Burnout Prevention: 4 Ways To Stay Passionate When You Keep Failing

(Podcast at the bottom)

The Biggest Mistake Is Thinking Your Goals Cause Happiness

Business and success don’t cause happiness. HAPPINESS creates success. Loving your life now, as it presently IS, is how you become successful. 

You know the words, “fake it til you make it?” They're bullshit.

There’s a fine line between acting like a successful person and pretending you have success when you don’t.

When I started my online business, I WANTED the success and freedom. I put up Facebook posts about living a life by design when in reality, I was almost 6 figures in student debt. It was a load of BS. And these days, people can smell BS a mile away. So if I could go back and give myself advice, it'd be:

“Be successful until you make it.”

What does that mean? Successful people don’t exaggerate. They share their vision for what they want to create and they’re honest about where they’re at now (struggles and everything!). That's real success. 

Perceived Perfection Equals No Connection.

So how does this have to do with burnout?

Trying to bullshit your way to success leads to failure.

When you fail over and over again, you lose passion.

When you lose enthusiasm for your business and job, people can tell.

Then they don’t want to be part of it.

I kept finding myself failing over and over and over again. I’d recruit someone I thought was a rock star and they did NOTHING with their business. I’d eat healthy for a couple weeks and then gain it all back by eating nachos at 11 pm in front of the TV. All these failures totally fucked with my mindset. They drained me, and I started to believe that I didn’t have what it takes to be successful.

I Hit Burnout

I found myself on the couch binge-watching TV having these “bad days” 4 days a week. It was terrible. I was depressed and even worse- I was pissed off that I was depressed. I knew EXACTLY what I needed to do, but I couldn't find the drive. EVERYTHING felt forced. And it hurt. 

So today, I want to help you never get to that point that I faced.

Success leaves clues, my friend.

So let’s go through a couple of great tips so you don’t LOSE that passion along the way and you create success in your life, business, marriage, career WAY faster than I ever did!

Set The Game Up So You Can Win

You’re on the verge of burnout because you’re setting yourself up to fail and don’t even realize it. This is perhaps the most important sentence of this entire blog post:

You’re Only Burnt Out Because Your Happiness Is Dependent On The Results Of Your Career Or Business

Wouldn’t you agree? You say that you’ll be happy WHEN you achieve X rank or X income. That’s bullshit, and you know it. 

It’s so important to understand that NOTHING has to happen for you to be happy. NOTHING.

When you’re unhappy, you won’t build a great business. In fact, even if you do achieve, have money, have all the accolades, live in that fancy apartment, you still won’t be happy. And just like my mentor, Tony Robbins taught me, “Success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure.”

Staying Passionate When You Keep Failing

1.) Reframe Your Failures

Remove YOU from the word failure. There’s no such thing as failure. There’s only FEEDBACK.

If you realize that life’s lessons will keep getting louder and louder until you listen, then you’ll understand that life is merely trying to teach you a lesson.

I had to listen to life telling me, “LEARN HOW TO BE HAPPY, AND THEN YOU CAN HAVE ALL THE THINGS.”

YOU are not a failure.

You simply did something incorrectly.

That’s IT. Stop turning the gremlin into Godzilla! It’s not a big deal. If you miss your monthly benchmark, are you gonna die? NO. You’ll be fine! 

Then get grateful for your failures. When you fail, say the words THANK YOU. Just try it. It’s a beautiful reframe. Why? Because you start looking for the lesson.

When you fail, it’s merely life trying to teach you a lesson. When you stop making it wrong that you failed, you open yourself up to the possibility of learning what you need to learn to take the next step in life.

So reframe your failures. You just did something incorrectly. Be grateful because life is ALWAYS trying to guide you toward where you’re meant to be.

2.) Connect With Something Bigger Than Yourself

When you’re only focused on what YOU can achieve, you’ll never feel like enough. Human beings do more for others than they'll ever do for themselves. You feel BETTER when you focus on giving to others. That’s why you feel better from buying a cup of Starbucks than receiving a $1,000 check as a Christmas gift. 

HUMAN BEINGS ARE MEANT TO CONTRIBUTE. Your "failures" are growth opportunities. And we grow so we can give.

So in your business/ career:

Stop focusing on what you can GET. Start focusing on what you can GIVE.

Stop focusing on earning 100,000 dollars. Start focusing on impacting 100,000 lives.

