My 2023 Lessons and 2024 Success Mindset

Here we are. The end of 2023, the beginning of 2024, an important moment in your life, an important session here, and a rare episode that I'm going to post on my podcast Motivation with Brendon Burchard, as well as in my daily Fire in Growth Day. I don't think I've ever done that overlapping, but I I just thought that my audience would appreciate a real structured way of thinking about the end of this year and the beginning of their next year. I know many of you will watch or have watched my live broadcast. On January 1, 2024, all growth day members will get to watch that full day transformational event free in the app. If you're not yet a member of Growth Day happen to be listening to this, make sure you go to growthday.com, start your free trial. Get to join us on January 1st. It's going to be an incredible full day seminar on how to really advance your life. In this episode, I thought I'd talk about the 10 Big Distinctions lessons that I've learned as a high performance coach. Teaching, advising, coaching, interviewing, helping, and frankly, being paid to to help people reach new levels of success in their life. It's something that I do for a living. So I'm one of those people who really doesn't earn anything unless I get results for people. And so having coached and taught and trained and been with so many people live this year, I thought I'd share some of those big lessons, not just my personal lessons, as in like, hey, here's the 10 things I learned this year. But these 10 things will explain your results, your consequences in life, not just how my year went. But you can use these as an analytical tool to evaluate this last year as well as where you're going this next year. Of course, I'll bring in my own personal perspective, but by the time I get through the first point, you'll get it. You know, my first point is this intentional living. The willingness to get better by making self improvement a genuine way of life. Is the big secret. To live intentionally. That's always been my own personal secret. I can tell you in one simple answer. Why my year was great or why my year sucked, where I struggled, or where I excelled? The answer so simple. Was I living with real intention? For me personally, that means did I live that day, love that day, make a difference that day matter? And was I willing to do the work to get better in that area? Was I willing to do the work to get better in my health? Was I willing to do the work to get better in my relationships. Was I willing to do the work to get better in my business? In every situation that sucked this year, I can tell you I wasn't being as intentional as I could and I was bemoaning the work that it took to grow. So I wasn't intentional and I was whining and crying about doing the work. Does this resonate with anybody right now? That at some point, if we really want to make a great difference in our life, we get more intentional and we get more willing to get better. And we get better by making self improvement a way of life. That means we start our day by getting our morning mindset right. That means we journal about what we're thinking, what we're feeling, what we're aiming for. It means we write down our goals and we track them. It means we learn from mentors and experts and guides who are a little further down the path than us or might have a unique perspective of wisdom that can inspire us or keep us our best. It's literally the reason I started Growth Day for you. It wasn't just some new software company I wanted to start, believe me. It was that I knew for my own development that remembering that every day is a great day to grow and making self improvement sticky, making it a way of life that I would advance, that I would be more willing to do the work, that those efforts would lead to greater intentional living. So if you're like Brendan, what's your top 10 of all your big lessons learned? I gave it to you in the first point. It is living with intention, being willing to do the work by making self improvement a way of life. That's the unlock and that's everywhere that I struggled or screwed up this year. Now let's move on to what I really believe will be some practices that might help you. Because I can. Instead of just recapping this last year, I can tell you what your 2024 is going to be about. In fact, I believe that I can tell you in just simple terms what your destiny is going to be predicated upon. There's really only five things that drive our personal destiny outside of those things that we really cannot control. What I would just call God's grace, or you might call fate or luck, or the universal willingness, whatever you believe it to be. But destiny is your thoughts, your goals, your habits, your health, or what I might call your energy and your understanding. Thoughts, goals, habits, energy, understanding. And every result and every consequence and every pattern in your life comes down to those five things. So let's break it down. Your thoughts. Are your thoughts more on the positive and optimistic spectrum that allows you to, to engage the world and to sense your own personal agency that you know that you can make a difference and you can take actions to improve your life. Your goals. What are your goals? Are you clear about them? Are they sufficient in size and scope to motivate you, to drive you, to help you become the person who you were meant to be? Your habits, of course I still want to let you know your high performance habits are still king outside of God forgive me, but your habits and specifically the research of the high performance habits, after all these years, in five years of trying to find something that correlates better with long term success than the habits we learned, and I wrote about of that research in high performance habits, my book, I still haven't cracked it. I still have not found a set of habits that are more correlated with long term success. I try and I try, I measure and I measure and I don't mind me, I mean academically, I still haven't been able to beat it. And it's just incredibly powerful. By doing all of our research and our studies, it always just so much of it comes back to your habits. Like tell me about your weekly habits and I can start to shape a picture of your destiny. Then I said energy and health. I like to use the word energy versus just overall health because I think some people have health, but they have terrible energy. So a way to think about it is that energy is really the output and operational force from health. And a lot of people have good health, but they haven't learned how to manifest that health into good energy in the world. And I think it's really important. And it happens to be by this, by the way, the second high performance habit is learning to generate energy. So I said your destiny is five things. Thoughts, goals, habits, energy. And the fifth is understanding. I think this is a word that so few people even use. It's kind of surprising to me. Everyone wants to be understood, but they don't understand the power of understanding in any given situation. To understand what is required of course, with other people to understand them deeply, to be in a place where understanding