498: How to Rise Above Discouragement and Help Others

[INTRODUCTION]

Hal Elrod: Hello and welcome to the Achieve Your Goals podcast. This is your host, Hal Elrod. And today we are talking about how to rise above discouragement and lead others. I talk in-depth today about how we are all leaders because a leader is someone that impacts someone else positively or negatively. You can be a terrible leader and hurt the people you’re leading. But as human beings who have other human beings that we interact with every day, we are leading those people. And of course, to be an effective leader, you have to lead yourself first. And right now, we are all dealing with a world that is collectively discouraged and afraid and unsure about the future and the economy and government. And there are so many things right now that are out of our control. And of course, we’ve got to come back to what can we control. We can control ourselves. Today’s podcast was inspired by a video, as I will explain here in the opening minutes of the podcast that Brendon Burchard posted recently and it inspired me to record my perspective on a lot of what Brendon shared. And I do encourage you in the podcast to go watch Brendon’s video as well. So, how to rise above discouragement and lead others to do the same.

Before we dive in today, and by the way, today I was in flow. So, this is one of those episodes, right? Ended it and I was like, or even during it, I’m like, “Wow. This is just coming through me.” So, I really hope it lands for you the way I felt as it was coming through me that it is going to land for you. So, I feel good about it. I hope you do too. Before we dive in, I just want to take a minute to thank our sponsor, Organifi. And I want to focus on sleep right now because there are a handful of supplements that Organifi makes that are specific to sleep. The only one I’ve talked about really is Organifi Essential Magnesium. Magnesium has natural calming properties that can help manage and mitigate stress when overstimulated and promote relaxation, which can contribute to falling asleep more easily. I take Organifi Magnesium every single night. However, there are four other products from Organifi that all contribute to sleep. One is collagen. Consuming protein in the evening can help to maintain stable blood sugar levels and reduces the likelihood of drastic blood sugar fluctuations during the night, which can lead to interrupted sleep and frequent waking up. My wife loves the Organifi Collagen.

They also have Organifi Gold, which is like a nighttime tea. There’s a turmeric version and a chocolate version that has adaptogenic benefits from Reishi mushrooms for relaxation, anti-inflammatory, and anti-anxiety effects from turmeric, and stress-reducing aid from lemon balm, which is literally known as the calming herb. So, Gold or their chocolate version is a nighttime ritual that could be a secret to your success slumbering. They also have their Liver Reset because liver issues can impact sleep. It’s the organ that plays a role in blood sugar regulation. And Organifi’s Green Juice is packed with 600 milligrams of ashwagandha to support cortisol balance throughout the day. So, if you want help with your sleep, I encourage you to head over to Organifi.com/Hal. Check out their Magnesium, their Collagen, their Gold, their Liver Reset, and their Green Juice. And you might not be able to afford all of those or might not be in the cards to get them all but I would encourage you to try at least one, two, or a few of those products to help you utilize superfoods for a more restful sleep. By the way, that’s Organifi.com/Hal and then I almost forgot, use the discount code “HAL” and you’ll get 20% off your entire order as a listener of the Achieve Your Goals podcast.

All right, goal achievers, let’s dive in. We all deal with discouragement from time to time. Sometimes that time feels like it’s more often than not. And I’m going to share with you Brendon Burchard’s best advice and my best advice. You get to hear from both of us today if you will. It’s all from me but I’m channeling my Brendon Burchard today, how to rise above discouragement and lead others. Here you go.

