Reaching Greatness

Welcome to the charged life. This is Brendan Burchard. People always ask, do we actually achieve greatness or is it part of our lifelong journey? What's your opinion? Let's talk today about greatness. Now, the challenge with greatness is of course it sounds like a big egoic thing to say I'm great or you're great. We don't like to often talk about ourselves that way because it sounds like we're self congratulatory. However we do, honestly, if we're being straight with ourselves, we all want to achieve a life of greatness in some way. We want to be great to our family, to our friends. We want to contribute greatly to the world. So let's talk about how first you define greatness and then when do we actually have it? If I think about the topic of greatness, immediately three things come to mind. Number one, a life of greatness begins with the power of intention. You can't become great if you don't have some kind of intention for what that means to you. How do you define it? How would you know if you went through your entire life and you were in the last moments of your life and you look backwards and you look backwards, how would you know if you lived a great life or not? Like, how would you know? How would you define it? How would you discern it? For me, many of you guys know I was in a car accident when I was a 19 year old kid. And it gave me the blessing of attention. It taught me that at the end of our lives we're all going to ask, did I live? Did I love? Did I matter? At least that's how I know I'm going to evaluate my life. So a life of greatness, what does that mean to me? It means each day I wake up and I live intentionally so that each day I feel like I'm alive and vibrant and living. I take challenges, I take risks. I'm living my own life. Each day I feel like I'm loving and connecting or doing something through my heart. Each day I feel like I'm doing something that matters, something that helps other people, that makes a contribution. So for me, greatness means that intentionally living each day. So when I go to bed tonight or when I finally have my last breath, I can say I live the life I imagined for myself. I lived a life where I had intention each day and I strive to live that intention. Greatness begins with intention. Second, big thing that comes to my mind is kindness. No one would ever call somebody great if they were a complete Jerk to everybody, right? It's hard to think of those people we imagine as the great leaders of our time. For example, you don't think of Nelson Mandela or Mahatma Gandhi or Martin Luther King and God. They're jerks. You know, these were people who were inspiring people because they had compassion and heart and kindness for other people. And I think kindness is a virtue that's gotten lost in our modern society. I think it's why a lot of people aren't reaching their full powers of greatness is because they're impatient, they're short with other people, they're quickly judgmental. They're looking for the evil in other people or what they did wrong versus the good in other people. If you want to live a life of greatness, it starts with kindness. You have to have some kind of connection with other people, because who's going to define you as great? Just yourself? Or is greatness also going to be something that others define you as? They're going to say, you know what? She was a great mom. You know what? He was a great dad. You know what that was a great leader. You know, that person was a great person in our community. When you think about the people who you really consider great in your life, I don't mean just people on the media or in the, you know, the covers of the magazine. I mean the people who you really love and adore, the people you respect. Maybe that role model who's a grandparent or that teacher who is the greatest teacher you ever had. Think about what made them similar. And I promise they all came from different backgrounds. They had different experiences and different skills. But I bet they were kind to you and other people. So maybe gauge yourself today. How kind have you been with the people around you? Have you been really demonstrating heart? Have you really been being compassionate to others? Have you withheld the judgment so that you can give the benefit of the doubt? Kindness? And a third thing that comes to mind in everything when I think about greatness off the top of my head is service, contribution. Great people looked beyond themselves to help, to lead, to serve other people. They weren't just thinking about, I am great. They were thinking about, how do I make you great? You know, it's like Zig Ziglar taught us. The way that you achieve what you really want in your life is you help other people achieve what they want in their life. Through service, we develop true strength. Through service, we develop that real capacity to reach beyond our own comfort zones, to do something that we feel like really does matter. Greatness but the challenge is today we live in a very selfish and selfie focused world where I understand that. I mean, I'm shooting a video myself. Okay, I get it. But at the end of the day, you know, if you watch any of my videos, I hope that you'll sense that I'm always talking about you, your life and your experience, and asking you every single video, every single podcast, everything that I do to gauge yourself, to rate yourself. You know, how have you been doing in the realm of service? Have you been serving with excellence? Have you been really giving, really pushing to contribute things that you're proud of? Are you focused on the details, really caring about getting things right, or you just kind of going through the motions? Because I think when we look at the people who, you know, achieve greatness, they weren't just kind of half assing it. You know, they were really into mastery of service. You know, they wanted to create the best business, the best product, the best way to serve other people that they possibly could. And they obsessed about it. They wanted to create raving fans because they obsessed about the service aspect of it. They were out to make a great difference in the world and do it with excellence. So when I think about greatness, that's what comes to my mind. Number one, the power of intention. Number two, being kind to other people. And number three, leading with service, trying to do great things for great people with great amounts of excellence. So the question ultimately comes down to, based on all those things, are you ever achieving greatness or is it part of everyday life? And I hope you can realize it's part of everyday life. You. You wake up with intention. Have intention for the day you're more likely to be living from your greatest self. Are you actually being kind to other people? That puts you in play for greatness. Are you actually in that service mindset? If you are doing those things, you are living a great life. It's not just the cumulative stacking of a life that makes somebody great. It's how they approach each and every single day. Cause you all know this day could be our last. These things, I think, will help you achieve greatness and live what we call the charge life. Hey, my friend, it's Brendan. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Do me two favors. Number one, subscribe to this channel so that you continue to get updates every time I release new training for you. And number two, if you would like to get ahead a little faster in life, what I'd like to do is give you my 10 steps to achieving anything 10 times faster. So if you have a big goal, a big dream, a big mission in life, and you just like to achieve it faster, what would you need to do? You know, this is exactly what I keep next to my computer or next to my bed. And every time I have a big dream, a big goal, I open it up and I kind of use this as my checklist to get ahead faster. Because you and I both know if you're going to be more effective or more productive or you are going to achieve your goals and your dreams faster, you're going to have to switch your perspective a little bit on achievement itself. You have to adopt new thinking patterns and habits. You're going to have to have new daily rituals and habits. And your entire approach to learning and skill development must be better. So in order to help you do that, go to brendan.com 10x that's Brendan B R E N D O n.com 10x and you can download this guide for free. Just tell me your name and email. I'm happy to email that to you for free. The same guide I use to achieve any goal or dream faster. Thanks for tuning in. Until I see you next time, go out there every single day of your life. Live fully, love openly and make your difference today.