The Year of High Performance - COURAGE and the feeling we're after

Welcome to the Charged Life. This is Brendan Burchard. Hey, my friend. Welcome to a special edition of the Charged Life. I hope that you're enjoying this time of year. And that motivation, that fire for making an extraordinary 2017 is still burning in your belly. I'm so honored to be here with you every single week on the Charge Life. And what we thought we would do this week is run for you our piece of our special New Year's live webcast. Now, if you didn't make it to that, that's probably because you're not one of my paying High Performance monthly members, which is cool. But I thought we'd take this little segment out of it and help you realize what is that feeling of high performance? Really? What does it feel like? How do you get your psychology and your mindset aligned to create the real feelings and momentum you want in your life? That's what this is going to teach you this session here. Now, obviously in the session, I'll mention that I'm live with people. Cause I was doing a live webcast at the time. So just kind of disregard all that. But listen for the lessons. This is an episode you want to take out your journal. You're going to have a lot of breakthroughs about your personal life, about how you think, and about how you really want to feel and progress in life. So take lots of notes and if you're ready or willing to go to the next level, come to our High Performance Academy seminar. We got a live event coming up in San Diego, March 9th through 12th of this year. That's San Diego, March 9th through the 12th. And you can learn all about it by going to hpa.brendan.com that's HPA, Brendon. B R E N D O N. And you can learn all about the live seminar, the sort of gold standard in personal and professional development. Come Join us for 4 days of proven mindset habits, tools and strategies to get to the next level of high performance. With that, just enjoy this session. You're really going to like all of these high performance takeaways. And you're going to find some real magic that will last all year long for you. Trust me. Get your journal. Get ready. Here we go. We'll jump in right now. So this is the year of high performance. I want to begin with one big question as we do this very simple request, my friend. Bust out your journals. This is going to be a very transformative experience for you if you choose it to be today. You know, this could just be something you're playing in the background as you're cleaning up the house on New Year's. The this could be something you're just listening to as you're out for a drive or something. But I want to share with you, this can be transformative just like any other training or any other moment in our life, if we choose it to be. And what I would recommend that you do is that you do something very, very simple. And that is get out a journal, get out a piece of paper, shut the door. Take some time away from the world today so that you can learn to engage the world in a different way. Take some time here to open up a brand new journal for 2017 so that you can start thinking about what this year is really going to be about, what it must be about, and what you can be doing to succeed at higher levels. So you already took the time. You're here. And if you're here with me live, congratulations. If you're watching the replay later in High Performance Monthly, awesome. I honor you too. But only those who are live right now will qualify for some of the all expense paid trips. We'll do the Q and A, all the cool stuff that I like to do for you guys. I want to begin in your journal. So if you got a new journal, open up to page one right now. Okay. Or if you got a piece of paper, whatever, get to page one right now because this is the question that I want you to consider. And here we go. We're just going to jump right into the training if that's okay with you. In High Performance, I want you to ask this question of yourself. Will this be a. And write this down. Will this be a courageous year for me? I actually want you to write it down. Will this be a courageous year for me? And then do something silly with me. Ask it out loud. Will this be courageous year for me? Because the truth is, we're going to decide that every single day that we wake up. Some people never make the decision. They go through their life and they're just reacting to everything that's coming to them. And because they're doing that, they're not sensing that forward progress because the courage isn't there. And courage is not something that you have by nature or biology or by luck. Courage is a decision. And that's what we want you to make today, to make this year. This is going to be a courageous year for me. What does that mean to you? For you, that might mean you're going to start that new business, write that book, take that leap of faith, Ask for what you've really been wanting. Tell the person you're unhappy, Ask for this, Go do that. But go this year, push this year, progress this year, face those fears this year. For too many people, 2016 became a little bit of a year of avoidance. You know, they avoided the conflict, they avoided sharing what they really believed. They avoided sharing their values, they avoided asking for help, they avoided the inevitable difficulties of life. And, you know, if you've trained with me before, you know, I like to say that avoidance is a great short term strategy to avoid discomfort, but it is also a great long term strategy to guarantee suffering. What have you been avoiding, facing or doing because you didn't choose to summon up the courage? I want to begin our session today as we have so much time today. I want to begin it with that level of challenge for you, no matter who you are or where you're at. I've got friends who are watching this right now who I know are a billionaire, literally a billionaire is watching this with you right now. I have friends who have hundreds of millions of dollars or fans or friends. I've got people watching with you right now, right now who are multimillionaires, some people watching this right now who are also just beginning. But they have that. There's a restlessness and a stirring in them that says this year must be different. They can feel it. You know, it's like a. There's almost a frustration and it's not a negative frustration. A lot of people think, you know, well, frustration is bad. I don't think frustration is bad. I don't even think guilt is bad. Sometimes we, we need something inside that makes us want to change. You know, there's only two things that change your life, my friend. Either something new comes into your life, new friend, new opportunity, new strategy, new habit, new mentor, or something new comes from within, some new fire in the belly. And I hope you have that this year. I hope you have a new hunger, a new need, a new drive, something inside that's saying this has to be different this year. And I hope that there's a lot of ambition to that for you. And if it's going to happen, if something extraordinary is going to happen this year, it's going to be because there's going to be more. And you write this down. If something extraordinary is going to happen this year, it's going to be because you will have more mornings in which you choose to be courageous. That day you have that thing on your calendar and you know it scares you a little bit. And instead of looking at it going, well, you know, I'll just keep doing what's easy over here. That morning, you'll look at that thing and you'll say, today, I'm going to engage that. I know that's going to make me a little stressed today. I know that's going to worry me today. I know that might not be popular day, but today I'm choosing courage. Today, I'm going to