and life you love. Now, if you’ve ever wondered what it takes to be a high performer in your

life, today’s guest is going to show you how. Brendon Burchard is a New York Times,

Wall Street Journal, Amazon, and USA Today best-selling author and the world’s leading

high performance coach. Tens of millions of people have watched his videos and completed

his training courses.

Brendon is also the star and executive producer of the online YouTube show, The Charged Life,

and the podcast of the same name, which debuted at number one on iTunes. His latest book is

called High-Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way.

Brendon!

What?

It’s so good to have you here!

Thank you. This is so pretty up here. I can’t believe how awesome it is.

I know. But this is like – this is fun, because this is actually the second time that

you’re on the show. But last time we did this, we did Skype-o-rama.

Yes. And yours cut out like halfway through.

Of course it did.

But I loved it because you still aired it, so you had my face there. And I’m at home.

I wasn’t sure – I don't think I knew it was a Skype interview. And I had this shirt

and it was open like, my hair was like over here.

You were great. We had so much fun. I wish you’d told me – I’m gonna block

out my face, Brendon. I would’ve been like, “Oh, dude. Block out mine. This is great.”

That was called technical difficulties.

Yes.

Anyway, my point being I’m so happy that we’re doing this right now.

Thank you.

First of all, I need to congratulate you. So your sixth book. Right? High Performance

Habits.

Sixth. Yes.

This is a great beast.

It’s a beast.

But I want to congratulate you because it’s fantastic.

Thank you.

So talk to me about why. What inspired this book and why now?

Uh, yeah. I mean, every one of my books have been completely different. You know, one’s

Life’s Golden Tickets, like this parable. It’s a story. The Charge was based on some

neuroscience. The last one, Motivation Manifesto, was like philosophy, you know, injected with

like warrior-ism.

But this one I said, “you know what I want to do is I actually want to empirically test

whether what I believe leads to high performance is true or not.” Because I think at some

point with our platforms, you know, we can all share what we know from our life experience,

and that’s really incredible and it’s valuable. It’s important what we do. And

then I have to think we have to at some point say, “but is it true and are there nuances

that research would prove out?”

And so this became the world’s largest study ever on high performance. Last three years

of my life, a full academic team … and all we did is survey, interview, survey, interview,

run the data. Survey, interview, survey, interview, run the data. Largest ever not even comparable

by over 100,000 people is what we did. And what we teased out was that there’s only

six habits that actually empirically can be proven lead to high performance. That’s

– high performance just means long-term success.

Yup. Sustainable.

Sustained long-term success, which is huge. But so I’ve been teaching high performance

academy for eight, nine years. And the good thing about doing research is there were some

things I taught, they were wrong. And there are some things I taught, there was just so

much nuance to it, now I can teach it better.

And also I think a lot of people want to know in personal development, is any of this provable?

I think that’s why positive psychology is so important. And we had researches from University

of Pennsylvania helping us with this. So they just want to know is this – is it real?

Yeah.

And we teased out over 21 different habits, and then we asked, can it be replicable? Meaning

are high performers who are doing this, are they just freaking amazing?

Yup.

Or can you practice that? Then we said is it actually effective across domains, meaning

is this – would this prove out true for an athlete versus an assistant versus, you

know, a barista versus the CEO in Fortune 50? Which it did.

Then we asked is it something that’s trainable? Like can we empirically prove it can – you

can take somebody here over to here in a couple of weeks on this particular item? And we ran

all the research and it came down to these six high performers in the book. Or, high

performance habits in the book. And I’m super excited about it, because it’s done.

It was three years and it nearly killed me.

I remember our texts back and forth while you were creating this, but I – you did

a phenomenal job. But let’s – I want to tag onto something that you mentioned. It

was actually my next question, but it weaves in nicely with what you discovered.

