Mastering Change: My 4 Biggest Transformations

Welcome to the Charged Life. This is Brendan Burchard. Listen to your intuition that's saying, I'm ready for change, for the next level of expression and growth and vitality and love. Just start acting your most intentional loving self. Trust. All will be well from there. Those are two quotes from my Facebook page this week, and I thought they'd be appropriate to kick off this last session in this series we've been doing on how to master change. I want to give a big clap, a big shout out, a big hug to all of those who listened to our last couple episodes where I've been focusing on this question of how do you do better at change? And I hope that you enjoyed those episodes. If you didn't, do me a favor, make sure you go back and download those ones. Those were all really great. And to end the session and this special series that we've been doing, I thought I would share a question, the answer to a question that somebody submitted about the podcast, which was, Brendan, you know you've been talking about mastering change. What are the biggest changes you've made in your life? You know, I haven't really been making these sessions necessarily about me. They've been really about you all and about some strategies and ideas to help you change. But I thought I'd share that today. So here we go. There's been four big changes in my life. I'm not sure that they're the most significant or the most powerful powerful, but I thought they'd at least give some good instruction in a variety of ways and areas of life, from health to family to making a difference to finances. And I thought that maybe these would be relevant to one part of your life. So this is a good one to, you know, turn up the volume, get in a room by yourself, throw those earbuds in, or go out for a walk and just give some time to hear a good conversation about life where there might be some takeaways that could truly change your life as they did mine. I would attribute so much of my wealth today, not just my financial wealth, but my physical wealth, my mental wealth, my joy and abundance in my family, in my relationships, in my contributions to the world. Yes, my finances too. But my. My overall sense of well being, abundance, joy in life came so much from these four experiences. And I thought I'd share them with you. And I thought it'd be a good way to end this, too. So far in these sessions, we've been discussing some inspirations from my book, Life's Golden Ticket. I hope you picked it up by now and got all those bonuses. I'm giving a free course and a free webinar and a free video on the whole book writing process. When you go to lifesgolden ticket.com and grab the book from that site lifesgoldenticket.com but I want to go beyond the book and end this special series with these four stories experiences. The first one you all most likely know, but I'd like to give some new takeaways from it. If you've been following me for a long time, you know about my car accident. When I was a 19 year old kid, I had a car accident that truly inspired my greatest change in life. Up to that point, I was a very depressed and sad young man having come out of the breakup with the first woman I ever loved. We thought we were going to get married and had gone to college together and you know, shared a U haul over to school. I went to the same school as she did, basically following her and you know, ended up. That relationship didn't last and by the end of that year she had sort of, well, broken my heart. She cheated on me. I fell apart completely. Sometimes when your relationships fall apart that you have your identity tied to you fall apart. And by the end of the year I was depressive. And then I had the opportunity to go and work in the Dominican Republic with a friend and I went down there and we were in an accident. He was driving and it was just one of those magical, blessed experiences. Not many people would say that about their car accident, by the way, because yes, it caused pain, yes, it caused a lot of that fear of mortality. But that for me As a young 19 year old man was the turning point. We'd rounded a corner going 85 miles an hour. And in those next few minutes and moments I discovered what I call now life's last three questions. And I'm not gonna go on a big story about the accident because lots of you all heard it before. But essentially I learned at the end of our life, we ask questions to evaluate whether or not we're happy with the life we lived. We tend to ask questions like these. These were my questions as well. Which is number one is did I live? When you're crashing into death's doorway, you want to know did I live? Did I live my life fully and vibrantly, authentically, cheerfully, joyfully? Was I really alive, present here? Hear could I feel it and sense it? Feel life? You want to know? It's so bad that every part of you has a sense of regret. If you don't feel like you really lived, it's not about what just you did, it's also about what you didn't do. You have the sense of you want that aliveness in your life and of course you want that now too. At the end, though, it's a little more severe of a feeling. You also ask, did I love? Did I love openly and honestly, completely. And as you can imagine, my answer to that question was a no. I hadn't been living my life through my heart. I hadn't loved. I hadn't really felt any emotional range of life in any way related to compassion, caring, kindness, love. Because I was broken. I was sad and depressed. And then the last question I asked if you've read this story in the Charge or in my other works. I stood on the crumpled hood of a car, bleeding after having crawled through the windshield of the car. And I looked down at my bloodied body and there was blood oozing all over the hood of the car from my feet and legs. And that I had my mortality moment there, looking down, realizing that life could go away. And I just thought, did I even matter? Did I even make a difference? Was there a purpose to it all? I didn't like that question either, the answer to that question, because, you know, I was a 19 year old kid. I hadn't really looked outside of myself, hadn't thought about these terms we all throw around so easily today of making a difference and meaning and living a significant, contributing life. I