I'm Overwhelmed

Hey, y', all, it's me. And today we're going to talk about Overwhelm. That is a completely odd and crazy thing to say when I'm standing in front of a beach and it's a little windy out here. So I'm going to take you inside and talk about this all important topic, overwhelm, and how you can handle it better. Okay, my friends, I've got in front of me a list of five things you can do to better manage and deal with Overwhelm. And I think you're really going to love this session. And, you know, I know I'm sitting in front of a beach. This might seem like silly, but here's the real if you've been along the journey with Denise and I, Denise is my wife. If you've been watching us on Instagram Lives, you know that in this last month or so, you know, we moved our entire life down here to Puerto Rico from Portland, Oregon. You know, we manage a bunch of different brands and businesses. We have team all around and different brands and businesses all around in different states and countries. I mean, it has been an intense time to move down here. And, you know, we moved down right after the holidays. And when we got down here, you know, we didn't have anything. I didn't have this camera I'm shooting on right now or any of this lights around. It was bananas. We moved here and in 48 hours, we launched a brand new brand. We did Transformation Week. Then we had about 40 hours of rest. Then we launched another new thing. Denise had never been on camera, never been on Instagram Lives. We were trying to just maintain and manage and run everything. It was really, really difficult. And honestly, the number one thing that the community asks us on the Instagram lives, like, how are you guys doing this? You know, how do you move, run brands, do new launches, have teams? You know, seek to achieve your dreams when there's a lot of chaos and change. And so I hope that these five things will really serve you today and I'll share kind of our own journey and what we've been dealing with. And it's been hard, but I think this will help. Number one idea is identify the real deadlines you have in life, the real ones. Because most people are living their life or guiding their days based off of arbitrary deadlines or what I call preferential deadlines. That's kind of like, you know, if someone says to you, hey, I need that thing on Monday. If you just go, oh, okay. And you rush, rush, rush, rush to get on Monday, and they didn't even need it really. And if you really had a conversation with them and you said, hey, what's the real deadline? You need that on, like the time that if you don't get it on that date and time, you know, the world will burn down, your career will end, you'll have to fire me. Like the worst case scenario, what date is that? You know, we need to get clarity on that. That's the real deadline, that's the real date. And if you don't know the real dates, what you're always doing is scrambling to meet everyone's preference. What they want is that they want it tomorrow, but they don't need it tomorrow. Or the same thing. You might set a deadline for yourself and it's a preference when you'd love to have it, but it's not real as a deadline. I'll give you an example. Like, I was supposed to launch hpxlife.com and all our new planners and supplements and tools and blogs and membership stuff. I had been talking about it for like two or three weeks on Instagram and Facebook Live and we'd been building up towards it. It was supposed to go yesterday, but some gear didn't show up. Our podcast didn't go live on Apple. Like all these things happened. It just, it didn't happen. So I had to go live and apologize to everybody. And the truth was, it was a failure. It was a failure on my part to meet a deadline I said I would meet, but the world wasn't ending. It was a goal and a dream that I had that was my wife and I set, and that it didn't happen when we wanted it to happen. Nobody went to jail, nobody cried, nobody freaked out. In fact, when I went live, I told people, I'm really sorry I didn't make this deadline. Here's some things that happened. We are working to do these things. I took full accountability and responsibility. I said, this is what I'm working on. And people were super cool about it and cheering it on because everybody has been overwhelmed before. Everybody has had things not turn out. But here's the deal. If you're working each day without a clear and real deadline, then I promise you are scrambling with too much stress all the time. You want to know the real deadline for every single project. And when you know that the real deadline, the real goal, the real date, the real timeline, your mind almost finds a little bit of ease. Even if it's a lot, at least it knows the path forward. At least you know the obligations and the responsibilities. It's when we get all these things thrown on us without real deadlines or clear deadlines that we start freaking out. I know this is my career. My team could probably tell you the same thing. Not knowing the real deadlines creates a lot of chaos and a lot of unknowns. Number two, get perspective. You know, a lot of people, like, how are you guys dealing with this? I mean, isn't it stressful? I'm like, yeah, it is. And, you know, if you know my story, I mean, I wasn't always at a beautiful beach house. I mean, I was. When I started my career as a writer and a coach and an online trainer, I was living in this tiny apartment in San Francisco. All the money was going to my rent. I was literally. My bed was literally in the closet, and I was sleeping under the clothes hanging above me. I was going into bankruptcy. My girlfriend was having to buy me food. It was not an ideal situation, but even then, people were like, hey, you seem to have a positive attitude. How. And the thing that gives you positivity and the ability to deal with difficulties is perspective. And I had it in a couple different ways. One, I always had mentors. So I hope you get a mentor and you just share your stresses with them, because they'll help you kind of baseline the expectations and the challenges. If you don't have a mentor and you'd like to have one or you'd like me as one, click the link down below somewhere on this page or in this post, I'm sure you'll see it, and you can join my high performance mentoring program. But I had mentors. The second thing, though, that I always did that has helped my life so much is that I read and devour biographies. If you read the biography of Nelson Mandela or Martin Luther King or Churchill or the Roosevelts, they dealt with so many stressors, so many major difficulties and challenges. It's hard to really get overwhelmed by your