Winning Through Failure with Brendon Burchard

0:28So, hey, guys, are you frustrated with where you're at right now?

0:33this is the admired show all right welcome back to the show everybody so by popular demand he is back again people seem to love the two of us doing these podcasts together brother um i was just telling him the one thing about brendan is that his content is his he says things i don't hear said anywhere else and you can throw any topic at this man and he has such incredible depth of content and information that it just blows me away. And I've been in this space for such a long time. And I love our podcast together because we get to go back and forth on topics that mean so much to you guys. And so this week, my guest is the tremendous, the great, the leader of the Growth Day movement, Mr.

1:14Brendan Bruchard. Welcome back to the show, brother. Thanks for having me, brother. I love these two. I feel the same way about you. I'm always learning from yours. So I say the same thing. I'm like, are you listening to Ed? So it's a joke. I know you do because I hear you say it and I'm so, so grateful for that. All right. Here's the topic this week, everybody, because we keep getting asked about this, which I just know everybody's experiencing on their way to growth and success, which is failure. How do you deal with failure or what at least looks like failure in our lives? And so I know this topic means so much to so many of you.

1:45And so I want to start out with you, Brennan. Like when someone says the word failure, just in general to you, what, what's the first thing that comes to your mind? All these years in this space, you've been asked this question so many different times, and I know you get asked it a lot too. So when someone just says, I'm experiencing failure or failure in general, first thing that you think of is what? It's probably counterintuitive, but I think, thank God you care. You know, a lot of people don't care. That you care that you want to do a good job and not fail says something about you. It says, this is an idea or a passion or a project you actually care about.

2:25You don't want it to go off the rails. You wanna be diligent and conscientious. So I always start with a compliment. I'm like, good. I wish more people actually cared. There's so many people flying by their seat of the pants, wrecking people's relationships, wrecking projects, wrecking dreams. They don't care. But that you want to do a good job, you don't want it to fail is a good thing. Now we just have to find out where in your mental construct you're messing it up. Because yes, you care, but there might be a thing that you're doing that's blocking you from progress. And that is failure to you, there's fear there.

3:05So this is obvious to everybody. This is the, of course, if there's failure, there's fear there. But almost all fear is just poor management of our mind. and so my my fear of failing preventing me from doing something well you're just managing your mind wrong you're worried you're gonna ruin everything you're worried you're not gonna be able to handle it so what happens for failure instead of thinking about it as a process of iteration and getting better people identify they personify they go oh i'm a failure and if i do this thing, it will ruin me or I won't be able to handle it. So first, caring about success is important.

3:49But if you wreck that success and progress because you keep telling yourself, I'm going to fail, or if this thing fails, I'm ruined, it's in the ruin idea. I'll be ruined. They'll reject me. Everything will fall apart. That fear of that type of failure is what prevents most people from living lives that are maxed out and great. You're so right. And the other thing, I just did a podcast on the inverse of this, where I was talking about mental rehearsal and visualization. Yet most people do it very, very well. They just mentally rehearse the failure piece because if they've run this video over and over in their mind about it not working or what people are going to say about them and they live in the future and they worry about things that have not yet happened yet they project and create that future by mentally rehearsing it over and over again and in our lives our mind is going to move towards what it's most familiar with because it's trying to conserve energy it's trying to not think and so if you're mentally rehearsing these fears to your point and you're projecting that into the future you will move towards it i was just um i just interviewed this couple that he's the biggest big wave surfer in the world he surfed a hundred foot wave.

5:01Right. And he was saying that he said, I said, what's the biggest thing you've got to do before you go surf these? I mean, I wouldn't surf an eight foot wave, which is still huge, right? 80, 90, a hundred feet. And he says, well, the biggest thing is I've got to get my mind right. I can't think about crashing. I can't think because the minute I begin to think about it, I move towards it and I end up having these catastrophic crashes. And in my case, it'll take my life. And I was telling him, it's interesting you say that because I used to be a part of a group that sponsored a NASCAR driver, Carl Edwards.

