Habits To Improve Your Life (40-min class!)

I see it all the time. They don't know where to improve their life. They just know they're restless, they're frustrated, they're fearful, they're upset, or they just see there's a higher opportunity. So they're in transition and they know they have a bigger goal or they have this new thing they want to do, but yet they're lacking an area to focus on in their own personal improvement. It's really hard to dial in your personal improvement if you're not scoring yourself consistently in different areas. Hey everybody, it's Brendon Burchard. And my job today is to share with you some tips that you can use, some strategies, maybe some new habits that you can implement to be at your best. The best way to go about this entire thing is bust out your journal, get ready to write down some great habits and strategies you can implement in your life. Today's entire presentation is built from the questions you all asked. It is going to be an awesome, awesome session. I'm teaching about psychology and physiology, productivity, persuasion, purpose. But I'm usually sharing it from a perspective of best practices, meaning, you know, most of my advice across all of my YouTube channels and all of our courses. Certainly we're usually based on not just, you know, my own personal experimentation, but rather on what we know actually works, what can be proven empirically, what the science is telling us, what I'm seeing out in the marketplace with actual clients. So most of my advice is always grounded in a lot of research and real world applicability with clients. But my story isn't usually in there other than as you all seen, if you ever come to our seminars, it's I kick it off with sort of my story of what inspired me to do this work. But then from there it's framework after framework after framework after framework of what either I've learned from the research or we've proven or we have seen in the marketplace dealing with actual clients. So that's always been great. But it's also left a little bit of a, I think something with the clients and our general audience saying, well, Brendan, you know, what do you do for your personal performance practices? And some of you all know some of them because I do teach a few of them at High Performance Academy, but mostly, probably 75% of high performance Academy is research driven. What we know of best practices in high performance, maybe 25% is my personal story and practices. But this, what I'm sharing with you today, I've actually never shared before the principles of personal performance review That's a fancy way of saying, Brendon, how do you stay at your best? What do you personally do to track yourself, to know if you're doing well in life? How do you set it up so that you're continually growing each week? So people always ask me, brenda, I know you have a Sunday practice, what is it? I'm actually going to share that with you. Our three topics for the day are personal performance review, setting and achieving unrealistic goals and dealing with stress. And in all three of those, I'm going to share my personal practices with you. Usually when working with a high performance client, they want to know my practices in these areas. I'm happy to tell them and usually I only do that with my quarter million dollar clients. Today I'm just going to share what I do here. Let's talk about principles of personal performance review. You know, if you have a, you know, in corporate America, certainly usually, you know, once a year you have a performance review, sometimes two, sometimes every quarter, where you sit down with your immediate manager, at least if you have a predictable job and if you're an employee, you sit down with your immediate manager and they kind of say, here's how it's going, how's it going for you? Here's what we've observed. What have you observed? What are you trying to grow into? Where are you struggling? What's the next skill path for you? All of that happens in a structure. But many of you are entrepreneurs. Many of you are the business owner. Many of you are the manager or the owner. Many of you are the person who's doing the work by yourself. So you need to set up your own performance reviews now. I do mine every Sunday. It's just been part of my practice Since I think 2001 or two, I think right around the turn of the century. Isn't that weird to say that, you know, around the turn of the century? I'm old apparently. So. Principles of performance review. Here's some ideas to keep in mind. Number one, you need a weekly review to drive performance. So you have to block the time to review. This is principle number one that everyone violates and why most people don't see this sort of ratcheting up of performance and success in their life. Because what they're doing is they're going through the day fairly randomly, they're finishing the week, crashing and burning and they're just starting the next week. And there's no time to do the introspection that would gain not just new insights or new things to work on, but also help them identify where they go next. Most