How to Achieve Long-term Success and Maintain Happiness | Brendon Burchard

[Music] There's a hundred different performance variables in the literature that has been shown to lead to long-term success, but only six of them lead to long-term success and well-being, which means life satisfaction, if you will, happiness, and positive relationships over the long term. Meaning, you and I both know some people have success, and then they're jerks to everybody around them, and they're miserable inside, or they have success, but they burn themselves out completely. Without realizing, you can have "quote unquote" success, but real success means you achieve your long-term goals, and while achieving your long-term goals, you maintain health and well-being, and you maintain positive relationships and community. That's high performance. That's what we academically mean by the study of high-performance habits.

So the way that I do it here, here's like, you want to know my my my famous battle board technique? Um, here's how I think of winning the month, winning the day, the hour, the year. Okay, everything begins for me on the first of the month. The first of the month has always been my growth day. So that's why we started calling this growth day, right? The first of the month, every first of the month, always since I was 19 years old, gets probably about two hours of real deep reflection in personal development. That means for me, journaling and planning. Journaling to capture where, where am I at my life? How do I feel about all these major areas of my life? My health, my relationships, my wealth, my career, my lifestyle, my adventure, my family, my friends. So I do what's called the whole life assessment in the high-performance planner. For those who have that, I basically journal on the high-performance planner, the whole life assessment that I do that every first of the month, and I've been in that for years. And then I also look out at the month and I ask myself some simple questions about this upcoming month. I ask, what are my five major moves this month? Meaning, what are the five major activities or initiatives, you might call them projects, that I'm working towards and I'm moving forward? Those gotta be on the board. I got to know that each month, right? We call the five moves. So I know my five moves for the month. So I start with that second plan, which is, okay, what's my five major moves? Then I break down my five major moves. So an activity, let's say one of the major moves is write book. Right? That could be a major move. Well, what are what are the moves be under that? What are the activities below that? You know, uh, contact agent, write three chapters, uh, do this type of research, and, uh, you know, do these interviews. Okay, cool. Then I make sure that whatever I just wrote down has, listen, block time. Block time, meaning whatever those five major moves I gotta do that month, there's block time in the month. Meaning a block of time, a block of time, meaning there is an hour dedicated to those subtasks of the activity. It, it's blocked in the calendar. It's protected. At the beginning of the month, it's locked in that calendar. Nothing moves. The five major moves, y'all hear me though? Set those like anchors in the month. Everything else rotates around those, is rescheduled around those. Those things are going to happen. It doesn't matter. Those things are going to happen. So now I've taken major things I should be working on, I've broken it down, and it lands in the calendar. Now, sit down with your spouse, or sit down with your executive team, or sit down with that right-hand guy or gal that you have, and go through the calendar. I can guarantee your success based on how much you communicate your calendar. Let me say again, I can guarantee your success based on how much you communicate your calendar. If no one knows what you are trying to do, no one can be along for the ride or support you. If no one knows the time in which you're trying to protect, they can't be your block and tackle person with you. So if you are striving alone in the dark all the time and not speaking to anybody, which is the lone genius metaphor that still exists in pop culture, but is completely antithetical to any real research in high performance, then you've got to realize, oh, I, I gotta tell my spouse and my partner, this is what I am trying to do this month. Here are the major blocks. If you need to protect the time, this is what those blocks are. So that both, listen, I'm assessing where my life is, I'm planning the month ahead, and I'm communicating the month ahead. You do that on the first of the month. It's a shift. It's a huge shift, especially if you're not currently doing that with discipline.

Then my next growth day, if you will, my next growth day, if you will, is on Sundays. Sundays, I do a very similar process. It's shorter, but I also look out on that calendar, and that's where I'm sharing with you, I might reshuffle things or change things. So I'm really focused on making sure that, and by the way, I want you to all know, I suck at planning, and I do this so that I still achieve my dreams. As you heard me share earlier, I have very free mornings. For me, I really protect my mornings, but still on Sunday, I evaluate where I'm going. Is this what I want? Okay? Is that where I'm going? Great. Okay, cool.

On the daily, every day, let's talk about that. Every single day, I have my morning routine. You got to have your morning routine. For me, I get up for 20 minutes. I basically do, I do, you know, a 60-hour, I'm sorry, a 60-minute morning routine, and I've built my life to be able to do that. And so it usually has this combination of these things: 20 minutes of movement, 20 minutes of reading, personal development, or leadership, or history, 20 minutes with that high-performance planner, planning out the day, setting the intention, prioritizing, and visualizing the day's activities. Here's what I mean by that. So when I write out my planner for the day, and I have a meeting or a presentation or a work effort in the morning, I already know that block of time. I close my eyes, I imagine that block of time. I, how would I do that with excellence? How would I do that with excellence? How would I do that with joy? What might trip me up or stress me out, and how my highest self deal with that situation? So I look at every major thing I have to do that day, and I just close my eyes and I visualize it and think about those questions. In other words, that's what a pro would call mental rehearsal, visualization, good old-fashioned personal development. Imagine it before you do it, and you'll do it better, especially if you heard what I just shared, what might trip me up, what might stress me out. So as an example, today I thought, you know, it might stress me out, trip me up if I don't eat enough. I better make sure I've got food, I've got water, I've got everything handled. Okay, great. Because when I don't do that, problems after this many hours. Okay, cool. Got to make sure I do the self-care. So I imagine that this morning. Okay, God, that gets that me, that mental visualization preparation, every day, every day. So that might sound like a lot. It's not. Other secret, uh, growth day members, you know this.

