Best Of: Remove The Non-Essentials

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Hey my friends, it's Brendan Burchard and welcome to a best of edition of the Brendan Show. These best of episodes feature training that I have done live, sometimes online to tens of thousands, 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 and in these special episodes here, these are my best of trainings only and exclusively right here 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 and 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 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 brendon.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 Brendan show's best of trainings.

Remove the non essentials. I really believe that if you just got good at this, this would be One of those needle moving strategies or skills, if you will, that helps everything else work better. In high performance sort of parlance, we talk about this as a meta skill, as this skill. If you're good at this one, you're going to be good at the rest of these things. Because this is where most people really struggle. They have so much of their day eaten up by non essential things. And what I mean by non essential things is not only is it functionally non essential, meaning you don't have to do it right, it's not serving any end, outcome or cause, but it's non essential because it doesn't bring you any joy or meaning. You know, the greatest single incident of my life outside of, you know, having my blessed, you know, relationship with my family and friends is my car accident. Because at 19, it made me understand very clearly what were non essentials. For me, a non essential is anything that doesn't help me feel like I'm fully alive, I'm living my life or my calling or my truth. It's things that I know aren't important to my relationships at all. And they're things that doesn't matter in terms of matter make a difference, doesn't make me feel a sense of pride or satisfaction or joy that I contributed them. I just got very clear of like what doesn't matter? Because if you've ever been in a hospital bed, it's very clear what doesn't matter. You think all these things matter. And a lot of non essentials that people think matter stuff. As an example, they spend all this time organizing, creating, buying, getting, categorizing, researching stuff. Like, I can't tell you how many people spend so much time on stuff. Don't be a browser, because most of the time when we say competing interests, I'm going to assume from the start, from the get go, we're talking about real interests of yours. Things that you are really passionate about, things that really matter to you. That's why it's hard to choose, because these things are all important. But if you're trying to juggle in with all the important things, things are not important at all. They're going to do is they're going to eat away at your foundation of success. Like termites at the foundation of a home. Like little bites, the little, you know, 20 minutes or 15 minutes or five minutes that this person looks at these magazines that are just stuff that mean nothing to the person's life. They're not looking to shop, they're not looking to buy anything. They're Just kind of, oh, well, this thing showed up in my house. So I guess I have to look at it like a stupid consumer just takes whatever is given to them and eats it because it's there. It's like, oh, okay, I don't want. You got to be more conscious than that. Just because someone puts something in front of you doesn't mean you look at it. So for those who are browsing all day long on Facebook like, I got nothing else to do. And then later on you complain I'm so busy and overwhelmed. No, that's your problem. That's your inability to manage your time and your attention towards things that are essential to you. And that's what bothers me at this day and age, frankly, it's very difficult to be a compassionate coach right now because people say, I'm so busy and overwhelmed. What are you doing? They're looking at Facebook for 20, 30, 40 minutes a day. I'm like, what? That's because you're not managing your mind's addiction to the dopamine drop that comes every time you see something new. Because, right. This is a variety machine. And a variety machine that is just like a hamster connected, running on something for a food pellet. This is your food pellet for your brain today. And because it's fun, people spend 20, 30, 40 minutes an hour, two, three, four hours a day browsing. And then they have the gall to say, you don't understand how stressed I am. You don't understand how busy I am. No, what I understand is you've never mastered this meta skill of removing the non essentials. It's very, very important. What does not matter must not be on your plate. And you need to stop putting it there because what it's doing, again, I'm talking about competing interests. Please recognize the context here is if you got interest things that are important to you and you're juggling in all those unimportant things, it's going to wreck you. All those little distraction pieces, they add up. You've heard me say it. If you've been to High Performance Academy, that the average American watches four hours of television a day now, four hours of television is over a decade of their life. 24, 7 in front of the boop tube, doing nothing that is meaningful to them per se. It's cool to have escape. I don't mind escape. But make sure the escape is something that you feel is going to revitalize you in a real significant way. You know, it's like I tell a lot of People, they're like, well, I just, man, I'm, I'm really fried, man. I just need to watch an hour tv. I'm like, you know what, Go take an hour of yoga. I'm really fried right now, man. I just, you know, I just, I'm going to, I'm gonna do some other escapism, like a video game. I'm like, you know what, Go meditate. Because there's gonna be benefits to that yoga and the benefits to that meditation that are going to multiply your later performance where there's gonna be no benefit to blatant consumerism. And I think that's really important for people to understand today because they're getting lost in the digital stream. They're drowning in the digital stream and yet they're saying that they're so busy, they're really not. And so just identify the things that you can remove. And you know, for me, you know, I've just removed so many things that I used to think were important because so many times in my life, you know, I've lost somebody or I've been in a hospital bed or I've moved. I'm sure you've done it too, right? Do you remember that last time you moved and you got rid of so much stuff and you're like, I so don't need this.

