The Charge

By: Brendon Burchard

Narrated by: Brendon Burchard

Length: 7 hrs and 57 mins

Publisher's Summary

From the author of the number-one New York Times and number-one audio bestseller The Millionaire Messenger, an electrifying and inspiring work that provides the keys to motivating yourself to satisfy your highest, most essential creative and intellectual needs.

In the hyper-connected, hyper-digitized world in which we are living, the time has come to revise Abraham Maslow's classic "hierarchy of needs" a pyramid of human drives that places the basic needs of safety and sustenance at the bottom. Burchard, a world-renowned motivational speaker and best-selling author, makes a compelling case that it's time for an entirely new approach to understanding what drives human ambition and achievement today; it's time to change the conversation about what it takes to succeed and feel alive and fulfilled in a stressful, chaotic, distracted world.

In The Charge: Activating the 10 Human Drives that Make You Feel Alive, Burchard, using pioneering studies from the fields of positive psychology and neuroscience, as well as great stories from his own experience, identifies the ten simple drives of human emotion and happiness: Control, Competence, Congruence, Caring, Connection, Change, Challenge, Creative expression, Contribution, and Consciousness. The Charge provides the keys to understanding and activating these drives in clear and concrete ways that will inspire and help everyone find the one thing we all are searching for: more life in our lives.

©2012 The Burchard Group, LLC (P)2012 Simon & Schuster

Critic Reviews

" The Charge is an inspiring guide to the one thing we all want: more life in our lives. Brendon Burchard proves that we can harness our emotional drives to feel more alive, and that it's our internal charge that helps us meet life's challenges with joy and courage. I love this book." (Paulo Coelho, New York Times bestselling author of The Alchemist)

“There hasn't been a game-changing book on personal development in a long time. The wait is over. The Charge confronts our very notions of what drives us as humans, and after reading this book you’ll find a new internal charge that’s stronger and more energized than you ever imagined possible.” (Jack Canfield, Co-author of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series and author of The Success Principles)

Not top of my list

So at one point during the listen Mr. Burchard lets on that his coaching fee for a one year period is $250,000. So when I heard this, I said this is gonna be fantastic. Rather it was just meh. I’ve listened to several personal development books and while he had several good ideas and recommendations, I did not find his system particularly compelling, nor in many instances practical. There are better listens out there. It could be that his program resonates with hyper successful people but it didn’t resonate with me and he didn’t seem overly genuine. He narrated his own book, which I felt took away from his message as I didn't find him particularly enjoyable to listen to.

Good info ?

Good info, if not completely new...
I appreciate the intent of this book BUT
it lost me with the less than inspiring presentation. I think he should hire a professional narrator. He sounds like an infomercial speaker the whole time, trying so hard to relate to the audience, but sounding plastic. Ugh! He needs to work on learning to speak naturally. Just TALK to people. Stop performing. Huge turn off.

Good but a bit fictitious

Interesting perspectives but a bit to "diary" like and to much religion related discussions. Great book though, thanks!

great book

Basically the foundation for the other books I so far have read by Mr.Burchard. It really highlights how much effort is needed to make it all work, while the others show what to do. Very humbling, and at the same time it makes all the other things easy to do. Just when you see how distanced you actually are. The amount of work to really bridge that gap is present, front and center. An example. The areas to contribute. When you really get how much time you've wasted on red herring projects from selfish and greedy people. Or having people you draw meaning from in your life, realizing why people aren't helping you. For my self. Is basically because of letting who ever wants to in, and not people who can actually meet the demands I have. If I would have known that years ago, I wouldn't have wasted any time or money on any of these schmucks. Most who were never my friend in the first place. But the illusion of them putting on a charismatic appearance and not knowing why they say one thing and always do another is highly vivid now. Why that sense of investment into them but them not returning the time and resource effort equally. Weather at a class with a teacher or coworker or people who supposedly share the same interest. Let's use reading as an example. Say you like Harry Potter. And some schmuck just likes to gossip and spread rumors. But they talk to you about Harry Potter and. In this example, say you got the book early and almost finished reading it. But some how they claim they know everything about it. And still want to talk about it with you because they love Harry Potter as well. Tons of red flags pop up like, they obviously don't like Harry Potter because they insult it all the time. They have said they hate reading and I'm part of a special test group and no one else could have a copy of this book outside of my special test group. Prior to reading this book and identifying. Really, what charged me up. This would happen around my hobbies or say videogames like call of duty or music. Maybe tv shows or going out to a place. Just people talking to you and disguising the fact that all they want is to use you to get something. With a improv act of rhetoric and prepositional dialog. Before I would get discoordinated in my compass of who to trust because they let me talk, and it's easy to want to talk about things you love. Getting a sense of charge from my interests. Now I can maintain and attain that same charge from 10 areas and it bypasses them as a source. So in the end I can see through the act. And investigate their motives and interests a lot more. And even spot people wayyyy ahead of time with good motives and or bad ones. Because while energetic and charged I can pay attention to everything else. Context, our history, their possible motives, what I actually have to give and if I even want to give or not. And The epic monumental amount of people I do not want to help. Living in California. Is kind of dissettling. On the other hand it gives me strong motive to maintain my health, energy, sleep and vitality at higher levels because I am super hyper aware of the need now. When before I couldn't grasp why one small thing would make me feel so drained. To me, it's because on the inside I could see all this stuff but before it was only the end result that really registerd. Now the need plus all that stuff is blaringly obvious. When you don't wanna go to a family get together. It's literally causing you trauma. Just lacking the awareness of why, the ability to say no is immensely distanced. Forget that noise. Imagine being able to take control of that! 100% awesome. Half of the problem is the people who refuse to contribute to you. But no worries. Because understanding that fully, let's you see how you can actually get it. Don't waste any more time on people who are so runned down their only joy is to force other people with more energy and vitality to fall and fail. Just so they can learn from your mistakes. Sort of like how Ursala tricks Areal to give up her youth so she can steal the prince. F that noise. Go get that trident and shank that squid into the deep. Ursala being a metaphor for the ideal of that negative relationship. Do not actually shank a person. But maybe eat some kalamari because cooked right, it's pretty good. And when you do, remember how amazing it feels to say HELL NO I WILL NOT VISIT FOR THANKSGIVING THIS YEAR!!!!

