Brendon Burchard is a world-renowned personal development trainer, founder of the High Performance Academy, host of The Charged Life Podcast, and author of the #1 New York Times Bestsellers, The Motivation Manifesto, The Charge, and The Millionaire Messenger. Brendon has the #1 rated personal development show on YouTube, is one of the top-100 most followed public figures on Facebook, and he’s shared the stage with other notable speakers such as Tony Robbins, Richard Branson, the Dalai Lama, Steve Forbes, and Katie Couric. His educational work has helped millions of people around the globe achieve the results they are looking for in the areas of business, marketing, and personal development, and his programs like the Experts Academy and World’s Greatest Speaker Training have helped to jump-start thousands of people on the way to the careers they dream about.
Why you should listen –
Brendon comes on Bulletproof Radio to discuss how to master motivation, the secrets to dealing with negative emotions and self-doubt, why you should avoid becoming too comfortable, and some processes and hacks to help you recharge and stay driven. Enjoy the show!
Click here to download the mp3 of Brendon Burchard: Confidence, Drive, & Power – #190
What You Will Hear
- 0:35 – Cool Fact of the Day!
- 2:25 – Welcome Brendon Burchard
- 4:30 – The Motivation Manifesto
- 8:35 – Self doubt
- 13:50 – How to find who you are
- 17:15 – What drives us?
- 23:05 – Taking control of your emotions, happiness, and life agenda
- 30:15 – The secret of dealing with negative emotions
- 36:15 – The power of exploring your own emotions and asking for help
- 42:25 – Mastering motivation and personal performance
- 45:15 – Fear of perfection
- 49:30 – Why you should avoid being comfortable
- 53:45 – Setting up processes to recharge
- 1:00:15 – Where you can learn more!
Featured
The Motivation Manifesto: 9 Declarations to Claim Your Personal Power
The Charge: Activating the 10 Human Drives That Make You Feel Alive
The Millionaire Messenger: Make a Difference and a Fortune Sharing Your Advice
The Charged Life Podast on iTunes
World’s Greatest Speaker Training
Resources
Think and Grow Rich: Your Key to Financial Wealth and Power by Napoleon Hill
Gratitude Journal – use code: BULLETPROOF
The Five Buddhist Hindrances to Enlightenment
The Release Meditation Technique video
Bulletproof
Transcripts
Click here to download a PDF of this transcript
Dave: Hey, everyone. Welcome to Bulletproof Radio. I’m Dave Asprey but you probably already knew that if you listen all the time. Today’s interview is remarkable because if you’re watching on YouTube, you might know that we’re doing this in a place where I don’t normally do it because there’s no espresso machine and biohacking gear behind me.
That’s because we’re at Brendon Burchard’s studio. Today’s guest is none other than Brendon.
Brendon: Hey, man. Thanks for having me.
Dave: Brendon, I open every show with cool facts of the day. I would be remised if I didn’t do that today. I’m going to show you today’s cool facts of the day with you and with everyone listening.
Today’s cool fact of the day is that if you want to get your way and you’re a woman, there’s actually a study that shows that if you wear high heels, you have a greater chance of getting your way from men.
Brendon: Yes.
Dave: It’s a statistical thing.
Brendon: Men authored that study.
Dave: I believe they did. It was actually sponsored by one of the expensive shoe brands that I couldn’t name. Here’s the weird thing. They haven’t actually figured out if it’s high heels themselves or whether it’s the way they change the way you walk. It could be a change in gait but there’s definitely something in a double blind study where you can actually say wearing high heels does make the guy say yes for reasons we don’t entirely understand.
For women biohackers, I suppose you could say that wearing heels to that meeting, there actually is a reason to do it. It’s not just because you like to have your back hurt at the end of the day.
Brendon: They did a self-study or self-report, psychological study on it and said, “What is your emotion as you’re putting on your favorite pair of high heels?” I promise you, they would say, “I feel more confident.”
That confidence also probably shows itself out in the world. Then where they’ve shown all negotiations studies which are pretty much in-arguable, the more confident negotiator typically wins.
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Brendon: You just have the situation. They get their way because they’re in an emotional energetic level that’s different. Maybe the shoe had something to do with it or not. Maybe they can generate that energy anyway but more confidence usually wins.
Dave: I decided to do my own study on this. I wore high heels to my last negotiation. It totally didn’t work. I don’t know about the science of it.
Brendon: I’m wearing them now for good luck.
Dave: If you don’t know who Brendon is, that’s okay you might not know but you should because Brendon is an incredibly well-known author and … What do you like to be called in terms of personal motivation? I had a really hard time figuring out what to say because you’ve helped hundreds of thousands of people upgrade different aspects of their life.
Brendon: I’m a writer and a trainer.
Dave: Okay.
Brendon: Writer first, trainer second. I usually write or train on the topics of motivation and personal development or marketing and business. Outside of those two things, I don’t write or talk about or know anything.
Dave: In the Bulletproof life that I’ve lead, I’ve learned things from hundreds and hundreds of people and that’s how you go about becoming an expert.
Brendon: Yup.
Dave: You’re one of the guys who’s I’m like, “Damn, I have some stuff I can learn here,” from both sides of what you do.
Brendon: Thank you.
Dave: If you don’t know, let’s see, Larry King says you’re one of the top motivation and marketing trainers in the world. You’ve hit number one on New York Times list. We’re actually on it the same time. This is with your Motivation Manifesto book.
Let’s see, number one personal development show on YouTube, top 100 most followed public figures on Facebook. You’ve been on stage with Richard Branson, the Dalai Lama, Katy Courics, Steve Forbes. In other words, you’re like in a level all of your own. If you and Tony Robbins arm wrestle, which one wins?
Brendon: He wins every single time. He’s louder than me too. He’s got pretty much every factor of studdliness above me I could say. Yeah.
Dave: You guys run in the same circles.
Brendon: Yeah, we’re friends, deep friends and big admirers of each other. I’ve been on his stage, he’s been on my stage so we really appreciate each other’s work.
Dave: If you don’t know who Brendon is, that’s probably good introduction. Basically, you’re someone that I’ve learned from very specifically. You’re newest book, the one that was ahead of me on New York Times list, well done again, tell me about it.
Brendon: It’s called The Motivation Manifesto: 9 Declarations to Claim your Personal Power. It’s a book that it’s my last work. It’s like if you ever have a book, it’s your opus and you’re so proud of it because you’ve poured everything you had into it, every amount of research, your whole life experience, everything that was this book for me.
It’s a book that’s about personal freedom. I make the argument in the book that the main motivation of mankind is seeking personal freedom which I define as that ability to fully express who we truly are and pursue the things that are meaningful and important to us, pursue our dreams.
We want to be free to do those things. We want to be free to be who we are. We want to be free to go after what we want. We have these two enemies that get in our way every single time. One is self-oppression. We put ourselves down. We struggle with dabble and delay and devising this from other people.
Then there’s social oppression which is the reality that there’s critics and people who judge us and people who aren’t always nice and kind and supportive of who we are or what we want.
