Best Of: Debrief with the 10 Human Drives Framework

Hey, my friends, it's brendon burchard and welcome to a best of edition of the brendon show. These best of episodes feature training that I have done live, sometimes online to tens of thousands of people or live on stage where I was speaking on.

Some stages across the world.

Or these might be some of my monthly training programs and highlights of those that I do every single month with our monthly students.

So I know you're going to really.

Enjoy these because these are a little.

Bit more of a deep dive look.

At some of my training as a personal and professional development trainer. You know, I focus so much on helping you find that deeper level of motivation and start practicing some of those high performance habits. Well, you hear me talk about many of those concepts in these special episodes here. These are my best of trainings only and exclusively right here on on the brendon show. So I hope you enjoyed them. Please note that as you hear me speak in many of these, you'll hear me reference something because sometimes I'll have been training live or on video or on stage or through a broadcast. So you might not be able to see something I'm suggesting or motioning to or maybe even drawing out on a flip chart or motioning towards on a presentation, but you'll get the gist of it. So make sure you bust out your journal. Take some good notes here because this is really valuable insights on the mindset or the strategies that you need to adopt in order to improve your life. And if you want to go and get more content like this, but much more deeper and have more of an interactive relationship with me in this type of training, make sure you join our high performance monthly training program. That's our monthly subscription program where I go live with you and our high performance students every single month and I train on a new topic or a new piece of research that we've created from the the high performance institute and I train on that and then I do q and a and actual live coaching, interactive coaching with people every single month. That's called high performance monthly and you can Access it at brendan.com monthly that's brendon.com monthly B-R-E-N-O-N.com monthly to get deeper dive training similar to this. So if you like this, you would love that training program. But without further ado, let's jump in right now to one of the brendon show's best of trainings.

