I have read a number of Brendon Burchard’s books (Motivation Manifesto, High Performance Habits and Life’s Golden Ticket), have taken his Transformation Week and am studying his Productivity Masterclass also. As many of you will know from the contents of this site, personal improvement is something I take seriously and am always ready to look at new and related materials. So, when an invite came into my inbox to look at unreleased footage of Brendon discussing the 10 Human Drives, I accepted.

The course is delivered via growth.com using the Kajabi platform, but you cannot access it unless you’re part of Brendon’s HPX world in some form. You have to be invited to see it. I feel special 🙂

The course is a 90-minute recording broken into three segments where Brendon gives an overview of the 10 human drives, plus a bonus 11th, and offers actionable advice on how you can boost each one of these 10 human drives for yourself quickly and easily so that you can live a life with more Charge. Incidentally, this is the title of his 2012 best-selling book (The Charge) which goes into more depth on each of the drives.

The audience at the course had the benefit of workbooks with activities, tests and exercises to allow them to get more benefit from Brendon’s material (after all, they did pay to be there) but we do not get access to this. There is a bonus 30-minute segment from his Achievement Accelerator course which also looks at these 10 human drives and provides more perspective on them and how you, in your role as a leader, can use this insight to better understand why people you interact with may be acting up.

The 10 Human Drives

Our problem is that we live in mediocrity, settling for less than we are capable of and blame this state on external factors that we don’t, in reality, have any control over. The only thing we can control is ourself and our reaction to these events. “But, I have to …”, “It’s because XYZ happens that I have to …” and so on are familiar excuses we all default to, but we can choose more and more easily than we might think.

I include a quick summary of the drives here for reference. The Baseline Drives are internal drives (also called Primary Drives) and Forward Drives are externally focused.

Brendon says that simply by focusing on 2 or 3 of these drives and implementing the sample action steps he offers, you can create measurable gains in your life. I include a couple of examples below the list of the 10 human drives but we’ll have to buy The Charge to find out more.

Baseline Drives

• Control
• Competence
• Congruence
• Caring
• Connection

Forward Drives

• Change
• Challenge
• Creative Expression
• Contribution
• Consciousness

Facing Change

Nothing improves without change, but it’s more the fear of change that stops us. It is the fear of 3 specific types of pain that stop us in our tracks:

• fear of loss (e.g. of a job) (instead of focusing on the emptiness, focus on the space it creates)
• fear of the process (the process of dealing with the pain)
• fear of outcome (or the “what if life is worse off” fear)

When change hits, instead of focusing on the negative or getting lost in the fear, ask positive what-ifs. It may not be easy but it can be transformational.

You can’t control everything, but you can control your response to everything.

Developing Competence

Here are two ways you can improve your competence:

• Set monthly learning challenges for yourself (the brain likes newness – it creates a positive feeling and excitement). Find and study an expert. Some things may take longer than a month to learn, but set a goal for the first month to get started.
• Celebrate your wins when you learn something new. Celebrate your incredibleness. Write out all the things you have learned and succeeded at. We tend to have a negativity bias and forget all the wondrous things we have experienced. Journal them and remind yourself just how amazing you already are.

Backed by Research

All of Brendon’s work is backed by meticulous research and cross-checked with peers and experts in respective fields. The findings are presented backed by this verification process and the 10 Human Drives provides a solid framework that our lives are built around, even if we are unaware of it. I found the course insightful and actionable and will continue to learn from and apply Brendon’s work to my life.