Holiday Challenge: Stay Sane, Let Go of Control, Bring the Joy

Hey, everybody, it's Brendan Burchard, founder of High Performance Academy. Happy holidays. If you're here with me right now in real time, this is live. It is today, December 11th, at 1:00pm Pacific Standard Time. Which means we're headed headlong and excited into the holidays. It's an honor to be here with you today. I welcome you all from the High Performance Academy community and I look forward to serving you here in this hour. Just talking about, like we do every single month, simple things that you can do to continue maintaining a higher level of potential and performance in your life. Please keep in mind, as always, if you can't attend this whole thing or if you are watching this later, obviously we supply a replay of this to our High Performance Academy masters students. So if you're seeing me live, welcome. If you see me on replay still, it'll feel the same. Your job, get your journal out and let's get to work. Let's talk about how you can stay sane this time of year. You know, as soon as you head into the holidays and even if you're watching this later on on replay, you and I both know that there's just certain times a year where crunch time happens, where there's a lot of expectations, a lot of complaints, a lot of challenges and a lot of people kind of going crazy for your time and very demanding and high expectations. Trust me, I get all of that. So the challenge is for you to rise up to another standard of performance so that you can simply survive without murdering any of your family or friends. So I hope that you'll enjoy this session. My job, as always in these live sessions, is to just teach a topic and then at the end I'll go into Q and A. So your job when you're here is to post your questions down below. I apologize for getting notices out late for the these live events these last two months, especially this one. I've been sick for the last 18 days. You'll see me putting a video out on it very soon about how I've dealt with that. It's very difficult when you get the flu or bronchitis or any mixture of those kind of colds that knock you out good. You know, the more the viruses that keep you down, it's difficult to maintain and believe me, I get it. Yesterday, I don't know, probably around 3 o' clock in the afternoon, I just said, all right, I need to take a break. I need to go lay down, meditate, watch some tv, turn off for a couple hours because I was a hot mess so for all the challenges and struggles you're having right now, I'm giving you permission to have them. We beat ourselves up so much as high achievers as people who are always seeking to be a great role model, to do awesome in our business, to be productive throughout the day, to be an awesome mom or dad. And sometimes when it's not going well, you beat yourself up. And this time of year, I see people do that over and over and over again. They have such high expectations to put together the perfect holiday, you know, dinners. They have such high expectations to make sure they get gifts for the 500 people on their list. They have high expectations for, you know, everyone's supposed to be happy and peaceful and loving and perfect this time of year. And then they find themselves wanting to smack people, you know, so trust me, I get it. If you feel some stress at this moment in your life, it's okay. There's times in your life where you got to go, okay, I get it. It's on right now. And during those times, that's when the best of you doesn't have to be there all the time. But at least you have the intention of saying, I know it's going to be chaos. I'm going to try my best to be the calm amid the storm. It's the most important thing. You know, when you watch a high level athlete walk out onto that Olympic field or you watch a high level performer walk out on stage when they are sick, look, they don't want to be there in those moments in some ways either. But they know that they got to deal with it. They know they got to manage it and they got to pull from in those moments the best of them. A couple days ago I was doing a live training and I was so sick. I mean, it was tough. You're seeing me right now and you're like, he doesn't look sick. Well, it took me 45 minutes to get in this physical state to be able to talk to you. From doing my vocal warmups to my stretches, to my opening of my meridian is my energy levels, to stretching out back in the other room for a good 25 minutes just prior to sitting down here. It takes a lot. And I take it seriously because. Because sometimes in your moment to serve or make your difference, the world doesn't care how you've been feeling. And you've gotta be able to rise up above that initial feeling that says, I don't wanna. And so how do we balance these two? Because already you've heard me share two messages One, allow it. Be okay with it. There's just certain times of the year, it's crazy. Don't have such high expectations that you beat yourself up. But then the second part of what I've been talking about is like, you know what? Get your game face on. Handle it. Is there a balance there, Is there a way to sort of deal with those two different scenarios or different, I guess, reactive states so that you can be in a place where you survive not only the holidays, but the most stressful times of your lives? Because I know other people right now you're doing your year end reporting and you're looking at your financials and going, oh man, I'm in trouble. Or you're looking at it and saying, oh, we're doing great. How am I possibly going to hire another 10 people? Trust me, I get both of those. I've been in both places in my life as well. So wherever you're at right now, let's just talk about how can you survive this storm when there's high expectations, when there's high need, when you're going for something that's, you know, a different quality of life, when you're dealing with other people in your life right now you probably have a lot of family and friends and a lot of expectations. They're probably texting you this time of year. Happy Thanksgiving, Happy Holidays, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Christmas. You know, they're all expecting replies and videos and updates. And where's the pictures of your kids? I haven't seen them dressed as reindeer yet. Oh, my God. Right? You know, it's a lot. I get it. So here's what you got to do. Couple steps. Number one, prioritize your sanity. In a time like this, when everybody needs you, this is when you prioritize you. And it sounds just blasphemous to some people, like, no, no, no, this is the time for the kids. No, you know what? You can't be awesome for your kids when you haven't taken care of yourself. You know, it's that old thing of why do they say on the airplane to make sure that you take the oxygen mask first, then help out your family? Because you can't help out people unless you're breathing. You can't be able to manage the storm if you're not taking care of you first. It's a message you've been hearing me share over and over and over about well being for the last decade. It's something you've been hearing me share a lot in the last two Years, as I've done a lot of work with my friend Arianna Huffington, who wrote a book called Thrive. It's a lot of my topics in my Oprah Winfrey Network course. It's something I'm deeply passionate about. You have to take care of you, and if you haven't given yourself that permission before, this is the time to do it. Otherwise, you will go flat out crazy, insane trying to serve everybody else, and you'll wipe yourself out. You'll be exhausted, you'll get sick, you'll run yourself into the ground. That's not going to be good for you. So here's how to know whether or not you're doing a good job with this. And it's something I love. It's one of my favorite questions to ask my folks who I coach in high performance or advise. And that is tell me about the moments