Transformation Week Day 3 - NECESSITY

Hey, my friends, it's Brendon Burchard and welcome to special series of the Brendon show. In this series we're playing for you our entire program called Transformation Week. Transformation Week is a program that Denise, my wife and I did to help people really understand what are the key habits that we know from science will help dramatically, I mean, really dramatically improve your life. It was an incredible video based program and online challenge that Denise and I did and we wanted to just capture it here for you in audio here on the Brendon show. So for the next six, seven days, we'll release a brand new day of transformation week and you'll get the audio right here on the podcast. If you're somebody who loves video and you would love the resources or the tools that we recommend as an example, the downloads or some special discounts to some products we might mention, please make sure you just go to transformationweek.com that's transformationweek.com when you go there again, you'll just enter your name and email. You'll be added to our newsletter list but you'll be sent this entire series by email where we summarize each of the days. We give you the PDFs, the downloads, the research, the tools, everything you'll hear in the audio on the Brendon show. With that, I hope you enjoy the series. Happy 2020, my friends. I hope you enjoy this year. And this really becomes a transformation week for you as you kick off the new decade of your life.

Hey, everybody, it's Brendon Burch and Denise Burchard.

Welcome to hpx, which stands for high performance experience.

This is day number three of transformation week.

We're talking about raising necessity today.

This is Denise. She's my wife.

We're married.

We're married. The last two days in transformation Week we talked about transformation begins with one, you getting clarity. Two, you generating more energy. And today we're talking about how do you raise the necessity for your success? Meaning how do you use your mind to make it more necessary for you to become successful? Because often it's easy to just go through the motions and you're not like being the most extraordinary part of who you are because it's not necessary. Les Brown always says you gotta be hungry for success or if you can.

Get away with it, then you can tend to lean towards getting away with things. But if you really, really need it, you'll figure out how to make it happen. Yeah.

If you need it, it's true for you. It's part of your identity. Your heart and your soul, to get ahead, to make magic happen, to serve, to contribute. You will do it. If it's not necessary Netflix, why do anything? Just watch Netflix all night. I understand this very well. So today we're going to give you some ideas. Denise will share three ideas.

I'll share three ideas.

So with that, let's.

My first lesson is to link being good at what you do to your identity. And if you can find that alignment, you will naturally not want to not be in alignment with yourself. So if you can link I'm going to be good at whatever I do as something that's integral to who you are, then you will find some way to make sure that you are good at what you do. Whether it's learning new skills, whether it's showing up with a certain amount of energy, whether it is trying something new and being courageous and stepping outside your box, if it's finding a new schedule for yourself, any of those things. Whatever you do, link it to your identity to be good at it.

So she always talk about, like, excellence. Like, excellence is a big word around our house. And part of I do not like.

It when I'm not good at something.

Yes. Like, she has a very excellence driven psychology, because as part of who she is, like, I'm Denise Burchard. I am excellent at what I do. And honestly, it inspired me a lot too, because there's parts of things that I do, I'm like, ah, I'm not passionate about that. No. She's like, even the things that she's not exceptionally passionate about, she's like, I'm gonna do it well. Because part of her identity is that and she's allowed herself that gift. Cause most people, that's scary to them because then, well, what if I'm not good? That means I'm not enough people might like me. But having an internal demand for higher standards of excellence is part of every transformation program you will ever go through in personal professional development. That idea, expect more of yourself, set higher standards. That's what she's talking about. Like, in your mind, like, you have to challenge yourself to be good at it. And if it's not necessary for you to be good at it, then you'll be average at it. And that explains a lot of your performance.

Yeah. And I think that's where that quote that we use at the end of each one, like, you have the choice to be average or to be extraordinary kind of comes from. So whatever you pick to do, it'd be excellence driven at it. Be extraordinary at it. Work towards it. You're not gonna get it perfect the first time. But I think I was interviewing somebody who I was interested in hiring, and they looked around my exercise studio and they said, I notice all the mats are a certain way, and I notice everything is clean. And I notice that I don't see people doing these things. And I notice that, you know, all these things are happening. Why is that? And I turned to her and I just. I don't. It just came out. But I was like, I don't do sloppy.

She does not do sloppy.

If you saw your house or saw.

The speed in which she cleans up.

After anything that I drop anywhere around.

The house, like, I'll put down a glass of water and I'll turn around and the glass of water is gone. Probably already in the dishwasher. Probably. I'm like, what, What, What? What happened to my stuff?

It has a grace period.

