5 May 2021 · 11 min
Brendon Burchard uses a childhood monster-in-the-closet story to argue that fear shrinks when you face it directly. Real resilience comes from naming your fears out loud, through journaling or conversation, not from pretending to be tough. He says expression transforms fear into insight and builds empathy.
Chapters
Hello, my friends.
I'm Brendon Burchard, host of the Brendon show and founder of growthday.com and I'm honored to be your high performance coach today. I believe that every day we can be inspired. We can live with intention and purpose. We can bring the joy and honor.
The struggles of each day to push.
Ourselves to grow, to serve, to be a role model, to lead extraordinary lives. I believe that every day is a great day to grow. That's why I started my company, growthday.com it's an online personal growth platform where you can get me and the world's best personal development teachers live coaching you every week, sharing our wisdom, keeping you motivated and accountable, encouraging you to find the aliveness and the connection and meaning of life that we're all after. If you're not a member yet, please go sign up@growthday.com and join our huge worldwide community of achievers. For less than a dollar a day, you get the world's best teachers live every week. And look, you've probably known for a long time that you needed some expert guidance and inspired community and life changing tools. So please, your breakthrough awaits you@growthday.com now let's get to today's episode. My friends, please listen closely. Maybe you take some notes so you remember these insights of personal growth and share this episode with three of your friends because we all have to share more positive messages in the world today. So share this with three friends just like you who are committed to their personal growth. And also be sure to tag me or DM me on Instagram. Rendon Burchard, Join our million plus community there on Instagram so I can say hi. Thanks again for listening. Now let's begin.
Monsters fade with light. And sometimes, you know, we forget that and we hold so much from our past in our mind that we're not even free in the moment because we're scared. You know, I always tell the story. If you ever been to my seminars, I often tell the story of when I was like 12 or 13 years old, I had gone and shut out the lights in the house, went to bed and was just getting comfortable in bed and happened to look around my room and in the closet there was a figure in the closet and it scared me. Like I was like someone in my closet was like terror. I pull up the sheet as if.
You know, the sheet is going to.
Protect me from the axe murderer, you know, not so good. But I pull up the sheet and I was mortified. Mortified. And I just sat There. And I was just like. I felt all these fears and all these thoughts went through my head, and it was just terrible. And finally I was, like, just laying there and I was like. I realized how ridiculous it was because if it is an axe murderer here, I am just not going to do anything. And I willed myself to throw off the covers, go turn on the light, and then attack this thing. Right, of course, What I see, turn on light, go to the closet. It's my baseball cap, my winter jacket hanging just at the right angle with the right shadows. There's no monster there. I had made up something bigger in my mind than what was actually there. Mental resilience is often about the truth of light being shed on things. Sometimes facing it, sometimes finally talking about it, finally sharing about it, finally sitting down with it and looking at what it is. Sometimes it's getting perspective on something. But that mental resilience comes from perspective going, oh, I thought this thing was big and scary and awful and traumatic.
And going to be forever.
And then mental resilience goes, oh, when I turn the light on it, I recognize. Yeah, wasn't good, but there it is. It's not as big and scary as I thought it was. Or, hey, let me shed some light on it and have a conversation with people, bring out this hurt and share this thing with people. Because you know who becomes really resilient, communicative people. People who open up their heart, open up their mouth, share with others their experience and their struggles. Because often it's talking through those challenges. Demons, villains, monsters, whatever metaphor you want to use, it's in discussion that other people talk about. Like, oh, that thing's. Oh, that thing's not so scary. Oh, in processing, I'm understanding my feelings more. Again, this is just why I think it's so important. Most people have never had these tools, and they've never summoned the courage to talk about things. But the people I follow online as an example, the influencers who really inspire me, they're often like, here's what I'm going through. They're sharing their struggles. And not as an act to get more likes or followers, but because we know in expression we discover emotion. We discover that in expression, we can find empathy for our own voice and receive it from others. In expression, we can realize that this thing doesn't have control of us. We get to communicate its meaning. We get to communicate what it is and what it is not in expression.
Hey, it's Brendan, and I want to.
Jump in the middle of this episode here real quick. And Tell you about something I'm really excited about and something that answers a question that many of you have for me all the time, which is, Brendan, what?
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And not once in a while, but.
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Monsters often fade with light. I was telling people, don't, don't forget that the light in a dark room only exists because the dark, but that that light grows as you open that door a little bit more and you're not so closed anymore. And people fail to realize and go this deep on resilience. Most people like just mental toughness. And I'm like, yeah, how about we start with instead of mental toughness, we start with emotional openness. Because if we start with emotional openness, when we open that door a little bit to our truth, to our real.
Thoughts, our real feelings, our real desires.
Our real needs, when we open the door just a little bit more, that light comes in a little bit more. And the more open we learn to be emotionally, mentally, spiritually, the more we tend to notice the light of the world. When we close down and shut within and we obsess about and stay Static, frozen about the monsters. That's a long, dark night of the soul. So I want to remind you, you can open up again. That might be the first next right step for you to open, to express, to share, to. Even if that just means you sit down with your own journal and acknowledge it and write it down. It doesn't mean you need to go do Instagram posts. What it means is sometimes literally just writing about it can help you activate a different part of your mind, can help you gain control over it by giving it voice. These are skills, right? These are skills and the skill of expression. Whether it's self expression in your journal or you talk to your phone and record it, or you share something with your lover or your partner at dinner, or you go to a group, you meet new people.
This is powerful stuff. This is really powerful stuff.
And I really want to encourage you to think about, like, wow.
Have I.
Been as resilient as I wanted to? Have I been, you know, stuck in a room thinking there's bigger monsters out there? Because another part of resilience is that perspective. To realize that tomorrow that you're so scared about. It's a baseball cap and a jacket. It's a mental projection. We are the ones who build the vision of fear in the future. Because the future doesn't yet exist. Tomorrow is very much a blank page. And even if there are known challenges in the future, we still can't see the chapter after that. All we can do is show up each day, faithfully ready, doing our best, and when we can do that over and over and over again, suddenly things aren't so scary.
Okay, my friend, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Brendan Show.
Tell some people about this episode. It's on each of us to spread positivity and empowerment during these times of.
Chaos and negativity, right?
So I'm asking you to be the dealer of hope and personal growth and education in your tribe. So take a screenshot right now and share the screenshot and this link to this episode with three of your friends today. Post it on social media. Use the hashtag growthday. That's growthday, because that's the name of.
My company and we're always giving away.
Prizes to our community. If you'd like to help me personally, then please rate and review the podcasts on Apple Podcasts. Give us some stars, cheer us on, leave a review. Because believe it or not, that stuff actually really does help. And I read all of them. So my last thought for today, please remember, you are stronger than you think. And the future holds good things for you. Tomorrow can be an inspired day. Every new morning is a second chance, and every day is a great day to grow. We're thankful to have you here in the Growth Day community, so be sure to go deeper with us@growthday.com.
Sam.