9 Feb 2021 · 27 min
In this episode of The Brendon Show, Brendon Burchard frames courage as a habit that emerges when you set an ambition to be among the world’s best in any role—parent, partner, speaker, or trainer. He contrasts a survival mindset (staying in the comfort zone) with a thriving mindset that forces new questions, learning, and higher standards. Burchard shares personal anecdotes about his evolution from a terrified public speaker to a top‑paid keynote presenter, and about his friends Dean Graziosi and Ethan Willis as examples of intentional parenting. He emphasizes the power of intentional conversation: steering dialogue toward positive, brave stories, and creating a culture of “skyscraper” conversations rather than “street‑sweeper” complaints. Practical tools include self‑talk triggers—alarm reminders, a door‑frame affirmation (“I’m a happy man ready to serve”), and a water‑trigger (“calm flow”)—designed to keep focus, calm, and service‑orientation. He also promotes proximity to fear (repeated exposure to feared activities) as a method to diminish anxiety, and frames anxiety as a resource that can be channeled into mission rather than allowed to dominate. A brief promotional segment mentions his HPX Wellness nootropic supplement line. The episode closes with a call to share the episode, join the GrowthDay community, and adopt daily second‑chance optimism.
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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, an 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.
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Now let's begin. How do you live a more courageous life? You seek to be the world's best best or one of the world's best. Here's what happens. Most people go, I'd sure like to survive doing this because they have that old story that was like, God, I need to belong, I need to survive. I need to be okay. And so what they do is they always play their comfort zone because they're only trying to survive. If you're only trying to survive, you won't ever thrive. Why would you even try? So you just survive, survive, survive, survive, survive. Get through, get through, get through, get through, get through. But with a new ambition to become one of the world's best. It forces you to think differently. It forces you to act differently. It forces you to research differently. Isn't it true? I mean, Think about it. If you're a mom, if you're a mom, it is very easy to go, I am just trying to survive, Brendan. That's all I want to do is survive. I want to survive and make sure my kid survives. That's the most simple and basic and elemental human thing in the world. And if all you try to do is get through the day without hurting yourself or your child, okay, that's one level of an approach to the day. And there's another approach that says, I want to be one of the best moms ever. I want to give my daughter a life that she didn't get to have, that I didn't get to have. I want to do something for my children that previous generations didn't get to for their children. I want to be one of the best moms in the world. So how would I do that? I guess I better have to learn more. I guess I'd have to read some books, talk to some other moms, figure out how they're doing it, change how I approach the child when they're screaming, ranting, raving, conflicting, challenging me. I'd have to learn new communication skills. I would have to learn new parenting skills. I would have to challenge myself to be more present with these children when they are freaking out. Like, you would set different goals from the mindset of I'm going to be one of the best at this than if you would set goals of I need to survive this. Right? You look at the world and you approach circumstances different. If you're going to I want to do this, great, isn't it true? As soon as you think about that, how would I do this as one of the world's best, doesn't it change the way you view and look at everything? Like everything. You literally adjust and change everything. If you're going to be an online trainer like me, I was like, I'm going to be one of the world's best online trainers. Okay, well then how would I light this room? What gear would I use? What people would I need? How would I set it up? What would I make it look like? What would the teaching and training like? You start asking different questions and just like, oh, I guess I got that live cast today. You got it. It changes everything. I would love for you to go, I'm going to be one of the world's best parents, one of my partners. Many of you guys know I work with Dean Graziosi and he and I co own with ethanwillis growth.com awesome dudes. And they're both literally the best parents I've seen my entire life. Like, it's like, in awe. And I'm always like, how are you such good parents? Ethan's got seven children. Seven. Okay. And they're all alive still. Seven kids that he somehow made. Like. And they're good kids. You're like, how are these kids? All, like, amazing? And Dean, like, how did you raise these two kids? So. And they're never like, well, I was just a good dad. They're like, well, I decided I want to become a phenomenal father for them. So I read books, I took classes, I asked the questions. I met every father. I'm like, how are you surviving? But how are you doing it? Good. You're doing it good. What do you do good? What's your tick? What do you do? And they just share strategies for raising the kids. And they're always sharing strategies to do it better. Always sharing strategies to do it better. Cause when you come from a mindset of, I'm great, you're always looking for the greatness. You're always looking for the clues. You're always like, there's gotta be a better way. There's gotta be a better way. And you're not saying, like, there's gotta be a better way. You're excited, you're enthusiastic when you know there's a better way. You're not getting down on yourself because the identity is, I'm going to become great at this. The behaviors might not have been good. So instead you're going, okay, there's got to be a better way. And you're enthusiastic and curious for what those better ways could be make sense. Like, you really look at everything completely different when