Friday finishers. A Friday finisher. What does that mean? You should have next to your computer or on the wall somewhere, a Friday finisher. Is your task list for the week? It means these things, it might be, you might call it your deliverables, your task. It means these items are finished by end of day Friday. Friday finishers, they're non-negotiables as well, like I got to finish these by the end of the week. And by knowing my Friday finishers, I get to go into the weekend free. I don't, I hate, I don't know about you, but I hate getting to a Saturday afternoon and going, oh, I forgot I was supposed to do that thing. How much stress we have? Oh, I forgot I supposed to do that thing. It could have taken 20 minutes of planning. And so I know that sounds like a lot, and some of you go, boy, Brendan's a control freak. No, remember, I'm wandering around like an idiot half the morning. I'm not a control freak. Guess what? As you've always heard, discipline gives you freedom. The more disciplined you are about the blocks of time in which meaningful processes, meaningful pursuits must happen, you protect those, you organize your mind and your day around those things, and you move towards them. I promise you, it will give you a different result. I promise you that will be a different result.

You know, we're going to have some fun today. We're going to talk about your confidence, and I am really excited to break down a framework for you. And I hope in doing this, help you realize where some of those dark days come from, where you lose faith in yourself, where those dark days come from when you know you have a lot to do, but you just don't feel like you can figure it out, where that, you know, when you get to go out in the world again, or when you're on a Zoom and you got to show yourself to the world, you feel awkward or weird or insecure, that you, you tap back into that authentic strength, that truth of who you are, and that as you go through your life, you feel confident that no matter what life is going to throw at you, you're gonna learn, you're gonna figure it out, you're gonna develop your capabilities. And many of you are going through really hard times right now. Sometimes it's just hard to even be positive. You can be so consumed and so overwhelmed by the negativity of other things out there, you just go, oh my gosh, this is just hard to feel good, let alone confident. I'm going to break down a framework that I hope some of you are familiar with, but today we're going to talk about it in, uh, with a different lens of how to overcome insecurities and what specific daily and monthly habits you might set up for yourself to feel more strong.

So this is a piece of paper. It's a framework for confidence that I have on a board in my office. See, we need reminders. We are visual humans. We need to look at something to remind ourselves of something. And so you see I have this. I'll share this with you in a minute, but I want to get the practice in your mind. The practice in your mind is you should have instructions to yourself on a wall somewhere. So you're like, if you walked into my office, say, Brandon, why you have a framework for confidence on your wall over there? And I go, well, because sometimes I don't feel confident. And what do we do when we don't feel something? Well, when we don't feel something that we want to feel, we tend to feel not good because, like, I don't feel this, so I feel bad about myself. Or we tend to distract ourselves. I don't like this feeling, so I don't know what to do, so let me just scroll through the internet. So to me, what I've done is I've got a board over here, and there's my framework for happiness. Do you have a framework for happiness on your wall yet? So that when you don't feel happy, you go, I don't feel happy. What's going on with me? And you can just go look at it, you go, ah, I've got my checklist for happiness right there. I forgot point number three. No wonder I'm not happy. What I'm trying to suggest to you is maybe you give yourself a checklist, a framework, a set of instructions for the feelings that you really want to experience in life. And when you're not feeling it, instead of retreating into the comforts of distraction, you go back to your instructions. You know what makes you feel good, and it's time to write that down and look at it more consistently.

Here we go. This is my confidence checklist. This is my framework for confidence. I'm going to break down each of these areas, and even if you've seen this maybe before with me, what I'd love to do is break down where these grow into trouble, where these are developed and strengthened, where these can be applied in your life financially, in your life, in your marriage, or your relationship with your partner, with the kids. So I'm going to break down each of those things, each of those areas. I'll use a, a card here for you. We're going to start with that very first card here: Clarity. Human beings are a goal-directed species. If we don't have clarity on what we want, if we don't have clarity on who we are, if we don't have clarity on what our intentions are, and social relationship, it's, it's unnerving to us. Well, if you ever felt lost in life, you know that feeling. It's coming from a lack, a often of clarity. We'll talk about this. You just don't know who you are, what you're about, what you want anymore, and, and it's unsettling. When you lack clarity, it's really unsettling. You're like, ah, I, I don't, I don't know what I'm about anymore. And this is where midlife crises come in. Clarity is something that it's like knowledge or a goal or an aim, but it's loosely held. What I mean by that is like, okay, that's important to me, but I can be flexible and adaptive as well. It's not this idea that you have total 100% complete certainty, and you're total certain all the time. Ah, it's like that, that is an adolescent dream. There is no absolute certainty in anything in life, right? And so we have to go, oh, okay, I can have clear direction, or I can be strongly committed to this thing, but lots of people who are absolutely certain about something shifts months later. So here's my question for you: On a scale of 1 to 10, in the last 60 days, how clear have you been about what you wanted in life? Did you start the day with some clarity about how you wanted to live that day, show up that day, treat other people that day, serve that day?

