The Power of Intention and Mindfulness

Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard and welcome to a best of edition of the Brendon show. These best of episodes feature training that I have done live, sometimes on online to tens of thousands of people or live on stage where I was speaking.

On some stages across the world.

Or these might be some of my monthly training programs and highlights of those that I do every single month with our monthly students. So I know you're gonna really enjoy these because these are a little bit more of a deep dive look at some of my training as a personal and professional development trainer. You know, I focus so much on helping you find that deeper level of motivation and start practicing some of those high performance habits with. Well, you hear me talk about many of those concepts in these special episodes here. These are my best of trainings only and exclusively right here on the Brendon show. So I hope you enjoyed them. Please note that as you hear me speak in many of these, you'll hear me reference something because sometimes I'll have been training live or on video or on stage or through a broadcast. So you might not be able to see something that I'm suggesting or motioning to or maybe even drawing out on a flip chart or motioning towards on a presentation, but you'll get the gist of it. So but make sure you bust out your journal, take some good notes here because this is really valuable insights on the mindset or the strategies that you need to adopt in order to improve your life. And if you want to go and get more content like this, but much more deeper and have more of an interactive relationship with me in this type of training, make sure you join our high performance monthly training program. That's our monthly subscription program where I go live with you and our high performance students every single month and I train on a new topic or a new piece of research that we've created from the high performance institute and I train on that and then I do Q and A and actual live coaching, interactive coaching with people every single month. That's called high performance monthly and you can Access it at brendan.com monthly, that's brendon.com monthly B-R-E-N-O-N.com monthly to get deeper dive training similar to this. So if you like this, you would love that training program. But without further ado, let's jump in right now to one of the Brendon show's best of trainings.