Hey, my friends, it's brendon burchard and welcome to your monthly jolt of motivation and drive so we can have a conversation about your high performance and how much you grow and how fast you're succeeding. This is a very, very special monthly edition. This is my new offices in Portland, Oregon at the High Performance Institute. And I'm super stoked to talk with you in this session about debriefing 2017. You went through a lot this year and I'm sure some of you were happy with this year and some of you hated this year. And some of you are like, I don't care, Brendan. I just don't care no more. But I do know that as you charge into 2018, we want to make it an extraordina year together. So I honor you for taking the time out of your day right here to work on yourself. Let's figure out what went good in 2017, what didn't go well in 2017, and what we need to do to set ourselves up for extraordinary success in 2018. That's what this one's about. It's an honor to be here with you. And I'm going to make this an awesome training session for you and every one of these frameworks. I'm going to give you some new ways to score yourself, new things to measure, new mindsets, new habits to adopt. Because my goal for you is so that you can reach the highest levels of growth and success and high performance in your life this year. Because Whether you liked 2017 or whether you didn't, it is a challenge to change. And year over year over year, we can get in this process, especially when you're good, where you're not pushing yourself at the level you could push yourself, where you're not putting yourself in the right mindset and where you're not maintaining the right habits to really crush it. So I'm here with you live to do this. And let me walk you through the process. Today we'll go through a very big framework. It's a 10 part framework to help you look back at 2017 and prep for 2018. Now, many of you guys know you'll be here too, with me live on New Year's Day, January 1, 2018. And that session I'll be doing a very strategic breakdown of how to accomplish any of your goals 10 times faster in 2018. Today's session is a look back to learn to ready yourself, and also for some of you, just to release 2017, because a lot of people had some negative things happen this year. You know, many of you guys were with me in my live broadcast after I lost my grandmother this year. Or after my computer crashed this year and sent me into complete turmoil. Or after. Or after I had to let team members go. Or after I broke my toe. Or after my house almost caught on fire in the big Oregon fire this year. Shout out to all my friends who are in the Los Angeles area or in Southern California who are still being affected by fires as we shoot this today. There's a lot that went on this year, good and bad, and I'll talk about my own journey, where I failed this year, what I learned, what I'm going to be trying to get better in 2018. You know, I'm blessed now to be named the world's number one high performance coach. But I think sometimes people think I'm different than yourselves, and I'm not. I'm going to go through this framework with you in real time today. This is a worldwide community of people who are saying, you know, I want to be at my best. I want to know how to bring my A game. I want to practice the right habits. I want to take care of my family. I. I want to advance in my career. I want to get in better health. We're all on this journey together. You're a high performer. If you're here because you have the curiosity and the commitment to figure out what will get you that edge, what will help you go to that next level. That's my job with you here today, my friends. So I plan on delivering in full with you. We have a lot to cover today. I'm going to teach you a framework that I use here towards the end of the year to really analyze the major areas of my life with a very specific intent. Now, for those who are joining us for the first time, if you don't know a lot about my story, you can look up my car accident story on my YouTube channel some point today or tomorrow and see that my journey really began with understanding. At the end of my life, I was going to ask questions to evaluate my life and to evaluate whether I was happy with the life that I lived. And I learned that we all ask questions. You're going to ask questions at the end of your life to see if you're happy with it. And I would urge you as we go throughout today to question where you are right now in your life and if you're really happy with where you're at in all the different areas of your life. And I'll be talking about many of those areas. Your career, your finances, but also your emotional well being, your connection and love. With other people. If you feel as vibrant and healthy as you want to feel, if you feel like you're making a difference as much as you want to make a difference of. I don't know what and how you would evaluate yourself at the end of your life, but I do know we're at the end of the year, and this is a great opportunity for us to evaluate ourselves in the same ways. Like, for me, as many of you guys know, last night I went to bed just like I go to bed the last 21 years of my life, and I ask, did I live today? You know, did I live vibrantly and passionately? Did I love openly and completely? And did I make my difference? I asked that every single night. Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter? And of course, you can imagine I'm also asking that here at the end of my year in 2017. So whatever questions you might use to evaluate your total life, use them here at the end of 2017. But specifically, what I want to actually do the training on with you today, give you a new framework. I want to give you this framework that I call the 10 human drives. But we're going to use this framework to actually evaluate your 2018 or 2017 and really debrief it, understand where you've been, what worked, what you need to learn. So even if you know this framework, you've never gone through it in this way before. This framework is pretty famous if you don't know what it is. The 10 human drives framework was the subject of one of my books called the Charge. And it was a framework that we built to ask the essential question or answer the essential question, which is what makes us feel fully alive and what makes us actually feel like we're connected and contributing. In other words, I think we all want to feel like we're fully alive and that we're living meaningful lives. So I teamed up with literally hundreds of psychologists by now, have beat this framework up, and there's nothing missing and there's nothing to add to it. Meaning it's a pretty comprehensive framework for understanding the vitality and aliveness that you have in your life. And I thought, what a better way to end 2017? To ask, did you live 2017? But I don't want to ask it just so generically. We're going to bust it down into what we call the baseline human drives. Okay? So we're going to create a nice little division here. These are the baseline human drives, and these are the advanced human drives. These ones, if any of these, you are missing in 2017. If your mindset or your habits or your routines, your relationships weren't firing here, you probably didn't have a good 2017. And if none of these were firing, you probably didn't have a fulfilling 2017. So this just makes us feel like we're alive. This makes us feel more fulfilled, and we're going to walk through this all of our time here today. This is the 10 human drive framework. Let's use it to think about our 2017. But here's what I'd like to do before I even get in. Ask yourself this. On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy with 2017 are you? Just give yourself a global ranking. 