The Charged Life

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SUMMARY:

Do you find yourself giving away your time, attention and energy to other people with no sense of peace or progress? Is your agenda truly your agenda, or somebody else’s? Here are three new ways to think about how to prioritize your day:

1. Stop prioritizing easy:

While a lot of people think knocking off the easy tasks on their to-do list will create momentum, it actually stops them from doing what counts. If you find your day filled with busy work instead of your life’s work, then take note:  just because there is something easy to do does not mean it should be done. The activities in your day should add to your vitality, enjoyment and the contributions you want to make in the world. Ask yourself, “What three things must happen today that will move me forward toward my dreams?” Stop prioritizing easy; start prioritizing progress. By taking on something hard every day, you gain more confidence, momentum and meaning.

2. Stop prioritizing false emergencies:

Don’t re-prioritize your life’s work to handle someone else’s false emergency. Prioritize what will move you forward and initially say no to everything else. You owe nothing to anybody but your own health, family and major contributions of what you want to give to the world; every other request is a sudden distraction. By focusing on what’s important to you and making sure you accomplish that first, you leap forward in life, live your truth and serve your highest good.

3. Start prioritizing freedom:

You have the potential to experience more emotional, physical, social, financial and time freedom every day. Whether it’s a 20 minute meditation that makes you feel alive and connected, a health practice for cultivating more energy, or time breaks in your day where dream up and develop your next major contribution, you have the ability to make your days magical. Make it a priority to prioritize freedom and your creativity and joy will expand.

As you prioritize with these three decisions, you become the architect of your day and put yourself back in control of your agenda. Do this and you will start to experience more of what we call The Charged Life!

FULL TRANSCRIPT:

Hey guys, it’s Brendon! Let’s talk about how you prioritize things in your life.

How you prioritize

• Your tasks
  
• Your activities
  
• Your responsibilities
  
• Your obligations
  
• Your days
  

Because you know, it’s kind of difficult these days to prioritize anything because there are so many people coming at you from left and right with their notices, their messages, their text, their voice messages, their emails begging for your time, for your tension, for your energy and most people, I hope this is not you—just give that away so freely.

You give all of your attention to everybody else and to all the world’s false emergencies and to all the world’s needs and all the messages and the texts and the timelines and all of a sudden your day is gone and you had no sense of peace or progress or vitality.

I hope that’s not you but if you’re finding your day is feeling a little frustrating usually it comes back at some point to how you are prioritizing things during those days.

Makes sense, right?

So, how have you been doing in this department?

Really think about it. Do you feel like your day’s agenda has been YOUR agenda or is it somebody else’s? Or do you even get to shape your agenda?

Do you just wake up and respond to everybody all day? And that’s your priority just responding to everybody all day.

If you’re in customer service and that’s your job, rock on! Good job. Keep doing that.

But if it’s not your job to do nothing but respond to customers all day, then we’ve got to have a higher conversation now and get you back in control of what your day is about. And the only way to do that is to teach you some new ways to think about your prioritization.

Now, you guys know I have lots of online courses on these types of topics from

• The Achievement Accelerator to
  
• The Success Accelerator to
  
• High Performance Academy and
  
• High Performance Academy Master’s Course.
  

Lots of deep-dive training on this so in this video all I’m going to try to do for you is just give you three simple takeaways, three new ideas. Maybe a reframe of how to think about how you prioritize things and if you do a good job there, I think you’ll find tomorrow, next week, next month and the rest of this year. You’ll be on fire. You’ll be back on path.

1.Now, the first idea I have for you is stop prioritizing easy.

Stop prioritizing easy.

A lot of people when they look at their to-do list of the day, they just start working towards the easy things—knocking off the easy things. They think, “That’s going to get me some momentum. It’ll get me into the day. I’ll feel like I’m succeeding.”

And the reality is, it’s making them less likely to actually do the things that count.

And how do you know this? How do you know if you’re guilty of that?

You know it if your day feels like there’s a lot of busy work but there’s an absence of your life’s work.

You know what I mean?

If you don’t feel like your activities during the day are really creating

• To your vitality,
  
• To the contributions you want to make with the world,
  
• To doing activities and tasks that you really enjoy.
  