[EPISODE]

Hal Elrod: Hello, friends, goal achievers, members of the Miracle Morning community, welcome to the podcast today. It’s Hal Elrod. And, man, I’m feeling good. I’m feeling really good. And that hasn’t been the case as I’ve mentioned on a few podcasts recently that I’ve been a little overwhelmed and stressed out with a lot on my plate, as you can probably relate to. And I’ve done some podcasts from that place of, “Hey I’ve been overwhelmed. I’m sure you are too. Here’s what I’m doing to work through it.” And this morning I came across a video from Brendon Burchard. You may know Brendon. He is the founder of High Performance Academy. He’s a New York Times bestselling author of many books. He was featured in The Miracle Morning documentary. He’s in the movie and he’s somebody that I wouldn’t call him a friend. We don’t know each other well but he’s been a mentor to me because back in the day, I don’t know, maybe ten years ago, a long time ago, I used to go to his live events and I went to his High Performance Academy. What else? I went to his Millionaire Messenger Mastermind, I think. There’s a bunch of events that I went to of his, and I’ve always been a fan and I’ve always learned a lot.

Again, some of our greatest mentors we might have never even met. I mean, I’ve met Brendon. I’ve spent time with him. We drank wine together. But a lot of our mentors come through a book or a podcast, right? Meaning you don’t have to actually engage with a person back and forth for them to be a mentor. To me, a mentor is anyone that offers guidance for us that is a leader in some way that helps us. And again, whether it’s through a book that they wrote or a video they recorded, which that’s actually what inspired today’s podcast, is this video that I watched on YouTube of Brendon’s. I’m actually going to tell you the video. I’m going to link it in the show notes. I highly recommend you go watch the video because you’re going to hear my interpretation and my perspective on what he shared. The video, by the way, is called Feel the Day to Win the Day. So, it’s Brendon Burchard and I’ll put it in the show notes but if you’re listening to this and you’re not going to click the show notes, you’re on your Apple Podcasts or whatever, you can just go to YouTube and type in “Feel the Day to Win the Day” and it’s on Brendon’s YouTube channel.

So, with that said, Brendon talked about I think one of the first things that he said in the video, and I don’t know if this is word for word because these are my notes, but he said leaders. And when someone says leader to me, I think about Robin Sharma’s book, The Leader With No Title, meaning not everyone identifies as a leader, but I believe that every human being on the planet is a leader. I’ve done podcasts on this before, right? Because a leader is someone that impacts another person whether they want to or not. So, whether you want to or not, you’re impacting the people in your life by how you show up, your mindset, your energy, whether you’re pessimistic or optimistic. You are a leader because you are impacting other people. And I think that’s something not to take lightly. We really have to consider that, “Wow, I am a leader. I’m leading other people.” I’m leading my spouse. I’m leading my family. And again, you can swap the word leading with impacting. I’m impacting my spouse, I’m impacting my family, I’m impacting my colleagues, my coworkers, etcetera. Therefore, you are leading them. You are a leader.

And so, what Brendon said is that he said, “Leaders,” he was addressing the audience, this was a speech he was giving, “Leaders, your number one job in the world right now is to deal with the discouragement in this world and be the power plant that transforms that negativity into possibility.” Again, those are my notes. They may not be word for word, but it really resonated with me. That’s our job as a leader, as a mom, as a dad, as a human being. There’s so much discouragement in the world right now. And we’re all, you know, it’s not like we’re immune from that discouragement, which many of us are facing as well. But our job as parents, friends, human beings is to deal with the discouragement in this world by being the power plant that transforms the negativity, the pessimism into optimism, into possibility. And what Brendon said is he said, “When people are drowning in pools of pessimism, it takes a leader to pull them up, show them some optimism and what’s possible.” And one of the things that he talked about and it relates to that first quote or lesson that I shared, which is that as a leader, your number one job in the world right now is to deal with discouragement and be the power plant that transforms that negativity into possibility. He talked about one of the most important lessons he ever learned or metaphors that he heard was about the power plant.

