← Progress Mode with Brendon Burchard
Progress Mode with Brendon Burchard
The Secret to Rewiring Your Brain for Growth
00:17:36
In this episode of The Motivation with Brendon Burchard Podcast, Brendon reveals how to reprogram your brain so it works for you instead of against you.
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Reflection isn't just about self awareness. It's about learning to master attention by reflecting on things that have occurred. You notice those little details, those little things to improve those little follow up points. And now you become more present and attentive. In the future, you're actually there paying attention. It's creating greater awareness. Reflection is one of the most powerful tools for developing presence because it's teaching us to notice the details. How can you reprogram your brain so that you can feel better, feel more optimistic or confident or joyous, more appreciative, more present, more capable of handling the day's stressors without freaking out? This is a topic I'm often asked about in the community. So here we go, four quick ideas. Number one, realize most of your brain has been programmed and it was programmed for you by society. Your parents, your caregivers, your siblings, your teachers, the peer group that you hung out with, the society or culture you live in at large. You went through life, you were punished or rewarded, you went through life, you were acknowledged and appreciated. Seen or not, you were fed values by those folks and the situations of your life. In your society, you were taught to think in a certain way, whether or not that teaching was conscious or, or how you learned to think was conscious. So many of us have a brain that just runs on autopilot all day, of course, with unconscious ideas, thoughts, the generation of feelings and reactions that we don't have a ton of control over. It's just that unconscious part of us, that majority, has been programmed either by genetics or personality, or what's more likely, the reality of our social sphere as we grew up. Learning to be more conscious of how we react to things is probably the central way and the first step. The first step. As you know, I teach in personal development, that first big gate to grand openings is always awareness. A greater level of self awareness to what we are thinking and how we are operating in the world and why we do those things, and whether or not those things are serving us at this stage of our life and at the next levels upon which we are reaching for that conscious self awareness is of course one of the reasons that we ask you to journal every day. It's just at this point so ironclad and so obvious that those who journal have a greater sense of self awareness, a greater understanding of who they are, they're more clear about their goals and their feelings, they're more likely to be intentional in the next situations of life. So please use it way more often. If we can get self awareness and we can be in that active sort of approach to looking at how we react to things and how we're showing up at things. That's all good, but four simple ideas that will really help with that. And this first piece here is really about conscious consumption. See, you were not only told and directed and shown how to think and feel and behave, what to value, what to do in life, but you are actively doing that today. And people underestimate how much their life has been directed and controlled based on what they've consumed. That's the books you've read, the podcasts you've listened to, the newspapers you've read. It's the consumption of the media, the consumption of video games, the consumption of, know, social media that what comes in tends to stick around. You know, they always say garbage in, garbage out. And I'm always like, oh, I wish it was that simple. It's truly garbage in, brain wired, garbage out. And it becomes a very difficult circuit to break. As I always tease, you gotta bust something in your brain that's positive, that's empowering, that reminds you of the conscious control that you do have, the personal responsibility you do have, the great future you do have. So welcome for being here and I would love to congratulate you and cheer you on to continue consuming great things. Everyone always asks, why do you love reading so much? I'm like, because I know everything that I'm reading that's going in is going to shape who I am as a person. And I think it's important that we choose wisely. Choose wisely. What you watch and listen to, what you scroll through, who you follow, the more empowering, enlightening, inspiring, kind, thoughtful, educational these things are, the more likely you are to be developing yourself versus hurting yourself. Second, to reprogram your brain requires a lot of reflection. And what I mean by that is a lot of debrief time in life, right? You do something you didn't want to do and you're kind of ashamed by it, embarrassed by it, don't feel good about it, thought you could have done better. Well, you can just move on in that next situation next time and not think about it and hopefully get better. Or you can spend a lot of time just rethinking it, debriefing it, walking it through in your mind again to try and improve. As you know, I'm a high performance coach, so I work with, you know, people from all walks of life. Some of the favorite people I work with are sports stars and a lot of sports celebrities and people in you know, on big teams and then pro leagues, Olympians. And I love working with them because they're so thoughtful in watching their performances, taking notes, trying to improve next time, playing the tape over and over and over, as they say, just to see that minute change they could have made to increase their performance. And they're doing it not from a place of self hatred. They're doing it because they truly want to improve. And I think a lot of people go through all day without doing that. I'll give you a personal example here. Yesterday I logged in probably somewhere around like seven hours, pretty straight on zoom, you know, I took my five minute breaks in between to recharge and reset. But it happened to be one of those days. I was super booked, really intense, working on lots of cool things for y' all at growth day. And at the end of the day, I just wanted to do nothing. You know, I was going to go for a long walk, I was going to do release meditation, then I was going to come back and do some creative work for you all. And instead I said, okay, no, what I need to do is sit down right now and journal and capture how each of those meetings went. What could have been better? What did I learn? What decisions got made? Again, let me review those, Let me put them into my plan. And it was just at the end of the day of long meetings, it was just kind of