High Performance Habits Summary: Brendon Burchard’s Guide to Peak Performance
Brendon Burchard is a world-renowned author, motivational speaker, and high-performance coach. He is best known for his groundbreaking work in the field of personal development and his influential books, such as The Charge, The Millionaire Messenger, or High Performance Habits. And this article is the summary of his book High Performance Habits.
His work has helped millions of people worldwide achieve success and happiness. In addition to his best-selling productivity book, Brendon also runs several online courses, including his signature program High Performance Academy.
In this program, he helps people develop the skills they need to become successful and productive. He also hosts a popular podcast, The Charged Life, which features inspiring conversations with experts and thought leaders.
With his thoughtful insights and unwavering commitment to helping others, Brendon Burchard continues to be an invaluable asset to the personal development community.
High Performance Habits Summary
Brendon Burchard explains High Performance in his book this way: succeeding beyond standard norms consistently over the long term. Brandon writes about the six most essential habits to be a high performer. He divides the six habits into the following:
Seek Clarity: It’s important to know what kind of person you want to be, how you want to deal with other people, what you want, and what makes you the happiest. At the start of any big project, it’s a good idea to ask yourself things like, “What kind of person do I want to be while I’m doing this? How do I treat other people? What do I want to do, and why do I want to do it?”
Not only will high achievers ask themselves these questions at the start of a task, but they will also keep asking themselves these questions throughout the process. They don’t make a mission statement and stick to it. Instead, high performers tend to keep looking for clarity as things change and they take on new projects or social situations.
This constant self-evaluation is a big reason why they have been so successful in their personal and professional lives.
Generate Energy: Generate energy so that you can keep your focus, effort, and health. To keep performing at your best, you will need to take care of your mental strength, physical strength, and good feelings in specific ways.
Raise Necessity: It is crucial to stress the need for excellent performance. This means taking advantage of the things that make success so important.
This requirement is based on a mix of your personal criteria (such as who you are, what you believe in, what you value, or what you expect from yourself) and external expectations (social responsibilities, contests, public pledges, and due dates). Raising necessity is about always knowing your purpose and keeping that flame burning bright so you feel the inspiration or pressure to get to work.
Increase Productivity: Improve your skills in the area you care most about. More specifically, focus on doing great work in the place where you want to be known and make a difference. Also, avoid any distractions, even if they are opportunities, which could keep you from doing your best work. Focus on your main goal.
Develop Influence: Making a good impression and having a strong influence on others is essential if you want to make your dreams come true. You need to actively work at building a positive support system to accomplish your objectives in the long run.
Demonstrate Courage: Even when you’re scared, unsure, in danger, or in situations you can’t predict, show courage by voicing your opinions, doing new things, and standing up for your own and other people’s rights. Courage isn’t something you choose once in a while; it’s something you choose and decide regularly.
Seek Clarity
- Envision the future four
- Determine the feeling you are after
- Define what’s meaningful
Brendon Burchard’s three years of research show that compared with their peers, high performers have more clarity on who they are, what they want, how to get it, and what they find meaningful and fulfilling. But don’t worry. This is a skill as anything else. You don’t have clarity. You generate clarity.
Next, his research showed that high performers are very clear about the skill sets they need to develop to win in the future. But first, you have to have a vision for yourself in the future. Without those, you have nothing to dream of and strive for, no pop and zest in your daily life propelling you forward.
Take a sheet of paper and a pencil and write down what comes to your mind when asking yourself the following questions:
- How do you know when you’re doing something meaningful?
- How do you know when you’re doing something that isn’t bringing meaning to your life?
- At the end of your life, how would you know whether you had lived a meaningful life?
- What are the three skills you want and need to develop to achieve your dreams and desires?
- What do you focus on to stay clear about what matters most?
- How do you want others to perceive you? What kind of mood and tone do you want to set?
Try answering these questions. And then, evaluate your feelings and emotions weekly with The Clarity Chart by Brendon Burchard. You can download here The Clarity Chart.
Generate Energy
- Release tension, set intention
- Bring the joy
- Optimize health
People who do well tend to be very active. To keep going for a long time, you have to have a lot of energy. And you must take care of yourself to keep this energy up. Energy is not just a physical thing. As important as your physical health is, so is the health of your mind. Ask yourself the following question to see where your level of energy is:
- I have the mental stamina to be present and focused throughout the day.
- In general, I feel cheerful and optimistic.
- My mind feels slow and foggy.
- I am physically exhausted too often.
- I feel a lot of negative energy and emotions.
Energy is linked to learning things faster, being creative, and being confident. Additionally, people with higher energy levels are generally happier.
They are perceived as more trustworthy than those with low energy levels. And, of course, energy is significantly related to productivity. So it’s less about doing email better and more about doing energy better.
The good news is that with just a few simple steps, you can greatly boost your energy and overall performance.
Your energy is not a fixed state of mind, body, or heart. You don’t have to wait for happiness, inspiration, love, excitement, or any other good feeling. Instead, you can use the power of habit to make it happen whenever you want, whenever you want. Here are two powerful exercises you can do:
Release Tension, Set Intention
- Before you start your next task, sit down and close your eyes for the next minute or two.
- Repeat the word release in your mind over and over. Release all the tension in your body.
- When you feel relaxed, set intention. What energy do you want to bring in your next task? How can you do this next activity with excellence? How can you enjoy the process?
Get Fit Now
Having high-performance energy means you have to move your body. Exercise is good for your physical and mental health and is crucial to maintain high performance over a long time. Start with any physical activity 2 to 3 times a week.
After you set your habit of exercising, work on your diet. Start with what you already know you should be doing to optimize your health. If you are honest with yourself, you already know what to do.
