Change Your Life by Changing Your Thought Process | Brendon Burchard

Your life is a series of actions that you initiate or don't initiate and that your thoughts are going to control that roadmap. And so how are you using your mind today to either make yourself feel great or not? I posted on Instagram this morning, I said, listen, your destiny is ultimately controlled by a decision you already made this morning. Everyone watching this already made a decision this morning. This morning they made it. A life changing, huge decision this morning. And that is either I'm going to get up, enter the world with no intention, go through the motions to hopefully get by or survive, or I am going to get clear in this morning about what I want, what I'm going after, who I'm going to be, how I'm going to serve, and whether or not I'm going to be excellent and extraordinary or not. And the problem is most people never make that conscious decision.

Hey everybody. Welcome to Impact Theory. Today's guest is widely recognized as the world's leading high performance coach. He's written a gaggle of books and topped virtually every bestseller list there is, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal and Amazon. I've gotten to know him personally over the last couple years and I can say that I am not at all surprised by the fact that that some of the world's most successful people have enlisted him as their coach. He's worked with everyone from Fortune 50 CEOs to athletes and celebrities like Usher and Oprah. And he's the guy that millions of people all over the world turn to when they want to break through to that next level. He's one of the top 100 most followed social influencers on Facebook with over 10 million followers. His podcast, the Charge Life debuted at number one on iTunes and stayed in the self help top 10 for roughly 100 weeks. More than 2 million students from over 190 countries have taken his online courses and his video series has been seen over 100 million times. His Experts Academy was ranked by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the five must attend events for all entrepreneurs. And his recent digital magazine and live event series, Influencer has launched to sold out crowds and much faster fanfare. So please help me in WELCOMING the man Oprah.com named one of the most successful online trainers in history. The author of High Performance Habits, my good friend, Brendon Burchard.

Yeah, I want to do the fancy handshake. Let me run it.

Thank you, thank you, thank you. Good to have you. I'm pumped. It is very exciting to be back with you. We've actually spent a Fair amount of time over the last few months together and over the last year, about 18 months, two years maybe now that we've spent some legitimate time. And right now half the audience is thinking this guy is, he's acting like that for camera. And I can just tell you right now, he's always like this. The amount of energy that you have is really extraordinary. And I want to talk to you about carbs.

Carbs. That's it.

I want to talk to you about consciously designing your life. It's an idea that I see you live day in and day out. Thank you. Everything in your world seems completely integrated. The people that you hang out with, the things that you do to have the energy, the things you focus on, to make sure that you remain excited. Like it all feels like there's nothing that's sort of by accident in your life. So what's the whole concept and how do you actually pull it off?

You know, I think I talked about this last time a little bit with my car accident. So when I was a 19 year old kid, I had this car accident. And prior to the car accident I had been suicidal and you know, coming out of breakup with the woman I loved, I lost my identity in that, became suicidal, had the car accident. And it was just powerful juxtaposition because here I am, suicidal, want to take my life and then I get an accident that says, oh no, I don't want to die. And it forced me to consider how I will evaluate my life at the end of my life. And that has always been the driving force for me is I realize at the end of my life, for me personally, I'm going to ask these questions to evaluate was I happy with my life? And those for me are did I live? Did I love, Did I matter? Which isn't for some people watching, like so what? But I was 19 and it set in me. And so if you think about it, you know, that was what, 23 years ago. If you wake up every day with a super clear intention and reverence for life, realizing how short it is, you absolutely get your act together.

But how do you, like, how do you really turn that into a roadmap and start doing the right things? Because one, I think a lot of people could waste a moment like that, the eye opening thing, a lot of people could do it for a while. And then without concrete things to do on a daily basis, what I really want people to understand in all the research that you've done in high performance and all that, it comes down to things that you can do. It comes down to things that you can teach. It comes down to things that people can structure their life around. And what I want to dive into today is that structure.

Yeah. You know what's funny is like, I think you nailed it. People take an eye opening experience and some don't do anything with it. And some people grow from it. And I came back from that experience. I was in college and prior to going back, I was the depressed kid, the sad kid, kind of lonely kid, kind of the pull away from the world kid because I was hurt. I came back and I had this new intention to live. So I wanted to meet people and talk to people. And they're like, who are you? And anytime you change your life, usually people are like, what's wrong with you? So everyone's like, what's wrong with you? But I was like, I'm gonna change. Cause I knew I didn't want misery anymore. I didn't want suffering, I didn't want sadness, I didn't want negative thinking. I didn't want poor quality of relationships. I didn't want to feel horrible. So I began the quest of, well, how do I not feel horrible? So I started reading. First I started personal development, self help, then jumped into spirituality, then jumped into psychology, then jumped into neuroscience, then jumped into sociology, then jumped into leadership, and spent Every week for 23 years I read a book a week on one of those topics. For 23 years I went to the seminars about the audio courses. So I'm listening to Dale Carnegie and Napoleon Hill and Earl Nightingale and Jim Rohn and Zig Ziglar and Louise Hay and Marianne Williamson and Debbie Ford and Tony Robbins and Wayne Dyer, Deepak Chopra, Brian Tracy. And I went down deep like, I'm very much like you. I'm obsessive. So I got obsessive into psychology. Carl Rogers, Alfred Adler, Roy Baummeister, Abraham Maslow, all of the positive psychology work that was developing at the time, that was becoming bigger and bigger and bigger.