that you find to center yourself in advance of the chaos. When does that happen for you? And a lot of people don't have a practice or a habit for that. And so what they're hoping is that someday in their life they find a little more peace. And they're like, oh, Brandon, I finally found some peace. And I say, why? Well, I went on vacation for two weeks. I'm like, well, that's not sustainable. Where is the peace really going to come from? It's going to come from you taking moments to recover, recharge, and center even amidst the hurricane. There's a reason that the calm in the hurricane is in the center, is in the eye of the storm. It gives you a moment amidst all that craziness to go, whew, okay, we're still together, guys. Everything's working. And I think that's a blessing of nature that you get that moment in between the hurricane and you get that moment every day. The difference is you get to choose those moments. So find your moments to find some peace, to center yourself before the storm. You know, even before this webcast right now. You know, I've got my man Travis Shields over on the dials. Today. I had another member of my team here in the studio. And, you know, lots of conversation, lots of things can go on. But before I do this, I gotta go in the other room. I got to close my eyes, and then I got to get up and stretch. I got to do my vocal warm ups. I got to do my thing and it's not much. It's. What's the day? 15, 20 minutes? Travis. I can't remember. Maybe. Yeah, maybe 20 minutes. I went back there Today just to. I just got to get away from people and I got to stretch and I got a deal. But a lot of other people say, where can you find more moments like that? Well, let's think about a few. You know, if you're a parent, you and you're about to pick up the kids at 3 o' clock when school gets out. Here's an idea. Roll up there earlier if you can. Let's say get in if you got to get in line or you got to get there early enough because all the cars are parked out. You know, roll up there around 2:15 or 2:30 if you can. 2:30, close your eyes just for 15 minutes. Just get there, close your eyes for 15 minutes. Center yourself, Remind yourself that first impression your kid has when they come out the school doors and hop into the car and they see you, that moment counts. You know, they've been with a lot of people all day. They've had social influence from their teachers, from the other kids, and now there's their first moment with you. So how are you going to meet them? Are you going to be all frazzled and crazy and upset because of the traffic or are you going to meet them in an intentional, peaceful, caring, loving, cheerleading way? You really have to think about this because otherwise what you end up doing is picking up the kids become a task here. I'll do that. And you don't even connect with them. And you and I both know how easy that is to do in any given thing. Think about before you come home at work at night, if you do and you're returning to a spouse as an example. You know, you could have all this work and all this craziness on you from the day and you can just get out of the car, you can walk in, you're dealing with all this stuff. You're texting on the way in, you're putting your stuff down. Hi honey. You perfunctory kiss where you don't even really connect with them and you go about your day. Or you can find your moment when you get home. Just sit and you know, pull around the block or sit in front of the house or in the garage. Close your eyes for 15 minutes or 5 or 2 or I mean you can give yourself 60 seconds but get yourself just centered before you walk in the house. It's just a moment. It doesn't have to be long. I think for me, I found if I can do a 10 minute centering before something else, it's very important. Many of you have studied my release meditation Technique. Really proud of that one. We've had over a million views now on YouTube alone. I think some 1.5 million people have now learned how to meditate from me, which I'm really blessed by. And you can see all that online. But what I often talk about with meditation is use it as a transition tool as much as a performance tool. So you're finishing one project that you had to be in front of the computer and you're really focused, but now you're gonna go, and you're gonna go, you know, dream up a curriculum and come up with something new in your journal, right? That moment of transition from this to this, and how you use that moment is the difference between unlocking genius or creating with mind fatigue. So if I've just done. Let me give you an example. If I've just done an hour of email, I'll put that aside. I'll get up, I'll stand and bounce in place. Literally just standing, bouncing in place, breathing in deep 10 different times. If you've been to High Performance Academy, you know, I'll do my qigong and meridian unlocking. I'll do my quad release technique. I'll do, you know, a higher level breath scaling technique. And depending on how much stress was involved in that, I might just sit down and do the release meditation technique, you know, 5, 10, 20 minutes, and then go to the journal to come up with stuff. It's my moment. You gotta have your moments. And if you look back at this last week and you don't see you took any moments proactively in advance of changing gears, whether it's picking up the kids now or coming home or changing a project at work. If you're not finding those moments, I have bad news for you. You're not performing well. You're certainly not performing at your potential. You're not being your best mom, dad, business person, creator. And I know that's difficult to tell people, but we just know it from the science. Those moments of transition are so vital. Think of it, it's like a reset. But it's not just a reset where you can clear off the negative energy or clear off the stress. It's also a moment where that gives you time to have intention. You know, how do you want to be in these next moments? How do you want to serve or love or connect in these next moments? You know, if you've ever been at my live events, you know, we've been truly blessed. You know, Entrepreneur magazine ranked my events in their top five must attends for entrepreneurs, Success magazine Recently put us in their top 25 and personal development again. And a lot of that has to do with how our live events are. And a lot of people say, well, how do those, how do you get that energy at the events? Well, if you ever saw me backstage at my events, I'm in constant preparation mode to get on stage so that I know, you know, you have to have that warm up before the performance. Well, that shouldn't just be when you're about to step on the field or just be when you're about to go in that big meeting. Use it for your family. You know, if you know everybody's coming over for holiday dinner at 3 o', clock, then your job, get everything done by 2 o', clock, lie to yourself and your spouse and tell them 2 o' clock is the deadline so that everything's done at two and you've got this whole hour to finish the things you kind of had to finish maybe 15 minutes just to close your eyes and put yourself in a good place before everybody shows up. Because you've been there before where you're running around the house 50 miles an hour before they show up and you hate yourself. You're like, gosh, why didn't I take more time to prepare? I know you've been guilty of that. I was guilty of that just a couple days ago. You know, I had a high level client coming in in the room. This, this is a lot of my private advising is a quarter million dollars or more a year. So it's an expensive program. And this studio was a hot mess because we've been filming and filming and filming and filming for a lot of our Oprah Winfrey work for a lot of our other live programs. And we just, I just had everything everywhere. And so I came in here and I was like, oh, my gosh. And I, it was like a whirlwind to get it