If You Can't Start or Want to Quit

Hello my friends. I'm Brendon Burchard, host of the Brendon show and founder of growthday.com and I'm honored to be your high performance coach today. I believe that every day we can be inspired. We can live with intention and purpose. We can bring the joy and honor the struggles of each day to push ourselves to grow, to serve, to be a role model, to lead extraordinary lives. I believe that every day is a great day to grow. That's why I started my company, growthday.com it's an online personal growth platform where you can get me and the world's best personal development teachers live coaching you every week, sharing our wisdom, keeping you motivated and accountable, encouraging you to find the aliveness and the connection and meaning of life that we're all after. If you're not a member yet, please go sign up@growthday.com and join our huge worldwide community of achievers. For less than a dollar a day you get the world's best teachers live every week. And look, you've probably known for a long time that you needed some expert guidance and inspired community and life changing tools. So please, your breakthrough awaits you@growthday.com now let's get to today's episode. My friends, please listen closely. Maybe you take some notes so you remember these insights of personal growth and share this episode with three of your friends because we all have to share more positive messages in the world today. So share this with three friends just like you who are committed to their personal growth. And also be sure to tag me or DM me on Instagram. Rendon Burchard, Join our million plus community there on Instagram so I can say hi. Thanks again for listening. Now let's begin.

Do not wait to start writing that book until you're rich and you have all this time. Do not wait to create a better relationship with the kids until they're more mature. Do not wait. Like have that do not wait list. I was like do not wait. And it could be simple things, dream things. I literally wrote one time maybe a couple months ago I wrote do not wait to move to the place that you would love to live and create every day. Now I'm in Puerto Rico. You know, do not wait to get yourself healthier just because you know you're busy. Do not wait. I'm just, I think a do not wait list can be really great. Really great, really great. Don't wait until everything's perfect, my friend. The new chapter that's today discouragement story, Comeback story. Comeback story Starts with asking, where have I been waiting? Because my body, my mind needs to trust itself. I need to trust myself to take action towards the things that matter the most. We've got to go from victim to role model. The biggest shift in many people's lives, the ultimate comeback story, begins with this one. It goes from, you know what, they took advantage of me. This wasn't fair. I don't like them. It was just, you know, terrible. And listen, I am not here to say that what you have been through in your life was not significant. Awful, tragic, hard. You know what? I hate when people do that. You know, they try to get. They try to say, oh, no, what you've been through, that's nothing. Because everyone else went through all these other things. No, I appreciate the perspective, but if you had a hard time in your life, you had a hard time, maybe you weren't equipped with the coping mechanisms to deal with it, or the maturity or the support. Maybe somebody really took advantage of you. I get that, trust me. But I'm here to say there is a mental shift that goes from victimhood to survivorship, but then to being a role model. The greatest comeback stories happen when someone goes, you know what? I need to overcome this because my kids are watching. I need to overcome this because my team's going to see how I deal with this. I need to overcome this because everyone else is expecting me to blame, stop and freeze. And if I rise up, maybe I can be a story of inspiration for somebody else. Even if rising up is so friggin hard. You know, even if rising up is so hard, I know that rising up might inspire someone else. Because if you can't inspire yourself for yourself, some of you will do more for other people than you will do for yourselves. Isn't that true? Some of you will do more for other people than you will do for yourself. So I always tell you, if you are down and out, that's why I always say, ask, who needs you on your A game each day instead of card right next to my computer, who needs me on my A game today? Because I will do more for other people to serve other people than sometimes I will. I can be very like, believe it. People are like, wait, Brendan, did he just say he can be lazy? I'm like, I can totally be lazy. I'm from Montana. I can chill out on the mountain or on the lake or in the river with a fly pole all day, happily. All right, I'm good at chilling. But I also know that many people don't make a turn in their life. They don't realize that if they could overcome it, they could inspire people. You know, it was one of the things that kept me going. When I had the brain injury in 2011, I wrecked a four wheeler, an ATV, and I wrecked it in such a way that I really damaged my body. I mean, if you ever see this big scar on my hand that some of you guys have seen, I got, you know, got a big metal wrist going on right here like a bionic guy. I threw out my hip, dislocated my shoulder, cracked a couple ribs. Gosh. And ended up with a brain injury. And to me, as I was going through that, I was so cognizant of the fact I was like, you know what? Because there's so many days I couldn't control my emotions. I didn't have hope for the future. I couldn't even see the future anymore. My ability to look out far in the future was kind of gone. And it was like, oh, man, it sucked. It just. I mean, there were so many days I was super sad because my emotions were all over the place because the.