remember watching the blood go off the hood of the car and seeing this glint, the spark, something in the blood that made me look up, this reflection. And I saw this bright, big, beautiful moon in the sky that night, kind of big blue moon. It's so big, you wonder why it's so big. And the blueness of it just emanating in the darkness of the sky. And if I felt this fear and the sadness, you know, of these questions, of this experience of evaluating life, even in these short moments, I don't know, when I looked up, I felt something different. If this fear had shot down earlier, this faith came up and it felt like this connection, like I was still here and I was grateful for it and I knew it would be okay. And I remember I felt like I got what I call life's golden ticket, like my second chance. It was like the big guy reached down and said, here you go, kid, you're still alive, you can still love, you can still make a difference. But now, you know, the clock is ticking. And I remember getting that feeling, that sense that I was okay, I was alive, I could be grateful for this beautiful moment, even amidst this chaos and this crash and this hurt and this pain and this blood. And I felt like at that moment, I really was gifted with something. You know, I call it now that life's golden ticket, a second chance, redemption, moments to begin again. Because that's how I felt. Like I thought, I'm alive. I will earn this. I will earn this opportunity to be alive and to care and to give and to live and make a difference now, because I wasn't doing it before. And I don't pretend that it was an easy experience from there. I think I passed out at some point under the hood of the car. And luckily, my friend and I, we both survived cuts and bruises and broken things, but we were okay. And ultimately, you know, I've shared that story all around the world, and usually a lot more drama and depth than that. If I was on stage telling you the story, but just here sharing the story into my microphone in a room by myself, I just, you know, kind of reflective about it, because you all asked, what are your big changes? And as I've shared that around the world, you know, lots of people come to me saying, but, Brendan, I had more injury than you. My accident was more dramatic, or, you know, I lost somebody, or, you know, extreme circumstances were like this or that, and it didn't. It didn't change my life, they say. And I say, well, I get that. You know, lots of people can have the same experience. One person changes from it dramatically, and the other person doesn't. So why, for me, it comes down to the power of intention. You know, I left that incident and I looked back at it and I said, you know what? That's the defining moment for me because I don't want to be in pain anymore. I don't want to be in depression anymore. I don't want to be the same person I was before. It was a demarcation line in my life, not because of. It was an accident, because I chose it to be. Look, the demarcation line, if you think about it, the demarcation line could have been when she cheated on me and broke up with me, but I didn't get it. I just fell into depression. Demarcation line could have been going to a new country to work. That could have been the new beginning, but it didn't. It was that moment on the hood of the car. Why that moment? I don't know. Maybe it was divine. But no matter how you would Define it. That was the one I defined as things must change now. And I have the deep intention to be a better person for me, as many of you know, I mean from our 4.4 million fans now and followers on Facebook, on my page alone, not even our company websites, just Brendon Burchard Facebook page, the tagline live love matters. That was my intention. I left what psychologists call a critical incident, a moment that switches and change things. What I call my turning point. And that turning point became an intention for me. I just said next time I face life's last questions, I want to be happy with my answers. You know, I want to get to the end and say, yeah, I really live, man. I did my life. Not my professor's life, my parents life, my peers lives, my friends lives, my girlfriend's life, my life. And I loved every single day. I brought heart and passion and emotion to everything I touched and felt. And I made a difference because I thought beyond myself to serve. And so my number one change in my life ultimately came from a car accident. And the change was intention. I set a new intention. I was going to be an alive, vibrant, loving, service driven man. And now for 20 years, every single night that I go to bed, I say, did I live today? Did I love today? Did I matter today? Because you can have the intention, but if you don't measure it every day and ask if you're sticking to the intention, then it's just all hopes and dreams and stardust. The second thing I got from the car accident was a decision to be more confident. The number one is I got the power of intention just given to me, blessed or whatever. But see, I went back to college that later, that next fall. And when I got there, I really thought I want to be different. And I recognize one of the reasons I got hurt in that relationship is because I didn't have my own identity. My confidence was at a whim of other people. Am I loved, they support me, they believe in me. And I didn't have an internal strength of confidence. And I thought, you know what, I want to have that. And I thought about the time that after the relationship ended, I just couldn't even barely talk to girls. I was so hurt. And I was in that relationship way sort of shy. I mean I was, I was outgoing kid, believe me, don't worry about that. But I was, I wasn't confident, you know what I mean? You can be someone who talks and has a good conversation, doesn't mean you're necessarily confident. And I wanted that kind of confidence that just made me at peace and strong with inside, internally, no matter where I was at networking event, sure. Talking to a new girl. Absolutely. Hanging out with the guys to express my thoughts and my true beliefs and feelings about something. And yes, standing in front of an audience, yes, I wanted that kind of confidence. The kind of confidence didn't change from situation to situation, but it was in me, it was part of me. And so I started