So let's think about where sometimes you feel insecure. You're going to go to that party or that networking function, you feel insecure about yourself. Why? Because in your mind, the insecurity in, in that moment, in that situation, of the networking situation or the party, is coming from, I don't know who I am in here. I don't know these people, and who I'm supposed to be with them. I don't know where to go or where to stand, or, or who to talk to. And so just, it's unnerving. The insecurity is, I don't know what to do in the situation. Now, that type of confidence, or lack thereof, is something that psychologists call self-efficacy. Self-efficacy is about, I don't know what to do in this situation. That's where the insecurity comes from. Positive self-self-efficacy means I believe that I know what to do in the situation. I can handle this, even if I don't know how yet, I believe I can handle this. I have the competence to take this on. As an example, that's positive. But a lot of things in life, you don't know how to deal with. You don't have self-efficacy because you don't know how to handle it yet. This is a new party, you don't know anybody in it. It's a new networking event, you've never met any of these people. How do you get more confidence in that? Well, one simple thing you can do is start with clarity. Like, okay, I'm gonna go talk to people. What's something I'd love to share about myself with every new person I meet? Oh, okay. Lock that in. Okay, got it. What's one question I could ask every new person I meet? Okay, let me lock that in. Okay, just those two things have been found to dramatically increase people's sense of confidence in social situations. I know what I'm going to share about myself. I have clarity on it. I know what I'm going to ask them. I have clarity. Just those two simple things.

The problem with clarity is it's a double-edged sword. A lot of people, their clarity is, I'm awful, I'm worthless, I'm no good. And they've stacked up all these experiences to strengthen that belief. And their clarity is, well, I'm a jerk, I don't deserve success, I won't have success. They've got clarity, but they got the wrong kind of clarity. See, confidence requires positive clarity, not negative, self-defeating clarity. So clarity is a double-edged sword. If you believe the wrong thing about yourself, that's going to hurt you too. So what's the opposite that? Well, I'm going to start viewing myself positively. How can we do that? Well, you know what? Maybe each day for the next 10 days, I'm going to write down a strength that I have. Write down 10 positive things about yourself every day for the next 10 days. Watch what happens for you. It starts shifting your perception of yourself.

Here's my little framework. We're going to go from clarity now to congruence. Congruence is living in alignment with what you know is the best of you, living in alignment with the best of who you are, living in alignment with your values. When you are not congruent, your brain logs that. And what it says in that log, that log entry, not living your word, not living your truth, not doing what you said you would do. And too many of those negative withdrawals sucks away your confidence. But here's what you need to be congruent. What do you need? Clarity. You say, okay, these are my values, these are my beliefs, this is what I think is important as a human being, as a parent, as a caregiver, as a leader. Congruence measures whether or not you're doing what you said you're going to do. And that's important. So here's the simplest fix. If you've been pulling too many withdrawals out of that bank account, it's time to put some back in. And so today might be the day you go, where have I been incongruent? Where do I say something and I don't do it? Where are you out of congruence? And can you do the simple acts? Sometimes when you're out of congruence, first, you just apologize to yourself. You say, you know what? Gosh, Brandon, I, I haven't been honest with myself. Let's make a change. I think the fastest path back into congruence is an apology. An apology to yourself. An apology to other persons. It takes a lot of guts to say you are wrong. It takes a lot of guts to acknowledge you could do better. This one's fundamental. You get to decide today what to be congruent with. You get to decide who you are, and you could decide to show up and live into that.

Third big idea: Competence. Right? Competence. It's a collection of knowledge, skill, talents, and abilities. The good news is, you can increase this. So here's what I want you to do. Every day, every day, I want you to have clarity on what skills you are working on in your life. That's how we're going to get competence. Competence for too many people comes two years too late, why? Because they wait too long to start developing a skill. Every day, I'm very clear about what I'm trying to improve. Every day, I'm learning something. But I'm learning not just casually or or passively. I'm going, I'm trying to get better at this thing. I want you all to have an ambition to have one or two or three skill sets that you're literally world-class in. That you're world-class, not because you need the ego that I am world-class, no, no, no, because you need the challenge. You know why a lot of people lack confidence? They never engage challenge. You want more confidence? Engage and challenge more often. The more challenge you engage in and you incrementally improve in it, the more your brain goes, yep, there I did it again. And what happens when you don't have confidence? You don't engage in challenge. When you don't engage in challenge, you don't get more competence, so you don't get that competence confidence loop we were talking about, the flywheel. You all follow? So for those of you, if you're like, but I just lack confidence, like challenge yourself more. But you're like, but I'm lacking confidence. Like, exactly, exactly. See, it doesn't, you're going, well, I'll get confidence, then I'll do the challenging things. I'm like, the other way around. The other, you want more confidence, do challenging things more often. When you do challenging things more often, you learn. When you learn, competence, confidence, connection.

