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 know when most people evaluate themselves? When they have a performance review coming up at work, when they’ve really screwed something up and they’re guilty and they’re thinking of all the other stupid things they’ve done that hurt them, when they hit a birthday, when they hit New Year’s, when someone holds up a mirror in front of them and says, “Hey, you’re being a jerk,” and they have to really reevaluate.

Most people are not proactively assessing their performance, and so when it comes time to do that, they’re disappointed. So if this is not a basic habit for you, I need you to start scoring yourself at the end of the day. Now, people really don’t like this one, and I’m just going to be upfront about that. You probably won’t want to do this, and a lot of people don’t. But if there’s something inside of you that is restless for that next level, we’re going to have to start measuring.

If you don’t measure it, you can’t improve it.

If you ever tried to lose or gain weight—apparently this is a weight lifting talk—but if you’ve ever tried to get stronger, you have to write it down. How many reps did you do? What routines did you do today? How much weight did you use? If you do that in the gym, well, you have to do that in the playground of life too, but most don’t, and they’re really struggling.

It’s just painful to watch. I’ll show up and I’ll say, “Tell me about your life,” and first, they don’t even know where to start, because they’ve never measured themselves, and then second, in the dialogue with me as a high performance coach, I find them disappointed, upset, struggling, unsure of themselves, and a lot of that could have been handled if, on a more consistent basis, they were self-aware and personally accountable to their own behavior and growth.

I mean, isn’t it true? Don’t you know somebody you wish—”I wish that person would stop at the end of the day and say, ‘Am I being a good person?’” I mean, isn’t there someone you’re so frustrated with right now in life, who you would just love to sit them down and say, “Hey, you need to be more self-aware. You aren’t paying attention to who you’re being, and it’s hurting everybody around you, jerk.”

We all have that person we wish were more self-aware. But how do you get self-awareness? You just go to a meditative retreat once a year? Do you luck out into being a self-aware person?

Self-awareness is gained by self-evaluation. If you want to be better aware of who you are, where you can grow, how you can uniquely give or serve, you need to evaluate yourself.

Does that make sense?

So what are your habits right now for evaluating yourself? What do they look like? How are you measuring yourself and your progress in life? What are those?

If you got some, virtual high five, I could be there with you. Celebrate that, that’s awesome, that’s incredible. Because most people don’t do that, so I hope that you are doing that, but it’s a struggle for a lot of people, too.

So here’s a simple way that you can end your day scoring yourself along the lines of productivity specifically. You might have other ways. You might score your personal values, you might score your energy, you might score how much influence you had with other people. I’m going to give you some—related to what we talked about—productivity, so we can get some quick wins and gains for you as we jump into more in-depth training.

Here’s what those are. Have yourself ask yourself, at the end of the day, these specific statements, and then rate yourself. Low, one means you suck, okay, five means you’re awesome, you’re doing a good job. So let’s walk through these.

Number one, I worked on things that mattered most today. I know that’s basic, so I’ll go fast here.

Number two, I progressed a major dream or goal today. Meaning, did you progress today?

Number three, I avoided distractions well today.

Number four, I set intentions before each major activity today. That’s a huge one.

Number five, I fully engaged and enjoyed my efforts today.

Because high-performers strive satisfied. They’re engaged, and in that engagement, they find joy, fulfillment, satisfaction, competence.

It’s by engaging. So how did you do today? Did you enjoy your efforts or not?

Now remember, low one one one one, high, five five five, where are you here? So every day I sit myself down and I start scoring myself. This is probably about seven years ago, and remember, seven years ago, I was still then a certified high-performance coach. Seven years ago, my career was just taking off, and what we want to believe is that people just kind of bumble into progress. People bumble into momentum. I’m telling you, high-performers are more strategic, and they’re more self-evaluative.

For many of them, this was an unconscious competence for them. They really didn’t know that their self-talk was so oriented towards self-evaluation until I did some coaching and interviewing with them to discern that, but it turns out high-performers, they’re measuring stuff.

Now, I just want to make it easier for you, so here’s a simple tool. Just write those things down, then score yourself. Now, when you score yourself, at the end of the day, add your score up. So let’s say you’re at three all the way down. That’d be three, six, nine, 12, 15. Montana kid doing math, and it was right. Okay, one, two, three, four, five. So let’s say you’re a 15. So you add your score up, that’d be 15. Then multiply it by four, 15 times four is 60. That will give you a score of 100%, okay?

Whatever your score is, keep seeking clarity each day, and you’ll get better and better and better. Try to improve this each day.

Look, there’s going to be days you’re a two, other days you’re a five, but the goal is to ask yourself this. I want you to do something, and if this sounds too basic, here’s what I want you to do, and add to your routine that maybe you already have. Maybe you end your day with journaling. Congratulations. Not enough, okay. Instead, what I want you to do is create your own scoring mechanism for the end of the day, whether it’s taking a page out of my playbook here, or you’re scoring yourself, right? If I ask you, “How’d you do today,” and you go “Good,” that’s one level of self-evaluation. But if I say, “How did you do today,” and I give you a specific context, “How did you do today in keeping to your own agenda?” That, you might say, “Good,” or “Pretty well.” But if I say, “How did you do today in keeping to your own agenda on a scale of one to 10, one, you sucked and got pulled into everybody else’s agenda, you got totally distracted, you didn’t get anything done you wanted to. 10, you were superbly excellent today, you stayed on point,” it’s a different quality, isn’t it?

When you rate yourself and you’re like, “I was a six,” and then my next question to you goes, “Well, why were you a six versus a 10?” Then you can go, “Oh, well, because I made these decisions,” or, “I allowed that,” or, “This person did this.” Great, okay, well, what would it take to go from a six to a 10? “Well, I would have had to have done this,” or, “Next time I would do this,” right?

As soon as you score yourself, you have an anchor or a benchmark from which to move yourself, and a different level of self-evaluation.

I’m trying to get you, in your own unconscious mind right now, to be generating a lot of ways you could score yourself. Because for me, there’s 50 different things I score myself on at the end of the day, 50. Now, here’s the thing. I don’t let my life numbers bum me out, because the truth is, you know what? Measuring myself across 50 things every day, it’s not like I’m a robot. It’s not like I’m perfect in every one of those areas.

But here’s what happens. Let me tell you this. This is a huge insight, so please write this down.

If you’re not scoring yourself consistently, that’s why you feel so out of balance.

It’s why one day you realize you’ve been working hard, but you neglected the kids, why? Did you neglect the kids ’cause you’re a bad person or a bad parent? No, it’s because you didn’t have the quality of your experience with them on a radar, on a dashboard, on a sheet at the end of each day or maybe each week. So what happens is, life takes hold of us, we get caught in the stream of life, and we’re just kind of getting carried along, and then one day we wake up and we realize, “wait, I’ve gone down seven different river channels that I didn’t anticipate,” right? So the only way to keep us there is to evaluate, and I think if you can do that, things significantly shift.

So I hope that you’ll figure out what is your end of day scoring. I’m sure while I’ve been talking, you’ve been thinking of other things. You could score your energy, you could score how you treated your wife or your kids or your team, you could score how much you stayed focused, you could score how well you actually made sales, or how well you dealt with clients, or how well you built your business. I don’t know what it is for you, but if you don’t know what it is for you, and if you aren’t scoring, I know the next level is right there for you. It’s right there. So put this in play.