Best Of: The Power of Perspective

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Hey, my friends, it's Brendon 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 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 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 the Brendon show. So I hope you enjoy 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 still suggesting or motioning tool 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 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 forward/monthly. That's brendon.com forward/commonly B R E N D 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.

This is probably one of the most frequently asked questions I ultimately get. And this month's session is on the power of perspective. Now, people don't write in and say, brendon, could you tell me your perspective of life? But they do write in and say things like, hey, man, how do you look at things in life? Or they'll say, how do you make decisions? Or they'll say, how do you evaluate things? Or they'll say, how do you know if one thing is right or wrong? Or they'll say, just, how can I change my mindset, Brendon? All answers to those questions leads to this discussion about perspective because so many people ask different questions, but it all comes back to perspective. So I just want to share, when I have a decision in life or I have an opportunity in front of me, how do I make those choices? How do I think through that decision a little bit? How do I evaluate things, Ideas, opportunities, and even people all usually run through these lenses, if you will. The power of perspective. By looking through the lens purpose. Almost everything that comes up or available to me, I gauge towards what I feel my purpose is or what I feel living a life of purpose is. Even if sometimes I don't know exactly what my, you know, purpose statement is by a sentence or by description, I usually have this feeling that, you know, I wonder what the purpose is here or what purpose could I bring to this? So let me give you a couple examples here to make this lens really valuable. A lot of opportunities come to me all the time. I mean, a lot. As you can imagine, you know, 30 million people watching my videos every year. You know, tens of millions of people seeing my posts literally every day. I have a lot of opportunities. People ask me to come speak at their event. People ask me to hire me. Brendan, last night, brendan, I'm going to the White House. Would you like to come meet the president? And the answer there was a shocking no. Not because I didn't like the president, which I would love to go. But I had a higher purpose that particular time that I was supposed to be going that I could go to the White House. I could have something else. I already had something else scheduled with my lady. And when I schedule something on the calendar with my lady, it's immovable. I don't care if it's a rock star, a president, an alien from another country offering a free ride. I'm like, no way. I'm on purpose in those moments with my relationship, and I don't derail from them. And so another opportunity. Well, Brendan, hey, would you come out and speak to this particular group now? They might be offering a Lot of money. This is a good opportunity. But I'll look at what that group is there, why they're assembled, what topic they're meeting on, what they want me to speak on, and if it's not in value with what I believe my purpose is, where I can really add value in terms of their real personal development or their ability to grow their brand, their business, their message. Sort of high performance Academy or experts academy stuff. It's a no even if I know I can speak on it. They're like, brendan, come and speak on how to be amazing on video. I'm like, not too narrow. Not my thing. I have a bigger purpose of wanting to transform people's lives. And that one narrow topic. But when we have lots of money, not quite it. But I also have this lens that it's not just about evaluating opportunities, it's about evaluating life circumstances. I'm always asking, I wonder what the purpose of this is. What could I draw from this experience in terms of meaning? You know, I think a lot of people in their life, they don't have great perspective to life because they never read, like, you know, Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning. They don't realize that there's meaning imbued in every moment. There's meaning imbued in every situation. And if we can have the lens of purpose, we start looking for, what's the meaning in this? Or what could I do to bring more meaning to the situation? And that makes me an incredibly positive person because I'm always drawing something good from it. Let me give you another example. Not just opportunities, not just decisions, but real life events, even tragedies. My car accident, you know, I've met probably 10,000 people, literally live, who've come up to me who said, after they hear my speech, you know, I've been speaking about this for 20 years. My car accident, people come up and say, well, Brendan, you know, I had a car accident, but it didn't change my life. Why did it change yours? Because I took that situation and I looked for the depth in it. I thought, what could this mean to me? What could I draw from this experience? It wasn't like I just thought it was an ordained thing. It was not like I'm one of those guys who. Who thinks every little situation is perfectly set up for our development. But, I mean, that was such a knock on the head and such a real. As a young man to face my mortality, to make me think about life, that I thought, you know, gosh, I wonder what the purpose is in this. A lot of people have a car accident, they're like, woo, I'm lucky I'm alive. And they just continue on. I'm like, wow, I'm alive. What does that mean to me now? What do I want life to be about now? What is second chance? I drew from my car accident. The purpose, the meaning of that, that was a second chance. And I could take the things that I learned in that experience, specifically that I learned. We're all going to be asking questions to evaluate our lives at the end of our lives to see whether or not we're happy with our life. And I thought, well, what if I just told people that? What if you just sat down and you thought, well, at the end of my life, I'm going to evaluate it. How would I know if I'm going to be happy with it? And then you lived your life so that you were happy with those evaluations at the end. That's all I wanted to tell people. It was so simple. And those questions of did I live, did I love, did I matter? They all came out of that is because I drew purpose from a tragic situation. Does that make sense? So the power of my perspective, if I have anything, is the blessing of looking at everything and asking, what does this mean? Or how could I add more meaning to it? So don't you think about that in your life just for a moment. The major stressors in your life right now, what could those stressors be queuing you off to? What hints could they be leaving? What coincidences might be occurring? What meaning could you draw from that in a beneficial way for you, yourself, your family, the world? Or if you don't like those, how can you change to be a more purposeful human in those situations, to bring more meaning to them? Because that's another part of this. So that lens of what meaning could I draw from it? What meaning could I give into it? What's my intention here? And never breaking from those, never losing that lens, it makes life magical. Second lens is the lens of positivity. I hope that you figure that out by now. I'm a really positive guy. I'm always looking for what's positive in this. What could I draw from this that is positive? Not just meaningful in a deep, fulfilling way or a satisfying way, but positive like, where could I find some joy in this? Right? Where can I bring some joy in that? Where could I feel optimistic about the situation when everyone else says there's no hope? How can I cultivate hope? How can I be the champion with the drum, how can I be the person, you know, with the trumpet just cheering people on? How can I be that guy? I'm always gonna be the more positive person at lunch, I promise you. You'll leave there and say, what a positive guy. Why? Because that is my intention. That's the lens I bring to lunch. I'm going to leave the experience more positive than I found it, because I think that's a spiritual principle, to leave things more positive than when you found them. If you walk home and your kids are all down and out and they're frustrated and they're angry and they're hurt and they're upset and just nothing's going right for them, Your job as a good parent, switch that up for them a little bit. Change that energy for them a little bit. I don't pretend it's easy, right? You go home and your spouse is having a bad day, and it's just clear they're just having a bad day. You can't just go and, hey, how do you forget about it, right? You got to absorb that energy that they're throwing. You got to listen, you got to understand, you got to provide empathy. But towards the end of all that, start shifting your tone, start pacing in a way in which sort of lifts the energy of that conversation. Just out of the sort of negative space, even if back to neutral. Look, neutral is a lot more positive than negative. Just get them up. Start lifting the energy, the social context you find yourself in, the situations you find yourself in, and you'll find a whole different level of success, because very few people have that purpose or intention. Part of my personal purpose is to bring more positivity to the world. So I look for it. If I see something cool going on, I'm the first guy to point it out to people and say, look at that. Isn't that amazing? You know, look at that lady helping the guy across the street. That's amazing. Look at that little kid, how nice he was to do over here. Look at how nice they did the house. Look at how nice they did the arrangements here. Look at what a good job our team did. Like, I'm the constant cheerleader. Why? Because I want to be that guy. Third lens with the power, perspective, potential. It's like a good coach on a football team. A good coach can take a mediocre star and make them shine. A good coach can take someone who's on the bench for three seasons and make them the star. Why? Because they can see the potential there. Why can they see it there? Because they just believe it's their inherently for all people. I see potential in prisoners and criminals. I see potential in people who beat people up. I see potential in bullies. I see potential in crooked politicians and straight politicians. I see potential in people who've screwed up 50,000 times. I see potential in that person who cheated on you. I see their potential. I believe it is there. And the reason I believe it is there is because I'm like you. I've had times in my life where no one believed I had any potential. Do you remember how that was? Think about it. Do you remember how that was? Think about where you came from, your hometown. Remember high school, middle school, elementary school, Any teachers coming to mind, Kids come to mind who didn't believe in you, who ridiculed you, who teased you, but.