people aren't living intentionally, and I bet you feel that way as well. And if you're in High performance monthly, one of the reasons you joined is because I bet that conversation I had with you at some point about being more intentional. You know, for me, being more intentional each day of my life is what made each day of my life get better, better. And I feel like I'm on this arc of growth in my life where I always feel like I'm just beginning, but I'm still so far away from where I was before. And that only happens because of this personal practice of a weekly performance review. And you need to have it weekly if you want to drain, if you want to drive sustained long term performance. Almost every high performer at the highest levels I've ever talked to has some type of weekly review that they do. And sometimes that review is kind of casual, maybe that sit down with a pot of green tea, think about their week, write down what they're grateful for, what they learned, things like that. But when you work with me, it's at another level of intention. Here it's a full hour block time on a Sunday to work on yourself. And most people won't take that because, you know, on Sunday's catch up day, it's family day, it's picnic day, it's rest day, it's Netflix day these days for people. And matter of fact, most Americans are still clocking in over four hours of television on Sundays. Over four hours of television. So I'm not really asking that much. I say, you know, just block up time. Maybe it's only 20 minutes for you because you just got some newborns and there's no way, Brendan, I could do an hour. Maybe it's 30 minutes, maybe it's 45 minutes. But what I know is if we're going to increase your performance, like your actual ability to succeed at the next level, we've got to get you blocking time to do a weekly performance review. We got to have a time. I just do mine at the end of the week. Some people do theirs on Friday morning for 20 minutes. Some of my clients, because they don't want to mess with their weekends. I'm cool with that. Sunday's my reflection day anyway, because, you know, I have a spiritual practice on Sundays. So for me, that's the perfect day, right? So it aligns my thoughts about my life with my own spirituality and my own beliefs. And that helps me keep myself sort of congruent. But I Need you from this day forward to set a time every week. And that's blocked out. And that's when you do it, period. And if you're like, brenda, I can't because I got, you know, I got a three year old and a five year old running around, they're beating each other up with pots and pans and you're like, there's no way. Then choose a day and make sure it happens on that day by the end of the day. Just choose a day. It has to happen, okay? I can't tell you how important that is. Number two, you need a written journal for this activity. No duh, Brennan. Really. I sign up for High Performance Monthly for you to tell me to keep a journal. Here's what I want you to do. I want you to have a separate journal that's only for performance review. That's all it is. It's a journal that nothing, no other thoughts, no writing, no randomness, no diary, no gratitude journal that doesn't live in your performance journal. Your performance journal is for you to learn how to become more of a weapon in life so that you gain greater self mastery at what you're doing. It's not for sketching, it's not for anything else. It's not for even diary. I want it just for these performance reviews. Okay? Number three, score everything. Okay? The basis of real growth in performance comes down to scoring. Cause it's just like if you're gonna go work out and you're trying to be able to lift more weight, if you go in the gym and you just have the intention to lift weight, and it's more weight every single time. Apparently this is the universal move for weightlifting. I have no idea what that would actually accomplish. But you know, if you go to the gym and you're trying to weightlift even more, and you just say, I'm going to lift heavier each time, but you're not tracking how much you lift last time, how many reps, how many sets, then there's no way you're actually going to have a steady growth period at all. There's no way you're ever going to have exponential growth for sure. So you have to score it. So here's what I'm going to have you do. All I'm going to ask you to do is score yourself on 1 to 10 in each of these areas, okay? 1. You suck that week. You had a bad week at it. It was no good 10. You were on your game. You kicked butt. You were incredible in that area of your life. And you're just going to score, give yourselves numbers in each of those areas each week. Now let's talk about the areas we have. Roles, goals, and performance drivers. So I'm going to share with you what mine are. I'll tell you what the topics are as well. Okay. Roles mean you should know. Well, how are you rating yours every week? If you had to say, did I do a good job this week, what roles would you look at? Maybe you're a mom. And you say, okay, how did I do as a mom? How did I do as a husband? How