go for that. And I'm here to tell you, my friends, if this is truly going to be an extraordinary year for you, 2017, it's going to come from this intention that you're going to put yourself out there more than you did last year. Even if you really went for it last year, I say go again. You know, a lot of people, they get up and they take, boom. They. They hit a home run in life, they knock it out of the park. They have their 15 minutes, they have their day, and then they stop because they got comfortable. You know, there's that moment in their lives where it got a little easier, so they didn't push as hard, which is okay. But what happened is, because they weren't pushing, they weren't challenging themselves anymore. And soon that comfortable life doesn't feel like the charged life. So much of the charged life is being okay with the challenge. If you've trained with me before, you know this concept. Honor the struggle. You honor the fact that it is hard, and you don't complain about it, and you don't avoid it. You just know that that difficulty and that challenge and that frustration, it's part of. Of the process. It is inevitable, it is unavoidable. And when you engage with those difficult days that you're going to have, because I know, hey, look, as we go through this, you're going to set some big goals today. Big ones, right? You're going to look at your life in a different way by the time we're done with these four hours today, I promise you. So, my friend, will you face it? Will you wake up in 2017 with more mornings in which you choose to be courageous that day? If you can say yes to that, I'm going to tell you, you're an extraordinary day with me today. I promise you. If you're not willing to go there right now, then I just say that might be something to explore, you know? What's keeping you from making that decision to be courageous? Because usually people say the same thing. They say, well, I'm scared I'll be rejected. Well, I'm Scared I'll be disappointed. Well, I'm scared I won't be able to handle that. I won't be enough. I won't be capable. Well, I'm scared that I put in all that work and then it doesn't go good. And I would just like to share with you my personal belief about all of that is that sometimes the reason people don't engage is because they're so scared of the result that they may or may not get. Which means in my mind, they're focused on the destination. And you've heard that thing before, right? It's not about the destination, it's about the journey. Well, if that's true, if it is about this journey that we get to have, then the good news, my friend, which I'm sure you know, is that if we can engage this journey and we can put ourselves fully into this journey, then every day will be okay. We'll be more engaged and more fulfilled and more joyous as some of the things we'll be talking about today. It's a good thing for you. And I promise you, if you can make the intention right now on page one of your new 2017 journal to ask yourself, will this be a courageous year for me? If you can say yes to that boy, it will be an extraordinary year. This is where it begins. The decision, the intention to go for it this year. It's got to be there. And if you haven't really felt that yet and if you're just like in your look, if you're just kind of recovering right now from last night, then get up, stand up wherever you're at, do a bunch of jumping jacks, do some push ups, do some squats, get yourself present here and up until you want to shout out, I'm ready, right? Get yourself to that place. I'm ready for this year. I want to crush it this year. Don't kind of bumble into this year and be like, oh my God, I need a coffee. Like, get yourself in a good place. Okay, coffee's fine. But I'm here to say, get yourself in a good place. Let's set the mental frame for this entire year in the mental frame of courage, if you will. Give yourself that gift right now, day one, January 1st, then January 2nd, January 3rd, January 30th, February, March, April and May. If you live that intention, you live an extraordinary quality of life, my friends. So here's what we need to know for your year of high performance. I want to help you kind of figure out what that's going to feel like. Because if you know what it should feel like, then you can sort of start training yourself to cultivate that energy, that state, that feeling, that emotion, whatever you want to call it. And so that you get the end result. I wonder if you set your New Year's resolutions yet, and if you did, did you set a resolution for the feelings you want this year on a daily basis? That's my question. You know, a lot of people say, well, I want this thing. I want the car or the house or the yacht or even the girlfriend. I want the family. I want more time together. They say, I go, you don't want more time together. I mean, I know that's what it seems like you want, but what you want is a different level of engagement during that time. Because the truth is, some of you are going to work bigger this year than you did last year. Your ambitions are bigger. You're going to put more hours in this year, and you might be away from family or friends more this year. And if that does happen, then you have to realize the real goal is what level of engagement and feeling you have there. You know, a lot of people have more time than they think they have. I'm sure that in 2016, you know somebody who lost somebody, you know, somebody maybe personally who you really cared for, who isn't here anymore. And I just always use that as a. As a great reminder that life is short. Life is really short. So you got to make something of this year. Life is really short. So you have to make something of those moments you have with your family and your friends and your team. You can't take it for granted anymore. And if we're going to live 2017 at a more exceptional level, it's not just because you're going to be more productive. It's going to be because you're more present. And that's what we have to teach you to do, is we have to start thinking about this thing that we want in life or those things that we want in life. It's really about feeling. So what feelings do you want to experience this year? Maybe you write that on your journal now. Just write feelings or emotions to go, what do I want to feel? What kind of state do I want to be in throughout the year? Ask that simple question. Well, as we've studied high performance now for the last decade, we found out that there's basically a common set of emotions, states or feelings that people feel when. When they are in high performance. So what I've done in my life is I trained myself through a lot of struggle. And I'll tell you some of the secrets to doing it, to figuring out how can I generate that emotion? Because if I can generate the emotion, then I can get the result. Because when people are in result, they're experiencing a sense of feeling and emotion. I thought, well, if I can reverse engineer that, if I can get myself into that emotion more often, then I can get that result more often. I know this is not your first rodeo at personal development or self help, so that might be something basic to you, but I guess the real challenging question is, when you set your New Year's resolutions, were you specific about the feelings that you want to feel each day? Because that really is the foundation, right? That's the foundation. It's not just like, you know, I want to have more date nights with my wife. No, it's like, what do you want to feel in that relationship? Does that make sense? So if you said, you know, in 2017, I'm going to have more time with the family, okay, that's cool. But what does that mean? How does your family feel around you when you have that time? How do you feel around