How to Reignite Your Life
16 Jul 2019 · 17 min
Brendon Burchard proposes four practices to revitalize your life without drastic changes: presence (mindful awareness), people engagement (deeper relationships), planning (concrete goals), and peaceful progress (ambition with self-care). He argues against the midlife crisis mentality of sudden external shifts, focusing instead on intentional internal transformation.
Chapters
Hey, my friends. It's Brendon Burchard, and welcome to another episode of the Brendon Show. How do you reignite your life? You know, if you're, like, ready for a big change or you just want more vibrancy and more pop and more joy and more energy into your life so that you can actually feel happy about life, how do you do it? Especially if you've been through, like, a dark period of time and you're just like, I really. I just want to turn back on. You know, maybe you've come through a breakup or a divorce or you started a new business or you just recognize, like, hey, for the last six months, you've kind of sucked. You know, life has just not been good. It's just been, like, upsetting. And you're like, I need something new. I need to revivify. You know, you're that place where you're like, I just need some new pop in my life. Brendan, how do I reignite? Well, some of you guys know I did a whole course on this with the Oprah Winfrey Network back in the day. But I've been really thinking about it lately because so many people are asking, like, okay, I feel like, so much negativity. I want more positivity and joy in my life. But I also need a change, because a lot of people right now, they're in transition. You know, they had this part of their life, and now the career changed, and they're like, oh, I'm in this part of my life, and they want to do it better. So this still applies to you. So how do you reignite your life? I got four big ideas. I call it the four Ps. Okay? The first way to reignite your life is not to have a midlife crisis and become a metaphor. Okay? What I mean is that most people, what they do is they think, well, I must have to move. I got to move to a whole new location. I see, Brendon, you moved to Puerto Rico. It's great. I guess I got to move my life. No, my life was already ignited. I didn't have to move somewhere to find it. You don't have to be in a new relationship, start a new career, move to that new town. Often when we want to reignite our life, we look for these big things. Well, I'll feel good when I win the lottery or that perfect thing happens. You're waiting for that perfect thing to happen in order to feel good. And that makes you a novice in personal development. And I say that with all Respect, because we all do that at some point. I can recognize time in my life. I'm like, brendan, why didn't you feel better at that stage of your life? Because I wasn't using my mind. Well, and so I learned that if you want to reignite your life, don't think it has to be this big, abrupt, sudden, crazy change. Those can be great. But if those aren't well thought out, it becomes a train wreck and a midlife crisis versus an intentional new way of being. Because, listen, that's how you reignite your life. An intentional new way of being. And that's what these 4Ps are really going to be about, a new way of being for you. We don't have to change your marriage or your career. I'm not saying those things might not need to change, but you can reignite your life by starting with these four P's. The first P is presence. Learning to be more present in the moment, more mindful and appreciative of what you already have that you've been been missing. So many people think that they need something new to make them feel good. When I'm like, but didn't you see what your child just did? How cute was that? Or didn't you just notice that you do have more abundance than 50% of the world? Didn't you notice that today went by? No one shot at you, Nobody tried to stab you. Didn't you understand that today there was no crime in your house? Like, if that's true for you, you're lucky. And what happens is we lose our perspective and we become people who are always attached to the next moment or the previous moment and we're not here. And I've always found that when you can learn to get in this moment and you can breathe and use your breath to engage in this moment, and you can notice the small things in this moment and just be in the moment that when I'm here in the now, in this moment, I will always be happier. I will always notice things. I will always feel a sense of connection with life. The reason a lot of people are unhappy and they feel like they have to reignite it is because they become disconnected. They become disconnected with themselves. They become disconnected in their relationship, they become disconnected in their career. And the only thing they're connected to anymore is their phone, right? The only time there's any presence when they're like, ah. And they've lost presence with the moment, with this breath, with this joy of being alive. Like, I hope that you realize the ultimate way to reignite your life is to first have reverence for life. And if you have reverence for life, you connect with the moment. You have fun with the moment. You dance with the moment. It's