In this motivational video, Brendon Burchard explains how pervasive human judgment—rooted in an evolutionary survival mechanism—becomes a chronic, self‑limiting habit that harms personal happiness, relationships, and high performance. He describes how early experiences of criticism and judgment lead many people to adopt short‑term protection strategies, causing them to avoid long‑term goals, make unhealthy choices, and feel unworthy. Burchard illustrates the problem with anecdotes about his own upbringing, a high‑performing Olympian, and typical “thumb‑warrior” behavior in online comment sections. He argues that continual short‑term judgment creates mental “blinders,” trapping individuals in past grievances that dictate present emotions and decisions. The antidote he proposes is forgiveness—of oneself and others—to regain freedom, expand mental space, and reconnect with a future‑oriented mindset. He links freedom to the ability to envision and plan for long‑term goals, using the metaphor of a vacation that clears the mind. The video concludes with a call to action for viewers to reflect, ask questions, and consider joining his High Performance Experience coaching program.
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This one is going to hit a nerve for many of you. If I haven't hit any nerves yet, this one will probably do it in the short term. We tend to value as humans judgment and that. Yeah, I think I spelled it right. Judgment. The biggest issue with judgment is this. You make judgments all the time and you can't help it. Our automatic, our automatic sort of system, one level of thinking is just like immediate bias, immediate judgment, immediate framing, immediate good, bad, right now, later, healthy, not healthy, safe, unsafe. We have these immediate judgments that drive our life right, Move towards, move away from right, approach, avoid. It's literally built within us that we make immediate, spontaneous judgments that, that was to protect us. That was part of that evolutionary impulse to make sure we survive. The issue is we have a bunch of judgmental brats running around the world, causing havoc, spreading hate, spreading darkness. Because it's also really fun to demonstrate and portray and to publicize our judgments, right? How fun is it to go on and comment, well, that's a stupid video. Hate your shirt, you suck, you're fat, you don't know anything, anything. Who do you think you are? And we as a society now have become little, you know, thumb warriors, passing our judgment in comment sections all the time. And what's happened is many people, these two things have come together to create an incredibly negative society and a negative, unhealthy life. Right? I know that's not in this community, but I know in this committee, how many of you guys know this to be true, that a lot of people judge you the more you go for it, a lot of people judge you. The more you take a risk that they don't understand, the more people judge you when you shun this and you move towards that, right? It's difficult to be a front runner. It's hard to be the high performer. It's hard to be the person who raised their hand and says, I want more, I'm ready to go for it. I'd like to help more. Because people judge that they think, well, who do you think you are? Enough people tell you, who do you think you are? Guess what you do, you shut down and you start making short term goals. Many of you grew up in incredibly critical and negative environments. And here I am to tell you, after coaching people for this many years, I have learned and seen that if there was a pattern in your youth where he was always critical, always judgmental and negative over and over and over and over again, you tend to develop an overvalued system for stability and self protection. And so what you end up doing because you think, oh well, something's wrong with me. You don't seek to build team, oh well, every time I want to do something, I get judged. You stop pursuing things that are fulfilling because you're hurt all the time. You start taking those simple pleasures to make yourself better, feel better, and you compromise your health. And I'm not saying this from a person knowing you specifically, I'm speaking to this obviously in a group coaching environment. But I have worked with so many people who have incredibly unhealthy habits today because they never realized that they developed short term valuation strategies to protect themselves from judgment that hit them in their youth. So today they keep making short term decisions for themselves and they don't know why. Like, I don't know why, Brenda, I can't seem to, you know, plan for the long term. Because you were hurt so much when you were younger, you started being protective in the short term and stopped thinking long term that you stopped thinking that you were even worth it. So why pursue things that would make you feel really happy? You don't deserve happiness because this person told you you're, this stuff is real and it happens for people over and over and over. I grew up in a town where for me, like even just at its physical safety level, like I grew up in a very, very anger fueled, aggressive town and city. There was a time of my dad's life when he was very, very, very strong because he was a military guy, right? Like he was a marine. And so very short discipline. And it just makes you on your edge, right? And guess what? When you're on your edge to protect yourself all from your neighbors, the community, people around you, when you're on your edge all the time, what are you doing? You're like this short term and some people don't know, they never taken the blinders off. Like you're safe now, but you're still thinking short term when you're trying to protect yourself. Makes sense. A lot of people have that. They have safety now. They really do. They got great spouses, great partners, good paycheck, life is good. But they're still completely unhappy because everything is short term protection. And they don't realize those blinders for short term were put on when they were younger. And so what I have to do is bring that to your awareness to say, if you've always been a short term thinker, does that stem from you protecting yourself? And that might be a good place to explore, right? A good place to do some personal development, a good place to talk with your coach or with your therapist