them? You know, if you said, I'm going to be in amazing health this year, what does that feel like? This is the level of conversation we're going to be having today. Now, I see on my phone here on the side that a lot of you are joining us just now in chat roll and just getting your notice out. So thank you. As soon as you join us on you see the sunlight comes out more. Travis and I are having a good day in Portland, Oregon. It was snowing this morning when I woke up and now it's sunny outside. You see that? It's pretty incredible. So I know that you're all bringing the sunshine and bringing the joy with me here. I want to thank you for being here. Again, those of you with us live or just joining us with this live again, we're going to be going four hours today. Some of you are watching this first hour somewhere out in the world. But if you want the full four hours, you got to be a High Performance monthly member. And for those who are joining us from all around the world, especially if it's late where you're at or very, very early morning, I want to thank you for being part of our community. With that, let's jump into it. The year of High performance. What's it going to feel like? Let's start with the end in mind. If you finish 2017, how do you feel? If you really brought it all year. Like, if 2017 was incredible, if we advance ourselves one full year from today. So now it's January 1, 2018. How do you feel like, what do you want to wake up on January 1st, 2018 feeling like? Once the hangover gets over, what do you really want to feel like? January 2nd and 3rd, like, what's life feel like? Here would be my wish for you. And my wish for you is going to be based on the data on science. So if you guys aren't familiar with a lot of my work, I've spent the last 10 years in deep dive research and study on this topic of high performance. We have High Performance Academy, which I know a lot of you qualified for. There's a link on this page probably that you can sign up for High Performance Academy and take and claim your tuition waivers for that. I encourage you to do that at any point. But that seminar now, after a decade of teaching and after having just this last two years, if some of you were wondering, where was Brendan these last two years? My friends, my family watching. I was in deep research on this new book. I have a book coming out this year on high performance. And we're really sharing the data and the research that we've been gathering, both from qualitative and quantitative. So the empirical stuff, as well as a lot of that survey stuff that shows, hey, here's what makes the difference in high performance. Here's what we know about high performers, here's the proven strategies they're doing. Not just like, hey, what book did you read? I'm not trying to be a podcaster, just talking about like, hey, hey, what's your life like? I'm trying to say, what are you specifically doing that is replicable and correlated with results? Not just someone's opinion about what makes them successful, but what we can actually track and manage. And what we found in doing this research over the years is basically, when you're in a high performance state, if you will, it feels like something. And these are the end games that we're after. Number one is you have a heightened and sustained level of engagement. If you can't read my handwriting, that says engagement. That's what high performance, first and foremost, there's a higher level of engagement with what's there, a higher level of presence in the moment. Because in high performance, you're focusing on something, you're trying to achieve something, trying to give, contribute to something. You're immersed in the experience more. Right. Psychologists might call that that sense or that feeling something like flow. I'M sure you've read that book, Flow from Mihalymihalyi. It's a little bit like that. I'll show you some more qualifiers for it. But it's this sense of presence, you know. Now today it's so popular to talk about mindfulness, right? To be so mindful in the moment, to be more fully aware. That's sort of the base of a feeling of high performance. With that, I have a question for you. Where in your life have you not been engaging? I have some friends who describe, when I ask this question to them, I said, where do you feel like you're not engaging? Well, I'm not really engaging in my family. And you can see it in their happiness and the relationship there with the family. Other people say, well, I'm not really engaging at work. You know, I'm kind of half assing it at work. You know, I show up and I kind of go through the motions, but I'm not really invested yet. I have other friends who it's not even about that big stuff, mission or relationships. For them, it's about the basic things. I'll give an example. One friend of mine has a long commute in the morning, and so he's, you know, about 45 minutes every single morning commuting to work. And what he discovered is he wasn't engaging in that time. He was just kind of going through the motions of getting in the car and driving and turning on that podcast and just kind of listening, but not really there with it. And people say all the time, well, Brendan, are you saying you have to engage in everything? I go, no, you don't. It's just that you'll be happier when you learn to, that's all. You know, it's hard. I get it. You know, it's very easy to be disengaged because of lots of reasons. You know, you're scared or you're hurt or you're tired. That's a challenge. You know, many of you know, I don't know if you know this, but this is actually the first time I've been able to stand up in what, basically three weeks. I don't know if, you know, I broke two toes and then after breaking two toes, a week or two later, I went and ripped up all the tendons in my ankle. And it's been brutal. When you're in pain, it's easy to disengage, right? But I said, I need to face this and I need to engage it and I need to rehab this thing because I Got people to help. I got people to inspire. It's easy to say, well, you know, I'll just go through the motions. I mean, I could have just made this easy on me today. But. But I said, no, let's be here with people on January 1st. I want you to learn to engage the little moments more. You know, if you're walking into your house this year at the end of a workday, when you first see your family or your friends or your pets or whatever living thing that you engage in, when you open that door, engage it with more energy, with more presence. Don't just wander in the house, put a bunch of stuff away and start organizing and cleaning and doing things. And don't even look at your spouse. Be somebody who walks in. And first thing is, you're going to bring full engagement to the people around you. It will change your days. Because is it true that there's some people in your life you have not been engaging with fully? Family, friends? What about your team? It just happens. It's because we get busy. It's because we find our own rhythms and routines. But unfortunately, sometimes in that we've lost the zest of life. And getting the zest of life this year, I know you already feel it. It's about putting more presence back in engagement, first and foremost. Okay? The second big feeling is joy. If you've been with me at High Performance Academy or any of our seminars, you have to learn to bring the joy. Too many people are waiting for something to give them happiness, and that's why they are continually unhappy. If you had a lot of dissatisfaction in 2016, it wasn't because something gave you dissatisfaction. It was because the energy you chose to bring. Let me give you an example. You know, maybe even know. I've been blessed to work with and, and meet and network and interview some