What were some of the early things you were pulling out of that to begin? Chang, I'm guessing you didn't lay in the hospital bed and have the revelation of all the things you needed to do to your mind to get out. So what were in those early days you're reading these books. What are some of the first things that begin to hit you? Like, I remember I had a transformational moment with Napoleon Hill and grow rich. And that was a real demarcation point for me. The notion of, oh, if you think you can, you can. And if you think you can't, you can't. And that was, that was one of those things that just sort of cut to the heart of everything for me and became something I could circle my mind around. What were some of those early things for you?

First and foremost is exactly what you started the show with, which is conscious design. It's like your life doesn't end up an accident. Your life is a series of actions that you initiate or don't initiate, and that your thoughts are going to control that roadmap. And, and so how are you using your mind today to either make yourself feel great or not? I posted on Instagram this morning, I said, listen, your destiny is ultimately controlled to by a decision you already made this morning. Everyone watching this already made a decision this morning. This morning they made it A life changing, huge decision this morning. And that is either I'm gonna get up, enter the world with no intention, go through the motions to hopefully get by or survive, or I am going to get clear in this morning about what I want, what I'm going after, who I'm going to be, how I'm going to serve, and whether or not I'm going to be excellent and extraordinary or not. And the problem is most people never make that conscious decision. And so I was learning early on, make the conscious decision about who you want to be each day, stay congruent with that. And that was, you know, for me, a kid who was just going through the motions all of a sudden going, oh, who do I want to be? What do I want my relationships to be?

Like?

That was really important. And then I started setting personal challenges every month. At the beginning of each month, I do this whole thing where I holistically evaluate my Life on the first of every month. And it's like these 10 different categories of my life, you know, from emotional to relational to financial to, you know, career mission objectives, all these things. I go down that on the first of the month, just kind of holistic viewpoint in my life. And then I set a personal challenge and a professional challenge and I do that every month, every Sunday. I revisit my progress every Sunday for 23 years. So it's not like I'm just, you know, one day ended up in a happy life. It was like that level of self evaluation that most people avoid until their birthday or New Year's. I do it every Sunday and every first of the month and I don't ever miss. And I think that has helped me kind of know what my thing is because I don't think I'm super special. It's like what I help people do. And you know this is chapter one of High Performance Habits, right? Seek clarity. The only reason I get to work with all these people you mentioned is because they're at a new level in their life where they're going, what is it now for me? And I help them kind of figure that out. Like, what is it now for you about how you want to define yourself, what types of relationships you want and how deep you want to go? What is it that you want to develop as a skill set and what is the specific service you want to provide? And I just work them through that because I've been working through that myself, you know.

So let's say it's Sunday. And what, what does that look like? You sitting down at a desk by yourself, headphones on, journal out. Are you sitting at a computer? You write by hand. What is the physical process?

Desk, journal, green tea. Desk, journal, green tea. And by myself. Doors closed, no phones, no computer, just sitting and thinking about it.

Do you write that?

Self evaluative process is huge.

Do you write as you think?

Sometimes. Not always sometimes.

So when, if you're not gonna write as you think, is it a meditative practice? Like, are you sitting there? So if I'm trying to think through a problem, I'll sit myself down in ideally a completely dark room. If the sun is already up, then I'll put something over my so that it's at least dark to me. I've got over the ear headphones. I'm listening to the sound of a thunderstorm. Something that just completely collapses my world down to inside my mind basically. And I'll return to either a visual image or a very simple sentence, like one that I'm doing right now. Because we're attempting to get Neon Future, one of the projects, fiction projects that we're doing, thank you. Turned into a different format. The simple phrase that I come back to is reboot Neon Future. So like what does that look like? Imagined in this new way. And so I'll sit there and then imagery, words, whatever, begin to flow and then I'll start, I do that, but I'm actually typing. So then I'll type out my ideas and I definitely type as I think. So what is that? Is it like. I would say my process is very meditative.

Yep.

Is yours meditative?

Is, is it for the Sunday thing? It's really self evaluative and very planning oriented. So it's like, where am I, what I need to do this week, this month? And just checking with my calendar. So on Sundays, a lot of it's like just deleting things, but separate process.

