SUMMARY

INSPIRATIONAL QUOTES

 

FULL TRANSCRIPT

[The following is the full transcript of this episode of The Brendon Show. Please note that this episode, like all TBS episodes, features Brendon speaking extemporaneously–he is unscripted and unedited. Filmed in one take, The Brendon Show has become one of the most viewed unscripted, direct-to-camera self-help series in the history of YouTube. It has also been the #1 Podcast in all of iTunes and is regularly in the top podcasts in Self-Help and Health categories around the globe. Subscribe to the free motivational podcast on iTunes or Stitcher.)

You must reclaim your life’s agenda and your day. So many people have lost their day, and thus their week, and thus their month, and thus their year, and thus their whole life’s agenda to distraction, to focusing on the wrong things, and because of that, they’re not getting the momentum and the progress, the productivity that would make them feel alive, would make them feel activated, would make them feel fulfilled and challenged.

So today, we’re going to talk about something that doesn’t seem sexy in personal development, but changes your life, your schedule, the way you calendar your day, the way you start your morning, the way you actually tactically go through the week and the month and the year, because so many people are literally going through the motions. And when you go through the motions, guess what robs you, steals you? Distraction. When you’re just kind of wandering around, every distraction—ooh! Ah, ooh! And you wander it, and you follow it. I know. I used to be a distracted kid, too. You can see all this energy I have? It’s easy for me to go, “Ohh, ahh! Shiny! Let’s go!”

But I had to learn if I want to be confident, I must feel like I’m capable. If I want to feel capable, I must feel like I’m contributing.

I must challenge myself. And as you also heard in previous videos, I had to be honest about my day and my schedule and my life, because I faced the end of my life. I had that car accident as a young man that made me realize life is so short. And I always tell people, if you believe life is short, you probably believe life is precious, right? So you should be grateful for life, right?

Gratitude Shows Up in Your Calendar

Well, I tell people all the time, you know where real gratitude shows up? Real gratitude shows up in your calendar, because if you’re really thankful for life, you’re using your time well, my friend.

If you really care about life, you use time well. But most people don’t, so they’re not getting progress. Because they’re not getting progress, they don’t feel that sense of accomplishment, achievement, contribution. Because they don’t feel achievement, contribution, and progress, they feel down on themselves. They feel less worthy, less capable, and they trust in themselves in their future less because they’re not making it happen.

Confidence is not only your belief in your ability to figure things out. Confidence is that sense of your own worth, your own ability, your own future.

And if you can keep throwing away days, of course you don’t feel amazing about yourself. So we have to get organized and disciplined, right? But think of how many people don’t manage their life. I mean, let’s do some math together. Today, do you think maybe this morning, let’s say before noon, you lost like 20 minutes of focus or productivity somewhere? Maybe you did something that wasn’t really developing yourself, or it wasn’t something that needed to be created, and you got distracted on some social media thing, or maybe you just weren’t paying attention and you lost some time.

Well, let’s do some math. 20 minutes lost just in any given morning over the course of seven days. Well, that’s 140 minutes, isn’t it? 140 minutes is almost two and a half hours. Well, over the course of four weeks, that’s over eight hours lost, meaning you lost an entire eight-hour work day every month by just losing what? 20 minutes in the morning. But most people, they’re losing more than that. Maybe they lose an hour in the morning. And if they lose an hour in the morning, that means they lost four work days per month. Four work days per month. Think about that.

So people say, “I don’t have time,” or something.

No, it’s like when we don’t use our time well, we’re stealing from our own confidence. When we don’t use our time well, we’re stealing from our ability to serve. When we don’t use our time well, we’re not going to make that dent in the universe, change the world, or make more money for our family.

You’re going to be more disorganized, and because you’re more disorganized, you’re always last minute. Because you’re last minute, you can’t plan trips with your family and your friends. You don’t plan your work and project as much. And I know it doesn’t seem like so much, but I’m always telling people, your confidence is in your calendar.

Your confidence is in your calendar. Manage your calendar well, and progress comes in.

When you’re doing things consistently that matter to you, your brain goes, “Hey, I had this intention of doing it. I feel confident.” So today I want you to decide to retake your agenda, your life’s schedule.

