Why Achievers Crash and Burn

Welcome to the Charged life. This is Brendan Burchard. Why do achievers crash and burn so often? You know, they work so hard to get ahead, and then when you get ahead, everything kind of falls apart and you start failing. You're like, why am I sabotaging myself? Am I doing something wrong? Well, sometimes I found over and over, working with high performers at the top level of Fortune 50 companies, Olympians, major celebrity sort of entrepreneurs, that these four horsemen come into the achievers life, and it just punches them out. And it's like, if you understand these four and you watch out for them, then you can maintain your success longer. But if you get trapped into these four things, you're in trouble. Here we. Number one reason achievers start to fail is they start to feel like they have to help everybody. You know, you got some success in your life, and all of a sudden, you know, some family and friends come out of the woodworking. They need some help, assistance, money. They have new projects for you, new ideas for you. They want you to help their dreams come true. And all of a sudden, you start finding yourself spread too thin helping everybody. The community comes up and they say, hey, could you give us some scholarships? Hey, could you fund this nonprofit opportunity? As you get more success, more people want you to serve. And while that's a good thing, it also ends up diluting your focus. And now you're trying to help everybody because you can. You know, one of the hard parts about being achiever is everyone looks to you for help and because you succeeded. And the only reason you succeeded is because you had a big heart and you had compassion for other people. Now you feel like you have to help everybody, and you burn out. You get exhausted, and you think, gosh, you know, I used to be able to really focus. But you lose all that focus helping too many people, so watch out for that. Are you currently helping too many people? Because it's an issue. There's a balance. There's a fine line of serving others versus burning yourself out. And if you feel like on your path to achievement, you were really focused and now you're too dissipated, beware. That's where you'll start to fail. Because that leads us to the number two reason people start to fail is they lose focus. Your projects and your mission was this. Now you've succeeded at it, and you have other people to manage it, or it just runs by itself. And now you can go focus on all your other projects of passion. And now you're like, oh, I'm interested in that. I'm interested in this. I'm interested in this and this. You lose focus, not just helping other people, but in taking on too many projects of your own that you're excited about. Now you've got 50 hobbies. You didn't have all these hobbies before, so you achieved. Now you've lost your focus and you start to lose. So be very cautious of taking on too many passion projects in a row. Take on too many at the same time. Remember, if you take care of your health and God bless, you're going to live a long while. You know, life has a way of, like, giving yourself time to do things, I guess I should say, you know, don't try and smack it all in. Just because now you have success and money doesn't mean you have to do everything at once. Just because you have some taste of success doesn't mean now you have to, oh, now I have permission to do everything because I succeeded. Actually, the reason you succeed is because you focus narrowly on one thing over a period of time. So I'm not saying you can't do lots of other things now. I'm saying just do them slow, like, pace them out. Take on new project, do well at it. New project, do well at it. In my own life, in my own career, what I tended to do is I built one brand or one new product or service offering for my audience per year. Just one. Now when you look at my arc of my career, it looks like, well, Brennan, he does all these things. He has all these books and all these courses, and he's everywhere, really. I was just doing one new thing a year. That was it, you know, and sometimes, like right now, I'm doing things right now that I knew I was gonna do five years ago, but I didn't try to take it on five years ago because I knew that would lose focus from a project I was working on then. It's like right now, you know, I have this whole spreadsheet at home of all these books I want to write. If I started trying to write all of them right now, none of them would get written. One thing at a time, man. That's what made you successful the first time. That's what's going to keep you on the path of success. You know, the other thing that comes to mind is that achievers tend to forget skill acquisition. They got the skill, they became successful. Now they're successful, they're good at it. They just keep doing the same thing, running the same route, but they're not training anymore. They're not going to the conferences anymore. They're not exploring and innovating and trying and testing the boundaries. They're not trying to get better. They just settled at where they're at. And because they settled at that skill level, their achievement kind of hits a ceiling. And over a period of time, also because they settle that one skill level, they get restless and they get bored with what made them successful. So they try everything else to feel filled up and happy. So achievers, keep learning, keep developing your skill at whatever that project was, keep pushing the boundaries, whatever it's. You don't need a new business or new career. You need to reengage with what you're doing and push yourself again. But that's what people do. They don't feel the push in this one thing. So they say, oh, I'm going with the push in all these other areas. Because these other areas bring novelty and growth. And that's what we want, right? We want novelty and growth. So we already succeeded at this. I'm bored with it. I'll go get novelty and growth in all these other areas. And this thing that made us successful starts to fail. So beware of seeking too much novelty and growth in other areas. Get novelty and growth in what you're already succeeding at. If you still love that thing that you are succeeding at should make sense, right? And I would say the last part about is, the reason people fail is because as much as they've achieved success, they never allowed themselves to feel it. They never integrated the successes. So they're on this never ending treadmill that burns them out. And as they burn out, they succeed less. And that comes from a place where psychologically, they never allowed themselves to feel joy, satisfaction or pride or even contribution from doing what they're doing. Everyone else identifies them as a success, but they haven't internalized it and said, you know what? I am a success. I'm good here, I'm happy here, I'm doing a good job. I'm still challenging myself. But you know what? I have a pride about what I'm doing. So I don't need to go chase 50 new things hoping to fill myself up and find some fulfillment. I'm able to feel fulfillment in the moment because I integrate it. I allow myself to feel the emotions that come from doing a good job. And if you never allow yourself to feel good about what you've achieved, then you'll always be on this never ending treadmill to find the next new thing. And so achievers, give yourself some credit. Achievers take a moment to pause at the end of the night and feel a sense of gratitude for what you did do today. Achievers have a practice where you reflect on what you've done with your family and your friends and your team to celebrate it and to feel it and to own it so that the achievement journey itself feels worthwhile. Because if it feels worthwhile, you won't abandon it. If it feels worthwhile, you'll keep doing it. You'll keep climbing, you keep innovating, you'll keep contributing. You'll keep feeling what we call the Charge Life. Hey, it's Brendan again. Did you notice something in today's episode? Yep. No ads, no sponsors. Just a positive message to improve your day. How do I do it? How is it that you listen to all those other podcasts and they have minutes and minutes worth of lame ads for underwear or other websites they're promoting? Hey, I don't judge them, but I choose to focus on you in this podcast. And personally, when I listen to other shows, I just skip those long winded sponsor pitches. Anyway, I can only do this because you share my podcast with so many other people and enough folks end up looking me up online and buying my books or taking my online courses that I can self fund this entire effort. And you know how hard it is to do all this and that's why I appreciate you guys so much. I heard that you even helped me break a record too. The longest running top 10 self help show without a single sponsor or product pitch or ad. So if you like this podcast ad free and sponsor free. Do me a favor, tell a friend today, you know you should listen to the Charged Life Brendon Burchard's podcast. Just help spread the word, share why you like my show or tell people to go to podcast.brendon.com it would sure help and I'd appreciate it. And I'm sure our community would too. I look forward to talking with you again soon my friend. Until then, go out there every single day of your life. Live fully, love openly and make your difference. Today.