How to Feel the Goodness of Life
11 Jan 2023 · 8 min
In this episode Brendon Burchard explains how to cultivate a sense that life is good by deliberately conditioning oneself to notice and appreciate the present moment. He emphasizes practicing gratitude, recognizing beauty, and feeling awe, which together create a feeling of mattering. Burchard argues that the freedom to choose one’s thoughts and actions in each moment is a core source of goodness, and that focusing attention on what is beautiful and meaningful transforms one’s perception of self and the world. He warns against the poisonous effects of divisive culture and social media, which can condition the mind to see everything as negative and erode a sense of purpose. Instead, he encourages spending time on personal interests, passions, and competencies, arguing that engaging in activities that matter to you reinforces the feeling that life is good. Burchard also promotes his private community, Ultra, and a newsletter at progressmode.com as avenues for deeper support and accountability in pursuing passion projects and building a meaningful life.
Chapters
Feel the day. You have to condition yourself to feel the day. This means you have to notice moments and appreciate it. Have gratitude for it. Recognize beauty. Recognize something happening around you that draws awe, aspiration, inspiration. You've got to learn to feel the goodness of life. I know this sounds super esoteric. Don't worry, I'll get more tactical for some of you who are like, come on, dude. But so many people don't feel like they matter because they've never felt life. Who knows what I'm talking about? They don't feel like they matter. They've never felt life. They've never felt the energy of this moment. There's no connection to the presence. It's what I've been teaching for so long now. You have to condition yourself to feel the day. You have to condition yourself to feel the day. This means you have to notice moments and appreciate it. Have gratitude for it. Recognize beauty. Recognize something happening around you that draws awe at aspiration, inspiration. It means feeling the goodness of life. Also having perspective to realize how much better your life is than some of the other alternatives. It means, for example, recognizing the struggles of other people and being thankful that you are gifted something different. And knowing that in the magic of this very moment, you have new choices. And if you're looking for what's there, there's no goodness in life, Brendan. It's all arbitrary and chaotic. And I'm like, but isn't it true you have choice at this moment? You can choose your next thought. You can choose to pick up the thing on your desk. You can choose to call somebody after this session, you got a lot of choices. If there's any great goodness in life, it's the fact that you got a lot of choice. It's the fact in this moment you can make a change. But it's the fact that you can also aim your awareness and aim your focus to take something in that's beautiful and good. Because when you sense your goodness and you sense the world is good, others are good. Life is good. This moment is imbued with goodness. Then all of a sudden, you feel different. And when you feel that around you and you feel that from within, you start to say, this really matters. This means something. If you don't recognize the beautiful gift of life, it's hard to ever recognize that you are a gift and that you matter. I mean, if you can't recognize it from the world, how do we recognize it from the internal? So you got to see the beauty in the world as much as you recognize the goodness and the beauty of yourself. So beware of feeding your mind with poisons that says they are all bad. Beware of the divisive culture, the divisiveness on social media, because that conditions your mind to think everything is awful, everybody is awful. No one's trying to make a difference and so why can I? I can't make a difference, so why even try? And all of a sudden you just spun yourself into feeling like you don't matter. Do you want to feel like you don't matter? Engage in divisive politics? Because I promise you that condescension and superiority that you will feel to give that that pop of righteousness soon turns poisonous. And soon you realize I'm not making a difference here. I'm contributing to noise. I'm contributing to fear and divisiveness and that will never make you feel like you matter. 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 progressmode.com another idea I think that might help is if you just spend a little more time on your interests and passions. So often we're chasing and doing everything to earn the buck or to please others or help others and we're not giving any time to what we would sense is the goodness of life, which is, hey, I have some time to do the things I care about I'm interested in that seem cool, right? You want to feel like you're making a difference or you matter. Well, you have to do things that bring meaning in. And often for people, if you can disassociate from just the outcome of meaning but recognize the process matters. Well, process focus on things that are interesting and passionate to you. The more time that you give, your interest and your passions, the more you sense like, hey, this life is good. I like to do this. You do a little more, you get a lower skill development, a little more competency or a little more capability or, or just More time with something you enjoy, life starts to have that pop again. And so I know this is so basic, we talk about this one a lot. But when you're focusing on what matters to you, when you're connection, connecting to what matters to you through your interests, your passions, your hobbies, the ways that you like to serve or give, your skill sets, your talents, your knowledge, your capabilities, what we just call your competencies and passions, when you're engaged in those things, they matter to you. That translates into a sense of being that you are mattering because you are working on things that matter and feel good. I know that's so basic, but so many people have robbed themselves of hours a day focusing on things they're actually interested or passionate about because they're allowing themselves to be enslaved by engineers who make social media. So they're like, oh, well, I just lost three hours today watching a stupid documentary I didn't even like. Or I watched 50. I scrolled through a hundred stupid celebrity influencers who I don't even care about their life, but I sure know what they ate this morning for breakfast. And all of a sudden we're like, I don't know. Well, those things don't matter to you, but you're being addicted to them. And when you're addicted to things that don't matter to you over a period of time, again, not engaging with things that matter, not focusing on things that matter, draw your interest, your passion, your competency, your talent, your giving, then you feel less. You're pouring your attention out to things that don't matter and you're wondering why you don't have a connection to things that do. Does it make sense? Watch your behavior on social media, my friends. It's stealing so many hours of deep passion, deep work, real interest and contributions.