all here. It's already here. You're already alive. You already won the lottery of this crazy cosmos that all these billions of cells aligned perfectly to make you right now, please. You forgot this moment. You forgot the magic of now. And you're looking for tomorrow to make you happy when it's right here. It's a choice, it's a decision, it's an intention. It's a reconnection with the moment each day. Stop going through the day, going through the motions. Reconnect with the minute. Take notice of your breath. Take notice of what you're paying attention to. Appreciate the small things. Be present now. Because trust me, if you can't learn to be present now where you don't feel like life is going great, when it becomes great, you won't notice either. Trust me. I coach some of the highest level people in the world and I always find this to be true. They have everything and they're still not happy because they never trained themselves in the practice of presence. The second p that I think is so critical is people engagement. And that is if you want to reignite your life, the way to do that is in your current relationships. The people you already interact with, the people you already love, the people you already lead, the people you already work with, I want you to re engage them again. You got distracted and you thought that you know everything about them. You don't know a lot about your wife, your husband, your boyfriend, your girlfriend. The people who you're working with, they are infinitely complex. But what you do is you shorthand them. You kind of like take them for granted. You stopped asking them the questions, you stopped engaging them. Deeply and without depth in relationships will never feel like life has its pop. Life has its pop. When you're in a relationship with people and it's this deep and real and curious thing that you honor the mystery in other people enough that you ask them questions, that you explore what they think, what they feel, what they need, what they desire. That curiosity with other people lights you up, man. But you take them for granted because you've been around them for a while. Yeah. You know your kids. Yeah. You know your husband. Yeah, yeah, you know your friends. But you don't. And once you accept that, it becomes like a curious thing again. I mean, think about all of the vibrancy and the pop that you had at the beginning of your relationship with somebody. Remember those first couple weeks of dating, it was just like magic and fire. Cause you're learning so much about the person and you're just like, oh, I learned this about the person. You tell your friends, oh. And she's like this. And he's like, that is so cute. It's because you were curious about them. You didn't pretend you know everything. But so many of us take our relationships for granted. And we're missing the very thing right in front of us. Just like presence. It's right in front of you. The people in your life are there to make your life come alive. You forgot that they're a tool for that. There are ends, there are means. They're an experience. They are there with you and for you in your life to make life have pop. And don't blame them if they're not giving you that, because that's what we do. Well, she's just negative. She's terrible. They don't support me, Brendan. Yes, I understand, and that might be true. But if you haven't fully tried to re engage them and been present with them, don't expect them to do it for you. So first, take ownership. Ask. Have I really poured myself into these relationships? Getting to know these people and diving deep. I mean, think about when someone does move to a new town. Why is it so magical? New people they can ask questions to and get to know? Well, they had people at their house too, but they forgot to do that. So I hope that makes sense. Re engage the people around you. There is vibe and pop there like you just can't even imagine. Third P is probably not. It's not a sexy one, I gotta tell you. It's planning. Planning. The reason a lot of people want to reignite their life is because they're frustrated with where they are. They're not having the momentum behind them. They recognize they have unbelievable potential and they have not been able to activating it. And why? Because they have been leaving their growth, they have been leaving their momentum. They have been leaving their goals to randomness. Let's just see what happens every day. See what happens every day. See what happens every day. See what happens. And if every day is I guess I'll just see what happens, guess what the odds are in a month nothing happened. Two months, nothing happened again. Because the world is good at letting you sit on your laurels. The world is good at it passing you by and not bringing new opportunities. Yes, sometimes we're lucky. And new things come into our lives and changes us. But often we've got to architect that. We have to strategize it, we've got to structure it, and we've got to schedule it. Baby, you have to think about that. You have to take back the strategy and the structure and the scheduling for you to get ahead. What does this mean? It means planning. It means I need to be able to show up in your house. You need to be able to open up your laptop or show