They didn't know you.

They didn't know what you were capable of. I think one of the worst things we can do is have the perspective that we believe what people are capable of, that we somehow know what they are capable of. I have no idea what you are capable of. I don't. I could meet you, you could be the most under assuming person in the world and you know, be dressed like a slob and it turns out, whoa, you're worth a billion bucks. I see potential in people, you know, I just do. So if you think you do, which I hope you do, then show me. Tell me some actions in which you cheered somebody on, gave them a challenge or task that you knew, maybe they didn't know how to do. Show me that. Tell me about the person that you lead, the person that you're managing or coaching, you know, as doing a high performance coach in that career. In my role as high performance coach, I got to see more of this in the person than they see in themselves. That's why they're paying me. I got to see this and I got to yank it out of them. So challenge yourself, start looking at things for potential. Now let's move off of seeing it in people and start seeing it in projects. I think it's one of the greatest things. I think all the major Silicon valley investors and VCs that I get to work with or advise, I'm very lucky here. They have this ability to see potential in something that literally maybe three kids.

In a dorm room started, but they.

Can look at and go, this is going to be big. How do they do that? Well, one, from experience, they've seen lots of big things. But two, the belief in innovation, the mindset for innovation, the mindset for believing in and championing new things that change the game. Because a lot of things that change the game, everyone hates it. First, right? When you come up with something that's going to completely change the game, you know, an Isaac Newton or a Copernicus, you know, these guys were not popular.

When they came up with their theories.

In physics or the systems or the beliefs about the solar systems, they were not popular. They were coming from a different left field. But over a period of time, they changed the world. Why? It's so simple. Because they saw potential even in dogma, even in the most fixed environment. If you can be the dreamer, you know, the Einsteins and the Da Vincis, it's not necessarily that they were more brilliant than anybody. It's that they thought about it more and they dreamt about what could be more than anybody else. And that's what made them leaders, innovators, game changers. They looked for the potential. They dreamt about what could be. And that changed everything. When's the last time you just sat down for an hour or two or three and you just thought about what could be in your life? Not like as a victim, like, oh, things are so bad, they could be better, but like vision, like excitement, like dreaming stuff up when you just dreamed up stuff that didn't even exist. I hope that you will start doing that again.

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 sure you hashtag the brendanshow. 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 bit 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.

Sam.