What are the secrets of the world's most successful, influential and fulfilled people? How do they think? How do they behave? How do they interact? What have they done to stand out against the mediocre masses so they can live the lives of their dreams and join the top 2%? So I know, as I share some of the things here with you today, you might say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it, I got it, I got it. But you know, the people who say, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it, I got it, and they kind of blow things off, they blow learning off, they blow insights off. They often miss the most valuable piece of wisdom that could turn their life around because it's usually not the most profound. Big new change in neural science that changes our life. It's we finally get an idea and we put it into play more consistently. You don't need to be told to be kind to people. You've heard it before. But if you went out each day with the intention of being 50% more kind to people, 100% more kind to people, it would change the quality and the direction of your life. So as I share some of these things, while they might be common sense, your job is to put them in a common practice into your life to take these ideas and analyze yourself. Say, where am I at with these ideas? Have I really understood them? Have I really put them into play? But also then to wear a different hat, how could you use these same ideas to help other people? Because one of the great concepts of becoming the top 2%, it's those folks who also turn back and lend a hand and say, hey, look, let me help you improve your life. So maybe some of these concepts you can use to teach and inspire your kids, your teams, the people you have a blessing to interact with every single day. The first thing we want to share with you about the top 2%, what is it about them? Where do they gain all that power and the influence from? Where did all that success and the joy and that fulfillment come from in their life? It comes from, first and foremost, we want to talk to you about the power of intention, that the top 2% are incredibly intentional people, that they not just have a purpose or not just have a goal, but in each of their daily habits and interactions, there's an intention there about specific things I want to share with you today. But what is this idea of intention? I know you've heard it before, and I know that sometimes the power of intention or the concept of intention sort of gets made fun of a little bit. You know, some people say, oh, all these people wandering around with good intentions, but they don't have Good actions. So they're, you know, they're worthless. And there is a reality that intention isn't enough. But if we don't start with that, you know, if there's no intention, there's never going to be proper initiative, right? There's a lot of people in this world and you see them and maybe you've been guilty of this. You're so busy, you're doing like a million different things. You got 12 different projects, you say yes to everything, and one day you wake up completely overwhelmed, freaked out and wondering why your life is off the rails. Yes, you've been busy, but you haven't been working towards your life's work. There's a difference between busy work and life's work. Most people are in busy work, they're doing what they're told. Most people are in busy work, they're replying to everybody else's needs, desires, demands. Most people are in busy work, they're working and laboring all day, but not feeling like they're getting ahead or doing what they really want. The reason that happens is, yes, they have a lot of initiative, they're doing a lot of things. They're, quote, unquote, succeeding in their own minds. And sometimes society would say they're succeeding, but then you hear about these same people crashing and burning, overdosing, becoming addicted, becoming miserable, becoming upset. Or suddenly they sit down with you ever have a friend sit down with you at lunch and say, I'm miserable. And you're like, what? You're doing all these amazing things, and they're like, I don't want to do them. The power of intention was not there. They just kind of started doing things because maybe they were good at it. Maybe they were told they should do that. Maybe they fell into something and the intention wasn't there about, for that person of, what is it I really want to be about in my life? What is it I want my career to be about? What is it I want my hobbies to be about and my relationships to be about? What are the dreams that I have specifically that I want to achieve? These aren't questions that they've given deep thought to. See, intention isn't just. Intention is not what we would call just sort of impulse. It's different, right? Impulses I feel like doing that. It's a quick desire, right? It's that immediate sense that I should try this. Some people call it intuition, even, that just something comes up for them. Intention is different. Intention requires real thought, real practice to sit down and go, what is It I want to be about. And that power of intention sometimes as you get busy goes away. I don't know about you, but you know, as I built my businesses and my brands and everything that I stand for, from all the videos that we shoot to the best selling books, to the multi million dollar businesses and brands, as I built all of those, there were times that I would have to kind of reset myself. There'd be a Sunday that I'd wake up and go, whoo, I need to revisit this right now because I'm doing a lot of stuff, but it's not taking me where I want to go. Because without intention, we're just always going to be caught into the waves and into the rivers and into the directions and the pushings of other people. And suddenly what ends up happening all over, over and over and over and over again is the person without intention leads a life without real joy, right? Because there's just nothing for them there. They're not even thinking. And part of, I don't know how you feel, but I think the major problems in people's lives and the major problems in our world is comprised of people not thinking. Intention is thinking in advance before action, thinking in advance before you do something. And when you do that, you think in advance, it makes you a different kind of person. You can't find any celebrated leading thought leader or celebrated politician, celebrated leader of our times who didn't talk about the importance of thinking. You read Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson, one of our founders of our country here in the United States, who just talked about that incredible importance of contemplation. You read Henry David Thoreau, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and every single leading psychologist of today. And it's all about using your mind.

To direct your life.

It's all about understanding that our thoughts control the direction of our life. Every New Age person has said that, Every spiritual advisor and now every neuroscientist says, look, you have to use the power of your thoughts. You have to be intentional about living your life. It's all the same things. The power of thinking is the power of intention at the end of the day. Because just as you contemplate and think things, you have to decide, what is it? I want to go now and be, do, accomplish, achieve. So we have to think about that. What is it for you? Now here's what I've discovered in my studies about high performance people and about the top 2% over and over and over again. They have three specific intentions that they've gotten real clarity about because you know, I Always like to say, no clarity, no change, no goals, no growth. So we have to begin with. Okay, Brandon, Intentional about what? What should I be intentional about? Three specific things that I found the top 2% are always intentional about. The first thing that they're intentional about is who do they want to be. And as generic as that sounds, they are specific about it. One of the practices we have people do at our programs, like High Performance Academy, is ask people to come up with three specific words that they would like to define them and describe them. Three specific words, right? That those words, those words, they're going to live each day intentionally. And here's a very simple tactic to do with this. We have them take those three words, and then we have them program them into their phone as an alarm. And that alarm shows up three times a day on their phone. It buzzes. Their phone buzzes. They look down. These three words are on their phone. And three times a day drives people nuts, right? But guess what? It does. It teaches them. It conditions their mind to be focused.

