CRUSH Your GOALS By Taking CONTROL of Your MIND and Your ACTIONS

You will only ever get in your life what you absolutely must have. Your absolute obsession. Never do anything that diminishes you. Never do anything that moves you away from your goal, whatever it is. Until it you need that like you need oxygen, you won't get it. Got to find a way to find energy in that. [music] You can change. So, whatever position you're in right now, you can change. No matter what it is, no matter how horrific, no matter what you've been through, no matter what you've done. Like there is a way out from under it. No gray, nothing in between. That's [music] it. It's all your fault. I want people to know it really does not matter where you start. The whole question that life is going to ask you is where do you want to go and what's the price you're willing to pay to get there? [music] You don't get skills because it looks good on the resume. You get skills because it lets you do the thing you want to do. [music] You don't learn to build a house to impress your parents. You learn to build a house so people can live in the house you build. It is something so much more than going to architecture school, which maybe you went to because your parents wanted that and they they were architects. And so you do that thing for that and you forget that the whole reason you became an architect was to build houses. [music] Nature only gave you two things to motivate you, pleasure and pain. Why would you eliminate half of them? Fulfillment is all that matters. Don't chase money. Don't chase fame. Don't chase success. The only thing that matters [music] to actually enjoying your life is to feel good about yourself when you're by yourself. That's it. If you are in a dark place and you hear change is real. Change is possible. Doesn't that lift your mood? Don't you want that to be true? And once you allow it, because you have to allow it. Once you allow that to lift your mood, you're like, I feel better just by thinking I can change. That was huge for me. That was like moment one was when I realized I actually can change. So this thing that feels like a death threat, this like smothering cloud of just like despair, it can clear away. And it immediately, and it's not like, oh, it went from gray skies to blue skies. It wasn't that immediate, but it was it literally immediately a lighter load just because I realized I can change. So I was like, whoa, I can change. None of this is a death sentence. That's so like just amazing. That was enough to get me going. And people are always looking for, how do I have that energy? I'm depressed. I'm down on myself. How do I get the energy to push through? Man, you've got to find a way to find energy in that. You can change. So whatever position you're in right now, you can change. No matter what it is, no matter how horrific, no matter what you've been through, no matter what you've done. Like there is a way out from under it. But part of it is allowing that sense of lightness to be there. So I allowed it. And so it began to lift off my shoulders, which then encouraged me to take more action, to read more, to get better. I started my obsession with gaining skills, that reading isn't about checking a box. It's about actually getting better at something that lets you do something. And I need a better way to explain this. This is one of those things, like if people really understood what I'm talking about right now, this one fact would change their life forever. You don't get skills because it looks good on the resume. You get skills because it lets you do the thing you want to do. What do you think uh all success starts with? Well, the fast answer is mindset. Um going back to the only belief that matters, you said it. It's your the way you act is ultimately all that matters. And the way you act follows what you allow yourself to believe. Or maybe a better way to say it is what you choose to believe. So if you choose to believe that your energy and efforts will result in more skill set, then you will actually put energy and effort into getting that, which means you actually will get the skill set. But if you think well, my talent and intelligence are fixed. So, no no matter how much I work, I'm never going to get better, right? If you don't think that putting time and energy into it will yield anything, then you won't put time and energy into it, and you thusly won't get the skills. So, and if you don't have the skills, then you can't do the things other people can do, and so people just get stuck because they don't have the only belief that matters. So, they don't put the time and energy, and so that's like where everything starts is are you putting the time and energy into getting better, yes or no? I think that everything in life comes down to what your own value system is. So, what's your identity, what are your beliefs, what are your values, what are your habits, what are your routines? When you figure those out, that like if you just gave me a sheet that told me what those were about somebody, I would tell you what the outcome of their life is going to be. And