Eat more fiber, less sugar, and less dairy fat. It’s just a matter of commitment and habit. So start today. You will be grateful in a few weeks and even more thankful in a few years.
There are a considerable number of ways to get your body moving. If you try out a few things, you’ll find things you like to do. And if you enjoy it, you’re more likely to stick at it.
Raise Necessity
- Know who needs your A game
- Affirm the why
- level up your squad
High performers hold themselves to a high standard. Have you ever noticed that you feel guilty when you’re not living your values or being the best version of yourself? That’s because you set goals but don’t follow them. Brendon Burchard names them the internal forces. That’s when you feel guilty for not following your rules or identity.
“High performers care even more about excellence and thus put more effort into their activities than others do.”
Brendon Burchard
In their studies, they found that two specific internal forces are particularly powerful for succeeding over the long term: personal standards of excellence and obsession with a topic.
High performers have a mindset of excelling, even when they do not choose the task or don’t enjoy the task. They feel a sense of responsibility doing it with 100% commitment.
High performers need to do the task with total commitment because it’s crucial for them personally in the future. When we do what aligns with our future identity, we are more driven and likely to do a great job. The next time you find yourself unmotived, it is because you have no real goal or value for the future when doing the task.
You must set yourself goals and regularly self-monitor whether you are on track or not. According to Brendon Burchard’s studies, people who self-monitor their goals are more likely to succeed two and a half times more than people who don’t.
Here are a few questions to find out your values:
- The values that are important for me to live include…
- A recent situation where I didn’t live my values was…
- The topics I find myself obsessed with include…
It’s essential to figure out what you’re really into. The best way to do this is to try many different things. And pay attention to your values to figure out what you want to do. What do you like? What do you really care about?
Other than the internal forces, you have the external forces. This is the pressure coming from outside. Healthily, a little pressure can help us advance significantly. You can ask yourself questions like:
- Who needs me on my A-game the most right now?
- The reasons each of those people need me include…
- The things that throw me off my A game are…
Having a solid network of contacts can also help you accomplish more. Spend time with successful people if you want to be more successful. Our social environment has a significant impact on us. You could also look for a coach to learn faster and better.
Increase Productivity
- Increase the outputs that matter
- Chart your fives moves
- Get insanely good at key skills
Productivity starts with goals. You tend to be more focused and engaged when you have clear and challenging goals. To maintain high productivity over the long run, it’s essential to have a good work-life balance. But this doesn’t mean you have to divide your time equally between work and free time. You might need less free time one week and more work time the next.
The important thing is to know when you need more of one or the other. And the best way to do this is to take a few minutes to reflect on your week.
On a scale of 1 to 10, how happy are you at the end of the week? What can you improve over the next week? You can find the right balance between work and other things by asking yourself these questions.
Additionally, set a timer for 50 minutes, and then take a break. Stand up, take a deep breath, walk around, and continue working. This can do wonders with your focus and productivity.
To be more productive, become more competent. First, you have to master the primary skills needed to win in your primary fields of interest. With a greater skill acquisition, there’s more progress in your career. So what are the primary skills you need to be more productive?
Develop Influence
- Teach people how to think
- Challenge people to grow
- Role model the way
Brendon Burchard describes “having influence” as the ability to shape other people’s beliefs and behaviors as you desire. Developing influence starts with asking other people what you want. Sometimes we are feared to ask other people, but studies show that people tend to say yes over three times as often as people thought they would.
“Underperformers fail to ask all the time. They let fear of judgment or rejection prevent them from speaking up, asking for help, trying to lead.”
Brendon Burchard
When they give you, show gratitude. And give them something back. High performers have a giving mindset. That makes them role models. Ask yourself the following questions:
- Who has you influenced the most in your life?
- What makes this person extraordinary? Why could this person influence you?
- What are the traits of this person?
High performers give a lot of mindshare to thinking about being a role model. In his studies, he found that with performers, they think about being a role model more often and specifically in relation to how they seek to influence others.
- Some ideas on how I can be a role model for other people…
- If, ten years from now, the five closest people to me in my life were to describe me as a role model, I would hope they said things like…
Demonstrate Courage
- Honor the struggle
- Share your truth and ambitions
- Find someone to fight for
Demonstrating courage doesn’t mean you have to save the world or do something marvelous. Sometimes, it means taking the first step toward real change in an unpredictable world. So how do you respond to these questions?
- I speak up for myself even when it’s hard
- I respond quickly to life’s challenges and emergencies rather than avoid them
- I often take action despite feeling fear
According to Brendon Burchard’s studies, high performers answer these questions with yes. They take action despite fear. But courage is not fearlessness. Courage is taking action and persisting despite that fear.
A good practice is to define what being more courageous means to you and start living that way. Here are some questions to ask yourself to kickstart this thought project:
- Something I really want to do that I haven’t shared with enough people is…
- If I were going to be more “me” in my everyday life, I would start to…
- A major dream I’m going to start telling people about and asking for some help with is…
Conclusion
By integrating high performance habits into our daily lives, we embark on a journey of personal and professional development, raising necessity for performance habits that propel extraordinary people toward success.
Harnessing mental energy, generating and sustaining energy, and maintaining positive relationships are all essential components to achieving long-term success and living a life that truly shines.
[amazon box=”1401964117″]Embracing high performance habits empowers us to seek greater success, foster personal growth, maintain focus, cultivate a giving mindset, and become high performers who avoid distractions, ultimately leading us to a purposeful and abundant life filled with boundless possibilities and accomplishments.
This is it for this High Performance Habits summary. See you soon!
Best, Fabian
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