How to Play the Long Game (and Avoid Burnout)
18 Jan 2019 · 1 min
In this episode of the Brendon Show, Brendon Burchard argues that lasting high performance comes from adopting an "excellence" mindset rather than perfectionism, and from deliberately playing the long game. He defines excellence as a sustainable, forward‑looking approach that produces multiple achievements over time, whereas perfectionism is driven by fear, leads to compromised health, relationships, and timelines, and yields only occasional, isolated successes. Burchard explains that burnout is not caused by a single overwhelming project but by a series of small, repeated decisions that erode boundaries, freedom, and recovery time. He stresses the importance of maintaining a steady rhythm—regular recharging, clear boundaries, and strategic planning—to avoid the boom‑and‑bust cycle that many high performers experience. Throughout, he shares personal anecdotes (e.g., back‑to‑back seminars, airport encounter) to illustrate how his own high‑performance lifestyle is sustained by long‑term vision, community support, and intentional recovery practices. The core takeaway is that to achieve lasting excellence without burnout, one must play the long game, set sustainable habits, and shift identity from "perfectionist" to "person of excellence."
Chapters
Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard and welcome to another episode of the Brendon Show. How do you level up so you feel your best? That to me is the quintessential metaphor and demand of ourselves to be extraordinary. Right? Because if you just go through the motions or you do what you're comfortable with, excellence demands a little bit of edge. Excellence demands you push beyond what's easy or what's your natural strength or what you just could do and get away with and says, no, no, no, what's that next level? For me, that's real excellence over the long term. And I wanted to start with that expectation right off the bat. Like you need to have that thinking coming in today, plus you need to be doing the self analysis. Because today, as usual, I'll challenge you.
I'll cajole you, I'll tease you, I'll.
Share my own struggles and challenges along the way because it is not easy leading a worldwide community of high performers. The other day I was in an airport and someone came up to me and said, brendan, you look rough. I was like, well, thank you very much. And I said, well, I just finished a four day seminar. He says, oh, okay, well, you do those all the time. I said, yeah, but I finished a four day seminar. I went and opened two new businesses, flew to another four day seminar and all these were across the country and I was delivering the seminar mostly by myself and people were like, how are you doing that? A huge piece of it comes from the mentality we're going to talk about today. The simple things that you can do to make sure you are setting yourself up for excellence. Not exhaustion, for excellence, not mediocre, for excellence. Something you can have pride about, something you can feel good about inside. I know many of you are perfectionists and that's not the conversation today. Excellence is not the same as perfectionists. Right. I think anyone who really believes themselves to be a perfectionist tends to be really hurting themselves. They are hurting themselves because that mentality that it has to be perfect, while they take a lot of pride in it, it actually ends up compromising their health and their relationships where excellence. I'd rather you say I'm a person of excellence than I'm a perfectionist. Cause usually those who are perfectionists, they have to ultimately compromise. They have to compromise their health, they have to compromise their relationships, they have to compromise their timelines. Because most perfectionists are operating off of fear they're offering based on, well, if I do that and it's not Perfect. There's rejection, there's ruin, regret. Where excellence is getting stuff done. There's a momentum to excellence that is lacking in perfectionists. Right. A perfectionist might get something done, but they get one thing done each year. And person of excellence gets six things done. And as equal progress and equal breakthroughs. So I know some of you are like, mm, this is me. I'm a practionist. I'm like, no, no. Actually, I think it might be really important that you listen and tune in today because we might be able to add some value that helps you reimagine who you are and what you are capable of. Because, listen, if you don't have the momentum in your life you want right now, your mindset and your behaviors might be preventing you from delivering your best. If you don't sense a real momentum, like there's some kind of movement at base, there's something going on. You feel like that tremor of excitement inside because something big is coming up. It's because maybe you've been fighting and reacting and you've been in the trenches, but excellence kind of requires you to look above the trenches and have some vision once in a while. So the first value of excellence is this. You have to play the long game. You have to play the long game. Now, I know it's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, I know that. But listen, if you don't have the momentum you want in your life right now, you haven't been playing the long game. If you've been too stressed or too burned out or you've over committed yourself, you're not playing the long game. If your health sucks, not