1. It sucked. You hated it. F you 2017. I'm done. Okay, 10. It was outstanding. One of the best years of your entire life. You love 2017. You were engaged with it. You were fulfilled from it. It was awesome. Where are you? Be honest. Give yourself a score. Maybe even type your score down below in the chat, like, just to publicly declare, like, well, here's where I was at. And no matter where you're at, if you were four or you were nine, hey, you're here now. You know, you made it through. We're wrapping this sucker up. You only got a couple more. What do we got? Two more weeks of the year. Two and a half more weeks of this entire year. You made it. I mean, you survived this thing. So I would like to ask a very simple thing as we begin. Go get a journal if you don't have one yet, that you keep up just for me and you every month, we're here live, and I'm going to keep you on track all of 2018. So stick with us. If you're new, trust me, stick around. But one of the greatest benefits you can give yourself is to just have a journal just for us every single month when we get together, live that. You're going to keep working on yourself with this journal. Because if you have a journal just for us, just for this, and you see yourself every month asking these right questions, learning a new framework, learning how to measure or monitor or improve yourself, you'll see a tremendous amount of momentum. I mean, I always tell people, if you're new, just give me three months. Stick with me for three months and see the unbelievable transformation you start sensing and seeing and feeling. So bust out your journal. And I want you to really go along with me as we go through this. But at the very top of your journal, I want you to give yourself that number, right? You know, write down 2017 and write down what your number was in terms of your happiness overall with 2017. I just want our mindset right there. How happy with 2017 were you in general? And then we'll start breaking it down and seeing where you learned. I'll share with you all of my lesson points and all my challenge points that have put me either on the path of high performance throughout the year or where I really, like, crashed and burned. Okay, so here we go. I'm going to go through our baseline human drives. Okay, These are your baseline human drives. So you might even just title this in your journal your baseline human drives. Okay? These are the musts. When we don't have these, we're miserable. So when we have them, we're on fire. And we're going to walk through every single one of these. Okay? So enough warm up. Got your journal now got your water, shut the door, shut the windows, shut out the noise. Let's focus on your life, if we can, right now and just jump into the 10 human drives. The number one way to evaluate your 2017 the number one way to evaluate your 2017 in terms of what gave you the most sense of aliveness or satisfaction or joy often comes down to this first of the human drives, and that is your sense of control that you had in 2017. If you had a high level of control in your personal life, in your career, with your health, with your finances, it tends to be you felt pretty satisfied. If you had no control those things, you tend to be fairly dissatisfied. True statement, right? When we have a little bit more control of our life and our direction, our career, our finances, our health, we tend to feel like, okay, I'm on path. But when all of this is gone, that can create tremendous amount of emotional and spiritual turmoil. So we're going to talk about how to deal with that here as well. But what I'd like you to do right off the bat is take this opportunity in this area. Just like all the other areas we're going to go through, I really want you to do this practice of scoring yourself on a score of 1 to 10. Okay? Remember, ones are unhappy, tens are super happy. Okay, I know that's a little elementary, but you get the idea because as we go throughout here, guess what? 10 points. 10 points, 10 different topics you're going to end up with. At the end of this session, you're going to end up with a potential of 100 points for 2017. Okay? And we want to see what your number is and identify the areas that are low and improve them and identify the areas that you're great at and improve those, too. Okay? So that's what we're going to be doing together in our session today. So let's think about control, and you might in your journal because you have the time and space to do this. I'll move along fairly quickly here because I'm talking with the worldwide audience, and I want to make sure I get your questions in the giveaways. But I'd like you to give yourself that score of 1 to 10. Your overall sense of control in your Life. Like, in 2017, did you have a lot? See, when I think about mine, I think about my sense of control this year. Mine, I think overall was only a six, only a level six. Now, that might surprise some of you because, like, but, Brendan Burchard, you must have everything handled. My God, haven't you been doing this long enough? No. There was a tremendous amount of things in this year that were completely out of control. And you know what? It pissed me off or it hurt or it caused just a lot of, like, ugh, those days where you're like, I can't believe this day, really, another thing going wrong. And so I have those just like you. And if your score is higher than 6 or less than 6, that's okay, too. There's no right answer as we go through all this. But you need to know where you're at in terms of the overall sense of control you had this year and where you've lost some control that you need to gain back. Right? So let's think about 2017, and let's walk through a couple different areas of your life. Okay. Let's just do give ourselves the gift of identifying some areas of our life. Okay. Our major areas of life. We can have the major area of our health. Right? We can have the major area of our families, of our friends. We can have those major areas of our career, of our finances, of our sense of adventure, of our sense of learning. We can have all these different areas of our life. I don't know exactly which one you want to have a look at, but I do know the lens I want to give you. I'd like to give you the lens of control. And let me see. Let me show you how I walk through this at the end of the year. I hope it will be supportive of you. Like, let's take a look at your health. What level of control did you have about your health this year that you're happy with? Right. Do you feel like you were in Command of your health this year, or did your health get away from you? Did you feel like, you know, some people I know this year maybe got sick? Maybe you got hurt? Many of you guys know this year, Was it this. Yeah, was this year I broke my toe. That sucked. That was not good. Many of you seen my sort of little mini movie on YouTube where I was sick during the High Performance Habits book tour. Completely out of control.