reading books. It got me into personal development. I started, you know, reading the greats, Wayne Dyer, you know, I started studying Earl Nightingale and Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie. I mean, I was going back. I was with reading OG Mandino. You know, I was studying Tony Robbins CDs, John Gray, David Box, you know, Susie Orman's. I was consuming Marianne Williamson and Debbie Ford. And I mean, it was just, if I could get my hand on it. I was reading stuff from more of the Yogi style, a lot of Eastern philosophy. I studied deeply into Taoism and Buddhism and even the origin of Christian faith. I was doing anything I could just to understand myself and my world. But it was all with a goal to become more confident. Sometimes we have to say what emotion do? What emotion or strength do I not have that I would need to live into the next best part of my life. And for me, I didn't have real confidence. So I started developing that. And it wasn't just breeding. I forced myself to talk to people. If I sat down at a table, I said, I'm going to talk with these people. So I became the storyteller. Even though I was a little weird about it, I would just start telling stories and telling stories and having a good time. If I saw a girl and I was single and I was attracted to her, I made myself on the spot, walk up to her without even thinking, with nothing to say. I thought, you know what? I will arrive and something will come out of my mouth. Most of the times, not nothing came out. Then after that, stupid things came out of my mouth and I felt embarrassed and silly and dumb for, I mean, most of college. But I tried. I put myself out there and ultimately became much more confident. The third thing I got from my car accident out of intention and confidence was the desire to be a leader, a person of influence. Because I thought about all these people who are influencing my life, you know, was blessed. As many of you know, my stories of my. Where I grew up to have grown up very, you know, struggling family of us four kids and, you know, just trying to. Mom and dad trying to make it but, you know, I had all these people. I was reading these books and studying, and I just saw all these great. One of my things in studying confidence was I read all these histories of the presidents of the United States and world leaders and, you know, was studying back then everything I could on Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela and just the greats. I mean, everything I could on fdr. And I just really got into studying biographies. And I thought, you know what? Every single one of these people ultimately asked the same question I did at the end. Did I matter? Did I make a difference? Did I bring purpose? But part of their purpose was in service. They really thought about a legacy. They thought about leading other people not just as far as having a destination for people, but having that intention to help people become their best. Because here I was, this kid trying to become my best, and I saw all these people helping me do that, and I wanted to be like them. And I would say that was the first big change. It was sort of thrust upon my life. An accident, didn't ask for it. Lots of people had one different. But what I took out of was the intention to live love, matter, the desire to be a more confident person on my own, and the hope, the dream that I could lead and influence people one day. So what incident has happened in your life that you did not want, but you could draw strength from if you chose to? Not that you did choose it, but you could. I love to ask people that. What incident did you have in your life that you did not want to happen, but it changed your life? And what lessons could you draw from it as far as a strength? What could you do now, thinking back to that same thing that maybe you didn't want, maybe you've cast it into the darkness and thought it was always a bad thing, never to see the light of day again. And I say, hey, you know what? It's not about revisiting all the negativity or the horrible or the traumatic or the difficult moments of our past and have to rehash everything. But it's to say, hey, you know what? Use those as tools. Instruction points to say, you know what? Those things now have set an intention for me to be a specific type of person today. And I've always found that specific type of person for all folks who experience dramatic change is they become more intentional, loving, and willing to make a difference. About 15 years later, after the car accident, I had another injury in another country. Apparently people should revoke my passport. And I was down in Mexico with some friends and we were riding ATVs, four wheelers, and we'd been riding safe pretty much all day, nothing really crazy or technical. And we could all ride four wheelers. We all had experience on it. And at the end of the day, I was having a moment riding down the beach, fourth gear, 38 miles an hour. And I just kind of looked over to the ocean and took my eyes off the sand for a moment because it was flat and everything was going good. And I just happened to hit, you know, a little pillow sand that, you know, gosh, it was so flat I didn't see it. And that little pillow of sand wasn't very big, but it picked up the bike just enough in the way. Picked up the four wheeler just in the way, landed on front left tire, boom, went over and I hit the ground and I started rolling. And I remember all the sound of the gravel and the sand and the dirt hitting my helmet and my head bouncing off the ground. And I just remember the sound next to me, this boom, boom, boom. And the ATV was bouncing alongside me as I was rolling. And I remember thinking, God, please don't let that land on me because, you know, 600, 700 pound four wheeler landing on you, it would snap me and break my back or my neck and be paralyzed. Well, I got knocked out. When I came to, I could hear sort of ATVs in the distance. I passed out again. Came to, my friends were standing above me, passed out again. Then they're kind of like the medic who was traveling with us. Which by the way, if you're traveling with a medic, you probably know you're doing the wrong thing. So the person's like, this medic is feeling up and down. You don't have any broken bones here or there or whatever. And