of literally the world's most influential people, most influential authors, most influential media personalities, most influential athletes. And what I've learned about them is they're very careful about the energy they put out and about the energy that they allow around them. You know, Oprah has her story of one day seeing in a green room a little sign that said, please be responsible for the energy you bring into this space. And I love that because it's taking responsibility for the energy. And here's what the end result really is. What you want is joy. You want to experience more joy even in the struggle. That's the big one. See, it's easy to be joyous when something makes you joyous. Your kid makes you laugh and you have a good day. You're out with your friends and they make you feel great. But the real magic of life is when there is struggle. How do you meet that? And you're asking, Brendan, do you really meet struggle with joy? And I go, when I'm on my game, I do. When I'm off my game, I don't. And I'm not always on my game. You know, I'm the high performance guy. But I've got plenty of challenges and struggles just like you do. It's why I started researching all this for you. It's why I wanted to figure out in my own life. One of the number one things I figured out is this concept of you learning to bring more joy into the situations of life, not trying to draw it out, right? Because at the end of the day, that's what you really want, right? No matter what you think you want, you want to have a more joyous experience. Even if you say, brennan, I want more love, what you really want in that loving relationship is that feeling of joy that can only come from appreciation, gratitude, positive energy and attitudes that we put into things. So put joy into it. Learn to bring joy into the moments and you will find an amazing year. Look, if you do nothing, if you stopped watching right now and all you did this year is set this intention, okay, I'm going to be more courageous this year, and I'm going to bring more joy into each and every moment because I'm going to engage life again. We won. We already won on January 1st. We won. You already did it. That's it. Show up each day with a little more courage and show up each day engaging in every single moment that you can and putting more joy into those moments. I think the secret, for most people, the real secret isn't sitting and hoping and dreaming for something like the Secret movie, right? It's not just setting an intention and hoping things land on us. Because remember, there's only two things that change your life. Either something lands on you, something new comes into your life, or something new comes from within. And what needs to come from within with so many of my clients is a new feeling of joy. Some of you know, this last year I got to work with several Olympic athletes who were in Rio and amazing, amazing experience. And what I noticed was that the people who took more joy and in their sport, they were just better. They had what, you know, you would consider a joy. There was a positivity in which they engaged their sport even when they were losing. Like they could Lose a match and smile because they knew they'd get better. They could face a huge challenge, but actually love it. You know, they would love the challenge. And we found that in high performance research, too, that high performers have a love of challenge. And that love of challenge shows up as joy. They love going to the gym, not because the gym gives them something, but because what they put into the iron. They love that time at work, not because what work is giving them, but because what they are putting into work. If you want joy, you have to learn to give into situations again, not just want to take. It's in that generosity of positive emotion that joy ends up hitting us, right? It's just a beautiful thing. There's a new book out, by the way, from my main man, the Dalai Lama and the Archbishop Desmond Tutu. And if you haven't read it, it's called the Book of Joy. I'll be giving away a few to you guys. Some of you know, I've been blessed now to meet the Dalai Lama twice and talk about an extraordinary example of this. I mean, you look at the guy and you're happier. He walks in the room, you're happier, he's happy. I think it's easier to be happy when you have like, you know, five smiling monks following you around all the time like the Dalai Lama does. I think it's easier with a bunch of robed monks following us to be joyous. But I say, what are you going to do to create this, my friend? This is what you want in 2017. This is what you want. And so don't hope to get it. Bring it. I mean, if you've ever hung out with me, you know, I'm a little weird. And I also am going to try to make a moment, whether it's with we have a waiter or waitress at the restaurant. I'm going to try to make a joke or say something nice or leave an extra tip or I'm hanging out with a friend. I'm always going to try to do something, just something. I don't always get it right. I'm not always on. But life is best when I remember to bring the joy. Write it down, double underline it, star it, put it on a wall somewhere. Later on this year, I've got watches and necklaces coming out, wristbands with this phrase, bring the joy. Because I wanted it for me. I want a reminder. Okay, bring the joy. That's right. I gotta do it. I can't wait for it to hit me. Third big thing we know from high Performance. So this is not just my opinion, because if I had an opinion about it, I'd probably share lots of other different emotions. But this is what we can tell and track when you're in a high performance state over the long term. Number three, confidence. Huge. Huge. I cannot tell you how huge this is. I actually. I knew confidence was important. I didn't know how important it was. So many of you participated in what is the world's largest high performance study. With me, we're publishing all the results this spring and then in the fall in my new book, High Performance Habits. Okay, Huge, massive study. And to my shock, the number one thing. The number one thing out of what do we have 79 different measures in this major study? Yeah, I think it was 79 measures out of all 79. The one thing that impacted the most categories of high performance. There's six categories that we know are true in high performance habits that lead and correlated with results. Okay, here's what shocked me. The one question. If you answered higher on this one question or this one statement, I should say, then all the other categories would be higher. It's the only question that across every major area that we can measure you in your high performance, life makes the most difference. Okay. This is the number one mental trigger. It is the number one most important thing. And the statement was related to this. It was this. I have confidence in my ability to achieve my goals despite obstacles. That was it. I have confidence in my ability to achieve my goals despite obstacles. And those obstacles, sometimes we would qualify in the research, like, you know, obstacles like people's approval, obstacles like your own lack of resources or your own inadequacies or your own fears. And that's the secret. And if you're like, well, I'm just not confident. Brendan. Confidence. All confidence means is that you have a belief in your ability to figure things out. That's what real confidence is. I'm not talking about confidence like they teach at seminars. You know, rah. I'm like, no, I'm talking about a genuine confidence to be able to face life's basic challenges and life's extraordinary challenges. Right. I'm an incredibly confident person. I don't have a big ego about it. Like, hey, look at me. I'm just confident that if you throw a