Life is about dealing with those two things, dealing with the ways we keep ourselves down and oppress ourselves, dealing with the critics and social oppressions. Some social oppression would be a political tyranny. Sometimes it’s also like office politics.
Dave: Yeah.
Brendon: How do you deal with those two things? This is a book about that. Let’s learn to find our own freedom by overcoming our stuff, overcoming the challenges of other people. I just get nine ways to do that in the book.
Dave: The closest book that I could compare this with is maybe Think and Grow Rich …
Brendon: Mm-hmm.
Dave: … where you’re really laying it out there. The style of your book is very much like traditional set of declarations.
Brendon: Yeah.
Dave: It doesn’t read like soft new agey thing.
Brendon: No.
Dave: Tell me the story of how you managed to get a book out that was classically strong versus popularist.
Brendon: Yeah. You go to write something called a Manifesto, you know you have to be the writer. I wasn’t honestly. This book when you read it, I had readers, millions of readers say this is so much better than anything written before because I spent two years studying how to write this book. The two year deep study and revolution is rhetoric.
Dave: Wow.
Brendon: Try to figure out, how did the great leaders of our time like revolutionist leaders, like founding fathers of our country or revolutionists or founding members of other countries, how do they talk about the desire to pursue personal freedom? Now, they were talking about a political freedom. How do they do it because it’s a trick, right?
Dave: Yeah.
Brendon: How did the founding fathers say to the entire 13 colonies at the time which were just under around 3 million people at the time, “You’re enslaved by Britain and we need to change that.” How do you tell someone that they’re trapped and they’re caged at the same time tell them they’re powerful enough to change it.
It’s a trick. You have to learn how to do that. I didn’t know how. I had to really study the language. This book, the reason I think the accolades just gotten from real writers so far is because it opens up rewriting a declaration of independence and we call it the declaration of personal power.
Dave: Yeah.
Brendon: It’s a true I keep to form of the format, the structure the pentameter of the great writing like that because no one writes like that anymore. I brought it a little modern edge and put a little bit of just ferocity into it because I think people right now, they’re restless. There’s a lot of frustration and stress out there that’s aimed internally but also to the world.
There’s like you can feel the stirring of people wanting to revolt or change or at least significantly transform their lives. I want to tap that energy and put it in chapter 1 so we overlaid the declaration of independence. That’s why the book feels so momentous.
Dave: I did not know that you had done the declaration of independence. Come to think of it, it does feel like that like this is the way it is. I would say it’s more like personal independence in terms of it.
Brendon: Yes. That’s why I call it personal freedom.
Dave: Yeah. For people listening on the show today, you guys know that the art of biohacking is like changing the environment around you or inside you so they have control of what happens in your body and thus in your life.
There’s a set of things, you’re taking your vitamins or getting enough sleep. I’ll find discussions like comparing out vitamin baggies and stuff. I know that you take care of your hardware with the same degree of precision that I take care of mine.
Brendon: Yeah.
Dave: Let’s assume that if you’re listening that you’re doing some things there and there’s probably more you can do there. Now, your hardware is working. Then there’s the software thing. Anyone can take some pills and exercise and eat the right foods and do the things that are going to make yourselves do their thing.
For some people this is more work than others. Then you’re there. Now, you’re faced with the next big thing which is self-doubt. In the book or just in your experience, someone who’s, “All right, I’ve got enough energy now. I’ve got enough health. I want to do something that I haven’t done before.”
Then there’s a process that happens in their mind. You write about the same book. Walk me through that. What happens with self-doubt and then what’s the counter move to that so you can upgrade the software as well as the hardware?
Brendon: Yeah. When I think of biohacking, I can add everything that you teach and everything that you do. Try to do that if you don’t have sustained motivation. I just try. Try to stay on a diet plan. Try to have a great career. Try to lead your team. Try to do something significant.
I think unfortunately right now, when you talk about software, people sometimes go, “Oh, motivation.” They pooh-pooh the topic. Is like, no, that’s the one thing. It’s easy because Chris Farley made fun of motivation. We all learned to laugh a little bit about the guy. At the same time, without it, that’s the problem.
Most people say, “It is self-doubt” or “It is fear that wrecks people’s lives.” I open up one of the conversations in the book of saying it’s usually not fear. We conveniently as a culture blame fear.
Actually if you go back and read philosophers of time, you don’t see as much conversation, “Oh, it’s always fear,” and they’re always blaming fear, they’re usually blaming self reliance and personal responsibility and habit and discipline. It’s only a modern era thing that we all conveniently say fear is the number one thing.
By the way, fear is a big dog. We take that on the book. We’ll talk about that in relation to self-doubt. The real problem most people have is sustained the motivation.
Dave: I totally agree with sustained motivation.
Brendon: If you have sustained motivation, you’ll overcome the fear. That’s the soul.
Dave: Yeah, because you keep trying.
Brendon: Yeah.
Speaker 1: If you’re just, “I don’t have any more inward ability to bring it,” then you give up. You’re saying it’s the lack of motivation or I would interpret it as lack of energy because energy powers motivation. Then you hit the wall. “I’m done. I’m not going to face that,” whether it was facing a fear or a challenge. It’s semantics.
Brendon: Totally. I think in terms of the self-doubt and what do we do with it because I like to give tactical things for people. Probably people have a lot of self-doubt because they lack clarity and competence.
Dave: Yup.
Brendon: They don’t have the confidence. In psychology we often talk about the competence-confidence loop. The more you understand something and master it, the more you have confidence in it. The more you have confidence in it, the more you push the edge where you’ll discover and learn more.
You have this great infinity between the two, the more competence gives you confidence. That first piece of clarity is where people really struggle with self-doubt. It’s not that they hate themselves. They just often don’t know themselves …
Dave: Okay.
Brendon: … or they’re not being intentional during the day. Or my favorite activity, simple takeaway, I had a speech in this last high performance academy. Our last High Performance Academy, I had Arianna Huffington. She came backstage. She’s like, “What are some tactical things you do?” I said, “Let me show you my favorite thing of all time. Give me your phone.” I said, “Let’s put three words in here as an alarm that go off throughout the day these set of three words to remind you of your highest best self.”
Dave: Wow.
Brendon: I tell people, “What are three words that describe your highest best self?” Even if you’re not there now, they could be aspirational.
Dave: Next time I see Arianna, I’m going to ask her what her three words are if she’s going to tell me.
Brendon: I would love that if she did.
Dave: I’m going to ask her. All right.
Brendon: What it does is, I’ve done this for years, just like you biohack your life is in technology and tools, you can biohack your mind. A simple reminder going off three times a day of who you are …
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Brendon: … and stating the aspirational can help you overcome self-doubt because a lot of self-doubt is just you haven’t connected with who you are. You haven’t spent the time. You just haven’t said, “What do I want to be about today?” and driven your life intentionally that day. With more intention throughout the day to be who we want to be through our beliefs and our behaviors, we start to find more confidence in self.
