Being Brilliant Every Day

SUBSCRIBE for weekly episodes and bonuses:  Sign up to our exclusive content: http://www.being-brilliant.com/yt Get the transcript on the blog: http://bit.ly/CommunicateBetter  Get the podcast free on itunes:  http://bit.ly/BeingBrilliantPodcast Get daily motivation on FB:  http://on.fb.me/1J6lTT8 Tweet Us: https://twitter.com/brillianttoday More videos: http://bit.ly/BeingBrilliantShow Android App download: http://bit.ly/UoEAppAndroid -------------------- EPISODE SUMMARY -------------------- Communication is key to great relationships, but many people are not aware of how to communicate effectively. There are two key elements to communication: 1. Reception: Receiving the message and understanding and hearing what the other person is really saying 2. Transmission: Transmitting the message clearly so that you can get your point across clearly without miscommunication occurring While we are often taught from a young age how to transmit a message clearly, through grammar, spelling, punctuatio

Many people have often wondered what their life means and have wandered a bit lost trying to figure out where they are going and what they are doing. If this is you, now is the time to understand that you don’t have to wander aimlessly and that your purpose is already there – you simply have to see it. To truly know and understand your purpose in life is much like having an ‘internal compass’ that is steering your life in the right direction. Your internal compass appears at two points in your life: Key choice points, where your intuition is largely at play Peak moments, where you are at your best By becoming aware of what choices we make in those key choice points and how we are performing during those peak moments, we can then understand what our true purpose is, and what adaptations we must make in order to be on the right track to fulfil our purpose.   SUBSCRIBE for weekly episodes and bonuses:  Sign up to our exclusive content: http://www.being-brilliant.com/yt Ge

Managing your emotions can be extremely complex especially when you factor in another person you really care about. However, if you want brilliant relationships you have to learn to deal with them in a way that they do not become toxic to your relationship.    The first step is taking ownership. Understanding that no matter how badly someone is behaviour from your perspective they are not the ones making you angry, annoyed or frustrated. When they forget to put the toilet seat down for the 20th time it's not like that comes with a syringe of cortisol being injected into your blood stream making you annoyed. You create the emotion.    The moment you accept this is perhaps the most transformation moment of your life because then no one can ever make you feel anything you don;t want to feel. You get the control back because you realise if you are doing it to yourself then you are the one the can undo it.  

SUBSCRIBE for weekly episodes and bonuses:  Sign up to our exclusive content: http://www.being-brilliant.com/yt Get the transcript on the blog: http://bit.ly/BeingBrilliantBlog  Get the podcast free on itunes:  http://bit.ly/BeingBrilliantPodcast Get daily motivation on FB:  http://on.fb.me/1J6lTT8 Tweet Us: https://twitter.com/brillianttoday More videos: http://bit.ly/BeingBrilliantShow Android App download: http://bit.ly/UoEAppAndroid

How to have more energy is something most people would like to know the answer to but many people don't really understand the question. This isn't your usual advice about sleep and eating right. To have more energy you need to understand what energy really is and how it is quantified in the human body. The best proxy is heart rate variability because it is a measure of the body’s ability to react to environmental stimulus, and is the biggest predictor of all-cause mortality. If you have chaotic heart rate variability it is the same as driving a car stopping and starting and constantly changing the speed. You will burn more fuel and have less energy. Conversely if you are cruising along you will be more efficient. The same is true of your Heart Rate Variability. Turning it into a coherent pattern will improve your energy.  The fastest way to transform your heart rate variability from chaos to coherence, and therefore how to have more energy is through breathing rhythmically.   SUBSCRIBE for wee

There is a big difference between horizontal learning (skills, knowledge and experience) and vertical development. Think of learning as adding more apps and development as upgrading the operating system.  Just as we cannot skip iterations in technology it is the same with human beings and their levels of development. Within each line of development there is a specific sequence of stages that people go through with ever increasing sophistication. This is because each level transcends and includes all of the previous ones.  Knowing which level you are at and what is next can help accelerate your development because it helps to make it an object of your consciousness. Fundamentally development is about making what you have been subject to and making it an object.  This episodes explores those building blocks of brilliance we call levels.    SUBSCRIBE for weekly episodes and bonuses:  Get the transcript on the blog: http://bit.ly/BuildingBlocksOfBrilliance Get the podcast free on itu

If we asked you to rate yourself on how good you were on a scale of 0-100. 0 Being you are just getting started and 100 you are as good as you are ever going to be. What would be your answer? Most people say around 75. Our belief ... 9.  How dare we say that? You misunderstand. We are not saying what you are doing is not already amazing. But what we are saying is there is so much more awesomeness there could be another 90% still to come.  Unlocking your potential is about knowing which lines of development are most important for you to focus on in the particular domain you wish to achieve success. Without a clear distinction of lines of development it is hard to focus your development and track your progress.  That's what this week episode is about. Where we unpack what are the 8 lines we've identified as most important to high performance and success in working with leaders and athletes for over 15 years.  After watching the video leave a comment below about which line of development you