I remember him teaching this almost a decade ago when I was in a live audience and Brendon said, “The power plant doesn’t have energy. It generates energy.” And I’ve shared that lesson before in the context of physical energy. Right? Meaning if you’re laying around on the couch complaining about having enough energy, energy doesn’t just come pick you up off the couch and it doesn’t just show up. You have to generate it. And a very simple, actionable example that you can model, I’ve been doing this every day. I mean, I’ve done this for a long time, but I had forgotten about how powerful it was and then recently I just started doing this again, which is just 60 seconds of jumping jacks first thing in the morning. So, if you’re doing your SAVERS in your Miracle Morning, you’re doing your SAVERS, put the E at the front. Now, I still work out in the morning. I lift weights or bike on an indoor exercise bike five days a week. So, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, I lift weights. Tuesday, Thursday, I do an indoor exercise bike. And I mean, it’s a quick this bike that I got recently, it’s called the CAROL exercise bike and it’s like you can do as short as like an eight-minute workout. So, often the Tuesday, Thursday workouts are like anywhere from 8 to 30 minutes but a lot of times I just do a really quick 8 minutes, get the heart rate up, get the legs pumping.

But anyway, back to this strategy of generating energy is those 60 seconds of jumping jacks. It’s amazing how my level of not just physical energy, but even maybe even more beneficial, more so is the mental energy, right? Like I’m mentally fatigued and my brain isn’t on, I’m waiting for my CURED Nutrition Rise supplement that I take in the morning for focus that takes, I don’t know how long, 30 minutes to kick in or whatever. So, immediately, I don’t want to wait those 30 minutes. I do 60 seconds of jumping jacks, and sometimes I’ll do less. In fact, this morning, I’m 44 years old, I just hit 44 jumping jacks. I don’t know how long it took me, 30 seconds, 60 seconds. I don’t know. I just counted to 44. You can do your age in jumping jacks, if that’s more fun for you, which is actually ironic because you’re like, “Wait. So, the older I get, the more jumping jacks I have to do?” Yes, yes, yes. If you’re 70, do 70 jumping jacks. But anyway, do whatever you can do. The point is to Brendon’s the lesson that he’s taught for so long about the power plant doesn’t have energy, it generates energy is that as a human being, you have to take responsibility for generating whatever it is that you want in your life. If you want more physical and mental energy, you’ve got to generate it. Those 60 seconds of jumping jacks or those 44 jumping jacks, right? That’s it. I mean, in less than a minute you generate an abundance of physical, mental, and even emotional energy. You feel better, you think clearer, you have more physical energy in less than a minute and so you can generate that energy.

And as Brendon talked about, if you’re feeling discouraged the world is discouraged, you as a leader, as a parent, as a friend, as a colleague, as a CEO, whatever, whoever. You’re a human being, period. You’re a leader. You affect other people. You impact other people. You have a responsibility to generate the positivity, the optimism, the energy, the vibrance, whatever it is that you feel you need and the people around you that you are leading by simply how you’re living your life and how you’re showing up for them. We all have a responsibility to generate the things, the energy, the attributes, the attitudes that will serve the moment, that will serve our fellow human beings that we engage with on an everyday basis. Another thing he talked about that Brendon talked about was taking frequent breaks and he talked about that I think it was him and his team that conducted the most extensive study on high performance. So, they studied I don’t know how many thousands of high performers in all different industries to look for what were the common themes. And he wrote a book called – what was it called? High Performance, something, I think. I’m drawing a blank. I’ve read it. I can picture it. It’s gray with yellow writing.

But anyway, I digress. But in that study, he said that high performers on average take a break every 52 minutes. Every 52 minutes they take a break from their work. And I’ll tell you, I had this today. So, I’m working on the Miracle Morning book launch today. I was outlining, designing, not designing, but outlining the website for the we’re doing this huge preorder campaign where the three months leading up to the actual release date of the book. The release date of the book is December 12th, but starting around September 12-ish, give or take a week, depending on when everything’s ready, we’re going to have these preorder bonuses where people can get up to $15,000 in bonuses like not made up values, but legitimate real values and awesome bonuses. We’re doing a live Miracle Year event. We’re giving away guided… Anyway, I don’t want to spoil it, but a whole bunch of stuff. So, today I was working on that and like after I wasn’t timing it 50 minutes, I probably should have been, but essentially my brain after a while it’s like you’re looking at the screen, the computer screen, and it’s like I’m just like I’m getting stuck. I’m getting writer’s block. So, I got up, I went and stood in front of my mirror. I don’t know why. I find it helps to see my reflection maybe because I can smile at myself and I can generate positive emotions by generating positive facial expressions.