It has a grace period of 4.0 seconds. Exactly. And she's really good about, like, I'm gonna tell you that. That. But that literally does perpetuate across everything we do. She doesn't do sloppy. But also every high performing person I've ever met, people of true excellence, that's their mindset. And so remember, we're talking about necessity here. The mindset that says it is necessary for me to succeed and be excellent at what I do. And that's so important. Big tip from me. My first lesson here is to always ask every day, who needs me on my A game? Because the truth is, you and I both know you'll do more for other people than you often do for yourself. You know, it's easy to be lazy for yourself, but if somebody needs you, you show up, you get it done. Somebody who needs me on my A game today is. It's the third question I fill out every day of my life. And I think, okay, today my team, you know, this specific person on my team needs me to reply to that email. Or today, you know what, who needs me are students worldwide. Come on, Brandon, do the social media. Today who needs me is my wife. Today who needs me is the coo. Like, I always write down. I literally write down the person's name and what they need of me today. And often it's my team or other people I'm trying to lead or serve. And I feel like that is that connection to our. Why is the people who we are serving or wanting to be good for. And so I make it very, very personal when I write that down. And so I think it's something when I was interviewing these high performers, many of you know, we conducted the world's largest study of high performers that's ever been done at the High Performance Institute. And that was what, you know, formed the book High Performance Habits. And one thing is, when I asked all these people, 300 different people, what, why do you think you became more excellent at what you do than your peers did? Almost all of them mentioned service to other people and them like connecting with that every day. And somehow, like, they'd write it down, they'd talk about it, but it was always about other people, because other people, it taps into our purpose on this planet to connect with, serve, care for, love other people. And so if you mentally connect with that every day, you won't let yourself just lay on the couch all day. You'd be like, there's people to serve. There's people I need to show up for today. And you get at it. Because if it's just about you, it's easy to spend all day watching television. If it's about other people, you get to work.

My second lesson is discipline and making a plan. So very few amazing things or transformations happen without a plan. And I think it's not just making a plan like these big lofty goals or this big vision, but it's really about making a plan big to small. So if you want to get to a certain place or you want to achieve a certain level of success, and like we talked about in the past, you know, making those skills, but the discipline to actually follow through, not just on a big level, but then what does that mean on a monthly basis, on a weekly basis, on a daily basis, and otherwise, if you can only think big picture, you'll always be kind of floundering around in the details and you'll never get to your big picture because you can't coordinate all the elements that lead up to building that mountain that you're trying to climb. Whereas if you can only think of the small things, you'll just kind of be always moving and shuffling papers around, or never quite kind of moving forward and creating momentum towards a specific goal. So I think it's really important to be able to. And that's maybe one of the skills that you develop, is to be able to plan from big to small and have that self discipline.

I love that. I love that. And it also gives you a big picture to connect to.

Yes.

You know, there's nothing worse than feeling like you're a cog in a machine and you can't see how it all puts together to improving your life or making your difference. And a lot of people, they just have all these tasks, and tasks can be uninspiring, but the big picture can pull you forward. In those darker days.

Yeah, I think it's. Everyone needs to have a purpose of being a part of something that's bigger, and then it becomes a movement. And that movement can be really powerful and really connecting.

I love it. My next one is go deep and allow obsession. And I love this one. So many people are scared to be obsessed about something, to want that world class, to want the gold medal, to want to be best at it, or to just dork out and go in deep. Like, if you. If you read high performance habits, I went deep. This took three years. I obsessed about learning every single mindset and habit of the world's top 15%. And I don't mean just by income, I mean, like, in every category. They were the healthiest, they were the happiest, they were in marriages longest, they earned the most money, they got promoted more often, like, whatever. Like all this work that we did, I went deep. She knows this. I mean, I disappeared off the grid for three years to do this research with academics to create the world's largest study on high performers. And everyone thought I was crazy like Brendan. But you could write a book in three months and sell just as many. I spent three years. I went deep. My book, motivation manifesto went deep. This high performance planner took me three years. Who takes three years to make a planner? Because I literally tested each of the questions in here, all of the prompts, all of the assessments, all of the tools. Because I want to know that what I'm creating is great. And I feel like these days, people have made the word obsession a bad word. It's like, oh, they're obsessed about that. That's an unhealthy no. Because the world right now are casual browsers. They never go deep. They just, like they're skimming the surface. They never develop specific or deep skill sets and passions. And that's why they're just like everybody else. And they're average because the average person just skims the surface. They're by nature superficial at the depth in which they go into something. But experts or legends or leaders, they allow the obsession. It doesn't mean the obsession takes over all parts of their life and ruins their balance. What it means is they do spend an abnormal amount of time studying, doing the work, digging deep, focusing on the art, whatever it is for them. And instead of doing that, they kind of like, placate. Because guess what? When you're obsessed about something, almost no one else understands it. They're like, why do you care so much? Why are you spending so much time on that? And they start judging you and that judgment throws people off. But listen, other people's understanding is not required for your progress. Other people's support or cheering you on is not required for you to be a high performer. Other people's opinions are not relevant to whether or not you succeed. And so it's incredibly important, incredibly important for you to say, okay, what in my life am I gonna allow myself to go a little deep on, to get a little obsessed about and not apologize for? I will share that. One of the magical things with Denise and I is we always allowed each other to go deep on our obsessions. Like she, like her, her, her obsession for bar method and fitness and training and mentoring women was like, that sometimes meant she left the house at 4:30 in the morning, came home at 9. I never made her feel guilty about that because that was her passion. She was going deep on it. When I'm out on the road traveling, I've been traveling for 15 years, our entire relationship, and when she's never guilted me for being on the road, she's never called me. I mean, we miss each other, but she's never been like, I wish you didn't pursue your passion, your mission with such ferocity. She never said that.