Deleting what things?

Meetings, blocks of time, things that have.

Been booked for what's coming. And you like discussions.

Most of my schedule's been booked six months, seven months out, starting any given Sunday. When I'm going through my evaluative process of what's important, what do I need to work on. I look at the schedule and notice, oh wow, here's that chunk of thing we scheduled three months ago. Delete. I thought it was going to be here. Delete. Just like really clipping at the calendar. Most people don't have a calendar, so that's problem number one. They're not strategically blocking time, moving towards the major things they want in their life. They won't say they're going through the motions, but the calendar reveals it. Like if I parachute in their life and I opened up their calendar and there's nothing there, they can't possibly say they're living with purpose or intention. And that sounds so flippant to say, but I can't believe how many people, they're not planning their skill set development, they're not planning specific goal attainment on certain dates. So just like their calendar is completely empty and they're hoping it's going to happen. And it's like, if you look at mine, it's like military esque, like planning, like I'm going to hit these goals, it's going to happen. So that's a piece of it. But to what you were saying about the meditative process, I also every morning lay in bed and I visualize what I want. And I see it like when I first, when I wake up, I literally just lay there for an extra 2, 3, 4 minutes and I just kind of visualize and I'm thinking about the things that I want. So that happens every morning.

Are you willing to share an example?

Actual example? So from age of 20 to 26, probably 90% of the time I would lay there and I would see myself on stages, big stages, and I would sit there and as soon as that image came up, I'd freak out. Like, I'd imagine myself walking on a stage with an arena and I would literally just start sweating in bed. I'd lay there in bed terrified. Like, just awfully uncomfortable because that wasn't me. But I was like, everyone was saying, your car accident story, Brennan, really made a difference in my life. This whole idea of having reverence for life and having, you know, the Intention of who you want to be, all these simple things that we talk about in personal development. But I'd share my story with people and think, oh my gosh, you need to teach that. And I was like, oh, I started hearing that. I said, maybe I'll learn how to teach. I'll learn to talk, only be more expressive. Because where I'm from, I grew up in an Irish mining town that had been economically depressed for a century. Like, men didn't communicate. There was no emotional expression. If their hands came above their waist, they were punching you in the face, you know, I mean, it was a very physical and very violent place I grew up in. But there wasn't emotional expression. So I'd lay there and I'd see myself like talking and moving on stage. If you visualize yourself on stage, people watching now or listening now, if you close your eyes and you see yourself on stage, public speaking with no podium, no notes to 10,000 people in arena, most people will get clammy hands and start sweating. If you really see it and think about it and feel it and put yourself there for two to three minutes. I did that for six years, for three to five minutes every morning I'd hear myself saying something. I'd see myself moving. I'd see the audience clapping or jumping up at the end. I'd see myself moving across the stage in ways I never move. And that visualization created that skill set. Because then I'd go and I. Sometimes I'd wake up and I was like, oh, that was good. I'd try it out on the carpet, you know, I'd get up like, oh, I like that. I'd try it out and I'd try it out just in my little dorm room, then my little apartment. And I was always trying things out. And I always wanted to get better at it. And I always wanted to get better at it. So it just depends. Sometimes it's a specific goal. Like right now I'm also working on some, you know, major media goals. And so I'm seeing myself and hearing myself talk through the deal with the people I'm pitching. The second visualization I do in the morning comes later. So I get up in the morning, I drink 20 ounces of water, I do 20 minutes of mobility, movement and stretching every morning. Then I read for 20 minutes something positive. For me, it's almost always a self help book or a leadership book. Almost always. Sometimes a business book, almost always self help and leadership. Read that book. Then I go and I sit down with my high performance planner My green tea. I fill out the day, right? I look at the blocks of time that are already scheduled. And then what I use is my second visualization, which is I look at the major blocks of time that have been scheduled just like this, this morning. And I close my eyes and I think, how do I do that thing with excellence? What would make that thing special? So this morning before I got here, when I thought about this, because there you go. My high performance planner impact theory. Tom Bilyeu. Oh, yes. Three exclamation points. Literally. So I looked at the schedule, I closed my eyes, and I thought, okay, what do I want to communicate on Tom's show? How do I want that to feel? What do I want to communicate? So I literally close my eyes and I visualize those blocks of time. And how would I do them? Well, that's a superpower. Most people write their day out and they just go about the day and then they. Sometimes they come back to the plan and they go, oh my God, I didn't even do it. Because I sit there and I think about, how do I do that? Well, that's a game changer.

How do you actually audit yourself? How do you hold yourself accountable? What are the standards by which you're measuring yourself? Which that alone I think is important. And that's something that I feel like if I were going to put my finger on a high performance habit, I would say for sure. My ability to look nakedly at how I'm performing, like, almost dispassionately. I'm not beating myself up, I'm not celebrating my. I'm just saying, like, either it's working or not objectively. So how do you do that?