rethinking them, capturing to dos, just taking a few minutes to reflect on the day and then open up my plan in growth day and capture any of those to do lists. Now, I know we all say, well, of course, you know, Brennan, I take notes during my meetings. I'm like, I know. But you know what professionals do at the end of the day, they review all their notes from their meetings that day. They think about the people they interacted with that day. They set deadlines or reminders on the things that they need to act on that day. This doesn't mean that they're always perfect. I certainly am not. But by being a little more conscientious about our reflection, what do we end up doing? We actually teach our brain to pay attention more. Oh. Reflection isn't just about self awareness. It's about learning to master attention by reflecting on things that have occurred. You notice those little details, those little things to improve those little follow up points. And now you become more present and attentive in the future when most people, during, you know, a meeting, as an example, are living in the past or in the future. Now you're, you're actually there paying attention. It's creating greater awareness. Reflection is one of the most powerful tools for developing presence because it's teaching us to notice the details, to think about how things go and turn out and how our performance is. It improves how we show up. Yeah, the more we reflect on the past performance, the more likely we're able to show up and improve today. I mean, imagine an NFL player who never watches any tape. They just keep showing up, you know, the next game and the next game and the next game. And they're doing no analysis of their performance previously. They're not going to be more present or capable in the next game without that reflection work. That's how you start teaching your brain to notice more attention and details in the moment. And it's one of the most powerful things we can do to reprogram our brain because our attention has been stolen from us. Third, intention. So the first piece was about consumption. The second piece is about reflection. The third piece is about intention. The more that we sit down and determine what we are going to think, say, do or feel in advance and then show up and be integris with that decision, commitment or vision, the more our brain goes, hey, someone's in charge here. Someone's the captain at the wheel here. Somebody is minding the ship. And what ends up happening is we have a higher level of conscientiousness and we start to determine more consistently how to think, feel, say, do, act, behave, align. It doesn't mean we're architecting every moment of our life perfectly. What it means is you're back in the driver's seat when you set intentions. Because if you set your intentions, you're much more likely than in that moment to be driven by that decision, than by an unconscious behavior. If I just show up. Let me give you an example. If I. If I just show up, you know, let's say you're throwing a party at your house and I show up. If I just show up and I go through my reactive unconscious brain at that party, here's what happens. I go. I probably don't talk to that many people because my default is more like quietness, more shyness, believe it or not. And yes, it's true. Brendon Burchard is right down the line between introvert and extrovert on all of the studies. So my general thing would be I'd probably hang out, maybe talk to one or two people, and I wouldn't stay that long. But if I. Before walking in that door or on the way over, I Say, you know what? Tonight I'm going to stretch myself a little bit to learn about other people, to have some positive influence here, to be entertained, to have a good time, to push myself, to meet some new neighbors. Don't you think I'll act differently? And so now my unconscious preferences, or really what are unconscious conditioning, they don't get to rule the night. Instead, my intention gets to rule the party. I get to come in and decide to do something versus react into something. Does that make sense? It's learning. Set intentions in advance. It's one of the most powerful things you can do. And in personal development, it doesn't mean you know every single time you say, I'm not getting a fight with my spouse, I'm not getting a fight with my spouse, I'm not going to scream at the kids, I'm not going to scream at the kids that you'll always be perfect. But you know what? Your odds will sure improve and over time you will surely show up better than if you did just running by your amygdala. So show up with intention. A conscientious decision about how you want to experience things. It can be as simple as how do I want to experience date night tonight with my spouse, my partner, my lover, my first date? How do I want to show up? How do I want to feel? What's the energy I'm looking to create here? Don't worry if you get it right every time. Just have the intention and try to be integrous with that intention. It's a game changer. Last big idea. You want to reprogram your brain for a better life. More happiness, more joy, more positivity, more success, more health. Focus on your peers. Get around the right people and they won't let you slack off or be a jerk. Get around the right people and they'll teach you how you view yourself too small. Get around the right people and they'll cheer you on, open up doors, challenge you to be the more confident, bold, conscientious. Get around people who love personal development, who are striving for a better life for themselves and their family and their team, their brands and their businesses. Get around people like that. Because what happens when you're around a higher level of peers? You start thinking at a higher level. When you're around people who like personal development, they're more visionary, they're more future minded, they're more intentional. And all of a sudden you find yourself going from reactive, scared, upset, stuck in your past to thinking about building your future again. To being reminded just how strong you are, how capable you are. To be reminded that a good life is in front of you. That you can use your mind, use your habits, use your relationships in such a way that. That you grow, that you get better. Because people who make self improvement a way of life, and that is what we do here. I call you a striver, because that's what we're doing. We're striving for a great future. And we know that we get there by making personal development a priority, by working on ourselves and being conscientious about it. Day by day by day. This is how we become better. This is how we reprogram not just our own brains for a better quality of life. This is how we rebuild society. This is how we all learn, and we all remember that every day is a great day to grow.