does this feel. Do you feel like I was in shock. I didn't feel anything. My friends ultimately helped me sit up. I ultimately got on a four wheeler and thought I could just go along with them. And then I went to raise my hand to put the bike into gear and I realized my wrist was all cocked to the side and, you know, I basically snapped my wrist in half. I had thrown out my hip, bruised up a bunch of my ribs, whiplash thrown out my shoulder and I was in bad shape. My friends got me to a hospital and I had a couple hours laying in bed before they could give me painkillers because no one really spoke that much English there. And we didn't know if I would be allergic to it until the Osteo got in there. Who spoke English and could treat me. And so it was a long time there. And I remember having the moment to think, you know, if this is it. Because I knew I was damaged inside. I broke my ribs before, but something was wrong, I could tell. And I just thought I might be bleeding out inside. I might be in a lot of trouble. The nurse kept coming in maybe every 5, 10 minutes and pressing down all over my chest cavity and my stomach, feeling for that internal bleeding bloat that people get when they're hurt inside. And I just kept thinking when I was laying there, if this is it, this time, did I live? Did I love? Did I matter? And I can show you it was 15 years later. And for 15 years I'd ask that question every night. Did I live? Did I love? Did I matter? I just thought, if this is it, did I really. Since last time, I've had 15 years as an intentional person. Did I do it? And I just remember laying there crying, thinking, I'm good. I just kept thinking to myself, I'm good. That was going to be my moment. Fifteen years later, I knew I lived, I knew I loved, I knew I'd made my difference. The utmost of my abilities doesn't mean I didn't mess up sometimes, doesn't mean I'm perfect. Definitely doesn't mean I didn't make mistakes or be rude to people or do something dumb once in a while. But overall, I was good. But something else came from that. After I got home and got all healed up, it turned out that I had post concussive syndrome, which means I had a brain injury, traumatic brain injury. I had damaged my prefrontal left cortex, my hippocampus, and my cerebellum, which threw off my executive control. Like being able to strategically plan, it threw off my ability to emotionally regulate my myself. So I found myself being angry. I threw off my short term memory. And without your memory and context, sometimes you just kind of lose yourself. And cerebellum, that's your kind of motor control. So I was kind of, kind of out of it. I was losing my racquetball games. I didn't feel like working out. I just felt all weird. And I didn't really understand all those things coming together for a couple months. So I'd really suffered through and so did the people around me. For a couple months. I didn't, you know, I wasn't great to my team, I wasn't great to my wife, I wasn't great to other people around me. I wasn't horrible. I just I didn't have. It wasn't me, it wasn't Brendan, that vibrant, fun, compassionate, caring, loving guy. I was short with people because without the emotional control of the prefrontal cortex, I was kind of like, hey, I was like sparking at people with the guy who never, ever really argued with people. And now I was. And then I wasn't feeling the energy and the joy from my life, for my events, from my work, and I ultimately just felt horrible. I thought it was just the injuries. But then I was diagnosed and I was blessed to be treated by a phenomenal, phenomenal psychiatrist and brain imaging expert who knew neurology, who knew the structure of the brain, and who ultimately changed my life. I give a lot of credit to Dr. Daniel Amen for being an expert who not only brought the conversation of brain health to the real public in the United States through his public television specials that have raised tens of millions of dollars for public television, but also the guy who scanned more brains and behaviorally tracked people with those brain scans than anybody else in the world. You can go to amen clinics to learn about him. Amen. Just like you would say amen in a sermon. Amenclinics.com I'm not associated, just love the guy. And he diagnosed me and helped treat me. And I'll share with you. It wasn't a miracle. It was a long road. It took about 18 months to get my brain back to where it probably should be and then probably another six, seven months to optimize it. And so here's what I learned in that the big change, I didn't want that injury either. But from both those incidences, something drew from it. I knew, I said, I got to learn something from this. What am I going to learn from this? And what I learned from it was the incredible importance of honoring the struggle. Those 18 months to get my brain back were so frustrating. I couldn't control my emotions, I couldn't control my focus. I was just struggling every amount of willpower and motivation, discipline, volition that I could possibly summon each day to make it through the day and still operate at the level people expected me to. Because you guys understand this was also a moment when my brand was like crushing it. You know, I just rolled out a number one New York Times best selling book within a couple months of that had generated over $5 million from that book launch and, and resulting online course had, you know, now was tracking on a million fans joining us on social media around the world. Like things were just, I mean, I was getting the Calls from the dream clients, the olympians, the Fortune 50 executives. You know, it was the times of meeting the US Presidents, whether it was a Bill Clinton or George W. Bush, it was a time of meeting Branson and Arianna Huffington and so many legends and leaders over these next couple years. And I was compromised. And it was such a struggle. But I knew that the way in which we meet struggle determines not only our character, but our destiny. Because look, anyone can have a great day and have a great day and be cool to everybody, but it's when everything goes wrong. Can you be the peace amid the storm? Can you be the strength amid the chaos? Can you have the focus amid the distractions and the troubles and the pains? Those are the real challenges