for me, implementation, being willing to face the fears, the anxieties, the unknown, um the need to stare at my inadequacies so I can figure out what skills I actually need in order to go and do something cuz implementation is really a question of skill set. So, it that's why motivation ultimately is going to let you down. It's like, you may be motivated to go do something, but let me walk you through exactly what will happen. You're motivated to try the thing which you don't know how to do, and you suck at it. And so, you go do that thing, you suck, it hurts your ego because your ego is tied up in being right, being good, being talented, worthy, all those like permanent um set states that people don't realize are malleable, and so they get stuck in that. It damages their self-esteem, so they want to run in the opposite direction. Psychological immune system kicks in, reminds them that that was stupid anyway, why were they worried about even trying that, and so they back off. And any one time doing that is not a big deal. It's just that people do that over and over and over and over and over. And my thing is that's such a predictable pattern in humanity, it's like, what do you have to do to counteract that? And the thing you have to do is emotionally reward yourself for being willing to take the steps. So, okay, I know I'm going to do this, I'm going to suck at it, it's going to hurt, it's going to hurt my self-esteem, and so what do I need to do to make sure that I don't trip up over that in a way that makes me turn and run in the opposite direction? Number one, stop valuing myself for being good at something and start valuing myself for being willing to learn. So, that's just a a core part of my value system is I am a learner. That's my identity. Being willing to put in the energy to learn and get better is a part of my not only my belief system that people can do it, but part of my values that that is important to do as a human. You should do that. So, when I see something that I want to accomplish, then I know that I'm going to have the fortitude and the stamina to see that through because it taps into my identity of the learner and my value system of this is important and should be done. So, then I just keep going down. So, I hit the the wall of my inadequacy and I don't meet that with stopping. I meet that with cool, now I know what I have to get better at. I'm now aware of what the skill set is and so, now that I know what skill set I need to develop and I believe that it can be developed, then I just put the work into developing the skill. Now, the one thing that I think gets lost in all of that is people lose desire and they think that that means that oh, it wasn't as important as I thought it was or I didn't want it as much as I thought I did. The reality is that even desire is something that you have to learn to cultivate to turn into a raging inferno. Like your wants have to become needs and I think there's some weird push back that people think that like if it's real, if it's love, then there's no energy that's put into building that up and I think that's BS. So, you think that that desire is a teachable concept? Desire is definitely a teachable concept. The real question is building that desire, will that actually work? And so, I think people have something in their mind of something they were forced to do that they didn't enjoy and there was no natural inclination towards that and I'll say yeah, you're probably never going to be able to build something there. So, that's like trying to start a fire with wet moss. It probably is not going to happen. But, if you have something where it's it really is a spark of real interest, it's not a love, it's not a passion, but it's a spark of real interest. Now, that's something that you can work with and really turn into something by building it because there is a process that goes along with building that desire. There is a process that takes something from interest to full-blown passion. And if people are willing to go along that process, then you really can evolve that initial just sort of oh, it's a spark of interest to the very thing that I'm willing to give my life over to completely. I realized that those people are as extraordinary as anybody. Barack Obama, um Oprah Winfrey, um Tony Robbins, like they all those same raw materials exist in people in the inner cities that nobody believes and nobody think will ever go anywhere. And they won't because they don't believe in themselves. And so, we were talking at our most honest, like what what are we really driven by? And I'm driven by that moment of awakening, which I had in my own life where I finally realized, wait, I can learn new things. So, just because I'm not good today doesn't mean I can't be good tomorrow. And and that filled me with so much excitement, I want to see that in other people. And I want to see what the world looks like when other people realize, wait a second, that Steve Jobs quote that the world is made by people no smarter than you is actually true. And so, if you're believing that these people are smarter than you cuz you did