Dave: It seems not that easy to find out who you are. That sounds new agey. That’s not a criticism. You’re a hardcore scientist. You’re listening to this guy, “How could I not know who I am?” like that’s too abstract.
To be honest, my background engineering and computer science and all that stuff. There was a time in my life when I’ve been like, “For god’s sake, what do you mean?” It’s obvious. I was also an angry guy. I wasn’t self-aware enough to really recognize my core essence there.
How does someone who either doesn’t connect with that phrase at all or someone who’s just getting and going in life and in their career, early 20s, your prefrontal cortex is almost done forming.
Brendon: Yeah.
Dave: How do you find out who you are in order to then do that?
Brendon: I tell people don’t find it. Don’t try to find it. You don’t find your purpose in life either. You walk out the door one day and piano purpose falls on your head, and you’re like, “Oh, I found it. It just hit me in the head.”
Dave: Is piano a purpose?
Brendon: I say, Don’t find out who you are. Decide who you are.”
Dave: Okay. You have control of that. You decide. All right.
Brendon: Yeah. That’s what these three word and this activity of just it’s so simple but as you know, if you’re not intentional about your food each day, you’re going to end up fat, schlobbily and just destroyed.
Dave: That’s true.
Brendon: That’s what happens. The society will just push you to convenience and ease and speed and you’ll take it. You’ll consume too much.
Dave: Yeah, fast-food all the time.
Brendon: The same thing happens intellectually and psychologically for us. The world says, “No. Just be easy.” A lot of people just show up in an environment and they have no presence or intention at all. The less presence and the less intention you have, the more self-doubt.
Once you have presence and intention and it’s something you choose to have. Let me give you an example. Maybe this sounds too esoteric for people because sometimes, “Yeah, what is this kid Brendon talking about?”
The Dalai Lama. I’ve been blessed to meet him twice and his intention is so obvious it’s so obvious. His intention is kindness and compassion and happiness. Those are his three words I got to ask.
Dave: Nice.
Brendon: He’s going to make those happen in the environment he’s in. That is why he’s such an unbelievably kind, compassionate and happy guy because he decided he was going to be that and stand for that not just or himself, for other people. I think another level of self-doubt is like knocked away when we decide to serve.
Dave: Yes.
Brendon: When we say like you’ve done, I’m going to be a role model for people. Now, when I say that or someone listening goes out like, “That’s an egoic thing to say,” no, it might be one of the most profound things you ever give yourself the gift of is to say, “What would it be required of me to be my best self? What would my best self look like, feel like, sense like?”
Then to demonstrate that to the world, not only is that just an absolute exemplary personification of personal power …
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Brendon: … it is service to other people. Look, there are so many people wandering around who are completely lost or self-doubt. I don’t make fun of that. My whole mission in my life is to help that. The first thing has to happen we’ve got the real intention for them to live into their best self.
This ties in to things like leadership and the idea that someone who’s not officially the boss but could still be a leader because they walk in and they exemplify something. Kindness is a great one. There’s strength and there’s power and motivation and all these things.
Brendon: Can I have a simple …
Dave: Yeah.
Brendon: … clarity piece where they help a lot of people is, I talk a lot about the baseline human drives and what really drives us. One drive that we all have is congruence.
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Brendon: We want to be congruent with who we think we are and how we’re demonstrating ourselves to the world. It’s so basic but a lot of people when we really struggle in self-doubt, it’s because we know that there’s something inside that’s rallying around. We got a little lion in us but we’re living as mice.
Dave: Yeah.
Brendon: It opens up that way to talk about why.
Dave: You have, if I’m recalling, there were 10 primary drivers in that book. What was the title of that one for people to who might want to read it?
Brendon: It’s called The Charge.
Dave: The Charge. Thank you.
Brendon: Activating the 10 Human Drives That Make You Feel Alive.
Dave: Mm-hmm. That’s a good book.
Brendon: Thank you.
Dave: I don’t know why I’m not sticking the title right now but to have those 10 things laid out is really accurate. I certainly dealt with that because there’s a set of things that you’re supposed to do and be. That comes from advertising. It comes from parenting. It comes from religion. It comes from society honestly, like know your place.
That, for me and I think for a lot of people, it creates stress. One of the things as we do as human animals is we want to do things that are not useless stress. Stress that causes you to grow is good stress. Stress that’s like, “I’m not doing what I’m supposed to do. I may not know what I’m supposed to do but I know that whatever they told me I was supposed to be isn’t it. How do I do this?”
What I hear from people especially the first decade of adulthood is like, “I know something is mismatched here but I don’t know where to go to get here to this other part where I would feel congruent there.”
There’s like this vague sense of unease, vague sense of stress but there isn’t a roadmap to say, “Do this.” My approach there is, “Get your energy up so your motivation can be up.”
Brendon: Love that.
Dave: That’s why Bulletproof coffee and Bulletproof diet and all that stuff is like get energy up because then you’re like, “I’m so super charged. I’m going to go find my mission or find what it is,” and …
Brendon: Yes.
Dave: … maybe you’re going to make some weird choices that scare the crap out of people around you.
Brendon: Yeah, that’s why I love your work.
Dave: Oh, thanks.
Brendon: Everything we talk about at base in our software like you said earlier, it does rely on the component of health. If you’re wiped out, it’s hard to feel the charge in life internally or externally just that sense of energy and enthusiasm, engagement if your body is wiped out.
The same thing we’re talking about here is so interesting because I think about your work now in my mind, when I read your work, I listen to you, I listen for those takeaways and those habits I can implement. What that is, is you’re giving people personal power.
See, a lot of self-doubt comes from what you’re talking about, that vagueness. There’s just no clarity and intention there. Soon as they have that, everything could start to shift in a new direction for them because now they’re focused on it. We give this framework for motivation and this idea that motivation spark from ambition that you have to have a desire for something more …
Dave: Yeah.
Brendon: … to spark that ambition like what is it you truly desire. You have to be hungry for something. You have to expect that you can go get it. The second thing is attention and effort. If you give attention and effort to something, then that sustains, it starts kicking up that motivation.
I say all that for just a simple idea. Declaration 2 in The Motivation Manifesto is this idea of we shall reclaim our agenda. It’s taking back control of our day just like you teach people take back control of their diet …
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Brendon: … and their energy. When we start taking back control of our day, just, again a little bit more control about our day to do good things for ourselves, we start to find the attention and the focus on ourselves grows. We start to enjoy life more. We start to feel a higher level of control which is the first human drive.
As we start to master our day a little bit more, we have a little more competence. We’re doing what we believe we should be doing. We get more congruence. All of a sudden, all these is so subtle. All of a sudden, you find a person if you just get back their day just like I’m sure you find if you could just get that breakfast back.
If I’m just like if we can just get the first couple hours back, they’ll start to find that they’re back in control of their life and their self-doubt starts going away.
Dave: That’s interesting. The manifestation of control can be just even in your calendar. One of the things that was stressful for me, as I got more and more busy with Bulletproof, I work with a team that helps me to manage my time so I’m not wasting it.