did I do as a team leader? How did I do as, you know, spiritual person? How did I do as a role model? You got to choose the roles that you want to score yourself in each week. The second area is your goals. Yep. That means you should already have an intention, you should know what your goals are and then you should score yourself against those goals at the end of each week. How did I progress against those goals? Not, you know, do I have them? Do I believe in them? Do I want them? It's, did I Progress this week? 10 progress on this goal? 10. I was absolutely consistent every single day moving towards this goal. Okay, 10 everyday. Consistency and momentum. Right. And then the last one is performance drivers. What makes you great? Like, if you ever been to one of our masterminds, I'll often ask the mastermind to write down five of the things that made them most successful in life. And then I'll ask them to score themselves in each of those five areas. And that's what I want you to think about too. Okay, so what makes you most successful? What is it? If you really had to identify what drives your highest levels of performance, like getting the best of yourself, what would those five things be? Those are what we call performance drivers. Okay, so we're going to score ourselves in each of these areas and I'll share with you mine as an example. And then that's just basically how we are guiding the week. So every week on a Sunday, I block my time to do this. I keep my written journal and then I score myself in these areas. Okay, so let me walk you through my areas. Okay. My roles. These are the areas that I score myself on each of these in a score of 1 to 10. Husband, son, brother, leader, creator, and inspiration. So every single Sunday, I have a guilt fest. It's awesome. I'm Catholic. No, I was raised Catholic, but I'm not anymore. Okay, but let's walk through this. This is how I score myself as a husband. This Week one, I was a dirty, mean, horrible bastard. Ten, I was awesome. Winning points all week, every single day. Which one? How did I score? 1 to 10 as a husband? Okay. How about as a son? How about as a brother? As a leader? So here's the thing. I've, like, these have been my roles. I've been measuring myself for, I don't know, four or five years, and so these specific roles. And so I've got my scores going all the way back for four or five years on how I've done in each of these areas. And you know what it did? It made me more intentional in each of these areas. Because the nice thing is with scoring yourself in roles, our roles in life are tied to our identity. Our identity forms our intentions, and our intentions form our initiative. You follow too many people, just focus on initiative each week. And what I do psychologically is I back it up. I go, okay, intention. And I come back all the way. Identity. Your roles. That's tied to your identity. Does this make sense? So I want you to start scoring yourself. These might not be yours, but you should know your roles. So if I ever meet you on the street, I'm gonna say, what roles are you scoring yourself on? And I hope that you have an answer. And after a period of time, you just get used to it. Creator, did I actually create new content this week? Because my career is tied to this, so you might have a role where your career is tied to. I also score myself on. Do I feel like I'm living an inspired life? Whatever way that means for me, you might have your own definition for. For me, do I feel like I'm living my message? Am I being congruent with what I believe? Did I do something this week that inspired somebody? These are the things I measure myself on. They become my intentions, they become my initiatives, my initiatives become my habits, and they form who I am. So simple. Honestly, if you've never done this before, just doing this one simple thing will completely transform the quality of life after, I swear, just like, three, four weeks. Because most people are so unintentional. Is that a word? Unintentional? Maybe not. They're lacking intention in the roles that they play each week. Okay, so those are my roles, then. My goals. Here's how I do my goals. Okay? If you've been to High Performance Academy, you know, every single month, I set a personal goal for myself. So that's my monthly personal project. Okay? I am a project. I'm a human in motion trying to get better. So at the first of every month, the very first day of every month, I sit down with my journal and say, what am I going to work on this month? Okay, what am I going to work on this month? And you know, I think I often joke that patience has been a monthly personal project for me. Probably, I don't know, 40 some plus months, you know, because I have to teach myself. I grew up in an environment where no one was, no one was patient. So I had to teach myself to deal with anger and frustration and restlessness and learn how to be patient in life, which is really hard. So that's been a monthly personal project for me. So if my monthly personal project is patience, I'll say, okay, on a scale of 1 to 10, 1, I was an impatient bastard. 