day. Oh, you missed your Internet deadline, Brendan. Oh, you know what I mean? It's like when you have perspective. I have a lot of clients. I have clients who. Who have literally, like, lost limbs, lost jobs, are coming back from cancer, or, like, you know, just lost a family member, and they still are able to carry on. And they're so inspiring to me that when you see other people's inspiring story, it makes you go, wow. And you don't have to see them and go, oh, what a bunch of lucky bastards. What you should say is, wow. What is their mindset? What's their day like? How are they handling it? How do they delegate? How do they plan? How do they prioritize? And that's what I was always looking for. I always tried to find people who were more successful than me and ask how they did those things. How do you keep such a fresh and positive mind when everything's so crazy? How do you deal with confidence issues? How do you deal with insecurity? How do you deal with times you fail? How do you deal with times when it doesn't work out? I'm just always in that conversation with people around me to learn how they dealt with it. And that perspective strengthened my heart and my spirit. Number three, daily declarations. If you don't know my practice here, you know, you might. Some people it's their prayer, some people it's their meditation. One unique thing that I do is I find passages from books that I really like. Sometimes it's spiritual text, sometimes it's just something that really inspires me and I read it out loud. And then after I read it out loud, I give kind of declarations like self talk to myself. Almost like spiritual self talk. Like, I am grateful today for the positive attitude that I have that's going to allow me to approach my work with enthusiasm. Thank you God for an open, enthusiastic mind willing to serve today. I am excited about the things I get to do today because other people would dream of having my career and I get to do it. Thank you God for this opportunity to serve today. And I'll say these things over and over and over myself. It sounds silly and maybe like affirmational, but the reality is it gets my mind programmed to be thankful and to be in charge. Like I immediately by the morning, by speaking it out, I've taken control of my self talk for the day. So later on when overwhelmed self talk, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God comes in, I'm able to command and go, hey, Brendon, take a breath. Brody, it's not that big of a deal. Just figure out what's the next right action of integrity and take that step right now. You got this. By speaking to myself every morning in positive ways, I'm more able or more skilled to speak to myself when it really matters. That's your daily declaration. Some people pray to get in command of themselves or meditate and say things to themselves as a mantra. It's just learning to control your self talk in your mind so that when the time is important, you can really do it. Number four, tell everybody, everybody who's important to you in your Life, who you deal with on a consistent basis, what your dreams are and what you want of this life, and what are the major activities you are working on this week that might stress you out and when they happen, that's a lot. But listen, one of the reasons people get overwhelmed all the time is because the people around them keep stacking more onto their plate. But the reason they keep stacking more on your plate is because you've never told them, hey, this is what I'm working on. These are the times it's crazy for me. Please don't add anything during this hour, this day, this week, because I'm already at max capacity. I'm about to freak out and lose my mind. By sharing that in advance, people can know when they got to walk on eggshells around you a little bit, when they can be attentive to the needs and the stresses that you're dealing with. I think that's really important to realize. Some of, you know, I also, you know, am the high performance coach for some of the, literally the most accomplished people in the world. I had the blessing of working with a gold medalist athlete one time, and she hadn't been a gold medalist, and she'd never actually meddled before. So I asked her, like, how did you, like, what made the difference for you? And, you know, she'd been at some world championships, but she never won a gold and never won a medal in the Olympics. And she says, you know what the difference made for me, Brendan, was I started shouting my dreams from the rooftop. I started telling people I want to be a gold medalist. I said, well, how'd that help you? She said, well, when you shout your dreams from the rooftop, you know, a couple things will happen. One, you know, expect that some of the village idiots will come out and point at you and judge you. She says, that's gonna happen. But she says, the village leaders also come out, they hear you, they see you, and they're like, oh, young woman, you want to accomplish that? Do you know this coach? Oh, you want to accomplish that? Do you know this person? Let me open this door. Let me help you. That as you share ambitious dreams, ambitious, thoughtful, positive leaders in your community might hear that and might assist you. My friend, part of the overwhelm is that you feel like you got to do it yourself. But when you start speaking and sharing more with other people about what you're doing, people start raising their hand and say, hey, I know somebody. Can I help you? Can I serve you? Or at least they know what you're dealing with, and they're less likely to pile more onto you. So tell everybody, everybody around you anticipate that. People will judge you, people will put you down, people will doubt you, but their permission or their understanding is not required for your progress, my friend. Last one, Your daily morning preparation. This is key. Many of you guys know I created the High Performance Planner, and I'm insanely passionate about it because I needed a tool to manage my morning and my days and prioritize my life better. And so I created the High Performance Planner. But even if you don't have one, let me tell you the practice. I spend 20 minutes in the morning with my planner going through my day's schedule. And sometimes the schedule is on my calendar, my phone, and I write it down. Now, I write down the times and the meetings or the times of the things that I'm going to be doing something with. But what I do is I write it all down. I think about my priorities, I think about my task or my meetings or schedule for the day, and then I literally sit there and I visualize doing the day with excellence. I think, okay, I