My calendar just got staffed back to back to back. I’m like, “You know what? I want a personal upgrade hour in here.” Every day I might do something. It might be neuro-feedback. It might be exercise. I might sit on an ice bath, all sorts of crazy stuff.
Something at least once a day that makes me stronger or better or at least recharges the batteries because I found for a good almost nine months there, I didn’t do any of that. It was like come out of the biohacking office, run into the house which is a 20-foot commute or something. Then play with two little kids and be husband but I wasn’t doing a recharge thing.
Reclaiming your agenda the way you’re talking about it is exactly that saying, “If I don’t put a quarter in the savings account, I won’t have any money. If I don’t put a quarter in the energy account, I’m not going to have the ability to bring it and I’m not going to achieve the bigger things that I have in mind.
Brendon: So people are racked with guilt about their day’s agenda. I don’t just mean their daily schedule. I mean their life agenda. Where are you going? I tell people, “Where are you going?” They say, “I don’t know.” I say, “Let’s look for evidence of where you’re going to end up.”
Dave: Ouch.
Brendon: You’re going somewhere. It’s clear, just like the idea in health too. Look, what you’re experiencing right now in life is, in some ways, a result of some good luck, some bad luck, some of your actions, some reactions of other people. Here we are. Your life agenda, where you’re going to be in 10 years is probably in the same exact spot unless you take back control.
Soon as people start taking just little bits of control whether it’s their diet or whether it is what they’re going to do during the day or what they’re going to say no to or how they’re going to choose to feel throughout the day because I believe emotions can be felt but attitudes are generated.
We have to feel like wow. Most powerful metaphor I ever had in my own personal health was that the power plant doesn’t have energy, it transforms and generates energy.
Dave: Okay.
Brendon: You and I don’t have happiness. It’s not just sitting around somewhere in my pocket.
Dave: Uh-huh.
Brendon: You generate it. I feel the same about confidence. I feel the same about depression. I feel like we are choosing these things. I don’t mean clinical depression by the way.
We generally get to choose the emotional palate of our day, maybe not by the hour. Something can happen and piss you off, get you all fired up when someone cuts you off. If you carry that in the office, that’s just lack of presence and intention.
Dave: Yeah, maybe lack of skill.
Brendon: Yes.
Dave: There were times in my life where I would, okay, if someone cuts me off and like hat, you’re mad for two or three hours. It’s not that I chose to be mad, it’s that my nervous system, my body was basically taking charge because I didn’t have the skills to tell it to shut the hell up.
Brendon: Yup.
Dave: That’s why things like meditation, breathing, heart rate variability, whatever the technology is and meditation is a technology just like any other, it just doesn’t have silicon involved.
Brendon: Right.
Dave: Those things, if you don’t have that, you can actually end up feeling guilty about your emotions.
Brendon: Yeah.
Dave: The thing that I learned maybe when I was 30 was that emotions have no rationality to them. That’s why they’re emotions, not thoughts.
Brendon: Right. They’re feeling.
Dave: Right. They just happen. Then I would get in this weird loop where it’s like, “I can’t believe I’m feeling this way. I must be weak because I’m still mad.” I shouldn’t be mad. I’m a bad person because I’m mad about that A-hole who cut me off, right?
Brendon: Yes.
Dave: You get in that weird loop like, “This is inappropriate emotion. How dare I feel that?” I had that completely wrong. From the framework of The Motivation Manifesto, how do you deal with that sort of you should choose to have a good day but I’m having a bad day.
Brendon: Right.
Dave: Is it because I did it wrong?
Brendon: I love what you said. In your audience will get this all up. It’s skill.
Dave: Yeah.
Brendon: It’s skill. How do you develop a skill? You choose to focus on this thing. You’d put a practice in and you’d keep doing it. Here’s what I tell people. I say, “You don’t have to quash all of the negative emotions that you happen to feel. What you have to do is teach yourself to generate the emotions you do want to feel on it because it’s enough basis.”
Good example, Oprah has had a gratitude journal for 30 years of her life. Okay. She chooses to feel gratitude at the end of the day and write about it. By focusing on it and doing it, she became a grateful person.
What happens is getting that one little sliver of control over that one emotion gives your mind that, “I can control my emotions.” It sounds so silly. A big part of Motivation Manifesto, even though it sounds very masculine “Motivation Manifesto”, there’s declarations on there that amplify love. Practice joy and gratitude.
I think one of the most important things we do to people is teach them the emotions they can generate and how profound it can be once you realize you can do it.
Once you realize you can create joy, once you realize you can create gratitude, you can create happiness in the moment but you practice it to develop it as a skill, now you have competence. Now you feel more congruent. You have more control and you start getting more motivation.
Dave: The idea that emotion is a skill …
Brendon: Is the most important finding I think of human psychology.
Dave: Absolutely. There’s a dividing line. In fact, I tend to fall into the Buddhist hindrances list, things like fear, aggression. I’m probably listing all of them wrong but essentially the negative emotions.
Brendon: Yeah.
Dave: All right. Those things were destructibility can fall into that sort of thing. These are the things that take you out of the zone. In my own inner wiring. I’m like, all right, there’s the emotions, negative emotions. Those are generally coming from my nervous system trying to keep me from dying from tigers and things that make no sense.
If I identify as those are me, I’m actually losing the battle. I’m like, “No, my body is feeling this thing. I’m not interested in that.” How do I then consciously turn on these other emotions?
The framework that all of us, especially in the West, learn is that those emotions are equal like these are good, these are bad but they don’t come from the same place. It’s hard to make yourself afraid.
Brendon: Right.
Dave: If you don’t want to be afraid, you might watch a scary movie or something. It’s hard to generate real fear and anxiety but it’s actually possible to train yourself to say I’m going to create relaxation. I’m going to create list. I’m going to create mindfulness.
It turns out those negative emotions are less programmable than the positive ones and so you have more control. The positive ones are like you. The negative ones are an old operating system remnant that there’s to keep you from falling off cliffs and stuff.
Brendon: Yeah. Or to keep you in congruence. It’s funny positive thing is such a loaded thing too, right, because people say guilt is such a bad thing. No, if you just shot somebody in the face, I’m really glad you feel guilty about that. You know what I’m saying? It’s like guilt can be a good thing, disrupts your good behavior as well.
I tell people if they say, “How do you hire people?” I’ll go, “I hire for guilt.”
Dave: That’s interesting.
Brendon: They say, “What do you mean?” At one of my interview questions, this is called the High Performance hiring. I have High Performance Academy which I tell you about a cool trick to answer your question about how do you get the good stuff conditioned.
One of the questions I always ask somebody, I’ll say, “Tell me about a time you were involved in a project.” It just went off the rails. It completely went bad and kind of mess things up. As a person tells me that project, if I can’t hear any kind of like they’re bummed out or they were regretful or there’s little guilt about it, I won’t hire them.
Dave: Wow.