That one video.

If you ever saw me, I have snot going out my nose. I'm, like wiping myself off. I'm trying to do yoga before I go and meet the Oprah Winfrey team. I mean, I was in a total mess. My level of health control for me, too low this year, didn't like it. And so my question will now go, okay, if my level of health control, let's call that a level six. What could I have done? What could I have done to have made that innate? What could I have done to make that innate? Now, this introduces the idea that some people are going to start feeling pretty bad about themselves. As we go through all these 10 things, you're going to say, oh, my God, I could have done this. And I coulda, woulda, shoulda, and I hate myself. And now you get mad at yourself. I don't want you to do that today. Let's just kind of look at our life of 2017 as an observer and in command, in control, having a sense of desire in our heart and our soul to learn, to learn. I mean, there's so many things I could have done better with my health this year. How about you? Well, here's my question. Where? Where could you have done better? Let me give you an example. With my health this year, I think about all that travel, you know, what I should have done every single time I ordered lunch, should have got a salad. I know that in my mind, like, dang it, on the road, lunch, salad. I should have made it part of it. But, you know, on the road, you're busy, you're talking with other people. Sometimes I'm at events, sometimes we're doing a lunch and learn. Sometimes I'm at executive tables and the CEOs are sitting around and it's like croissants and, you know, bad food or, you know, I have a speech in the morning, you know, two, three hour speech in the morning. And then, you know, after my speech, it's lunchtime, I'm starving, and I'll choose something that's super high calorie because I'm so hungry. Takes a lot of calories to run this mouth. So I'll be so hungry, and I'll choose something that's not good for me. My mother is French Vietnamese, so there's this bread thing. I want the bread. I know I shouldn't have the bread. Like, I know that. What I should have done at lunchtime, every single time is ordered a salad. Put some chicken on that salad, and it would have been good. Speaking of control, I have no control over the sirens you're hearing right now, but it's important for me to know that. Right? Okay. Health. Not where I wanted it. Next time, Brendan, salad. I know that's so basic, but you'll see how this sort of learning mentality picks up a lot of steam as we start moving through this framework. So I'm spending a little bit more time on this first one than I'll do in the rest of them, but you get the idea, Right? So now let's look at your family. Was the emotional connection you had with your family what you wanted it to be this year? And who was in control of that? Were you in control of that? Was the happiness, the engagement, the satisfaction, the joy, the connection you had with your family this year? What score did you give yourself there? When you think about your family, were you, like, not with them enough so you feel, like, not so happy there? I mean, how much did you try to control the energy and the connection you had with your family this year? Or did you just go through the same old motions and have the same old fights and struggle with the same old things? I think you get the idea here, looking at these different areas of our life, it's important. You know, one area up here I think about in terms of where this number comes down for me, I would say for control, with the amount of adventure I had this year was lower than it usually is. Now, I know some of you like, well, you spoke to 60,000 people. That sounds adventurous. Yeah, but that's my job. That's what I do. I didn't do as much mountain biking as I usually do. And who's in control of that? The mountain? The mountain bike? My team. Who's in control of how much mountain biking I do? I got to own that. Right. I let go of control over an area that I really love. I didn't golf as much as I should have this year. And it wasn't just because of work, because I was doing other things I really loved, too. Like, I'd replace maybe mountain biking with some research that I was really interested in doing, or I Would replace golfing with some racquetball. But maybe I didn't do as much as those things as I wanted. I think it's really important for you to look back at 2017 and just go, what did I not do that I really enjoy doing? And how could I control that a little bit better by managing my time better? Because ultimately, so much of the control we sense in our life is how we spend our time. Isn't it true? So much of the control we sense in our life is how we spend our time. Did you spend your time in the appropriate buckets here that would make you happy with the year? Did you control the time that you spent with your family, with your friends, with your finances, with adventure, with learning? Like, did you really connect with that, really want you to think about that? Like, so these simple areas are just something to think about and start scoring yourself. There's no right way to do it. But you and I both know that overall, you either had command of 2017 or 2017 had command of you, right? Either. It was a really year where you kind of, you went along, you went with the flow. You didn't insert your personal power, your sense of self control into the world. So you just took what the world gave you. For example, this world, this year, 2017. A lot of people I coached this year for them, they were trapped in reaction and distraction. Like half the year, right? So much reaction. I would say, look, if you're constantly reacting, don't fool yourself into thinking you're in self control. If you're constantly in distraction, don't fool yourself into thinking that you are demonstrating the personal power you are capable of, my friend. And I'm going to challenge you. I'm going to push you on this live webcast because you know what? You got to get back a little bit more control of your day and your life. How many days this year do you felt like completely got whacked out by other people's agendas? Somebody just stole your day, they sent that email and like, you felt like you had to respond to them. And you lost five hours of the day in which you were going to do the things that mattered to you, you were going to do those things that mattered to your customers, to the marketplace. And because you did that, you got in trouble. So as I go in this one, I also want to share with you as I look through this lens. I'm not trying to make you a control freak. I'm not saying you can control everything. I couldn't control that. My grandma died Couldn't control that my house almost burned down. So I didn't get to see as many of you guys as I wanted to this year because I had to cancel those book tours. I mean, there were a lot of cities I never got to because our house was going to burn on fire. Decided to stay home. I wasn't able to control, you know, breaking my foot. That wasn't part of the plan. You know, I had to let some team members go. That wasn't part of the plan. You know, we go to shoot these live webcasts in this new office, and it's so huge, you know, there's like 10,000 square feet. So we're always trying to figure out where we want to shoot. Sometimes I'll be doing a live webcast and sirens will go off or, you know, people walk by or dogs barking. I mean, there's just things I couldn't control. But I have to. At the end of this year, as I debrief this, I go, what could I have controlled better? And that's what I want you to write down in your journal. What could I have controlled better? It's not that we're ever going to get to the utmost control of our life, you know, because I believe there's someone else in charge of my overall destiny and direction in life, you know, because I have a strong spiritual faith. But I also know that we've been equipped with the power of choice. And I've got to be honest and accountable at the end of this year of where I let go my sense of control, you know, But I do know when this number for me is that low, I get frustrated, I get fired up and. And I allow that to be true. I allow that frustration that getting fired up, I don't get disappointed or mad or guilty or down to myself. This exercise of self reflection is ultimately a process to claim more personal power. Like, I want to be aware of all these things so that I get better at them in 2018. So, please, if you haven't pushed around this year too much by other people, if you feel like you gave up your personal power, you let someone else control your agenda or your day or your feelings too much or your energy too much, let's just be aware of that. You know, you control your feelings, you control your energy. I mean, ultimately, going to 2018, if we don't say, I own this year, this year is mine, I am going to bring the best of who I am this year. I'm going to take back control. I'm going to take Back the reins. How can 2018 get better if we don't take back the reins from where we gave them to somebody else in 2017? So where did you give it away in 2017? And I know I'm going on and on about this first one, but this is the one. I tell you. You can get more edge back on this one if you decide today. If all we did today