all ready. I just thought, you know what, I got to prepare a little bit more advance. So I share this with you. Not from a place of perfection. I struggle with the same things you do. I go through that same thing. People say, well, it must be so easy for Brent is equally as challenging for me. The difference is I find more moments than most people do. And I know I'm giving a lot of examples here. And I'm working to hit this in every angle. Whether you're a mom or your dad or you got the holiday family or your business person or your creator. I'm trying to hit on all these different heads because I know this has to sink in for you today. If it doesn't, the rest of this month, and potentially the rest of this year, and potentially the rest of your life will continue to be a hot mess of stress, of anxiety, of frustration. But worse, you'll never serve your highest good if you're always wandering into things with a mind frazzled. It's why, you see, mindfulness has taken off in Silicon Valley, in heads of government, in the top performers in the world, whether it's athletics who are now studying a higher level of mindfulness and stoicism, or Buddhism. You see that all around the world now, this unbelievable adoption and unbelievable proliferation of the science behind mindfulness awareness, meditation. I'm just telling you, operationalize it. Use it as a transition tool to make you awesome before everything. I really want you to think about tomorrow. You know, when you look at your calendar, I would love for you to look at your calendar and make sure you always have moments in there. For example, I tell all my Fortune 50 clients, I don't let them schedule back to back meetings anymore. It's one of the first things we'll do to just to clean up their life. I'd say no. You always need a half hour between every meeting, minimum. Always, not sometimes. It's a law with your assistant or a law with your scheduler. It must be all the time, every time. I work with a lot of high level, high performance coaches. I know we probably have some coaches watching this now that it's like, I won't. I'm like, don't schedule calls back to back, ever. Don't schedule meetings back to back, ever. Because you'll never serve at your highest capacity. Because the mind takes some time to transition. You know, it's that same thing we discovered with multitasking. People actually who think they're good at multitasking, they're not. Their performance is still lower than someone focused on a singular task. It's important for you to give yourself that gift of transition. So operationalize it. Look at your schedule. 30 minutes between meetings, every time, all the time. Don't tell me you can't, because I've had billionaires do it. I've had Fortune 50 CEOs who have way more employees, way more revenue, way more headcount, way more responsibility at work than you probably do as well as I probably do. I've done it with some of the highest level and highest achieving people in the world. If they can figure it out, and I can figure it out, you can figure it out. Don't ever be one of those people. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, they can do it because. Well, they can do it because they have assistance. They can do it because they have this. Yeah. But they also have 50 times the obligation. So don't be somebody who checks out just because you don't think you can, because you haven't tried. I always tell people in high performance, the most important thing is always judge an idea after implementation. Tracking and managing, not before. Your first response to something, well, that won't work for me is almost always, always wrong. You don't know if it will work for you until you've tried it for an enduring state of time. And nothing works the first time. Nothing. You know, your first day of the diet sucks. Your first day of the workout sucks. The first day days of your business or new job, it's just like you're just figuring it out. But once you get a rhythm in, that's where we're going to get you a higher performance the easiest. See how it's just common sense. But as you heard me say, common sense is not always common practice. And that's why so many potentially great people fail to achieve their potential. They don't implement the basics. So I know I've hammered this for almost 15 minutes here. Transition. Find your moments and you will be so much more peaceful throughout the rest of your life. You can't believe it. Second idea. This time of year, pick your top 10 people to focus on. You know, I stirred up a lot of controversy when I wrote the book the charge, activating the 10 human drives that make you feel alive. In that book, I talked about connection, that we are all driven to want to connect with other people. Connect at a deep level, connect at a heart level. To have that sense of enthusiasm and fulfillment that only comes from having great relationships. And yet I also kind of stirred a little controversy. And I said, look, there's three types of friends in the world. There's old friends. These are people who, yeah, at one epoch of your time that you, you know, you really did. You connected with them, you maybe hung out with them. Everything was really great. Everything was fine. But today you don't connect with them like you haven't talked with them. They're just, they're in your past. And what you need to do is allow yourself to be. Allow yourself to categorize them there. Oh, they're old friends. Once I move someone an old friend bucket, all the guilt goes away. I don't go, oh, I was supposed to get them a gift. Oh, I'm supposed to call them On Sundays. Oh, I'm. Nope. They're in the old friend category. They're safely placed there with reverence and love. But I'm honest with myself. They're not current growth friends. They're old friends. They were there. They served that time of my life. I hope I serve that time of their life. We had great memories, but there's no activity in the present. Be cool with that. This time of the year, your holidays, if you can categorize people. I know it sounds so horrible because at a diversity level, it sounds like an awful thing. Don't ever categorize people. But in order to organize this time of year, you kind of have to, don't you? So allow yourself to go. Those folks, they're over here. If you ever had a wedding and you had to decide who comes to the wedding and who doesn't, that was kind of like, ah, kind of awful. And what I tell people is you should do that like on a monthly basis. And they're like, what? I say, yeah, you should kind of categorize the people of your life every month to see who's going to get your time this month. Who gets to hang out with you this month. Not once in a while. It felt painful that one time you had to do it for the wedding because there was only a limited number of people who you could have at the wedding. But let's be honest, there's only a limited number of people you can buy Christmas gifts for. There's only a limited number of people that you're going to go hang out and have lunch with this month. So be honest about it. Like just once your mind makes a decision, it feels so free, doesn't it? So say these folks, they're in the old friend category. There's another group of friends called your maintenance friends. Your maintenance friends, these are people, they're going to get a card from you. And it's probably a card. It looks like everyone else's card. You know, they're the friends who you call on their birthday or you send them a card once in a while. And maybe you go out to lunch with them once a year. But a maintenance friend, and you keep them posted, you know, you're following and liking them. You're kind of updated a little bit with what they're doing, but not much. They're just friends who, you know, maybe you'll see once in a while. Maybe you do a yearly trip with them and you see them that one time or you get together that one time. That's cool. Allow them to