How to End the Year Properly

Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard and welcome to a best of edition of the brendon show. These best of episodes feature training that I have done live, sometimes on 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 gonna really enjoy these because these are a little bit more of a deep dive look at some of my training as a personal and professional development trainer. You know, I focus so much on helping you find that deeper level of motivation and start practicing some of those high performance habits. Well, you hear me talk about many of those concepts in these special episodes here. These are my best of trainings only and exclusively right here on the Brendon show. So I hope you enjoyed them. Please note that as you hear me speak in many of these, you'll hear me reference something because sometimes I'll have been training live or on video or on stage or through a broadcast. So you might not be able to see something I'm suggesting or motioning to or maybe even drawing out on a flip chart or motioning towards on a presentation, but you'll get the gist of it. So make sure you bust out your journal. Take some good notes here because this is really valuable insights on the mindset or the strategy 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 try, I train on a new topic or a new piece of research that we've created from the high performance institute and I train on that and then I do q and a and actual live coaching, interactive coaching with people every single month. That's called high performance monthly and you can Access it at brendon.com monthly that's brendon.com monthly B-R-E-N-O-N.com monthly to get deeper dive training similar to this. So if you like, this 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.

Hey everybody, it's a real thrill to be here with you. And I thought I'd take this opportunity at this time of the year to share with you some ways that you can really clean up and button up the end of this year. I know in previous sessions I've been talking about that because, you know, really, it's really the last part of the decade, which keeps. Every time I say that kind of freaks me out. It's like, wow, we're about to enter a brand new decade. And what I want you to do is enter that decade clean and free and empowered and abundant minded. And sometimes you got to get rid of all the mess and the scratch and the baggage, the that is in your life right now. And I know that might not sound incredibly motivating, but I like to take this time of the year and actually do my cleanup of the year and my yearly review right now. So this month we're going to focus on a, how do you clean up 2019 well, and B, what did you do this year and how well did you do in regards to your high performance habits? Because we're always talking about this some way or another. You know what your habits are dictating your future. Your habits are leading to your current abundance, your current sense of life, your ability to have great relationships, how fast you close on new people, how more, how well you lead the team. Everything is coming back to the habit. So today we'll do a review. So let's start though, with this intention of this first piece about cleaning up where we are at now. You know, when I think about this idea, I think about a few things. Number one, if you don't already have it on your fridge, you should have on your fridge or on your mirror or right when you walk into the office, like your cleanup list for 2019, it means what is your checklist or to do list that you're going to finish by 2019? And what I'd love you to think about is this does not sound motivating. So just stay with me. I'd love for you to sit down and literally write out a sheet of all the unfinished projects and tasks that you have from this year. Everything you have not yet finished or completed, that you started, that you've been hoping to finish well with or to achieve. But that punch list should, like, if you could see my fridge, it's right on there. It literally says, by end of 2019. And it's like, there's like 32 items. And every day I'm just reminded, all right, check that off, check that off, check that off, check that off. Because too many people, they Bring so much garbage into the next year. And we want to have a cleanup list. You need to have this cleanup list. And here's what I encourage you to do at this time of year. Just first sit down, write out that list, be very intentional about it and really spend some time on it. Don't do 50 other things, just spend that time. Then open up your calendar, go back through your entire year and just ask yourself as you're looking at each month of this entire year so far, saying, what did I miss? What did I not complete? What did I start? What tasks are still outstanding? I just want you to go straight through your calendar and use your calendar as a cue point, as something to go, oh, right, I started that thing.

I didn't get that done or I.