Most people struggle to know how they feel, never mind the impact they are having on other people. In most cases it is only when we can see someone experiencing a very intense emotion such as anger that we pick up on how they are feeling.  However, being able to tune in at a much more subtle level to the emotions of other can have some profound impacts from being able to connect more deeply, have greater influence, build trust faster and many other benefits. It is an important part to building really fantastic relationships.  But beyond just being able to sense what someone else feels, can you change it. Well the truth should be no because as we've said in other videos you are in complete control over your feelings. However, other people may not have that level of control yet or you can certainly make it easier for them to feel a certain way by how you are being.  How do you make people feel? Inspired, irritated, drained, soothed? It's time to start thinking about it and that's what this episod

Learning how to control feelings is perhaps the most important skill you can ever develop in your life. If you learn to regulate your own emotional state it means no one or thing can ever make you feel a way you don't want to feel. Imagine if worry was optional. Joy was something you put on in the morning like your favourite t-shirt.  This ability is possible for us all, but it takes practice. Developing this skill will be the biggest leap forward in your personal development journey.  In order to do it. First you must become aware of your current emotional state. Then you must develop a repertoire of positive emotional states that are familiar to you. There is no point trying to shift your state if you have nothing good to shift into.  Once you can do this you have complete control over how you experience life, no matter what comes your way.    SUBSCRIBE for weekly episodes and bonuses:  Video Episodes: http://bit.ly/BeingBrilliantEveryDayChannelGet daily motivation on FB:

The most brilliant leaders in the world realise that there are four main areas that they need to focus on in order to deliver outstanding results. Unfortunately most leaders spend 80-95% of their time focused solely on commercial performance in the top left hand quadrant and do not build a system around themselves that frees themselves up of the tyranny of the day to day. They never make the transition from “manager” (top left) to “leader” (all four quadrants). Our approach is to help individual, teams and organisations to become brilliant in all four quadrants.   This means a greater emphasis on people leadership and personal performance. Great leadership really starts from your own sense of self and personal purpose. That's why the best leaders focus on improving themselves first.   SUBSCRIBE for weekly episodes and bonuses:  Video Episodes: http://bit.ly/BeingBrilliantEveryDayChannelGet daily motivation on FB:  http://.fb.com/beingbrillianteverydayGet the tr

Being happy and healthy are perhaps the two most important aspects of life that we can experience. It's rather strange but people seem to put more time into being healthy than they do happy.  Most people try to be healthy by being careful about what the eat and the exercise they do. However there is a third aspect beginning with E that is far more important- namely your emotions. Think about it in terms of time for a second: Exercise = 3 times per week Eat = 3 times per day Emotion = Every Second So emotion has a more consistent impact on health on of course emotion is fundamental to being happy. Many people try to feel a certain emotion by controlling their exercise and eating. "If I eat healthy I'll feel good.", "If I look good I'll feel good enough". In reality it works the other way around. Your emotional state determines if you make the right food choices or work out with the same determination (an emotion) needed to get the body you want, or to even go to the gym.  There is lots of researching

On your personal development journey the only real thing that can get in your way is you. The most common way this happens is through the fears we create in our lives.  A liberating thought about fear is to understand that when we are born we only have two fears that are biologically programmed, loud noises and falling. Everything else is learnt.  The three categories of fears you are most likely to face are: Fear of loss of the status quo. Fear of change in order to transition to your vision Fear of result not meeting your expectation.  Listen this week's episode to overcome all three of these fears.  Presenter: Zander Woodford-Smith SUBSCRIBE for weekly episodes and bonuses:  Video Episodes: http://bit.ly/BeingBrilliantEveryDayChannelGet daily motivation on FB:  http://.fb.com/beingbrillianteverydayGet the transcript on the blog:  http://bit.ly/BeingBrilliantEveryDayBlogTweet Us: https://twitter.com/brillianttoday

When becoming brilliant it can sometimes be difficult to keep the balance. There can be so much focus on one area of life that other parts suffer. There are the major things to balance such as sleep vs. being awake, work vs. rest, eating, exercise, family and the list goes on. How do you really do all that? People try to compensate for balance by doing even more things. It’s been a long week at work so they think they have to read the newspaper or workout to wind down.  This often leads to feeling even more out of balance as they now have a to do list of things they must do to rest. The way you feel about doing those things is much more important than the acts themselves. The marginal effect an extra cardio vascular workout will have on your health is paltry compared to the lingering negative emotion generated by going to the gym when you don’t really feel like it. It is the same with eating. Being out of balance can cause serious health issues such as high blood pressure, heart disease and c

