How to Build an Intentional Life
17 May 2023 · 7 min
In this episode Brendon Burchard argues that living intentionally is the antidote to a life dominated by reaction and overwork. He reframes intention as an offensive, assertive stance—personal agency that lets people shape their day rather than be driven by external demands. Burchard explains how constant reaction creates misery, keeping people on the defensive, and how even successful high‑achievers fall into this trap by overworking and fighting fires instead of playing offense. He introduces a simple three‑lens framework—Live, Love, Matter—to guide daily choices, and critiques the "mindset of lack" that blocks wealth and abundance by telling self‑limiting stories about the rich. Throughout, he emphasizes the need for intentional routines, boundaries, and community support (e.g., his Ultra private group) to cultivate aliveness, connection, meaning, and growth.
Chapters
What successful people are doing as they want more aliveness, connection, meaning and growth. They're just leading the day with so much more intention. Their intention, it's offense. They're more assertive into the world than reactive, to use another word. Because sometimes people think intention is too soft. I'm like, oh, no, intention is offense. Intention is assertiveness, right? I assert myself in the world. And soon as you understand that, you're like, oh, okay, me being on offense or in assertiveness or in personal agency, or I just like the word intention much better. I like the vibe of it, right? Then it's very different. I need more days intentional for you. More days intentional. That's how you get to feel the day again. We are either an identity, a person who is in reaction. I am a reactive person, or I am an intentional person. The day that I became an intentional person for me was the car accident when I learned that Live love matter was going to become something in my life. I'm going to guide my life based on these three words every day. I see everything through these three lenses. Live love matter. It's just how I see things. So I'm intentional going into the day to make sure I do these things. And at some point, at some point, I tell people, oh, I forgot to tell you. You know all the misery you feel in life sometimes? Well, Mike Watch says it's like 10:20 in the morning right now on day two. Well, by 10:20 in the morning on day two, most of that misery you feel in life, we just covered it in two points. Most of that misery we feel in life is because we feel like the world is against us and we're being beaten down, not trained up and built up. And we feel always in reaction mode. Right? If you feel always in reaction mode, you wake up and you check in the DMs and the VMs and you're immediately into your inbox. And I always tell people, like, listen, people who do that, they have no idea the misery they're causing in their life. Like, you jump up, you, and you immediately answer your email. You're not even awake. You're still in a weird consciousness in the morning and you're putting the screen in front of you. Judgment, comparison, reaction. Judgment, comparison, reaction. No wonder you look like this all day. Like, because you woke up, you're like, ah. And then you go out to the kids and you ah. And you go to work, you're like, ah. And then you had that dream and you're like, ah. And you're like, why am I not doing anything? Cause you woke up in the morning, you trained your brain. You're freaking yourself out. The misery is coming from too much reaction and too little intention.
Right?
The more you feel like you're just on the defense in life all the time, the more miserable it feels. Cause you never feel like you're winning. You're just always defending, defending, defending, defending, fighting the next fire, fighting the next fire, fighting the next fire. And this includes the successful people. Don't be fooling yourself. You set yourself up for a life of reaction when you set yourself up for overwork. Highly successful people, no boundaries, overwork, burnout. And they think they're so strategic. I'm like, you haven't been strategic in five years of your life. You've been fighting fires, and that's why you don't feel like you're winning. That's why it feels like your business is a slog. That's why you feel like, what the hell is going on? I don't understand. This sucks. I'm backing off. I'm going to blow it up. Screw those people. No one understands. And you're back in the cage. Anyone follow this? Is this too heavy for the morning? You like this? If you like it, say, keep going.
Keep going.
I need the encouragement sometimes, too. I don't know, maybe it's just in my head, but I think this stuff is important. I think. I think sometimes, yeah, I think sometimes what we do is we get so caught up into building more and more and more and more into our life, we didn't realize we just built a life of reaction, not intention. And if we're always in reaction, always on defense, we can't win. No teams win only playing defense. Even the best defenses in the world cannot win without the offensive line. You still have to have offense. And intention is offense, intention is offense. Oh, I'm going to play this way. I'm going to play this way. This. This is the play today. This is what I'm doing today. This is the routine today. Here we go. I'm in it. Everyone say, I'm here.
I'm here.
I'm ready.
I'm ready.
I go in strength.
Woo.
That's different. That's different. I love showing up in people's life and just seeing how they do lunch or how they talk to each other, how they move through the world. And some people, you know what, that's their time to rest and recharge, you know? And so they're just chilling. I. I'm good at chilling. I'M from Montana. I'm the best at chilling. I'm so good at chilling. Oh, my God. Give me a beach and a pina colada. I can chill till sunset, baby. I can chill. I have no problem. Brendan, you're so busy. You have all these companies and you've done all these things and oh, my gosh, you must never relax. And I go, that's an interesting frame. So you think successful people never relax. Do you think in any way that has prevented your brain from wanting to succeed?
Hey, guys, it's Brandon. I'm jumping in here real quick. First, I want to make sure you've gone to progressmode.com to join the newsletter because I have a resource for you related to this episode and I have an upcoming meetup with my private group, Ultra. If you've ever liked to be in a private group with me where I help you get more progress towards your passion projects or to build your business or your brand in a bigger way, just go to progressmode.com, click on Private group to apply to see you can get into Ultra. And we can take it to the next level by getting in person and meeting up virtually once a month online as well. Just go to progressmode.com a lot of.
People stay of a mind of lack because when they see wealthy people or they see abundant mindedness, what they say is, oh, well, those wealthy people, you know what they got to do? I think to become wealthy, you know what? They had to cheat, they had to steal. They had to treat people bad, they had to run over people. I would never do that. And what you're saying is, I will never become wealthy. You're training your brain the, oh, I don't want those negative effects of that thing. So I don't want the thing, so why even try? And you intellectually convince yourself not to have more abundance for your family and the next generation and their children. And their children.
That's what we do.
We tell ourselves stories. Oh, to have the next level of success, that would be terrible. I would be burned out and everything. I'm like, oh, no, no. The only people who feel like that is the people who have at this current level of success, wrecked their life because they didn't know how to do it yet. If you don't know how to do it yet, that next level is so terrifying because you're like, I. I can't even handle this one. If I can't even handle earning six figures as an entrepreneur, how could I earn seven? How could I earn eight. If I can't handle managing three people, how could I manage 10? And so you say, well, people who manage 10 people are stupid. They don't understand they could have freedom as you're drowning in your own overwork. So what we do, we set these judgments against things. Again, it's all perception, though, isn't it? It's all just a choice. It's a perception. I want to let you know, though, that what successful people are doing as they want more aliveness, connection, meaning and growth, they're just leading the day with so much more intention. Their intention, it's offense. They're more assertive into the world than reactive, to use another word. Because sometimes people think intention's too soft. I'm like, oh, no, intention is offense. Intention is assertiveness, right? I assert myself in the world. And if that's too strong or too motivational for you, for all the academics and the psychologists in the rooms, we're talking about personal agency. People with higher levels of personal agency over a period of time are very clearly happier, are very clearly healthier in terms of their overall mental health in every measure, from. From confidence to resilience. And soon as you understand that, you're like, oh, okay, me being on offense or in assertiveness or in personal agency, or I just like the word intention much better. I like the vibe of it, right? Then it's very different. I need more days intentional for you. More days intentional. That's how you get to feel the day again.