10, I was Dalai Lama man. Right up in that territory. That will help me figure out how I'm doing there. Then I measure myself on long term projects and these are the bigger things I might be working to. If I have my ultimate ambition or my ultimate vision, the projects are going to get me there. And so these long term projects, if you've been to my training or if you've read any of high performance habits, you'll know that there is this conversation about the five moves. So I'll know my five major projects or my five major moves moving towards my accomplishment of these projects and I'll rate myself in each of those areas. And I might say, oh my gosh, Brendan, this is a lot. Now remember, I'm teaching in real time. This might only take me a couple minutes sometimes, right? This is really fast because I do it every week for you. The first time you're going to do this, it's going to be like, it feels like it'll feel like an all day personal workshop. You know, it's going to take some time to think through these things. But after you've thought through these things, every single week for weeks on end or months on end or years on end in my case, it's just like I know I'm at right there, I'm right there. And it's increasing your self awareness. As we increase your self awareness, we increase your ability to become great. Okay, then the last one is my vision. Am I living because my goals are all tied to my vision? Do I feel like I'm living towards my vision on a consistent basis each week? So that's a 1 to 10. So now you get the idea. Then the last area is performance drivers. Now my performance drivers are the high performance performance drivers. The stuff that we've Proven from our analysis and data and the things that now I've been teaching, some of it over the last five years and some of it I just learned. But it's these different performance drivers. Clarity, energy, necessity, productivity, influence and courage. These are your performance drivers, okay? These are the things that make the greatest difference. So if you're trying to grow and more importantly, you're trying to sustain long term success, those are the most important things that will drive your performance. Seeking clarity, consistently generating energy, consistently raising your necessity right before a performance, right before activity, increasing your prolific quality output, meaning your productivity. But a very specific way of focusing on productivity, developing more influence and demonstrating more courage. Those are the performance drivers. Those, by the way, are the six habits in this book. You can see it's even on the back of the clarity, energy, necessity, productivity, influence and courage. Because this is what the world's largest high performance study kicked out. Now, if you've ever been with me, if you've been studying for me from a long time ago, you know, I had about four of these down in lock. I didn't know that necessity was so critical. And I didn't know, even though I taught and I talked about courage, I didn't know that the scores in these areas were so instrumental to everything that we do. So those are part of the book. I hope you'll get it and check it out. But I measure myself 1 in 10. Now you see when people are like, brendan, how do you get so much done? I'm like, it's because every week I score myself. Brendon, how come you always seem so happy? Because every week I'm measuring myself on things that make me happy and congruent. Brendan, how do you do? Whatever, it's probably tied to this in some way or another. So I hope that helps. So what we've talked about so far, number one, you have to do weekly performance reviews so you have to block time. Number two, you got to keep a journal. Number three, you have to score everything. Roles, goals, performance drivers. Those are my three areas. You might rate yourself in other areas that I didn't even think about. Maybe you rate yourself in terms of finances. Maybe you rate yourself in terms of focus. Maybe you rate yourself in terms of something else that is important to you. Did you live through your heart that week? I don't know. But if you don't know, we got a problem. Okay, number four, self score and social score. This is huge. I would say this is probably the biggest part of my personal development. The thing that I love the most about our events is I'll have the audience stand and share things because I really believe you have to socialize learning. If you don't socialize learning, it doesn't stick. You don't get the mortar that is perspective of other people. And so even your own ideas kind of come in one ear, out the other for yourself until you talk things through with people. So what I do, and most of my friends and family don't know I do this. So if you're watching, this is what's been going on. I score myself with you. So I ask my family or my friends or my wife or my team or the people around me questions, how am I doing in this area? Are we moving towards this? Did you need anything in this? And I'm socializing to try and see am I on track with them. Especially in the