Eliminate the Things that Don’t Serve You

What are some things you need to immediately stop doing in your life? They are a time-suck. They are not passionate. They’re not moving you forward, but you keep getting distracted there. What do you need to stop doing? Is it watching seven seasons of a show every week? What are you going to do to get your time back? Is it minimizing the amount of useless chit chat that doesn’t add to anything in your life? Is it social media? Is it TV? Is it just not being organized? What do you need to stop doing to take back control of life? Also, what do you need to start doing? And what do you need to start doing every day, every week, every month, every year, to be on your A-game?

As an example, I personally fill out my High Performance Planner every single day. I created it for my greatest clients based on the world’s largest study of high performers, and this is how they think in the morning. So I do all these mindset prompts, so I get my mind right. ‘Cause in the morning, I don’t know about you, I’m kind of a nutty professor in the morning. I’ll wander around and just like, “What am I going to do?” I’m a free spirit in the morning, but I had this one client one time.

She’s a really famous yoga teacher, and I was working with her and she said, “I just like to be a free spirit in the morning.” I said, “Yeah. Is there anything in your life that you wish you could do, but you can’t do ’cause you’re so busy?” She said, “Oh yeah. There’s this yoga retreat coming up. I don’t have any time for it.” I said, “Aw, poor free spirit. Don’t have time for a yoga retreat? Well, maybe you would have time for a yoga retreat if you organized yourself a little bit in the morning.”

Discipline buys you freedom to do what you want.

So confidence is in the calendar. Take back your life and get a little more organized and you have more free time. Get a little more organized, you serve better. Serve better, make more money. These things all add together. I know you know that. So for me, I fill out the High Performance Planner, ’cause it tells me this is my morning prompts. It gets my mind engaged with the day. So I get out of that wandering around mode. It sharpens me up. Gets me in a good attitude. Helps me organize, prioritize, schedule the day. Think through it, how to live it with excellence.

I review my performance every single night. Every single night, I look at my six high performance habits, and I say, “How did I do well here? How’d I score, one to five in these areas,” and it’s not like everyday I’m awesome. There are plenty of days I’m like, “Ah, kind of sucked at that one,” but I don’t get down on myself. I’m just aware of my own performance, and by becoming more aware and measuring that with the High Performance Planner, I’ve gotten better in my life. It also really helped me and supported me in terms of managing my schedule and my time.

Get Better Mentors and Coaches

One thing was getting better: mentors and coaches. Having people tell me, “Focus on this, not that,” helped me make my career go faster. ‘Cause if you ever started your own business or your career, if you wander and you just start doing stuff, it might take three or five years to break through. But if someone said, “Hey, just do this.” Boom! You know, you can cut three or five years off the learning curve. So I got coaches. What else did I do? I got really disciplined measuring myself at the beginning of each month, based on the last month, but really projecting forward. And every first of the month, I do two things.

Set Monthly Challenges

Every first of the month, I review what’s upcoming, think about how to do it with excellence, and I also ask if there’s anything I need to cut out? Do I need to change some plans based on the way I rescheduled? But most importantly, every single month, I plan out whether or not I’m going to achieve my projects. What are my deadlines? What am I working on? And as the first of every month, I challenge myself. There’s always a challenge at the beginning of every month to make me better, and that challenge might be like, this month, I’m just going to learn to be more patient. So all month, I’m focused. My intention is patience.

I’ll set my phone to pop up several times with the word “patience” throughout the day. Patience, patience, patience on my phone. I’ll put a note card next to my computer. Patience! And all month, I’m working on this topic of patience. Well, guess what? At the end of the month, I got better at it. I feel more confident.

Giving yourself monthly challenges will change your life forever.

So you see, we can do all the things inside. We can do all the things with other people, but if we don’t take back our life, if we don’t get back, handle our own confidence, but also our productivity, our influence, our energy, our relationships, our leadership, if we don’t really, really put our hands back on the wheel of life to become self-reliant and personally accountable and responsible, if we don’t have the ambition to live the high performance experience, to challenge ourselves, to rise, to be excellent, to lead, to change the world, then what’s all the confidence for? What’s the whole point of all this? So challenge yourself, my friends.