Well, in spirituality, it's just called being the observer. So you're observing your life dispassionately from a place of mindfulness and understanding where the judgment isn't there, that's negative. And so that's a huge part of it. Because a lot of people, the reason they hate self audits and they hate self evaluation because it feels bad, but they're letting it feel bad instead. It's like, how do I perceive this and think through instead what my real intention should be? So how do I do it? And here's how I'd recommend others to do it. First, I have my high performance planner, which literally details out. But if you don't have the high performance planner, here's a simple thing to do. Three things I want you to do every day. First, I want you to write 10 prompts for the morning, for yourself, 10 prompts. Those prompts for you might say, how can I be a great mother today? How can I show appreciation to someone on my team today? It might say, how do I care for my health today? It might say three words I want to keep in mind all day. You know, the message I have for myself today is this. The most difficult thing I'm going to face today would be this. And the best way my best self could overcome it is this. Two big long term projects to keep in mind are this, right? Those like write down 10 prompts. So the high performance planner begins in the morning. There's the 10 prompts that we know correlate with long term success that we've measured. There they are. So I fill that out every morning. Second thing I want you to do at the end of the night, 10 more prompts. What did I learn about myself today? What did I learn about other people today? Did I demonstrate my best today? Where did I not? Where did I get stuck? Where did I get frustrated? What negative thought did I have today that I don't need to have anymore? How did I treat people today? Did I move as swiftly towards my goals today? That type of thing. But the other piece about it is at night I do the scorecard. So for me it's the six habits of high performance now. Clarity, energy, necessity, productivity, influence and courage. And so it's like there's the word clarity and it says was I very clear about exactly what I need to do today to move forward? Score one to five. And so the third thing I want everyone to do, build your scorecard for the end of the night. And your scorecard might say dad. Your scorecard might say leader. Your scorecard might say specific. What I've made, it is habit driven. So it's generate energy. Did I generate the energy I needed today to deliver my best productivity? Did I avoid distraction today and only focus on the needle moving activities?

And what do you do if the answer is a low score on something?

It's always there's so many low scores in there. I just feel about it, I'm aware of it. And I take that and what I do is I flip the page for the next day of the planner and I just write down, don't get stuck here, don't do this. You know, it's just a constant learning process. The nice thing about self awareness is the human brain has this incredible capacity for guilt. And most people unconsciously let that roll over them and kick their butt and make a horrible life. I love guilt. Guilt is A tool. Guilt is a weapon. Guilt does not have to be a bad thing. It's not like I perpetuate, but I'm like, I love that I feel bad when I don't do a good job. Most people hate that about themselves. I love that feeling like I didn't do a good job there. Next time I will. So some people, guilt is discouragement. Other people, it's a signal for learning. To me, guilt is a signal for learning. It is the body and the brain, the spirit. Knowing what is right, knowing what is wrong, knowing what's great, knowing what's mediocre. And it's saying, hey, do a little better now. If it's translated into a negative impulse, then some people call it guilt. But I'm like, I'm totally cool with guilt. You know what? I think it's good that we feel bad when we do something that is below our standard or that's not right. Because that impulse to go, I want to do that better. Like I wanted to make sure I want to come back to my morning visualization. I'm going to be on tomorrow Friggin Bill Use show. One of my favorite people on the planet. I tell all my people to listen to your show, watch your show. Like everybody, everybody. You know, the other day I was literally coaching a billionaire and I was like, I'm supposed to be with Tom Bilyeu right now. You gotta watch his stuff. You gotta like everybody. I'm just like, Tom, Tom, Tom. So this morning I was thinking like, how would I make that excellent? How would I feel good being on Tom's show? So when I was visualizing that, the one thing I want to make sure I did today was acknowledge you for how incredible of a speaker you have become.

Wow.

Because I saw you two years ago and the Tom Bilyeu on the stage today is fundamentally the same. It's the same, man. The congruence is there, but the performance and the talent and the power with the audience has gone like this. Like you've gone from a passionate dude to one of the best speakers in America right now.

Wow. Thank you, man.

And watching that, I know that is because the impulse is like, you know when you come off stage and you crush it or when you're like, I can do better. And that impulse, that desire to learn and drive and do better is something that doesn't always feel good because it says also, I kind of screwed up over there. But when you can dispassionately recognize your performance and go, I actually want to become great at this, all of your psychological and spiritual energies kind of align a little bit to saying, let's grow then. And if you can allow that impulse and deal with that anxiety and that discomfort that comes with it. Just like when I was laying in bed for six years in an awkward, super weird dude sweating in bed, literally profusely sweating, thinking about speaking, people like profusely sweating. I endured that visualization, that practice, that trial for myself to become good.