Injury, it was just.

It was an awful experience. But there weren't too many days that I lost perspective in such a way that I never really forgot that. You know what? Someday I'm going to have to explain that I had a brain injury, and I'm either going to go, you know, gosh, I had it, and my life still sucks. I'm gonna say, you know what? I had it. And I did everything I could to come through even a physical limitation like that. And it's not in any way making myself, you know, the hero of the story. Because some of the people who inspire me the most. I have a friend who, you know, literally cannot walk. Lost use of both of his legs in war, and he's one of the champion wheelchair basketball player guys, right? And for years and years, he was miserable and sad and hated himself. And obviously, I mean, to lose the ability to walk, to become paralyzed, but he just said, you know what? I'm not going to be the person who goes through this and gives up on life. I'm going to get the training, the support and do the work to try to lift myself into something. Because it's a choice we get. We're going to give up and check out, or we're going to work hard and rise up that demarcation line. Discouragement, come back, give up, check out, or like, engage, rise up. One thing we know from the world's largest studies of high performers is they always say they're fully engaged in their experience. And I always love that. It's like, because we're either avoiding things or running from things, or we are engaging it and facing it head on. But what lifts us is when we can go, you know what? If I pull through this, man, it's going to be a good story. If I pull through this, man, some people are going to see this and be inspired. If I pull through this, okay, something good is going to happen. I don't pretend that it's easy, but I do pretend to tell you that you got a choice. You're going to stay with this story where you're down and out, people took advantage of you, and you're going to relive this one and play it forever and relive those old chapters over and over, read them over and over and over and over and over again, or you're going to start telling yourself a new story that you got an opportunity to rise and be the role model for someone who's going through the same thing. I'm not the only one who ever went through a brain injury. So I hope that my efforts to recover, to do the hard work over that two and a half year period can inspire some people say, hey, you know what? Maybe I don't just have to accept where my mind, body and brain are. I can rehab, I can change. And I've always been inspired by people who did that. I really do believe that. I really do believe that. I will also say that the role model mindset is integral to the highest level of success, not just the comeback story. Let's go to the end chapters, right? The very end chapters of life. When you look back at life, we know that high performers view themselves as role model. And if you view yourself as a role model, even if today you suck, but you start adopting the role model mindset. Like, how would I behave if I was a role model right now? What would I be saying to myself? How would I treat other people? What would I do? If, even if, when you just are starting or you are down and out, you can step into the role model mindset, Step into the mindset that says the way I live my life can serve as an example, the way I live my life can serve as an example. The way I live my life can serve as an example. And if I can step into that, then maybe, then just maybe I'll work a little harder to change. Because you'll do more for other people than sometimes you'll do for yourself. If you're going to do something for yourself. As you're evaluating those old chapters, my friends, here's one I'd love to give you. I would love to say forgive and just set some new standards. Forgive and set some new standards. What do I mean by that? Well, I think, you know what if you've been discouraged and you've been down and out, fearful, stopped, blocked, you're probably holding on some negative feelings for yourself and other people, you know, and it's by holding on to that that's hard to break through now. You know, it's being weighed down by that old stuff. It's not allowing you to break through now. And sometimes real transformation begins with forgiving yourself and other people. It doesn't mean you justify it, it doesn't mean you approve of it, because maybe you did something that was stupid or someone did something stupid to you. But forgiving it and letting it go, when you let go of all of that that you're holding onto, from the self hatred to the social judgment of others, and you can step into a more free moment now, everything shifts. And here's what I tell people. I'm like the reason a lot of people don't want to let go of the past because they like to hold on to that. But when you shift into the role model mindset, it kind of goes like, oh wait, I gotta look at this a little differently. And here's the thing, instead of being discouraged by the past, adopt the learning mindset that says, got it. Okay, I learned this from this situation. So here's the new standard, right? Last time I allowed somebody to walk all over me. And you can live in that past, they walked all over me. I'm a victim. Woe is me. That was awful. Which, hey, all that's true. But if you live there, life is not good. Or you can say, okay, they walked all over me. New standard. I never let someone walk over me like that again. I take back command of my own life, my own personhood and, and I'm gonna live my life as the truth of who I am without bowing down or trying to live somebody else's permission or projection of that. And that's a big change for people's lives. It's a big change. So let's find what is it that it is time for you to forgive? Like, what is it? It's just time for you to forgive it. You know, I don't pretend it's always easy, but there's plenty of tools out there. I think there's a YouTube episode I did one time called how to Let Go. How to Let Go. It's a powerful one. But I love to combine these Forgive and set new standards and forgiving yourself is primary. And setting new standards of behavior for yourself is also primary. And if I can take a minute to share a story with you all, I don't usually share, I think I've shared four or five times that. But it's an important one to me. You know, when I was a young kid and was in a relationship that many of, you know, kind of had fallen apart, was the girl I thought I was going to marry. When I was in high school and college and then in middle of college, she had cheated on me. And that spiraled me down into forced, you know, discouragement and hatred and anger and then into depression and then into suicidal thoughts. And then I had the accident. Fortuitously that kind of changed my life. One of the greatest things I still feel like literally in my life, one of the greatest scenes of my life and moments of my life when I look back that I'm so glad I did and was one of the hardest, scariest things I did, especially as a young kid, you know, was after I survived the accident and I healed, when I went back to school, I. I called her, the girl that broke my heart. I called her and I. She was at a sorority, she was staying at a sorority, living in a sorority. And I called, I got somebody, they went and found her. She came to this, the phone. Who is this? And it's Brendan. And she was like. I could just hear the silence. I said, hey, don't hang up. I actually, I've been in an accident, I'm okay, but I wanted to say something to you and apologize. And she goes, what now? Remember, she had cheated on me. But I also, also wasn't playing victim in the sense of. I had realized too I wasn't a great person. I was a 19 year old kid. I didn't know how to be in a good relationship. I didn't know much about relationships at the time. I didn't know much about myself. Young kid too. And I'd acted so angrily and upset and hurt and called her terrible names after she had cheated on me, wrote her horrible emails. This is just when emails was coming out. So I felt really bad. My first actions on emails were like calling a person negative, horrible names. Even though they'd done something wrong. I didn't react well. So I apologized for that. I said, listen, my accident has taught me that life is short. And all I desperately want to do is live and love and matter. And I don't want to hold on to the hurt anymore. And I don't want you to do it either. And so I basically explained to her I would. I want to let you know I'm not mad about anything that happened.