bad on your SATs, I'm just going to tell you right now, stop. So, you can develop yourself. So, my obsession became that humans are the ultimate adaptation machine. We are literally wired from the ground up in order to grow and improve under stress and pressure. So, it's like what's the phrase? Uh pressure can burst pipes, but it also creates diamonds. So, it's like you need the pressure. And yes, it can hurt, but it can also make something amazing if you're willing to put yourself in that situation. So, it's a weird twist of fate that humans um in order to build the muscle, you first have to tear it, right? Yes. So, but once you accept that that's how it works, you can do extraordinary things. Most great COOs are people that were taught to be an operator. Many of them are considered co-founders, but would have not been successful without the energy of the human that was there to eat the pressure and actually lead the company. That's how I see it. Tom? This is one that I I have lived the exact opposite. So, I started out my parents taught me to be a good employee to keep my head down, do as little work as possible, and avoid punishment at all costs. I I had a newspaper route. I was too afraid to go knocking on the doors to collect the money. So, for like 2 years, I delivered the paper for half the money I could have gotten. I never stole somebody's flowers out of the yard and sold them back. Like, none of that. Yes. So, but then to get what I wanted, which was to make films on my terms, I had to generate the capital. To generate the capital to do that? Why do I need Lambos? Well, you said it earlier. You were like, you were into some of the flashy stuff. why other people chase that. going. No, I was chasing I wanted money to build a studio. So, I knew that I had to learn a certain set of skills. Now, my whole thing comes down to humans are the ultimate adaptation machine. Literally, what we do is adapt. That is our design. So, you can take There was a woman who swam the Bering Strait, and she turned literally over a year of cold exposure turned white adipose tissue, which is the fat, into what's called brown adipose tissue, which generates more heat. Now, people will believe it at the body, right? Nobody's here telling me that I'm crazy for that. So easy to show people that you can change your body. But, for some reason, people don't think that you can change the mind. So, let me ask you a weird question. First of all, I completely only believe you can change the mind, which is now going to get into an interesting semantic. So, keep going. Yeah. Yeah, so no, no, no, I'm sorry. I'm going to go keep going. But, you're going to But, you're going to But, no, but you're going to appreciate it. You're going to answer. Does that mean everybody is born a natural born entrepreneur? That means everybody is. It means everybody that meets minimum requirements, and we will have to talk about that. Okay, so that gets can That's fine. That gets into a different place. Yeah, so if you meet minimum requirements and some people do not But what if you're Hakeem Olajuwon? What if you, Tom, are actually Hakeem Olajuwon? Okay. So, Hakeem Olajuwon is born in Africa. Doesn't realize he's a natural great basketball player because he's not exposed to it, but actually was born a natural Like what if you actually were? Just cuz the environment you were in suppressed was a natural-born entrepreneur but was just in a weird environment. So Because that's where I'm going with this, which is you were in an environment where your parents created the environment to eliminate the entrepreneurial, right, spirit, but that it was down deep in there and more importantly, just cuz ripping flowers back to First of all, you had a paper route. Yeah. Let's break that down for a minute. Okay. Maybe you were scared of asking for money just like the last kid, but let's really, really talk about it. The [ __ ] were you doing with a paper route? In my In my family, you had to have a job. So, my parents made me get a paper route. Did they make you get a paper route or did you have more than one choice, Tom? Now, this is very important. You have I don't remember. To me, there's Well, here, let But let's answer that question. So, let's assume for a second that I'm secretly a born entrepreneur who's in a bad environment, which I'm very okay with. Not a bad environment. It's bad for entrepreneurship. It's a great environment. That I have no beef with that. So, my thing is knowing that people can either good environment be trained and bring out those natural inclinations or not, my thing is figure out what you want to do and then go down the path of gaining mastery in that. The only thing that matters are results and if you aren't getting the result you want, then you're not making the right decision. Surrounding yourself with people who act in a way that's going to lead you to the goals that you want to get to is that's like that's it. Like if Like I so believe that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. How could you not be? It's like you're going to be surrounded by those ideas. You're going to