is not something that you just have, but you are actively practicing through a conversation. See, most people, they're terrible at understanding. Instead they're labeling, they're judging and they're accusing. And very few people can just listen and be in a learning conversation with somebody to keep trying to understand them, to keep asking questions, to stay open and Curious and compassionate and empathetic. To be in the process of understanding. Not to assume that you understood or understand, but to be in the process of understanding. And I think about that so often, especially this year. I would say in any relationship I struggle with, whether it's, you know, my wife and I, we are just not seeing eye to eye or in business, there's somebody on the team I didn't have a good zoom call with or I was trying to do a deal and it just didn't feel like it connected. I always know that I wasn't in the right learning mode. I wasn't in a good posture of understanding. So they felt seen and heard, appreciated sense that I really understood them. And I really believe that that is a skill. Understanding is a skill. And your ability to understand is just as important as everything we talked about. Your goals, your habits, your energy and your thoughts. So to me, if you want to predict your 2024, I know that's very high level and we'll dive deep. I'm only on the second point of the day, so bear with me. But I think the destiny is your thoughts, goals, habits, energy, and understanding. Those things will shape what you do each day. Those things will shape your relationships. Those things will guide your path. Those things will lead to discipline and fitness. Those things will allow you to get work done. Those things will keep you motivated and driven. The next big idea I want to share with you is, I would say, my greatest aha of the year in terms of both my personal and my business life. Some of you know that we rolled out a new program this year called Ultra, and I didn't know how it was going to go. In fact, the night before I offered it, I called four very close friends and advisors. And then I eventually even brought in several members of my team and my family. And I asked them what they thought about making the offer of Ultra or should I just stick with what I was usually doing? And Ultra was going to be a new group that I was starting, a new community, a new network of successful people, a new network of people who wanted to strive together and build together and learn together. A community that was focused on, you know, coming together, gaining more clarity, challenging themselves, belonging to an aspirational group that wanted to develop that performance edge that would lead to Ultra success. They wanted a new way of networking. They wanted a new way of learning. They wanted to be together more consistently. And I started the group, and at this point now, many of you know, I lead that group and I bring on Ed Mylett and Natalie Ellis to co lead it with me. And eventually it'd be a worldwide network very similar to like YPO or Vistage. And I didn't know if it was going to go well. And so part of my suggestion to you is swing for the fences once in a while, aim big. I didn't know how it was going to go. And the lesson I learned was that people want community and belonging and an aspirational group more than I ever anticipated. I actually knew for me personally that there was a heightened level of loneliness that came out of the COVID years where I just felt like there was a something, I don't know, a separation between us and others. I know that happened for some people because they were just scared or happened for some people because it was mandated or it happened for some people and they didn't really care about it, but it just. They didn't see their friends or family as much. And I think that that reality that people are so driven for connection is something that I've always understood. Matter of fact, if you've been with me, I've taught that as one of the four primary drives we all have. The four primary drives we all have are aliveness, connection, meaningful pursuits and growth. And what shocked me though was the level in which people raised their hand to be part of Ultra. I thought that Maybe, you know, 50 people would join and you know, as I'm sharing with this with you now, we're well past 650 people in Ultra. To give you an idea as a first year program, that's pretty shocking and I will share with you. I was shocked and I think the community was shocked. I remember when I first offered it, we were at a seminar in Austin and at the end of the event when I asked the people who have signed up to stand up and come get a picture with me on stage and something like 25% of the room stood up. You heard an audible gasp in the room that it was like, oh wow, this many people want this and I can share with you. There was a gasp from stage too. I was pretty surprised and honestly humbled and honored. And it's one of the surprising things that turned out for this year. If someone says, what's the biggest surprise that you had this year? I would say it was Ultra success. And how many people want to be part of a group aiming for and striving for and learning together on our paths to Ultra success in every area of our life? It was huge to me. Lesson for you is get part of a group. My group Somebody else's group, a community somewhere in your neighborhood. Don't forget that power of belonging to an aspirational group that will lift you to higher levels of not just, I'd say, success, but spirit and energy and momentum in life. Big lesson for me, and it's been a great, great benefit to me as well. I have honestly just learned so much from the group and it's been the hardest challenge of my career to serve this group as we're starting it in, you know, our first couple of months here and the ambitions of the group already worldwide, and so many people joining and wanting to see it go bigger and bigger and bigger than I even imagined. It's really fun to see the networking coming out of that group and I've loved it. 4th Big Idea today is that if there's something that's really wrong with our culture, I think we can boil it down to two things. And I know I'll get some judgment for this, but all year long people ask me, what's going on, Brendan, what is going on with society right now worldwide, where there's so much antagonism and there's so much frustration and so much division. And I don't like all of this bad attitude and cynicism. And I recognize that. And I guess being a high performance coach and looking at things through a unique lens of human behavior change, which is kind of what my job is 24 7, I would say it comes down to two things. And one of the things I don't think it is, by the way, is I don't think it's that, you know, people are bad. And I also don't think it's that people believe that they're bad and everyone else is bad. I don't think it's about self worth and I don't think it's about superiority. Those things are real, but I don't think those are causal. I think the causal element is the lack of skill and training and experience and awareness to self regulation, social influence. I actually believe I can take a shorthand to somebody's life and just