I was curious throughout this journey, was there anything that surprised you? And one

thing that you mentioned, you’re like, “hey. There were some things that I thought were

in the ‘yes’ column” that you discovered based on the research are not. So I’m curious

if you can tell us a little bit about what surprised you and what…

It was three years of surprises. I mean, the ah-ha’s I had going through this journey

were so great, but it was difficult. You know, it made me – I mean, I was away from family

and friends. I didn't get to see you. It’s been – I mean, you mentioned our last interview.

I’ve basically been doing research since then. I mean, it’s just been really, really

intense.

But the learnings kept me going even though I didn't get to see family and friends as

much, because I was just – every day was, “Oh, what? Oh, that’s a thing?” And,

for example, big ones. Big biases I had that were wrong, and you’re not gonna like this

one and no one’s going to like it. But creativity is not strongly correlated with high performance.

I would have … three years, I would argue. I mean, I would’ve been – I would have

passionately argued against it, because I’m a creative.

Yeah.

This is my life. I write, I train, I speak. That’s what – I would’ve argued forever.

I’ve designed all the covers of my books.

Yeah.

I mean, I dork out about design. I design all my webpages. I’m – I believe that

creativity must give the edge, and it does give an edge in certain circumstances, for

sure. But I interviewed a Fortune 50 CTO, chief technology officer. Unbelievably high-performing

people. Their stock is off the roof. And what he said, he goes, “Brendon, I’m not a

creative person. My team isn’t particularly creative.” But long-term success matters

just as much about execution and consistency and showing up as the creative edge. The creative

edge might get you in the game. Because, remember, high performance is long-term success. We’re

not studying initial success. It’s very – initial success, you know, grit, creativity,

originality. All these things, very important. The spark, the get you in the game, for sure.

But even Jim Rohn said, you know, “motivation gets you in the game, habits keep you there.”

And creativity as a habit – the spark that might be called original creativity, it might

only happen for us every two to three years. So that’s not sufficient. We’ve got to

show up on Monday and Tuesday and Wednesday. Execution is more important as an example.

So we talk about the kinds of creativity that actually matter, but it’s not strongly correlated

almost across all industries. And I would have completely argued with that.

Another one, you know, we tend to think – I would have thought the older you get the more

likely it is you’re a high performer, because wisdom.

Yeah.

There’s a lot of old, lazy people.

Yup.

You know?

Stuck in their ways. Doing the same thing that they’ve been doing day in and day out.

Yeah. So I think there's a lot of demographic things I would have – I would have assumed

certain countries. We did – this includes research from 195 countries. We wanted this

to be global and we wanted the largest one ever. And I would’ve thought certain countries,

you know, we all have like, you know, I buy lots of cool Scandinavian furniture. That

doesn't quite necessarily mean anything. Right? We make these assumptions about things, and

so we dispel a lot of it.

And the good news is, all six habits are things everyone can do. They’re not innate, they’re

not like “you’re lucky and born with that.” And everything that we learned that, you know,

when people have an excuse they say, well, “I’m too young.” Or they say...

“I’m too old.”

“Or I’m from this demographic, I’m from that town.” None of that matters. And we

proved it. We said these are the only things that matter. And that’s what excites me

about it is because I can now share these little nuances and people go, “Oh, that’s

what matters and that will help me get ahead.”

Yeah. And it levels the playing field for all of us. And I feel like that’s one of

the other things I really appreciate about the book.

You know, you wrote that “achievement is not the problem, alignment is.” Can we talk

about that a little bit?

Yeah. I wish it was my line. It was one of my clients. She’s – I mean, she manages

over 10,000 people. Like, she has 10,000 direct reports. She’s just an unbelievable achiever.

And when I started working with her, I mean, just like a lot of people, their struggles

aren’t “can I make a goal list and a checklist” and, you know, “can I get things done.”

Because people get stuff done all the time, but our busy work isn’t always our life’s

work.

And so you have to learn that we have to find that thing that we can align to. And a lot

of people, they’re achieving themselves into the wrong thing. They put the ladder

against the wrong building. They just haven’t really figured out what’s important to them.

And, most importantly, alignment also includes harmony in your life. Because a lot of people

achieve and achieve in their career, and then they’re divorced. People achieve and achieve

and achieve, and they’re fat and they didn't take care of themselves, and they know it.