feel good about yourself cuz they're going to praise you for things and if they're praising you for working your ass off, for admitting a mistake, um that turns you into one kind of person. If they're praising you for smoking a jay or for playing an extra hour of video games or for, you know, hammering that Mountain Dew or jumping in on some cake with them, it's like, well, then you're going to go down that path because it's rad and and we are we are social creatures, man, and you want to please and inspire the people that you're around. And so, um change your circle, it will change everything about your life. [music] There are some people who think that their talent and intelligence are fixed traits. That's a fixed mindset. Then there are other people who believe that their talent and intelligence are malleable traits that can be developed and they are developed through challenge. And those are people with the growth mindset. So, people that believe they can grow into basically whatever they want to become. Do humans have limits? Yeah, almost certainly, but there are such a gap between where you are and the upper bounds of human limitation that to even worry about limitation just doesn't make sense. We put people on the moon. So, like once you accept that we could figure that out, it's like you're not aiming at anything crazier than that. So, it's going to fall within the limits of what humans can do. So, going after that and developing that mindset and being aware of what Carol Dweck calls the false growth mindset, which you alluded to earlier where people think they're thinking in the right way. They think they're implementing something, but they're really not. What matters is at some point you have to identify what you want to do and you've got to become the best in the world at that, period. Not really good, you've got to be the best in the world. So, your thing in life at something, whether you get good grades or not, you've got to become the best in the world at it. And if you're not prepared to go in with that mentality, you're never going to get anywhere. Not not anywhere grand and not everybody wants to be I'm speak I'm speaking to all of you out there that want to do something unbelievable. People don't remember that skills have utility. They let you do something. You don't learn to build a house to impress your parents. You learn to build a house so people can live in the house you build. And once people understand it, like holy [ __ ] you're building this house so somebody can live in it, build a home in it, have a family, be sheltered from storms. Like, [ __ ] it's a real thing, man. And so all of that effort and energy went into I have the chills right now is so you can create that moment for yourself, for other people. It is It is something so much more than going to architecture school, which maybe you went to because your parents wanted that and they they were architects. And so you do that thing for that and you forget that the whole reason you became an architect was to build houses. And so once people realize, oh, I'm putting all of this time and energy to build these things because they let me do something. What do I want to do? What do I want to give? What do I want to create? When you look at skills from that perspective, it it is like it is being a superhero. It is being a superhero. You're going to collect these abilities. These abilities actually let you do something. The fact that Superman can fly allows him to save people, allows him to do things other people can't do. We all have this opportunity to become capable of the extraordinary, to be able to do things other people can't do. And that feels so good. Thinking of myself as the person who's just good enough to recognize that other people are better, stop doing that. And now start thinking relentlessly about acquiring new skills. That's it. Like, whatever. Be inspired by people that are better than you. Great. That's amazing. But don't sit there and lament, which is what I used to do, that you're not as good as them. Find out how close can you get? Having a growth mindset so that you you want to see how you're wrong, that you can have these really ferocious ideas, but hold them loosely. Because the moment that your identity is wrapped up in your ideas, you are in real trouble, man. Your identity should be wrapped up in your outcome. What outcome do you want and are you actually getting that outcome? And then as long as you're not a sociopath with an ugly outcome, like people that get into identity politics and things like that, I'm going to give them the benefit of the doubt and say no for real, the the world they imagine is a beautiful world for the people that they love and care about. Okay, fair enough. So, I'll just give them that they're trying to do something positive. But when you look at the outcome in terms of how it affects everyone, it starts to break down pretty fast. Like that's where it really starts to worry me. So, that to me says that your identity is based on something that isn't necessarily anti-fragile. It's probably based on something pretty fragile. So, to