go, can you self regulate and can you influence others? If you have skills in those two things, you're gonna go pretty far. If you don't, well, not only will you not go far, but you'll start to develop those self worth issues. You'll start to develop that antagonism towards others. Yeah. So I think your competency, your ability to self regulate and have social influence are paramount to your success, but also to our culture's renewal. We Got to teach people about self regulation. What does that mean? It means you have first and foremost the awareness to yourself. You have self awareness and you're aware of the thoughts, feelings, attitudes, moods, beliefs that you have. And you can attenuate those things, adjust those things based on what you want and the situation that you're in. In other words, you can regulate your thoughts, feelings, emotions and actions to be helpful, appropriate, supportive to the life that you want to live and the social context that you're in. I think first we have to do a better job of teaching people the ability to be mindful with their thoughts, feelings, emotions and actions. We have to teach them to be aspirational, that they can improve those. And that by improving those they'll feel better and have a greater life satisfaction, joy, creativity, fulfillment, growth. That when you learn to self regulate, you're more resilient. You know, when the day has a crisis or you get judged or something sucks, you're just able to bounce back so much more mentally and emotionally than other people. And what's happened is culturally we've all been just fed so many narratives of negativity and cynicism, and we've had so many crises after crises after crises and war after war after war and challenge after challenge after challenge that many people haven't been able to find their footing because they've never trained themselves or been trained or coached on how to bounce back, on how to truly identify what they're going through and be resilient and courageous in taking the next right actions of integrity, informing the next helpful thoughts in depressurizing the energy and emotions that they have that are not serving them and in truth might be distorted levels of thoughts or emotions or energy that's not serving them and is not even accurate for them. Because of course part of self regulation is recognizing our own biases, our own preferences, our own frustrations, and learning to cope with those and yes, even control those so that we attain a level of self mastery so that we can regulate, but even master and then learn to anticipate and to live with greater intention. And I think this is so important. So the skill that our society is lacking is just self regulation. People aren't bad. They literally have never been trained on a lot of personal development topics. And if you've never been exposed to self improvement, self help psychology, the basics of, you know, mindfulness, self awareness, self regulation, self mastery, then no wonder we have people who everything throws them into a frazzled and frustrated state. No wonder we have so many people acting out from Their fears or their insecurities. They don't know how to regulate that. When that comes up. The other side of that coin is social influence. The ability to, as I shared earlier, be in a state of understanding with others, to understand how to persuade, how to connect, how to lead, how to influence. How do you influence others to understand you? How do you influence others to have, you know, equal and shared values? As you pursue something, how do you enlist other people to march towards something that's important to both of you? How do you start a movement, how do you start a company, how do you make sales? All of that can be bucketed around your skill set in social influence. If you've been in Growth Day with me for a while, you know, so many of the conversations we have isn't just about the self, it's about relationships, understanding the basics of good communication and understanding really the fundamentals, but also the advanced strategies for connecting with people, uniting people, leading people, selling people, persuading people, inspiring people, learning to be a lighthouse for others, but also learning to set boundaries because your boundaries are a result of your skill set with social influence. And I don't mean to belabor this, but if you're not a Growth Day member, I encourage you to just because of some of the mastery trainings that we have done on communication, on friendship, on relationships, on conflict management, on leadership. Each of those masterclasses which are by the way, if you're listening in Growth Day under the learn section and you click courses, those Growth Day masterclasses are worth their weight in gold, I should say worth their weight in bitcoin. And they are so powerful in shaping your ability to shape your social dynamics. And I really believe the reason that our culture is struggling so much is people don't have the skill set of self regulation and social influence. And in fact, if you can increase those skills, I believe you can increase their sense of self efficacy, their sense of self worth, their sense of self confidence, but also their ability to socially contribute, to socially make a meaningful difference, to want to engage with other people again because they know how to be great with other people. I'm one of those people who was not good at this. And I think in both of these skill sets, it's why I always tell you, make self improvement way of life. If I just accepted how my emotions were, if I just accepted how bad I was with other people, we wouldn't have the opportunity to be doing this. I wouldn't have the opportunity to have a billion video and post views. I wouldn't have the opportunity to reach hundreds of millions of people, to have millions on our newsletter lists, to have the opportunity of speaking at all the major arenas and around North America and some of the major arenas around the world. Now, I can attribute my willingness. Remember that part, willingness to get better. Do you remember that? I can attribute my willingness to get better with self regulation and social influence to all of the incredible dynamic movements of my life, the big leaps and bounds, and came from getting better at those two things. Is that helpful? Next up, I'd like to share a sort of a viral moment from this year that seemed to kind of take off. And it was something I said from the Growth Day stage, if you didn't know. Every first of the month. We're live in Los Angeles and I've rented a theater or multiple theaters now where we meet with the Growth Day members and Ultra members. And one of those. I'm sorry, I can't remember which one it was, I was talking about how appreciation is such a core driver for people that if they don't feel appreciated, they leave jobs and they leave relationships. But I also shared the reality that a lot of people, because they don't feel appreciated, they don't take courageous action, they don't feel appreciated, so they stop. They're like, well, no one appreciates me. Why try? I'm doing all this hard work for my dream, but no one appreciates it, so screw it. And I said to him, the fact of. Wait a minute. So you