A Masterful Piece

Where does The Charge rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

Amongst the top 5 audio books in self development

What was one of the most memorable moments of The Charge?

There are times when we need a wake up call to challenge how we do things and how we can go about to change our behaviors. This book provides many inspiring stories to help the readers change, challenge and to bring about creative expression and consciousness to achieve the forward drive.

I like the part where the author shared about sharing our voice first before we can find it. Often we think of finding our voice first before we go out and share it.

Did you have an extreme reaction to this book? Did it make you laugh or cry?

I enjoy listening to the ideas and stories. He makes it come alive and real. He challenges us to bring out the best in ourselves, by using great questions. Most of the answers to the questions lie within ourselves and we need to reflect on them.

It's OK.

It's OK. Brendon has overcome much, and seems like a decent person, he's also a fantastic narrator in his own right. I just can't stand the monetize your story and your pain movement, because you know 'snake oil', and sadly The Charge suffers from the same murky sense of purpose.

not sure what I expected

Where does The Charge rank among all the audiobooks you’ve listened to so far?

it ranks in about the middle of the heap

What did you like best about this story?

Listening to audio has many benefits for me including this was read by the author and he hands out a lot of enthusiasm, mostly the story has a perspective given by someone who knows how to motivate people, is successful himself, and gives actual events and thoughts.

Have you listened to any of Brendon Burchard’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

This is the first I have listened too but for the free performances which persuaded me to buy this book.

The 10 Human Drives

This was a perceptive account of what makes humans do things...fantastic and helpful for having a framework for making change in my life

Great life changing

This book can be a life changer if the principles are applied and carried out. Thanks Claudia B SC

Waste of time and money

I couldn't even finish listening to this audiobook he talks so much and says nothing it is literally the worst audiobook I probably ever heard and I've listened to a lot of them. he just Rambles on and on and on literally about nothing it almost seems like he just likes to hear himself talk. very little to no substance at all.

Great content, but bad format for audio

The chapters aren't named, don't align with the chapters in the book (the audio has far more chapters than the book), and there's no PDF download. This is a big problem because there're so many independent sections worth returning to, and so many work assignments, that you're missing out if you're reading this on the go and unable to write.

The Charge

Brendon always delivers!! Great insights. Always admire Brendon enthusiasm when he explains his message to us. Great.

amazing, life-changing book

I loved this book, the ideas are compelling and inspiring but also factual and doable. it was very interesting to hear how these different needs (charges) can be integrated in daily life. I know I will listen to it over and over again.

great asset!

really useful book - things explained meaningfully. And words backed up with understanding and I even would say compassion. it's all the times good to read/listen a book there author really wants to share something to you because he believes it really gonna help you rather than just telling what kinda life hack he found. Highly recommend this to everybody!

Great Listen

This is the second book I've read by Brendon. The first was 'High Performance Habits'. The fact that he reads the books himself is a big aspect of why I liked the book. The content is life changing and is read with such enthusiasm. Great work.

Modern day equivalent of ‘snake oil’

I bought this as was hoping for something to help increase my productivity. This is not that. This is all about ‘being the best that you can be’ but from an idealistic / ‘everything is awesome and so are you’ view of the world. The 1st 8 -10 chapters were just waffle, I suspect they were written to make the reader feel great about themselves, motivated etc. Admittedly, I could only endure half of this audio book. I think that you’d have to be of limited intelligence and incredibly naive to feel that this book has in any way imparted any life improving knowledge. A complete utopian view of the world.

the charge

not a brilliant book. it is a stephen r covey rip-off. read the seven habits of highly effective people instead. author who reads his own book comes over as very conceited.