about to go like, huh. I've always been a short term thinker. Why is that? And I've just noticed that correlation personally working with really top performers who started making bad decisions in the short term. I worked with an Olympian who everyone knew was going to win the Olympics four years later and instead they completely self destruct for three years and they couldn't figure it out. Why couldn't they have a four year view? All they had to do is look for four years out and, and have gold medal. Instead they destroyed themselves because all they've ever been doing was protecting themselves. And when all you're doing is protecting yourselves, you can't see four years from now you're trying to get through this week, man, this day, this hour make sense. Something to explore about your unconscious. I think the other element about it is we've gotten so practiced at passing judgment to other people that we have hurt relationships. You know, I think that's something that we're just, we've lost patience as a society because everything's so quick serve that our relationships have become quickly judged. And if you keep overly judging things in the short term, sometimes to protect yourself or sometimes because you have a bias, but it's that judgment that we have that tends to really hurt key relationships and, and that compromises our long term growth, fulfillment, happiness. And so all these things obviously have a dynamic that they play together. And I also have to say that sometimes it's easy to judge somebody on the short term, but what we do is we hold judgment for the long term. And when judgment is held for the long term, it always becomes like that whole relationship, that whole person, that whole thinking becomes spoiled. Like fruit left out for too long. That's what judgment is. Judgment is like that piece of fruit that's been left out so long that now it becomes poisonous. You see what I'm saying? And some of you are holding onto a judgment about somebody that happened three years ago, some people 30 years ago, you're still upset about that. That still causes you to go into impulse control problems. Let me give an example. Like sometimes people have judgment like something happened to them 10 years ago and what happened to them 10 years ago is still controlling the day to day, even though that person isn't in their life. That situation is 10 years old. But they held onto the judgment about themselves and about that situation being unfair or unsaf. And so because I feel this way at that time, it's unfair and unsafe, then guess what? I'm angry or I'm scared or I'm unworthy. And the judgment of self perpetuated from a situation 10 years ago. And this is why some people never hit high performance. I know that sounds so weird to bring in because it feels like we're in a therapeutic conversation. I'm not a therapist. I. I've studied psychology for 20 years of my life. I've trained therapists in coaching situations. But I am not a therapist. And what I do understand from the work though, is that so often our old judgments slow down our speed today, slow down our happiness, our joy, our abilities, our capabilities, our freedom. Some people are still caged from something that happened 10 years ago because they have not yet gotten the support they might need to overcome that judgment. That judgment against that person, that situation and themselves. Because it's always three levels deep, isn't it? It's always three things. We judge a situation, we judge the people in it, and we judge ourselves within it. And what people don't realize is often when all three of those judgments are negative somewhere in the past, I'm bad, they're bad, that situation was bad. And we don't have a long term mental strategy to overcome that. Then we go into short term thinking again. And now we struggle to make good, healthy decisions for ourselves. And so what's the opposite of that? The opposite is what you guys probably could have guessed. It's forgiveness. It is the stuff of personal development, it is the stuff of psychology and therapy, but it is the stuff of spirituality too. And if we don't learn to let go or forgive ourselves or other people from past circumstances, then we are not free today. And when we are not free today, when we don't feel freedom today, we don't make long term decisions. It's just the way it is. The more caged somebody is naturally in any situation or conversation, the more protectionist and short term thinking they get. The more free you are, the more you're like, I mean, have you ever gone on vacation? Like back at home, you were tied to the computer 24 7. Like just constantly you're at the computer 24 7, you go on vacation, there's no computer for a day, and all of a sudden you're like, oh. And all of a sudden your mind starts flooding with thoughts about the next decade. You haven't thought about next month or the next decade for weeks or years. But you're on vacation and all of a sudden you're like looking for a piece of paper to write that big idea. Or you set new goals or you talk with your spouse about the future. Again, why you got a moment for your brain to breathe in freedom. And when you are in freedom, you are connected to the future. When you are trapped by old judgments, you are trapped in short term. And so I think it's really important that if you haven't ever done the work to forgive the people in your life that need to be forgiven. Not because they need to be forgiven, but because you deserve freedom. Do the work hey all, I hope you enjoyed this episode. If you did, would you please smash that subscribe button and also post any questions you have down below? Because it's these questions that you're all asking that inspires these episodes. I'd love to hear what you think about it. Also, if you would love to join us on our next upcoming Live training. We call it our High Performance Experience Coaching Program. If you like some coaching and have some perspective and get some two hours of live with me every single month, then click the link in the post down below so you can join us in HPX Coaching. I'd love to give you some more strategies, more insight, and more interaction to help you reach your next level of success. Until next time. Again, please subscribe, Share this video with anybody who could be inspired by it today. And thanks one more time for being part of my community.