Had that schedule that never happened. Just go through the whole thing. I know that doesn't sound like the best use of your time, but I promise it is because it will give you emotional freedom going into the end of this year. For me personally, that takes me about 35 minutes. That whole process I've talked about just sitting down, thinking of all the unfinished things going back through my calendar, and then I finish the hour by doing something that's really important, which I really don't love. But this is how you turn pro. Open up your inbox and sort that inbox by any of the things that you have flagged. And you know that you probably suck at this now A if you don't flag things, you should always flag things. Teach yourself to flag some things that are most important. If you do flag Things, which over 80% of email users do, so I'm assuming you do. If you do flag things as important follow up items, sort your inbox based on those flags or those follow up items and just start going through them. Don't worry about replying to all of them. Instead, what I do is I actually just go through them to be able to write into my cleanup list. What do I still need to do? So this is not a working session, it's a planning session. So what I do, I write down my cleanup list based off just what I know. But honestly, what I know is probably like 10 things. Then I go through my calendar. That reminds me a few more things. Then I go through my flagged items and it's like, oh, now I know some of you are like, but Brandon, I flag items all the time. I probably flag a million things and I don't follow up with them. All I need you to do is go through your last 90 days of your flagged items in your inbox, last 90 days of your flagged items in your inbox. Also, I want you to do the same thing for your voice messages. It's just like, you got it. Like call this a catch up cleanup session. Okay. It's just time to catch up on what are your to do lists. And it's a cleanup session of going, okay, I'm going to get through these things, I'm going to know what they are. And that like I said, my original intention when I did my cleanup list, I think I only found when I sat down with just a piece of paper, I had like 10 things I could think of. I went through my calendar, I added like eight or nine more. I went through my flag things, I had like 20 more. And all of a sudden it grew to a list about 50 items. I could only think of 10. But the calendar is a cue. The flagged items in my inbox as a queue and my voice messages as a queue gave me literally 50 total items. I've already been punching them down. And I want you to know I did this activity four days ago and I had 50 some items on there. I've already punched it down to 32 items. And I can't tell you how on point that makes me this time of year. I don't know about you, but this time of year it's super easy to get pulled into distraction. Everyone's trying to plan your holidays, everyone's trying to plan where you're going to be. You're trying to figure out your final travel. You're trying to onboard some new team. You're trying to roll out this new product or you're trying to reach this next level here in the company. And as you're trying to do that, I get it, how easy it is that your days can be ruled by randomness. But remember what we've talked about in all of my sessions, I'm always trying to hit you with this, that if you leave your days to randomness, you will always live in the land of mediocrity. If you leave your greatness or your personal growth to randomness, you'll always just stay in the comfort zone. If you leave your day to just like getting up and not having a specific plan, you'll lose more days. I shared last time, I believe it was, or the time before, about how the average American now spends 30 minutes day just on Facebook, just based on Facebook alone. And I know most of you are watching this on Facebook and that's great because you're Doing something here that's adding value, that's building your business, that's helping you become more successful for your family and abundant. This type of training, this type of touching in with the community, this is what Facebook does best. This is what you should do if you're consuming. But right now you're not consuming, you're training, right? You're building your business. So this is a great use of time. But browsing just to see what everybody else is doing, right? That 30 minutes of just straight consumption where you're not doing something that's generative or empowering for you or inspiring or instructive, that you got to be careful of that because that ends up being 22 work days of the year, right? When you combine all those 30 minute slots throughout the year, it ends up being 22 full time, full days lost. You cannot go into this next year as distracted as you were this year. You can't do it. You cannot let the distraction that stole from you this year steal from your greatness and your 2020. So that is why I am so intentional right now about the need for you to build up this cleanup checklist. And I'm telling you, I literally look at it every day. It is on the fridge here. Because if I don't, I just know. If I go into 2020 with like 20 tasks incomplete, it's just. It doesn't give me that joy, that motivation, that drive to make the next year great. Instead, I'm drudging in all this unfinished stuff. And what does that do? You know, the more you unfinish things, the more things in your life, they're unfinished, not done well. Incomplete threads. Your mind knows that and it creates a lot of noise in the background. That noise is always saying, there's all these things, there's all these things, there's all these things. So even when you're supposed to sit down and watch some Netflix and chill with your family, in the back of your brain, there's all these