you seek to be one of the world's best. I wanted to be one of the world's best public speakers on stage. And I don't know whether you see me on stage or not. I give my all out there. I can't say my ranking in the world, but I know what my ranking is in pay. I'm in the highest paid speakers on the planet. And I'm really proud of that because I sucked at public speaking at a level of suckness that most people couldn't even dream of for themselves. Like, if you think you suck at public speaking, try throwing up every time you try it. If you suck at public speaking, try freezing in front of an audience. If you suck at public speaking, try imagining, literally, like, having a panic attack. Like, try being so bad that you know you're bad and you know you're badder and badderer than anybody else on the planet. I don't mean bad like Michael Jackson, cool bad. I mean bad. I was so bad. And so now how do you go from so bad to. I think I'm in the top five highest compensated speakers on the planet today. How? How? Gosh. Having the mindset go, I'm going to become one of the world's greatest. That's going to be my intention. I'm not now, but as soon as I say I'm going to. Soon as you say I'm going to become that, you start looking for clues. You start getting your coaches, you start getting your training, you start approaching things with more intentional. I know you get all this, but I am begging you in your life, in your relationships, in your career, go. I'm going to kill one of the best. And it's hard, right, because it's so easy to take things casually, right? Think about your marriage, your spouse, your significant other. It's easy just to be in a relationship and to hope that the two of you are happy. Or you go, we're going to have a storied, legendary love affair. Like, when we look back at our life, we're gonna think of all these incredible things we did together, experienced together, felt together. Like, we're gonna write that storybook ending. Cause no one ends up at a storybook ending. You write that book, you write that storybook ending. You live and you work for it and you architect it and you struggle for it. It's not easy. You know, I would love to be one of the world's greatest husbands. And I know I kind of suck, but I'm always on the lookout. How can I do something better? Like, okay, not just, like, if someone says, okay, go have a date night, I'm like, okay, no. How would the world's greatest couple have a date night? Like, what would they do? And I don't mean like, what, okay, let's fly to Paris on helicopters. So we've done that. Super awesome. I would say instead, like, okay, what could we do on a regular night down the block in that time together to make that amazing? It just. I'm telling you, it will change everything. It will change everything for you when you start saying, I'm gonna be world's greatest. Even if. Please listen. Even if it's really out of reach. Because in everywhere that I said I was gonna become one of the world's greatest. And I'll leave it to you and the world to judge me where I landed in that. All I can say is I was not qualified, I was not good, I.
Was a hot mess.
But that intention saved my life, guys. The intention alone makes you a more courageous person because you start looking for new ways. And as you look for new ways, you start changing. And guess what happens as you start changing and and you start leveling up your standards. Guess what happens as you start changing and you level up your standards? You get more comfortable with change and your standards go up. As you're more comfortable with change and your standards go up, you make more courageous decisions automatically. It's just now part of you. It's who you are. Change doesn't freak you out. So courage is more common day. When you're not fearful of change, courage just shows up more. You got it? That's why you had that intention. Ask for people's brave stories. One reason we have a culture that's less courageous is because no one talks about the brave things that people do. One reason you're not more inspired each day is because people stand around the water cooler and they complain instead of talking about the heroic, everyday courageous things that are happening in in their lives. And the reason people don't talk about that is because they feel like they're bragging. So they shut down and they stop celebrating their successes. Your job, if you want to be a more successful, courageous, high performing person, is to ask more people about their successes, about their courage and about their high performance habits. Be like, hey, you're awesome. What do you do to be awesome? Hey, you had a lot of success. What did you do? Hey, you seem like you're on a roll. What's working for you right now? You need to create. Like if you followed me around and heard my discussions with people in my everyday life, you'd be like, holy crap. He's talking about the good stuff and the success and the breakthroughs and the bravery and the good jobs. All day. I'm like a sponge collecting all that goodness. Everyone's good ideas, everyone's good strategies, what's working for them and their breakthroughs that they're having. And everywhere there's breakthrough, there's bravery. Everywhere there's success, there's courage. And you just start collecting them. Because listen, if you live, think about it. It's like if you live on a winning team in sports, that team has a different rhythm, the different way of looking at competition. They know they're going to beat the competition. They know they're going to win the game. If you're on a losing team, you're always talking about how you lose. What went wrong? Lost, lost, lost, lost, lost. And it's a different vibe, isn't it? It's two different vibes. One's talking about the rhythm and how we got the hot hands right now, and the other one is bemoaning it, complaining, blaming and pointing. And they get different results. You have to know that you are the coach on your team and you have to know that you got a team. And every conversation you're in is either adding to the likeliness of your growth or stealing from your greatness. And you're the director of those conversations. And what we want to do is be victim to conversation. No, no, no.