Whose fault is that? Is it the man’s? Is it the government’s?

No.

It’s like you’re setting up your day, you could choose what to do with it. Maybe you need to look at doing things that would support you, your health, your vibrancy, your joy, your real growth and contribution in a more significant way.

If you feel like there’s always busy work, but it’s not your life’s work, you probably prioritized things at a larger level maybe incorrectly for you.

Now I don’t know this. I can’t gage it. I am just talking you through … here now as I look and as you listen to me all I can do is encourage you to just look and say,

• How have I been prioritizing?
  
• Have I had a structure?
  
• Have I had a framework?
  
• Have I had ideas about what’s important to me in the world and I always run my decision making through those?
  

Because if you haven’t set that up, this is the time to do that for yourself.

First step: Stop prioritizing easy.

Just because there is something that’s easy to do does not mean it must be done today. What I would rather you to do is say, “I’m going to prioritize things today that will make significant steps forward in my life.”

These are, I just say, the opposite of stop prioritizing easy is to prioritize progress—

• Things that actually move the needle of your life forward.
  
• Things that actually contribute in ways that you find meaningful and significant and fulfilling.
  

And you know you deserve that but sometimes you get caught up right? Maybe you’ve just been caught up in everybody else’s hot mess and your life thus became a hot mess. It’s not because you are. It’s that you were just doing the easy things to please people because that’s easy.

“Oh, I’m going to please some people today.”

But what we need you to do is say,

• “What would significantly move me toward my dreams today?
  
• What three things must happen today that would be real movement forward?”
  

Not like a little checklist. Our whole world has gotten so addicted to little tiny checklist but they’re not doing anything meaningful. They’re not checking off “I’m living my life.”

So, I want you to get back into, “What would really progress me today?”

• Stop prioritizing easy.
  
• Start prioritizing progress, things that matter.
  

I want you to take on something hard every day. You do that, you’ll start to find yourself getting

• A little more confident,
  
• A little bit more momentum,
  
• A little bit more into that space where you feel like you’re doing things you were meant to do.
  

2. Second thing is: Stop Prioritizing False Emergencies.

Just because someone put it on your plate today does not mean you need to reply to it today. Unless, it again is your job in customer service to reply back within 24 hours, but that is not for everybody.

We’ve fallen to this false collective belief that we all have to reply to the text on the second we receive it. Then we got to return the call the second it came it. We don’t.

What I always tell people, as you know being blessed to do what I do now. It’s like tens of millions of people watch these videos and watch my work every single year now. Every single week we send out two million emails. We talk to a lot of people.

I’m out on the road nine months out of the year. I’m doing an event with hundreds of people travelling from dozens of countries to get there. I talk to a lot of people. I get a lot of feedback and with that feedback comes a lot of requests.

• “Brendon could you do this for me?
  
• Brendon could you help that?
  
• Brendon could you endorse this?”
  

And I know you get the same thing. “Could you help me? Could you do these things, I need …”

And you get all of these people asking you for something. How often are you doing what they’re saying and what they’re asking for?

The more that you’re doing what the world tells you or asks of you, frankly the sad thing is the more you lose your life. You lose yourself in it. You become a pleaser or a placater. You become a person who is just so busy all the time, you’re wiped out. You know what I’m talking about.

You cannot prioritize other people’s emergencies and here’s what you need to do—learn to say no.

Prioritize the things that are going to move you forward and everything else realize that’s got to be an initial no and it needs to sound like this.

Here’s what my email literally says when I send out to people. I say:

“Thank you so much for your request. Really appreciate of you thinking of me. However, while I recognize this is really important for you today, the reality is my plate has already been full and is packed with things that I have planned and prioritized months and months and months ago.

I’m executing against a plan that has been in the works for a very long time. So, I’m sorry I can’t get your sudden need fit into that. I’m happy to put you in queue but please realize it’s likely you won’t be hearing from me or I won’t be able to participate in that or I won’t be able to do XYZ (whatever they ask me of) for several months, if at all.”

Now, people say, “Oh my gosh, that’d be hard to say.”

