How to Create and Sustain Your Energy

If never in your adult life have you ever decided to make a singular year your healthiest year of your life. Make that this year. If you never took the challenge, you said, you know what? This is gonna be my healthiest year. This whole year. I'm gonna exercise, eat, drink, meditate, do all the things that will help me become healthier. Make this that year. Just choose it. I know you woke up with incredible attitude today. So excited to give and learn and serve and connect with your family and your friends and your team. I know that your attitude is improving as we develop every day as we learn something new. More aha's, more distinctions, more commitments to our habits and the mindsets and the relationships that we know help us feel more fully alive and on track. Then, oh, my gosh, that wind behind your back is spectacular. Today I take on one of the biggest momentum, biggest needle movers, biggest pieces of advice I could ever give, and something that we found in the research was so obvious and so critical that I think people overlook it because it's also so common sense. And today's topic in your personal development is about energy. Energy. People always say, brendan, if I could change my life and do anything, what's the first thing I should improve? And to some people's surprise, I don't say your mindset. I don't say your beliefs. I don't say your values. I don't say your standards. I don't say, you know, your. Your sense of security. I don't know any of that. I know all those things vital, all those things important, all those things will build up. But it all rests upon the energy that we have. When you don't have energy, your motivation goes down. When you don't have energy, we know you're less productive. When you don't have energy, you tend to be a little bit more short with your family or the kids. When you don't have energy, your persistence goes down. When you don't have energy, you don't have that outlook, that optimism, that vibe, that zest, that ability to inspire others when you don't have energy. And I know you've been there, and so have I. So there's no judgment. It's just not fun. And so I believe we've got to do everything we can to protect, to build up, and to project our energy in ways that are supportive to our mental health and our physical health, our spiritual health, our emotional health, the health of our relationships, and ultimately our contributions to the world. Energy. Energy. I think one of the most important tools is for you to fill out your daily scores. And why is that important? They're built on the foundation of the world's largest study of high performers. The questions that we ask you on a daily basis have been correlated with long term performance. And one of those measures in there is energy. And that when we measure your energy, if you start noticing your energy over a period of time keeps going down. We need a major intervention. And look, I know there's people listening to this inevitably because we have a worldwide audience in 70 plus countries who are having ill health right now. You know, your health isn't good, you got sick, you got a bad medical report. There's inevitably people who are dealing with major traumatic physical events, cancer, sickness, major challenges in their biology that they don't have any control of. And to those I send my grace and my love and my prayer, and I wish you abundant health for the day to day reality that we have to face when we aren't in emergency physical illness is we've got to do everything we can to build up our energy. That's why I'm such a proponent of doing the release meditation technique every day or making sure you exercise or move or walk every day. Why I really believe that we have to really care about our diet and you know, practice a diet and a nutrition plan that's best for us with professional guidance along the way so we're not just guessing. I feel like it's really important that we manage, manage our sleep and do a good job with our sleep. I think it's so important that we figure out what supplementation we need based on our performance required each day and based on our own biology. I think all of these things are so basic. But again, common sense is not always common practice. People don't care, they don't think about it. And so what do they do? They just grind, grind, grind and caffeine, caffeine, caffeine, caffeine and hope one day they achieve, you know, a sense of the promised land. And then they'll chill out, then they'll get healthy, then they'll feel good. I want you to start managing your energy like a high performer. And that energy might surprise you because we're talking about mental energy, physical energy, spiritual energy. It's about getting an alignment and a harmony between those types of things. And I think it's so important today have a gauge of your energy. Where are you at? Is it where you want to be? How could you improve it? You know, we used to do eight live seminars in person and you know, they Started pretty small, you know, 22 people in a room and then grew up into hundreds and then grew up in the thousands. And then it was just crazy. You know, when you're doing that many events per year, you really think about your impact. Because I'd be spending four or five days with people and doing really immersive activities in their personal development. And one of my favorite things that have come out of all those seminars all those years is I always challenge the audience. I say, hey, listen, if never in your adult life have you ever decided to make a singular year your healthiest year of your life. Make