challenge in front of me, I know that you and I can sit down and we'll figure it out together. You know, I'm constantly brought into situations where I don't know the answer. But because I'm willing to learn, I'm Willing to be humble. I know that experts are always students first and always students. I just know it. And so if I come in any situation, everything I faced, my when I broke my two toes and ripped out my ankle, I thought, I don't know how to deal with that. But I'll learn. When I started this new business, you know, 10 years ago, when I started doing this professionally full time, I didn't know how to do lights, I didn't know how to do video, I didn't know how to write, I didn't know HTML, I didn't know blog. I didn't know anything. Almost everything I do today, I had no clue. There was no natural talent. Believe me, no one identified me as a high potential when I was young. Okay, none. And so I say to you, there is no reason you cannot reach high performance and there is no reason you can't have confidence. Here's a big huge finding in the research that's going to be, I really believe, controversial next year or this year when we release the book. And it's just that high performance. And high performance is defined as the basically long term success. It means that you consistently outperform standard norms in whatever industry you are in or whatever you're measuring. If you're measuring your health, high performance means you're consistently outperforming last year's health. It's not just constant and never ending improvement in that area, it's heightened and sustained consistency of results in that area. It means you're like this. It doesn't mean you're a peak and then that you're having valleys, which is what peak performance is. You're up and then you're down, you're up, you're down, you're up, you're down. That's why we label it high performance. It's heightened and it's sustained. It stays there. You don't have the peak and drop and you don't plateau. You are consistently getting better and it's measurable in the norms of either your industry or your own measurement and your own tracking. But here's a big stunning thing about this high performance, long term success, shorthand for it. Long term success is not, listen to this. It is not correlated with your age, with your ethnicity, with your race or your gender. It is not correlated with your socioeconomic or your income right now. It is not correlated either with all the majors, personality. It is not correlated with, basically, for lack of better phrasing, childhood experience, meaning the parenting style. It's not to say that those things don't matter. Those things do matter. How you were raised matters. How much money you have now, it matters. Everything matters when it comes to performance. So I'm not saying those things do not matter. Those things don't matter as much as other factors. And all of those things can be overcome by training, coaching and conditioning, or counseling. All of them, 100%. There's nothing in your background, your life, or in your mind or your current biological situation that cannot be improved unless. Unless you have a true, lasting and diagnosed mental disorder or degenerative disease. I know that doesn't sound like lot, but I have to qualify it because I'm a researcher. Okay? But here's the amazing thing. There is almost no excuse that lasts. You can't hold it up. You can't say, well, Brenda, I can't succeed because I'm a woman. Women are equal measure of high performance as men. You can't say, well, it's Brendan, it's because I came from Nebraska, never had so and so. Nope, you can't say that. That's a good excuse. And it's probably true that it impacted you. We also know from science that if you believe it impacts you. In other words, if you believe that's your reason, then it probably is. Remember Henry Ford said that whether you believe you can or you can't, you're right. If some reason, some story you have in your mind is keeping you from succeeding, then I never call that story an excuse. I just say that's your reason. And everyone's reasons are accurate because if they believe it's true, then it's true, right? If you believe you can't get ahead because you're this background, this ethnicity, this ability. I don't know what to tell you, but what I do know is what the science of success has just definitively proven, that regardless of your innate talents and strengths, whatever that means, you can develop greater levels of expertise and success by practice, by shifting your mindset, by developing and focusing more on your passions. Not your strengths, your passions. By focusing more on exactly what it is you should be doing that would generate happiness for you. And so don't get caught up in any part of like, well, I can't be confident because X, it's not okay, I'm not confident or I can't be joyful because of these things. Because these things are, at the end of the day, a choice. Happiness is a choice. So is engagement, so is joy, so is confidence. You can generate these things. And here's the secret. The best way to generate Confidence is to challenge yourself. It's funny because we want confidence without the struggle, but confidence only comes with the struggle. It's engaging the struggle with joy that gives us more confidence. And in psychology, we often call it the competence confidence loop. The confidence competence loop. What does this mean, my friend? This means that when we have more confidence, we're willing to try new things and learn new things. As we try new things and learn new things, we develop more competence. As we know more things and know how to do more things, we develop more confidence. There's this infinity loop between confidence and competence. It's probably one of the biggest aha's I had ever in my life. When I was early on researching psychology, I thought, that is an amazing correlation. It's so obvious to me. So if you're lacking confidence, it means it's time to learn and try new things again. And the only way you'll develop confidence from it is if you start mastering those things. And I'm sure you've already done that. I mean, think about how far you've come. You know, a lot of people are disappointed with their 2016. I go, look how far you came. And they go, Brendan, 2016 sucked. I go, look how far you came. And they go, I didn't come far at all. I didn't progress at all. I go, no, you came 365 days. That's progress. You're alive. You've come a far away. Have you given yourself credit for that? Think about all of the crap that you have endured in life. You're here now. You said, I'm ready for a new level. I'm ready for a new mentor. Even if you're watching this and you would say, your life sucks, and I've been there, many of you know my big long story. You know, I was a very depressed and suicidal kid because of a relationship that broke. And I was lost. And I was at. At the lowest point imaginable. And it wasn't just then. That was 20 years ago. You know, what was it five years ago? I had a brain injury. I snapped my wrist, threw out my hips, broke my ribs, dislocated a bunch of. I mean, it was an awful, awful experience. You know, I've gone bankrupt in my life, and I've made millions. I've been extraordinarily healthy. Right now, I kind of feel a little bit like crap 60 days ago, in incredible shape today. Feel like crap because I can't do a lot of things because of my foot. And so it's just like there's times. We all have the ups and downs of life, but I think the difference in those who really get ahead is right there. I'm confident I'm going to get my health back. I know it. I'm very confident. I'll figure it out. It's been a while, you know, six weeks, nine. Not being able to really walk or move was pretty difficult. You