in life. And for me, I learned and started teaching this concept of honor the struggle. Be okay with. Don't fight it. Know that the struggle is going to be there. And it is there specifically to make you a better person to serve now at the next level. Notice I didn't say it's not there just to make you good. It's there to help you, to empower you now to serve. Because you know what a struggle gives you a new strength. You know what struggle gives you a new toolkit to serve at the next level. And I knew that. And I tell people all the time, don't hate the struggle. I know it's difficult, but tell you what, when you hate the struggle, everything quickly goes bad. Because you know what hate, whatever a hate is applied to, it destroys. Apply hate to a relationship, it's destroyed. Apply hate to someone's perspective about this group or that group or this race or that race or a person like this or a person like that. Relationships fall apart. Apply hate to the process of growing in a career. The career stagnates. And you have to realize that everything that hate is applied to it quickly dies. If you are on the path to your dream and your constantly complaining, bemoaning the amount of work to get there, you'll kill the dream. The way that you meet the struggle directly impacts your overall motivation for the dream. So you have to honor the struggle. When it's hard, know that it's going to be hard and it's okay that it's hard. Accept that this is going to be a difficult, uncertain, vulnerable thing, and that's okay. Allow yourself to be uncertain, vulnerable to go along with the process. Yes. Be intentional. Yes. Direct it. Yes. Be confident. Yes. Know what you're doing. Yes. Know that you're a role model. All these things. But at the same time, allow yourself to be at peace with what is, even when what is is not what you currently want. Honor that this is part of the game. It's like if you go to the gym, you recognize that there's going to be a little bit of pain for that gain, as they say. Well, the same thing in achievement and in growth. It's going to ought to be a struggle. Honor it. Look forward to those moments to develop your weakness. Look forward to those challenges that require the most of you. Don't be like, oh, I hope I can do this, or I hate doing that. Instead, say, you know what? I'm going to fully engage with this. I'm fully present with this learning experience. And that's all struggle really is, the learning experiences. I would say the third major change I had in my life was bankruptcy. I had this dream to do what I'm doing today. If people say at a cocktail party, brandon, what do you do? I say, I'm a writer and a trainer. They usually say, well, about what I say about motivation or marketing, Those are the two things that I'm deeply passionate about. I've studied motivation and high performance at elite levels now for 20 years. And I've studied business and marketing at elite levels for 20 years. When I say elite levels, I mean studying the best, studying under the best, and now getting to work with and coach and advise the best. I've learned a lot. But when I began, I didn't know what the heck I was doing. I had been studying a lot, but I hadn't actually done it. I started writing a book, I started doing seminars. I started this industry. And back then, there was no today, you know, my program, Experts Academy. There was no Experts Academy. So if you wanted to write a book, you went to a bunch of writers conferences on writing books. If you were a speaker, you went to a bunch of speaking conferences on being a speaker, you joined association. If you want to do seminars, you went to seminars on how to do seminars. If you want to do online training, you studied online marketers. One guy over here, one guy over there, this guy guy or there. I mean, it was just like all over the place. And I was lucky that I was coming out of corporate America, out of college. I'd gotten a job in leadership. And so I was doing leadership development, consulting, organizational change and change management. And in that process I just learned, luckily, I learned how to kind of train, how to advise and teach, but I didn't know anything about business. I learned about best practices. That when you go into an industry or company, you're trying to find out what are the best practices, the little moves that make the greatest difference, the processes that are contributing the most, the results. And so I started studying that in our industry and then boom. Started having some success and then boom quickly went bankrupt when I had a frivolous lawsuit against us and I didn't understand how business worked. I didn't know about insurance, I didn't know about legal stuff. And I got taken advantage of and was wiped out immediately. And I was terrified. Here I had quit my job, I didn't have any money, the bankruptcy wiped everything away. I couldn't even afford my apartment, I had to move in with my then girlfriend, had nothing. And all I can say is, fortunately she believed in me. And every day I just worked, I just tried, I tried everything. I was like, okay, if I need a website, I'm going to learn how to build a website. Oh, people are doing sales copy on sales letters. I'm going to learn how to write a sales letter. Oh, people are doing video right now. I'm going to have to learn how to do video. I didn't know how to do any of that, but that didn't stop me. If you don't know how to do something but it's relevant to your dream, then your real job is to devise a curriculum for yourself to develop those skills. Not say, well, that's just not a strength of mine, so I shouldn't do it. It's like, no. If those are skill sets critical to success in any given industry or career, you learn the skill set, strength or weaknesses be danged. You get in the game and you develop into the person who can do that. And that's what I had to do. And so I learned how to do all of this. But I'll tell you what I learned about the bankruptcy. Number one, never let your small beginnings make you small minded. Even though I'm sitting there in this tiny apartment on a three legged fold out table that I borrowed from my mom with a laptop that wasn't even mine, trying to do my dream writing and building web pages and things like this, I had no idea what I was doing, but I could see