that this year. If you never took the challenge, you said, you know what? This is gonna be my healthiest year. This whole year. I'm gonna exercise, eat, drink, meditate, do all the things that will help me become healthier. Make this that year. Just choose it. You don't have to wait till January 1st. Just whatever date you happen to be hearing this, Just choose it and try. If you'll say, but I tried and I fell off the wagon, you know, two, three months, I got, it's. You got the whole year to adjust. You can be resilient over the course of a year. It's okay if you messed up last weekend. You still got the rest of the year to get back on track in every area of your life, including your health. That's so important. Energy. All I'm asking you to do is every day, fill out your life score every day so you can start seeing a trend line in these areas that are important to your long term energy. That then if we can start seeing them and identifying where the problems are, then you can consume the content and write in your journal to improve your energy. Because what happens if you just increased your energy, you know, just 5% every day, or 10% every week, or 30% every month. Now, maybe you can't sustain that forever, but I promise you, those little tiny adjustments make a huge difference. And you know this to be true. You've had one of those nights where you had a great night of sleep and you woke up and you were just incredible. The rest of the day you felt awesome. Or you had a great nap or meditation in the middle of the day after the kids finally fell asleep. You fell asleep and you woke up totally a new human. You just felt like completely differently. I know you've gone to the gym or gone for a runtime once and you just suddenly felt so much better in the afternoon. Your mind was sharper, you're more clear. Or one day, one month one week you did a cleanse or you decided to eat healthier or cut out the alcohol or the caffeine or whatever you needed to do and you just felt better. Do more of that. Not here to give you the advice on exactly what to do because it's different for each person. I'm here to tell you, figure it out, master it, get better at it, keep working on it. Because this one area of your life is the foundation of so many others. Energy. Think about how you feel energy, how you build it up, how you project it to others, how you protect it. I think your energy is so key. And when you can improve your energy, everything gets better. So remember everything. Every day you not only choose your energy or build your energy, but when you do that, then every day is a good day to grow together. 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 progressmo.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 progress mode.com today's topic we're going to take on for you is on persistence. Because it's so easy to get to Friday morning and just bail, you know, okay, well, there's still so much to do and I didn't get as far as I wanted. And you know, I've been trying this for days or weeks or months or years and just another week I didn't do all the things I'd hoped to and I wasn't perfect. And I guess I'm just gonna just kind of flub the day and, you know, be discouraged and doubt myself and just stop. No Persistence. One of my favorite words in all of the English language, the idea that you will persist and I think that's so beautiful about persistence, is it's this long term mindset, isn't it? When we celebrate people who had persistence, we're not like, they sure worked hard Monday and Tuesday, it's like, no, man, it's like month after month or year after year or decade after decade, it's a celebration of people who stick to those passions and those dreams and work hard through it and make it happen through the ups and the downs. And ultimately, not only do they win and are they recognized for that win, but more importantly, internally, they had the greatest win of all. They persisted through the struggles. They taught themselves to be strong, taught themselves to be focused, taught themselves to be dedicated human beings. And isn't that what we all want to be? Oh my goodness. Persistence. Four big ideas for you here today. Striver number one. Persistence comes from clarity of purpose or topic or lifestyle. Clarity. It means you have a focus, an idea, a vision, an ambition, a hunger for something specific. You want to achieve that thing, that purpose or that goal, or you want to work on that topic until there is mastery or winning, or you want to have that type of lifestyle. So you dedicate yourself to creating it and improving it and becoming it. That clarity and that hunger of purpose or dedication to topic or dedication to living that specific type of lifestyle. Those things matter. Because without clarity, you just won't persist. You'll just bounce onto the next thing, that next shiny object, that next distraction, that next fancy new opportunity, and all of a sudden your days and your weeks and months and your years start looking like all these side tracks and random spider webs of effort. Eventually, persistence comes from a narrowing down of options, doesn't it? What is that thing you need to persist towards? Is it a specific purpose? Goal, Mission? Is it a specific topic you just want to work on until you've mastered it? Is it a type of lifestyle you'd like to live and dedicate yourself toward? Please think about it, because if you don't capture it and narrow it and focus, then you'll just be busy doing lots of different things. But you'll never persist towards those things that matter most for yourself. Second big idea. Obviously persistence comes from