be there and do something very simple for them for the holidays. Simple card. That card could be. You know, there's a lot of services online now, as well as apps that you can, you know, literally put your handwriting in there and you can write them a message. Basically you type it and these services basically make the font look exactly like your handwriting. So you can type the same message to everybody. Upload an Excel spreadsheet of all your maintenance friends. You can even put your old friends in there if you want to hit go and the cards go out. It looks handwritten on the envelope. It looks handwritten on the actual card. Just look up handwritten cards on Google. I'm sure Mr. Googs will help you find lots of different services there. And done. You're finished. No guilt, complete. Awesome. You know, how great is that? These are the people that, you know, you can once categorize that way, feel okay about. And you can be honest, too. A maintenance friend. When you're really busy and things are going crazy unless there's an emergency in their life, but they're just like, hey, let's hang out on Friday. I literally think I go, what group are they in here? Oh, this is an old friend or a maintenance friend saying, let's hang out on Friday. You know, my answer is, it's a no. It's not because I'm an ass. I know this sounds like I'm an ass right now, but let me qualify this. It's because there's another group of friends. Another group of people. They're my growth friends. This growth group of my family or friends or affiliates or business partners, they get my priority. It's like, they're here, maintenance here, old here. So when I get a request from any along that line, who gets prioritized? These people. Just like you probably prioritized your kids. They're probably in the growth group, right? I hope your kids aren't in the old group, you know, but your kids are probably here. So it's like if you got a choice between going to lunch with Sally or meeting that obligation with your kids, you're gonna go with the kids. You should do that. That's because they're here. A growth group is just a higher level relationship because it is consistently engaged. And it's like with your friends, these are people you see more often. You text or email more often. You're up to date on their photos, they're up to date on yours. You have adventures together. It's like this is the group you go to Vegas with once or Twice a year. This is the group you hang out with or you have holidays or this is like your buddies, your pals. These folks deliver, you know, these are folks you keep in touch with at least once a month. You know, maintenance friends might be every couple months, old friends, maybe once a year or not. But a growth group. These are your priorities. And when I tell you in the holidays or in times of dramatic stress, let's say you're opening a new business, you know, and you're crazy busy for the next three or four weeks, you know what you got to do, you got to go, okay, who's my top 10 here? And everybody else, you just know you can't serve. And I know this probably just sounds so difficult to do, and for some of you, you won't even like the idea. But here's the thing. You end up being a better mom, better dad, a better friend to the people who deserve or need or who you've chosen to get the most of your time. So what I do, the way that I handle my holidays is I got my top 10 list. And this top 10 list, they're all going to get a video from me and my wife on the holidays. This top 10 list, they're all going to get a card or a gift at Christmas. These are the folks I'll take a call from, a return an email from. These are the folks. No matter what, I'm going to be proactive in maintaining, building it. I'll put some expectation around myself to serve these folks. There is no expectation at maintenance or old. One simple act could be for them, a car. But these folks going to dork out and go, okay, who gets the best gifts this year? That's my top 10. And I know 10 might sound crazy to you because maybe you have seven children, okay? So the number is arbitrary. What I'm trying to tell you to do is be clear on who your growth group is. That's all I'm trying to tell you. Be really clear about that. I know it hurts, just like the wedding planning hurts hurts. But the reality is you're one person and you need to take care of yourself. Because the worst thing you can do for all groups is wipe yourself out in such a way that you can't be there for anybody. Spread yourself so thin, you know, trying to serve everybody else who you should have just kind of let go during this crazy time or business time, and instead focus on those who you should be serving. You know, sometimes people compromise a relationship with their spouse to go do something, you know, with A maintenance friend. And I go, that's not the right prioritization. There are people in your life who deserve a higher priority from you. Are you clear on who they are? Second, do your actions prove that you are clear on who they are? Lot of people think they have their priorities straight in life, but when I get in their calendar or I talk to their immediate circle, it's clear that they are not. They say they are, but there's a difference between thinking it and implementing it. There's a way of having the intention and actually making it a habit. So gauge yourself this time of year. Are you spreading yourself too thin for, for folks who really are maintenance or old friends? And could you give yourself a little bit more priority of those you should be serving? That's my second idea. Pick your top 10, or what I call your growth group. If it's more than 10, that's fine. Third idea, always remember that during times of stress, poor expectations equals pain. If you have unrealistic expectations at this time of year, you're not going to enjoy the holidays. And that's, I think now everybody has that partially because they have such poor planning or prioritization in their life that everything always is last minutes. And now this year or this time of year when there are real deadlines, you know, they go on vacation this time, the families arrive at this time, the gifts are due at this time. When poor planning, poor prioritization, and poor performance meets a deadline, that's called a train wreck, you know, and that's what a lot of people go through. It's like, look, it looks like they're doing fine all year until the deadline, you know, the business opens its doors and it's like, uh oh, what a hot mess. The, you know, new, the new implementation or launch is supposed to happen. Uh oh, what a hot mess. It's usually with deadlines or real sort of scheduled dates on the calendar, like a holiday, that someone's real life emerges. And you can see how well they've planned, prioritized, and performed. So here's what you gotta do. If things have been a hot mess for a while, and I know that's a lot of people, and when I say hot mess, I hope you recognize I'm always teasing and kidding you guys. On I'm pushing you on I none of this. I'm making easy. And that's why I told you at the very beginning, I struggle too. So as much as I'm giving you crap and I'm asking you tough questions, I'm doing it from A place of empathy and understanding. Because, look, I'm there too. Here's my question to you. Is, are the expectations you have for this holiday doable and real? Are you being honest with yourself or are you setting yourself up from major mental catastrophe called holiday disappointments? See, if you think everything has to be perfect and you've got four kids, you're in a lot of trouble. If you think everything has to be perfect and you have seven members of your family coming over for the holidays, you're in trouble. Don't you recognize by now, at this age in your life, that every single Christmas movie ever made always centers around. There's always one person in the family, the mom or the father or the daughter or