The Moment I Realized My Success Was Destroying My Life
Brendon Burchard recounts reaching a near-burnout point despite commercial success and explains how that realization prompted multi-year research into what enables sustained high performance. He describes interviewing over 300 high performers and partnering with academic researchers; that research became the basis for his book High Performance Habits. Brendon argues that habits (not personality) most strongly predict long-term success while preserving health and relationships, and he presents a four-bucket clarity framework (who you want to be, how you are with others, skills/teams, and the level of value/service to offer). The chunk also includes promotional CTAs directing listeners to progressmode.com and his private group, Ultra.
Chapters
I was quickly becoming overwhelmed and going to risk burnout if I kept going at the speed and the pace I was on. It was hard for me to stay as connected and present with my friends, family, even my wife. I was consistently double booking myself. I was consistently crash landing into deadlines. I had to be honest, I didn't have the organizational capacity that could help me go to the next level. I realized.
I was quickly becoming overwhelmed and going to risk burnout if I kept going at the speed and the pace I was on. See, I had these next stage ambitions at that stage of my life. I was already a New York Times bestseller. Like, things were going good in my writing career. That was my goal. I could write as much as I wanted. My goal was to be a coach and a teacher. But I actually had the honesty to go. I have next level ambitions, but I don't have next level performance. Like, I could admit that I didn't have the competency, I didn't have the habits to be able to go to the next level. People are organized better than me. People have better teams than me. People know how to manage their day and big projects better than me. I had to be honest, I didn't have the organizational capacity. And I mean that. Like, I was not organized, but I also didn't have an organizational team that could help me go to the next level. I was losing a lot of time. I was not scheduled. I was not effective enough because I was doing everything. I needed somebody to come in and help me do the things that didn't move the needle as much as I uniquely could. If I can be honest with you, I probably knew that for about two years before I said, I got to really start hiring and I got to do deeper research. How do I perform at the next level? And for those who know my career, that was the genesis concerns that became this book. High Performance Habits. How Extraordinary People Became that Way is the subhead High Performance Habits? I just wondered. I'm like, okay, I know there are people who perform at higher levels than me all around the world. How the hell did I do that? Like, do they have a different mindset? Do they have different strengths? Do they have a different economic background? Did they have. Did they have, like, what was their magic? And so I did, you know, three, four years of deep dive training and research on that topic. I read everything academically about performance, psychology or goal attainment. I interviewed over 300 extraordinary high performers around the world. Not for a podcast, for, like, academic research. I partnered with researchers at University of Pennsylvania's Positive Psychology Department, UC Santa Barbara Psychology Department. I was trying to really figure out, like, what really makes the difference for your next level. And as I did that research, it was a little bit counterintuitive and a little bit counter to what was popular in the media and the research back then. Back then, it was basically like, oh, if, if, if you want to, you know, be extraordinary what you do. Either A, you need to, you know, have decades of focus on something to get extreme competence, which of course helps and is true, or B, we were in the strengths movement back then. It was like, there are all these strengths evaluation, strengths assessments and strengths. And everyone's like, oh, if you have strengths, that's the thing, just focus on your strengths more and you will break through to new levels. It's just that that wasn't always true. In fact, people who focus obsessively on their strengths don't have that much greater performance over a period of time than other people. Because sometimes we have to be honest about where we lack and we have to, you know, fix the leak in the boat. We have to handle our weaknesses. We have to develop competencies that make us a better general player, not just a highly specific one, because sometimes generalists are able to break through as long as they also have skill set. So what did I discover in all of that research? I found out your personality doesn't matter that much. That was a shock, right? Well, I'm an introvert Brennan. Or I'm an extrovert Brennan. I can't do this or I can't do that based on my personality. As an example of obviously, your level of openness, your level of, of. Of conscientiousness, your level of extroversion or introversion, your level of neuroticism, all these things in personality psychology, really, they. They make a difference. They're. They're all important. But there's something that actually is more correlated to long term success and performance. When we ask, how does someone achieve long term success and maintain positive health? How does someone achieve long term success and maintain positive relationships? The highest correlation to being able to achieve your dreams and have high performance over the long term, where you have great health and good relationships. It's just your habits. Hey guys, it's Brandon.
I'm jumping in here real quick. First, I want to make sure you've gone to progressmode.com to join the newsletter.
Because I have a resource for you.
Related to this episode and I have an upcoming meetup with my private group, Ultra. If you've ever liked to be in a private group with me where I help you get more progress towards your passion projects or to build your business or your brand in a bigger way. Just go to progressmode.com click on private group to apply to see you can get into Ultra and we can take.
It to the next level by getting.
In person and meeting up virtually once a month online as well. Just go to progress mode.com have you.
Ever really struggled to keep friendships as you are working hard.
To stay as close to your spouse as you got, more busy to keep that connection with your kids as you took on the next level of work?