roles. Right? Especially in the roles. So I'm consistently asking, am I doing a good job in each of these roles? And the truth is I know most of the time I'm not. And that doesn't make me feel guilty or bad because I approach this entire thing as an opportunity to keep learning. I'm not consistently a 10 in every area of these, in every area of these measures, despite people thinking I'm some kind of like superhuman. Sometimes in the comments I'm like, I'm a regular fallible, weird dude. Okay? But so 10 is not my thing. And I score myself hard. I'm difficult on myself. You know, for me, usually if I, if I'm at a 7, I feel like, good job, Brendan. Nice work this week. Okay? Because I was a C student in school, so sevens mean something to me. But it's important for you to score yourself and then ask someone, go ahead and have the guts to ask your spouse, honey, how am I doing as a husband, as a wife? To have the guts to ask the team or the people you serve, how am I doing for you guys? You okay? Do you need anything? Have the guts to ask those questions even when you know you are in that week. Maybe insufficient, ineffective, not around, like it happens. It's totally okay. Don't beat yourself up, but always score yourself, okay? Always score yourself. Because with the higher, with more scoring will come more self awareness. And again, that's how we're going to get you to a higher level of greatness. Number five, let the scores tell you where to improve and set goals. This is important. So most people, I really feel like, because they're not doing a review and they're not scoring themselves that they don't know where to really improve in their life, right? They say, brendan, I want to be more successful. I say, great, what should you improve? And they're like, oh, my finances. I'm like, really targeted, buddy. Where should you improve? And it's a challenge for people. I see it all the time. They don't know where to improve their life. They just know they're restless, they're frustrated, they're fearful, they're upset, or they just see there's a higher opportunity. So they're in transition, and they know they have a bigger goal or they have this new thing they want to do, but yet they're lacking an area to focus on in their own personal improvement. It's really hard to dial in your personal improvement. You're not scoring yourself consistently in different areas. All I would suggest to you is you need a personal practice every week. And give yourself the gift of having that every week, blocking it out, keeping it in a separate journal so you can find it versus, like, where'd I keep that journal about, you know, the grocery shopping list? No, in one journal. And then look at it every week. And then get strategic of where you need to improve and where you need to focus each week. And I promise, over a period of time, you'll kind of do what? My new favorite phrase is weaponize. You know, you'll learn to weaponize different parts of your life because you'll know where you're at at any given time. I'm pretty confident and clear about where I'm strong each week and where I'm dogging it. That's only because it's practice. Okay, next big topic. I promised to talk about setting and achieving unrealistic goals. And I know I have so much to cover for you guys today. I went a little over on that, but it's passionate for me, setting and achieving unrealistic goals. I love this one, because my first lesson is this. Stop worrying about anything if it's realistic or not. Oops. Forget realistic. I'm not worried about realistic. I've never been worried about realistic. And anytime someone told me, be realistic in life, I said, be more courageous right back to them. So focus on instead what's the ambition or desire you have. Then developing the competency so that you can earn it and get it and live into it. And third, your network, meaning your environment, meaning your networking, meaning the people around you. I'm never worried when someone says, brendan, I have a goal to be just like you in six months. I'm like, cool, maybe they can. And if you don't believe it. I mean, look at the rise of some people in our industry who have a. You know, they'll drop a book or their YouTube channel will blow up or their Facebook page will blow up. And it's like, everyone says, that person came out of nowhere. I say, no, that person came right out of intention and hard work. And so, for me, I don't worry about realistic. If you got a goal and your heart is there and your mind is there, don't let anyone tell you about what's realistic. Let your results tell you about what's probable. Think about, okay, I've worked at this. I'm clear about what I want. I've developed the skills and the knowledge I need. I've put myself in a network where that could possibly happen by networking with other people who've done it and learning from them or hiring or having support, and then see, okay, after a year of hard struggle, after two years of really giving, after three years of pushing, and after five years of dedication and discipline and fire, now let that five years tell you what's realistic. Don't