tags:: #source/video Personal Growth MOC
author:: Brendon Burchard

The Decision

Today is about The DECISION.

You don't do anything for this decision to happen—it comes to you.

Chicken coop.

There's more to life than this. This is not it.

Some of you disguised this voice. Oh yeah honey I'm just burnt out, overwhelmed, we'll get there, next year honey. And you've disguised this voice. Because this is a very scary voice to listen to.

There's a decision waiting for you right now and there's a confrontation required, and you backed up from it so that's why you haven't broken through with the speed you could.

So explore that feeling. Journal, therapist, friend.

I'm already convincing myself I can endure. What's wrong that you've been enduring too long?

We tell ourselves it's okay, we can handle, after we've heard that truth of this decision that "this is not how life is supposed to be."

This is the advanced personal development work and it's about listening to yourself. To what your heart is saying. To quit denying your emotions and your feelings.

It's okay there are parts of you that need to change.

By making everything okay we make a society that's on the brink because we've lost standards.

Ambition - Mindset - Habits - Relationships.

It's usually changing those things more than the big "oh I need to quit" or "I need to move." They might be a consequence but it most of the time doesn't start that way.

So few have actually made the next level decision:

The decision to live an extraordinary life.

We know when we're average. Some people go "I'm fine, I can survive it."

I want to live an extraordinary life.
I want that.
I'm willing to work for that.
And it will take so much work, it will be a lifelong journey of self-improvement.

The people who judge you for personal development never made the decision.

Our culture started celebrating cynicism. So we make fun of the people who are trying. So when we cut them down it's okay for us to endure what's wrong because we don't have the guts.

A lot of people are miserable because they never chose to try to live an extraordinary life.

Don't try to be an example for everybody. Because most people won't like you.

The Formula

on/online-courses Presenting with flipchart and post-it notes covering parts of the framework.

Your dreams must be greater than the things that are stealing your extraordinary life.

(Dreams + Lighthouse + Discipline) > (Drama + Distractions + Discouragement)

Drama

Main type of drama: Taking personal offense to everything. That's a decision that you've been wronged. The thing, this noise monster. The more you do that the more you can't hear the truth, God, the aspiration, the dream, the vision.

Nobody stops dreaming, they just started focusing on something different.

Is there always going to be drama & distractions even if you're in your dreams sometimes? Yeah sure but you can't have it be dominant.

Things don't go perfectly but you can still be in the dream. But if you obsess about the things not going perfectly you're disconnected from the dream.

Distractions

Humans are kind of dumb and that's okay.

But no place more are we dumb and in distraction like social media.

There is no research that has shown social media is a positive thing over time—outside of the people who make it their career, the creators.

Discouragement

People are so discouraged they feel they can't "take another loss."

When you're discouraged, you better reconnect with that feeling and ambition that wants to be extraordinary. When you lift yourself through this something amazing happens.

If I had to give one big feeling for all of America over the past years, it's this: discouragement.

Suffering and struggle kinda is just part of it. Life is just about, in large part, dealing with it.

We end up spending a lot of time analyzing what went wrong. So the discouragement becomes part of the noise, part of our head. We get down and get down what we're getting down.

Get good at getting back up.

The Ceiling

A lot of people don't have a problem with the formula—they have a problem with the ceiling.

For successful people: your ceiling is the reality that there is no ceiling, and that is fucking with your life.

The dream is undefined, you always want more, there's no ceiling on your ambition.

If there's no ceiling (clarity, target) to your ambition, there's also no ceiling to how much you work each week.

That's burnout.

How much work is allowed?
Why do you have to work this hard every week, every month, every year?

We justify our continuous work as the magnificent thing about us.

What is my enough? Not to limit your potential but to address the ceiling you keep breaking.

Maybe you're a high achiever you don't call it burnout, because you can keep burning.

Maybe it's not burnout, maybe it's just having less fun. Less time with your kids and friends than you want.

You have to set the ceiling for how much you're willing to work.

You need to know your number. And once you hit it, yeah strive more but have more fun because you've reached the number. Celebrate it, have that be enough.

"I have more time with my wife than anyone in this industry."

High achievers: how hard is taking a vacation?

If you struggle taking time for yourself, you have a ceiling problem. And the problem is you don't have a ceiling

Noone gets to the end of their lives and celebrates working 24/7.

The Path

"Brendon I don't know what I'm supposed to do with my life. What should I be doing with my life then, smart guy?"

The PATH. Spend more time on:

• Passions. Yours, with your wife, your interests. Over time when you obsess and learn.
• Abilities. Your unique abilities. The thing that's easy for you, that you have a gift for.
• Tenacity. The things you're not giving up on. What are the things you keep going and doing? Even if it wasn't an ability or passion yet.
• Helpfulness. Don't know what you should do in your life? Cool, be more helpful. Be more of service. (This will make your tenacity.)

Be there more if you don't know your dream. You'll be in the right zip code. It's somewhere there.

Entrepreneurs: well, well, well document the things you should be doing and delegate the rest. Do't give your great abilities to administrative duties.

The Lighthouse

Tanya, Brendon, Jonas, Vishen, Jan.