know, hobbling around. I had to do an event when I had two broken toes. I hadn't messed up my ankle yet, and it was just two broken toes and doing an event and everyone's freaking out around me and I'm like, I'm confident I can get through this. I knew it wasn't going to be a spectacular and fun experience for me, but I was like, I'm confident that I can do this. I couldn't even walk, you know, I was like, well, I'm gonna have to wrap up that foot. I'm gonna have to ice that foot. I'm gonna have to elevate that foot. I'm gonna have to do so much to keep myself going through. I'm gonna have to figure out a system to make it through this five day event. Now, if you ever done your own seminars or taught, I mean, imagine like some people, you know, they can teach for an hour and they're drained. I'm doing eight to 10 hours a day standing up on stage by myself for five days at that event. There was plenty of fear. I remember going in that event. I was like, oh, my gosh, what if this happens? What if this happens? What if this happens? And my mind went very negative. And then luckily this came back. I thought, well, I've made it through a lot of horrible things in my life before, and I figured it out. I'll figure this one out too. So do you have that confidence? Because you deserve it. You came a long way. You got to accept that. I hope part of your 2016 recap was sitting down and just asking, what can I be grateful for? Because this year, I'm still here, I'm still alive. And remember, if it's truly about the journey and not the destination, then we have to take this moment and realize we've already been rewarded. It's something I'm continuing. Have to tell my high performance clients, you've already been rewarded because they're waiting for the payoff. They're working so hard and not experiencing the journey, so they're not experiencing the payoff. And here's what I say, you know what? 2016, my friend. The payoff's already happened. Don't be like, I need to work another five years, then I can feel good. That's a trap. You've already been rewarded. And if you can start to believe that, like, I've already been rewarded because I'm in the journey now, you have more confidence. Because some people's confidence comes with a sense of reward. And so that's why I tell them these two things. Build on this too. Because if you engage the moment and have joy there, the reward is there. And the more rewarded you feel in life, guess what? Confidence goes up too. It's not just skill and expertise, other competency. It's also reward. Like, I feel so rewarded even though many parts of my life I suck just like anybody else. But you know what? I try and I'm confident. I know I might feel. It might feel like, geez, Brendon, you're really belaboring these points. And I am because I know this is what's missing from most people's lives. Right. I know a lot of people who are extraordinarily successful externally. They've got the house and the car and the kids and the dog and their Instagram. I look at their Instagram, it's beautiful. It's like you want to lick it. You're like, oh my God, look at this person. Look at that. I mean, look at their house. Look at all these things. Look at, oh my God, look at how healthy they eat. I hate myself. I know. You do. Well, you look at their lives and you just think they got everything. And then I work with them. I discover the only way to take them to the next level is to help them engage these things again. You think it's going to be tactical Often. And I often tell you you're looking in the wrong space. What you need to look in is in the emotional. If I get you emotionally connected again, no matter what you're doing, you will increase your performance. We know that from simple things like, you know. Well, we know that from scientific things. Take like Gallup's Q12, right? If you haven't ever. If you're not in organizational development, you might not be familiar with that. It's 12 questions they ask about employee engagement. If you are more engaged at work, which is an emotional component more than just a tactical. If you are more engaged at work, your performance goes up through the roof. Highly engaged teams outperform disengaged teams who from 4 to 6 times, not 4 to 6%, 4 to 6 times. They demolish, disengaged. That's true in our life. Disengagement, someone outperforming you that fast. That fast. That's why you need to get back in that place of these things. Because those things will also give you a sense of this one progress, that sense of magic in life again, that we are growing. I asked a lot of very, very extraordinary people this year who are clients. I said, what if something is missing this year and we're working together? What is it specifically that's missing? And you know, it almost always came down to being this side of the box. Joy, the energy they were putting in and feeling from situations and progress. They didn't feel like they were progressing enough. And here's there's only two ways to measure enough. One is the emotional meaning we're getting from our struggle and our work and our progress. And the other one is tactical. You can measure it. And so you have to ask both things. One, do I feel like I am progressing in life? If not, it's only two reasons I'm not progressing, because either A, I am not allowing the emotion of progress into my life. It is an emotion, I think progress. It's a sense. It's a deep human desire to have that sense that change is happening in the positive way. That's progress. Change is happening in a positive way. If you read my book the Charge, that's the sixth human drive, isn't it? Change. It's the first, what we call baseline, I'm sorry, forward human drive. Like, the first thing that gives us that zest is that piece change in a positive direction. And if you don't feel like you're progressing fast enough, then you need to do two things. Number one, explore why am I not feeling it. And it usually comes from, you're not integrating the successes. You're winning. Winning succeed, accomplish task, accomplish checklist, checklist, checklist, checklist. And you never stop and sit and just go, I'm doing good. I got to give myself some credit. I'm grateful those things are happening. I'm allowing myself to feel good about what I'm doing again. I can feel it inside. This is good. I honor myself. This has not been an easy road. I appreciate that. I'm still trying. I appreciate that. I have come this far. If you're not checking in emotionally like that, you never feel this. That's often the case for a lot of my quote unquote super type A clients who are just man, they're crushing it every single day. But they're not fulfilled. And they're not fulfilled because they're not bringing this, and they're not fulfilled because they're not giving credit. It's an emotional game. We're trying to win here. I know you know that. But the second reason we're not feeling progress is because of that tactical reason. We are not knocking off the goals. We are not tactically showing up each day. We're getting distracted, and we know we're being distracted, so we don't sense this. A lot of people actually have a lot of progress in their life, but they're unhappy because they recognize how much they're limiting their own progress because of the distractions. It's like they're actually kicking some butt. But they also know, I just watched three seasons of Netflix last night. They know it. They're just like, I know I could get ahead so much more if I wasn't so distracted. So they don't feel that they are getting progress, but they don't feel fulfilled because the guilt of how much time they are being distracted and not doing things that engage them, that bring them joy, that they feel confident about and that they feel like they are progressing.