let the first five people you meet and you share your goals with tell you what's realistic, because they're all going to be like, well, who do you think you are? You need to determine what's probable after five years of effort. Before that, you're guessing or you're quitting or you're delaying or you're distracted or you're full of crap. That's the only way we can say it. If it's a real. And remember, we're talking about unrealistic stuff here. This is not like basic goal setting. If you're telling me, Brendan, I got a. It's crazy. I'm like, great. I mean, I think about Elon Musk and how crazy he was to start SpaceX and try to launch personal spacecraft and rockets into the air. It was terrible. You know, it was a disaster. The first one went up, boom, blew up, second one blew up, third one blew up, fourth one, thank God it finally worked. Now every single step of the way, people were saying, you were crazy. This is unrealistic. You can't do that. You're not NASA. But he let the years of effort ultimately prove it. Now, if he had failed five more times, he would have moved on to something else, but he let the work happen. He trusted that each failure was a learning point and a development point. And so don't worry about realistic anymore. So if you've got someone saying you're stupid or who do you think you are? You're unrealistic. You need to turn your ears off and put them back to the grindstone and focus. Second big idea. Oh, what's happening to my little thing here? If it's unrealistic, then work in what we call step ups. I'm sure you've heard this phrase before. Step up is okay. Start with a really small goal. Like if you have a big vision and it's unrealistic, break it all down to the easiest moving components and work those easy ones. Then step up to the next level of difficulty. Then step up to the next level of difficulty when you start setting those bigger goals. Like, don't feel like you need to, you know, eat that whole whale all at once. You know, work those little things. Nibble at it. Work, nibble, work, nibble. Get better and better and stronger and stronger. Next up, plot your five major moves, then work backwards and set deadlines. I think that one of the big compliments I've gotten off of high performance habits so far. There's a chapter in here on productivity. It's going to shake you up. It's one of my great friends. Danny, if you're watching, thank you. Said it's the best chapter he's ever read on productivity ever, anywhere. And he's a productivity like guru and he read this. And one of the things of the practices is knowing your five moves. I talked about that earlier. Knowing the five moves to achieve anything. But once you know the five moves, breaking it back down to deadlines. So move number one. What would the first major move be? To accomplish something. What's the first major move? Break that down into steps, tasks, activities and deadlines. Do that. Then step up to major move number two. Then step up to major move number three. Step up to major move number four. Step up to major move number five. And that's where everything starts shifting. I've done that with books, I've done that with courses. I've done that with clients. I've done that with brand building. I've done that with investments. That five major move mentality has been everything for me. If a person can't break down the five moves of what they're trying to do, I. I know they don't know what they are trying to do. Okay, then let's move on to this idea. You have to go all in with your learning. If you tell me, Brendan, I have an unrealistic goal. Go all in with your learning. I'll give you an example from my career. When I decided to be a Book author. And I decided I was going to be a writer. And I was going to leave my job, my corporate job at Accenture. And I said, I'm going to go out on my own, write books. And I was terrified. I went all in. In my learning, in my case, what that meant was there. I didn't. There was one major conference coming up. I don't know if you remember, it was back then. It was Jack Canfield and Mark Victor Hansen were doing a seminar called Mega Book Empire. And he was coming up, and it was like $3,000 a ticket. And I did not have that much money anywhere. I was just kind of getting warmed up into what I want to do with my entire life. And I put half on my credit card, and my dad put the other half on his credit card. And I went down to Los Angeles where that seminar was, and I didn't know anybody. And I was easily, easily. If I wasn't the youngest guy there, I was in that, you know, top 1% of the youngest people in that room. There's like 2,000 people there. And I was young and I was scared and I was all in, baby. If you have an unrealistic goal, you got to put the chips in on your learning. I'm not saying bet the farm on the idea. I'm not saying betting the. Give all your money to start up. I'm saying your whole commitment in learning must shift entirely. Must shift entirely to you being able to learn this stuff. Stop consuming random YouTube videos. Only consume instructional videos. Stop reading random