When you don't have a connection with yourself or others, confidence goes down. So you want to feel more confident in life? Reconnect with yourself and others. With yourself, that's your morning routine. Lock in that morning routine. The more you feel connected to self, the more confident you are. But you need the time to connect to yourself away from the email, the social media, the obligation for the kids, the family, the husbands, the wives, the team, everything. You need that moment where you're like, out and connecting with yourself, with your thoughts. You need time to think and to feel again. So turn off the TV, go for the walk, put down the phone, do the meditation, get away from the, the, the social thing one, you know, 10 minutes earlier so you can sit in the car and just think before you go home. You need, need more space to be thinking and connecting with self. So build that in your life. Self-connection. Second part, the most important part. We know environment dramatically shapes your confidence. The connection you have with people around you. This means be around positive people, contribute around positive people, learn from positive people. It means create great relationships in your life. I want you all to improve this one simple action, simple daily, weekly, real-life action. You must start sharing your real thoughts, feelings, desires, and goals with the people around you. You got to do it more often. Here's where you lack confidence in life: when you won't share your truth because you're worried what everyone else thinks. That's what high schoolers do. You don't do that anymore. You're too damn old now. You share your truth with other people and realize most of them won't get it, won't understand why it's important, won't support you, won't care, or at least won't get in your way and say anything at all. But the less you speak your truth to other people, the more superficial your connections are with them.

Number five is capability. Competence is the knowing, the knowledge, skill, accountability. Capability is you can do it. You can do it every time. It is like a strength, if you will. It is something that is you are highly capable at that thing. You are at another level of skill that it shows up every single time. But here's the truth: capability, capability is as much as a mindset as a competence. Let me give you an example. A lot of extremely smart people who can handle the problem don't handle the problem because they don't feel capable. It's like, yeah, I know it, but I don't do it. See, there's a difference between knowledge and execution, which is often the difference between competence and capability. See, competence is like the foundation and a stored value, but it's expressed through execution. Capability. You want to develop capability? It means you get in the mix, you do the work, you show up, you try. Capability means I know I will execute. That's what to me, confident capabilities. I know I will execute. How do you do that? You have to be more consistent in your execution. You need to be way more consistent in your execution. We talked about decision earlier. Decision is great. Action is required. We've got to get you to execute more of those to-do lists. You want more success? You want more joy? You want more confidence? You got to execute more of the plans. Capability is self-trust to take the action. It's not just, do I know how to take the action? It's, I'm gonna, I'm an action taker. I'm gonna show up. I'm capable to handle this. I will do this. I trust myself to handle this, to execute, to execute again and again and again and again and again. That's capability. And I really want you to develop that in your heart and in your soul by checking off the simplest of things each day. By, if you have a list of three to-do list, if you wrote down your three top priorities for the day, do those first before you do your social media, before you reply to everyone's DMs, inbox, uh, you know, voice message, texts. It's like, listen, I have so many people who they spend all day just checking their email to reply to everybody else. Now, that's fine if that's your job, if that's customer service, do that, that's your job. But if you're an entrepreneur, as an example, or you have a whole list of other priorities, and you're just checking into other people's agendas all day to meet all their obligations, and you keep missing your key priorities day after day after day after day, your brain doesn't feel like you're capable anymore, even though you might be smart, you're competent, but your brain doesn't believe you're capable.

Last big idea today: Contribution. You want confidence? Give more. You want confidence? Make your difference. You want confidence? Do things that matter. Why? Because those things are celebrated in the world. Generous, giving people tend to have greater what? Connections with other people. Generous, giving, caring, hardworking people tend to have what? More clarity about who they are. They're more congruent. These things, they feel more capable. Like generosity, doing things that matter, giving strengthens the whole rest of the model. The whole model drives itself when you've got each of these pieces running right. Each of these pieces touches one another. Contribution is a key. It really is. Sometimes when you feel so bad about yourself, you're not going to shake yourself out of that. But what can shake yourself out of that is service. Sometimes you got to get out of your own head. And to me, what has created a great confidence and reverence for life in my life has been, I've been volunteering most of my life. When you're a volunteer, when you show up for others, when you volunteer to help out, whether it's as simple as helping a friend move, or going down to the local soup kitchen, or volunteering for that nonprofit cause that you like, or, or running that fundraiser, even though you don't know how. Those contributions make a difference. Maybe your contribution is your art. Maybe your contribution is your time. Maybe your contribution is financial. Maybe your contribution is mentorship. Maybe your contribution is your content, or your book, or your work. Whatever that is, if you can do the same thing where you can where you can give generously to it, give to your work, be generous to that contribution, be in the moment in when you're serving someone who is in need, you get a little more spirit inside. And when that spirit of goodness is inside, you can share it more too.

Hey, my friends, it's Brendan Bouchard. Thanks for joining me this morning for a very important topic, as we discuss some of the difficult, difficult topics of life. Those topics of loss, of grief, of dealing with tragedy, difficulty, struggle, loneliness, of how do we carry on when bad things happen? How do we find strength and grace and peace in some of the most difficult situations and moments of our lives? That's a big topic today. I encourage you today to enter and frame this conversation in your own mind, to develop your own mindset and attitude towards these conversations before we even have them, because that is one secret, in fact, to dealing with difficulties of life, to set our minds in advance, to set our intentions in advance, to think through and contemplate, how will I cope with that? How will I face that? How will I endure that? That ultimately is one of the great strengths of consciousness, of presence, of intention, of anticipation, that allows us to deal with some of the worst issues of life. So let's enter this as a community, positive, to have a beautiful conversation. Let's do it from a, a perspective of knowing that we're going to deal with some unpleasant emotions that might come up, and let's face that willingly with trust and faith and gratitude. Because I'll share one thing that's beautiful about loss and grief, and that is you only experience those things and feel those things if you had something and you were connected to something that you enjoyed, something that you felt was important, something that was beautiful, something that was meaningful to you. And so you had a sense of meaningful connection, and something maybe shifted or changed, but that was a beautiful gift.