where I was going. I didn't know. I mean, I didn't really have examples because back then there weren't, you know, there was, you know, there was a good seminar guy over here, a good online marketer over there, a good person on TV over here, but I didn't see anyone kind of doing a lot of what I want to do in the multiple modalities. You know, I didn't see someone killing it on video and on stage. I didn't see someone killing on video on stage and in the media. I didn't see someone doing all that and writing multiple New York Times best selling books. I didn't see somebody doing that and. And actively coaching people. I didn't see anybody doing all that. And then turning around to people who were beginning and saying, hey, let me show you how I've done it. I just didn't see exactly what. It's not like I had the perfect role model and I tried to mimic them. They were extraordinary people who I learned from or attended their seminars and learned great things. I mean, I think about the impact of studying and learning and attending things. You know, whether it was a hay house event or a Wayne Dyer or Tony Robbins or John Gray or David. I remember sitting in these audiences Mark Victor Hanson, Jack Canfield's events, and I was learning a lot. I didn't see exactly what I wanted, though. But here's the deal. It didn't matter. I just dreamt it all up. I dreamt about what would I want to do with my day, what would I want to create, what would I want to give? Even though here I am broke in San Francisco, which is a horrible place to be broke because, you know, a burrito in San Francisco is like eight bucks. You know, it's a tough place to not have any money, but as the great Zig Ziglar taught us, you don't have to be great to start, but you had to start to become great. I like to remind people, if you got a dream, never forget when you knock on the door of opportunity that it's work. Who answers that door? I like to tell people, no matter how small you start, start something that matters. Don't let your small business, your small beginnings, your small struggles, your small quote, unquote life prevent you from thinking big. I dreamt big things. I was like, someday I'm gonna meet a U.S. president. Someday I'm gonna get to coach somebody at the top levels. Someday thousands of people will be in my audiences. And he wasn't believing it from a place of ego, like, oh, look at me. It was like, no. Because I will have attained success enough that that could happen. I will have worked my butt off, honored the struggle, lived as an intentional man with confidence and the hope to influence other people positively, that I will get there. It wasn't ego, it wasn't outsized ego. It was readiness to work. I Had the dream and I was ready to work. The second thing I learned from bankruptcy is that you got to have discipline to pull yourself out of a pit. You got to climb every day. Then when you get out of the pit and you get level grounded, you got to work every day to pull more people out to serve others. Then after you got a tribe of people, you've served them and you start marching to that mountaintop, you got to work every day, every step to keep going. Always marching, always moving forward, always aiming towards that horizon line, always waking up each day and throwing that spear of purpose as far as you can and working diligently to go pick it up again and throw it again. That is daily discipline, that belief that says, hey, I had better. I had better make this happen. Because you know what? No one was coming to save me. I didn't have. No bank came in to save me, no loan, no investors. That's not true. Because I had some family and friends who helped me through bankruptcy financially. Not enough in terms of it. Didn't make it comfortable or easy. But you know what? They believed in me. They gave me what they could. My dad and mom gave me their entire life savings. Didn't even get me through a couple weeks, but they believed in me. A couple buddies who were just starting their careers lent me a couple hundred bucks or a thousand here or a thousand there to get going. My girlfriend, she lent me a thousand here, a thousand there. These were big. They believed in me, and they believed in me. Not because I was some special kid, not because I had any real. I don't know, I don't think it was rather obvious that I would be who I am today in terms of, oh, Brendan Burchard. No, you know what the reality is? They knew I'd work for it. Because isn't that who you want to give money to? The guy that's going to go earn it? Because I learned to earn life from my accident. I learned to live each day intentionally from my accident. I learned to honor the struggle from my injuries. And soon I pulled out. I got out of that pit. It took about 18 months of the most focused discipline. It felt like, you know, 24, 7 type of work. No holds barred went for it, and in 18 months, it generated 4 million plus dollars from scratch. That was also, I would say, a thorough, disciplined application of best practices. I wasn't doing anything, I would say, different than a lot of people, but I was doing it with a whole lot more consistency, with a whole new level of excellence, working hard and consistent at the highest levels for as hard and as long as I could. The truth is I didn't take care of my well being back then as much as I should, looking back. But there was just. You know what? I think everybody's got those moments of discipline, those moments of go time in their life where it is just full throttle immersion into what you really dream of and desire. It is a daily discipline unseen by people who don't need it, want it, believe in it, willing to work for it, who honor that struggle. I mean, I worked, I worked harder in those 18 months than many of my peers had done in decades long careers. And I don't mean that to be flippant. They told me that, you know, so this is not me being braggadocious like dude, you, I've never seen someone work like you. I mean, I mean literally people were standing on our stages saying, you've been more prolific in the last two or three years than I've been in 30. You've written more books, done more hours of video and created more online courses than anybody. And today I would say that still stands. You know, as the Oprah Winfrey Network said, I'm blessed to be