And it sounds horrible to say it, but they know it. And so you have to figure out like,

“okay, how can we align ourselves to something that we really care about?” And not align

like sometimes on a Monday or a Tuesday, or not just in our career but really get our

relationships, our health, our career all in alignment to help us become in high performing.

Because high performing isn’t just achievement for achievement’s sake.

Right.

What we found in that study is high performers also value well-being more than almost any

other demographics that we’ve ever measured. And you and I know that, but it’s actually

the second habit in here is the ability to generate energy. And that’s mental, physical,

and emotional energy. And we can talk about the nuances in all of that.

Yeah, that’s actually some place I want to go next, but I don't want to cut you off

because you’re on a train.

Yeah. No, that’s it. I mean, it’s so important. And so when we say alignment we don't just

mean choosing the right thing. We mean generally creating some kind of harmonious alignment

in your life. I don't use, you know, I wouldn’t say that in the book, but that, you know,

that’s really what it is.

It really is, because, you know, in thinking about how each of us define success, it’s

such a unique thing. But those components of health and your family and how you feel

every day and the meaningfulness of it, it has to be there.

So I say for people watching, if you’re in this place where you’re – you really

feel like you’re struggling but you’re like, “Damn, I’m working so hard,” I

would say what she said to me. You know, “achievement is not the problem, alignment is.” Once

we got her aligned, I mean, her life came back. I mean, literally this person felt like

their life was a waste, like they had spent 20 years doing something that wasn’t the

right thing. And there’s a lot of guilt and shame and frustration there.

And but I’m like you’re a badass, but she didn't feel right because she wasn’t

in alignment. As soon as we got her in alignment, I mean, literally weeks, she changed. I mean,

you would have thought she had, you know, some Renaissance of the mind. And it wasn’t

that many things. Just sometimes you’re actually not off by, you know, 50 feet like

you think you are. You’re off by like four or five degrees. And if we can align your

relationships, your career, and your health back into the right angle for you, you come

back to life.

Yeah. It’s huge. One of the distinctions I loved in the book was about emotions and

feelings and how you parsed through that. And your framework, and I’ll paraphrase

here so feel free to correct, emotions are instinctual. Like they often just appear.

Right? Where feelings relate to our interpretation and we can better influence them. I’d love

you to talk a little bit about that, because I think it’s a really important distinction,

especially as it’s related to energy and this idea of high performance.

Yes. One of the major, major keys we found, the first high performing habit, is seek clarity.

And what we found is one of the practices that high performers do is they define the

feeling they’re after. And so when we had explained that and later talk about in the

energy chapter, we had to differentiate between feelings and emotions. And they are different.

Emotions tend to be – they’re the same.

Yeah.

Like we – they’re physical, they’re almost always automatic, even though in the

brain is creating associations as often happen, for us they just kinda…

Emotion comes up.

Yeah. You’re watching a movie and you’re sad. And you’re like, “Oh, my gosh,”

you know? “I’m crying.” You didn't even have the tissues ready, you’re just like

– you know? But feelings are usually interpretations that we make of what that emotion was and

how it sticks and the meaning we give to it. And the example I used – you know I like

to give, and I don't remember if it’s in the book or not, honestly. Because here’s

what’s happened, this book is 400 pages. It was 1,481 when I finished.

Ooh, baby! You edited down!

Yes. And it was 1,481 good. Complete. It was like awesome.

Yes.

But I was like that’s gonna freak people out. So we’re publishing a bunch in academic

journals later, and I just stripped it down to 400 pages so it’s more readable and fun

and learnable. So I can’t remember if this one actually made it in there, but the example

I like to give is if you and I go to a haunted house.

Yeah. Which I love.

I love them. I love them. And they scare me to crap, but if you and I walk around, you

know, you walk around the walls in a haunted house, someone jumps out at you. You and I

are both gonna jump.

Yes. We are emotionally going to experience fright

immediately. It’s gonna be there. Right? But I might be freaked out for the next five