scheduled effort. I'm always that high performance guy in your ear saying block that time in your calendar, my friend. The reason you become efficient and effective and high performing is because you start blocking time on your calendar to do things. You don't just keep showing up and going through the motions or winging the day day after day after day because there ends up being so much unused and wasted space. Don't worry. If you read high performance habits, you know you don't have to schedule every hour of the day. It's actually not about cramming too much in or like burning out or scheduling yourself to overwhelm. That's actually not the practice. The practice is to ensure that about 60% of your week is dedicated to moving towards things that really move the needle. The needle movers, the major activities that actually make a difference towards your goal or your dream. And all the people that we celebrate in history who achieved remarkable things, they just did a lot of it. Whether it's an inventor, we celebrate a business person, we celebrate a leader of a country, we celebrate a person in the neighborhood who you admired, who made it and was still a great person. You know, they just worked at that thing for a long time. They were scheduled in their effort. They had a consistent routine or a certain amount of time each week or each month or each morning that they dedicated towards something. Even though the great writers who wrote the great novels and those novels took, you know, three, four, five years, 10 years to write, they still found that time on a daily or weekly basis to do a significant writing session. It was block time, scheduled effort. Third big idea. Persistence requires the adaptive mindset, right? A learning mindset. But there's a difference between a learning mindset and an adaptive mindset. Learning mindset says, oh, I'm excited to learn. I'm excited to notice the new distinctions. I'm excited to do the research, I'm excited to test and see how things go. Adaptive is not just the learning mindset. Adaptive says, I am willing to change my approach and change myself in order to hit this goal. I am willing to stray from what is comfortable or easy, to try new things that require something more of myself that I might have to skill up in order to achieve this. I might have to develop new capabilities that I never even imagined myself doing. It's not one of those things you get to say, well, I'm just this profile in Myers Briggs or I've, you know, done, you know, this psychological test or this enneagram and it says that I'm this type of person. It's like, yeah, no, I'm sorry. Your strengths finder is not predictive to long term success either because your style is less important than what you must become to have the things you want to have and be. And that's important to remember. I always share the story of listen. I wasn't a natural skilled speaker. I was not natural in front of a camera. I was anxious and freaked out and terrified to get on stages. And now, I mean, you've seen the videos. Speaking at arenas around the world, having the opportunity to communicate every day. I knew I had to develop that. Even though all my psychological profiles say I was introverted, I knew I had to learn to Become more comfortable with people and large groups of people and expending a certain type of energy and learning to renew it faster. Even though that's not my natural quote unquote style or my soul profile, it's like it's important that I am willing to develop myself and develop my skills from the learning in order to achieve the thing or to live the thing or to become the thing. That's the adaptive mindset. Finally, to persist over a long period of time, you need to have some wins. You need to set some milestones, some goals, and you need to hit them and win. You need to have that sense of those small achievements or even those big ones that you said, okay, I was going to do this, I did it, and you get to pat yourself on the back. A win doesn't mean you get the medal. A win doesn't mean you're celebrated and appreciated and recognized and honored by everybody on the planet. A win is an internal demarcation that says, hey, I followed through on what I said I was gonna do and I hit that mark. Even if that mark is just one page a day, if you're a writer, even if that mark is just that first sale and an entrepreneur, even if that mark is just that first website, or even if that mark is just that, that tough meeting you had to have with your supervisor, even if it's just that final sit down with somebody you love, who you said you're gonna honor. Whatever it is to persist over a period of time, you gotta have some wins. Your mind, your body, your spirit, your emotional energy comes from those momentum moments, I. E. Wins. Those moments where you recognize, you hit a milestone and you recognize you got some momentum here. Okay, good job. So what do you gotta do? You gotta schedule those. You gotta write down your goals, you gotta create a plan. Hey, write out your plan. Just type down the activities or the to do lists and set those schedules and deadlines and reminders and knock off those bullet points. Get that plan done. Those little small wins, those moments of momentum that carries you through over the long term. And then one day you wake up and you realize you persisted, you are persistent, you win, you get that big goal, or you recognize in yourself who you have become and you are proud of it and rightfully so, striver, because you kept going. Do the work, write the journal, build the plan, keep doing it. You can do this. Every day is a great day to grow.