Are people just born positive or optimistic and if you aren’t like that you can never change? The truth is, no. Whilst we are born with certain tendencies, more and more research is being done every day showing just how quickly the brain can change. This is called neuroplasticity.  Measurable changes can be seen in the brain after just 3 weeks when people begin learning a musical instrument, meditating or some other task that creates new neural pathways.  The most exciting finding is that not only do our brains change and create new neural pathways even as adults but this also affects gene regulation. This is a breaking new field called epigenetics which shows that the neural pathways we create can alter our genes so our passed on to the next generation.   So whilst it is true that we can change our neural pathways it is also the case that what we practice will have a profound effect on the tendencies of our children and our grandchildren. This gives us all an incredible responsibility to

As the speed of change accelerate we all clamor to do more just to keep up let alone get ahead. In an effort to meet this challenge many people have become obsessed with time. People today feel as though they have time famine- Too many things to do with not enough hours in the day.  As a result people try to manage their time. The truth is, it is rarely a question of time, and more a matter of how much energy we have. In fact time is not something that can be managed. We can’t convert three hours in to six. There are 24 hours in a day regardless who we are or how desperately we need a few extra. And if we are exhausted, having another week to complete the task usually doesn’t help that much because we just don’t have the energy to get the job done. When we have the energy we can get through a huge amount of work and our productivity is enormous.  With energy we can achieve more in one hour than we can in 10 when we’re ‘running on empty’.   So the fi

Since Yerkes and Dodson’s experiment in 1908 there has been a clear and definitive relationship between pressure and performance that has stood the test of time.  Pressure increases performance up to a certain point and then too much pressure impedes performance. This relationship holds true for people, computers, complex systems and corporations. Yet today, 100 years on, more people than ever are suffering the health and performance effects of too much pressure.   In order to optimise performance you need to understand where you are on the pressure performance curve. Are you on the upslope building capacity, at the apex of peak performance, or on the downslope heading towards crisis and burnout?   Too many people today fail to recognise the signs of that downslope. Mind-sets such as “I want 120 per cent effort” reinforce this problem. But as any elite athlete will tell you in order to increase capacity you have to work on the healthy side of the performance curve at 80-85 per

We all face hard times at some point or another in our life. In this week's episode I share the night my life was changed when I went through some trauma as an eight year old. I also share what I did to help pull myself through the aftermath and make sense of it all and how I managed to turn it into a positive. Hopefully what worked for me can work for others.   SUBSCRIBE for weekly episodes and bonuses:  Video Episodes: http://bit.ly/BeingBrilliantEveryDayChannelGet daily motivation on FB:  http://.fb.com/beingbrillianteverydayGet the transcript on the blog:  http://bit.ly/BeingBrilliantEveryDayBlogTweet Us: https://twitter.com/brillianttoday

For a long time coaches and consultants have claimed you have to be psyched up or relaxed to perform at your best. These contrasting views do little more than confuse us about which level of arousal is best. So what’s the solution? Actually, you don’t want to be psyched up or completely relaxed to reach your peak performance.  When people talk about relaxation and excitement, they are referring to the action of our autonomic nervous system (ANS). What really determines the quality of our performance, or our output, is our neuroendocrine system (NE). The NE system determines the quality of our emotional experience whereas the ANS determines the degree of our arousal. Two critical hormones; cortisol and DHEA control the NE system. Cortisol is linked to a negative emotional state and is catabolic, meaning it breaks down molecules to release energy. When we feel negative, high performance is extremely difficult and when we get ‘stressed’ about the fact that we’re feeling negativ

How do you perform better to get the results you want? You have to do something differently and execute better behaviours. So then what drives behaviours? The answer is thinking. What we think about determines what we do. Easy right, just think your way into success. Unfortunately there are deeper levels in our system that are effecting our performance. What is driving thinking is feeling. Both affect each other but because of the way the brain is wired a thought will always be overridden by a feeling. No amount of thinking can halt or reverse the process once feelings take over. But how we feel is determined by something even deeper in the human system and that is raw emotions or more accurately e-motion (energy in motion). The reason this raw energy is coursing through your body in the first place is because at an even deeper level, down in basement of the human system is your physiology. Physiology is just data or information streams that are occurring inside your body all the time. Vast streams of data ar

To live life to the full you have to live your life in 3D. The majority of people are just living a one-dimensional life. It’s time to pause and ask yourself how much attention you’re paying to the dimensions that make for a full life: Doing- The world of objective, representative things we can see and achieve. Many people spend almost 100% of their time, energy and attention in this dimension.  Relating- what is the quality of the connection between people or the dynamics within a team, group or organisation? Cultivating deep trusting relationships is by no means easy, but just because it’s difficult does not mean we should shy away from the challenge. Being- How are you cultivating your interior? The paradox is people pay the least attention to this dimension yet it is present in each of the other dimensions. You are the one that is doing the doing. You are part of the relating. We must reconnect with the truth that we are human beings, not human doings. By becoming more aware of