And was part of the thing that you're practicing when you're doing that, is it not having the anxiety response? Is that what you're trying to get to? Or are you just visualizing over and over and over? I would move like this. I would say things like this. Was it purely tactical for you?

Well, luckily, I just knew that psychologically, with familiarity, you know, the odds of decreasing anxiety is extremely high.

So it's basically like running a simulation.

Running that simulation. Yeah, exactly. Like a pilot running that simulation over and over and over. If you're a pilot and you run the simulation and it crashes 50 times, the first 10, you're mortified. The last 12, you're on the dials, you know. And so I think just running the pattern over and over visually is really powerful. The world completely underestimates the power of visualization, Completely misutilizes the human power of contemplation. The number one thing I say to my high performance clients is going through the motions is the death of high performance. High performers don't go through the motions. They're contemplative, they're intentional, they're thoughtful, they practice, they want it to go well. And the reason most people don't do that is because the pressure, it puts a lot of pressure on yourself, but that's what makes you feel great.

I think you're very right about that notion of contemplation and the willingness to feel badly about something. I think self reward and self punishment is really, really important.

Yes.

And I think that if people don't sort of automatically have the guilty thing, which they probably do, it's more a willingness to lean into that and to say, okay, this is actually gonna serve me. This is gonna work for me. And wonder sometimes, you know, as somebody who now basically has a profession of giving advice, at least on the one side of what I do. And so I think a lot about, like, who should actually take my advice, because my advice is not going to lead to a carefree, easy life. Lisa was just saying she was laying in bed last night thinking about me, and she said how the Fuck does he do it? Because there's just a level of things that I'm willing to take on and I don't. One, I'm not even sure it's healthy for me, and two, I'm certainly not certain that it's healthy for other people. But what I do know is that I have a level of thrill and pleasurable obsession around it. So for me, it's fun. So when I think about the guilt or the momentary pain of fucking something up and you talk about me getting better as a speaker, it's like that journey is. It is a very simple journey that requires you, though, to really accept that you're not very good at things right now and that that's fin. So a big key for me has always been to think of my life, not the lens of a moment. And I used to tell this to my employees all the time, like, stop judging yourself through the lens of a moment and start judging yourself through the lens of 10 years. If you think of yourself in 10 year increments, like, you will blow your fucking mind. So if you're embarrassed today about where you are, don't compare yourself even to yesterday, which may not soothe that and encourage you to push forward. Think back 10 years. My gut instinct is, unless you've really been treading water, in which case, then leverage that pain to never do that again. But if you think back to where you were 10 years, chances are like, you're gonna be blown away with how far you come. And so then it's like, all right, then I'm just gonna focus my gaze 10 years in the future and start saying, what would I have to do to be somewhere where I'd be blown away then with where I'm at now?

Yeah.

But it really does require you to say, okay, the pride that I'm going to establish is actually around my willingness to look at the fact that I'm not good right now, today. And that, to me, it's really simple. But it is very hard to do for people that are unintentional about their emotional life. So how have you learned to read your emotions to not just give in to them and to have the same kind of high degree of consciousness around how you shape that as well.

One revisiting it a lot. But let's give a framework to what you're talking about, and then we'll drop into the emotion piece. I love that you keep saying it's simple. And for some people, they don't think that way. So it's not simple. So let's give them a framework. Number one, what we're really talking about here is contemplation, really thinking through and using the power of thought. What you want, what do you want to be like? What are the skills you want to deliver? What's the service you want to offer to the world? Number two, the consistency of action. To not only create that in your own body and your own mind, but start creating that result in the world. That's really important. Number three is courage. Because it takes courage to put yourself out there and try to get a little better. Like it was even just laying in bed, visualizing myself doing something on stage that was way outside my boundaries of comfort. Like walk across the stage really fast, walk down to the audience and give high fives and say something strong or, you know, admit something or share something vulnerable. Like, that's courage. That's scary. But the other thing is, I think that you and I have always had, which sometimes is undervalued, is we also had community. We had other people. You had Lisa, you know, I had Denise. We had people in our industry or our peer set, who we looked up to or who we could learn from or who we could be. Like, this sucks. This is hard. And for me, coming back to your emotional element, that has been everything for me. Community, having people in my life who I can, you know, when I'm on the road for X amount of time, or I'm dealing with a super hard client, or we're rolling out a leadership program to a Fortune 50 company, or, you know, I'm doing my first, you know, major deal with Oprah Winfrey Network and I don't know what to do. I am so incredibly fast of asking people what to do. I'm also incredibly fast in sharing how I feel about it. Being like, oh, you know, I feel really awkward about this. I'm unsure. I'm having a lot of self doubt. How would you deal with it? I'm somebody who expresses emotions all the time. My frigging tagline is bring the joy. Like everybody knows that. Why? Because I want to make sure people know we're going to create this energy. Because emotion is not something you have, it is something you generate. Emotion can be an impulse, but feelings is our interpretations of those impulse over a period of time. And I said I want to feel vibrancy, joy, love, connection, satisfaction, fulfillment in my life. So I'm going to learn to generate those emotions. How do you learn to generate the emotions? You read psychology. How do you learn to generate the emotions? You try like you're just like, I'm gonna go. We're gonna have date night tonight. I'm gonna make it a fun night. I'm gonna make it a fun night. I'm gonna do things to see. Can I make people laugh? Can I make people turn their lights on? You learn to control your own emotions and or deal with them in better ways as you decide to be a more mature person.