is you said, I'm taking back my life. I'm taking back control of my health. I'm taking back control of my energy, my feelings. I'm taking back control of my day. I'm taking back control of my morning. I'm taking back control of where I give my time, my energy, my efforts. If you got serious about that, my friend, you kicked 2018's ass. We got to do that. We got to get back in command of our year. Isn't it True? Where did 2017 go off the rails for you? Where did you lose it? Be aware of that. Don't get mad at yourself. Don't hate yourself. Don't beat on yourself. Just know it and determined to do better. That's what I'm doing. I'm doing that with my health. I'm doing that in my areas, with my family. I'm doing that in other areas because, you know, I think one of the major areas that I failed to control this year was the time I spent with family and friends. If I better control the time I spent with family and friends, meaning I blocked more of that out like I usually do, then this could have easily been an 8. My ultimate failure here was, for me, control. I got sick, I got injured. That was a big. That knocked me down pretty good. My sense of control with my grandmother, losing my grandmother, that didn't throw me out of a sense of control. I just acknowledged that it was her time and that, you know, God called her up and so she's not here. But I don't. I didn't take that as a sense of control. I don't feel like I have a control over anyone's life or health. So that didn't bother me in terms of my overall sense of control about life. I didn't spiral out of control because, oh, my gosh, everyone dies. Like, I kind of got that when I was 19. Okay. I've had mortality motivation a long time. But where I do know I failed one of my great failures of 2017, I know that I did not control my time enough to ensure a little more time with my family and my friends. Right? Definitely not enough Adventurous, crazy, stupid trips with my buddies. So if you guys are watching, sorry. I know. I really. We should have gotten a lot more trouble this year. And I also know with my family, too, a very good amount of time with family, no questions. But not at the standard I like to keep. Many of you know that I'm very, very productive of my family and my friends, and we spend a tremendous amount of time together. You know, I see my mom, who lives in another state, you know, at least nine times per year, you know, over 40, 50 days of the year. So I get to spend a lot of time with many of my family members. So I get to spend time with my mom at my events. But even at my events, I know, you know what? Sometimes I could have controlled the environment a little bit. Instead of doing an interview, I could have said no to the interview and had mom there. Now, again, I don't get mad at myself about that. I just go, okay, man, 2018, get control of those things. So if you've been good at taking notes, I've been giving you some areas to think about that you can grab some control back of or. Or ask where did I lose or not have sufficient amount of control in 2017? And some of those areas are, did I control my time, my day, my agenda, my feelings, my energy? Was I in command of how I was going through my life? Was I being purposeful and intentional? Or did I succeed or secede that control to somebody else? And I'll tell you, one of your greatest breakthroughs in 2018 will come from you realizing where you are giving away control of your energy to other people. I think 2017 was a tough one for people. They lost control of their own optimism, their own positive emotions. And because of the vitriol in the politics, particularly here in the United States, because of a lot of the hate and rejection, because a lot of even some of the good, positive movements out there, like the Me too movements or the movements to increase wages or other movements that started this year. There was a lot of combatant feeling this year, and a lot of people felt like they were on edge all year. You know, like this negative edge they felt. I hear all around I'll be standing and signing 200 books, and inevitably, out of the 200 people, 50 will say, Brendan, how do you stay so positive right now? Well, I always come back to this one. You know what? It is a human drive that you want to be in control of your own mind and your own energy. And so first, be aware of that. Know, when you give away that to somebody else. When you give away your power to somebody else, you are diminishing your life. So be aware of where you're giving that away. Start right there. Notice, like, for me, I can't read the news every day. If I read the news every day, I get to start turning negative. And it's not that I don't consume news. It's not that I'm not aware of what's happening in the world. But if I do it every day or find any breaks where I start filling it with reaction, I start getting an edge. I start losing the positive energy and buoyancy I want in my life. Okay, so for me, for 2018, I know to bounce up to 8. I've got to get back a little bit more time with my family and my friends. And it bounces up to like a level of 9. I need to absolutely make sure that my health, my controlling my time and controlling my health goes up back to where I like it to be. It's not that I'm dissatisfied. I just know I have pretty high standards for myself. I'm going to keep those year over year over year over year. And that's how I'm thinking through some of this. Okay, I spent longer on that one than I'll spend on anything else. But I hope you've been writing a lot in your journal. Okay, so we're all driven. We all want a sense of control. A when we lose it, we're unhappy. When we have more of it, we're more happy. If we're completely out of balance and we want total control, we're screwed. And if we have no control, we're screwed. So our job is to find that sweet spot in between where we feel an appropriate amount of control and surprise of our life. Next up next human drive is our drive for competence. Human beings are animals that want to master things and figure out things. We have a high level of curiosity as much as other animals in the kingdom. But our drive to develop mastery and multiple areas of competence that have nothing to do with survival makes us distinct from most other species on the planet. That we really have a high and broad range of curiosity. But we want to get good at things. We want to develop knowledge, skill and ability, talents that really relate to our overall direction of life. And when we don't have competence in the areas that matter to us, it really affects our overall energy. When we feel like we're uninformed or ignorant or dumb or not smart enough in some given area, it can really take away from our Sense of aliveness. I don't know if that's true for you. I remember when I was a kid moving from one town to another, and when I went from one town to another, there were a lot of. I would start a new grade in a new school, and a lot of times when I would get there, I'd get into class and I might be joining that class mid semester, and the teacher would go around and ask questions and all the kids knew the answers and. And I just got into that town and I didn't know the answers. And I remember feeling not competent. And when you don't feel competent, it really affects your sense of joy and vibrancy in life, doesn't it? So I'm curious for you. Do you feel like you had the knowledge, skills, abilities, and talents to have met the goals that you wanted to meet in 2017? In other words, did you feel competent enough to achieve the things you wanted to achieve in 2017? Right. So if you're here and you're thinking about competency and you're like, oh, no, you know, I started a new thing, Brendan. You know, maybe some of you guys watching this, you came to Experts Academy or you know how I teach people to do what I do. Right. How do you be an author or speaker, coach, Seminar leader, online trainer, social media, thought leader? Like, how do you do my career? I teach that at Experts Academy. So thousands and thousands of new people all year long come to our programs. Who. This is new for them. They're leaving a corporate job and now they want to do online training, or they're leaving a job over here and they want to do webinars and get paid for them, or they're starting this new thing and they're like, what do I do on Facebook, dude? You know? And so for them, social media or online marketing or email marketing or doing launches is scary for them. They came out of a very, you know, good background where they developed some sense of security. Yep. And competence at what they were doing. And they started a new job, a new career, a new thing, and it scared the living crap out of them because for the first time in years, they didn't know what the hell they were doing. Did you have any of that in 2017? Where in 2017 did you just not know what the hell you were doing? Be honest with this one, because it probably affected your performance. And if you think about it, maybe you could have taken a little bit more time to skill up. Maybe you could have gone to that extra seminar or actually watched that course that you got. Or maybe you could have tried some new things to develop that competence. But, hey, maybe competence is high for you. And you're like, I crushed it. This year. I learned so much.

