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.)

We must learn to center ourselves amid the chaos, the stress, the struggle, the challenge, the bad day. We must, in the moment, be able to flip from anger to peace. In the moment, be able to flip from stress to clarity, to ease to freedom. We must teach ourselves to center ourselves both when we don’t need it and when we do need it. And I think that’s what’s really important.

I think one of the greatest disciplines we can ever give ourselves is this topic of centering.

And so we must actively train ourselves as if we were going to have 10 times the pressure on us as we seek to achieve our dreams. ‘Cause I’m sure many of—I mean, how many of you guys feel like the next mountain you climb is going to demand so much more of you than the last one? Many of you guys, you got your dreams and your eyes set on huge ambitions, huge aspirations to provide for your family, to change the world, to do something significant and important?

And when you’ve got that big dream way up there, trust me, it will demand more of you next time. So you must start training your mind now to deal with stress.

Meditate

For many of you, that means it is finally time to start learning meditation. It’s like, you’ve been thinking about it. You kind of meditate once in a while and you’ve thought about it. Or you did that one retreat one time.

I’m like, make it a daily part of your life to center yourself every single day.

For some of you centering yourself, that just means closing your eyes, thinking about who you want to be. Think about what’s important. Just calming your mind down. Other people centering’s—that can be just like, if you’re super stressed, lay down. Take a quick nap. For some of you that can mean important self-talk. For some of you, that means meditation. For me, if I don’t center myself every day, twice a day actively, the next day I know I’m going to get short with somebody. I’m going to let anxiousness get to me. I’ll get my nerves, I’ll get frustrated. I’ll bow out, I’ll quit. It’s so clear. It’s like super obvious to me that the days that I don’t center end up in tomorrows that are chaotic.

Take a Walk

And so I just got to make sure I take that time every day. That might mean you go to take a 45-minute walk. Many of you guys know every single day I walk outside. Every day, rain, water, snow, sleet, I don’t care. I will walk 30 to 45 minutes outside every day. I don’t miss it because just being out in nature and breathing and feeling the wind on my face and the sun just calms me down, gets me grounded back into the earth and in nature and it’s like, ugh okay. Every day. So for what, 20-plus years, I meditate at least once a day. I think for the last 14, maybe 11 years I meditated twice per day.

Sometimes it’s only five minutes, both sessions. Sometimes it’s 10 minutes both sessions. And when I don’t get that, I might take a 30-minute nap in the afternoon. At some point, I’ll sneak away. Even when I used to have a corporate job and worked for somebody else, I’d go close the door in one of the rooms, one of the meeting conference rooms, I close my eyes for 20 minutes, I meditate, take a nap, lay on the floor or do whatever I have to do to recenter my mind.

Your ability to deal with stress at this stage is dictating your ability to reach the next level.

Seek Professional Support

And so if you’re somebody who is always dealing with that negative emotional range, nervousness, anxiousness, stress, depression, some of the big issues that come up today, make sure you seek support. Go see a professional, go see a therapist, go see a psychiatrist, go see whoever your doctor recommends you to to get support in that mental health department. For those of you who aren’t dealing with clinical issues after those conversations, maybe it’s time for you to finally do the things you know you need to do to calm yourself down, right?

Reduce Social Media Use

Don’t look at so much social media every day, because going into here is not centering you. This is reaction mode. That’s all this is. This is reaction, reaction, reaction, reaction, reaction, reaction, and every one of these swipes is firing more chaos in your brain. Like literally it’s hitting more dopamine, and it feels reward, reward, reward, reward, reward, but your eyes are burning. Your attention is burning. You’re exhausted after, not re-invigorated. We need reinvigorating activities for you each day.

Reinvigorate Yourself

So what are some reinvigorating activities? Reinvigorating activities for me might, always start with sleep. Always include meditation. Always include a walk outside. For me, always include a cold shower. I know no one of you, you’re going to hate the idea of a cold shower.

Take Supplements

For me, I take adaptogens. These are stress support supplements that help me be more able to deal with the stress because my mind is a squirrel and it’s crazy. So it centers me again, that’s the same products, HPX Optimized for me. Some of you might take supplements that you—maybe you take some calming chamomile tea that costs super cheap.

Whatever you need to do, you need a centering practice every day, because the more you center yourself, every day is a discipline. Then in the moments that matter, the more you’re able to lock it in.

Develop Breath Awareness

So a couple of things you can do in moments that matter. When all of a sudden you feel yourself get angry, you feel yourself get freaked out. And that’s about to win, the very first move you must do, when you feel that coming on, when you’re like getting whacked around in the chaos, the very first thing I want you to always remember to do is center in on your breath. I want you, as soon as you feel angry, start taking deep breaths from the belly and I want you to count those breaths 20 times. Just immediately start counting your breathing. If someone’s hollering and screaming, before you holler and scream back and react, breathe. The best way to center the mind and the body is through deep breathing. There’s literally thousands of years of research behind this in terms of both the more anecdotal to what we now know in neuroscience. That deep breathing can deeply calm the mind and help you make better decisions. So just breathe, just breathe. The first thing is breath awareness.

Develop Body Awareness

Second thing is body awareness. Be attentive to when you feel like, like how are you holding your body? A lot of people get really tense in their shoulders and their neck, which is chewing their brain and go emergency, emergency, emergency, get out scream, holler, fight. And what I want you to do is first breathe, that’s breath awareness. Second, body awareness. Drop those shoulders, pull that chest out. Elongate that neck. Put your feet shoulder width, just stand up. Like just be tall and stand and breathe. That’s huge if you’re alone and you’re feeling these things, or if it’s proper, I mean, if it’s—’cause sometimes I do this with my wife and she’s around, all of a sudden I start feeling anxious, upset or something. I will literally drop down in a downward dog. I will breathe. I will roll around on the floor like a, I mean, I would just go. I’m telling you what, I will just start stretching myself out right as we’re in a conflict. I know I’m a child. No she, and she knows it’s preaching cause I’m calming myself down.

Cause for me, centering is a very physical thing. It really, it’s like, it’s a physical thing and that’s so important for me. So breath awareness, number one. And I really encourage you to set an intention to count. Don’t just focus on your breath. Count, breathe, count, breathe, count, breathe, count. Second, make sure you use your body. Get body awareness. I really encourage you to drop those shoulders. Straighten your neck out, open up your body. It will give you more energy.

And then third, what I really encourage you to do in centering, and this is really important. As you’re breathing out, as you’re breathing in, a lot of people think of just breathing in. I want you to breathe out and imagine yourself breathing out and it’s just dropping the energy and grounding the earth and pulling it up and grounding it at the earth. Your breathing out is just as important as an intention as breathing in. And if you can get in that mode, you just start noticing you feel better.

Be Intentional

And then that third piece though, outside of the centering into the ground, the third thing is intention, intention, intention. For me, I trained myself on three words I want it to be and I’ll remind myself those three words. Remind myself those three words. Because it’s easy for me to be reactive and responsive. And instead I want to be intentional. So I know those three words that really defined you and repeat those. Like oftentimes when I’m—if you ever see me around and I’m like this, all I’m doing is kind of rocking. I’m breathing in and out deeply. I’m getting attentive to my body and my posture. And I’m repeating my three words, just to reconnect because I do that every day.

In the moment of crisis, it feels like everything’s out of control. But what can I control? Breath, body awareness, what I say to myself.

Breath, body awareness, what I say to myself. I do that over and over and over again. And it really helps me lock back in.

I hope this supports some of you because learning to be centered emotionally will so support you as you go to change your life.