use Nassim Taleb's term, something that is fragile, that's easy to understand. Something that is anti-fragile isn't something that's strong or resilient. Those are still defined by their breaking point. It's just that their breaking point is far away. But ultimately, even something that's strong, it's strong because you think wow, it can take a lot before it breaks. Something that's anti-fragile on the other hand actually grows stronger the more that it's attacked. So, and that doesn't mean you entrench in a position that clearly everybody's saying like this is crazy. The only anti-fragile position that I can think of is to be that of the learner. That is truly anti-fragile. So, for instance, if you come at me and say that I'm stupid, be like amazing, in what way? And the reason that I say amazing is because I I know that skills make me more powerful. So, you've just said that I have a blind spot, which means that I'm less powerful than I could be. And I'll define power cuz I think it weirds some people out. To me, powerful just means you can close your eyes, imagine a world, a better world than the one that we have today. You can then open your eyes and actually create that world. So, that's the kind of power that I'm trying to amass in my life, the ability to impact people at scale in a positive way. So, if you're telling me that I'm less powerful than I could be, amazing. I want to know in what way because once I'm aware of it, then I can address it cuz I know about myself that I'm willing to accept that I'm inadequate because I know that it's a temporary state. I'm not good at it yet. If I decide that it really does match with my goals and what I want to do, I can get good at it. So, it's not ego damaging for you to tell me that I've, you know, I'm not doing something in a way that I could be could be better. Cool, tell me how. When people don't want to hear that, it's like, "Ooh, it's they're in a very brittle place. They're being backed into a corner and people lash out when they're backed into a corner." So, at an individual level, I would say to everybody, if you feel that your blood boiling when somebody challenges you, if you feel like caged animal or like you're being backed into a corner, I promise you 100% it is not the truth of the world, it is that you have a fragile something, a fragile ego, a fragile belief system, something in there can break. And because it can break, you're trying to protect it. And the more you try to protect it, the more hardened and potentially violent, vicious, cruel, whatever that you may become. So, when it isn't that and you're not afraid of that thing breaking because you want to take information in, you want to assess, it doesn't mean you're going to agree. You may take that criticism and go, "I actually don't think that's accurate, but I'm really grateful that you gave me that piece of information." And look, intention matters. You can tell when someone's just trying to be a dick. So, it's like you've got to be cognizant enough of that. But when you get to that point where you're you're leading with everything is my fault, including the way this person's coming at me, I've done something to make them want to come at me too hard or whatever. So, at the individual level, I think that that the fragility versus antifragility is is where everyone should start. I love inspiration and motivation, but it is the neurological equivalent of candy. It's rad, it has its place, but everyone because those just happen to be fleeting neurological states, yeah. You you just have to find something that's way more grounded. You need a mission, you need a grand why, you need to know what it is. And And this is not a discovery, it's a thing you decide. I decided now because I tell it as a story, people think, "Oh, it was un- unavoidable. He meets this kid Rashaan and that coupled with all the people that he worked with at Quest, it's sort of inevitable that he decides that he's going to um build Impact Theory and try to change culture to give everyone an empowering mindset. Yeah, well, literally a year before I decided to found Impact Theory, my mission in life was to end metabolic disease. So, it's like you decide and then you point yourself at something. Nothing is ever going to feel right, like this is what I was put on Earth to do. It won't feel that way until about a year or 2 years after you've been saying that's what you're going to do, that that's what you're committed to, and actually acting in accordance with that. And then you'll be like, yeah, this actually is my mission. We all get to decide what our values are, what our belief system is, what our rules in life are, the code of ethics that we live by. Those are all decisions that people mistake for empirical truth. But if you want to know how just unempirically true it is, look across all societies, they don't share it. So, we just decide that stuff. It's usually handed to us by our parents, which is what makes us confuse it with just being true. But the reality is that we're all constructing this belief system, value system, honor code, all of it, and it's going to