Let me see how many people I can turn off right now by dealing with another element of this. So everything you just said is A, true and B, super powerful. There is a different reason that I say that. It is simple. And admittedly, this is because this is the journey I had to go on. But have you seen Fight Club? Yeah, there's a part in Fight Club and the gift that I would like to give the world if I had, which I did not, but if I had sat down and set my intention for what do I want to convey? This is one of my top five things that I want to get across to people if you really want to succeed. There's a moment in Fight Club where he puts his hand out and the guy puts a caustic solution on the back of his hand and it burns. And he tells him that he has to just leave it there. And he ends up holding his hand down so that he can't take it away at first because it hurts so badly. And then finally he releases, and the guy has the strength to leave his hand there and let it just burn. And what I'm saying is you have a mechanism in your mind called the psychological immune system. Its job is to get you to pull your hand away, to wash off the thing that burns. And, hey, you're fine. Again, what I'm saying is, if you want to be great, the burning sensation is you having to accept that you fucked something up, that you're not as good as you want to be, that there are people that are better than you, that you're not as far along in the journey as you want to be. And what you have to learn how to do if you want to be great, you have to learn to let it burn. And even though your impulse is going to be to turn away from that, to not look at it, to soothe it by saying, it's them, it's their fault, they fucked it up. I grew up in the wrong place. It's fine for them. They're wealthy. Like, whatever excuse you use to try to let yourself off the hook for not being where you want to be, instead of saying, actually, the power is the ability to let it burn. And one of my employees was just asking me yesterday, and he said, how do you not get overwhelmed? And I said, you want to know the God's honest truth? The second I feel that impulse, Brendon, I say to myself, you don't get overwhelmed. I'm not gonna fucking back down. I will not break. You cannot break me. Fuck that. Get that shit out of your head right now. And just interrupting that thought with an aggressive impulse of like, I'm gonna let it burn now. I'm not a moron. So I immediately go, hey, thank you, psychology for letting me know that. Ooh, there's a lot of things coming at me right now. So I'm gonna go meditate. But the way that I interrupt the thought is by reminding myself not to be weak.

Who's in control? Right?

100%.

Who's in control? Is overwhelming in control, or are you in control? Are all these different situations making you feel something? Or are you allowing yourself to interpret something to make it that? And so I think that's incredibly powerful. I think it's incredibly powerful. I think there's a yin and a yang to that, too. I think those who learn to endure hardship, struggle, challenge, difficulty, pain, grief, vulnerability, failure, regret, that's one side of that coin. If you learn to do that, but you also don't, on the other side, learn to allow joy, fulfillment, satisfaction, a sense of. Now, hold on, hold on.

I have to stop you allow. Is that the word you want to commit to? You said bring.

I'm going to build.

I'm building.

