How to Lead with Excellence & Originality

It's easy and very, very easy to let excellence slide. And I'm here to encourage you. Don't be that guy. I'm here to encourage you. No, no. Keep that high standard. Keep that expectation. Care about those details. Deliver with such value and greatness for your customers and your family and your team that you become the role model, that you become the leader. Demand that of yourself. Do not avoid that hardship and the difficult realities of bearing that burden of excellence, because the alternative is to live a mediocre life. Excellence. Let's deliver some excellence this week. Oh, man. I feel like if any topic has been radically neglected or over these past weeks and months and years, now it feels like excellence has gone out the door. You know, sometimes when a culture turns to survival mode, doing things with great precision or detail or high standards can go out the window too. And certainly culturally and globally, we've had a little bit of a moment of survival. We all know that. And as we've been caught in a huge and continuing web of uncertainty, it's easy and very, very easy to let excellence slide. And I'm here to encourage you. Don't be that guy. I'm here to encourage you. No, no. Keep that high standard. Keep that expectation. Care about those details. Deliver with such value and greatness for your customers, your family and your team that you become the role model, that you become the leader. Demand that of yourself. Do not avoid that hardship and the difficult realities of bearing that burden of excellence, because the alternative is to live a mediocre life. Don't avoid the burden of excellence, because the alternative is to live a mediocre life. So let's talk about it and let's talk about how to do it right first and foremost, this week. It's so simple. There. There is no excellence in your week if you don't plan the week period. Excellence requires preparation. Write out your to dos this week and maybe for the first time ever, write out what specific deliverables you will create for other people. Tangible artifacts, presentations, downloads, guides, videos, whatever it is that you're going to create. And you're going to ship them this week. What date, what time. Put it in there. Create your plan. I think that outcome planning is so lost of an art. Outcome planning is like what I call those Friday finishers. It means by this date, Friday at 5pm I will have delivered these things on these days, at these hours. So simplistic. What most people try to do is charge into their weekend, fill it with meetings. I'm like, a meeting is not an outcome. A meeting is a process. Our job is to know what are the outcomes and deliverables that we will tangibly create, ship, deliver. That's what's important. Planning the week with that in mind. You know that there's a higher level to this conversation too, isn't there? There is understanding your yearly goals and initiatives. There is understanding your quarterly goals and initiatives, understanding your monthly goals and initiatives, understanding what each week is about. And yes, not everybody can tie together every week into a grand plan of perfection that flows out with perfection throughout the entire year. Sometimes you don't know what the hell's happening. I get it. But at least every day, create your plan every day. Every day. Even if all you know is today, you're going to go to the grocery store, you're going to go to the gym, you're going to have a shower. Put it down. Right? Get in the mode of writing down what you're doing. But for those who really want to lead, outcome planning is the way. What are the major things that you will deliver this week and when? Number two, time blocking. Like at the beginning of the week, you need to look at each day and you got to have. You got to block out 60% of this week towards needle moving activities. That was what I found in the research of high performance habits, which is a book I hope that you have read. It's like, no, this is the hour. I'm going to create that presentation. It's going to get done. This is the hour. I'm going to write those email sequences. It's going to get done. This is that time. I'm going to film that thing or meet with that person or strike this deal or it's like blocked out. And so many people, they're so proud of a calendar that's empty and they think that what they have is freedom and what they really have is inefficiency. I would rather be blocked and disciplined so that I have spare time that is, yeah, planned. I love to have planned free time that I just know I have total freedom. I don't have to worry like, oh, I have to do this, or I forgot to do that. Nope, time blocking. 