stopped pursuing your dream because somebody else didn't appreciate you? That's not their dream. It's your dream. You were given that dream. That's your gift. You were given that to protect, to manifest, to build, to scale. No one else has to appreciate it. It's yours. You know, that's it. You ever get a gift at Christmas and you really appreciate it, but other people didn't think it was a big deal? Well, welcome to life, babe. A lot of people won't appreciate your hard work. I actually made the mistake of using the example on stage that lots of people who I'm very close with in my life and lots of our fans, our students, our clients, our attendees, they don't appreciate what I do at the level I'd certainly love them to. Isn't that true for everybody? The difference is I don't need their accolades or appreciation to serve my mission in this world. Does that make sense? You don't need other people's understanding or championing or support or appreciation or even acknowledgement for you to do your thing. My purpose is not tied to their levels of praise. Let me say it again. My purpose is not tied to their levels of praise. And if you don't get that, then you're really going to struggle. Because isn't it true that so often when you try to do something new, people think you're crazy, they make fun of you, they judge you, they don't support you, they just don't get it. And so if anything, you get labeled, you get judged, people make mean remarks, people become passive aggressive. That's just because they either don't understand you or they don't see you hurt. They want to protect you or they want to compete with you. And I'm not saying that's everybody. Many of us are blessed with an incredible community who appreciates us. But you know, sometimes it just doesn't happen. I mean, you'd be shocked how many millions of people I serve and yet how few, you know, messages of emails or voice messages or DMs that I get. Even wishing me a merry Christmas or wishing me a happy birthday or saying, hey, thanks for that video. I know you put hours into thanks for that thing. I know you're doing like it doesn't happen as often as you think. But that in no way did I say that to Memo. And believe me, I'm not asking for it. I'm not jonesing over here for more praise. It's not my message. My message is don't stop your dream just because someone doesn't appreciate you. I think that's what's important. Don't stop doing good things for yourself or your family because maybe someone in your family doesn't get it. They think, oh, why do you care so much about getting healthy? Why do you care so much about what we eat? Why do you care so much about this? Maybe you have somebody who just is always like, why do you care? What does it matter? It's not important. And I can share with you that attitude is often harmful, but thing is, it shouldn't stop you. Their praise does not set your progress in life. You set your Progress in life 6 big aha or lesson or thing I'd like to share today is that pressure and judgment are the success tax and you got to pay taxes. So don't complain about them. See so many people, they are upset that they have a full list of to do's. So many people are like upset by, you know, the requirements of success, how much pressure comes on your shoulders when you build a team, as if they never thought about it. You never Thought that building a large team would increase the pressure on you. Why did you not read books on business anytime? You never thought that, you know, trying to go to that next level in sport would demand more of you, would cause more competition or stress? I'm always surprised by the fact that adults are so often surprised by their own stress or anxiety or, or their own reactions to judgment. And I don't say that in a diminishing way. I just say that, gosh, if you'd read any self help books, any personal development books, or any psychology books, the reason that you do that is they kind of give you a roadmap. They kind of say, hey, here's the emotions that are coming at you, kid. I lucked out. I read, you know, hundreds of those books in my 20s, literally hundreds. And so I was able to, to just recognize, of course I'm going to feel sad when something bad happens. Of course I'm going to feel down when something didn't go the way I expected it. Of course I'm going to feel threatened when someone judges me. Those emotions are things that I not only anticipate, but I fully go, oh, yeah, of course, that's natural. I don't bemoan them. I, I just recognize that they're there. But I don't have to act from them and I don't have to let them overrule my action or a positive day. And I think what I've seen more and more is people, as they strive for greater wealth or abundance or promotion in their life, they find themselves in a complaining loop about how much pressure there is, about how nobody gets it, about how it's so unfair, all the judgment of all these other people. They, they're judging me and I'm trying to do good things here. And I just go, that's part of it. That's the tax you gotta pay to do great things. You gotta pay the tax and that's willing to endure the pains and the frustrations of other people not getting it. The pains and frustrations of having a lot on your shoulders. You know, recently, this last holiday season, somebody said to me casually, well, Brendan, you don't have any kids, so you don't understand. And for those who don't know, I don't have children, Denise and I have not had children. And they act like I'm lacking in awareness of the realities of that, as if I haven't coached literally millions of parents, or I haven't been in households with children, or that one of my partners doesn't have eight children, or that I don't have four unbelievably awesome nephews, or that I haven't literally taught parenting programs that help people with the mindset of it, or that I haven't studied for 20 years child and adult behavior and development so that I could do my job well. Or that I haven't coached families for 15 years and had to understand family dynamics. But it's true, I don't have children. But what I said to this person was, well, the issue is though, I think I've got about 350 that I am responsible for. And they laughed and they said, what do you mean? I said, well, you know, I've got over 150 employees across our core companies and brands and investments. And if I don't do a good job, then those families can't pay their rent or mortgages. Those families can't support their children with higher education. Those families don't have the ability to pursue their own dreams that are bigger. Like if I don't perform, then a lot of people are really and severely impacted. I know, of course, many of you listening, you have way more employees. I coach a lot of senior executives who literally have tens of thousands employees. And I know that employees are not children. So all the judgment that you can throw at me, I welcome it. And I understand because it just proves the point that of course people aren't going to understand that. They'll say, well, you don't understand the pressures of being a parent. I go, that's true. But I do understand the pressures of doing a good job because if I don't, then these 300 plus parents that I'm in