Well, here's the thing. And I remember when we were first dating and you said, oh, I'm gonna go off and write my book this afternoon. And I said, okay, bye, bye. And your brother was like, what just happened? And, But I, I equate it to, if you love somebody, you want them to do things that bring them joy. So why would I stand in the way of you following your passion or your mission or what it is that you have to contribute that brings you joy.

I love you for that. That's why I'm here. That's why I get to do this. We have 2 million online students, we've had 28 major online course launches, six best selling books, a quarter billion video views, tens and tens of tens of thousands of people at our live events. And none of that would have happened if she had guilted me into doing what I would do. Instead, she cheered on my obsessions and it led to extraordinary success. So I just have to say, you know, if you have someone who supports you, God bless, thank God. But if you don't, don't let them stop you.

My Third, learning is, is to know your consequences. So going back to the plan, and I know what you're going to talk about next is closely related to this. But when you go back to your plan and the discipline around that, when you aren't disciplined, what does that mean? So when you say, well, I'm going to do that for me or for my mission, but maybe that's not enough, then what does that mean? And you don't follow through with what you were going to do, what skill you were going to build, or let's say this week you slack off, or, well, what does that also mean for not just your mission, but for you? Or if you're not productive and don't follow the plan, then what does that mean? Like, maybe you didn't get to say goodnight to the kids, maybe you didn't get to go on date night with your wife or your husband. Maybe you didn't get to see your family or spend an extra day at the holidays with them. So knowing what your consequences are, I think is super motivating for keeping you on track, because there's more to life than just work. But you also have all these relationships. So going back to kind of the planner and scoring yourself in each one of these things, if you're finding that you're really high in your work category and some other categories, but your relationships are dipping down, maybe it's because the necessity isn't there or you haven't really looked at what the outcome is costing you. And to be refined about your plan and to stick to it because it does have a cost or a consequence. And knowing what those are, I think is a little bit of a motivator, for sure.

I love that. My last one's actually really related with that. And it is to socialize your goals and your journey. And what I mean by that is you should share your goals with everybody around you, which most people consider like a scary thing. But think of all of the greats. They projected what they were going to do. They told everybody what their goals were. And now in the modern age, it's like you also share that journey. Because here's why this is so critical when you actually share it. That's making a public commitment. When you're on a journey, you get public. People watching. Now you're like, I don't want to let them, like, be like, not part of the process. Or, you know what, I have stakes in the game because now people are going to judge me if I do this or don't do that. The consequences If I share what I'm going to do and I don't do it, the consequences is like embarrassment.

Or trust.

Or trust.

That's a big one.

It could be good, positive or negative.

Right?

So the idea here is, like, share way more broadly with way more people what you want to do, because often that will also attract good things into your life where people will support you or cheer you on. If you read the high performance habits, you know the story of the Olympian here who had never really hit gold medal, and when I asked her, like, what the difference was between world champion to gold medalist, and she was sharing how, when she was underperforming, she just was. She never, like, shared. And then she said, what? One day I just started shouting from the rooftops, I want to win the gold medal. I want to win the gold medal. And all of a sudden, these different coaches, these different team members, nutritionists, experts, like strength and conditioning coaches, they all emerge because she said, when you shout from the rooftops what you really want, two things will happen. One, the village idiots will come out and point and blame and make fun of you. But also the village elders will come out and say, oh, I can help her. I can show them the way. And so you'll get both the good and the bad. But once you share it, there is a psychological switch that happens. It says, you know what? I need to be congruent with what I just said I was going to do and with what they have been seeing me do. Because one of the deepest drives of the human mind is congruence. And when you lose congruence, you don't like it. There's a guilt that comes in. So your mind will do almost everything to stick to it. So that's why I say, share your goals. Share your goals, because now it is necessary for you to actually work towards the goals. Otherwise, people go, hey, you said you were gonna do this, but you're not doing that. And you're like, ah, it's true. I know. So sharing, socializing that goal and that journey will change your life. Make some kind of public commitment to improving your life. Because transformation happens when you use the tools and you stay on the path to personal development. So we'd love to support you in that process and any way that we can. Because Denise likes to say, every day.

You have a choice. You can either choose to be average or you can choose to become extraordinary.

So, my friends, we will see you tomorrow. All right?

I hope you enjoyed this episode of Transformation Week. Again, if you really love this and you want the video based resources, tools and downloads for Transformation Week. Make sure you go to to transformationweek.com again, that's transformationweek.com and your email there will send you the entire Transformation Week series. All the videos, all the resources, all the tools you'll be able to access for free@transformationweek.com.

Sam.