I'm sorry for the way I reacted to it. And.

And honestly, I wish you nothing but joy, health and love in your life. And there was this long silence and then I heard her sobbing because she shared with me that she had every day read those emails, those horrible emails I had written her and that she hated herself. Of course, I had no idea. I just. I was in my own world. We often don't know the pain that other people feel by their own actions. We might not ever see it. They might not say anything about it, but most people, they feel terrible about doing wrong things. They do. You don't know it, but they do, you know. And so what I share with you is that act of calling a person who had done wrong and letting that energy go and saying, listen, I just want you to know I don't have an ill will for you anymore. It was like the most freeing thing that ever happened in my life. We had a nice conversation. Nothing amazing, spectacular, but nice conversation. But hung up. When I hung up, I hung up. The hurt. When I hung up, the pain was gone. When I just let it go, everything was different. But I didn't just forgive. I also set a new standard for myself. And that's why I'm telling you, forgive and set a new standard.

Hey, it's Brendan and I want to jump in the middle of this episode here real quick and tell you about something I'm really excited about and something that answers a question that many of you have for me all the time, which is, Brendon, where do you get this crazy focus and energy in your life? And the truth is I've developed a supplement line that really helps me do that. And frankly, I needed to.

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It's called HPEX Optimized, and it is our most popular product. And you can get it. It's back in stock@HPX wellness.com that's HPX wellness.com you'll find HPEX Optimized for your mental focus and energy there. You'll also find my favorite powdered energy drink that we created, this 100% organic and vegan. And you'll find my essentials, which is my daily multi that I take that covers my energy, that covers my longevity, that covers my immunity, that covers my brain and body health that I absolutely love. And you will feel the difference. Go to HPX Wellness.com right now. HPX Wellness.com.