I applied what I learned.

I feel great. Now. I have the knowledge, the skill, the ability, everything necessary to go into 2018 strong. Maybe that's where you're at. Where's your competence? For me, oh, my gosh, this year, I was, like, rocking. I felt like I was at a 9. Now, by the way, that is not bragging, because I'm not saying competence is iq. Confidence in this sense is did I have the knowledge, skill, ability, and talent to deliver what I wanted to deliver this year to achieve my goals? And I felt like, wow, I really felt alive in this area. I feel more informed than I've ever felt in my life because I finished. Many of you guys bought the book High Performance Habits. It's the world's largest high performance study ever done, at least, certainly the most comprehensive. 190 different countries surveyed, over 300 structured interviews. I mean, I know all the academic literature and performance psychology. Right now, I feel very, very caught up to speed in everything related to neuroscience, economics, behavioral economics, social change, anything related to how do you succeed over the long term. I felt like I really scaled up, but that took me two years. I feel like I'm very skilled up in my online marketing because I've been trying and testing. I tested a lot this year. Some of you guys were on my list. You saw. You're like, why is Brandon doing this now? I was testing a lot of different things this year. So for me, one way I gauge my confidence is, am I trying new things? Am I doing my research? Also by being on the road, One of the added benefits of being a speaker, people go, oh, wow, you spoke to 60,000 people. What was your favorite part? And they always think, I'm going to say, well, I love to serve the people, which I do. Or, hey, you know, that was a challenge for me to get in front of 20,000 people in the Superdome, which. Which it was. But no, my favorite part, hands down, of speaking to 60,000 people was by getting to share with 60,000 people at these events. I was on stage with all these other really smart, competent, amazing influencers and thought leaders. So I got to learn a lot this year, right? Because I'm speaking to all these people. Guess what? There's other speakers at these events, and I got to sit and listen to the other speakers at the events and really consume what they were sharing. Really learning what they were doing. And it super inspired me. I mean, I learned so much from so many other great trainers in the marketplace that I always learned a lot. This was a great thing for me this year. So that's why mine is high. But coming back to yours, was yours. Did you learn what you needed to learn in 2017 to crush it in 2018? Did you learn what you needed to learn this year to Crush it in 2018? And you know what happens? Here's what most and I hope this doesn't offend anybody. Here's what people do these last couple weeks of the year. They watch an unbelievable amount of stupid Christmas movies. And I'm guilty, too. Oh, God, I love Christmas movies. I could watch all of them, all of them every year and be so satisfied. But I've already seen them. So instead of watching that fifth Christmas movie, why don't you take that 90 minutes and watch the online course? Why don't you take that 90 minutes and try something new? You've been waiting to put up that online marketing page. Take that 90 minutes, put it up, start typing it in, post it. Take the time where most people at the end of the year crash and burn into Netflix and into movies and messing around. Like, tool up skill. That's why I'm honoring that you're here. Like, skill up. This is a great time for you to use this time because if you got any spare time coming up, I know that's hard to say to a lot of people because you're like, spare time in December? Are you kidding? I'm catching up. But if you have some catch up time, skill up. That's what I do when I have catch up time, spare time, I skill up. I'm like, okay, what do I need to learn next? I'm always thinking, what do I need to learn next to reach the next level? What do I need to learn next? Like, for example, this year in my career, I had to learn and understand YouTube ads. I didn't know how to do those. Not the scale that we had to figure out. I had to figure out how to do different types of production. I had to figure out how to do different types of cameras. I had to figure out so much I had to learn how to do this year. I didn't know how to do that. Some of you guys were listening to my podcast and you heard me describing how I built my podcast booth. I had no idea how to do any of that. But I learned and I learned. I learned because instead of spending my time where I'm giving it to distractions, which I really do consider most of television as a distraction or most of screwing around on the Internet. I just pushed that aside and said, instead of, okay, I can take 90 minutes to entertain myself and I'll forget it in three days, or I can take 90 minutes to set myself up for the next level of success, which one am I going to choose today? And I'll tell you, by choosing consistently, education, empowerment, personal development, over and over and over again, it's made a huge difference in my life. I know that's true for you. So I'm speaking to the choir. That's why you guys are here. But please identify what you did not learn in 2017 that you must learn at least in the first quarter of 2018. Right. If I give you any gift right now, it's design your curriculum for 2018 before you get into 2018. Meaning, what are you gonna learn in quarter one, what are you gonna learn in Quarter two? What are you gonna learn in quarter three? What are you gonna learn quarter four, what books you're gonna read, what course you're gonna take, what seminars you're gonna go to, if that's your thing. But just figure out, what are you gonna learn, because you know what? When people get more competence, they get more confidence. When they have more confidence, we can statistically show more confidence equates to higher performance. More confidence leads to higher life satisfaction. More confidence relates to more positive emotions. More confidence relates to more positive relationships. So all of it really matters. And we always talk about that competence, confidence loop. I think if you can get a little more control and hone in your learning journey just a little bit more, I mean, your vibrancy will go so much because your confidence will come up. And then if your confidence is up, think about all the amazing things you're going to do in 2018. And I want you to enter 2018 as your most confident and abundant self you've ever had. I want you to be absolutely stunning and amazing all of 2018. SA. Third human baseline drive. Huge one. Congruence. Congruence. In 2017, were you congruent with the person you know you should be and can be? Right. See, this one's a tough one for a lot of people. A lot of people this year became jerks, right? They saw examples of jerks succeeding. They said, I'm gonna be a jerk. And their kindness went away. And they knew they were more kind, but they weren't congruent with that kind self image they had. And so here's the thing when we aren't congruent with the person we know we should be, our level of joy and satisfaction and vibrancy goes down because it's such a human drive. When you are incongruent with who you know you are or could be, that's a dark, night of the soul kind of moment. That's the stuff that burns at you at night. That's the stuff that causes guilt. That's the stuff that causes regret. And no one wants regret. Regret is one of the four huge fears that we all have in our lives. No one wants to live a day or a week and regret it. And so this one's a big one for a lot of people. I saw a lot of my best clients really struggle with this one. And, I mean, these are people who pay me a quarter million dollars and above a year. They're already amazing people, but they struggled with being as amazing as they know they could be. They weren't congruent with their values. They weren't congruent with the mindset they know they should have. They would say one thing, you know, on a video, but not do the same thing at home. They would be one type of person at work where they really cared about supporting and being patient with other people. And then they'd be short with the people at home. And so I saw a lot of people really struggle with this one. How'd you do? Do you feel, on a scale of 