I do want to set the stage a little bit more too, because I probably have a different perspective about this conversation that many of you have heard about. You know, and I know I got a lot of questions in advance, are you going to talk about the five stages of grief? And, uh, no, I'm not. Uh, if you've studied Elizabeth Kubler-Ross or the work or the ideals behind the five stages of grief, um, if you don't, if you haven't heard of that work before, the, the idea that there's these five stages: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance. Um, I'm more of the mind of which that of Elizabeth, who, who came up with that idea and wrote about that so compellingly towards the end of her life. She mentioned that she wished that it had never been framed as stages, because, as she wrote about and spoke about towards the end of her life, as a theorist and a, and a person who had given hospice care, she thought, you know, I wish everyone didn't think there were these stages you're supposed to go through. You know, some of you, you feel like you're supposed to feel great by now. You feel like, well, I should have moved through these stages. I should be okay by now. And some of the greatest, you know, moments of grace that you ever allow yourself in life are the, is the grace of time, the, the grace of allowing. Like, every single person here, if you look at these, this thing, this what we're doing here, these Zoom tiles, every person here will cope with grief differently, right? Everything I'm going to share with you today is, is just by nature going to be a generic nature. Everyone will cope differently. And if you're still struggling through and you're thinking, geez, I should be in the stage of acceptance by now, uh, you know, I want to let you know the person who literally came up with the idea of the five stages of grief wished it wasn't called stages because she thought everyone deals with it differently. It's not sequential. These things become circular in time, and not everybody feels all of these emotions either, right? The people who I've lost in my life, I've never yet had the sense of anger toward. I didn't have a sense of anger that that thing happened. I didn't have anger towards my father dying. And I know that might sound completely crazy to people, but that wasn't an emotion that I experienced with death. P, partially because the way that I have faced mortality throughout my life. Not everyone goes through all these stages. So I want to set that frame off the bat. Everybody copes differently. There's no right or wrong way to experience loss. There is, however, a healthy way to re-engage life. We know from 50 years of psychological study, and you all know it inherently and innately, that there's ways that we cope that are healthy, and there's ways that don't make us feel good. There's things that we do that can lead to less ability to continue on with life in a happy way.

One of the most important and powerful frames I can give you for loss and grief, above all else and above everything else, is conscious anticipation. Conscious anticipation. Consciousness or awareness in life is so important if we're going to cope well. And what we usually mean when we speak about that, especially with loss and grief, is having the ability to anticipate that it will happen. Okay? That it will happen. That if you haven't faced your own mortality and your own death yet, I deeply invite you to do that at some point. Face your mortality, your own personal mortality. Most people have never had a conversation about death in their own mind with themselves, let alone contemplating that maybe they would lose a parent one day, or a sibling one day, or a job one day. In other words, in, in a spiritual practice, we would talk about this as a concept of awareness to impermanence. You've heard that phrase before, awareness to impermanence, that nothing is permanent. That in a lot of spiritual principles, you might think of, well, what is permanent? Maybe is if it's, if it's God, or if it's universe, or it's the Dao, or the way that there, there might be something spirit that, that is permanent. But in the human experience, in our natural world, things are impermanent. Can you face that? Can you face that? Can you anticipate that?

Let me switch metaphors for you real quickly. I'm, as many of you know, I do this for a living. I talk to groups of people all the time. I'm out on social media all the time, and I talk with so many influencers, so many people who want to be leaders and who are building up their brands and their careers, and they're shocked, shocked when someone judges them on the internet. They get, they're amazed when someone posts a negative, just mean comment. They can't believe it. Can you believe this person posted this mean thing on my video? I spent months on on my life's work. I posted a message that's beautiful about my family, and this person attacked me. Can you believe it? I'm like, yes. Why are you surprised? It's called the internet. There, anyone ever been surprised you got a mean attack on the internet? Well, I tell my peers all the time, I'm like, please don't be surprised that some, that is something that I guarantee that will happen. If you are commuting, if you are driving to work, or you are driving somewhere, and you are cut off by somebody in traffic, and you go into a rage about it, I'm like, you were surprised. And I know these are simple and simplistic and almost silly metaphors here, but I just want to switch your mind into that anticipatory power that we all have, that when we actually anticipate, oh, this is going to happen, we are way more capable of being centered than when we don't anticipate it. I'm not saying there will not be shock. I am not saying there won't be heartache. I am not saying there won't be incredible, like fear or denial or regret or sadness. But what I'm suggesting to you now is find peace with the inevitable. If we can find peace with the inevitable in advance, we are more able to cope.