On those three words.

So, for example, and everyone has different three words. My three words are present, enthusiastic, and bold. And I can share with you. I wasn't those three things. I became those three things because of this. I said, you know what? I was being criticized at one point in my life of not being present enough, right? With the people I loved, with people I cared for. I just was always distracted in my own ways of thinking. And you know how this goes. There's a lot going on. And sometimes you're not distracted, sometimes you are. And when you're distracted, your kids can feel it. Your family can feel it. Your co workers, your teams, they can feel when you're distracted. And so I said, you know, I'm going to have the intention to become a present person, someone who is right there with them. They can feel and sense my energy right there, my intention. In every interaction that I go into, I'm going to be like that. I'm going to be a present person. I said, I want to be enthusiastic in my life because I wanted to feel excited, you know, So I was like, I'm going to make that happen for myself. I wasn't always this, I guess energized about things. I decided to become this. And I also wanted to be bold. Now, I was never a bold person, but I wanted to succeed in life, and I knew I needed to have more boldness and more courage, so I made that my intention. So what are your three words? What three words could describe the best of you. And could you remind yourself of those three words each and every single day about who you want to be? The second thing we've learned about the top 2% is they have an incredible. Because they are intentional about things, they also have to measure them, right? So they have this incredible discipline of being mindful. They're thoughtful, yes, but they're mindful of some specific things. Now, by the way, mindfulness is the new buzzword all around the world, right, for executives and entrepreneurs because they've done all these mindful studies, right? They've found out that, gosh, just people, if they'll just be more mindful, even if they'll just meditate for 20 minutes a day, their productivity goes up, their level of satisfaction goes up, their levels of depression, self hatred, angst, anxiety and stress go down just by teaching them to be mindful. And this is nothing new, as you know, even though it's gotten all the press lately, it's everywhere. Especially, you know, a lot of my high performance clients are in Silicon Valley and you know, they run major, you know, billion dollar type companies. And these folks, they're all. Now everyone's into it. Everyone's into it. I mean, Oprah and Ellen and Howard Stern and Jerry Seinfeld and some of the biggest, you know, entrepreneurs, entertainers in the world are avid, avid meditators. Why? Because it helps them become more mindful to their everyday experience. It's not just about that 20 minutes of meditating. It's that halo effect of the 20 minutes of meditating makes them go throughout the day more mindful, more thoughtful, more at ease in their mind, but present to the situations around them, which is what mindfulness is really about. There's an ease to the mind, but there is also a presence to everything around them. And mindfulness, you know, the old spiritual traditions would have used the word just generally awareness, right? This idea of becoming self awareness, Self awareness is the first step to transformation. We have to be mindful about who are we, how are we interacting, what's our day like? Like I talked about in the Power of Intention, but we have to go even further into mindfulness in order to become the top 2%, at least in terms of our happiness. We certainly know. So what does that mean? Well, to be more mindful today, some very specific, very simple things I want you to try and do. First, being mindful. Here's all I want you to do. I want you to be more attentive and aware to all of your senses. It's a big order, actually, to be attentive and aware to all of your senses. You're going throughout the day. So if I walk into this room, when I walk in the studio, I immediately kind of scan, I look for what are the colors in the room, what's it smell like in here, what's the temperature like in here? What's the pulse and vibe of this room feel like in here? It's tapping into our real senses about our experience. Again, part of the challenge that most people are really facing today in their own happiness is they're blazing ahead so fast and so many of them completely souped up on some syrupy cocktail of caffeine that they're just kind of, they're actually in a whitewash. They're all, there's like a frenzy to them. You know what I'm talking about? It's not enthusiasm or joy or real energy. It's just kind of like, it's like this high strung, high anxiety, like, wah. You know those people, I know you might be one of them. I've been one of them before. That's because we're not mindful. It's not that we can't be energized and passionate as we'll talk about. You can absolutely be that, but still be aware that to your surroundings. Still be aware to who you are, still be aware to how you're interacting with people. Still be aware to your overall senses and mindfulness. For a lot of people, even though that becomes a high flute and word self awareness, mindfulness, one way to help them land that concept is to say, I just want you to be mindful to your energy throughout the day. I want you to tune back into your energy. You know, how do you feel right now on a level of 1 to 10, 10 being energized, you know, authentic joyful enthusiasm and energy and zero being dead. So where are you? Like are you dead or are you 10 on the level of physical energy in your life? Physical and if you want to spiritual energy for yourself, where are you? And to realize that over time that being mindful that it's not just this sense of oh gosh, I feel crappy. If you feel crappy, then what do you have to do? You have to apply rule number one, the power of intention. Okay, I don't like the way I feel right now. I intend to feel better immediately. Right now. The body and the brain is incredibly powerful at following directions that you give it. Your mind can give your body, your brain, your spirit directions. And the directions can be something as simple as, look, man, be thankful Right now, you deserve to have more energy. In my programs, we always tell people, look, the power plant doesn't have energy. It generates energy. See, I'm mindful to my energy throughout the day. And if I don't like the number I'm at, if I'm a level four, then I will myself into a level six or seven just by focusing on it and amping myself up. I can move, talk, breathe, gesture differently to get a different energetic result in my life. But I couldn't do that if I wasn't mindful to it first. Part of being mindful is measuring things, right? Measuring how we feel and sense the situation. So if you need to land that concept of being mindful, be more aware to the energy you have throughout the day. Also be more mindful to your thoughts, your emotions, and whether or not those two things are supporting you. You know, a lot of us have a lot of recurring thoughts over and over and over again. They just pop up, pop up, pop up. And if they're always popping up in our head and derailing us, it's because we're mindful to them. We hear them, oh my gosh. But we don't layer an intention over them to improve them, change them, solidify them, strengthen them, whatever we need to do. Like, for me, I'm so mindful of my thoughts as they come up throughout the day. I often laugh at myself. I hear something negative. I'm like, where did that come from? That's silly. Replace it using the power of intention, having a different intention for my mind and conditioning that into myself. How do you do that? Like I said earlier, you set up reminders for yourself sometimes. Like for me on my phone, part of having those three words about who I want to become is making me more mindful to them.

