1-Sentence-Summary: The Charge shows you how to unlock the baseline and forward human drives within you that will help you get energized, grounded, and working so that you can have the life of happiness and fulfillment you’ve always wanted.
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Do you feel in control of your life?If you think about how your typical schedule involves only working, eating, and sleeping, you might realize you’re living a life that’s mostly aligned with what society tells you to do.
Pause and think about what you really want. It might surprise you to discover that what you actually have isn’t what you’d like to have. Now, can you imagine how you’d feel if your life was exactly what you wanted?
Even if you feel like you’re in a cage right now you can learn to change and live a life of energy. A charged, life, as Brendon Burchard would say. His book The Charge: Activating the 10 Human Drives That Make You Feel Alive reveals how to get there.
Let’s see how much we can learn about human drives from just 3 lessons:
- Your life is either caged, comfortable, or charged, the one you choose and the consequences that come with it are up to you.
- Reframe your understanding of control to become more proactive as part of the first step on your journey to a charged life.
- To begin unlocking the power of your forward drives, have a positive attitude about change.
Get ready to become a battery of energy and happiness because you’re about to learn how to live a charged life! Let’s go!
Lesson 1: Whether you want to be caged, comfortable, or charged, the type of life you live is up to you, including the consequences.
Growing up I did everything “right.” I went to school, earned good grades and participated in activities, then got accepted to college. When I was done with that I got a 9-5 job and I thought that was it.
At least until two years in, when I started to ask what my real desires were and began making changes.
By following what everybody else thought I should want, I was living what’s known as a caged life. The belief that I should want certain things began to be ingrained in me early on, as it did with you too.
As a kid, your parents rewarded you for being ambitious and self-disciplined toward what they thought you needed to have to be happy. These habits continue to control your decisions as an adult, even if you don’t notice it.
You’re afraid to go for what you really yearn to do because deep down you fear losing their acceptance if you don’t follow their path for you.
Now, in many instances, people do live what the author calls a comfortable life. This is where you’re still fairly happy living what society deems the “good life,” but you’ve never stopped to make the adjustments that would make it a life full of energy and enthusiasm.
This is a charged life and is what you want to strive for.
Lesson 2: The first of all the drives is reframing your understanding of control.
We all want to be happy. That’s the ultimate goal, even if it gets muddled up in the middle of all this talk of different lifestyles. But no matter which way you spin it, people living charged lives are living happier lives.
And doing that is just a simple matter of learning the human drives that will take you there.
While these motivations aren’t part of our survival instincts, they are traits within us that by activating, we can become happier. The first five baseline drives will help you improve your inner self. They are:
- Control
- Competence
- Congruence
- Caring
- Connection
Let’s talk about control for a moment. It’s not just about having control, but understanding and accepting where you have it and where you don’t.
Most things in life are out of your control. Whether it’s the weather, what others say, or traffic, you can’t force them to be what you want. But you can control your reactions, which is a crucial place to look to improve your life.
If you’re living a caged life you might see difficulties as proof of your constraints. A person with a charged life, on the other hand, sees trouble as mere information. They recognize that their sphere of influence only includes themselves, so they let it slide and learn all they can from it.
Lesson 3: Change can be a good thing, you just have to improve your attitude about it.
The last five drives are called forward drives. They help you look to the future and fulfill your dreams and include:
- Change
- Challenge
- Creative Expression
- Contribution
- Consciousness
Let’s discover what the change drive can teach us about living a charged life.
If you think about your past you might see that you’ve already experienced a lot of transformation throughout the years. Early on you went from a helpless infant to walking and talking, and eventually became an adult.
Transition is still around, whether it’s in work, family, or the world, but it’s a little scarier now. That’s because you’re afraid of losing what you have. Instead, to live a charged life, focus on the potential gains of every change that’s presented to you.
But looking for opportunities is also difficult because usually, you don’t have clarity about what you want. This isn’t your fault, but most often only a matter of not knowing what’s possible.
Think of a college graduate that’s not sure what to do with their lives. They have to go to a counselor to help them decide their major only because they don’t know all the different kinds that are available.
To get clarity, explore your opportunities. If you have just graduated from college, for instance, you’d want to search the internet to find jobs available in your field. You might also look for people you admire and ask them about how they got to be where they are.
The Charge Review
I really liked The Charge, you could say it charged me up! I especially like the way that it’s organized with five baseline drives and five forward drives, which makes it easy to remember them.
Who would I recommend The Charge summary to?
The 19-year-old considering a major in psychology, the 48-year-old who is tired of being overweight and broke, and anyone that wants both inspiration and actionable steps to improve their life.
Last Updated on July 23, 2023