charge of making sure they get a paycheck. You know what, that does filter down and I carry a lot of pressure for that in the companies that I'm a significant investor in or advisor in. There's another probably a thousand employees out there. And my ability to drive awareness or new leads or you know, new customers into those businesses, that's a big obligation. Because if I don't do a good job, those companies don't do as a good job, which means their employees don't make as much, which means those households suffer. That's not something I ever, ever feel pressure about though. Now wait a minute, Brennan, I thought you were just talking about this. I go, yeah, I just know it's part of it. See, sometimes pressure happens because you're trying to deny that it should exist. It feels like a lot of pressure because it shouldn't be there. And so you're like, this shouldn't be happening. And so you actually are creating the pressure in yourself. I had the opportunity to work with one of the greatest NBA players of all time and we were having a conversation with a rookie and we're on courtside and we're having this really cool conversation where they were. The rookie was struggling with his ability to drain some three pointers and we're just talking through it and they were asking this legend like, how do you just, you know, it's like on demand. It's like you make these game winning three pointers and just look so natural. And he says, well, just never surprised that I'm going to get the ball in a high pressure situation. But the situation is high pressure, but I don't have to be high pressure. I thought that was always a good lesson that. Isn't it true tomorrow when you open up your inbox, you could feel all sorts of pressure about it or you could go, yeah, part of, you know, doing life and running a business is there's lots of emails or inevitably there's lots of struggles with employees or customers or inevitably something doesn't go right. That's the tax stuff isn't going to go right and you're going to have to pay the price of either feeling pressure, anxiety or fear or inadequacy or you just go, huh, it's part of it. Let me give you the last metaphor on this. You know, it's the end of the year. I've, you know, been blessed to be part of a very, very, very successful and high earning set of peers. You know, people who earn, you know, not millions, but often tens of millions or hundreds of millions of dollars a year. And it's amazing to me how many of them will talk hours and hours and complain for hours and hours about taxes. They'll just complain about it for hours and hours and hours. And I'm somebody who, I don't even think about it. I'm barely aware of what we pay. I remember Denise and I, at some point we had moved to the Caribbean. I wanted to live in the Caribbean at some point in my life. A lot of people who found out we moved down there were like, oh, Brendan's doing it for taxes. Which was the funniest thing because that really revealed they did not know me at all. Like, they didn't know my heart, they didn't know who I was, they didn't know my drive, they didn't know that when I was a 19 year old kid I had a car accident in the Caribbean, that shaped my life, that brought me to you in this moment right here, that that was a place that I have a spiritual home in, that my life almost ended there. And I always feel like for some reason going back and I didn't want to give up my US citizenship to go and move there. But I knew that one day I would maybe retire and move down to the islands. And I happened to be out there for a keynote speech. And I was in Puerto Rico for this big keynote conference and I gave the speech and I fell in love with it. For those who geek out on my story, you might know that the last three chapters of High Performance Habits was written in Puerto Rico because I just fell in love with it. So I stayed there. I called and arranged it with my team. I stayed, I think an extra 10 days and finished the book there, fell in love with it and I eventually kind of realized it was like, hey, I don't have to wait till I retire. We could have a home down here someday. So that happened faster than I imagined. And we end up getting a home down there and just had an amazing experience. And so many people were like, oh, you're there just for the taxes. And I thought, I've never been anywhere just for the taxes. For those who doubt that, if you didn't know, I've moved back to California. California is not known as being a low tax state. So I'm not driven by that. And why do I share that? Because at the end of the year, I never bemoan that I have to pay taxes. I don't care where I don't really care about. It's just part of it. I know running a business and living a great life, I have to contribute back to society because I don't get to set, you know, the government's tax allocation is in rules and tax code. I just, okay, great, we gotta pay it. No big deal. My job's to earn enough that I'm able to contribute and live at the levels that I want. By the way, I have no judgment to those who do move because I think a good 30% of my friends have all moved out of California now and they will just happily cite taxes. So it's not about that judgment. I just want to give it as a metaphor that I'm that person who happily pays a success tax. Happily. I don't bemoan it and I'm never surprised by it. I'm not surprised that I get the ball. I'm not surprised that I got to pay taxes. I'm not Surprised that there's pressure. And I think that that is one reason that if you can look back to, you know, 20 years of me doing year end conversations, they're not that dissimilar. Because I'm never surprised by the struggle. I honor it, I recognize it as part of it. Don't bemoan the struggle. Recognize that it's there, it's part of it. It's part of it. And as soon as you realize it's part of it, you're in command of it. Next big idea is the situation that you're in is not the self. Share that again. The situation you're in is not yourself. Yourself, your spirit, your mind, body, spirit, if you will, is not your bank account. It's not that person who's being rude to you. It's not the level of followers you have. You are an autonomous, holy, independent spirit. And your self is something that you are manufacturing through what? Yeah, your thoughts, your goals, your. Your habits, your energy and your understanding. You're manifesting a self. And sometimes it feels like the situation and yourself blur together. But the more often you let them blur together, the more form and object and external things are in command of you because you attach yourself to those things. One of the struggles that I've had this year is too often attaching myself to whether or not, you know, something is working in the business. Does this feature work? Does this, you know, team work? Does this new offer work? Does this page convert? And sometimes when those things aren't going well, if I lose my intentionality all of a sudden, I can feel bad, I can feel frustrated. But luckily, because self improvement is a way of life. Because I journal growth day every day. So often when I press the growth prompts in Growth day's digital journal, it will ask me something and I'll journal about it and it'll just