5:32And I asked Carl, I said, what's the thing about racing that most people don't know? He said, really two things. One is never look at the wall. I said, why do you never look at the wall? Because he goes, even if you're the most skilled driver in the world, when you look at the wall, you begin to drift towards it unconsciously. That's that you're hitting. And I said, what's the thing about driving that takes the most guts? He said, driving through the smoke. I said, what do you mean by driving through the smoke. And I know I've shared this with you before, but he goes, there's a crash in front of you, right?

5:59It could be a six car pileup on the other side of that. And you don't know, you've got to do 150 miles an hour through that smoke and you don't know what's on the other side of that smoke. And you could be going head on 150 miles an hour into the back of a car that's already parked there crashed. And he said, the last thing you want to be thinking about is hitting that car. I can't think about it because I don't know what's on the other side of it. So I think positively about what's going to happen. And this may seem silly to everybody, but so many times in our lives, we look at the wall, we think about the wave crashing and we wonder when it happens, why it happened because of this fear thing we've projected.

6:32And we're afraid to drive through the smoke because we don't know what's on the other side. But the truth is, here's what he said to me. He goes, here's what's crazy. You know, what's on the other side of that smoke also? The finish line, the checkered flag, the W, the win, the trophy, the championship. And so in your life. What's on the other side of that smoke is all your dreams. It's all the things that you want. You'll be willing to drive through some things that you can't control. I think sometimes people who are fearful and worry about failure are ironically like control freaks thinking everything in their life.

7:06So that's number one. I totally agree with you. Second thing, and I'll throw this back at you, is I think to some extent you have to reframe what a loss seems to be for you. Like, no, I played baseball, as you know, and you know, if you're a really good hitter in baseball, you're successful three out of 10 times, you fail seven out of 10. And so a great hitter, hall of fame, in this day and age, you were hundreds of millions of dollars. If you could just succeed three out of 10 times. And one of the things that taught me something, I was a leadoff hitter. And so one of my jobs, That means you bat first.

7:43One of my jobs, I thought as a leadoff hitter, was to see a lot of pitches in the first at bat from the pitcher, meaning I would never get the first pitch. Other people could do that in the lineup. But in my case, I needed to see his fastball. I needed to see the break on his curveball if I could. Why? Because although I may not get a hit in that at bat, I'm getting a lot of information. I'm learning a great deal that'll prepare me for the next at bat. And so maybe that first at bat, you saw me look at two or three pitches and maybe I ended up flying out to left field. It looked like a failure on the surface because I didn't get the outcome I wanted, which was the hit.

8:21But man, I got a lot of information. I downloaded a bunch of data. I learned a ton from that at bat. And so it really wasn't a failure because I actually learned a great deal and I grew from it. The heartbreaking thing from so many people is they get nothing from their failures. So how do you, this failure you think you've experienced, you're going to get nothing for all the effort. And then you didn't close the sale. You didn't get the deal. You didn't get the date and you're going to get nothing out of it. That's insane. The people that you know that have won in their lives, it's because they got things from their failures.

8:57Like get something for your pain, get the lesson, get the emotion, get the memory, get the breakthrough. Maybe there's some other correlated win you get from that. So to me, it's like if your model as a human is I'm a learner, I'm going to learn and I'm going to grow. I'm not saying it's not a failure. If you miss a sale, that's not good. When you ground out, that's not. You'd rather get a hit. But I'm going to get something for that at bat is my point. Does that make sense to you? And how do you? Yeah, I frame exactly the same thing because I think you really illustrated a phrase I'll often say with my high performance clients.

9:31I'll say something like this. If you do failure right, you experience science, right? It's trial and error. You're learning and failure doesn't scare you. You know it to anticipate it. You actually want it to happen because iteration requires failure. Science requires hypothesis, testing, learning. And so if you're failing forward and you're learning, you're doing it right. If you're doing it wrong, you're not getting science, you're getting shame. That's the tell. Failure is fine. Everyone here, your audience is not basic. They understand failure is part of life. They feel it. They experience it.