got that meeting. How can I do that meeting? Well, what would I have to prepare? What would I have to think about? What could I say in the meeting? Or I think about, like, this video right here. I was thought about literally this morning, hours ago. I thought, how can I do that? That well? Well, I have to manage my food, manage my workout. I'll have to set everything up early, and I'll just have to go up there and practice a couple times because I don't know how to use this camera. I don't know how to use the lights. The sun's gonna be set. I don't know what the heck's gonna be happening. And so I just. I sealed myself for it. I thought through it. I literally spend 20 minutes a day just thinking about the day to come. I don't know very many people who do that. I also don't know many people who've been blessed to serve as many people or to achieve as many dreams as I got to at a young age, because I've been doing this forever. I'm not here to brag about it. I'm here to say it's just a differentiator for me. And I think it's really key. We all know we should visualize. We all know we should think through things and be thoughtful. But very few people are. Most people are just going through the motions and bumbling into one meeting, into another, another. But by taking just 20 minutes in the day to daily prepare for the day, I feel thought through it and what that happens is it prepares your mind for the day. So even when the chaos, the randomness happens or strikes of the day, you can kind of recalibrate, reprioritize and still get the day done with excellence because you know what's on your plate. The worst thing is when you're going through the day and more just keeps getting piling on of you and you don't even know it has to happen at three or four or five or six o' clock at night. So it's just like everything's a surprise and as everything is a surprise, everything's uncertain. As everything's uncertain overwhelm. So really thinking through your day in advance will serve you. I hope that this conversation is serving you guys here and it's just on my heart right now obviously because you know, it's been an overwhelming journey for Denise and I. I mean it's been incredibly easy to get caught up in distress and overwhelmed as we're trying to start hpx. If you haven't been along the journey with us on Instagram or Facebook Live, please just follow me. Brendon Burchard on Instagram and on Facebook it's Brendon burchardfan. So Brendon Burchard fan on Facebook. Five million in that community, Brendon Burchard on Instagram and I go live and Denise has been going live with me and we've just been talking about this journey as we're struggling to figure out how to launched this new brand that we call hpx. HPX stands for the High performance experience. Because our thesis, our belief is that everybody wants to live their best life. Everyone wants to be a higher performing at whatever they do, a better performing mom, a better performing business person, a better performing contributor team member. We all want the high performance experience and we believe that that comes from learning to be more vibrant in life, managing your mind and your body so you have the energy to do what you need to do. Being more connected, connected with yourself, present and mindful, connected with other people by understanding how to influence and lead and serve and ultimately being more excellent at what we do, developing skill, delivering our service with real excellence, being attentive to detail and being world class in what we do. That's what we call HPXI Volunteers Experience. And obviously as you can see by this video, you know, we're starting from scratch. You know I'm using a brand new camera here today, so I apologize if it doesn't look and feel like our normal videos, I couldn't even figure out how to get the sound thing going or this other light over here. Figure it out. I mean, there's a lot of moving pieces. As you know, I run four other major brands and businesses that I either run or invest in that take a tremendous amount of my time. And we're starting HPX down here. If you want to follow along on the journey too, you can go to hpxlife.com hpxlife.com that's the deadline I missed yesterday. I was telling you about where we were excited to launch the blog and the podcast and the new services and the supplements and the products and the planners and the tools. We're all supposed to go live. It didn't happen. And when I went live, I shared how disappointed I was in myself missing that deadline. But there's a difference between recognizing a fail. It was a fail because I said I was going to do it, but I don't recognize myself as a fail. I was disappointed I didn't hit it, but I'm not discouraged. We are still working mindfully every day to make it happen for you guys. And I shared that because my last point on Overwhelm is sometimes when you have a positive community there that's cheering you on, it makes all the difference the world. I can't extend enough gratitude and thanks to you guys, you've been incredibly patient and positive as Denise and I are going to launch this new brand, HPEX Life. And you know, you've welcomed her to the community. You've cheered me on. You guys have been there on our lives and just been so supportive. And honestly, amid all the chaos of moving and starting new brands and trying to find a house, moving into one, moving out of another, still don't have my office. Still just trying to figure out how I'm going to do my career down here. You guys, your support made all the difference and made it less stressful. So I hope that you will really take to heart what I shared. Tell people what you're working on. It will make such a difference. And if you can, along the way, build a tribe of people who got your back, who believe in you because that support can take away some of that stress and that overwhelm in ways that you cannot fathom, Surround yourself with positive, amazing people who, like you and I, are in this, what we call the HPX community, people who are trying to live the high performance experience. So if you'd like to participate in this some way again, go to hpxlife.com, give us your name and email. We'll send you the newsletter once it's all up. Other than that, just deep gratitude. Thank you for being here. If Denise was here today, she'd end like she often ends our lives. And we're doing our HBX show on my Instagram. And she always share. She often says, you know, each day you get to choose. And you can choose to be average or you can choose to become extraordinary. So, my friends, deal with your overwhelm a little better and go be extraordinary. Sam.