In this motivational video, Brendon Burchard introduces the concept of "identity themes"—core self‑beliefs that shape a person’s habits, decisions, and overall life trajectory. He outlines six primary themes: (1) I’m Deserving – believing you merit love, abundance, and joy; (2) I’m Ready – feeling prepared and committed to take the next step; (3) I’m Capable – trusting you have the competence and confidence to solve problems; (4) I’m Open – maintaining openness to learning, presence, and new perspectives; (5) I’m Persistent – persisting through rejection, chaos, and fear; and (6) I’m a Role Model – seeing yourself as an exemplar for family, community, and colleagues, which drives higher virtue and leadership. Burchard explains how each theme influences behavior, offers practical prompts (e.g., mantras, studying, interviewing experts), and ties them to daily habits across health, relationships, career, and spirituality. He encourages listeners to audit their positive and negative habits, rewrite them to align with empowering identity themes, and take concrete actions such as writing down habits, adopting new mantras, and seeking coaching. The video concludes with a call to subscribe, ask questions, and join his High Performance Experience Coaching program.
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I'd like to talk about this concept I call identity themes. It's that, you know, we all have an identity about who we are and what's possible for us. And sometimes we struggle, though, to figure out how do I need to look at myself and my life so I can reach that next level. So what I found is there's six primary themes that run through all of our lives and our identity that really shapes who we are today. And if we can look at each of these six areas and discover, how have you been viewing yourself as a person? Then we might be able to change it. So that will help you progress even faster in life. The first identity theme that can really move the needle for you is the identity theme of I'm deserving. Do you feel deserving of love? Do you feel deserving of abundance? Do you feel deserving of joy? Do you feel like you deserve to be happy? I know those are basic questions, but I can share with you. So many people don't, but they've never really thought about. They've never seen, like, gosh, so many parts of my life, I didn't feel like I deserved anything good. So I never worked towards anything good. So many parts of my life, I didn't feel like I was adequate or worthy. So I never put myself out there and tried new things. And if there's ever a point in your life where you decide, you know what I do deserve, that I deserve some good things in my life, I hope you'll do it. Now. Some people, they develop that as a mantra. You know, they literally say, you know what? I deserve happiness now. I deserve joy now. I deserve to feel better now. And when you can say that I deserve something, you are sort of calling it from the universe. You're phoning it in. The universe is saying, oh, wait, wait, hey, she's ready. As soon as you make that turn in your identity, I'm deserving, things open up for you. The second area that people really struggle with and I think can really be the changing day in your life is I'm ready. I'm ready to take this next action. I'm ready for the transition. I'm ready for the good things in my life right now. Are you ready and are you committed to that? You know, I've always. I work with a lot of Olympians, and a lot of the time when you're doing their conditioning, their mental conditioning for it, when you get them on the line, like a sprinter, as an example, like, I'll get an Olympic class sprinter on the line, And I'll sit down, I'll be talking to him about what he's about to go do. And the ones who feel ready, boom, they're like a bolt. They're out of there. The ones who, like, you know what? I didn't train enough. You know, I should have done this, I should have done that. I'm not really ready. They always lose the race. The person who believes they're ready wins the race. Next. Do you feel capable in your identity throughout your life? Have you felt capable?
Like, I got this?
Like, you had the competency and the confidence to do something. Really think about it. If you thought about the whole span of your life, have you thought, I got this, I can figure this out. And ultimately, capability, it's just a mental contraption. You just decide one day, like, okay, I don't know how it might turn out, but I know I'm going to work towards making it turn out positive. I know I'm going to figure it out and frankly, do the work. If you don't feel capable, I say, you know what? Go study. You know, I don't feel capable. Go interview people to figure out how they did. I don't feel capable. Read books on that topic. It's okay if you don't feel capable. Do the work to become capable. The next one is, as you're marching towards all of this, can you have an identity that is open? Are you open to learning? What's the next level opening for you? I'm going to open my mind again to my spouse. Not believe I know what they're going to do. I. I'm gonna open my mind to see who they really are and what they really want now, not what happened last month or four months ago. I'm gonna be open in this moment. Presence comes from an openness and awareness and a mindfulness to this moment. So as you open your presence, you open to the world. Another identity theme is persistence. Do you feel like you've been a persistent person throughout your life? And again, it's okay if you haven't any of these. It's okay if I'm going through these and you're like, geez, Brennan, I'm kind of. I've been off my game for a couple years. That's okay. That's why we're here. We're here to do the work, to start the new identity, to start the new habits and start the new desires of your life, to move forward. So it's okay if you haven't, but if you have been persistent, you know that those who are persistent, they get all the rewards of life. It's so easy to give up, but you need to persist through the rejection, the. The turmoil, the chaos, the fear. If you just keep going, you'll develop those skills, you'll develop those capabilities, and you'll develop the identity that says, I got this, too, and then the last one. And I've never seen an identity theme that's so powerful in people's lives, ever. When I think about the most successful and the most fulfilled, the most joyous, happy people, I know they have this identity theme and they work on it a lot. And their identity theme is that they see themselves as a role model. They see themselves as a role model for their kids. They see themselves as a role model for their neighbors. They see themselves as a role model in the community. And so they end up having usually more virtue or more values that are demonstrated to people. They have a different level of character. And those who want to be a role model, they end up being those who get promoted. They end up being those ones who think about the things they're communicating to their kids. They're the ones who, when, you know, everyone's volunteering, they kind of gather around that person because that person ends up being a little bit more of the leader because they had that intention to say, I want to be attentive to my behaviors and my energy and how that is coming across to other people because I want to be a good person for them. And so if you haven't had that identity thing for a while, this is a great time to take that in. Think about the habits you've had in your life that are good and that are bad, you know, and really think about how they have affected your life and who you view yourself as today. So, for example, a habit you might have had in the past, you might say, well, brendon, you know, I smoke. I'll say, well, how has that affected your identity and how you feel about yourself now? Maybe you say, well, I feel like because I smoke, I'm not a healthy person. I can't be healthy. Maybe that's true for you. And if that is, you should know that. See, all our habits really affect us. Our routines, the things that we continually do. They affect how we view ourselves. And all of them stack up to either we're proud of ourselves or we're not. We're confident or we're not, we're sad or we're happy. So I'd love for you to just take some time and figure out, well, what are the main habits of your life that has really shaped your identity, that is how you feel about yourself. So some of these habits could be things like, well, my habit is I run every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. I'm a jogger and so that makes me feel very healthy. Or we might move into your relationships. Because see, we have habits in all different parts of our lives. We have habits in our health, we have habits in our relationships, we have habits in our career, we have habits in our spirituality, all the areas we spoke about earlier and and those habits are either setting us up to win and feel good about ourselves or they're making us feel worse about ourselves. So take the time, write down what are your positive and negative habits and then write down what could be more empowering habits for you. Hey all, I hope you enjoyed this episode.
If you did, would you please smash that subscribe button and also post any questions you have down below? Because it's these questions that you're all asking that that inspires these episodes. I'd love to hear what you think about it. Also, if you would love to join us on our next upcoming Live training. We call it our High Performance Experience Coaching Program. If you like some coaching and have some perspective and get some two hours of Live with me every single month, then click the link in the post down below so you can join us in HPX Coaching. I'd love to give you some more strategies, more insight, and more interaction to help you reach your next level of success.
Until next time.
Again, please subscribe, Share this video with anybody who could be inspired by it today. And thanks one more time for being part of my community.