Brendon: You’d want somebody who’d feel bad if they didn’t do a good job. That’s not necessarily better.
Dave: There’s like integrity too, right.
Brendon: I’m just doing that as a quick qualifier. Yes, what keeps this integrity is we would feel bad if we did something else. Feeling bad is not necessarily a negative thing. It’s a negative thing when it takes over us …
Dave: Yes.
Brendon: … and it endures. Let me teach you that trick from High Performance Academy. it’s called RWID, relative weight of importance and duration. It’s the secret to tell whether or not somebody is healthy psychologically when dealing with negative emotion.
Dave: Mm-hmm.
Brendon: If we have a negative emotion and we give that emotion during the day a high relative weight of importance. We keep holding it. Duration would keep our focus on it over a period of time meaning we sense it incredibly intensely but we keep sensing it. We keep focusing on it, keep paying attention with it. We don’t let it go. Now, it starts derailing our further believes, behaviors, ambitions, goals. That’s not healthy.
Dave: Yup.
Brendon: Knowing that also gives us power too because we can choose to have an emotion to create the thoughts in our mind to have an emotion even like confidence. We can say, “Okay, I’m going to choose to feel confident. How would I stand, move, talk, breathe, project if I was a little more confident?” Just not Mr. Confident. Just a little more. What would that be like? What would that feel like?
We decided we just try that a couple times. We made confidence in something that needs to be important to me. I’m going to focus on that over a period of time. Every single day, I’m going to find my marks or I’m going to be more confident than I usually would. Just try.
Trying that over a period of time develops the skill. I think what happens for people who are also miserable, who endure suffering and we know this from Buddhism as well, I know you studied this as much as I have, is this idea that a lot of suffering comes from attachment.
Dave: Yeah.
Brendon: That’s RWID. The weight, the attachment, the endurance, the duration, the focus on that thing becomes the attachment which becomes negative.
Dave: Yeah. If you feel it and you let it go, that’s a win. You feel it and you identify with it, you become it and you let it ruin your day, that’s not a win.
Brendon: Right.
Dave: Right?
Brendon: Right.
Dave: I miss High Performance Academy this year because I’m actually going to blame you, Joe Polish, if you’re listening.
Brendon: Joe Polish is usually the root of almost every problem that we know.
Dave: Yeah, I’ll tell you. An amazing guy but I had a prior commitment with Joe which is why I didn’t make it. Next year, I’ll be attending your High Performance Academy event because I have a great number of friends who’ve gone and have nothing but wonderful things to say. I look forward to learning the rest of the tricks from that.
Brendon: Yeah. That’s a psychological hat, isn’t it?
Dave: Yeah.
Brendon: When you realize that the control factors are the weight of importance and duration, now you start playing with them, right. You start doing your tests with them. You start figuring it out because I think the most important thing that people can really do in their lives is say I’m going to learn to understand and master my emotions.
Dave: Yeah.
Brendon: Those are usually the things that derail people and they don’t know why. I make the argument. You don’t always have to know why. If you wake up in the morning, you just feel like crap and you don’t know what’s going on exactly and you’re not just highly ambitious during the day, you could do a root cause analysis which for a lot of people causes paralysis or guilt or shame or awful.
You can just say, “Okay. What’s the plan? Let me just set three small goals today and moving forward.” When you’re dealing with someone who’s really struggling emotionally with their life, sometimes just making … saying, “You know what? I’m going to give you three goals today.”
Just have three goals. It could be as simple as take a shower today. For real. I’m not smiling when I say this. That could be a win for somebody that day.
Dave: If they’re really, really down, yeah.
Brendon: Call somebody to move something forward, to ask for help. That can be a win. Write that letter, even writing a letter. It could be simple things that start giving us those pieces of control and efficacy and a sense of power back in our life.
They can be so simple. I think you found that too. Sometimes you just got to do simple things first. It develops a little bit more competence and skill and now you’re willing to push a little bit harder and go a little farther.
Dave: The understanding why thing is fascinating because you can talk with Dan Sullivan will tell you. There isn’t a reason why. I want something, I just want it. There isn’t a rational thing. For these emotions there’s sometimes a why but it’s an irrational why.
It comes from very old nervous system programming like someone almost dropped me when I was two years old. Now I have a fear of falling. You’re not going to know the why. You’ll probably never going to know that unless you’re doing some weird psychology thing.
The fact that, okay, I know there’s a dissociation here but you can still cure or prevent or reprogram that fear of falling if it’s getting in the way of your life without necessarily connecting the dots to the why.
Brendon: That’s right. It’s really important for people to hear that. I’ll say this next thing with prefacing. I’m not a psychologist.
Dave: You’ve read a thing or two though.
Brendon: Yeah. I’ve read a thing. I’m not a therapist. I’m not a psychoanalyst. I’m not a neuroscientist. Nothing that ends with “ist” that I know about but here’s what I do know. All effort of therapy even if it goes back, even if there’s regression, even if there’s conversation, even if there’s hypnosis, any effort to explore the past always results the same in all therapies.
It is coming back today with the client to make a decision today about what they’re going to be about and what are the healthy beliefs and behaviors they can now institute in their life to grow and go. That’s it. We know we have hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of psychologists at high performance academy. I was asked, “Is that true? Is it the whole focus?”
Let’s get them back today making healthy decisions and choices for themselves. That’s the focus. Sometimes we can just make those decisions and just start implementing them and catch up to ourselves and start feeling better about ourselves. Then explore our own self-awareness in greater depths from a place of confidence and success versus a place of just being debilitated.
Dave: Let’s say if someone listening and there’s a lot of Bulletproof listeners listening to us now who are pretty successful already. They’re feeling pretty good. I get these phone calls and emails from people. They’re like, “I’ve had a great career.”
They’re not saying congruence the thing we talked about a little bit earlier and a lot of people especially, I just turned 42. Guys 10 years older than me you tell them, “You should see a psychologist.” They’re like, “I’m not a wuss.” It’s not manly.
Brendon: Oh really?
Dave: It’s not acceptable. It’s an admission of weakness to do that. What’s your answer to people who are like, “There’s nothing wrong with me.” I’m not going to admit that desire for improvement is something wrong with me. I’m not going to see it that way.
Brendon: Yeah. If you’ve been struggling with any emotion or you’ve been struggling with momentum in your life for a period of years and years and years that is proof evidence you need to talk to somebody and ask for help. That is true. If it’s going on you can’t handle on yourself and don’t fool yourself you can, you need to get some help.
I’m a huge proponent of therapy. I think everybody should do it. It’s fascinating. Marcus Aurelius said one of the most powerful things a man can do is explore his own emotions and learn to understand them with the help of someone else.
This is powerful stuff. This is the guy who I think is one of the most manliest man of all time maybe. I think that’s pretty powerful. I think the other part about it is and this can be hard but I do this with all the CEOs we work with. It’s not comforting for them when I say this.