A new standard says, I am now a person like this. So in your journal, write that down. I am now a person like this. Describe yourself. Who are you now in this comeback story? Describe yourself. I'm a person now who is like this. And then write, I'm a person who treats people like this. And then write, I'm a person who does these things, your habits or your actions or your routines. And for me, it was stuff like this. It was like, I am a person who is compassionate and respectful of other people no matter what they are going through. I'm not going to judge. I am not going to get angry. And I am not a person who gets hooked up on other people's behavior. Because isn't it true other people's behavior is always going to be upsetting, frustrating, challenging? Is it true we can always judge other people and hate on other people, but then we're living in judgment and hatred in ourselves? I said, I am not a person who does that. I'm a person who is empathetic, compassionate, understanding, patient, or at least not hooked on other people's behaviors. That was a big standard for me. I will not get hooked on other people's behaviors. Some of you read the four agreements, right? You've read four agreements and you know it says first agreement. I'm not going to take things personally. Other people's behaviors, not about you. I said that. That was a big changer. I'm not getting hooked about other people's behaviors because their behaviors aren't about me. That's about them. So I'm not going to get hurt, angry or hooked by other people's behaviors. That's my new standard. That was a game changer. Imagine that at 20 years old. I'm not going to get hooked by other people's behaviors. Talk about freedom. Come on, people. That's freedom. When you are no longer hooked on other people's stories and behaviors in your next chapter because you got too hurt, too angry, too upset about people's inevitable crap in the old chapters, think about how angry, mad and upset you were always about other people in the last chapters. In those chapters where you're frozen, frozen, upset, angry, frustrated, how often that happened because it was about other people. New chapter. You're free. That's it. It's time to be free. The standards that we set can free us. The standards that we set can free us. My standard was no longer am I going to be hooked by other people's crap. Hallelujah, let's go. I also said in treating other people, I am always going to treat other people with dignity, even if I don't like them. I'm always going to give people respect even if I don't like them. Because I'm not going to lower myself in any interaction with another human being. I'm going to play the high road. I'm going to act for my highest self. It doesn't mean I might not walk away and go, I don't like that person. But I am not going to mistreat people. Think about that. I am not going to mistreat people because she mistreated me. And so what did I do? I mistreated her. And so I perpetuated that cycle. And that means if you're perpetuating the cycle, you're just as bad as the perpetrator. If you perpetuate the cycle, you're just as bad as the perpetrator. Think about that for a minute. So if someone mistreated you and you mistreat them, and now you mistreat other people because that person mistreated you, who's the bad guy? I said, new standard, Brendan. You don't mistreat people. Whoa. 20 year old kid, man. Right? Game changer. That's the new standard. You don't mistreat people, Brendan. You just don't. Even if you want to, you don't. I grew up in a very physical environment in which both punishment and culture were a lot of fights. I grew up getting punched in the face, slapped around, smacked, belted, wasn't good. But because I grew up in that very physical environment, I also developed a thing in high school and college that I fought people and I got in physical fights very quickly. Someone got upset, I'd get in a fight. I took martial arts most of my life so that I Could be able to defend myself or fight at that stage of my life. And I said, I don't want to do that no more. I don't want to hurt people. What is that about? What is about my ego that I got to hurt people? New chapter. Brendon, you do not mistreat people. Because you know what? If that's the new chapter, you don't mistreat people or overreact to people. Guess what? Five chapters from now, my friend, you'll be proud of yourself. You'll be proud of yourself that you took the high road. You'll be proud of yourself that you demanded of yourself. And in the moment to be patient, to be patient, to be thoughtful or at least not be hooked. This is the new chapter for you, defining the new standards of who you are and how you will treat other people. I also set new standards for myself. I said, you know what? What are some new standards? I'm always going to for the rest of my life, study relationships. That's a new standard. I'm going to study relationships because I don't know anything about them. How did that relationship devolve so bad? I didn't even know what was going on. How did I not know how to communicate my feelings? I'm going to study personal development. From now on, I set new standards of learning about life so I could be free of so many of the simple pains of life. Just an idea. Maybe today is the day you forgive yourself. I get that you screwed up. I get that they screwed up. But that was the last chapter. Not this one. This one begins with setting the new standards for yourself. That's where it begins.

Okay, my friend, I hope you enjoyed this episode of the Brennan Show. Tell some people about this episode. It's on each of us to spread positivity and empowerment during these times of chaos and negativity.

Right?

So I'm asking you to be the dealer of hope and personal growth and education in your tribe. So take a screenshot right now and share the screenshot and this link to this episode with three of your friends today. Post it on social media. Use the hashtag growthday. That's growthday, because that's the name of my company and we're always giving away prizes to our community. If you'd like to help me personally, then please rate and review the podcast on Apple Podcasts. Give us some stars, cheer us on, Leave a review. Because believe it or not, that stuff actually really does help. And I read all of them. So my last thought for today, please remember you are stronger than you think and the future holds good things for you. Tomorrow can be an inspired day. Every new morning is a second chance. Every day is a great day to grow. We're thankful to have you here in the Growth Day community, so be sure to go deeper with us@growthday.com.