1 to 10, one you just weren't congruent with who you really are, meaning you were trying to be somebody else this year and it wasn't who you were? Or did you kind of just lose your rhythm and lose your place and kind of fall into the opposite of congruence? And being who we really are is often conformity. And if you've seen some of my work before, I often quote John F. Kennedy and talk about how conformity is the jailer of freedom. And so we gotta be careful about where we try to be like other people. I think right now we're experiencing a tidal shift in culture where a lot of people are trying to be like other people, Right? You know, you want to look as good as your Instagram friends or as your Facebook friends or as your friends over here. And so a lot of people lost who they were in trying to compete with other people. They lost their messaging, they lost their values, they lost their style, their brand, their thing, you know, and I get that, you know, we all have that compelling urge to, oh, someone's doing something like that. Let me do something like that. But we always got to pause and say, but is that how I want to demonstrate myself? Is that who I want to be? Is that what's most important to the best of who I am? And that's an important one. If you say something, you do it, you believe something, you show it and you speak it. That's the stuff of congruence. So how do you feel on this one for 2017 now at this point, again, I know, look, we've got people from around the world. We've got all walks of life. Some people are really happy with this live cast right now. They're like, I'm learning. This is really great. Other people are like, you're a jerk. If you ask me another question that makes me feel bad, I'm going to throw something at you on the screen. So I hope that you're sticking with me. Again, the whole point here is just to do some self evaluation so we enter 2018 better. So, in congruence, how were you? For me, I feel like I was probably maybe like an eight. Maybe about an eight. I'll just divide those. So you're not saying I'm 98%. Probably nine on confidence, probably an eight on congruence. And that was good. I think I could have been a little better in congruence because one of the things I failed at this year, and I told you I would tell you about my biggest failures this year, this is something that I really believe and I definitely lost control of this year. And it's something that's very important to me as a piece of congruence. And that is, I believe if I say I'm going to be somewhere and I'm gonna do something that is, I must do it, that's congruent, right? If I say it and I'm gonna do it, that's congruence. And there were too many times this year that I said I was gonna do it at a certain time on a certain date, and I had to move the dates, meaning I said, okay, I'll be there at 11 o' clock, and I show up at 1. And that's because part of my life. Watch how this happens. Part of my life got out of control with time management, so I wasn't able to be as congruent as I wanted. Does that make sense? Like, I lost some personal control by how many demands came at me this year. I mean, just constant, constant deal flow, constant requests, constant interview, like, all this stuff coming at me. And sometimes I get caught up in the swirl. And then I'd say, hey, you know, I'll be there at 11. My dad was. Many of you guys know, I hope you read High Performance Habits by now. And my dad's story is in there a little bit. And he was, you know, 20 plus years in the United States military in U.S. marine Corps. And so my dad, you know, Marines, they're on time. Actually, they're not. I don't know any Marines are on time. Marines are early. Okay, if you were 15 minutes early, you are late, late, late. My dad loved to be there 30 minutes early. And it's instilled in my whole family. My mom is one of those people who goes to the airport like three hours early and you're like, what? And I'm more of a like, crash. I'm like the last guy on the jetway in the plane if I go to the airport. Like, we're different that way. But a lot of my team would tell you that, right? I'll see you at nine. And now it's eleven. One or three. Because I got my agenda out of control. One important thing about what we're talking about, they all play together. All these things play together, right? Your control impacts your competence, your competence impacts your control, your competence impacts your congruence. These all intermingle. It's why so many psychologists love this framework, because it's so holistic. But I want to ask you, where were you not as congruent as you should be? For me, I was not as congruent in keeping my word on the time I said I would be somewhere that is not going to happen in 2018. It's just not going to happen. So how about for you? How about for you? Where were you not as congruent? What did you tell your family you were going to do and you didn't do? What did you tell yourself you were going to do in 2017 and you didn't do it? What values did you let slip a little bit this year? What did you do in 2018 or 2017 that was totally just not you. That was just not who you are, not what you're about. Maybe you got angry at somebody, Maybe you said something horrible to somebody. I know those don't feel good to talk about, but we should. Don't you think it's going to make us better in 2018 by acknowledging these self? Awareness is always the step, the first step to change, right? Awareness is the first gate to all personal changes. These are the 10 human drives. Number one, our sense and desire for control. Our sense, desire for competence, congruence. And number four is our human drive for caring. This one is not just about us feeling cared for. It's also about do we feel that we cared for the other people in our lives at the level we should have? And do we feel like we care about our day? Right. When, you know, a time in my life, I remember it was really hard, and as many of you guys know my story, but when I was depressed and suicidal, I didn't care anymore. And sometimes that's one of the hardest places to be in life when you just don't care anymore. Don't care about yourself, don't care about other people, don't care about the world, don't care about any given topic or passion. When we don't have those things, we fall into depressions, we fall into suicides because we don't care and we don't feel like we matter. And it's a dark place to be. And it proves the evidence that the human drive is to care for things. We want to care for our families, for our friends, for our topics. So if you think about this at a global level, do you feel like you. In 2017, were. Were you engaged in caring for others for topics for your day? I mean, did you really engage in care for the day, care for your work? Right. Because when you think about a sense of satisfaction at work, it feels like when you feel satisfaction at work, part of it's the contribution, but part of it's like you're proud that you gave a damn, that you cared about something more than yourself. That's an important part of our lives. We all want to have that sense. So caring, do you feel like you cared for things a lot this year? People, things, career? Give yourself a score. And again, just like all these other areas, you might score yourself in different areas. Right? Maybe. You know, when we're talking about congruence, you're very congruent with family, but not so congruent at work. Right. There are the different arenas of our life. Health, family, friends, career, finance, et cetera. Right. But for caring, I want you to give yourself that global score, too. For me, I'm super stoked. Like, in a rare Brendon moment, I was like, I cared so much this year. Like, I mean, you know what? I felt like I was crying half the year. I don't know what was going on. I cared so much about my family, my friends and the people around me. I cared deeply about my topics and my swag and my. I mean, every little component of my business. I cared more for that little thing then that little thing. I found myself caring so much I get frustrated. This wasn't right. And that wasn't right. That high demand of excellence. Is caring about excellence. All that was just like on fire this year. And don't think I'm bragging because I would say, you know, last year that was like a six. But I recognized in 2016 that my caring was a six. And so I entered 2018. I said I'm going to care about everything this year.