60% of your time should be needle moving activities. And don't feel like that's setting an expectation for perfection because that gives you 40% of your time to do, you know, administrative stuff, emails, bills, stuff that we all got to do to live. You know, Number three, momentum, not perfection. I am not here trying to ask you to strive for excellence with some expectation or that you have to have everything just perfect before you ship it, roll it out or deliver it. We all know that that's not exactly the way of the world anymore. But pay attention to the details, get them right, really care. I mean, read the email 2, 3, 4, 5 times before sending it. That's not being a perfectionist. That's called being a professional. That's an expectation that you double check your work. Don't you wish you could share this audio with your entire team? You sure can. Go get them signed up for growth day. Omg. How many people on team need to friggin here Double check your work. What are we in fifth and sixth grade? Nope, we still gotta do it. Double check your work. I'm somebody who, I double check my work probably seven to 10 times and I still get it wrong all the times. I mean that's how dumb I am. But we gotta really do the work of double checking our work. I'm asking for momentum though. If you get in a place where you're never shipping, sending the thing, creating things, releasing the thing, then you're never gonna get done. And don't fool yourself if you have never watched my videos now, you know, viewed my like millions of times on this topic of perfectionism. Here's a brief guide. You're not a perfectionist. You say that in order to buy time, in order to protect your fears. Because guess what? If you were a perfectionist, it would mean that you release things on a consistent basis, not fail to deliver them. Why? Well, just good old fashioned linguistics. To be a perfectionist means what? Well, the root word of perfectionism is to perfect. And what does to perfect mean? To perfect means first you have to put it out there and then keep improving it. To perfect. It doesn't say to delay. To delay, to delay. To hide behind your fears. To hide behind your fears. It means to perfect. So you gotta release it to perfect it, get it out there, start my first online courses, my first videos. And some of you will say, even this audio sucked. It just is the way of the world. All you can do is keep the momentum. That's why the block time and the outcome planning really matters. Momentum, momentum, momentum. And if you never schedule it, you're never going to complete it. That's why so many perfectionists, even though they're really good, they just don't get it done. They didn't set the date. When is it going to happen? So go in your plan section, set that date. Reminder. You'll thank me later. Finally, number four, adopt the role model mindset. And the legacy mindset. Listen, the kids watch how you do stuff. It helps them become more conscientious in their life. When you're more conscientious. And did you know, out of the big five personality trait theory that's been so studied in psychology over the years, the highest correlation to long term success and yeah, life satisfaction happens to be conscientiousness. Someone who has that idea or that frame of mind in which they do care about the details and consistency and the schedule, and they do care about making things happen and doing good things for themselves and other people. Like, they're diligent, they're reliable, they're conscientious about making it right. It's okay that you have that. When you do that, you become a role model for other people. They go, wow, I gotta raise my standards to play this guy's game. I like it, I like it. But also, please don't forget, everything you are creating is part of your legacy. Now, I know some people say, ugh, well, gosh, that's so heavy, Brennan. Part of my legacy. That's why I'm a perfectionist. I don't want to release anything because, you know, I don't. I don't want to mess up my legacy. I'm like, well, listen, your legacy is like a lake. You see, lots of streams of activities will fill that lake. Lots of drops of deliverables will fill that lake. Like I said, for me, I've made plenty of crap videos, so. So podcasts, a few good books here and there. I've done 100 live seminars that were four or five day events. And you know what? Some better than others. Your legacy is more a result of your consistent action over time and the thematic quality of those things than it is any one or two things. So don't get all freaked out. Oh, my God, this isn't perfect. So my legacy's going down? No, your legacy is going down. If you don't keep filling the lake of the legacy, if the activity streams stop or the deliverables never drop into that lake. You ain't got no legacy, babe. So take to heart. You don't have to be a fractionist. We need momentum. But I say all that with a little bit of a wink and a smile at you. I know how easy it is to get all freaked out. But you know what inspires me? It inspires me to think about my legacy. It inspires me to think about the impact I'm going to leave. It inspires me to think that I have to level up Every week I have to get better every week I have to try hard every week to be conscientious and to do these things I'm talking about, I got to work at these things. And very few of these things come naturally to me. I'm the guy from Montana who just like to hang out in the cabin and read books, man. Or the guy from Puerto Rico, walk down that beach, have a pina colada. Like, I'm not geared. I'm not naturally built to be a communicator. I had to learn all that. I wasn't great as a business operator. Had to learn all that. Still learning. But guess what? I'm in motion. When you can think about your legacy and the difference you're going to make, make in the world, boy, that summons up a different kind of strength. And you just feel like that day you can be motivated and because you know in your heart you can do this, you can do this, Believe, get it done. Every day is a good day to grow. 