I was like, “You know that at first it’s true.”

The first couple of times I did that it was difficult and it made me uncomfortable. It made me feel like I wasn’t being helpful to people.

But what is helpful to people is you living your truth.

Is you serving your highest good in this world. Not everybody’s speedy, needy request.

Look, when people come to me with an emergency, I’m ok going back to the days of self-reliance and saying, “You know, why is this an emergency for you all of a sudden? Did you not know this was due?”

They’re like “Yeah, I know. I knew it was due.”

Or someone will say, “Brendon, I need this tomorrow.”

And here’s what I love to say to them. I say, “Tomorrow? Tell you what. When would you need it? If you didn’t get it by this certain day that, like your house would burn down. Like major catastrophes, oh crap your world’s going to fall apart. I mean the last minute of the last moment of the real deadline. Not when would you like this. Not when would you prefer this. Not when would it be convenient and nice for you. When would the **** hit the fan if you didn’t get it and people would start dying?”

And they’ll always say, "Oh, in that case Brendon. I really don’t need it for another two weeks.”

People will always tell you they need something immediately:

1. They usually don’t need it.
   
2. If they do need it, they should’ve went and gotten it themselves and been more prepared.
   
3. You owe nothing to anybody but your own health, your own family, your own major true contributions of what you are and what you want to give to the world.
   

Everybody else is a sudden distraction.

That is not going to make me popular saying that and I get it. But that’s how you have to do it.

If you really want to learn how to prioritize, you have to realize every request that comes into you is a sudden distraction, if it’s not on your plan.

I’m not saying you can’t meet it. I’m not saying you can’t handle it. I’m saying don’t re-prioritize your life’s work to handle somebody else’s false emergency.

What I want you to do is say, “What’s important to me today?”

And I want you to make sure you accomplish and achieve that. And then fit in everyone else’s little requests as is appropriate or needed or responsible for yourself.

I know it’s difficult when the kids come in and they throw off a couple of hours of your day because they had this sudden need or emergency. There are real obligations and responsibilities. Please live your life and manage it responsibly, but also stop doing that little thing that everyone does…

Giving away all their piece of the day to anyone who asks and suddenly they will find themselves:

• Broke with time,
  
• Broke with energy,
  
• Broke fulfilling everybody else, and
  
• Never having lived their own life.
  

Prioritize real deadlines, real responsibilities, real obligations and prioritize everything else as a sudden distraction and you will start finding yourself leaping forward.

Last one’s much more positive. You’re like, “Jeez Brendon, I thought you’re like the positivity guy and the motivation guy.”

3. Last one’s a lot more easy and more palpable for you, maybe or palatable I guess everybody would say and that is start prioritizing freedom.

Start prioritizing your ability to gain more:

• Emotional freedom
  
• Physical freedom
  
• Social freedom
  
• Financial freedom
  
• Time freedom
  

I love looking at people’s actual day agenda and I say, “Where in here is freedom? Where is your ability to do a 20 minute meditation because it’s going to make you feel alive and back and grounded connected.”

You don’t have anything where you prioritize your own psychology today.

• Were you thinking about your strategic plan?
  
• Were you thinking about the vision for your life?
  
• Were you day dreaming and napping if you need to do that?
  
• Were you prioritizing your physical energy?
  

Because if you can’t have physical freedom from fatigue, you’ll accomplish a whole lot more even if your priorities are not always in-whack. Like if you absolutely have the physical freedom to be able to just cultivate energy on choice that comes from having prioritized health during the day.

What about time freedom? I think we’re all after time freedom, so where are the breaks in your day and what are you doing with those breaks?

• Are you reading stupid trashy magazines?
  
• Are you sitting and dreaming about how you can contribute more?
  
• What your next art is?
  
• What the next major things is that you want to give or serve or be or develop as a human?
  

You have the ability to make your days magical and I wish someone told me that when I was younger.

They say, “Hey look. You are the architect of your day. How magical do you really want it to be?”

Make that decision today and you will start to experience a lot more of what we call, The Charged Life.

Like this? Please share it with your friends so that your loved ones can take back control over their agenda starting now. - Brendon