People talk around me.
They're all negative. Okay, show me the 50 times you steered it towards a great conversation. Well, everyone around me sucks. Yeah, show me the number of interventions you've had to say, hey, what are you doing that's working? Hey, I know it's a tough day. What's the things you've done to cope recently? Hey, I know it's negative around here. What's three things we could do to be better? Like how many times did you fight the tide of negativity versus let it kick your ass? That's the question I have to ask as your high performance coach. Because a lot of people, they just let it take them down over and over and over and over again and they don't got the guts, the courage that's necessary to steer the conversation towards positive. Like part of being courageous is changing the culture. Part of being courageous is changing the conversation. Part of from hate to love, of negativity to positivity, of bemoaning it to honoring it, of being in conflict to being in peace. Like you've got to architect the life you want through the words you use and the words you pull from other people. Like I'm around as equally number of negative people as you and as any other person in the world. Trust me, I'm in personal development. Oh, God help me. Instead, what I do though is I steer the conversation. I need you to steer more conversations. I need you to ask more questions. I need to create. You need to create the conversations of courage. Because the more you hear those brave stories of great people, whether that's you need to read more biographies or ask people around you, the more you hear of bravery and courage, the more it sinks into your subconscious just as much as the bad things in the past. Right? We always forget that we all think that our subconscious is always acting out and it's negative towards us. It's like, no, it's profoundly biased towards good things in our life. It wants to see us survive and thrive. The only reason for the existence of the human species was not just for survival. It's because we wanted to thrive. Otherwise we'd always be still living under, like plants. But we decided to build skyscrapers. We didn't need a. No one needed, like, listen, Darwin could not explain a skyscraper. Like, the ambitions that the human beings have is beyond just multiplying. It's to thrive, to build, to create, to do extraordinary things. And our conversations need to be. Are you having skyscraper conversations all the day or street sweeper conversations? Hot dang. There, we said it.
Hey, it's Brendan and I want to jump in the middle of this episode here real quick and, 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, Brendan, 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. I don't know about you, but sometimes when you're trying to achieve big things, a lot of stress comes along. And as you're trying to achieve bigger things, you need to be on your A game more often. You need to be mentally sharp, you need to be mentally prepared. You need to be mentally energized and productive. And not once in a while, but like every day, you have to be on. And sometimes guzzling more coffee isn't going to do it.
You have to use what we call.
Nootropics, which are, you know, basically supplements that help optimize your brain. And yes, we have a product for exactly that. It's called HPEX Optimized and it is our most popular product. And you can get it. It's back in stock@hpxwellness.com that's hpxwellness.com you'll find HPX Optimize for your mental focus and energy there. You'll also find my favorite powdered energy drink that we created that's 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.
You need to set some self talk triggers. Self talk triggers? What does that mean? Well, you need things that create your mindset to happen throughout the day. Now, many of you guys know I have a couple of them, right? I hope by now, you know, like my alarm triggers. My alarm triggers are three times throughout the day. Inspiring words telling me to be my best, boldest, courageous, ass kicking self. Pops up on my phone three times a day. Pops up, right? And that reminds me not to be the go through the motions, Brendon. It interrupts my day to be a good Brendan. You guys know when I walk through a door, every door I walk through, I always say the same thing. Enter a room, I say the same thing. Walk through door. Brain says, hey, you're entering this room a happy man ready to serve. I think courage really shows up in moments of service, doesn't it? That's why we admire the person who jumps in the river to save the child being swept away. That is someone doing something for another person in an extreme situation. Well, today the extreme situations that we face are judgment and cynicism and hatred. And sometimes we have to remind ourselves to be our best and to be of service in the moments that we have the opportunity to be service in. So a door frame trigger. I walk in the door, okay, I'm a happy man ready for serve, ready to serve. And that statement over and over and over again. I entered this room as a happy man ready to serve reminds me I'm happy, I'm lucky, I'm blessed to be here. And it reminds me, hey, focus on other people. Because every time I focus on myself, I'm much less likely to be courageous for myself. When I started my career, I struggled for a long time because I made it about me. I was worried about myself when I noticed that my wife was suffering or my girlfriend at the time who became my wife when I noticed she was suffering because of my own inaction, I became more bold because I need to do something for her. And we'll do a lot more for other people sometimes than we'll do for ourselves. So that's why I remind myself the door trigger is I'm entering this room a happy man, ready to serve. And that service mindset is a trigger for me to be there for others. And when you're there for others over and over and over and over again, you'll start being more courageous. The third one, I have another self talk trigger. I guess