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 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 originality. You know, I think so many people live their lives just trying to model other people all the time or mirror them, just trying to be like their parents or be like their peers or be like their teacher said they should. And so they've never actually had that freedom of expression to determine who they really are. They've always been trying to fit in the mold or the identity of or the role in which they've been assigned or been told or been labeled. And so they're living a life more as a copy of someone else's expectations versus the original authentic soul that they are. And sometimes personal development is the gateway to realizing that. You know, my favorite part of self improvement is that it makes us test our assumptions, makes us be more intentional about our identity and how we're behaving in the world. And I love this question of, well, how original are you being in the world? Is who is showing up authentic and vibrant and spontaneous and free of expression in that moment? Or is it sort of you're always operating on the rules and expectations of other people from your past? And I know that's such a basic question, but it's truly powerful when you think about it. I was asked specifically more about content originality, but I think my answer would apply at a broader level too. So here's how I think about originality. I think first and foremost, when I have to come up with content, I sit down with a blank piece of paper and I write out the topic and then I write out 10 points and I just try from my mind, from my immediate, spontaneous, just brainstorming state of mind, just write out as many kind of takeaways or ideas or topics or strategies or habits that I can. So I just think, okay, what's the topic? What lessons have I learned? And I just brainstorm those out. Some of those lessons are just things people have said to me. Some of those lessons are experiences I've had. Some of those lessons are just something I'm summarizing in my head. Some of those lessons are strategies, tools, tactics, habits. But really, if you think about it, it's just a capture session. If you're going to live an authentic, vibrant, original life, well, that can also begin today by going into your journal and asking yourself, well, what makes me original and capturing your uniqueness. Maybe it's your unique values, your unique beliefs, your unique way of viewing yourself, others or the world. Maybe it's a unique way that you believe your personality is structured or a unique way in which you want to live your life. I think just capturing is the first step. Just in a spontaneous moment, in a spontaneous session, just writing down. Second, I think it's important to do research. You know, I really believe that so much of what people underestimate about Growth Day or don't know is how much. Almost every tool, every strategy and everything you'll find here in Growth Day was built upon some type of research backed approach. Something informed the building of our approach and our courses and our teaching. For example, if you read High Formus Habits, my book, you'll see how that a lot of that research there from the High Performance Institute and what we did with university researchers from University of Pennsylvania and UC Santa Barbara really helped inform our approach to personal development and psychology. And so I really believe taking the time to research is important for content. But that's the Same thing for your identity. What do you mean by that? Well, your exploration here of researching topics of personal development or self improvement, your exploration out there of researching topics in psychology, the research that you do from reading, whether it's a self help book, a sociology book, a behavioral economics book, a leadership book, a business book, your work and listening to all those podcasts, that's all gathering, isn't it? That's all some type of research. And many people don't have a disciplined approach to that. And so what ends up happening is most of what they're doing is just operating from guesses or intuition. And so often they're reinventing the wheel, or so often they're lacking the ability to have perspective of their own issues or their own challenges. And for me personally, by spending a lot of time in my 20s realizing I was unhappy, and yet also complementing that with researching about how to be happier, researching about my own psychology, taking assessments, using tools and tracking, I was able to start to understand myself from a broader perspective. That's really the benefit of research is as you look into things or you try and test things, suddenly you discover new ways of perceiving yourself. And as you discover how you stack up or what is unique about you, of course it's easier to now understand oneself and live a more authentic life. Number three is all about prioritization. Okay, I've captured 10 points, okay, I've read a bunch of books or listened to a bunch of podcasts, or interviewed a bunch of experts. Okay, now what? Now it's my job to synthesize all of that information and ask, okay, what's missing here? And how would I prioritize what's left? And so in content creation, it's about creating a framework and asking, does this framework generally encompass most aspects of this particular topic? So for example, with high forms, habits, man, there, there could be what, hundreds of more habits, right? But what we did is we had that list of all the habits from my capturing of it, but