Switching metaphors again. I have so many, we have a lot of people in this group here who served in the military before. And as you know, I've been blessed to coach some of the highest level, uh, groups in the military across all branches. And the way that they deal with what is about to come, when it is just like one of the most difficult missions or projects or, or, um, tours of their lifetime, is they rehearse it over and over and over and over again in their mind, and in practice, and in the field. They get comfortable with what is going to be an uncomfortable, unpleasant, potentially terrorizing situation. I don't pretend that's easy, and that's one reason I love the military, their willingness to do what is incredibly difficult to protect the freedoms that we all enjoy. But I will share, there's some kind of power in that. And I had that when I was a 19-year-old kid, and I had my car accident. It forced me to face death. Any fans here of philosophy? Anyone ever read philosophy? Well, if you never really got into the study of philosophy, I hope you will, and you'll know chapter one in all of philosophy, almost across all philosophers in the history of the world, chapter one, if we could generalize, says, you're going to die. Now, let's talk about life. That's like the fundamental of philosophy. So I read so much, I got comfortable with the fact that I was going to lose people, and there was going to be loss in life. Anticipation. Now, I know this does not sound really like motivating, but that's not the point here. The point is to say, can we anticipate it?

When I received the call from my dad letting me know that he had been just diagnosed with acute myeloid leukemia, out of nowhere, he woke up, was lacking some balance as he walked down the hallway. It was Mother's Day of 2009. So I woke up on Mother's Day, didn't feel good. Mom said, what's wrong with you? Said, I don't feel good. He's kind of unbalanced. The weeks before, he's playing golf and racketball and bowling. He's healthy. All of a sudden, something's wrong. Doesn't get better. They go to the hospital. Within a few hours, he's sitting with two doctors who is look, who are looking at his blood work, and then do some more tests, and they let him know he has seven days to live. And they say, you have AML, acute myeloid leukemia. There's two types of leukemia. AML is the one that usually takes the person quickly. And they said, you have seven days because what happens is your, your stem cells, I don't want to go to the whole thing about leukemia, but essentially, you're creating blood that's not good, and ultimately it shuts down your organs. I know I could go deeper into that, but those who know what I'm talking about with leukemia, it's, it strikes fast. And, um, so he had seven days. As soon as he told me that, I like, okay. And I was in shock, and I wanted to deny it, and I had fear, and that comes from shock. You know, when you hear news that you didn't anticipate, or something happens you didn't anticipate, you're going to have a shock reaction. And for me, I was shocked about it at first. And those emotions come in. And by the end of the conversation, though, as I felt those emotions come up, I also was releasing them because I'd already contemplated my father's passing years earlier in journaling activities of how I would think of the passing of people. And I know that sounds almost fatalistic, but you know, have you ever heard that saying, you don't want to leave things unsaid? Well, I was reading a book one time and said, you know what? Contemplate the passing of people who are important in your life so that you don't leave things unsaid, so that you, you know, think of like, wow, what if this person, what if this my last moment with this person? If this was my last moment with this person, what would I love to say to them and communicate to them? And don't leave those things unsaid. Now, I know that's difficult because all of us have had situations where someone has passed, or knows someone who's passed, and things were unsaid, and that is incredibly unsettling. It brings up shock, and it brings up regret, and it brings up sadness, which we'll talk about those emotions. But also, in this moment, in the here and now, listen, none of us can take back whatever's happened in our lives. Right? Whatever has happened has happened. It is as it was, as it is. We are here. We are here now. And all we can do moving forward together as a group is anticipate moving forward. We can't, like, this is not a thing where I'm going to try to be on a healing journey of the things of the decades past for any of us, because we all heal on our own time and our own ways. But I'm here to say it's incredibly powerful if we can contemplate mortality and anticipate it and go, wow, what should I say to my kids? What should I say to my loved ones? Let me, let me make sure I take care of people and treat people in ways that I don't regret, and that things are said. One reason I was at peace because my father had already said everything he said needed to say to me. I was lucky on that. I'd already said everything I need to say. Now we just had to go through the process with honor and integrity and respect and love of of end of life, and not deny it, face it. My dad faced it with a positive attitude. He knew it was coming. They told him, you have seven days. He's a Marine, so he made it 59 days. Good job, Dad. And he fought with great, great attitude. I just couldn't believe it. I kept waiting for his attitude to sour. Never did. Couldn't believe it. He anticipated the end, and he anticipated how he wanted to face it, and it was incredible, and I was lucky to witness that. And I want to let you know, I've also witnessed the complete opposite in care before. Been with families where it was the opposite, and that wasn't right or wrong either. It, it is people cope with, with, with the end of life is the way that they can. And for those of you who've cared for someone at the end of their lives, I want to let you know that caregiver guilt is something that if you're facing it, or you've ever faced it, that's okay. That's entirely normal, and that you need to grant yourself the peace of knowing you did the best you could at the time with what you knew. You know, I've had the blessing of working with a lot of medical professionals, doctors, and hospice care workers who talk about this. Gosh, I wish I could, you know, we all wish we could take back time and go change things. We can't. And so today, grant yourself the peace and the gift of knowing you did the best that you could at the time that you knew how to do. They did the best they knew that they could. I wish, you know, that was the first time I've ever cared for somebody personally for months on end with leukemia. I wish I knew more about leukemia at the time. I didn't know. I didn't know. So some things I would have done differently, and Dad would have done differently, and my family would have done differently. We did the best we could, and so did Dad. And I want to let you know that no matter what you have dealt with in grief in the past, your family or others, loss, losing a job, your divorce, your breakup, your loss of job, listen, you were as conscious as you were at that moment. You did what you could, and you need to give yourself grace. Because please listen to me, my friends, at that time, you were in shock, and you were coping. And if you just need a little science from, you know, Brendan, right now, let me drop some science on you. A stunning fact that when people are in shock or coping, they don't always perform at their highest level best. Oh my gosh, did the performance guy just tell us that and say it's okay? Yes, I'm letting you know it's okay that you weren't absolutely phenomenal and perfect, and other people around you weren't absolutely phenomenal, perfect. It's okay if you were getting divorced and the two of you fought. It's okay if you're getting fired and you screamed at your boss. It's okay, whatever happened. You now must go, I accept it as it was. I'm at peace with what it was. I did the best I knew how at the time. And even if you don't believe you did the best as you could at the time, it doesn't matter because yesterday's darkness didn't rise with the sun. Today, you're in a new moment. You're in a new moment. Your circumstances are new, right? This spirit, this energy, if you take a deep breath in, that air you're breathing, that's fresh. But I want to let you know we're in the here and now. Take grace and connection with the moment for yourself. It's so, we've all had pain, we've all had sadness. We can allow the moment now to refresh us, a moment now to have a new feeling, a new emotion, a new sense about ourselves, a new belief about ourselves, a new faith in ourselves, a new faith in the world, right now. This is a new moment, and with new moments, there's second chances. And with new second chances, there's new abilities to begin a new. But even if we don't begin a new, to allow ourselves the peace and the grace of the moment. It's so important.