But I’m looking in the mirror and I did 44 more jumping jacks. I’ve already done 44 earlier. I had already worked out this morning. But all of the SAVERS, by the way, here’s a little tangent/bonus lesson is the SAVERS doing them first thing in the morning puts you in a peak physical, mental, emotional, and spiritual state to start your day. That’s crucial. But you can pull the SAVERS out of your pocket any time of day. If you need to generate energy, do those jumping jacks. If you need to calm your mind, pull out your Miracle Morning app and do a guided SAVERS track or just sit in silence for 60 seconds, do a short meditation. You know, visually, I can get any of the SAVERS. In fact, I’ve got these books that I’m rereading. I’m always rereading books. Interestingly enough, I’m rereading The Surrender Experiment. I’ve mentioned that a few times. And then I also had just an epiphany the other day around like self-esteem, if you will, and just talking to myself about like, “Hal, you’re an amazing human being.” I write myself these notes, right? And I’m like, “You’re an amazing human being. Look at the attributes. Look at what you’ve overcome and accomplished.” And I encourage you to do the same. Look at what you’ve overcome and accomplished. I’m talking to you listening right now.

But I wrote myself this really positive letter of encouragement like, “Hal, look at all you’ve overcome and accomplished,” and I listed some of the things out. I’m like, “What does that say about you?” Like, you’re an extraordinary human being. And again, this isn’t me making about me. Again, this is true for you. You too have overcome many things in your life. You’re an extraordinary human being. And then I want to say, “And, Hal, look at the attributes the positive character built, you know, the attributes you embody, like loving people unconditionally and maintaining impeccable integrity.” These were things that I didn’t always do but I read Don Miguel Ruiz’s The Four Agreements, and I learned about being impeccable with your word. And then I wrote that in my affirmations and I committed to it, and now I live it, right? So, anyway, the point is I wrote myself this letter of encouragement, and I hand-wrote it in my journal. I tore out the page. By the way, bonus tip for you all. Recently, I realized because I often write in these journals and then there’s dozens and dozens and hundreds of pages. I don’t know where I wrote notes, and I often lose them. And I think, man, I’m not getting a lot of value. So, I recently went, “There’s got to be journals that have perforated pages, journals with perforated pages so that I can easily tear out a page because I journal at night often as well.

For whatever reason, a lot of my breakthroughs come at night as I’m falling asleep. So, I journal at night but I would journal and I’d have this long-running journal and I wouldn’t know where I wrote certain things on which page. So, what I started doing is I ordered these journals on Amazon. I forgot the name, but you just type in “perforated journal” and they were inexpensive. And now, whatever comes to me at night I write it out and then I tear it out and I set it on top of the journal with my pin on it. And then the next morning, I’m sure to grab that page and I put it in my affirmations. I take action on it. I put things in my schedule, just depending on how I can execute, and really get the maximum amount of value from whatever journal entry I wrote. So, back to the letter I wrote myself as a journal entry one night, this was like three nights ago, I tore it out and I was like, “Okay. This isn’t a journal entry. Like, this is something I need to read every night. It’s really empowering to remind myself of who I really am.” You know, three very positive lens versus I’m fallen short here and I’m not getting all this done. We can easily get into negative thinking.