How freeing that was, getting rid of stuff.

If you haven't read Essentialism, a book called Essentialism or the Life Changing Magic of Tidying up, read those two books, it will just help you get in a new mindset. Or even read another book called Vagabonding. Read those three books just to get back in your mind, like, right, I need to get down to the core things in my life that are important. You know, one of the reasons the Zen masters were so Zen is because they weren't collecting lots of stuff, they weren't being distracted by lots of things. You know, you work with high level masters in any sport, they're not trying to do a thousand things. They're actually very minimalist. And I think that today becoming a little bit more focused on essentialism or minimalism, I think will help serve you being able to manage the things that matter the most. I'm constantly evaluating what's non essential and I evaluate the non essentials based on a bigger picture of my purpose. And we're going to talk about some of the goals I have. But I just kind of think about my life in a continual basis in terms of legacy because I faced the end of my life so many Times that I've had to say what really matters to how people remember me, what contributions really matter from me. And getting rid of the things that aren't unique to you or won't really move the needle, the things that you're replaceable on. Let somebody else do it. Do the things that are essential to you, contributing your unique ability or your unique purpose or your unique joy. Focus more on those and learn to.

Say no to the rest.

Learn to get rid of those. Let me give you an example that most people would not call a non essential, but I labeled right away. I've been offered probably seven or eight major television shows in my career and it's almost just not to be flippant, but it's the easiest and fastest no, because to me, I recognize all the non essential things that would come into my life from having to have like a daily talk show as an example which we've been offered, it's like on major networks, it's like, yeah, that'd be interesting. But I don't want Dr. Phil's life or Dr. Oz's life, nothing. I mean, I think those guys are great, but I don't want their life. I don't want a call time every day where I have to be on set every day. Not saying those aren't valuable and important and reaching millions of people, but all these non essentials of me having to get up, get makeup, do all these things, have a schedule, teaching topics just because it supports the sponsor or supports the producer's need. I was just like, man, I don't want all those things. I was like, it's just not essential to me. So it was an easy no. But in every area of my life I'm like, what's non essential? Let me give you another example. We're about to start shooting here on location. We're up in the woods. We're were, you know, miles and miles and miles from town. And you know what I used to do when I first started filming here was I would drive here every morning. And that commute was kind of whacking me out, like making me tired. And I figured out just recently I was like, well, this is silly that I'm driving out here. You know, we're doing a course as an example. I'll drive out every morning and drive.

Back in every night.

And I just thought, this is crazy. And I found a little crappy hotel that's not too far away that I can just go there and stay instead.

Of going all the way back to.