10:13I would argue most people don't have enough failure in their life, period. They're not failing forward. They're so scared of failure, they're actually not failing. And if they do try something and it doesn't go well, instead of getting the lesson, they shame themselves and they shut down. Because there's two ways to go after this failure thing. One is I actually want to try forward, right? Every time at bat, I'm going to miss, you know, seven out of 10. I might hit those three and I'll learn that distinction as you're sharing. So that's science. Doing failure well is the scientific process. Doing it bad bad is shaming ourselves and shutting down and no longer trying.

10:56And so I want to tell people, it's very rare that you have to say, I can't have failure in my life, right? That big wave surfer, how many waves did he crash? And he didn't say that was a failure today. That was the worst day today. He probably smiled as he paddled to the shore, exhausted and wiped out and said, oh, I'm getting good. His mess, his wreck, his challenge, that time he got pulled underwater, he didn't consider that a total failure. Now, failure can be something that's physical, like you can be hurt. But for most people, the real failure they're considering is how they're going to perceive themselves or others.

11:41Most fear of failure is perception. I'm not going to like myself if I fail or they're going to judge me. And either way, you're living a pretty limited life. If your only concern is if I try this, will I shame myself or other people make fun of me? That means you're living well, well, well, well below your potential. By the way, I totally agree with you on that. I want to ask you about that. It's an interesting concept. This gets to a real nuance in personal development. So like with a lot of the golfers, I work with, you're exactly right. It's projection. And what are people going to think about me?

12:17So even with like, take a professional golfer when I'm working with them and they've got fear over a putt, right? They've got this putt they've got to make to win a tournament and their heart rate goes up. They've got a lot of fear. And I'll ask them like, are you, what are you actually afraid of here? Are you afraid the ball is not going to go in the hole? Is that the entire fear? Let's dig a little bit deeper. And what you'll find out is, well, that's part of it, but it's more than that. It's that the, I didn't make the putt. The ball didn't get into the hole. Like I wanted it to, to win the hole, to win the tournament.

12:48And then if I go a little bit deeper, okay, so then what? So then you didn't win the tournament. So you're dead. No. So what is, well, and as you dig deeper, actually the fear they're experiencing over a putt is the, the future event that hasn't yet happened. Cause it's going to happen in five seconds living in the future. Not the moment. The fear is I missed this putt. It's on national television. I lose the tournament. It's not even any of that. What are people going to say? Right. I mean, the putt, what are people going to think? Then they're going to watch the video and play it over and over again.

13:22They're worried. Someone's going to say, oh, there is he choked. Someone's going to say, he choked. That's right. That they choked. That's exactly what it is. In other words, they move towards the wall, but the wall is almost always what you said. It's not the failure itself. It's what are people going to think or say about me if I fail? I want you to have goals to begin a golf tournament, which is to win the tournament. But when you're over the putt, I want you to separate from your outcome. And I just want you to execute in the moment. In other words, it's interesting. There's a difference between having a goal, which is to win the tournament.

13:57To me, there's a subtle difference. And the outcome, you're forcing this pressure on this outcome, which creates this anxiety, which is what's actually causing you to miss the putt because you're so outcome focused. So this is the question for you. This is a really hard question. I've always wanted to ask you this because I don't know if there's a wrong answer. How do you feel about that? So like our industry talks a lot about goal setting, goals, goals, goals. But then like one of my mentors, Wayne Dyer, was all about separate from the outcome. It's not a nuance it in when I'm working with athletes or business people.

14:31I want them to have goals. But when you get so outcome, like it's got to go this way, that creates that pressure, that fear that we then project. So I'm curious your thoughts about that nuance, or do you not see it differently? Should have goals and outcomes are the same thing, period. I love that question. Love that question. Goals and outcomes and clear visions of how you want it to go and the desire for winning. That's called the setup. That's what you do before the fight. That's what you do before the game. That's what you do the morning of the tournament. I want to win this tournament. I can visualize it.