somebody who has unrealistic expectations this time of year. And the drama of the entire Christmas show is based around that unrealistic expectation that everything has to be neat, perfect and clean. And I've been there before. I've been to holiday dinners with friends or their family or family members who is like, oh my God, chill the F out. Nothing's gonna go perfect when you have a bunch of four year olds running around. Calm down, it's okay, there's a mess. The issue here is not cleanliness. The issue here is connection. And it's really important to people to get that at some point in their lives. If they don't, they have a problem. For some people, when that problem is severity, it's diagnosed as ocd. For other people, it's sort of a casual ocd, meaning obsessive control disorder, they have an issue, or obsessive compulsive disorder, depending on who you talk to about it. But it really is this thing where you're just like, everything has to be so neat and perfect. I'm like, you know what? It's not going to be neat and perfect when you have this many family members or this many friends crashing towards a deadline. See, what people fail to think about in life, and I think where a lot of trouble comes from is empathy. You're running around crazy to get the house ready. It's been a hell of a week. Oh my gosh, what a mess it's been. And you are upset. Well, no one understands how much I'm going through. And you forget that these people come in your house. They also finished their job, had to pack up the kids in the car, get or go to the airport and land with the kids, and they're showing up. They just had a difficult journey too. But your OCD and what really ends up coming to Fore. In this time of year when the higher the stress, the higher the self centeredness. I don't know if you've heard that phrase before. The higher the stress, the higher the self centeredness. So we think, well here of course they can understand. They don't know what we did, Deborah. We went and got the 15 pound turkey and they have no idea how difficult our day was. We got stuck in traffic, the bird got a little bit burnt, you know, the cat ate half the thing and you think nobody understands. If you want the holidays to go well, have high levels of empathy when the family comes over to have dinner with you and their kids are a hot mess. It's okay that the kids are hot mess. They just spent four hours in the car. Why are you worried about the friggin placemats and the cranberry on the floor? You only have a couple hours with them. Don't worry about the cranberry on the floor. Connect with the kids. It's not about cleanliness this time of year, it's about connection. We all think everything has to be perfect because we live in this highly manufactured world on Instagram that says that everybody's dinner table looks better than yours. And you feel this high obligation to make everything neat and perfect so you can take pictures the entire time and not actually look at anybody in the eyes. Look at our pictures. We're having such a good time. We hope our Aunt Susie sees all this picture, picture, picture, picture. And you didn't even see the kids. You didn't even see your other aunt who's sitting there. There was no connection because you're worried about the next plate. You're worried about cleaning up. You, you're worried about the placemats and you just killed Christmas. The Grinch who stole Christmas is really ocd. That's who's stealing your holiday. It is your unrealistic expectations that everything has to be neat, pretty and perfect. So I know it's hard to say because I've got so many high achievers here and it's part of High Performance Academy. Especially in the last two or three years we've had such an extraordinary growth in the number of our high achieving women in the community. We have so many people who like me, are creatives, who love the little arts and crafts of this time of year. You know, I love this time of year. I mean you should see my wife, the cool little things that she makes. I'm like, wow. I'm totally blown away by what she's able to do this time of year. And I always let her know I don't care if she does those things. I always let her know I'm there to help if she needs help on those things. I'm always realistic that, you know what, sometimes when we're both entrepreneurs running big businesses that have a lot of high profile, that it's okay if things become a hot mess. So I hope this is serving you in some way, because even if you're saying, I can't relate with this guy, he doesn't understand, he doesn't have as many kids or he doesn't have this big thing I've going on, I want to remind you, as we remind you at High Performance Academy, the moment that you say those people can't understand me is the moment you give away all of your power because that's when your ego takes over. There are a lot of people who have it worse than you right now. So your expectations, they have to think neat and awesome. You know what? We got a beautiful message from one of our HPA students right now who is a refugee and is truly a place without home. And they're just trying to find their family for the holidays, meaning they don't know where they are. They don't know what country they are in. So if you have the blessing of being able to FaceTime or call or be with your families, value that. Don't become that person who stresses yourself out. When you have love available and ready for you, so easily realize that you are the person that might need to meet these holidays with an intention to have more gratitude. And I don't know how you grew up. I grew up in a place where we didn't have much. So anything that was on the table, we were grateful for any gift that was under the table, wrapped nicely by my mom or not so nicely by my dad, we were pretty happy about that. You know, I think that's something that's really important this time of year, to have a high level of gratitude for whatever is there. If they make a big mess around the house, be grateful that you know where they're at, that they're safe, that they are there with you. That you have the blessed moments to be off of work, to get to experience them and be with them. That a high level of thankfulness and appreciation at this time of year will create a bigger connection with those around you than any shiny object that you could have created before they got there or wrapped for them. That there's a little bit more soul and humanity in the holidays when you not trying to Be Martha Stewart. When you're not trying to get everything perfect, when you're allowing that reality in life, no matter the expectations of anyone around you. Cause I know some of you are dealing with the fact that you're okay with the mess and you're grateful with the people, but your spouse or your sister in law or uncle coming over, they're the ones who are the insane OCD people and they're the ones who, who you feel like are judging you. I have good news for you. You're probably over the age of 18 watching this. And the good news is that usually at the age of 18, people realize that it doesn't matter what other people think of you. Your uncle's judgment about the cleanliness of your house has nothing to do with you and your family. And you're the only one who is allowing their meaning or their judgment, their expectations stressing you out. They're not stressing you out. You're stressing you out. And you say, well, you don't understand. My spouse will be horrible to me if these things aren't perfect. And I say to you, you're the one who's dealing with the horror. Maybe it's time to read Viktor Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning again and realize that you could take everything from a human being, even including in a concentration camp in the Holocaust, but for man's last freedoms, the ability to choose one's own attitude, you get to choose the meaning of everything. If you haven't figured out by now that this