And so, I combined. So, that letter to myself now sits on my nightstand. I’ve been reading it every night as part of my miracle evening before bed. And then there’s these two pages in the miracle or, sorry, not the miracle. There’s two pages in The Surrender Experiment. And those two pages, I tagged, I have a bookmark in there, and I have this little sequence now and I read… I’m trying to think of which order I’ve been doing. I’ve done back and forth, I guess, so I’ll read those two pages that basically remind you that you are not the voice in your head, right, that you can hear the voice and you can distance yourself and go, “Yep, thanks for your opinion. Thanks for your negativity,” if that’s what you’re getting from that voice, “but I’m actually just going to go to sleep now and you do your thing, voice, like I am not you. I am this. I am consciousness.” We are pure consciousness, conscious awareness. The voice in our head is part of our subconscious, right? It’s not who we actually are. If I say to myself, “I’m an idiot,” it doesn’t mean I’m an idiot. It’s just that damn voice that’s non-stop talking in our heads.

And so, there’s these two pages that he really eloquently, this is the book, The Surrender Experiment, but he eloquently and succinctly just summed up like, “Hey, you don’t need to listen to that voice and you are pure consciousness.” And I forgot all the other things he said in there, but in those two pages, it was really important. So, for the last three or four days, every night I continue reading The Surrender Experiment, like I’ll read the next chapter. And again, I’m rereading everything I’ve already underlined, so it’s very low. Like, I don’t have to process a lot of new information. I’m just rereading things I’ve already underlined and deemed important and worthy enough to revisit at some point. So, I reread my underlines in a chapter in The Surrender Experiment to learn something new and then I go back. I reread those two pages that I bookmarked, and then I pull out that letter to myself, which is really an affirmation. Remember an affirmation in its simplest form is simply a reminder of something that you deem important enough to remember that you want to condition it within your subconscious. You want to embed it within your conscious mind so that it becomes part of who you are. You can access it. And that’s where repetition is crucial.

And so, for me, I read, again, there’s my little sequence right now. I read a little bit of The Surrender Experiment that I’m rereading. I then go back and read those two pages so that they’re one of the last things that I read because they really set me up for that blissful bedtime. And then I read that letter I wrote to myself. It’s short. It’s like three little paragraphs, but it reminds me of like my highest truth, who I really am in terms of the best version of myself. And this is true for all of us. You have two pages that you can focus on at any given time. Remember that, two pages. One lists everything you have to feel bad about and one lists everything that reminds you of who you truly are that makes you feel great, at peace, happy, joyful, grateful. Both pages are equally realistic, but which page you focus on determines your quality of life, your mental and emotional well-being. Whether or not you can’t sleep because you’re stressed out or you can sleep because you’re at peace, you get to choose. So, where was I that I shared that with you? I think that was a very important, hopefully, very useful tangent for you.

So, back to the second thing Brendon was talking about was taking frequent breaks and taking a break every 52 minutes. And so, I just watched the movie Gran Turismo. If you haven’t seen that, it was a… Like a movie has to be really good and obviously that’s always subjective but for me, I don’t like watching movies just to watch them. I really like to watch a good movie and usually, I’ll lose my attention if it’s not. But anyway, the point is Gran Turismo, which is it’s a racecar movie. And I’m also not a fan of racecar movies, but it was fantastic. Anyway, but Brendon talked about how like race cars take pit stops so they don’t go nonstop for the entire length of the race. In order to perform at their best, they pull over into the pit even though the other cars are passing them by during those moments that they’re pulled over into the pits for the pit stop. But for the pit stop, they’re changing, they’re getting new tires, they’re refueling, they’re resting and resetting. They’re making the machine perform at its best. And that’s what we need. So, I mentioned to you today as I was working on the website for the preorder campaign for the new book launch, I would stop every 50 minutes or so and I would do 44 jumping jacks or I would go outside or I would do a deep breathing exercise. This was on for like three hours from 9 to noon.