15:11I can see it. I can experience it. And you use it as a tool to develop a state of will. Okay, now I'm in a state of will. I'm willing to win. I'm going to win. I'm in a good place. You use the goal and the outcome that you desire as a thing to fire you up, to get you focused, to drop you in. However, in motion, when you're on stage, when you're on the tee box, when you're in the fight, we need you to be in two modes now. We need you to be in automation mode. And that is, you've practiced this a million times. Let that be automated, right? Don't use your mind to project till the end of the tournament.

15:55Use your body and your flow to make the putt. So in the moment, we just need full presence and automation. We need habit to take over. We need our flow, like full presence, the power of full presence now, not projection. So projection comes in the setup, in the getting ready, in the doing thing. But once you're over that putt, just need your putt, man. I don't need you to think about tomorrow. I don't need you to think about the hot dogs at the end. I don't need you to think about it. I just need you to execute the putt. So I think you're doing it right. Projection happens at the beginning, then presence in the motion.

16:37Yeah. And by the way, everybody, you need to think about your industry. That's the sales presentation. You have a goal that morning to get ready, give your best, close the sale, make the deal happen. But in the moment of execution, presenting, separate from outcome and be present and just in that automation mode. This helps restrict that thing that Brendan started, which is the fear of failure. And then we move in towards the wall. Okay. Next question for you. We don't have a lot of time on this stuff today. By the way, already incredible dialogue. Love it. But this idea of, and I've wrestled with this too.

17:09So someone gets knocked down, relationship breaks up, business fails. Maybe none of that. Maybe they just missed three sales in a row, right? They're on a down street. This idea of you get knocked down, get up, right back up. What are your, I've heard you talk about this before. So I want you to talk about it. What is your philosophy about this? You know, you get knocked down, you got to get back up. We know that, but what are your overall, what's your, what's your advice to somebody who's got knocked down? Should they get back up? Should there be a period of rest and evaluation? What are your thoughts on that?

17:43I'll kind of kick in. I'll add to it. What do you think about that? Cause that's the idea of failure just happened. Get up, get back on the horse. Right. Do you believe that? Uh, I think the most thing, the most important thing to do is to get a hold of your state. Right. And you talk a lot about this. Tony talks a lot about this. You got to get recenter your breath and your mind. Like the recentering, I like to use the word recalibrating. So I just need to recalibrate. And that almost always starts like, I need, I just got like, if I literally got knocked down, I need to get my bearings. I need to take a breath in.

18:18I need to feel my feet beneath me. And what happens sometimes, especially, I know you work with fighters too, when they get up, they've been taught so many times to just jump right back in without taking recalibration to feel their feet beneath them first. We got to get some weight on the legs, as we call it when I teach them. It's like, hey, I need some weight on the legs because you're kind of like wobbly. Like I need some weight on the legs. I need to just feel the mat. I need to feel where you're at. So I think that recalibration back into the body is really important. Same thing if you had that sales call and it sucked and now you feel that anxiety at the end because you're not going to make quota.

18:54You feel that anxiety because you didn't get the deal. You feel that angered yourself because you didn't do a good job. Whoa, man, you better breathe that out. You'd better recenter yourself, then re-engage. So it's recalibrate, then re-engage. And that recalibration can be short and swift, but recalibrating means two things for me. One, it's bodily or what we call state. And the second one is to reassert myself confidently. So it's recalibrate and then reassert confidently. So if I'm in the ring, I'm going to reassert my opponent confidently because if they see me questioning myself, it's not going to be a good situation.

19:39Also in real life on that sales call, okay, that next, if you let your confidence go down every time you get knocked down, you just don't even have the will to fight. You don't have the belief in yourself. So reasserting yourself, I always tell people, you want to win, you have to be assertive. And when you fail a little bit, you question yourself, you shame yourself, can I really do this? And you stop being as assertive as you need to be to win the deal, to make the next call, to finish the next chapter, to take on the opponent. I totally agree with you on that. By and large, here's my philosophy about it.