things. There's all these things. There's all these things. And I'm not here to pretend to be perfect or to tell you that you should be perfect and that your inbox should be zero at all times. I don't think that's real. I'm not here to say that every task in the world is complete because you got the kids, you're building a business, you got the team, you got all this stuff going on. I'm not diminishing or taking away from that. But I am saying if you don't Have a clear checklist by the end of this year. That's going to hurt you in next year. So do the activity it took me an hour to do. I did mine at the beginning of this month. It took me a full hour to do this activity I'm telling you to do. And it was the best use of my time. All I had to do is not play on Instagram for two sessions of 30 minutes. And here I have the whole punch list for the entire year. And I'm like, oh, great, because I want to finish this year buttoned up with a bow, feeling strong, feeling like I was on point so that I have freedom of mind and mental clutter going into this next year. So start with that checklist. Those tasks and projects complete. The second big thing I want you to think about, though, is relationships. I bet you have some unsaid or unfinished communication that you need to have in your relationships. You know, this is the time of year to share what you wanted to share with your husband. This is the time of year to share what you need to say to the kids. And you do it now. Otherwise, you know what happens. It comes out at Thanksgiving dinner, right? You're stressed. Everyone's traveled in. You're doing Thanksgiving dinner, you're cooking a million things, you're drinking the wine, and all of a sudden you get in this huge argument because you should have said it two weeks prior, but now it bubbles up. Because stress has a way of unfiltering people. And when you're stressed, you forget other people, you forget empathy, you forget compassion. When you're stressed, you're focused on survival. You're focused on self, right? Stress increases the concern of self. And now, because of all the stress at the holidays, you speak for yourself about yourself, about your needs, and you roll over somebody or you say something you miss you should not have said during the holidays. I know you've all been there before or you've seen somebody do it, and that's because they didn't get out of the way first. So this is literally the perfect week, this week to have those difficult conversations with your leaders, to have those difficult conversations with the kids or the family, with a spouse, with your partner, with your significant other. This is the exact time for you to have the difficult conversations this week. Don't put it off next week. Don't do it during the holidays. Don't do it at Thanksgiving, Please don't do it at Christmas or Hanukkah or whatever you celebrate. You got to do it now. Be proactive. There's some cleanup you have to do with your relationships. This is the time to do it. If you got to fire somebody, fire them this week. Stop putting it off till the end of the year. Oh, we'll just get them through the holidays. It's like, nope, Give them the freedom to be doing something with their family during the holidays versus working for you if they're not the right person. Brandon, that's so callous. No letting people know in advance when they got to go look for other jobs. That's the most kind thing ever. And I know anyone who's ever been let go. And the boss said, I wanted to do it earlier, but I couldn't. You're like, dude, that could have given me the time to put my resume out, get myself together, be with my family. What are you doing? So those types of things have to happen in relationships. If you got team to let go or you got to sit down with a team and have a difficult conversation, or you've got those five new people you just enrolled, but you really haven't talked with them a lot, you've got to clean up your follow up. That means you started that follow up list or that follow up idea with somebody, but you have not executed the follow up yet. I'll tell you one thing that made my list was I met four or five amazing people at a conference and I said, I'm going to follow up with these people all the time. And I text them once or twice, I emailed them once or twice. But I haven't created and locked in that relationship. I reached out to those people and created like a little voice message text to them and really tried to create a relationship, really tried to lock in that connection. Who do you need to lock in a connection with right now? What are the relationships you need to focus on? If your relationship with your kid right now sucks, repair that this week. If you've been waiting to call that old friend, call them this week. Prioritize your relationships this week, your relationships. I mean, that's what life is, right? You know, I'm always talking about what I call mortality motivation, which is, hey, at the end of our lives, we're going to evaluate whether or not we live good lives. And being aware that life is short and being aware that any of us could get sick, that some emergency could happen, that life is precious. You and I both know you're going to evaluate your relationships. So this is the time to really prioritize your relationships and do a good job. Some of you have somebody you need to forgive. Some of you have somebody you need to apologize to. Some of you have somebody you need to just put some appreciation and adoration and love on. I'm telling you, if that's not on your to do lists, then what's that list really about? You know, managing tasks is not what life is just all about. Our relationships are what life is all about.

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

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