Goals will just HAPPEN when you are putting your focus on contributing. 

Burnout will go away when you connect with something bigger than you.

Burnout happens to those who focus on what they can GET.

Even if you’re saying, “but my boss is making me work all these hours,” all you’re really saying is “I can’t live the life I want.” That’s it. Don’t BS yourself. Self-honesty is freedom.

So, connect with something bigger than yourself. Connect with your company’s mission. Connect with the people you can serve. And operationally do something that focuses on SERVICE FIRST.

“Service to many leads to greatness.” - Jim Rohn

So find a way to serve the many. People will feel it. 

When you’re service focused, you won’t get burnt out because you’re giving.

Heartfelt Giving Is The Antidote To Burnout 

3.) Detach From The Outcome Of Your Goals 

Your problem isn’t the problem. How you face the problem is the problem.

When you are SO emotionally attached to a goal coming true, you actually start to push it away. That doesn't mean you shouldn’t be passionate about your goals. It means when your happiness is DEPENDENT on a goal, you’re making that goal WAY harder to achieve.

Do you ever push so hard a goal and it just felt like it’s getting further away?

When you can't be happy until you achieve a goal, how do you feel when you don’t get to a goal? You feel pretty shitty right? Like your self-worth took a hit? That leads to self-sabotage and getting in a slump. That leads to compounding negative self-talk. All of a sudden, you're face to face with burnout. 

So all you have to do to make this WAY simpler is to DETACH. You don't need a goal to be happy.

Instead of being ATTACHED to your goal and HATING the journey life is taking you on, be COMMITTED to your goal and LOVING the journey life is taking you on! 

Attachment doesn't work. 

So what if you just let go? Release the emergency brake on your life.

What if you just chill and be happy either way? What if you love every lesson or "failure" that life is giving you? 

Wouldn't you agree that you'll learn the lessons to hit your goals faster? 

Go after your goals for the growth you'll experience instead of just the outcome. 

Your goals don't make you happy. The person you become along the way is what makes you happy. 

The feeling of forcing things all the time will go away! Living this way makes success easier. 

4.) Learn How To Celebrate

Start focusing on what you DID achieve instead of what you didn’t accomplish each day.

Do you ever cross off most of your to-do list and you’re angry that you didn’t get it all done? Or even if you DO get it all done, you’re still not fulfilled?

Dude, you gotta stop looking at what you DIDN’T do and start looking at what you DID do.

Wherever focus goes, energy flows.

So if you’re so focused on how you didn’t accomplish enough, guess what? Tomorrow, you'll be stressed. That’s how you get burnt out. 

You don’t have to do anything to feel like enough.

When you focus on contribution (point 2), and you celebrate it, you win! 

So focus on what you GIVE to everything you do and CELEBRATE when you give. Give yourself a pat on the back and say, “shit dude, I freaking rock.”

Every post you put up, celebrate it.
Every podcast you listen to, celebrate it because you’re growing.

If you FOCUS on the wins, you'll win more.

When you focus your successes, are you more or less likely to find a solution to your “failures”? Obviously more. 

When you celebrate the wins, are you more or less likely to be happy? More.

And happiness creates success! 

So set up the game so you can win.

Don’t just celebrate when you win in your career either. Celebrate the way you kiss your wife each day. Celebrate the smile you put on your kid's faces.

Your career isn’t everything.

Burnout Is Entirely Avoidable.

It’s a choice. And it comes down to the 4 points I mentioned today.

1.) Reframe your failures
2.) Find something bigger to contribute to
3.) Detach from the outcome. Do it for the growth
4.) Celebrate what you DID do instead of focusing on what you DIDN’T do.

You’re reframing what it takes to be happy. Let go of the rules. 

When you realize that happiness doesn’t need a reason, life gets so easy. And when that weight is off your back, achievement becomes easier. Everything compounds. This is why the rich get richer. This is why happy people seem so damn happy and sad people seem so damn sad.

Change your focus, change your life! 

If you need help changing your focus, or if this seems good in theory but you have no idea how you'll actually apply it with all the stressors of life, JOIN Appreciation Academy!

It's absolutely LIFE-CHANGING.

It will show you how to wire this way of thinking into who you are. 

But either way, use these tips to avoid burnout and you'll feel ALIVE in your business/ career again.!

Share this blog post with someone that needs it today.

See you next week! 

Love, 

Brad