fiction books. Only read books related to what you are trying to accomplish. Like, you need all 100% of your focus. Mental power in the learning department must go in towards this goal. Because if you call an unrealistic, you better increase competency and you better do it fast. Number five, make your work time relate to the unrealistic goal in this way. Notice says make your work time. Okay, 50% is about those five moves. That means every single week, I want at least half the week moving towards those five major moves. Okay? Half the week you are focusing on that. The other 45% you're managing and delegating. Even if you're a solopreneur, that means get in, get a virtual assistant. At least hire some interns from your local art school. Do whatever you got to do, but get an intern if it's unrealistic. Look, the message here is you can't do it yourself if it's unrealistic. You need a team. I don't care if those are paid Interns, unpaid interns, friends. I don't care if it's your cousin, the kid next door who's smarter than you on the technology. Okay? You need a team. And then 15% of your time networking in the industry in which that goal lives. Right? Networking in the industry. And you'll notice, what do those add up to? People. That's right. You got to give 110%. That's it. You got to go beyond. If it's unrealistic, you can't just be like, I'm going to give 50% at this. Go. All effort. Let's go. If it's unrealistic and it's important to you, go. Now, some people say, well, Brendan, but you didn't do it that way, because it's true. You know, when I left Accenture, what I kind of did was try to figure out how on the side I could be making 20, 30% of my salary. And once I felt like I was confident I would be able to do that, then I made the big leap. But what I'm talking about here with these numbers is when you are in it, when you decide to go for it, when you made that transition, and it's all in. I need 50% of the week notice there's nothing in here about watching Netflix. There's nothing in here about screwing. Look, you can still have family time. This is work time. But your work time. I want to know 50%. I want you to be able to show me. Brendan. 50%. This week, I worked on my five moves or at least one of the major moves as I'm stepping up. Brendan, 40% of my time, I was talking with team. Even if it's just virtual assistant or Internet, I was leveraging other people, and I was networking 15% of that time. Like, I was talking to people. That means at least one day or a quarter of a day, or, I'm sorry, a half day. You got to be just working the phones, talking with people in your industry, learning, asking for help, asking for favors, asking, talking, sharing, giving. But you got to get in the game. If it's unrealistic, you got to go for it. Okay, Next up, four practices for rapidly decreasing stress. I promise at the top of this live webcast, to talk about my performance review, to talk about unrealistic goals and talk about stress. Let's talk about stress and move this really fast, because I know you know, you can do these things. You just need to start, number one, have a plan and expect chaos. Too many people are stressed because all day long, they're dealing with uncertainties and they don't like those uncertainties and they don't like the things that they didn't anticipate. And so. And. But I always say, but did you sit down and try to anticipate? But most people don't. What they do is they're just, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God, oh, my God. All day they're running around with their head cut off because there's no plan. There's no five moves, there's no performance plan like we talked about earlier. So they're all over the place. So they always feel stressed because they don't prepare. Right. The more you prepare and plan, less stress. Then when you expect chaos, no stress. I came in today, I was late getting here to the office, running around. We're just about to get going. You notice we started, like maybe a minute or two late. That was because the first shirt I had, when we turned on the camera, it was wavy and weird. It had this goofy pattern. So I had to run all the way around the office, come back, put it on a different shirt. Let's go. Just chaos. I anticipate that today there was problems in the traffic getting here. There's chaos. I anticipate it. It never knocks me off my game because I don't expect everything to be perfect, but I prepare. Number two, release tension, set intention. If you have not heard me talk about this, it's one of the hallmarks of the energy chapter in the new book. And this is all about taking time between major activities to close your eyes, repeat a mantra to yourself, release the tension from your body and set an intention for the upcoming activity. What do I want to accomplish or achieve next? What do I want to experience and bring to this next activity? So that's what I do between every major activity. So if I'm doing email for an hour, I finished doing an email, I push back from my desk. I might get up, I might move around. We'll talk about that. But in general, I