one of the most successful online trainers history. Not just today in history. It's because the number of courses, instructions that I've created, that we've graduated a million people through our online courses and online video series. That's not really that common, especially when those are things that people really had to raise. There wasn't just like stuff on YouTube. We've been blessed on YouTube as well. 40 million plus views in this last year. But I'm talking about like courses and video series training. This was an entertainment. There's no videos of cats humping cats on my pages. You know, there's no cats, there's no babies. This is an adult talking about personal development and training with other people. That's unheard of. And the celebration that we've gotten from the community has never gone to my head like, oh, look at us. It's just like it's a natural result of daily discipline. That's all. I tell people all the time. There's no magic to me. I genuinely don't believe that there's people who run more miles than I have. It's just that I made sure the miles I ran were the ones that counted. I found out that Pareto's principle, those 80, 20, those best practices, those little moves that made the biggest difference, I knew what those were. I'd look for them, I'd Seek those out. So I tried to be efficient and effective and world class from day one, not when I made it from day one. I said, how do I do this? With the highest levels of distinction, excellence, and service. And I brought a daily discipline to all that. The last big change I had, y', all, was the loss, I would say, of my dad. In 2009, my dad, who was healthy and retired, just starting his retirement, he just retired, and he woke up one morning, it was Mother's Day, and he walked down the hall of the house, and he kind of was stumbling a little bit side to side and grabbed the wall. My mom said, what's wrong with you? I don't know. My side hurts. She said, we've got to go to the hospital. He said, no, you know, I'm fine. Dad was a Marine for 20 years, did three tours in Vietnam. When he came back, he worked for the state of Montana for an another 22 years of his life. An incredibly dedicated man. Good man. So on Mother's Day, he went in and had a test. The doctor said, it seems like your spleen is enlarged. Let's see what's going on here. And then was soon diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia. A couple different types of leukemia. AML is the one you don't want. They gave him a week or two to live. From diagnosis to his passing was about 59 days. It was a tough time for the whole family. It was out of nowhere. And he was such a vibrant, loving man. He was so hard on us when we grew up. And then over years, he became kind of like a Buddha, you know? And his belly got bigger because mom was used to cooking us for us four kids. And then us four kids left, but she kept cooking the same amount. So dad ate it. I mean, he was a garbage disposal. And he was just this happy, jolly dude who everybody loved, who had been through more difficulty and struggle and challenges on a daily basis than almost anyone I've ever met. Not just because of his military experience, not just because of Vietnam and getting shot up over there, but because, you know, his job. He worked and ran the dmv, where you go to get your license. And that's a very thankless job. And a lot of people will have opinions about that work. But you know what? The people at the DMV are so disempowered by the state, by the technology they're given. They're doing the best they can with what they got. And my dad was running a good one, but still, people came in every day and they insulted him and they were awful to him because they didn't follow what they were supposed to do or they didn't, you know, do this or that. But, you know, people project their. Their faults or their angers, their frustrations on people pretty easily. And dad had to deal with that every day. Mama, who's French, Vietnamese, and English is her third or fourth language. When we were in Montana, a lot of the ladies who she worked with at the hospital would make fun of her because of her accent, and she would come home crying because people were being mean to her and she was getting passed up on jobs she deserved because the way she looked and talked. And so I grew up watching my parents be belittled, my parents be treated poorly. And as much as we were poor as a family, financially, I'm lucky, truly lucky that I had two loving parents. And as dad was in his final weeks, I asked to interview him. I said, you know, dad, I'd just like to ask you about, you know, some questions about life. And I wrote down 30 questions about life. I just thought, I want to know about my dad, and I want to, you know, be able to know these things and carry them on. So I recorded the conversation and asked my dad over two sessions about life. And I'll never forget the things he said. And it's really the only recording we have of him. And it's hard to listen to. I can only listen to it once a year. It's been very emotional experience to hear his voice again. I'm sure those of you who have lost somebody and had a recording, it's difficult sometimes to visit, but it's also a beautiful experience. And I heard dad and I listened to him, and one of the questions I asked, I said, you know, what do you want us to know about life? You know, to have a good life? Like, what should we know? And his answer, I'm really. It means a lot to me, and I'm actually really proud of his answer because I wrote it down. I've put it on Facebook a couple times, and it is, to this day, the most shared and liked posts that I've ever done. Every time I post my dad's seven reminders to us, they are the most popular. And here's what they were. Here's what my dad taught me. Be yourself, be honest. Do your best. Take care of your family. Treat people with respect. Be a good citizen. Follow your dreams. And, you know, when he said that, it was so casual. And it's funny because in some way he's taught us that our whole lives. And now I've shared his message with literally tens of millions of people. I'm sure that quote has already been liked and shared and thrown around the web in some way or another. Probably 100 million people by now. And you know what it is, what I learned from that? Your