playing the long game. If you're wrecking relationships, not playing the long game. If you don't have a vibrant, amazing community of peers around you, supporting your dream, cheering you on, not playing the long game. Because playing the long game does not just take what shows up, it architects the future. Oh, write it down. Playing the long game doesn't take what just shows up. It's architecting the future. And I think a lot of people live mediocre versus excellent lives because they weren't playing the long game. They weren't thinking like, okay, three years out, how do I scale three years out? How do I stand out three years out? How do I have success unparalleled, paralleled in this industry? Cause you know, and I both know, many of you are here because you're in transition and something new is coming along and you're trying something new. You got a new hobby, a new way to make money, a new way to serve. And sometimes in that transition you go into survival mode. Survival mode is not the same as the excellence mentality, is it? Right. Survival mode is let me take what's here, let me do the bare minimum to survive versus think strategically and play the long game. Now, I said a few things that I think are really important. Like let's take that big old thing called burnout. Most people, when they've become burned out, it didn't happen immediately, it happened bit by bit by bit. I talked with my coaches this morning about that. It's like when someone's in burnout. Don't think it was one big project that tipped them over the edge. It was little decisions that bit by bit by bit by bit by bit where they gave away their time, they gave away their freedom, they over committed, they didn't say yes, they didn't say no, they didn't sort of like lay out the turf, they didn't set their boundaries and over a period of time they burned out. The problem, which I think you all know, is that if you're a high performer, you can survive on burnout for a long time. A lot of burnouts, they're operating at a high level of efficiency. I mean, they're burned out, but they can go six, seven months at that. And they don't take the time to step back and recharge throughout the day, not once in a while on a vacation throughout the day. They're not using transitions to recharge like we talk about in the book. They're not using those moments to like reset, recharge, go at it again. And they don't do that because they believe they're invincible. They can't see all these decisions adding up to exhaustion, adding up to burnout, adding up to running out. Like always looking out a few months is part of excellence, isn't it? Otherwise you can deliver excellence once and then you crash and burn. And many of you know this, your success has been up and down. And really if you look at the peaks and the valleys and the peaks and the valleys weren't successes, the peaks and the valleys were crashes. And that's how you know a person of excellence. Did they have this rhythm, this scale, this. Even if there were some like lower points, were those rhythms of excellence or was it boom, launch that thing, crash, boom, do that thing, great, crash. And it was just up, down, and it was just crash, crash, crash, crash. A lot of people I can look over the last 10 years, I'm like, your last 10 years wasn't defined by momentum or excellence. Your last 10 years was divine by like, survival. It was defined by like, luck. It was defined by crashes and burns and oh my God, you must be so tired. And you're like, yes, Brandon, I am. And that's why this is an important conversation today. If you know you're a person of excellence and if it's true, I would not see a rhythm of crashing and burning. I would not see a rhythm of burns and busts, burning out, failures and exhaustion. And it's really hard. Cause I know, trust me, like, there's so many nights, I'm like, oh my God, if I just stay awake for four more hours, I can get these projects done. And you know what? And then I'm a complete idiot. 72 hours later, I know it will catch up with me. Those who play the long game don't compromise in the short game. Cause they know it catches up later. And that catch up is a devil. It is a bear, it is a beast. It knocks you down. And what happens is you compromise three hours here, but then because that compromised three hours here, you're knocked off your feet three days over here. So if you'd taken the three hours to recharge, you wouldn't be worthless for three days in the middle of the week. Sometimes you're just like, oh my gosh, I compromised here. And then three days later, I'm a complete message, right? I want you to have steady rhythm. That's what we call high performance. That ability to have long term success while maintaining your well being and your health. My friends, you so deserve that.
If you're ready to take your life to a whole new level, make sure you grab my book, High Performance Habits. How Extraordinary People Become that Way. It's available on Amazon right now and when you order your copy, you're really supporting my channel and the message. And you're also getting a book that will reveal to you 20 years of my research into what is it that helps people go to a new level of success in their life? What does it really take? What habits are proven to help you reach long term success in your career, your health, your personal life, your relationships. It's called High Performance Habits. How Extraordinary People Become that Way. It's available on Amazon right now.