They.

This is the real game, my friends. I wake up every day wanting to experience this and demanding that I experience this. Two different things, right? One is, I hope I can experience some of this. And some days I get this. There's lots of days, though, that some external thing didn't make me laugh or bring me joy, so I have to bring that. And I know this might be, for some of you, too much of the emotional stuff, but. But I'm here to tell you, before I share the productivity habits, before I go on and on about different ambitions that you can have, before I talk a lot about your relationships, before I talk about how to break down projects and give you mental triggers and behavioral triggers that make you more focused and productive, I have to tell you, this is what you're after. And if you didn't know it and now you got it, it was worth your entire time. Our first hour today, because from here, we're really going to accelerate. From here, we're going to go into a conversation about what has led to all of the results in your life. All of them, okay? Every major result you've had in your life happened because three specific things. And I'm going to walk you through those three things in this next section. Before I do that, I got some housekeeping things to do with you, okay? Based on our time, the first thing I want you to do is in your journal. I want you to write down these seven items. Okay? These seven items, this says mission, finances, adventure, health, emotion, relations. That means relationships, learning. Just go ahead and write down each of these seven items. Okay? Each of these seven items. Because we do some work in each of these areas in a few moments. And I'm going to explain why whatever results you have in these areas is coming from these primary three things. Okay? And know that this is not in any particular order over here. I just put seven things up. Okay? These are the seven major areas of our lives as we'll talk about. But I want you to know there's no particular order. But I bet you lived your last year with a priority of some of these things. Maybe this last year you know what your priority was. You know, figure out money and work. But at the cost of that came your health and your relationships. Maybe this last year you learned all year long, but you didn't do nothing, you know. So this is what we're going to be talking about in a few minutes now. With the time right now that we're at, I want to do a couple things. One, I want to welcome you again and congratulate you for attending with us so far. If you're watching this first hour free somewhere on the Internet's cool. But we're about to end that and move into our focus for the rest of the training with our High Performance Monthly members. So if you you are not yet a High Performance monthly member, click the link on whatever page or on Facebook if you're watching it there. Because you need to enroll for the next three hours where we're gonna work through why you have the results you have in this area. Second housekeeping thing. If you are a High Performance monthly member on this page right now, you're watching me on ustream live. On this page is a link to our four day seminar, High Performance Academy. It's coming up to San Diego, baby. If you're coming to San Diego, drop me a note in a chat roll down below. Just say I'm coming. I want to see who's coming there with us. So chat roll down below, let us know you're coming to San Diego if you're watching this on that page. All of you were in our monthly membership program. You have qualified for two tuition waivers. That means you're not paying the $794 ticket to be there. You get those tickets and that tuition for free. You just have to make a payment for your materials to claim that tuition waiver. It makes sure that you show up and I don't lose $794 of seat sales. So there's a link on this page. It's March 9th through 12th in San Diego. That's where we go deep dive on your psychology, physiology, productivity, persuasion, people skills and purpose so that you can have an extraordinary quality of life in all areas. So make sure during this break, you click that link and sign up. Put it in your calendar, book your tickets, whatever you have to do. Everybody else, here's what I want you to do during this break. I want you to write down these seven areas and I want you to score yourself in each of these seven areas on a scale of 1 to 10. Okay? One means you sucked in this area in the last year. Okay? 10 means you are amazing. You crushed it. You got it great. No matter where you're at on that scale, one bad 10. Awesome. I'm going to explain why, okay? There's only three reasons to why you got that score. And a lot of people don't know why. And they fool themselves. They make excuses or reasons, but they don't know why. I'm going to explain with definitive sort of precision why you're getting those scores, okay? So that's why you want to come back during this break. What we'll do throughout the day is we'll just play some of people's experiences at High Performance Academy live. That gets you going. I want you to be there, my friends, during these breaks. It also allows me to either reset up for the next section or get some water or take a quick break. Bathroom breaks. So these are really short. These may be sometimes 510 minute breaks to allow us to reset in here or get ready for the next section. But during these breaks, I also want you to use them strategically. So ask yourself what level you were here, scale of 1 to 10, and then challenge yourself. What would you need to do to improve each of these areas this year? If you haven't already done goal setting in these areas, I hope you have by now. It's January 1st. Then take this time, okay? Rate yourself in the last year in these areas. Take the time to set some goals in each of these areas, okay? Set some goals in each of these areas and maybe jot down some tactics that you could do to improve each of these areas. And if that's all you accomplished, we did a pretty good job today together. But with that, my main man, Travis Shields. We've got a little trailer about High Performance Academy. It's coming up in San Diego. If you're on this page, remember you qualified for that tuition waiver. That's $794 of tickets. Don't miss out on that. It's only via the link on this page, as I'm sure you see. Click up, sign up, claim your tickets and we'll see you in San Diego. Shout out to those who've been in chat roll. I'm going to look during the break to see my friends here. So give a shout out in the chat roll down below. And also when we come back, we'll be doing some giveaways and we'll be giving away the reasons that your life has turned out the way it has so far in these areas. With that, my main man, we'll take about five or 10 minutes here. We'll keep playing this trailer. Sign up, do your homework. We'll be back in just a few minutes. You have to move towards the things that you desire despite the little fears because you know the struggles along the way are worth it. The gain, the connection, the mission, the ambition.