pop me back into awareness or intention to realize, oh, I'm. Oh yeah, yeah, I'm conflating myself with the situation. No, the situation is something to improved. But because I can improve the situation doesn't mean I need to diminish myself. I don't need to drag myself down just because there's something over here that can be improved or fixed or was not wanted. Just because I didn't want this situation doesn't mean I should not want myself not care for myself. Just because I hate that situation doesn't mean I should hate myself. Does that make sense? Your situation is not yourself. And when you can learn to separate those two things, you've developed what we often call in personal development or spiritual development, a higher level of consciousness. Your consciousness, yourself, your spirit is separate from just your impulsive emotions or your external realities. And that's important. You can honor yourself and honor yourself even though you're in a difficult situation. In fact, the more that you learn to honor yourself in difficult situations, I think the more you'll find that life gets better. Number eight, this one. I spoke to a lot of people this year. I think I spoke to 50 to 60,000 people live this year. I mean, in real person life, not on the Internet. On the Internet, millions. But in real life, in arenas, in hotel conference rooms, on stages. Yeah, I haven't done the numbers yet, but easily over 50,000 people. And one thing I decided to teach everybody this year that I heard a lot of feedback on was the incredible detrimental loss of time that we are experiencing in giving ourselves to distraction for multiple hours a day. You know, the average American is watching four hours of television and, and playing on social media for two hours a day. You know, it's like four to six hours of just blatant consumption and scrolling. That's not creative or the job, by the way. That's different. In a lot of their studies and surveys being done, it's asking the question, are you going in there to create or to do or to find something empowering, or are you just lost in scrolling because you don't know what else you should be doing or you don't feel like doing something else? And the average person is, you know, easily and readily admitting that they face about two hours of distraction a day. Many people, it's much more. But let's take the numbers on this because I think it's fascinating. I drew this out for a lot of people on all those stages I spoke to this year, and it was just simple for me. I just drew it out. I said, hey, two hours of distraction a day, which most people say they have. You know, they might lose an hour in the morning before lunch to distraction, just not really having clear goals or knowing what they should be focused on, or scrolling in bed for 30 minutes before they get out of bed. And then the distraction of the afternoon or evening, another hour they're lost to not knowing what they should do or just feeling uncomfortable with something. So turning to their phone or just scrolling because, you know, the highest paid engineers in the world are paid to hook you and keep you well running the numbers in audiences. I heard audible gasps. Did you know, two hours of distraction a day. Just add that up over the course of a 30 day month. Well, that's 60 hours a month. If you took those 60 hours a month and you just broke those down into, let's say, eight hour work days, that would be. You lost seven and a half work days, meaning each month you could have had an extra work week. Let me say that numbers again. If you're distracted for two hours a day, that's 60 hours a month. That comes out to be about seven and a half hours, eight hour days. So eight hour blocks of time, you could have worked in seven of those. That's an extra work week. So people are always like, how do you get so much done, Brendan? I was like, I just smile, go, I got an extra work week every month. They're like, how? And I just go, what? I'm not distracted. I don't lose myself to distraction. Now, by the way, this brings up other issues. People would say, well, Brendan, you know, you don't have kids or a dog. And I go, yeah, I, I know, but you probably don't have this many employees. Or they'll say, well, you have this, but not that. I go, yeah, but you don't have to create four pieces of content every single day and speak to this many customers and clients every day, right? We can all say, well, you don't have this or you don't have that. You know, I can say, well, you don't have a brain injury that you're trying to work through and that's a permanent part of your life. Right? We all have something. We could say, well, you're not like this, or you're not from there, or you're not that. And I want to let you know whenever you do that you are in a disempowered and antagonistic state that you must change. In fact, if you want to know a secret to lifelong success, don't diminish others. Never say, well, you don't understand because other people have walked roads that you haven't. One thing I'm proud of in my career and I think puts me in the leadership position I've been blessed to be in, where so many people turn to me. I never speak ill of other people. I'm very rare in that you can go back through, you know, all the years and all the different people in our industries who've come and gone. And so often it's easy to diminish others or question others. I never get pulled into that drama. I don't go after people. I don't diminish people because I know that each person really does walk a difficult road. I really do believe in that Buddhist idea that there's a lot of suffering in life and a lot of people really struggle. And I don't need to go and say, well, you don't understand this because you don't have this reality or that reality or this or that. I think that is very, very low level of conscientiousness and consciousness. A high level of consciousness just goes, yeah, I can accept that everybody struggles not because of their family or where they're from or all these other conditions that you might have that I might not have, but just rather, yeah, life is tough. And so I share that with you because a lot of people say, well, yeah, yeah, you get that extra work week. But I have these situations. I go, no, no, no, you're also not looking at the science of it, because they ask that and they, of course, normalize that in the studies. And so you have a situation where, no, most people are two hours distracted. And yeah, some of those people are married, some are not. Some have kids, some are not. Some are from the U.S. some are not. Some are white, some are black, some are over this country or that country. Some have this background, some have this wealth, some have. No, they, they've normalized all of that. They've accounted for all that. Most people are distracted for two hours a day. Once you understand that, it's like, wait, I'm losing an extra work week. Now, I know I also get criticism because people say, well, Brendan, an extra work week. Well, I don't want to work an extra week. I go, yeah, but. Okay, remove that idea and just understand that's 60 hours a month you could have spent with your family or doing your hobby, writing that book, starting that business, having