A short YouTube monologue by Brendan Burchard about building and protecting an ideal lifestyle by continually asking whether choices support one’s desired time, energy, and present experience. Burchard emphasizes boundaries over money, gives personal anecdotes (e.g., turning down major TV opportunities, preferring morning routines and family time), and closes with a promo for his Growth Day app.
It's a habit of mine not to get it right. It's a habit of mine to ask the question, how does this impact my lifestyle? And is that the lifestyle I design? Is that the time, energy, effort, future value, present experience that I want, or will that pull me away from that? Because if you feel like your lifestyle is not super great, don't think it's about money, it's about boundaries. A habit that I have is building my life for lifestyle. I know not everyone likes the phrase lifestyle entrepreneur or a lifestyle business, but I thought from day one, I'm like, why would I not have a good lifestyle? And what does that mean to me? And I'm continually revisiting that as a habit. What does a good lifestyle mean? Well, it means different things for people. Some people, you know, that means that they just have control of their morning. Like me. I gotta. I like to have my morning routines. That's a good lifestyle for me because my brain works that way. I'm happy that way. So I have a nice morning routine for myself. Some people, their lifestyle thing is, you know, they just want to live in a certain place. For some people, it's how the house is arranged. For some people, it's how much money they earn. For some people, it's where they go and travel. For some people, it's just what they focus on each day, what their purpose is or their intent is. I don't know what yours is, but I know what mine is. And the habit of continually questioning, is this choice going to help or hurt my lifestyle? So if. And some of you guys know these stories from my events, sometimes I tell them as I'm going through events about how I'm making decisions in life and how it's hard. You know, sometimes you have opportunities that seem so good. But you know, I teach this formula how whatever deal or opportunity you're chasing or presented with, always check against your mental sanity and your lifestyle preferences. Like, if you knew how many deals I've turned down, you'd think I'm crazy. But I look at those. I mean, I got offered major network television shows. I mean, huge shows by super famous producers and production companies. But I could see that that would make a life that I didn't like. It was not the workload or the lifestyle that I wanted because I knew the top people. You know, I knew what Oprah's schedule was, and I knew what Anderson Cooper's schedule was, and I knew what Dr. Phil's schedule was. And I was like, oh, I get that. That's for them. That's not the lifestyle I like. I like too much. I like too much of my own time. And when you're a network, you got. You're there at like 5am and it's like producer meetings, ratings meetings, show meetings, you know, debrief meetings, planning the next day. It's like you're there from 5:00am till 10:00 clock at night if you're lucky. And I was like, ah, I can't do that. I like more time with family, friends, reading. And I like a lot of extra time during the day to wander around like a nutty professor just thinking about stuff, you know, that's not. I, that's. I can't do that one. And so a lot of decisions were made that from, from movies to shows to stages to partnerships, it just. If I filter through my lifestyle thing, because really, what do I need? What's my ideal lifestyle? Well, a book, a pina colada and some sushi. Ain't that much, y'. All. So, you know, when you know it's important, it's like, it doesn't cost me any money to spend the afternoon with my wife. I know what my lifestyle is and I love that. Like, I just won't compromise on lifestyle for external extrinsic rewards. And that's a habit. And by the way, if this sounds like I'm braggadocious, no, this is like one of the things I struggle with the most. It's why I made one of those months of pro workshops on the topic of setting boundaries. I was like, I wonder how everyone else does this. I want to make sure I do a really good job. Because if you feel like your lifestyle is not super great, don't think it's about money, it's about boundaries. And this is really important. And this is the fundamental question here. Do you sense that you have your own way of doing things? Are you doing parenting in your way or just like your parents did? Are you doing business in a way that you like, not the way that everyone else in the suits around you did or told you to do it? Like when I was a consultant in a major company, like 70,000 employees when I first started out of college and everybody kind of walked and talked, they all came out of these MBA schools. I never went, never did that. I had my master's in organizational communication, but I didn't have an MBA. And they all walked, talked, like they all had BMW 3s at the time. I don't know, it seemed like all these new consultants got these BMW 3s I thought, man, I am not going to spend my money on a car. And I lived in San Francisco. I was like, I don't even need a car. I can't even afford the parking on a car. What is going on with these people? But they came out of fancier schools or fancier families sometimes. And I just thought, I'm going to do this my own way. So I didn't make slides like they made slides. I didn't structure things the way they. I did my own thing. And it was rewarded because it was like authentic. And even though it wasn't always perfect or good or even notice I'm not even judging, it was even better then. It was just my thing. It's like it's a habit of mine not to get it right. It's a habit of mind to ask the question, how does this impact my lifestyle? And is that the lifestyle I desire? Is that the time, energy, effort, future value, present experience that I want or will that pull me away from that? And this is a conversation that you may have heard me describe separately in high performance habits under the term of alignment, the habit of aligning to the lifestyle and the future that you want. And when I'm in alignment with that because I ask the questions, life is better. Hey, it's Brendan. Thanks for watching this video. Please enjoy all the other videos on my channel and listen if you would love to have a daily exclusive life coaching audio for me. Make sure you go get signed up for Growth Day. If you didn't know, Growth Day is the world's number one personal growth app. And it's the app where you go and you get your mindset right. You set your goals, you track your habits, you take wellness challenges and you overall improve your life so you become more successful and joyous and happy. And it's called Growth Day. It's an app. You can download it on your phone anywhere or just go to growthday.com and make sure you get it. Because every day I leave that exclusive life coaching audio to help you level up and advance your Life. Go to growthday.com and get signed up right now.