Every program I have ever taken from him has been extraordinary. He gives you techniques that you can continue to use each and every day. He doesn't just give you the conceptual, he gives you specifics and it changes your life.

What new breakthroughs in neuroscience, positive psychology and high performance studies can I use to master my mind and feel more alive, confident and focused? I highly recommend coming to Brendon Burchard's high Performance Academy. It's exciting. You learn so much. It's an amazing experience and I cannot wait to implement everything I've learned here into my business, at home. How can I power up my physiology to fight all fatigue and stress I feel in my body? Day by day, Brennan is giving me frameworks, taking me from idea to completion. There was a gap before, but now I have tools that I can implement right now and make a drastic impact not only in my life, but in the lives of others. What real world, day by day productivity strategies can I use to aim my efforts, get more done and achieve my dreams faster?

He gets you. He like reaches into your heart and squeezes it and has you not only with like the philosophy but the practice and the processes and the notes and just the extraordinary amount of content. And then he just shoots you off into the world ready to make all of that happen.

How do I become more persuasive and influential at home and in my career, with my family, with my friends, with my loved ones, with those that I serve and lead?

Brendan Burchard is one of the best teachers I have ever had. The gift of being in the presence of he's masterful, he's creative, he's on purpose, he's on target. And beyond all of who he is, his mission in life and his actual fulfillment of that mission is to bring that out in each of us. And he's done it for me.

This is High Performance Academy, Advanced psychology, physiology, productivity and persuasion training for today's high achievers and leaders.

Brendan Burchard is just the very best in high performance training, personal development. What I find is he takes the common sense and he puts it into a framework so that we can actually use it in our everyday to grow and to move forward.

I'm here at Brendan Burchard's High Performance Academy. Now, you gotta come to this event. I'm telling you. Brendan is so authentically energetic, enthusiastic, energizing and so savvy on all the things that make you high performer. There's so much here, I mean, even for people who think they've got it all figured out and dialed in and that are performing high in their life, I'm telling you, there are strategies and nuances and technology and cutting edge information here that you don't want to miss.

I have a much clearer idea and a much better plan and a clear pathway of what I need to look at, what I need to measure, how I need to change, and more specifically, what habits and thinking habits, particularly what I need to put into my life so that I can change the way I think, the way I feel and the way I behave. All of this wrapped up into one package is going to definitely change my life.

It's been so far, three days of off the charts training. Just the, the stuff that Brendan gives us is actionable, it's real, it's kind of driven. And Brendan is great at not only motivating you to live at a higher level, to perform at a higher level, but he gives you the framework and the actual strategies to do it.

Brendan, oh my gosh, he is a blessing. He puts, he connects the dots in what we struggle with. It has opened me up. I woke up this morning just alive again. And I recommend this for anybody, any walk of life, any place they're at. I'd like my adult children to come. I think it would be a wonderful advantage for them. I've heard people walking the halls talking about, wow, I've got four kids at home and these things I'm going to start now. So it's just amazing and I am grateful.

This year my charge to myself has been to, when presented with good, better and best choices for myself and for others to always choose the best. And that's been my charge for the whole year. But I'll tell you that I didn't have all the practices that I needed in order to implement that. So I found myself in a huge rut. And let me just tell you that now I have not only a six month action plan for the practices that I'm going to implement in order to really take that charge seriously and be the best person that I can be at home and in my business, but I also know exactly what I'm going to do every day when I get up out of bed, all the way to when I go to bed at night. And let me just tell you that that is invaluable because it's the small little decisions that really make such a huge difference.

I'm here at High Performance Academy with Brendan Burchard. Like many of you probably already know, you've seen the videos and everything. That guy just gives everything in every video. Well, it's everything and more in person. I've learned so much here that I had no expectation to learn from him and the people that he brought on stage. Would I recommend it? Absolutely.

This event has been one of the most incredible life changing events that I personally have gone to. Brendan means so much to me and what his teaching is doing that I've taken taken with me my family of four kids and my husband to be at this event with me. He looks at not only what is important, what's important to focus on, how to manage your time. He looks at all the mechanisms, what drives you, what keeps you interested in things and just really gets us to level up and change our game. If you're looking to change your game, if you're looking to take your life to the next possible level, then this is the place to be.

And all I can say is, oh my goodness. So I've been following this guy for a little while and who he is on that stage is powerful beyond belief. I had no idea what I'd be walking into and I just cannot, cannot wait to put into all these practices tangible tips, techniques, tools that I am learning and implement them into my life to really bring my game up to the next level. If you ever have an opportunity to work with this man in any of his programs, I cannot recommend him highly enough. I am taking on the 60 day challenge. I am bringing the joy to my life. I am going to commit to making the change. This is my new demarcation line and I can't wait for what's in store thank you, Brendan, and hope to see you here soon.

Brendan attracts the most incredible people in the world, people from all over the world. And this is my first time at High Performance Academy and I feel so great being here just from the energy, just from the incredible people. Everything that I'm learning from him and what I'm getting is like these tools on how to like, shortcut, you know, the learning curve. Like, Brendan's done it. Brendan is this incredible expert and I'm getting all the time and all the struggle that it took him to get to where he's at like this.

I've taken a lot of personal development classes because I want to be the best I can for my patients. But when you're listening to Brendan, you leave like just wanting to be the best person that you can be. He just has so many valuable tools and tips that I really feel like I can actually finally make a difference in the world because I took everything that he said and I'm like taking it to heart and really paying attention for four days. It's the most amazing training that I've ever been to. This is going to be the stepping stones for me to make it to.

The next level if you have a chance. Everybody says walk, don't run, sprint, fly, jump, hop in a boat, swim across the ocean. Make your way here as best you can because you will never, ever, ever forget it. You'll never also ever regret it.

I hope you've enjoyed this special episode of the Charged Life and enjoyed all the comments about how you can get your mindset and your emotions primed up for high performance. And if you'd like to join us at High Performance Academy Live, my four day seminar. You heard all about it. You heard people talking about it. Go to hpa.brendon.com that's HPA as in highperformanceacademy.brenden B-R-E n d o n.com HPA.brendon.com for our San Diego March 9 through 12 four day seminar. I'd love to see you there. Until then, know that you can live a high performing life. And as always, it's an honor to have you here with us in the charge life.