But it’s amazing how when you take those breaks and you do the jumping jacks or you do the deep breathing or you do a little meditation or you do one of the SAVERS and then you cut your reader affirmations and then you come back. And after you’ve reset, you’re way more effective. Your thinking is far clearer. So, taking those frequent breaks is crucial. Those are the two biggest lessons. He also talked about keeping things in perspective, but I think that’s really what we’re talking about during this whole episode, right, is keeping things in perspective, maintaining a positive perspective through optimism. And remember, as a leader, I agree with Brendon, our number one job in the world right now is to deal with the discouragement that billions of people are facing, including us. But you can’t control other people. You can only control yourself. And we need to be the power plant that transforms that negativity into positivity, into possibility, that pessimism into optimism. People are drowning in these pools of pessimism. We got to pull them up and speak life into them. So, it makes me think about being a lighthouse. No matter whether it’s a beautiful sunny day or whether it’s a cloudy, stormy, dark day or night, the lighthouse is always shining. The power plant is always generating energy. And so, be that lighthouse. Be that power plant. Be that leader for yourself and others.

And last thing, famous last words. You say last thing and there’s usually like three or four more things but I think it’s the last thing. Last week, we did an episode on what to do when you feel like giving up. And I talked about it’s crucial that every day you optimize your mental and emotional state. That’s crucial. That’s also how you generate energy. So, you generate possibility and optimism by optimizing your mental and emotional state. But the other piece that we talked about last week, when you feel like giving up, number one, keep going. Number two, optimize your mental and emotional state. And number three, focus on serving others. Remember, in case you didn’t hear last week’s episode or to give you this as a reminder, I learned this from one of my mentors when I was probably 20 years old. Get off self and get on purpose. Meaning when you’re feeling depressed and anxious and scared and upset, you’re typically focusing inward in a negative way. You’re focusing, you’re obsessing about yourself. “Oh, I’m scared. What if I can’t do it? Oh, my gosh, you have so much to do. I’m not good enough. I’m not worthy, I’m not capable. I’m stressed out, I’m overwhelmed. I’m, you know, this.” It’s me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, me, right? And that perpetuates the anxiety and the stress that we feel.

But I gave the example last week that if you’re sitting on the couch and you’re obsessing over yourself and you’re feeling depressed and you’re feeling anxious and, I’m sorry, I don’t mean to use a tone that, what’s the word I’m looking for, that that makes that not sound serious or demeans that. But when we’re feeling that way, and if all of a sudden a loved one in the other room shouts out for help, “Oh, my gosh, Come here. I need your help. Hurry,” in that instant that we shift our focus from self to purpose, our purpose being running into the other room, seeing what they need, helping somebody we love and care about, in the instant that they shout for our help and our focus shifts from self to purpose, our anxiety goes away. Our depression goes away. Now, I joked last week, you could argue, well, there’s a new anxiety. It’s like, “Oh my gosh, what’s happening?” But the anxiety, the depression, the stress that we’re feeling about ourselves and our situation when we shift from self to purpose, a purpose of serving others, we become liberated from a lot of our suffering. And so, realizing that you are a leader and that you are here to serve humanity, to serve the people that you love, and the people that you lead in terms of your circle of influence based on how you show up for them, that’s a responsibility that we should never take lightly.

So, take responsibility to show up at your best every day for those that you love and those that you lead. Generate the energy and the optimism for the people in your life. And when you do that for them, the beauty of it is the benefit is you simultaneously do it for yourself. I call it being selflessly selfish because when you’re selfless and you focus on serving others selfishly, you benefit as much, if not sometimes more than they do. So, remember that. You are here to serve. You are a leader. And even if you’re going through a difficult time, in fact, especially if you’re going through a difficult time, it would behoove you, as it does for me to ask yourself every day, how can I show up at my best for other people, for those I love and those I lead? How can I optimize my mental and emotional state? How can I shift from self to purpose so that I can serve other people? And if we all have that mindset, if we all can identify as the leader with no title that we truly are, this crazy, messed up, beautiful world will be a better place thanks to you and thanks to me and thanks to everybody listening to this.

All right. Goal achievers and members of the Miracle Morning community, I love you so much. Thanks for listening. It means more to me than you know. I appreciate you and I will talk to you all next week.

[END]