me on a wall somewhere on a piece of paper at the kitchen table. Here's my plan, Brendan. Here's what I'm excited to do, even if all that shows me is what's my ideal day look like. I'm trying to work towards that every day, Brendan. It doesn't have to be your, you know, your mission to go to Mars. It can just be like, here's what an ideal day would look like for me. I'm going to hit it. More often than not, it's just a plan. And without a plan, without knowing what your next month is about, we end up going month to month to month, flailing about. And then one day we're going, I'm kind of miserable, and I don't know why. I'm like, I know why. Because you're the same as you were five years ago. And we all have within our heart and our soul the growth imperative. It's in us by biology, evolution, God, whatever you want to call it. We are meant to grow and to try to reach the rim of our full potential. But that can't be done without some planning. So think about, what do you want next month? What does your ideal days look like? What are the big goals and projects you want to work towards? Bust them down, put them in the calendar. Start building knowledge, skills, and ability to be able to achieve those faster. And that's getting you a little momentum, because momentum makes life come back to full color. Fourth P is peaceful progress. One reason that people want to reignite their life isn't just because they didn't get where they wanted to be. One reason often is because where they got, they can't sustain it and they don't want to do it that way anymore. They burnt themselves out. They hustled themselves in the ground. They ground and ground and ground. And they were in the grind philosophy. And they cheated their relationships, they cheated their health, they cheated their joy, they stole away their presence because the way they were striving was not present, but also was not peaceful. You got to meet life with peace. Yes, there's that warrior part of us. Yes, there's that grind part of us. But if you ground yourself into exhaustion, that's why you feel like you need to reignite. That's why people love to go away to a week long detox somewhere because they're like, I need to turn off the phone, I need to eat healthier, I need to work out, I need to take care of myself. Because self care is part of peaceful progress. To take care of yourself as you are striving isn't a luxury, is a necessity for long term performance. As many of you guys know, I conducted the world's largest study that's ever been done on high performers, which are essentially the top 15% of the most accomplished people in any field, any art, any endeavor. And these top 15% people aren't superhuman, but one thing they are doing is they are striving more satisfied. They are joyous on their journey, they are happy with the path, they're not waiting for the destination or the outcome. And they're not grinding themselves in the ground every day with work. Rather, they're peaceful. There's a sense of centeredness to how they are proceeding through life. You ever meet somebody like that? They walk in the room and they're just so grounded and so centered and so peaceful. And you're like, gosh, I wish I had some of that. You got to practice yourself into that. So for some of you who just you feel like always stress, always anxiety, always frustration, always nervousness, always like hustle, hustle, hustle. Jeez, please teach yourself to meditate. Simple. Close your eyes 20 minutes a day, 5 minutes a day, 10 minutes a day. And just release your thoughts and release the tension in your body. And if you need a training on that, just Google me on YouTube and type in release meditation technique. The release meditation technique. I have a whole other video just like this where I teach how to meditate. Two million people have learned to meditate. For me, I'm super honored by that. It's something simple that can give you a daily break from all the noise in your head, that can steal away your presence, steal away your connection with other people, steal away the motivation to pursue all that planning that you did. Because listen, you could do all those things. But if you're completely hectic, freaked out, anxious, upset all the time, and you're exhausted, there is no way. We cannot reignite your life without managing your self care better. And I know you know all these things, but this is my invitation to you to explore. Or are you leaving any of this? Have you forgot your presence? The deep connection you have with people? Have you not been planning and have you been progressing just with just like all the time versus joy? You deserve to have a vibrant, joyous, connected, excellence filled life. That's what we always talk about in hpx. It's my brand, right? The High Performance experience. Hpx, the high Performance experience. That's what we all want. We all want that next level of experience. We all want to reignite and feel alive and have that fire inside. So try these four practices. See if they help you build a community of people who are positive, who, who are enlightened, who are conscious, who are excited about life. Because that will also help you reignite it all. My friends, 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. RA.