I say, “Do you feel other people understand you?” Most of them, “Yeah.” I said, “No, really. Do you think your team really understands how hard you work?” Then I’ll go, “Do people really know the responsibilities on your shoulder?” I’ll start asking them. Sure enough they start to say no.
Over a period of time, what I always find especially high performers, I mean the top level guys, I mean Fortune 50 guys I coach who were just up there. Here’s what I often did. They get to a place psychologically in their life at some point where they go, “They don’t understand me. They don’t understand me.” That is the most dangerous place to be in the world.
Dave: It sounds like a 16-year old.
Brendon: Right, exactly. Here’s what ends up happening. The amazing thing is the actual … I think my perspective of it anyway is if when someone says they don’t understand me, that’s called the caged life. You take a wild, ferocious, free, powerful animal. Throw him in a zoo. Put him in the cage.
Watch what happens. They’re ferocious. They’re mean. They’re activated. They’re aggressive for a period of time. Then they end up becoming resigned. They go to the back of the cage. They huddle down. They look at everybody walking by and there’s this look of aggression but there’s resignation in them.
They just sat back. They’d given up. They’re frustrated. They’re there. This happens for a lot of executives. They get more and more successful, more and more responsibility, bigger and bigger team, more and more money. They start saying, “People don’t understand how hard it is for me.”
“Look at them judging me because of my money, fame, wealth, influence, power.” They just start becoming resigned. They become frustrated and from a place of resignation there’s that gorilla in the cage has no motivation. It won’t eat.
When a powerful man has lost or a powerful executive, it doesn’t matter. We were talking about it earlier. A powerful person is in a place in which they don’t feel a lot of motivation it’s because they became resigned. They started saying, “They don’t understand me.” Guess what that is? Ego.
Dave: Yeah. There you go.
Brendon: “The Motivation Manifesto” we talked about one of our internal demons is called division that I feel separate from others. That’s ego. It says, “I am separate, better than, holier than that or less of them.” That’s all ego. Here’s the number one problem with that.
For someone to say they don’t understand me, that’s not a wimpy thing to do. That’s actually the highest level of ego you can have. The number one tragic thing happens with that person, those are the very people who never asked for help.
If you believe that people don’t understand you, why would you ask them for help? That is why people don’t get into therapy. They don’t do self-awareness. They don’t come to my type of programs or personal development programs. They don’t seek counseling.
They don’t do that because at some point they got fooled, their resignation and frustration of other people, it’s really an egoic thing that says, “People wouldn’t understand me anyway.” Now they don’t ask for help and they don’t progress and they lack motivation.
Dave: Back in maybe 2000, I had a chance to spend some time with David Pottruck the CEO of Charles Schwab at the time. He was talking about emotional awareness. You go back a decade. Not a lot of CEOs would say that. He had balls for saying that.
I asked him in front of a hundred people. I’m like, “Do you see a therapist? What’s the deal because you’re talking about all these stuff and honestly I have no idea what you’re talking about?” What he said, he’s like, “Yeah.” He goes, “Of course I see a therapist.”
The mindset that I got from that and one that I’ve been fortunate to share with the other people it’s like most of us don’t fix our own cars. Maybe you do when you’re in high school like I did. You don’t do it because there’s an expert in that. You don’t do a lot of things without a coach who studied this, who teaches you how to do it.
Then we have this DIY Home Depot mentality for gaining awareness of the most slippery part of you because your emotions don’t want you to understand them because they think they’re there to keep you alive. For me a lot of my learning comes from having a lie detector on my head.
You talked about ego. Your ego will hide from you. When there’s a lie detector and I’m lying to myself because of my ego. It makes you nauseous. It makes you cry because you’re like, “I can’t believe I was doing that to myself.” I was like, “That’s my ego doing it to me like that, that bastard.” It’s scary stuff but without an expert to act as a mirror.
Brendon: Yes. This should not be a thing of that’s just saying everyone needs to get a therapist or go see a psychologist. If anything I said to do it and say get a life coach, a high performance coach. Get a great friend who you can dialogue about your potentials.
There’s a reason that some of the most successful people in history had friends. They would get together for lunch and dinner on a continual basis for years and years and years like a Warren Buffett. They get together with same people and they talk through what’s going on in their life.
It is through the dialogue of what we’re experiencing in our life that we often find our true self-expressions. Now in doing that, in talking it through with a friend, it can be anyone. I just tell everybody, “Your number one thing in terms of confidence building should be a lifelong pursuit of study of psychology and personal performance.”
I’ve read a book a week for 19 years in psychology or personal development or spirituality. I never miss even those times I was in the hospital which you know now. That is what is enabled me to experience the life that I want. I don’t just mean I became extremely successful which I was blessed to do. I have an unbelievably flourishing emotional quality of life. I love my life.
Dave: Yeah. It shows.
Brendon: I’m happy. I’m energized. I can pick the emotional palette that I want to play from. When something gets me down, it affects me in that way, it’s an hour or less and then gone. I’ve moved on. I feel great. I think that is a skill and I would hope that everyone wants to get that.
I would say the number one skill whether you learned it from me or somebody else, master your motivation. Master what is your ambition. What’s your intention? What is the awareness that you have about where you’re moving because at some point in our lives we realize what rather the book talks about we ought to become a struggler or a striver.
They’re two different people. I have this visual metaphor of the striver being the person who has a lance of intention. They throw that lance out into the field if it is in the future. They didn’t make it their effort to go get that each day. Pick it up. Throw it forward.
There’s other people who just wander around. They’re usually marching under the canopy of somebody else’s ambitions, somebody else’s rules, somebody else’s bureaucracies, somebody else’s life. They’re living their parent’s life, their professor’s life, their peers’ lives.
They’re marching under somebody else’s banner because they never just said, “What is it I desire?” and did the work. Threw it out and then just took daily efforts to go get it. It was the daily efforts that we start finding personal power.
Again, they can be small at first but then you’re marching. Then you’re striving and then you’re running and then you’ll find that lance and you’ll find more power.
Dave: You said something really important there. It’s the little steps. I’ve found going to something as simple as diet. Perfection, where the lance is going to end after you’ve thrown 10 times, maybe that’s the goal. If you’re going to feel guilty because you didn’t throw it the first time it hit there, it doesn’t work because guilt sabotages.
The idea is you’re successful if you had three choices and you made the better of the two even if neither of them was perfect. You can do that for anything that isn’t diet-related. The idea is make a slightly better choice and you’re moving the needle.
Brendon: When people don’t do that because of fear of perfection but I don’t know if you heard my rif on perfection before. I have a YouTube video. I think it’s almost a million views on that stuff.
Dave: We’ll link to that in show notes.
Brendon: No. It’s just funny because I like to say perfection is the grand lie.
Dave: Nice.
Brendon: Here’s why. Perfectionists they are actually liars. They said, “I’m a perfectionist.” If they say that and they don’t ever begin which really happens, a perfectionist would actually be accurate, wouldn’t they by definition? A perfectionist if accurate would say, “What’s happening for me right now is I am uncertain or I am scared. I don’t know what to do or I’m fearful of doing it.” That would be accurate.