person stresses you out and can trigger you, and you haven't by now learned to deal with that, then it's time for a little more self awareness. It's about time that you as an adult say, I'm not gonna let people trip me up anymore. Aunt Sally is gonna be a crazy. Aunt Sally, always. Aunt Sally's been crazy since I was 7. So maybe now that I'm 47, I shouldn't get pissed anymore. Because if you're still allowing a family member or somebody in your life to piss you off, I have bad news for you. You're a child. And that sounds horrible to say to anybody. And so obnoxious from a kid just sitting here talking to you. But that part of your mind is still trapped in the child mind that says, I must please everybody. I must have everything perfect for them so I can be accepted. Hey, look, if they come over to the house, you're accepted enough. You got them in the house, okay? Now if you don't like them, Feed them the cold food. I don't know. But, you know, please get over the fact that you are being triggered by folks anymore. I love to think about, and many of you know this from High Performance Academy. I think about very actively every morning. Matter of fact, it's one of my three questions in the shower every morning that I ask myself to sort of prime my mind and frame my day in a positive way. My second question that I always ask myself is, what today might I face that could trip me off, trip me up or cause me stress? Every day I ask myself in the morning before the whole day starts, I'm like, what could throw me off today? Oh, you know, Aunt Sally's coming over. I don't have a real aunt named Sally, by the way. I'm just using that as a reference. People are like, is he talking about his family? I'm talking about everyone's family. But I'll think about, oh, well, Aunt Sally's coming over. You know, she's always very critical and awful and nasty. Oh, she's always critical. Well, one, is that true? Is she always critical and nasty? Am I meeting her in a way that's creating that energy? And two, if she does end up that way today, how could I better deal with it? How could I turn it from a negative to a positive? Or how could I just brush it off the shoulder, continue on with my time? No one in your life, no one in your life can make you feel any way without your permission. We learned that from Eleanor Roosevelt, didn't we? I think this is not new news. It's sometimes common sense is not common practice during the heat of the moment. We deserve to look at our life, know who's going to stress us out and to as adults today, choose how we will deal with it as an awareness, fully capable adult who can control our own reactions, bring our own awareness and meet it that way. I know I'm hitting a sore point for many of you who have tough families, and I get it. And for those of you who, you know, don't even like your family, but you got to deal with them. I get that. Trust me, I've seen everything at this point. I feel like I've been blessed to spend so much time with so many thousands of people in real life. I get it. It's difficult. How are you going to meet it? That's the question. How are you going to meet it now? Are you going to meet in a better way than last year? No one who's upset you for five years straight should upset you today because you should know the trigger points and you should know that you can use your mind to meet it in a better way. So I hope that helps. I'll also touch another sore point on this one. When you are dealing with outsized expectations, remember to have a little bit more of that empathy and couple it with patience. You know what, sometimes the other people in your life, they haven't had high performance training, they haven't been through, you know, the personal development journey that you've been through. They haven't had our courses, they haven't had the availability of the information that you've had or the experiences that you had that have served you in dealing with these things. So one of the worst areas is not just expectation that everything has to be perfect, everything has to be clean, everything has to be orderly. But the worst expectation is that other people have to be perfect. That, you know, the kid who said the inappropriate thing at the dinner table throws off the whole dinner table. That only happens when the dinner table doesn't have patience. That you got to understand everyone in a stressful time is having a difficult moment. You know, I worked with some major athletes this year. It was a real honor. And some of them had this reality of having a tough career. That's often when I get brought in to have a conversation. And one person in particular in a very high point of performance during a game, lacked patience with their teammates and really gave their teammates a boatload of anger. I heard about it later. I wasn't there. I heard it from everybody, in fact. And I think that that has a lot to do with your leadership and has a lot to do with how things are going to go right now is, you know what? When the kids freak out this time of year, that shouldn't be a surprise because they're dealing with all the stress and the unrealistic expectations and the demands and the uncertainties that you are too. And so when they do freak out, don't meet them with anger, don't meet them with OCD either. Realize of course they're freaking out. They're children. They haven't had the mindfulness training you have. They haven't had the experience. Of course your aunt is freaking out because she just went through a five hour traffic jam in Los Angeles. I mean, who doesn't want to murder somebody after that? You know, it's like be allowing when people aren't adults or highly conscious this time of year. You don't have to judge it, attach anything to it. I just observe it. I see somebody Freak out this time of year. And I go, of course they're freaking out this time of year. A lot of people are ill equipped. A lot of people haven't had the opportunity or the education or the empowerment that comes with life and personal development. Like maybe you have, if you're still watching this. Trust me, you have a little bit more of a background in personal development than your average bear. Could we say that? And so if you get the average bear who's a grumpy bear, you should expect that. Because most people, they kind of are grumpy bears because they're not taking their moments, they're not taking care of themselves. They're having unrealistic expectations and they're trying to control everything. Doesn't that sound like a perfect disaster waiting to happen? If you can relate with that and anything I've said on this, I will share with you that your moment to serve this time of year comes in moments of patience. To see things and not try to control them. To see things and to have the empathy and the patience and the allowance that other people are going through a tough time. I love going, and you're gonna laugh at me for this. I love going to the mall this time of year. Not because I buy anything. I go for mindfulness training. And I know this is really weird and you're like, gosh, this guy's a glutton for pain. I love to go to the mall this time of. I park and I walk through them all and I give myself a mindfulness training because I try to first and foremost notice and appreciate the beauty of the decorations. I try to notice and appreciate the holiday music and the holiday spirit that can exist there. And I try to notice without judgment the freak shows that are going on in the mall this time of year where people are pushing other people out of the way, they're grabbing the gift in front of somebody, they're screaming at the kids. The mayhem that is happening in the parking lot or at the popular stores. I love it. I love to go and just observe it and do the mindfulness training of not getting attached. I don't blame the mom who's juggling three kids, the stroller and five bags. And as she's going down, I don't feel sorry