You have to first allow it. Because what most people do is if on the other side of the coin, it's super etched in, what happens is even when that impulse comes up to, I like this. Oh, no, I'm not supposed to like it. So you have a lot of people who are extremely talented at the top levels who, they do endure the pain, and they really like the pain. And they will allow that all the day long. They'll allow that now because they'll tell their brain this is what's expected. But they also don't let themselves feel good when feeling good is there. This is a real big problem. I mean, if you study, like, psychosis, a lot of people who really struggle with addiction, eating disorders are super common. Who. Even when they feel that sense of self love or self acceptance. Oh, I'm not supposed to feel that? No, you really. There is an element to personal development where you have to allow the good feelings and not push them away because it's like, oh, I should. I don't deserve to feel that. Because a huge part of the world is telling themselves I don't yet deserve to feel happy. Even though happiness comes up, I shouldn't feel that yet. I'm gonna keep striving. It's not until I get the next 2 million. Then I'll let myself feel happy. Even though they had that good Monday. And so you have a lot of people who are striving in difficulty who also have not taught themselves the emotional side of what is called the most important movement in the history of the world in psychology called positive psychology, kicked off by Marty seligman, a good friend of mine, Mihaly cszentmihalyi, without that work of saying, no, no, we also have to allow ourselves and teach ourselves to flourish, feel satisfaction, feel Joy. So I'm 100% with you, and I'm like, the rule is that's one side of the coin. And the other rule is make sure you teach yourself to generate the positive emotions. Because what happens is if you don't teach yourself to generate the positive emotions as well, then what ends up happening is you burn out or you become a cliche of the person who had it all and never felt fulfilled. And, you know, our mutual friend Tony Robbins says, like, that's ultimate failure to succeed. Succeed, succeed, but never feel like a success. Never feel like you've had it. Like, I'm vitally aware that, you know, I could get on a plane and not survive. I'm vitally aware that tomorrow might not be here for me. I don't want to grit and hustle it out and never feel the joys of life, that satisfaction, that pleasure of, you know what? Gosh, good for you. You're trying hard, Brendon. Today sucked. You failed today, brendon. But you're doing a good job, kid. Stay in the game. Feel some satisfaction that you tried. Feel some fulfillment of that, you know, because what I learned from high performers, this is not just Brendon's personal opin. I've done this for 16 years at the highest levels, and I see it over and over. It's usually when I get the call, it's like, well, I just sold my company for, you know, hundreds of millions, and I crap, I'm miserable. And I ask when someone says, I can't figure out Brandon, you know, everyone says I should be happy. I'm not. I don't know what's going on. And they're edgy as hell about, like, I have it. I mean, Geez, look at the house, look at the girl, look at the cars, look at the thing. I got it all. I'm freaking out, man. I don't know why I did it all. And I said, well, did you ever teach yourself to be happy along the way? And they never did that work because doing that work is what makes life worthwhile too.

Why are you so good at relationships? Like, what are a few of the things that make you bond with people as quickly as you do?

I always come back to, there must be an intention there. So the intention. Where did the intention come from? So the intention for me came from, you know, when I was on my deathbed and in, you know, two times in my life I thought I was going to die. And the one that gave me the greatest gift was the did I love part of did I live? Did I love, did I matter? I saw scenes of my life when I thought I was going to die. I saw scenes of my life when I was surrounded by the people that I loved. And my instant feeling was I'm going to miss them and they're going to miss me and I'm dying. And that's so sad. And that was as important as did I live my life or did I make a difference? It was like, I'm so sad and, and I got that as a 19 year old kid. Like a breakup of a relationship sent me into suicide. That realization was like, oh my God. At the end all you're gonna wonder is about your family and your friends and people you loved and all they're gonna miss you. So I got early that one of the objectives of this game has to be deep relationships because you're gonna see scenes of your life surrounded by people you love at the very end. And I'm like, so live your life. So it's this epic, beautiful movie. And so I think that was where the intention came from, was I just wanted to have great relationships. The second is I'm so good at recognizing how awesome people are. You know, I just, I have a talent finding capability of just goodness. Like I, you know it, you've been in my world. I, I don't attract assholes like they're nowhere. I'm too annoying, I'm too happy for them. There's too much positive psychology happening. So the assholes are like, I don't like that guy. They don't come to my seminars, they don't buy my stuff, I repel all the jerks and I'm super lucky by that. I don't know if it's the way I look or the way that I talk. I think the other aspect is all I want to do. And what I realized early on from reading personal development books is your life creates a ripple. And so I'm always trying to realize that maybe I can make somebody smile today. And now when they go home, they're nicer to the kid. That's a real thing. And so I treat people with that recognition because I don't know if you ever. Sometimes when someone treats you bad, it really does mess up the rest of your day. And I had people beat me when I was a kid. I got in fights when I was a kid. I was in martial arts most of my life. So I've just had, like, super violent things happen in my life. I've had a lot of drama with relationships early in my life. I'm talking, like pre 20s. And I just wanted to be the positive ripple.

I love that, dude. Where can people find out more about you?

Listen to the Brendon show, my podcast, the Brennan show, because. But I'm really excited because we've basically taken some of the best I have of all my online courses. I got 28 online personal development and professional development courses. We take little clips of those best courses. We take clips of my live cast that people pay for that they don't get to see. We put that on the Brennan Show. I'm really proud of that podcast right now because just the best of stuff is in there. And then just on Instagram, on the gram, man, Just sharing my things. But my favorite place for people to meet me is in your local bookstore. Go look for the bees. Last name is Brashard. Find those six books, pick up one, and if you don't like it, use it as a doorstop or like a table leveler. But my first and greatest passion is when I'm at a party and people introduce, like, if we were somewhere and you're like, how do I introduce you? Brand say, I'm a writer. I love writing books.

Wow.

Books saved my life.

Yeah, I hear that for sure. All right. I've already asked you what the impact you want to have on the world is. And the first time that we sat down together. So I'm going to ask you a slight variation. What is the one change people could make in their lives that would help them have the biggest impact?