You know, if you think of like anticipation being something that's really powerful, I also want to share acceptance is really powerful. To accept ourselves as we are now, no matter what has happened to us. To accept life as it is now, even if it's not perfect. To be in a ready state of acceptance is really powerful. To be accepting when your kids act out and they're freaking out and they're angry. To be accepting when your team doesn't get it right. To be accepting when the project falls apart. To be accepting when the

If your video doesn't get the likes you want, just try allowing and surrendering to the outcomes of life and face them as they are. Identify what are the controllable variables here, what's not controllable, and ask for the grace of the wisdom to know the difference between the two. There are a lot of things you can't control; let them go. The things that you can control, you can only control in this moment. So, if you didn't control it right in the past, let it go. It's now uncontrollable.

Now, what are the controllable factors? Living in the now will always be, always be the first sort of gate to enter to free yourself from pain, to step back into this moment of now, to accept, to realize this is what is, even if I didn't want it this way. This is what is, and what is is here. Okay, now how would I like to interpret it? What would I like to do next? These are the powers.

Think of it: if you can anticipate things will happen and you can accept as is what the world is, while you also accept your power to shift and shape and control and move things around that you can, that's an uncommon perspective to come into things with. To anticipate them and to accept those two things are so powerful. This has been so powerful when you've shared this on our morning show, and I just want to share it with everyone here.

A lot of people are showing up here going, "Okay, like it's been a hard 14 months, and, you know, struggling with self-doubt, struggling with all the things." And some people have goals that they're trying to figure out with their career and all the other stuff. But then there's also a thing called feelings goals. Yes, feelings goals, right? So many of you guys, this is going to be new for a lot of people. This is newer for me in my own life, frankly, right? Because, you know, all my years of working as a Denny's waitress, trying to, all the jobs, and then all the years of rejection with my business. When I finally got, you know, when we were finally getting momentum, I didn't feel the day. I just drove as hard as I could.

And one of the things Brendan has shared so much about, and I would love for you to share with everyone live right now, is, yeah, you can have goals in your fitness journey and in your career and all these things, but what about goals for your feelings? For how you feel and how you feel the day? Can you share? Yes, this is so powerful. I remember the first time I said this to her, "Feel the day," and she's like, "Right?" And we just, we had this huge, great talk about it because what happens is sometimes you're taking care of the kids, you're going through your life, you're doing the projects, you have the to-do lists, and you're just going, going, going. And you finish the day, you didn't even feel the day. There's no reverence for life. There's no love. There's no heart. There's no spirit. No flow. No connection. No creative pop. And it's not because it wasn't there; it's just you just, you just like blew through the day. You bullied the hours, I call it. And there was no moment of a pit stop to give prayer or meditation or gratitude or a second to go, "Like, how am I feeling? Am I experiencing the energy that I want to experience in life?" And that's again, we generate that.

But feeling the day, I found the most successful people in the world. I remember we drew this out. I went to Jamie's house almost two years ago, I think now, yeah, and I, we were talking about successful people, and there was drawing this little triangle. And what everybody wants after they've gotten everything, after you hit your goals, you made the money, you feel like your family needs what you want, is you want to feel the day more. You want greater depth in your relationships, like deeper relationships, deeper commitment, deeper meaning, right? We all want those things. And then we also want to know that we're leaving some kind of legacy or contribution, what I call meaningful pursuits. And I think feeling the day should be in your top one or two priorities every day.

The whole mindfulness movement is really architected to do: I want to feel the day. I want to feel presence, right? I want to feel the energy. I want to feel the spirit. I want a self-awareness or consciousness. It's a different feeling of the day versus just like powering through or caffeinating through it all and just blunting it out. We want you to have those sensations of beauty and honor and respect and depth every day. We want you to feel joy and reverence every day. She knows I probably say reverence every morning show because I'm so happy to be alive. I'm so happy to be alive. I'm so happy to be with this woman. I'm so happy with this team. And you all guys, it's amazing. It's a gift.