Dave: I’m a procrastinator which is the same as a perfectionist.
Brendon: Yes. One of the great thing about procrastinators too is the same exact thing. The perfectionist and the procrastinator, here is the ugly truth of it. Perfection by definition cannot happen for something until it’s released. If something becomes perfected, it cannot be perfected until it’s done first once.
Someone says, “I don’t understand but I haven’t started this dream because I’m a perfectionist. I want to get it right.” I said, “No. Actually if you were a perfectionist you would have begun it and kept tweaking at it.” Perfectionism requires optimization.
You can’t optimize it unless you first do it. Unless you have the prototype, you can’t perfect it. Anyone who’s a perfectionist and has stalled or stopped, they’re actually not perfectionists. They’re just scared or uncertain.
Dave: Also a perfectionist is asymptotic. I always joke about beef. I did this with the waitress last night. I’m like, “Was this beef grass fed?” I say this but if you’re a waitress right now. It wasn’t crowded and we were just having fun conversation.
Brendon: He’s a respectful kind of man.
Dave: I wasn’t being a total jerk. I was actually flirting a little bit. I’m like, “Is this beef grass fed?” This is Portland so like, “How dare you even think our beef is not grass fed.” I’m like, “Was it grass-finished?” “Yeah.” She said, “It actually was raised on a local ranch,” and gave me more details.
I’m like, “Was it massaged by monks?” She goes, “Yes.” I said, “Were they left-handed.” She goes, you know. I’m like, “Okay, fine.” She said, “Actually they were because left hand is more rare.” That was the right answer. I’ll take two. It’s that thing.
You could always find a way to make it more perfect. Was it raised in zero gravity? It doesn’t really matter but you’ll never reach perfection. You can always take a step closer and eventually the steps becomes so expensive with so little return that it’s close enough to perfect.
To acknowledge that there’s always something more you could do but you’re going to consciously not do it because it doesn’t matter anymore.
Brendon: You love it.
Dave: For me that’s liberating because I find beauty and elegance in identifying that final point. In Math, what is infinity? It’s infinite but it’s there. You can come closer and closer and closer to infinity. You can always add one more and just recognize that I’m not going to add one more today.
I’m where I want to be. I’m within a standard deviation of perfection or two or three or ten or whatever. Then I’m free and I’ve gained what I wanted to gain from that. I can go on and I can find something else that I don’t want to perfect but I want to move.
Brendon: Right. Start with good.
Dave: Yeah.
Brendon: Start with good. I think we’re all starting with the same questions. I certainly did in my industry. We have the number one self-help show on the web now. 18 million views just last year.
Dave: By the way, just drop that URL because I don’t think a lot of my listeners know about your show.
Brendon: It’s just that they go to YouTube and type in “Brendon Burchard.”
Dave: There you go.
Brendon: It’s called “The Charged Life” on YouTube. I stand on the shoulders of just awesome people. I have studied everybody in this industry and put a button on what you just said is the great Zig Ziglar said, “You don’t have to be great to begin but you have to begin to become great.”
Dave: Yeah, profound words.
Brendon: It’s so profound. You just got to get in the game. Even for those who are already high performers because I know that’s your audience. It’s, okay, what’s the next level of action for you? What’s the next level of habit and routine for you? What’s the next level of ambition for you?
Everybody’s got those. Everyone can optimize a little bit. What happens is sometimes we get really comfortable because I talked about three kind of life. There’s the caged life which I talked about. The comfortable life is everything is going pretty good.
You got the picket house with the white fence, a white picket fence house whatever you call it. You have the car. You’re keeping up with everybody. Your income is higher than you imagined. The grocery is in stock with a good stuff. There’s lots of greens. I see healthy things. I see healthy meats.
You’ve got supplementation. You’ve unbelievable coffee. Everything is great. Then one day you wake up restless and someone says, “How is your day going, man?” You find yourself saying, “It’s … fine.” Fine is the calling card of mediocrity.
You only say it’s fine because you know that it could be extraordinary. Everyone knows there’s this next place where I call it the charged life. You got the cage. You got comfortable. You got charged. There’s something more here. Find out what that is.
It usually has an element of … there’s greater energy in your mind, in your body when you think about it. There’s greater engagement with it. You love to study it or look at it or talk with people about it. There’s a higher level of enthusiasm. You’re like, “I can’t wait to experience that, to do that, to see that.”
Start looking for those things especially if you’re watching, you’re a high performer and you got comfortable. You know it since I said it. You got your “dang it,” I’m comfortable because as soon as you get there, it’s not that you can’t find peace and joy and happiness in where you’re at.
That itch, that is something that should be explored. A lot of people are in comfortable high performing lives. They got all the reasons in the world to be happy and successful. They should feel that way. They should also be bold and brave enough to say, “What’s the next level of action for me, the next habit, the next routine, the next ambition.”
That will put them back on to their path of motivation and pull them into the next level of performance.
Dave: If you’re stuck in that comfortable life which is not a bad place to be stuck.
Brendon: Its a lot better than caged.
Dave: Hell, yeah. If you’re there and you want to go to the next level, it requires discomfort because to drive the body to change, to drive the mind to change, you’re going to have to take risks. You’re going to have to do things that push your limits because your body and your mind won’t adapt unless they’re stressed a little bit.
At least in my understanding of your work there to live that charged life, you do take that step. You’re taking a step into a place you don’t know. You’re adding another plate to the machine. You’re finding another challenge. This is one reason that I think some of my CEO type of clients and I don’t do that much coaching.
I’m super busy with Bulletproof right now as a company. I still make time for that because it helps me to be better at what I do to work with other high performers. Many of these guys are like, “I’m going to be a cross fit athlete. I’m going to be an Iron Man.”
What’s going on is they’re finding a way to push themselves whether it’s physically, mentally, emotionally, whether it’s a from a philanthropy perspective, setting giant goals. What it is, is this innate desire to not be caged, not even be comfortable but to experience that charge that comes from having a goal from stressing the biology and then meeting that stress.
The risk that certainly I’ve done as an entrepreneur where I’m like, “Okay, you can turn the stress up so you’re charged all the time,” but you’re not recharged. How do you avoid being so charged that you deplete.
Brendon: I’ve got awesome habits and routines.
Dave: Okay. You’ve build processes for that.
Brendon: Yeah. I have to be intentional about the motive or it won’t happen. I sleep eight hours. Out of 365 days of the year, I’m probably 300 plus of eight hours. I force myself because my mind is often active so I have to learn to calm my mind and calm my body and put myself in that space where it’s possible for me to do that.
I take care of my nutrition like crazy because I think your fuel tank has to be just optimized. I’m crazy about my nutrition. I also do mental breaks throughout the day. The most important of the high performance that we teach is the importance of 75 minutes to 90-minute break, significant ones.
Dave: Yeah. That’s a big one.