All right, my friend, I hope that you enjoyed that best of episode. Was that inspiring? Were you fired up? Did you love it? If you did, make sure you do me a favor, go out on social media somewhere and share that episode. You know, just go out, post it somewhere, post yourself listening to it. Make sure you hashtag the Brendon show, because when you do that, I can look you up and we can find you on Instagram and post that on social media. And sometimes we do all expense paid trips to people we find. We just randomly select people, we send them gifts, autograph books, swag T shirts, all expense paid trips to some of my seminars. So make sure you let us know, share what you thought about this episode and out there on the social media worlds and then we can find you and celebrate you. And also I would love to invite you to join us in our high performance monthly program. So just go to brendan.com monthly. That's brendon.com monthly. That's where we do deeper dive trainings like you just heard. But we do that every single month and there's some live Q and A there and I do some giveaways and we give students in that month monthly program tickets to my seminars and some extra special training on leadership. So make sure you check it out@brendon.com monthly. I appreciate you being part of this community of so many people dedicated to finding that deeper drive of motivation and practicing high performance habits so that they can become extraordinary in their careers. In your personal life, in your health, you can live an extraordinary quality of life. And sometimes you just need a little bit more training and a little bit more nudge, a little bit more energy, a little bit more drive and consistency. And I'm hoping that being part of this community with the Brendon show, I'm providing that to you in some way. So thank you, my friend, for listening. I look forward to seeing you or listening with you on the next episode of the B and D O N show. It.