You are a lighthouse for somebody.

Someone needs your beam of light. Who do you need to be a lighthouse for, right now?

We're so desperately seeking that we forget we're the lighthouses, that we are that person to others.

You can be that role model, that difference maker. But you will need to build yourself.

Sharing break:

• What are you most grateful for right now, in this stage of your life?
  • The friends around me right here.
• Who was a lighthouse in your life? What did they teach you?
  • Tanya. She taught me to believe in myself. She showed me I'm a magnificent human being.
  • Jan, Jonas—they showed me I can make this, my own business. They believed in me.
  • Brendon. He taught me how to think about high performance.
  • Tony. He taught me how to visualize the future and make change in others.
  • Nilesh. He taught me how to feel compassion for myself.
• Who do you need to be a lighthouse for? What does that mean?
  • Wolf, Danni, my audience.
• How do you need to develop? What is it that would make you more of a role model for others?
  • Storytelling with conviction.
  • Leadership and creating guidance as a professional.
  • Speaking.

The Ruin

As we start going this stuff, being a role model, we tend to ruin ourselves. Often with the Ceiling.

The ruin is the inability to say 'no.'

You don't like to do it and you know you should and you don't do it. That is discipline.

I don't like to but I need to so I will.

Your friends ask.
Your family asks.
Your team asks.
...that's why it's safe to say 'no.' They'll be there in the morning.

There is no focus without 'no.'

The people who are getting so much done say 'no' much more than you think.

It's saying no to unhealthy requests more.

If you say 'yes' to something unhealthy, you're in crisis to recover 2-3 days so you're always recovering. This slows you down.

The hangover might be real or metaphorical from all the yes'es. You need all the time to reset.

On average it takes 2h to get back to efficiency when someone in deep work is interrupted.

The less you say 'no,' the more you become the drama. Others need to pick up your slack.

Stand guard in front of your temple. Is this a high quality opportunity, person, yes? If it's not a high quality yes, it's a hell no.

Practice:

• What were the things you set 'no' to, the No List? Look at it.

Celebrate your wins. Saying 'no' is winning!

The Rise

So much of the ruin is the 'no's and your loneliness.

The rise is the rise of all boats. We rise together.

You should be asking for help every week.

I ask for help on everything even if I do it myself. On a webinar I ask 5 friends top 5 things.

Ask people, you'll rise way faster. You decrease the variability: when you're down someone's up. Chances are over time you'll be up more.

The efficiency of your rise is so much faster when you're down, if you have others to support you. Down is too long solo.

Text people who are good for you, often.
Ask what they're working on.
Their ambitions.

The Frame

If you are stuck, it's the FRAME. Feeling Stuck

• Fear. There's a fear there. "I x but but but..." there's some fear there. Identify it and don't be emotionally hooked by it. Question is, does it freeze you? Most mental fear is poor management of the mind—we're making it bigger than it is. "Maybe I'm not good enough." Well maybe you're right—but we will never know until we fought a thousand battles. Freezing only proves that you're not good enough and you can't make it. That's self hatred. If you're frozen you need therapy.
• Responsibility. Who has responsibility to you being stuck? Usually you gave away responsibility to someone else. Keep that locus of control a little closer, back on your shoulders. When you're stuck, take on some responsibility. Challenge yourself again. You gotta flex a little bit again to get unstuck.
• Ambition. If you're stuck, you're disconnected from your ambition. Brendon: in the morning, in bed, I visualize—the day, activities, my dreams. Just keeping the dream going. If you lose connection with your dream, you lose motivation.
• Mood. In the moment, often our mood is determining a lot. Your mood is very contained in the last 72 hours of what happened to you. What did I eat, how did I sleep, who did I hang out with? Next: how did I move? Walk, stretch, energy release, strength, endurance. If you have something good coming up Friday, be extremely good from Tuesday. You are conditioning your mood.
• Empowering Self-Talk. Listen, listen, listen to audio programs, podcast, daily fire. Condition your self-talk. Your first step in every project is your self-talk. If you didn't prepare yourself you will ruin it, over and over.

The project for life is managing you. Not the project.

The Way

This is: how are you going to show up today? What's your way of being?

MW: Brave, joyful captain.

How are you going to live live? That's one of the most important decisions you can make.

• Joyously
• Have confidence
• Have mastery
• Loving

You have to tell yourself these things with that empowering self-talk.

The Breakthrough

All breakthroughs come from steady, incremental, bold experimentation.

Sometimes you see the dream way out there.

You need to get in the game. Immediately. Small.

That is called skilling up. That is actually the breakthrough.

Take experimental action more consistently.

Every week, run a test!

Every Monday, what's your test of the week?

Little plane, big plane. Start with the small mode of doing something and then go further each time a little bit.

You always need R&D in your business and in your marriage.

It's not one big sudden move once a year, it's a little thing every week.

You can be madly happy and still want more.

You are either in decline or you are growing. I don't like dichotomies but over time I've found that it's true. You're declining if you're not testing. In every area of life.

What's this going to be like? – that's the greatest sentence of living life.

It should be fun to try and think about all the ways you can try and surprise.

We need curiosity.

It's better to have people resisting change than no change.