then deep research on the topic and we had literally hundreds of habits and we had to then synthesize and prioritize which of those habits mattered the most. Now obviously that's more of a research backed approach to find correlations. But in our own life we can say, okay, I know this to be true about myself, because isn't it true yourself has lots of different dimensions in that you have, you know, you're a little different around your family, and maybe you're a little different around friends, and maybe you're a little slightly different. At work. And maybe you're different with your spouse and, and maybe when you're with the kids you're like that. That we have these different roles that we play. And in those roles, sometimes we express a different part of ourselves. Well, sometimes in discerning what our authentic life really is about, we take all those realities and we take everything we know about self improvement, self help psychology, and we say, okay, what's most important to me? What would be the truest expression of who I am if I had to narrow it down and prioritize what uniquely makes me come alive, what uniquely makes me happy, what uniquely makes me creative or joyful? What uniquely makes me a leader? You're trying to say out of all the different dimensions or different attitudes or different ways of being, these ones matter the most to me and I'm going to prioritize them and I'm going to live those through consistent expression. Right. For example, I think of all the different dimensions of myself, right? I'm a dork over here, I'm confident over there. I'm insecure in this spot I'm doing, you know, you have all these different dimensions. I think of one thing, whole laundry list of how to describe, quote unquote Brendon Burchard. I think of one of the things. Joy is something that I prioritize. Joy is a sense for me of being authentic. And it's part of what makes me original. And I create a phrase around it. Bring the joy. I'm going to bring the joy to situations. Well, there's lots of other things that I could describe myself as, but for me, I know I'm living authentic and I'm in my original essence when I am in joy. So I make sure I prioritize that by measuring that, by summoning that, by having that intention. You're not authentic or original until you've prioritized what unique expressions you want to experience. Think about that. You got to prioritize what's most important to you, what's the way of being that is most original or authentic to you. There might be 10 or 12 things on that list, but maybe top two or three, those really make you come alive. Fourth idea, at least in content, is you have to be very consistent in the process in order to keep iterating and sculpting who you are, what your content is going to be as a creator. Well, that applies in psychology and personal development too. You have to be consistent in the process of having the intention to live an authentic life, but really showing up and doing the work. And what happens is it's like you sculpt away all of the noise and the nonsense and you find the real beauty in who you are. It's just peeling away all of the other nonsense that we have learned, letting go of some of those labels and baggage. It's showing up every day and trying to be uniquely ourself in a world that is struggling and fighting to make us copies. That as we realize, oh, when I'm authentic and free flowing and spontaneous in the moment, the more that's actually happened to me, the more I'm actually being me. But you have to will that. You have to summon that, you have to show up for that every day. Just like if you want to create content, you do it more consistently. It gets better. You iterate, you iterate, you iterate. And over a period of time, people think, oh my gosh, you're so wise. How do you come up with all these frameworks and all this content? And you're like, well, I just been doing it a long time, right? Expertise gathers in the content area. Well, guess what? Expertise gathers in knowing thyself as well. How does it gather? It gathers by you showing up and fighting to be uniquely you. Each day amid a world of distraction and comparison and judgment. You realize, oh, I do have to fight for who I am. I do have to set boundaries. I do have to express myself. I do have to share my real thoughts, my real feelings, my real ideas, my real needs, my real dreams with other people. And as I express those things more consistently and more often, I sculpt a more authentic character. I create that architecture inside that knows thyself. I gain expertise in knowing who I really am because I've showed up as who I feel I really am. I've been spontaneous and present and aware in the moment. I've been conscious of who I am so many times that I actually do know who I am uniquely, authentically, and I know how to express that. And when I express that, I feel alive. Every day is a good day to remind ourselves of who we really want to be and who we really are. And so use your journal today. Go in and write about what does it mean to live an authentic life or original life. Just capture, just brainstorm. Start this process today, I urge you, because this day can be that day that you start living more true to who you are and the best of who you are. Not by accident, but by design. Because every day is a good day. Design who we really are and to unleash that and to free that and to express that because every day is a good day to grow.