Yeah, you know, I love that so much. And I, and even Ed Mylett was sharing a little bit about that idea of, you know, setting goals also for feeling the day. And then also, like, how do, what are feelings we want in our life? And I think you just named a big one too, which is presence. I think that it's been so easy, especially the last 14 months, to like disconnect and just try to numb out and try to surf Instagram or watch the news or all the things, right? And so many people are saying that's really taking a toll on them, that they feel their own light dimming when they do that. And, you know, I started the morning off by talking about how that light is still inside of you. That light in every single one of us, right? A lot of people nodding. It's still inside of you right now. And I think part of igniting it is learning to feel the day, right?

So, what are, what are just a few, just simple tips people can do who are like, "Brendan, how do I feel the day? I feel nothing." Part of it is to recognize your, your overall emotional feeling every day is usually a 72-hour after-effect of how you moved, breathed, slept, and ate the last 72 hours. It really is. Like, it's a cumulative effect, especially of the last, last 72 hours have a lot to do with your emotional world. So that's why having good habits on a consistent basis. Like, you might, you might listen, if you want to have a cheat day, that's okay. But this is why they call it a cheat day. You eat bad for one day, but then look, number two and number three, if you get back on the train, you start feeling good again, right? So it's okay to have one day off.

But I think the most important thing for feeling the day is you need to have pit stops throughout the day. You need to have moments that you purposely take every day throughout the day to reconnect with spirit, soul, energy, or even just to breathe. Mom, like, just to take a beat, close your eyes, like I do. I'll stand, like every, I do this every hour, okay? I'll stand up. Sorry for the camera, guys. I'll stand every hour. I stand up. You've been asking me to demonstrate. Yes, demonstrate. I will stand up. I will close my eyes because a lot of your fatigue is visual fatigue, and that visual fatigue is causing a lot of neurological fatigue. So closing your eyes, especially since we're on all these devices, close your eyes. I stand, I bounce in place, I swing my arms, I take 10 deep breaths like this, 10 deep breaths like that, every hour, and it re-energizes my body and my brain. And it's a little pit stop. And now my mental focus is back. When I open my eyes, I go, "What's my intention for this next hour?" And that little pit stop makes me go longer, just like a race car. It can go around the whole race, but it doesn't. It takes the pit stops to tune it up so it can go longer and faster and win the race. You need little more pit stops to tune your mind up, amp up your emotions, reconnect with the heart or the spirit or the soul. And if you are just grinding all day, that is not, there are no pit stops. That's the equation for burnout.

Yeah, well, so many people feeling burnt out, right? People that aren't leaving their home, but because of the pandemic, but just so burnt out and so overwhelmed. And one thing you shared that I want to make sure everyone caught is the idea of visual fatigue. That was a huge aha moment that I had with you on the morning show just in the past few weeks. I thought, you guys, we implemented this at It Cosmetics. We grew to over a thousand employees, and we would start ending meetings like five minutes before the hour instead of just back-to-back meetings, right? Because the idea that you can get up and just walk around and move your body. But one of the things you brought up is I learned I was doing them wrong because I was like walking and moving but still engaged. I would take meetings in the hallway walking, or I would check my email on that five-minute break, right? And can you just quickly share the idea that when you do take a pit stop, when you do take that five minutes, right, and this is hard for a lot of people, but the idea is when you take that five minutes, the other 55, right, or you take the 10 minutes, the other 50 are so much more alive.

Yes, they're so much more alive. So people that say, "Oh, I can't afford to do that." No, no, no. It's you're so much more alive than those other 50. But I was doing it wrong because I wasn't actually resting my mind. And you talk about the power of like visual fatigue. If you take a break and you're scrolling Instagram or emails, that's not a break. That's exhaustion. Scrolling is just exhausting your brain even more and more and more and more. It's engaging it, but it's exhausting it more and more and more. And so it's like this, you cannot possibly hope the burnout will end if you don't more consistently recharge. But we grew up on a century-old model that, oh, we'll get to recharge when we retire. We'll get to recharge, you know, two weeks out of the year when we have vacation. It's why people are miserable because their burnout is real because they don't recharge. They think, "One day I'll recharge, the spa day," or, "You know, a year from now." No, no, no.

The world's largest study of productivity that's ever been done found out the most productive people in the world who also reported high levels of happiness, they took a break on average every 52 minutes. Largest study ever done. Every 52 minutes, they took a break. Did they need the break? No, they're recharging. If you're crashing at 2:00 and 3:00 in the afternoon every day, it's time to take a hint. You need to recharge at like 10:30, 11:30, or 1:30 to prevent the crash that happens at two or three. The crashes happen because the recharges are not happening. And so the burnout will always be there. And I always say, make sure you don't blame the burnout on anybody. Please don't blame your burnout on your kids. That's not fair to them. Don't blame your burnout on the team. Blame the burnout on either ambition that is unmet with planning, or just not taking care of and prioritizing your self-care or your well-being. You know, take care of you so you have the energy to serve at your highest levels.

I think that is something we can all align. This can be your day for personal growth. This can be that day you committed to, and you remember, you go, "That was the day I got myself a community. I got better coaches. I committed to making my life the absolute best that I could." This is that day. Make today your growth day. Click the button on this page and sign up right now.