that side hustle, mowing the lawn, cleaning the house for your wife. Hey, you do what you need to do with it. I'm just trying to point out the numbers here. Two hours of distraction leads to 60 hours lost a month. You average that across an eight hour workday, that's about seven and a half. Eight hour workdays, that's an extra work week. That's an extra work week a month. What does that mean? Well, 12 months a year, that means 12 weeks a year. 12 weeks a year means you get three more months of time every year. How'd you get so far ahead, Brendan? I get three more months of time every year than most people do just by living intentionally, being willing to get better, working on my skill sets of self regulation and social influence, and understanding that, you know, Appreciation is not required, and pressure and judgment are just part of it. And so I'm going to focus. I'm going to focus. I want to share that. I think that where I really struggle often each year, and I hope that you're enjoying the way I'm trying to do this, because I don't think it's one time. I think these are all lifelong things. That's why I'm trying to frame it to you in this broader way. If anything, often I can get pulled into negative evaluations, meaning I evaluate situations too quickly as negative. I kind of zoom in on something. I think, oh my gosh, that's catastrophic, or that's going to be brutal for me or. Or it's gonna be so much work. Then I attach myself to it and then I procrastinate because, you know, I think something is impossible or I think I'm inferior, or I'm blaming or complaining or antagonistic that somebody else caused something. And then I just go in that downward negative emotional spiral. I know you know what I'm talking about. So the lesson might be for me, and believe me, I'm teaching me as much as I'm teaching you here that negative emotions equal negative evaluations. And if you can be aware of that this year, whenever you feel negative, there's probably a negative thought pattern of evaluations where you evaluated a situation as catastrophic, you attached yourself to that situation and lost perspective, and you procrastinated or paused progress because you were stuck in that doom loop that things are impossible, you're inferior, or other people are to blame. And so you live in the emotion without realizing the evaluations can be shifted so that you can adjust the emotion. I think learning to flip negative emotions and deal with difficult emotions, as I shared with my Ultra members recently, is the big secret for the year. What else? I just shared the last idea, and I haven't really gotten this completely straightened out in my mind, but I was trying to think about, I would say, one of the major ups and downs of the year that I've had that a lot of people experienced as well, is that there were times this year where I felt like my drive was less. You ever felt like you lost your drive, your motivation, your performance edge? Has that ever happened for you? Which is like, I don't know what happened. I was so driven last week, but this week my drive is gone. I don't. I don't know what's going on. And I've been trying to understand, like, why does that happen? And obviously a lot of it comes down to what I've shared before, because your destinies, your thoughts, your goals, your habits, your energy and understanding. If I could go to another level of nuance, there's. I think I break it down into really, I think three things bear with me here. I think that so much of it comes drive. By the way, if you haven't heard that phrase or that word before, when we talk about psychological drive, usually we're talking about ambition and energy showing up in daily action, right? Oh, she's so driven. What does that mean? Well, she's motivated, but she's also doing stuff, right? There's the desire driven and then there's driven, as in, like she drives. She has high levels of agency or assertiveness into the world, so that she's taking, you know, prioritized daily action. I used to joke about that, by the way. I had that as an acronym. I said, most people need more PDA in their lives, and people laughed. And it means just prioritize daily action. But drive can simply mean, you know, ambition plus, you know, energy and prioritized daily action. And what I realized though, is just how much drive can be shaped by good relationships. I suppose this kind of comes back to my. What was it maybe my third point about how people want community and they want to be part of community or a peer group that has high clarity and consciousness who wants to challenge them. Because we want to belong to something aspirational. And when we are, there's more drive. I'd say that's one of the most unintended and surprising benefits of this year for me. One of the big AHAs again was related around Ultra. And just like, oh, wow. When I get around these people, these Ultra members, I'm fired up because they have high drive and they care about good relationships. And being in good relationships with other people who are driven lifts you up, turns that drive back on. I think so often in my world of personal development, of psychology, of high performance studies, we can forget that sociology is such a huge driver to our drive, to our motivation, to our ambition, to our showing up and being consistent. And so that old idea of good relationships and being around good peer groups, I loop back to that here. I urge you, if you're not part of Growth Day yet, to make sure you get a trial and watch what happens on January 1st together. It's incredible. It's incredible the energy that we are creating in Growth Day and Ultra. It's. I don't even know how it's happening yet, frankly. And I'm along for the ride of the momentum a little bit as well. Even though, you know, I'm the host with Ed and Natalie, it's just like, whoa, this is pretty incredible what's happening right now. This is a worldwide group of achievers saying, I want more intentional personal development. I want the performance edge, and I want a great network of amazing people to strive with and to climb with and to realize with and to manifest with and enjoy life with. And I know as I share this, so many of you are in Growth Day and ultra, and I just want to say thank you. When I think of the reality of what I shared earlier in point number five, that appreciation is not required. I also know that there's another side of that coin, which is, yeah, maybe you won't get appreciation in your life and you're not gonna let that stop you because, you know, your purpose is not tied to their praise. However, I do hope you flip the coin and you're always a person of appreciation, of gratitude that you're thankful for the people in your life. I'd like to end this one with some gratitude. My wife and my family has been so incredibly supportive these last two and a half years since we started Growth Day and started this new movement and this new company and these new offers and this, this new approach. I'm so thankful to my team who have struggled. Figure it out. Kept a good attitude, grew, took care of one another. I'm so thankful for each of you. You know, we have so many thousands of people or tens of thousands, I don't even know what the number is