Have you ever noticed that as you work harder, you compromise your health, you gain weight, you don't sleep as much, you start choosing bad foods. Here I am out on the road and I have to be so finely tuned in my mind and my body to get up on stage and, and to speak extemporaneously for eight or nine hours a day, for four or five days straight. I was coming through brain injury. And so I kind of, I really had to take care of myself. But I could see that it was hard for me to stay as connected and present with my friends, family, even my wife. It was very hard for me to maintain the health and energy required. And I just knew there had to be a better way. I was consistently double booking myself. I was consistently having like crash landing into deadlines, always crash landing deadlines, never like having enough time management where it felt like it was being achieved. I had a sense of urgency, I had a sense of focus, but I just was not organizing enough. I was not prioritizing daily at the levels I needed to prioritizing weekly and quarterly and yearly and year two and year three, it just wasn't happening. I needed to hire about 20 people to go to the next level. That was really scary. Like there's like when you have a business and you have to hire one or two or three people, that's one level. But when you all of a sudden realize you need like 20 or 30 and they gotta be weapons, they gotta be like a players, well, you gotta talk to a couple hundred to find those 20, which takes a ton of time. And so I made a great mistake of hiring.
A hiring agency that helped me, you know, Islam in those 20 people. And so now I'm trying to manage 20 extra people by myself.
Not doing a good job at that. Definitely did not manage them well because I'm crash landing in my projects. How do I manage them and their projects? And I know you hear this and, and you recognize the complexity that it takes to go to your next level. I want you to be strategic in setting up high performance habits into your life so you can go to the next level. Number one, we got to get great clarity right now at this stage of your life. We got to get clarity in four separate buckets that really matter. Clarity for number one, who do you want to be? Who. Who do you want to be at the next level? The next stage. I'm not talking about who do you want to be like, tomorrow, because you have a sense of being, presence, vibrancy, authenticity. I want you to think of, like, okay, in like, five years, who do you want to be? Who do you want to become in five years? And in order to get there, what habits do you need to install now? Second question. Who do you want to be with other people? Like, if you stepped away from yourself for a second, I know that's kind of silly, but if you could step away and observe yourself and how you interact with other people, is that sufficient for where you want to go to the next level of leadership, success, happiness in your life? Right. I had to realize. I was like, oh, well, I kind of. I kind of get awkward with people because I just. I haven't really learned how to deal with. With being known. I didn't know how to deal with people wanting a selfie. I was awkward about people telling me my books changed their life. I was. I was awkward. So one is self. Who do you want to become? Second is social. Third is what skill you need to develop. My first, you know, teams, like sports teams, Olympians, NFL teams, fighters, golfers, like super celebrity sports people. Do you know what I realized about myself? I realized I was almost too soft with them. I didn't. I didn't know how to push. I didn't know how to be assertive. I didn't know how to challenge them without feeling like I was either being rude or misplaced. I had to start going, oh, for Brandon, for me to go to the next level as a coach, I need to learn how to challenge people appropriately. They already feel like I connect with them. I can already help them find their answers. It's more of like, okay, you have this goal. Let's generate a bunch of options for how you might get there, and let's be resilient together as you're moving towards it. Well, what I found out was if I stepped outside of myself, I knew the step change I was going to have to achieve was how do you challenge somebody into higher levels of leadership? Or how do you challenge somebody to look at a belief they have that's just not serving them? Not just talk there, but like real challenge. I had to learn how to put edge into my relationships. And fourth is what level of value or service.
Service would you have to provide to like leapfrog to the next level? What level of service would you need to provide to leapfrog to the next level in your life, your career, for example? A lot of people you know, hey, Brandon, I just want a promotion at work. I've been here for five years. I'm like, oh, duration is not what gets you a promotion. Value is what's the next level of value you would offer at work to earn that promotion? That's a different thought process. Right. And so a lot of people just hope that, you know, their consistent action will compound into the step change. That's very rare. It's very rare. Usually it is compounding, but if you want the step change, you have to anticipate and go, oh, okay, what would be the next level value? I know so much of what we've talked about in progress mode is big goals and next level thinking and really believing in yourself as people doubt you. Believing in yourself as you doubt you. I just want to make sure you also take care of you. Sometimes the biggest shift into progress mode is realizing it's not just about the task or about the achievement, but rather it's gaining a greater alignment in our life with our relationships, our energy and the direction we are going. It's not just about achievement, it's about alignment. That's actually the opening story of high performance habits. Being in alignment with who I am becoming on the journey, being in alignment towards what matters the most and coming alive because of that. Because if you are misaligned as you achieve great things over a period of time, that, that, that part where you are misaligned, you will not only go in the wrong direction, but you will compromise your integrity. You will do something irresponsible, you will tell lies, you will find yourself so off path even if you get the award, you staying in alignment with the best of who you are. You staying in alignment with who you desire to be and how you want to live your life. And I promise you, relationships and your health are a big part of that. Don't compromise there for the quick check. Don't compromise there for that pride of ego of slugging it out every day in the trenches because you don't need sleep and you don't need a break. Your life is a bigger picture unfolding. There's a bigger story unfolding for you. You want this future that you're going to land in. You want to be healthy. You want to be connected with other people. You want to be competent and capable. And this is what happens when you have progress mode switched on in the right way. That's why we call it progress. The right direction, the right speed, the right magnitude of change, the right valence of emotion, positive emotion along the way, not just grit, grind, hustle, burnout. Because you already played that game. At this next stage of progress mode, you're going to learn to play the game. You're going to learn how to be in the world. You're going to learn how to achieve great things. You're going to have faith in the forward position of life. You know, you're in a before picture right now, and there will be an after picture. In the after picture, we want you healthier, more in love, more capable, more happy. You deserve to do that. You deserve to feel that. You just got to stay in progress mode, baby.