The one change?

Yeah. What could they do or stop doing that would allow them to have so many people that watch this show? If you ask them what they want to do with their lives, they're going to say I want to help people or I want to have impact.

Yeah.

But many of them fail to have the impact they want to have because they aren't doing XYZ or they should start doing xyz.

I have two answers. But you're going to like them because they're totally in alignment. This is one reason we're brothers. First one has to be a mindset shift specific 1. A very specific one that everyone's struggling with right now, which is really giving yourself permission to have the ambitions you have. Most people are half hearted, half interested, half engaged in their actual dream and actual ambition because they either fear it or they feel insecure or incapable. And teaching people. I literally just had this conversation with one of the most successful people in literally the world in the top.0001% category of revenue is has not fully expressed and owned their ambition instead. People apologize for their ambition, hide their ambition. You have to learn to own your ambition. Speak of the ambition, chase the ambition, drive the ambition and lead the ambition. It is a full both allowance, back to the words allowance of the ambition and an active generation of that ambition. The further you are from your ambitions, the more miserable you are. And most people don't even look at their goals every day. So no wonder we have a world that says I'm disconnected. It's like wake up. I ask people all the time, did you look at your goals today? That's as simple. That's literally personal development 101 is have goals, look at them. Most people do not do that. I want you to not just not go. I want you to deeply visualize, feel, sense and talk about your ambitions way more like. Way more like. I love that about you. You're like, I'm gonna build the friggin Disney of this nonsense. And everybody around you knows it. You know how rare that is? It's one reason I love you. People who are scared to communicate about their ambitions are cheating themselves in the world from supporting them. I coached an Olympian. I love this. It's in high performance habit. I wrote really briefly about it, but she had won several world records and world championships, but never a medal. And this was a big goal for her. And then she did, and I was working with her and then afterwards we were having this conversation. I said, what made the difference? She says, you know what? One day, it wasn't training, it wasn't nutrition, it wasn't diet, it wasn't everything we talk about. She goes, one day I just started shouting from the rooftops that I wanted to win a gold medal. I started telling everybody around me and she had this great say. She says, when you shout from the rooftop what you want, two things happen. One, the village idiots come out and judge you. All the village idiots, she says, but also the village leaders come out and go see this. Let's set this person up. She said, all of a sudden the right coaches, the right dieticians, the right former gold medalist, the right teammates started to came out. And all of a sudden she had a community who were galvanizing behind this vision and ambition she had that she never achieved. Even though nothing changed in her physical body, it was like she communicated the ambition. The tribe arrived, the goal was achieved, Complete game changer. So allowing the ambition, shouting from the rooftop, that's the mindset that is a behavior change that takes real personal power, real courage, real vulnerability, whatever you want to call it. But most people don't do it. That's number one. Number two, you have to have daily intention and habit tracking. You can't leave your personal development to randomness. And what most people do, they leave their personal growth to randomness. And so they're always in the land of mediocrity. You have to have that morning routine and that evening routine of evaluating where you are and where you want to go and asking the hard questions of what is it about me that's not moving forward? What is it about me that I need to accept, love, care for, take care of, do a better job with? How do I treat other people so I can get ahead faster? What do I need to focus on? If you don't do that on a daily basis, you're going through the motions. And even if you're successful, imagine how much more successful you would be if you were way more intentional and you actually tracked your habits. This is why we developed the High Performance Planner. Because I wanted it. I was like, I know how easy it is to go through a day. You hustle all day and you crash at the end of the day. I know the hundred hour work weeks, I know how that feels. I know what that's about. But if you're doing all of that and you're not aware, that leads to a nightmare that leads to. You take the wrong path and you're hustling down the wrong path. You lean the ladder against the wrong building, you do the wrong thing. The awareness on the daily is something people need to build into a routine and physicalize. Like not a note on your phone, journal, workbook planner, something that you actually connect pen to paper. You Think through. And if we can get you. Ambition Clarified. Ambition. Speak the ambition. Own the ambition. And you're actually intentional in tracking each day you win this game.

Very well said. Yeah, guys, he says a lot of things. Very well. I highly encourage you to go to the B section in the bookstore and pick up all six of the books. They really are extraordinary. The deeper you dive into his world, the more you're gonna get out of it. He is one of the rare people that the more I get to know him, the more I like him, the more I'm affected by him. So I hope that you will avail yourself of all the amazing stuff that he makes available. Alright, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, subscribe. Be legendary. Take care, Brendan, my motherfucker. Yeah, brother. Thank you, dude. That was amazing.

All right. There's always another racetrack, there's always another game. So take your game and ratchet it down just a drop and you're going to have another game. And he was right. I didn't listen to that. To me, winning was everything.