Going to put my attention and my.

Mindfulness back to things that are important. Now notice though, I didn't care about the things that don't matter. I didn't care about the haters. I didn't care about the negative comments. I didn't care about the 1 star reviews on the Amazon books. I didn't care about any of that. I cared about what mattered. Family, friends, topics of passion, of mastery, excellence at work, the details of, you know, how does this little bracelet here clasped together do I like the clasp? Like little, little. Like little every little thing. Many of you guys know I designed the book High performance habits. Like literally I designed the COVID That's my design. The front and the back of the COVID the flaps. I designed that. The illustrations inside design that like I designed everything of that book down to like the little. Just everything. So obnoxious. I know, but I loved it and it brought me to life, you know, because I've been in my life. And again, I don't want you to think this 10 is like, well, look at me. Because I've had points in my life where I didn't have any caring when I was suicidal. I was a zero there. 2016, six maybe. So I said 2017. I really want to care. I really want to get to know the people in my life even more. I want to demonstrate caring because to me, demonstrating caring means demonstrating interest and giving patience. So I demonstrated interest and patience with everybody I met to the utmost of my bill. Like I, I pushed myself so hard in this department this year. I'm really satisfied about that in 2017. What about you? Did you do a good job in this area? That'd be a high 9, 10, 8. Or did you kind of, you really kind of lost the passion, lost the connection, lost the engagement. And if you did, that's okay because you heard I've been there too. We've all been there. We've all had highs and lows. Our job is to re baseline at the beginning of the year and do A better job. Okay, last one. The fifth human drive is connection. That is our sense of love in deep connection and relationship with the people in our lives and with the moment. That's a little different. People always get these like, well, aren't they the same thing? You know, at some point I thought they were, and I work with psychologists on this framework. And it ended up being like, no, this is very different. Caring is a demonstration. Like caring is a verb. You know, it's an action. Connection is something that you sense or something that you have. And it's not that you can't also engage, but connection specifically is very relationship driven. Right? Our sense of belonging, our sense of wanting to be accepted, our sense of wanting to have good relationships with family and friends. Like, that's the stuff I'm talking about here. So did you really not just care for your family? Because you know what, A lot of people care for their family, but they don't feel connected with their family. You know what I'm saying? Two different things. You can be the caretaker of your family, but you might not feel connected with them. Does that make sense? So do you feel deeply connected with your team, with your family, your friends? I mean, are you really sensing that relationship type of connection that makes you feel like you belong or like you love and man, I've been all over the place with this one in my life at different times of my life. I've been very, very, very, very, very, very blessed in this area. I would say this was an 8 for me this year. I would say this was an 8. And I say innate specifically, just because all of the travel I feel this year took a little bit away of that connection. And as you know, I can't really blame the travel because now you have FaceTime. I mean, you can't blame the travel anymore. It's just the time that you make to deeply connect. I felt very connected to everybody in this, in my sort of space this year. But the depth of wasn't where I wanted to be with some people in my life. And I want to do a better job at that one, which I know I can. So here we go, right? So far, we're at five things, 10 points each. We could have 50 points. How are you scoring so far? What's your total score? This is the baseline drives, and you can tell throw any of these out and you're in trouble. Right? And so people are saying, well, how do I start better this next year? I'm like, evaluate these things, get clear on these things, and you'll Be in a better, better place. Okay.

All right, my friend. I hope that you enjoyed that best of episode. Was that inspiring?

Were you fired up?

Did you love it? If you did, make sure you do me a favor, go out on social media somewhere and share that episode. You know, just go out, post it somewhere, post yourself, listening to it. Make sure you hashtag the brendanshaw because when you do that, I can look you up and we can find you on Instagram and post that on the social media. And sometimes we do all expense paid trips to people we find. We just randomly select people. We send them gifts, autograph books, swag T shirts, all expense paid trips to some of my seminars. So make sure you let us know, share what you thought about this episode out there on the social media worlds and then we can find you and celebrate you. And also I would love to invite you to join us in our high performance monthly program. So just go to brendan.com monthly. That's brendon.com monthly. That's where we do deeper dive trainings.

Like you just heard.

But we do that every single month and there's some live Q and A there and I do some giveaways and we give students in that monthly program tickets to my seminars and some extra special training on leadership. So make sure you check it out@brendon.com monthly. I appreciate you being part of this community of so many people dedicated to finding that deeper drive of motivation and practicing high performance habits so that they can become extraordinary in their careers. In your personal life, in your health, you can live an extraordinary quality of life. And sometimes you just need a little bit more training and a little bit more nudge, a little more energy, a little bit more drive and consistency. And I'm hoping that being part of this community with the Brendon show, I'm providing that to you in some way. So thank you, my friend, for listening. I look forward to seeing you or listening with you on the next episode of the B r e n D o N show.