determine what we do and how we do it. Now, if you choose to breathe life into from a value and belief standpoint, putting in that work to get those skills, then suddenly that energy of like, whoa, this is going to let me do something that lets me serve, all of the sudden, like, wow, that's uplifting in and of itself. So, you feel good as you're doing it. Now, as you're feeling better about it, you're going to want to do it more. And so, that became that self-reinforcing loop of I want to do this more, but to do it more, I have to become aware of my blind spots. And that's where self-awareness comes in. But just like any other skill, like you have to cultivate it, you have to get better at it, you have to seek disconfirming evidence, you have to come to realize where you have been blind. Now, often those moments where we realize we've been blind, they are emotionally devastating. You can use your positivity super powerfully, no question. You need to, you need to be able to, you know, really work that up inside yourself, but you can use disappointment, failure, anger, like, those things are also powerful. And there's a reason, Um, know, the Star Wars talks about the dark side and how enticing it is and um, it's when people can balance and use both. And Tim Grover, who was Michael Jordan's trainer, says, "The greatest athletes in the world, the greats, the icons of the sport, all of them are driven by a darkness. Like there is a chip on their shoulder. There is an axe to grind. There's something they're trying to prove." And it's like you have to. Otherwise, you're going to you're going to hit a plateau and stop. [music] The nature of being a human is the brain developed a mechanism over millions of years of evolution to pick up this negative stuff, and you don't have to believe it. It is merely meant to keep you safe. So, you may hear it as one of the voices, but when it's the only voice, you're inherently in trouble. And so, people think they've done something wrong, that they are a bad person because they have this negative voice that's beating the [ __ ] out of them, but the reality is that voice is is a mechanism. It's like being mad that you have a second arm. It's like learn how to use it. I always ask myself one question. So, I have a goal. I know what my goal is. That's very, very important in in my entire rubric. Everything that I say assumes that the person knows what their goal is. Big goal or the goal just in that moment. So, let's say your goal is I want to feel good about myself. So, getting back to center. Um, okay, I want to feel good about myself, but I just did something to embarrass myself and it has real-world consequences, right? It really was embarrassing and it really will stick with me maybe for a year, maybe 10 years, maybe this is the thing that now is associated with me forever, right? It's out in the internet, whatever. Um, so how am I going to recenter? I use one question. Will it serve me to feel badly about myself because of this? And if it does serve me, and by the way, sometimes it does. Like you need that sting of like, "I messed that thing up. I don't want to mess up like that again." And being upset by it, never more than 20% of your time, but in that 20% leaning on what I call the dark side to be like angry about it. Be upset. Hold yourself accountable and not just let yourself off the hook and be like, "Yeah, you screwed that up. You weren't paying enough attention. Your skill set wasn't ready. Whatever." But nine or eight times out of 10, I guess, um the right answer is no, it's not going to serve me. And even if [snorts] kicking my own ass served me for a little bit, it's not going to serve me for long. So, I need to very rapidly transition into forgiveness, into just not focusing on it, letting it go, and knowing that So, I have a belief that I've consciously instilled in my life that I only do and believe that which moves me towards my goal. So, if even if it's true that I'm a [ __ ] believing that isn't going to serve me. So, I just go, "Okay, well, that's not going to serve me. So, I need to at least believe I can get better." Okay, I can get better, cool. Then I'm just going to focus on that. And that simple reframe pulls me out of that and I I just It's a pattern interrupt, right? Using cognitive behavioral therapy language. I don't allow myself to death spiral about what a [ __ ] I am. There really are only two macro-level motivators that we have in life, and that's pleasure and pain. And so, what I want people to understand is, okay, so if nature only gave you two things to motivate you, pleasure and pain, why would you eliminate half of them? And so, most people think that life's about avoiding the pain. I'm here to tell you right now, in a very controlled fashion, it is about really experiencing the pain, learning from it. So, Ray Dalio, the most successful hedge fund manager of all time, has a perfect math equation. Pain plus reflection equals progress. If you don't feel the pain, you never reflect on it. So, my thing is I spend 80% of my time focused on the beautiful things in my life, the things I'm grateful