for her. She chose to be there. I don't judge it and think she's doing a bad job with kids. I just notice there's a mom with her kids. What a beautiful intention to get the kids out today to try to have a little holiday spirit to grab Some gifts. I bet she's had a tough path today. Good for her. She's doing a pretty good job. They're still alive. I think that's my usual general sense about the world. I. I see how people struggle because I struggle. And I honor them for still being in the game. You know, they still got to the mall, like, wow, what a bunch of warriors. You know, I honor the fact that they had that intention today. I'm going to knock this to do list off. Here we go, kids in the car. Like, wow, I love to watch the husbands being drugged by the army, you know, and they're just like, you know, trying to survive the experience. I love watching that particular guy, you know who I'm talking about, doesn't want to be in. I used to be that guy. Watch that guy. Just wanting to freak out and just watching and honoring him for caging it in. He hasn't punched anybody in the face yet, you know, And I go, good job. And so I walk through there with no judgment, but rather a recognition of the struggle and honoring it. And that is my patience training, and that is my recognition that other people have patience. And it's a way of just recognizing the good things that are happening. As much as I see the train wrecks there, of course they're going to be there. I do the mindfulness training of just how can I feel some good spirit and joy? I put a big goofy smile on my face. I say hi to everybody who I walk by. As I walk by people, I have a smile on my face with my intention. You've probably heard from High Performance Academy that says, I wish you joy, health, love and abundance. And I just say that over and over. I wish you joy, love, health and abundance. I say in my mind as I see people, as I pass them by, it's just training. It's just training. That's all it is. So when you're there this year, train yourself, Bring a better person to that experience. Allow other people to have their experience without judgment. Honor them, and I think you'll have a much better year this year. I hope these ideas have served you in this time of high stress. But also a beautiful spirit. You get to bring the spirit to the holidays. You don't have to count on it to be there. You get to choose it. What's the spirit going to be of the holidays this year? Do you look forward to the holidays? Oh, it's going to be another crappy holiday season. Well, you're right if you say it's going to be A beautiful holiday season. You're also right. We get to choose the attitude in which we shape our world and sense our world and we can never forget that we're shaping it. So I hope you bring an amazing quality of energy to everybody this year, that you are looking forward to these next upcoming weeks and that you truly, truly look at this as a moment that you get to imbibe this time with energy. So what energy are you going to bring? Hope that serves you. I'll take a few questions here. I know I went a little bit long this session, but honestly, we had a lot of people asking questions about how do you deal with the funk of this time of year. I'm going to refresh. So for our live students here, if you're still with me, I honor you. I congratulate you. I hope that this helps you bring some good energy to this time of year. I'm going to go down and check out what my live folks are saying. Francis Heritis. I hope I said your name right. Thank you. I'm glad that you're enjoying this. I look forward to seeing you at High Performance Academy as well. Mike, thanks for the comments of Looking good boy. It took a long time to get here. Let me tell you what, buddy. I had to warm up for this session today. Let's see. I'm watching all of you. Ah, Mohammed Shabab. He says I turned out to be 17, but I'm so glad I can watch personal development contents at this age. Good for you, buddy. I was 19 when I got into personal development. It's great to have you here. Keep watching my YouTube show or the Charge Life, my podcast and anybody else you find inspiring. Stay on the personal development path, man. You'll be absolutely happy that you did. Let's see. FETA Asked. Hello, asked. Hey Brandon, can you share with us your opinion on what the difference is between having high standards and unrealistic expectations? Such a great question. Thank you for the amazing work. Thank you. And happy holidays to you too. Great question, feta. A high standard. Just remember a standard, it's really important for people. A standard is not a fixed point. Okay? It's really important. An unrealistic expectation is usually fixed point. Everything around this fixed point, it has to be exactly like this. That's what an unrealistic expectation is. It has to be exactly like this. That is an unrealistic equation because nothing is ever exactly like anything. A standard is a range, is a range or a level of how you would like things. The standard is something that you work towards achieving and keeping. But there's. Sometimes the standard is compromised, sometimes the standard isn't quite hit. But you had the aim, you had the intention and you geared yourself towards the best. The difference is at a standard level because it's a range or a level, it gives you flexibility. The standard is there, but there's flexibility to play. There is no flexibility in a fixed point. And so the unrealistic expectation is perfection minded. A high standard is excellence minded. You'll do your best, you'll give your best, but. But you'll be allowing with everything else from there perfection says you've gotta give exactly this, it has to turn out exactly like this. And if it isn't, you turn into Satan. No, you just, you go ape. And as unrealistic expectations, here's the difference to know when an unrealistic expectation is not met, you sense and you feel bitterness, shame, anger, you're upset at everybody else, you feel terrible, like you're a bad person and you're or you're pissed. With a high standard it's like if things don't turn out exactly right, you just adjust course you have flexibility to try to improve the best that you can, but be okay with what is is. Meaning there's a higher level of acceptance with standards than there could ever be with perfectionism. And you'll know if the versus the two different things. High standard, more positive emotions, associations, higher flexibility, unrealistic expectations, more negative feelings, higher levels of confrontation and static thinking. And you'll know where you lie on that. I hope that helps kind of tip that balance one's a more positive, intention, striving, excellence minded one is just like it's unrealistic. I mean and unrealistic is all perfectionism is always unrealistic because nothing can ever be perfect. You know, I would love to spend even more time on some of these Q and A's, but I get so many in advance I need to address. It just happens this way. I go with it, I roll with it. You know, sometimes I'm funny, sometimes I'm not. That's okay. Travis over there sometimes looks really bored. Other times he's like totally engaged. What are you going to do? Right? You know, I'm just teasing. Okay, Janice, I love this. I love this. Great comments. I hope that you all read some of the comments as we go through these. I know that I didn't get a lot of advance notice to you all as part of this live session here today, and I apologize for that. But that's also something that I Let go. It's okay. I could only do as much as I could do in these last two or three weeks as I was sick and I did the best that I could. So I really love that. Okay, let me go on to moving on to Julie, who asked a question. I love, love, love High Performance Academy. It's been such a great influence on my life. Thanks for being here, Julie. It's giving me strength. I'd love to be a person that matters and