Brendon: Where you just don’t work beyond that. You just go up to that 90-minute mark if you have a lot of mental endurance. A lot of people don’t so it actually takes 60 to 75 minutes on what you do. Get to the sink or the filter water. Get some water. Drink the whole glass of water. Fill it up again.
Come back. Bring it back. Do just two or three minutes of stretching, qi gong or cupping or yoga type of work. Whatever you need to do and then go back down. Then I meditate twice a day. I do a combination.
Dave: How long?
Brendon: Almost always 20 minutes.
Dave: Okay, 20 minutes twice a day.
Brendon: Yeah, 20 minutes almost twice a day. I don’t always hit. Probably 70% I eat twice a day. There’s a YouTube video of half a million people I’ve taught to meditate on YouTube. It’s called the “Release Meditation Technique.” It’s basically mantric-based meditation where I close my eyes and I repeat the word “release.”
My intention going into it is to release physical tension and mental tension. Releasing things so I’m just repeating the word release over and over and if other thoughts or ideas come up, I just come right back that mantra release and go with that sitting still.
Sometimes I play a sound or a music in the background is usually enough. I think those combination of sleep as the foundation, that combination of great nutrition and meditation and then I work out every other day for almost 19 years. It’s very guilt-free for me because I don’t feel I have to do it. It’s just every other day I do it.
Sometimes it could be as simple as … During my event, it will be a 45-minute walk. Other times, I like more intense cardio because I feel a lot of our real longer term endurance come from lung capacity. How easy for my lungs to take in deep oxygenation comes from more cardio work. I really like that.
Dave: I’m going to send you a present. There’s a thing I use. It’s a weightlifting thing for your lungs. It actually grows the lung capacity of muscles.
Brendon: Yeah. Give me that. I love that.
Dave: You’re going to love that.
Brendon: I geek out on that stuff. How about you?
Dave: Yeah. We both do. I didn’t realize you’re so into the lung capacity thing.
Brendon: Yes.
Dave: It’s a cool hack because it builds muscles.
Brendon: It’s so hugely important.
Dave: Yeah. Your interstitials grow because of your lungs have to push air out.
Brendon: Wow. I love it. Our breath is creating our emotional reality. That’s not a philosophical guess. We can prove it by science that your oxygenation, how much breath you’re taking in. As everyone knows you’re going to hold your breath right now, your body will freak out.
You can also super oxygenate it and your body will freak out. There is a balance for you that you need to know about your performance. Every time you get up, what I tell people I’m going to do is just close your eyes balance in place. Take 10 deep breathes.
You got up. That 75 minutes to 90 minutes, you get up. Go get that water. Come back. Maybe stretch and then just close your eyes, balance in place, take 10 deep breaths, repeat your three words about who you want to be and why. Sit down. Go back to work.
Everyone can do that because it’s a very quick break. It could be a two-minute break. Doing that gives me the mental edge to be refreshed constantly throughout the day. Do then the two big meditations completely release me from stuff and then I find myself clean and recharged.
Dave: That is an awesome answer. This is the kind of stuff that I want you guys to get on Bulletproof Radio actionable stuff. That’s a pretty nice recipe for the day. That’s amazing.
Brendon: Thank you. I appreciate it.
Dave: Thanks for sharing it. There are so many executives that you certainly have interacted with more than I have. They don’t have a routine like that. It’s often I’ll wake up. I’ll go for a run every morning. You’re doing it every other day which I think also shows some wisdom because stimulus recovery.
Stimulus recovery and when you’re charged it’s so easy to stimulus, stimulus, stimulus, stimulus, stimulus and you’re talking about sleep. You’re talking about taking a break doing this every other day. Thank you.
Brendon: It blows the executives’ minds too is I take the same philosophy in my relationship with my marriage. I think that everyone should give this a shot.
Dave: You take a 20-minute break more than I do.
Brendon: No. The recovery thing is so important. I really mean it. My wife is also an entrepreneur as I am. I own my own company. I own multiple companies now. What we do at the beginning of the year, we just schedule out every 90 days because every 90 minutes I have something.
Every 90 days when I disappear and we go out. We go four to 10 days and we just get away, the two of us. We might go to a resort. We might even go to one of our vacation homes. We might even do a staycation just depending on what we’re doing. It’s just the two of us and we’re off the grid.
We’re not working. If anything that we have to, emergency we might check in on something and we give an hour a day. That’s all we get. We have to do that. It’s just and it’s just reconnecting. That’s to recharge our relationship. I think we need to recharge our physical body giving its ability to recover from exercise and intensity.
I also think we need to do that from our diet. I’m a fan of people doing cleanses or paying attention to giving the body time to deal with its digestive process. I think we should do it in our relationships too. Give that time to rejuvenate with each other.
If people will say, “I can’t afford to go in some fancy resort.” I’m like, “You can afford two days to be together where it’s just the two of you. Get the sitter. Prioritize each other. Sit down. Talk. Connect because that’s the easiest one to let go off the rails because you didn’t plan the rejuvenation.”
Dave: Yup. Well said. We’re coming about the end of the show. I feel I could talk to you for 10 more hours.
Brendon: This is awesome.
Dave: People driving their cars are like, “I want to learn more about this.” I’m sure we’ll get another chance at maybe one of your events or something. I’ll call you and ask you a few more questions on video.
In the meantime, “The Motivation Manifesto” it’s still in the New York Times bestselling list. By the way if you’re watching this or listening for authors like us, we pay attention. When you go out and you pick up a book, you order online, you go to the bookstore, we know.
Every week, we see those numbers and it matters because when you’re on the list like you are right now, people see your book and your book will help you. I’ve read it. I absolutely know what it does and what it can do. Every time you buy it like now, it increases the odds of someone else buying it because it stays on the list.
If you’re thinking about buying Brendon’s book which I recommend, absolutely you do it. It’s on my shelf. My copy is signed. Thank you. Do now and that will be awesome. “The Motivation Manifesto,” pick it up online. Pick it up in your bookstore. It’s really worth doing.
Check out Brendon’s “High Performance Academy.” This is really, really the kind of thing. If you’ve listen to this every day, it might be up your alley and I’ll be there next year for sure.
Brendon: Yeah. I want you to speak so then you would talk about that too because I love what you do, man.
Dave: Thank you. Likewise.
Brendon: It’s really actionable stuff that you give. That’s what people need.
Dave: Yeah. It’s helping a lot of people and likewise with your work. Thanks for letting us record in your fantastic studio with Portland behind us, the source of all good food. I look forward the next time we hang out.
Brendon: Thanks, man.
Speaker 1: How do you lift weights for your lungs? Running on a treadmill isn’t going to do it. High intensity interval training like sprinting until you want to fall over, it does it a little bit but it really doesn’t change the resistance, the amount of pressure your lungs have to work. You want to get strong muscles in your lungs, there’s a biohack for that. It’s called the PowerLung and it’s something that we carry on the Bulletproof store.
Speaker 2: I reengineered the coffee process to create the Bulletproof process that makes beans without the toxins that rob performance from you every single time you drink most coffee.
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