always release all the tension from my body. I say, okay, I'm about to make a presentation now. What is my intention for this presentation? What energy do I want to bring into this next activity? That's what I call release tension, set intention. And it's a big practice in the new book because people wanted more examples about that's in there. But you get the idea because you've been with us for a while. Number three, walk away and breathe. Okay. If you're dealing with major stress, just realize the only way to recenter yourself is through your breath. It's always the fastest way. Most people don't breathe because they're just not aware of their breath. So if you find that that's true for you, make sure you get into a great yoga class, start taking some yoga, start doing some new breath work. Learning how to use your breath to power your body and your mind is everything. Like everything. Most people who end up exhausted at the end of the day, it's not just because they ate crappy food or they consume crappy things that they should have had or their ups and downs because of the crazy amounts of caffeine. It's because they also aren't breathing. They're not breathing and so they're not fueling the mind. The mind is depleting all day long. The brain literally is depleting all day long. If you don't have this oxygen high, you're in trouble. So sometimes they walk. You know, if I'm super stressed, I just disappear. I literally walk out and I'll walk around the block, I'll take a bunch of deep breaths as I'm walking, I'll come back, I'm centered, ready to go. And number four, supplement. And I know, don't judge, but we do know that there are supplements that will help people deal with stress. And those are some common ones. Sometimes if you're really stressed and fatigued, look, half a cup of coffee can put your mind back in play, right? The folks who deal with depression, especially if you deal with depression, coffee can help you really. And this is not my opinion, by the way. There's a great research study that coffee can be incredibly helpful to people who deal with negative emotions throughout the day because it can help even though you might have the crash from the caffeine, it can give you a little bit more optimism throughout the day, which will help you deal with some of those negative emotions, right? So very, very powerful. They highly recommend, a lot of psychiatrists highly recommend a cup of coffee or two for those who deal with kind of the emotional turmoil of negativity or depression. Now consult your doctor as always to see if that's right. But that's a pretty basic one. But other things like, you know what, have a big 20 ounce thing of green tea. Green tea has a little bit less caffeine so you don't get the jitters. But it has something called L Theanine. Okay? And L. Theanine is a great thing to focus yourself, right? Gives you a little bit of focus. It also helps you calm down okay. Helps you calm down a little bit. There's other things that you can take. Rhodiola, ashwagandha, go on Google or go into Whole Foods and just look for the bottles that say stress relief on it. Just make sure it also doesn't make you tired. Right? There's ways that can calm you down. My favorite of all time to keep my mental energy high and scientifically proven to drop cortisol as a side benefit is PS100. That's phosphacetylserine. I think I said that right. Phospho sub. Just PS100. That's a supplement. I have no association recommending it because it's generic. You can get it anywhere and that helps increase neural connection, neural communication speed and helps you lower cortisol. So that's a good one for people who are dealing with high stress environments. Now, there's lots of other ones I'm sure you guys can recommend to each other too. So you're welcome to do that. Always consult your doctor or your healthcare provider before you change anything crazy and do something nuts. So I hope this has helped you. Thanks everybody for participating. Remember this. You must be reviewing and scoring and paying attention so that you can increase self awareness and reach your highest levels of greatness. Until next month, go out there every single day of your life. Remember, the intention of being a high performer is everything. So have the intention to be awesome and as always, take each day. Live fully, love openly and make your difference today. Hey, it's Brenda. I just want to thank you for watching my channel. There's so many other teachings and trainings on this channel, so please enjoy. Thanks for being here. Also, for those who want to go to another level, I have an upcoming Certified High Performance Coach Certification Week. This is where I teach you and certify you to become a world class life coach. We call them Certified High Performance Coaches. You can click the link in the description right now to apply and learn about our upcoming certification week. If you want to go to another level as a life coach and you want me to certify you and help you, make sure you click that link and take advantage of it right now. Enrollment is open today.