that actually changes some folks life in a smaller, big way. But I feel that the people around me don't understand me and don't really look up to me. I saw your video on being a role model and doing the way that I do. I feel like I could inspire a lot of people but for some reason I'm not and sometimes I find that a bit discouraging. It doesn't stop me from working on my dreams and progress, but it feels a bit lonely not having people around me with the same passion and dreams. How should I deal with this? Thank you so much for your advice, your sense of service, your patience and your love for your magnificent work. You're a true hero, Julie. You're a hero. Thank you for sharing. And what a great question. What do you do when those around you don't recognize your contributions or don't have the same level of spirit, of service, of energy, of compassion, of will to serve? What you must do is never be upset with the people around you who are there. But you must now build your own tribe. And what I say by that is I think there's been a lot of bad advice in the self help industry for really decades on this particular point, which is being very casual with our relationships and throwing them away. Oh, your spouse is negative. Divorce them. You know that person said something critical of you. Get rid of them. It's like the world has become so wounded that they can't handle negative feedback or criticism. And so if that's around, get rid of them all. And I'm like, you can't always get rid of your spouse or your family or friends. And that's not the goal. The goal is if you don't have a supportive peer group who recognizes your contributions, your aims, your ambitions, your personhood, your soul, your job is to start building and acquiring those people. Whether that's someone you befriend in our online forums at students, Brendan, or it's somebody who you meet at High Performance Academy who you keep in touch with. Like one of the best things at High Performance Academy live is Everyone becomes such great friends. And they meet up people who are just like minded, like them, who are achievers and strivers, who have a high level of energy and want to serve and want to make a difference and have hope and humanity and drive in them. And they meet all these other friends. It's like those are the people call them. And Julie, I bet you know one or two of these people call them. When you're down and out and no one else is recognizing, call them and just say, hey, you know what? How are you doing? What are you up to? Hey, can I share something with you? I'm feeling lonely over here. I'm kind of like being discouraged by other people. Like, can I share with you what I'm doing? And maybe you give some advice. It's okay to ask for cheerleading. I can't emphasize that enough, Julie, because sometimes we feel lonely only because we're not asking for the right attention from the right people. And what I mean by that is we feel like the world should just suddenly come out of the woodwork and say, hey, Julie. Hey, you're awesome. Hey, girl. And sometimes that doesn't happen unless you ask for it. And so, you know, I tell people that in their relationships all the time, if you're not getting the level of appreciation you want from your spouse, ask for it explicitly with detail and description and heart and patience. Don't just say, we're gonna divorce. There has to be a communication about it, a conversation, and that conversation will help everything come into line. And so what I would love for you to do is find that one or two or three people who do get you. And if they don't, you don't find them yet. Start explaining it. Like, I'm feeling lonely over here, like not recognized. Is there anything else I could do? And maybe those folks who don't seem, as I would say, praising or as aware of what you're trying to, or aware of what you are trying to be. Then let them know, say, hey, can I sit down? I know it sounds a little crazy, but sometimes I wonder, do you know what I'm up to and why I'm doing it? Did you see the three or three things I did? I don't know. Did you actually see the videos I put up and just enroll people. You have to realize everyone hates change. And they do it because they haven't succeeded in a lot of change sometimes. So your job is to explain why this shift, what's important to you. I'm always telling people, why do something, why it's important to me and pointing out what I'm working towards and that progress. And if you could do that once in a while, Julie, I think you might find, you know, a little bit of empathy from them and a little bit of praise. And again, if you don't get it from them, ask it for others. And the last part is, you know, just stay on your path no matter what. You know, sometimes we march along our path in the woods for years without the sidelines of cheering fans. That was my story. I didn't have a lot of folks cheering me on for a long time. I mean, our first videos weren't good, weren't successful. My first book wasn't on the New York Times bestseller list. My first blog posts were quite horrible. And so it's okay. It's okay. Keep at it. Keep your heart and your soul engaged in it. Know why you are doing it and do it with great energy. Just stay. If you do that, year after year after year, more and more people recognize. I always tell people the way to get more believers is to get more momentum. You know, with momentum comes more believers who start to say, look at her. She's really doing it. Sometimes it's not until they smell or see success on what you're doing that they finally come in line. A lot of people thought I was crazy when I left my job. I had dozens of co workers for one or two or three years who would say, it doesn't seem to be working out. Do you want your job back? Why don't you come back to our team? And they tried to recruit me back into what I was because they knew that of me, and they knew I was successful and happy, and I was a good contributor there. But a year later, when they started seeing the success, they all said, I'm really glad you did that. Good for you. You're doing a great job. So sometimes they just need to see your momentum. They need to know you're really into it for real. That through your habits, your routines, your creative production, they sense and see and know this is important to you. This is real to you. You will stick to this. You will make your difference. And as you believe, they start to believe. And if they don't start to believe, gather your own believers, but stay on your true path. Follow your own heart, your own voice. Live your life. And as you do that, things start to fall in line more and more as you go. All right, I see my time here. I want to thank you all for your time, especially during this special time of year. I want to congratulate all of you. For those of you who are in High Performance Academy or our success accelerator, great to see you here and I also look forward to seeing so many of you at our upcoming Live High Performance Academy. I'm sure there's a link on this page or you can always email our team@supportrendon.com to get dates and details. We'd love to see you there. Our large event for High Performance Academy coming up with over a thousand people in San Diego, California. I hope to see you there sometime soon and if I don't see you there, I hope to see you on the road someday. Either way, until next month in High Performance Academy Monthly, I look forward to hearing about your breakthroughs about your AHA's, about what you're getting from the books, the training, the courses. I'm always watching the comments and seeking to make these relevant to your life. So keep posting, letting me know how you're doing. A big shout out to you, your family and your loved ones during these holidays. Until next time. As always, go out there every single day of your life. Love this time of year, live fully, love openly and make your difference Today.