I never taught really until the other day. Everyone was asking me for a big long list and I was like, oh, I do all these other triggers to spur this positive thinking. One of them is my water trigger. Every time I take a drink of water when I'm on stage or when I'm here. When I take a drink of water, I remind myself, calm flow, calm flow. I basically direct myself to flow in the moment, be present in the moment and to be calm. Because I think it's really hard to be courageous when you're frazzled all the time. You know what I mean? It looks good in movies, right? You like watch like, oh my God, watch Die Hard. Bruce Willis is frazzled the entire time and he's still absolutely amazing and amazing, right? It's like we watch movies and the characters, if they're frazzled all the time, it creates a great movie. But the best moments, even in Die Hard, and yes, I'm sorry, I'm quoting Die Hard, but even in that movie is when Bruce Willis has thought through things and he's got the upper hand and he's calm when everyone else is freaking out. Real heroism tends to be calm amid the storm. So you got to set some self talk triggers to calm. You're crazy stressed out, burnt out, overworked over, expecting, butt down. And I say this to all my friends because you're my high performers. Is it true? Like you gotta calm yourself down. And I think courage happens much more often in calmness than frenetic energy, right? It's like taking a bold action, being judicious and thoughtful, being intentional. It's hard to be intentional when you're frazzled all the time. So my self talk trigger is just one of calm. Water's easy, puts me right back into place, right? Calm it down, be present. Brendan. And so we all gotta have our own thing. I don't know what yours are, but there's things you can do to set a more positive mindset. We call them self talk triggers or high performance triggers. Things that happen that put you in better performance. When that trigger happens, drink water, say this to myself, Walk through the door, say this to myself, do this thing, say this to myself. That stimulus response that I've set up conscientiously is much better than the stimulus response of just reacting to everything. Get in proximity to your fears. One reason it's easy not to be courageous is because fear is over there. I'm not going to go near it. But listen, avoidance is not going to help you overcome a fear. Proximity helps you overcome fear. What does that mean? It means you gotta get in location near your fears consistently, like you're scared of public speaking. That means get on stage consistently. Get there, get in the fear, be with the fear, do the Thing over and over and over, and you're not scared of it anymore. It's like you're scared of riding a bike until you ride it, ride it, ride it, ride it. Now you're cruising. Same thing in every area of your life. You got a big dream. Get near it, be near it. Set your schedule to be near it. Live it, eat it, breathe it. I started going to seminars, starting it on small stages, small stages, small stages, small groups, small group, small groups. And just did it over and over and over. Because repetition knocks out those fears. Because guess what? You're not as fearful with those things that are familiar. Right? The first time you go through the haunted house, you're mortified. But if you got five kids, you take one kid through that haunted house, you jump. The first time, maybe the second time, the fifth time, you take that kid through the haunted house, you got it down, you know where the jumping out, you're not scared anymore. The thing that was getting a rise out of you the first time, the fifth time, you're like, are we done yet? Right. Familiarity often diminishes fear. So you gotta put yourself in motion, get near your fears, and this presupposes you're gonna do the work. And, like, what are your fears? Like, what are you really scared of? Most people just go, well, I'm fearful. And their identity is fearful, but they don't even know what they're scared of. Like, if you wanted that next big breakthrough in your life, what fears? Like, what do you. Are not. Like, what fears do you have in your life? Like, okay, breakthrough. What are steps required here? Which step are you scared of? Whichever step you're scared of, learn more about and do that step. Get in it, and you'll start to see. Oh, over and over. I'm not so scared, right? Because with competence comes confidence. With confidence, you can face those fears. I don't think the fear, the anxiety, the worry ever goes away for any human being. Doesn't for me. I still worry backstage about doing a good job. I still have fear that something I do is going to break when we do it. I still have a lot of anxiety at very high performance times backstage before I go out to 20,000 people in Arena. Yes, there's not just fear there. There's real anxiety there. But also, you just choose which one gets to win today. What's going to win today is my anxiety back here, Is the anxiety I'm having backstage. Is this going to win today? Or is my message and my mission gonna win on that stage today? Which One wins. They're both gonna be there. The odds are equal for both. Which one am I gonna let win? Will the anxiety win or will a mission win? And whichever one's gonna win, the other opponent doesn't have to go away. It has to be utilized. Like, if you're an NFL coach and you're facing a great opponent, you don't go out and run your own game and hope to win the thing. You. You go, I gotta react. I'm just gonna use their weaknesses against them in my situation. I'm gonna use my anxiety against itself. I'm gonna use my anxiety and channel that energy to serve my mission. I'm not gonna let my mission serve the anxiety. The anxiety is gonna serve the mission. Right? That only happens after you get in proximity to these things over and over and over again with familiarity.
Okay, my friend, I hope you enjoyed.
This episode of the Brendon 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.
It.