20:15By and large, most people stay laying down too long when they get knocked down. That's most human beings. They lay and wallow in it too long. You got to get up. Okay. You've been knocked down. You got to get up. Having said that. So that's most people. Okay. You better get up. Having said that, like in boxing, you get a 10 count for a reason when you get knocked out. That's right. I see too many boxers. They get knocked down, they get back up, and they're still disoriented. They've lost their confidence. They've lost their bearings. They're not in their body, right? And you're 100 % right about that.

20:46You get a 10 count for a reason. You can utilize it. So what I would say to most people listening to this as the sun's shining through here so we won't go much longer is that use your 10 count. Now, don't stay down too long. Most of you have been down too long. You need to get up. Let me say it to you again if you've been knocked down. You need to get up right now. Some of you, though, you're not doing that recalibration. And what you haven't done is you got knocked down. You missed the sales call. You missed the meeting. You've not done any evaluation as to why. You've not got any of the juice out.

21:16You didn't get any of the learning, any of the information. The relationship didn't work out. Take a second. Why? What part of it do you own? This isn't the first relationship that didn't work out for you. Why aren't they working out? What are the things that you need to change? Are you picking the wrong person? So some evaluation, there's a healthy count in there. It's not lay down for 60 because then you're knocked out. You get 10 for a reason. So calibrate that. But for most people, it's get up sooner. But when you get up, as you've said, get the information, get something for your failure.

21:45All right. Last thing, because the sun's pouring through my, my, uh. I love seeing it though. What a dream location you're at right now. So this is great. All right. Last question. So our friend Jamie Kern Lima says this rejection is God's protection. Other people have said something similar to that where, listen, it's part of a divine plan. And I just think it's one thing to have some perspective for most of us. If we look back on our lives, most of the things that we thought were failures and hindsight, you know, if it were 2020, we look back and go, that kind of helped them for a reason. I'll give you an example.

22:20Like we were talking about you and I were talking, which we won't cover now, but like what this place here is costing me and stuff. And you're like, how'd you do that? You know? And the truth is it comes from failure. So out of college, I had two sales jobs I flunked right out of. One, I just couldn't close any sales. I wasn't any good at it. I got fired. The second one, I quit in a day because I got rejected so badly after that failure. It's a really good example of getting up to. So I got terminated from a sales job. I was in copier sales. I was terrible at it. They eventually let me go. I hustled.

22:50I got something right away. I did not learn anything from it. I didn't get any lessons from it. I had ruined my self-confidence. I go through their whole sales training program. true story, brother. I walk in the first day. They put me out in the field selling. I got rejected really bad that morning. I quit at lunch. So huge failures. I ended up living back at home with my mom and dad, complete failure. That's how I started out in business. And my dad, as many of you know, got me a job at an orphanage. And that orphanage, even though it seemed like a huge setback, I was trying to make hundreds of thousands of dollars.

23:24Now I'm making back in the day, eight bucks an hour when it was minimum wage. And I thought, man, I failed in my life, but that positioning in my life, that time changed me. I've gone always and contributing and making a difference and coaching people and loving on people. I became so much less self-centered and money oriented. I became very service oriented. And then I found the businesses I went into at that time. I approached them very differently than I would have had. I not had those setbacks, not had those lessons. And I really believe I wouldn't be where I am today had either one of those sales jobs worked out and I not been humbled and had to go work for eight bucks an hour, which to this day is one of the two or three greatest blessings of my life was working with those boys.

24:07And so in that sense, those rejections were protection for me and it did change my life and it was part of a bigger plan, I think. So sometimes things that look catastrophic and horrible now are really a setup for something better in the future. I know you agree with that, but I wanted you to finish talking about it. Yeah. I feel like so many of our failures were the perfect ingredients of humility and hunger that we needed at that stage of our life. That's where I always see the gift that someone has when they're still growing and serving and giving and leading. They can tell you three or four times in their life when they got really humbled and they wouldn't say necessarily it was, they wouldn't even always say it's a failure, a failure like it was awful, they'll be like, yeah, man, I got humbled by that wave.