My home because it's taking out this commute. It's not essential that I get back home every night to do that. I can say, you know what, I'm going to take three nights, stay in this crappy little hotel, but at least I'm not going to have to be commuting for an extra hour a day or whatever it is. So how can you remove. So a good way to think about non essentials. I know I'm going off on this, but this is, like I said, a meta skill is look at everything you're doing in your life as a habit and say, what if I cut that out? Or I could cut that out. Can I cut out a commute? Maybe I can't cut out a commute five days a week, but could I work from home two days a week? What if I'm watching 10 hours of television a day a week? What if I could strip that down to just one hour a day? What if I'm cooking all my meals and instead I said, you know what? I'm going to have meals delivered at least once a day. What if. I mean, what is. What else can you do that will bring more convenience into your life and strip out something that you think you have to do but you don't? Because I really think that is powerful. You know, go read another book recommendation towards this is like the four hour workweek from Timmy Tim Ferriss. Absolutely necessary to get rid of stuff. You know, I think people really struggle here and a lot of people's overwhelm has nothing to do with the competing interests. It has to do with all the garbage in between that they throw in. And they don't realize they could easily get 10 hours a week back. I mean, think about that. If you got 10 hours a week back to focus on the essentials, you'd be a weapon. And that's how personally I've gotten so far in my life is recognizing the non essentials. So I want to give you a new way to think about it. Just a simple point system that might serve you in how you're thinking through your two competing interests. So what I'd like you to do is define two projects that feel equally important to you right now. So maybe you're saying, okay, two things that feel important to me, like in my industry might be do I start a book or do I start a blog? Right? It's like that. I get that question all the time. Which one first, Brendan? The answer is doesn't really matter. There's no finite answer to that. It's up to You. But let me give you a point system for figuring that out. Okay? I'm just going to give you four different criteria. So if you would just do me a favor. Pull out your piece of paper and write on one side something you're thinking of doing and on the other side something you're thinking of doing. And these are things you're just trying like you're like they're competing. I don't know which one to do or which one to give the most time to or which one will be the most value. Okay, so try to think of something like that, those two competing interests or competing values, competing opportunities. And all I'm gonna do is give you four categories and you're gonna rank them on a scale of one to five. Okay? One to five. Here we go. On that scale, the first factor I want you to measure and give yourself five points on is what we call being goals. Now a being goal means this is something that you feel like if you do will develop character in your life. And it will. In other words, it makes you a better person. And it also aligns with your self expression what's unique to you. And also it gives you a sense of satisfaction, right? So all I can say is by doing like, this is more me. That's kind of how you think about it. This is more me and will feel more satisfying if I do it. Now, both of them might get five points or maybe one gets five, one gets four. I don't know what it is for you, but it's the one that says this aligns with my goals for being like what I want of me and life and how I want to feel and what I want to express and what's unique to me. Does one rate higher than the other? It's okay if they both rate the same, but it's likely one rate's a little higher than the other. Next is what we call our connection goals. This is our connection in terms of relationship to the world, to others. Like, does one. Is one better for your relationships? Does one bring you closer to people? Is one better for your relationships or does one bring you closer to people? That's our connection goals, right? Our human relating goals. Does one help you connect or come closer to people? Again, that's a scale of 1 to 5, right? So if you think about it, we're at 10 possible points right now in each category, right? This one could have 10 points because you've got five points for being and five points for connecting. This other one that could also have 10 points, five points for being five points for connecting. We're just adding them up. The next one is creating or giving goals. To me, it's the same thing. Giving or contribution is the same to me as creating. It literally means the same. I don't differentiate them. Because in order to give something, you have to creatively express yourself. In order to contribute something tangible, you have to create the PowerPoint, create the book, create the message, create the movement, whatever. You're creating something that contributes or gives to the world, right? So which ones, what score is high on your creating or giving or contributing goals? Okay, one to five. And one means not at all, by the way, five means a lot. I'm assuming you knew that. Okay, last piece. Growing goals. Which one of these things will genuinely stretch you? It's like outside of your current ability, maybe more than the other one. Okay. It's difficult. It will bring struggle. It will force you to develop new competency, meaning, knowledge, skill, ability, confidence. Okay, which one's going to really push you? Okay, so you take all those and you add them up and whichever one scores higher, whichever one scores higher, is the one that's going to give you what psychologists would call that intrinsic sense of meaning, right? It's going to, it's going to be that thing that just, it, it feels right for you to do. And you should focus on that because you know your previous measure, right? Your payoffs, this is really about time, external benefits. This one so much is about more intrinsic meaning than just, you know, because payoffs can be very external, extrinsic rewards, intrinsic rewards, you follow? So that's why I'm having you measure both time. You know, this is timeless. These things are important, right? So I really want you to think through these competing interests and just rate them one to five. And I will bet if you do that one of those things ends up more important the other. Now the question I asked, well, what if one of these things is more important than the other, but the payoff seems better on the other one in terms of timing? Well, it just depends. I knock off a lot of things to score. Guess what? If it scores low on this, it's a non essential. Get rid of it. I shouldn't even be considering where it might fit in terms of payoffs because it's just not necessary. Get rid of that thing, you know, just get rid of it, you'll be super happy. But I do believe if you can master that meta skill of getting rid of the non essentials and learn to find out what is the essential, because they rank high on that point system I gave you and the payoffs, you've really clarified why you are doing what you are doing. Like why are you doing it? What's the payoff here? If you're clear on those things, you're going to get better at life. Okay, y', all, I'm so thankful that you're here every single month. I'm trying to bring a new framework to you every single month. I'm appreciative of you being here. Stay on your own path to personal development mastery by joining us again. Until then, go out there every single day of your life. Live fully, love openly, make your difference, y'. All. Later.

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. Just go out, post it somewhere, post yourself, listening to it. Make make sure you hashtag the Brendon show because when you do that, I can look you up and we can find you on Instagram and post that on 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, 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.