for, the beautiful things that I want to bring into existence, all of it. 20% of the time, though, I'm in the darkness, man. I'm in that Tim Grover relentless, I'm going to make this happen if I have to break myself, and I'm not afraid to lean into that because I know how powerful it is. So, I'm always looking for ways in which I'm wrong because I don't value myself for being right. And once people understand that that for me, it wasn't In the beginning, I was just telling myself to do that. It wasn't at a limbic level. Now, I've been telling myself to value myself only for my willingness to admit when I'm wrong and to learn that at a limbic level, it's true. So, when somebody tells me I'm wrong, I have this rush of like, "Oh my god, this is amazing." cuz if they're right and I really am wrong and they're making me aware of this, I'm going to get more powerful. Mhm. So, and that goes back to my real belief in skills having utility. So, it's like the ego doesn't have utility. Maybe some, but it's not when misplaced and and built around the wrong things can be super dangerous. But because my ego is actually built around my willingness to stare at my inadequacies, when somebody tells me that, "Oh, you're doing this bad, wrong, or whatever." I don't spend time It does still sting. I think that's just natural. So, it'll be like, "Oh, that sucks, but oh, a reminder that this is going to give me something powerful." And so, I use it sort of as mental jujitsu. And then, I open myself up and I learn. Like, I don't think people should try to silence the negative voice in their head, but I also don't think they should succumb to it. I think you should listen to the negativity cuz it will call out [ __ ] that's real, right? You're not working hard enough. You're not good at this. Yeah, you're absolutely right. But if I let that affect how I feel about myself, now it becomes self-destructive. So, that voice has got to be like that voice of clarity. It's got to be the oh [ __ ] Okay, that's the thing I need to work on. Got it. It's got to be a counselor, not a jailer. [music] The baseline thing people have to have is emotional resilience. So, you have to and this to me is a skill. You have to learn how to emotionally recalibrate. So, when I was the kid in the server room and there was a whole bunch of people farther ahead in their entrepreneurial journey than I and they all heard the same message about you can be a partner and none of them did anything with it. I started asking, "Why aren't they doing anything with it?" And I realized the answer was I could self-soothe faster than they could. And so, yeah, it hurt when I was told I was an idiot. That really sucked. Especially hearing it from someone you really respect. But, I decided to not spin out of control, not waste 3 days being hurt by it, but instead to recenter and just ask, are they right? Because if they're right, there's something to learn here. And if they're not right, just move on. And if they are right, learn the lesson. And so, I just slowly started collecting it and the lessons. And the image I started thinking was, whenever somebody throws an insult at you, you have two options. You can let it hit you in the head, or you can raise your defenses and deflect it. And your defenses are the psychological immune system. They're real. I'm not making that up. So, all of us have this thing that comes to our aid when somebody says something that hurts you, then you're like, oh, well, they're mean anyway, they're a jerk, they're a bully, whatever, I don't have to take them seriously. And so, that makes you feel better, and you believe maybe that they're being cosmically punished in some way. Being a bully is its own punishment and all that. So, and like that allows you to relax, and they've done studies that show people with the highest level of self-delusion are the happiest. So, there really is something to it. But, the people with the highest level of self-delusion are usually not the ones that go the farthest because they don't stop to recognize where they really are, to own the pain of that. So, I thought, okay, instead of raising my defenses, I'm going to lower my defenses. I'm going to let that rock hit me in the head because at my feet now is actually a nugget of gold, and I'm going to pick up that nugget of gold in the form of the lesson that the person is throwing at me. And here's the thing realize, when people really come at you, they're really trying to hurt you, they have sinister intent, they're going to come at you with something that's true. Nobody comes at you with the stuff that's not real. They're going to hit you with like the thing that you're the most secure about in the world. So, even the people with the the gravest of intent are the ones that are giving you the most powerful gift cuz you may be blind to it, or maybe you didn't want to acknowledge it. But, if you can let it hit you as much as it hurts, then bend down, pick Pick up, and learn from it, now you can do something. Hey everybody, thank you so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit, and unlocking your full potential.