who listen to the Daily Fire every single day. It's like their checkpoint in the personal development. And so if you're listening in Growth Day, thank you for being here with us. If you happen to be listening out on my podcast, thank you for listening. I really do know that I'm doing my best work in my life and career right now in Growth Day. I'd love to have you over there. I really want to take a moment to thank all of our teachers in Growth Day. A lot of my audience doesn't know that in Growth day, I'm only 20% of the content. The rest is we have these teachers going live every Wednesday or going live from stage and then we do a watch party together on Wednesdays. Just depend on the month and the topic. But it's been really incredible to sit back and learn from this year. Ed Mylett and Natalie Ellis and Trent Shelton and Lisa Bilyeu and all the greats we've already had in Growth Day over a period of time. Anthony Trucks and Mel Abraham and Gloa Tanmo and Jenna Kutcher and Dr. Daniel Amen. Jamie Kern Lima. And just watching people in here, you know, who just take it to another level who've been so supportive of us. I just can't even name everybody. Coya, Webb, Jonathan. Thank you. I just can't think of all that. Ben Newman's been in with us. Geez, I can't even. I should have had the list in front of me. It's been so many people who've been so incredible. John Gordon, just giving time into Growth Day, showing up, teaching, being awesome, being incredible, really caring for this community. You know, these are incredibly high paid keynote speakers just coming in and just crushing it. I didn't mention Alex Ortner earlier. You know, I just think of Jasmine Starrs being taught. I mean she was so amazing. We had Jessica Ortner at the beginning. Lori Harder has been crushing. Mel Robbins, of course, as an og doing one of our biggest challenges. I mean, the caliber of teachers and their belief in just showing up for you to give and to serve has been one of the great honors of my life. Because when your peers understand you're trying to start a movement, they show up for you. That's other level I'm grateful for this whole industry. So many people into personal development, so many great influencers and thought leaders, podcasters, bloggers, teachers, YouTubers, people using social media for good have come into the world of Growth Day and offered to help share and grow it. And you know, I feel like we're just getting started, we're just getting warmed up were part of a early conversation and a much needed conversation in the world about self regulation and social influence at a more advanced level. And I hope that sharing some of these lessons that I learned from this year, but also frankly, lessons I observed from my clients, from our millions of students, from the tens of millions of DMs and comments and messages and emails that we all interact with and send throughout the year. These themes that I've recommended and suggested here as lessons are things that I'm working on too. And our community, we're all striving together to make self improvement a way of life, to do our journaling each day, to score our week each day, to set our goals, to take challenges, to learn from mentors, to connect with the community. That's all the stuff that we're doing in Growth Day and we're just getting warmed up. I hope that as you end this year, you'll Share your appreciation with somebody today. Is there a family member, a friend, a teammate, somebody specific who you're thinking of, who just before, you know, you end the year and you rush off and you charge into the New year, you can think about them just for a second and you could share some gratitude with them. What an amazing way to end the year with gratitude and appreciation to another. With that, I love to end with the final charge into the New Year with a little bit of a tradition for those who've been with me for a long time. I wrote a book called the activating the 10 human drives that make you feel alive. And every year as we head into the New year, since that book came out, I always read the opening, sort of, I would say more philosophical or poetic message that I wrote way back then. I think the book came out in 2012. It's called the Charge, and it was one of the first books that I brought in a lot of neuroscience research into that, trying to figure out what makes people feel alive. But I love the metaphor of the Charged life and I wrote about. I would love to share it with you because this opening is called Out There. It's about getting out there in 2024, even though I wrote it, what, over a decade ago. And I hope you'll enjoy it as the tradition ends this episode. The Charged Life, the truly lived life is not a routine existence in some quaint, picturesque village of safety, certainty. No, the life worth living is out there in the wooded wilds of the unknown, on the craggy battlefields that test our wits and wills in the daily fights with our own demons. It is found during the long onward slog, through the storms and strife, when we hear only the whispers and taunts of our foes and opponents stronger than we, on the ground where we are knocked sprawling and forced to to face our own weaknesses, and on the mountaintops that we reach only because we pitted our every ounce of virtue, strength, character and courage to keep climbing. No matter the slings and arrows flung at our backs or the barriers thrown up before us. It is out there that we come face to face with the best in ourselves and with our destiny. It is out there, in a new world of uncertainty and adventure that we push ourselves better ourselves, realize ourselves. It is only in the herculean quest for something more that life fills us with wisdom and meaning, but only after we have paid with our sweat and at times, our tears. It is in the marching on, when we are tired and weak and fearful, and in the camaraderie of those fellow warriors we have striven with, our brothers and sisters and family and friends who cheered us on and toiled with us despite the messiness and apparent madness of it all. It is out there on the path less traveled, an uncharted path chosen by each of us alone, an often meandering, overgrown path that leads only to another unpaved road or open field of opportunity where we must strike out once more with the same hope for victory and transcendence. It is out there, when we have the guts to stand before the world as who we truly are, when we peer into the souls of those around us and finally see in them the image of the Divine, that we plunge ourselves bravely and unconditionally into love that has no bottom, one or boundary. It is out there, outside the confines of our comforts and the pleasures of our accumulations, beyond our architecture of the routine, that we slip the bonds of our limiting beliefs, soar magnificently above our own shortcomings and express our highest selves. It is out there, in a world rich with choice and challenge and fear and freedom, that your greatest gifts and adventures are await you. Listen. It is out there that destiny calls. Be bold and ready yourself. It is time to charge once again. Happy New Year's, my friends. I'm so excited to see you and serve with you in 2024. Thanks for listening today.