life is a message. Someone's going to carry on your message. Your son, your daughter, your loved one, the people you care for, those who you influence and lead. Somebody's going to carry on your message. And that means strive to be a role model, to live such a good life, so intentional and so loving, that others just carry on your messages. Because when my dad shared those seven things, I can tell you, I just. It was so natural. It was just like. It was obvious. And when I think about those things, he'd said those to me all my life. I never really put it together. Like, one of my favorite books I own is a book from William Safire called Lend Me youe Greatest Speeches in History. And when I open up that book, there's a little inscription for my dad. Be yourself. He'd been saying it in one way or another in notes and cards and sitting down on the couch. Sitting and talking and eating a peanut butter and jelly sandwich. And his white Hanes T shirt, corduroy, white shorts. Sitting there on a hot summer's day with all the doors open in Great Falls, Montana. Watching some TV and football and just talking about life. He was a simple man and an extraordinary man. My mom, if you ever met her at my events, she is the vibrant. I mean, people think I have a charged life, that I'm vibrant. I'm like, that's where I get it from. My mom is just, boom, she is charged. Despite having grown up and being separated from her parents in Vietnam and later on in France, despite going to boarding schools where they picked on her and punched on her, despite owning no material possessions and coming to the United States. States, despite being in a relationship when she got to the United States with a person who beat the crap out of her, despite having moved to Montana with my father with nothing but a dream to have a better life, despite having been broke, despite having been made fun of, my mother is a vibrant, loving, compassionate, present woman. So you know what people say, Brendan, you sure are lucky with all that success. And, you know, I say, you're right. I worked hard. But here's the deal. I lucked out on the parent train. Both of my parents see everyone's got some caregiver or some influencer, some role model. Made a difference who's either with them or not with them. I think the difference is just like similar to what happened with my car accident. I look at the relationships in my life like I look at the situations in my life and I say, what can I learn from this person to become a better man? What can I learn from my dad? What can I learn from my mom, my little sis, my two older brothers? What can I learn from my students, from my fellow teachers? What can I learn from what's happening in society? What can I learn? I'm always asking, what can I learn? Because I know that as I absorb more learnings, I become a better person. As I become a better person, my life becomes a better message for others to share later. Like I said at the top, I don't know if these are the biggest changes in my life and most of these ones are pretty difficult. A car accident, a brain injury, losing all your finances and bankruptcy, losing your dad, nothing. I didn't ask for any of them. But we've all been through a lot of experiences we didn't ask for. So what are we going to do with them? As you get life's golden ticket, which begins right now, begins in the morning, begins the next morning. Every morning's a blank page. Every morning's a new breath, Every morning's a fresh start to say, what am I going to show to the world today? How am I going to hone myself to be better, to be happier, to serve more, to be of better influence, to live a better message? We get every single day to ask these questions. That's why second chances aren't really just number two. Two, they're evergreen, perpetual. Every moment is a moment to be a better husband, a better wife, a better child, a better servant, a better leader, a better contributor, a better human being. And now we just have to choose those. So what's the change that you're going to choose now? What intention do you want to live for yourself? How can you live your highest so you can influence other people despite and in honor of the struggles? Those are the questions that I ask and those are the questions that I hope served you today with this podcast. If you like this one, do me a favor, share it. Just tell people about it. Say, hey, you know what? I heard a good story today. I got some inspiration today. Check out this podcast called the Charged Life by Brendan Burchard. I think you'll like it. If you enjoyed this session discussion, I hope you'll go listen to a bunch of our podcasts, download them all Have a listen, share them with people. These are all here, they're free for you. And as yes, as always, they are ad free because it's your support of my books or my courses or our events that I'm able to self fund the entire thing without running ads to you of a bunch of lame household products. So I appreciate your support in all this and I hope you enjoyed this session. You know, I promised to do something for you all special in this podcast and so what I wanted to make sure that we did for you. If you haven't got a copy of life's Golden Ticket, go to Life's golden ticket dot com. There's a link to get on Amazon and then you enter your receipt number. You get a bunch of free courses from me. And I also wanted to give you one of my favorite new tools. It's a tool of how to get ahead faster. Just go to brendan.com 10X Brendan B-R-E-N-O-N.com 10 that's the number 10. And then X brendan.com 10X to get a download of my favorite ways to achieve more. I hope it supplements all the changes that you're doing. It was something I created literally just for you guys because I thought. Okay, I want to say thank you to this community for having support us so much in this podcast. I hope that each and every single day you wake up with that fire inside, that motivation, that blessed grace that says, today is the day. Today is my day. Today is a day I can begin anew. Make a difference, make a change, make progress. Live my message. I hope that you'll do that. I look forward to seeing you out on the road someday, maybe at one of our events. Until then, go out there every single day of your life. Live fully, love openly and make your difference. Today.