Follow Your PASSION, Gain FINANCIAL Stability, and Live a Life You LOVE | Tom Bilyeu

Welcome to another episode of Impact Theory. Today, today my friends, we are talking about the age-old question, following your passion, doing the thing that you most want to do, and financial stability. Buckle up because this is something that a lot of people think about and the roads are windy. So, we're going to get into it right now. How can I get rid of the fear of following my passion, especially when the odds are against me? It's so hard to get over the false notion of permanent security. Okay. You're never going to get rid of the fear of following your passion. Let's start with that. As you said, there is no such thing as arriving in life. And this is one of the main ideas that I want people to really grapple with as you think about how to live your life well, is that there is no success big enough that you can stand in that success and that it will last forever. Really, this is a game of neurochemistry. This is how you feel. This is what stresses you out. This is what do you love. This is an ever-changing roller coaster of emotions. And so, understanding that you could fail at a job that you hate, I think this was Jim Carrey's advice to his father, that you could fail at a job that you hate. So, you might as well at least try the one that you're going to love. Now, that doesn't mean that we just throw caution to the wind. We're going to get more into that with some of the subsequent questions, but recognizing that you will never reach a destination. The only destination in life is death and that is not a worthy aim. You shouldn't be thinking about that or focusing on that or thinking in terms of, you know, I just need to get to 95 or 150 or whatever age you're aiming at. This really is a question about how you want to feel every day. And once you understand that, that there are things that make you feel alive, those things you're passionate about, those things that give you more energy than they take, and then there are things that take more energy than they give. And so, you want to be very careful to structure your life in a way that you're doing something that gives you more energy than it takes. Okay, so we know that we're never going to arrive. Because we know that we're never going to arrive, we understand that this is really just a game of emotional management. Because we know that this is a game of emotional management, then what we're asking is what is this thing that gives us passion? Is it giving us the neurochemistry that we want? Or is the thing that we're passionate about so high risk that even though it would be fun in the abstract, once I really commit to that and make it my job, it stops having that same sense of giving me energy. And that's the tension. This is where people end up not being able to make a decision because they have not yet figured out how to optimize their life in such a way that they can pursue that thing that they're passionate about without that sense of joy and excitement, and that incredible thrill of getting better at something that you love doing. And that even when it's hard, it's giving you that energy. Because people can get lost in that, they get in there, they think this is going to be amazing, that passion turns into a job, and then they lose the enthusiasm, or there's so much stress and pressure around having to be successful at that passion cuz you no longer have the safety net of a job or whatever the case may be. Um they don't recognize that just pursuing something that's your passion on paper isn't necessarily going to solve that problem. That the problem fundamentally is that life is an ever-changing roller coaster of emotion, and the name of the game is to manage those emotions well. Okay, so how do we set it up? If we have a passion and we want to follow that, how do we do it well? So, we know that we're never going to get rid of the fear until we have predictability and um stability in terms of the financial things that we need. And I would say we want to take care of that. We want to make sure that we have as much safety and security on the financial side as we can to give us the room to pursue the things that we're passionate about. Now, the fastest way to do that is to cut your expenses to the quick. If you don't have an expensive lifestyle, this becomes a whole lot easier. And one of the mistakes that people make is they're living a lifestyle that's beyond their means, and so they have to keep making this massive monthly nut. And so it becomes very stressful to pursue that thing that they love. Okay. So, we're either going to recognize that we have to reduce our expenses so that we don't have to worry so much about money, or if we already have a job that pays well, we have to pursue our passion in nights and weekends fashion, such that we can build that financial stability so that we can then progress. Okay. So, getting that stability there I think the people that have the strongest home life take the biggest risks. And often times pursuing that passion is going to be a risk. So, instead of trying to eliminate the fear, we're going to structure our life in such a way that the things that trigger the fear aren't as high risk. Okay, that's a big part of this. Then we want to make sure that we're structuring our passion in such a way that it doesn't end up robbing us of the joy. So, we want to experiment with what our passion looks like as a financial endeavor. And I think that's a very important experiment to run. Again, nights and weekends without making any major life choices is going to be very important. Now, if we're in a situation where the odds are stacked against you, this is where the first two things that we just walked through become incredibly important. You want to make sure that you've got your finances taken care of so that if this fails that it doesn't drag you down, that will make it not fun. And again, there's no accomplishment so great that you can stand in that forever. So, even if you were to be successful, you still have to deal with the emotional management. So, do not put yourself in this hyper-stressful situation where it's you're always living for the future because the success is not guaranteed, but the struggle is. So, the key is to struggle well. That's the answer. Get after it. Okay, next. Please address the different aspects of transitioning from your regular job to your dream job. What mental strategies should I employ? How much financial cushion is enough? How much confidence do you need to have in that new venture? Let's work backwards. So, how much confidence do you need to have in that new venture? So, one, taking the answers that I just gave in the first question, you want to make sure that you're structuring your life in such a way that you don't have these huge financial risks, that you're not adding stress to yourself in that way. The second thing is you don't need to have a lot of confidence that the new venture is going to work given your current skill set and vision. What you need to have an obscene level of confidence in, what I call the arrogance of belief, is that you can get better over time. So, if you put time and energy into something, you actually will get better at it. That's what I call the only belief that matters. Once you recognize that the human animal is designed to grow and improve through disciplined effort, so you go in, you're practicing something very specifically with the aim of improvement. So, you're not just doing it randomly on repeat, you have a very structured approach to improving it. So, once you have that and you believe that if you have that structured approach to improvement that you actually will improve, now you've got the confidence that you need to go into this. And if you have structured your life in such a way that you don't have these huge financial responsibilities looming over your head, now you're able to buy yourself the time that you need in order to get good enough to pull this off. I'm always telling people that the goal is to avoid a mortality event. You want to stay in business long enough to be able to figure it out. Then you can run what I call the physics of progress. If you don't know about the physics of progress, make sure you sign up for Impact Theory University. Uh and by the way, if you are a legendary key holder, you get Impact Theory University for free. Uh so, definitely check that out. Um but, getting into that loop where you are working, improving yourself, buying yourself the time that you need to improve, running the physics of progress so that you can iterate your way to success, now you're going to be able to pull this off even if it's difficult, even if in the beginning you don't have the current knowledge and skill set that you're going to need. So, many of the things that I've gone into in my life when I first started it, I didn't have the ability to pull it off yet, and I just made sure that I bought myself the time to figure it out. In terms of the how much cushion do you need, I I would say 6 months. You need to have at least 6 months, a year if you can pull it off. If you are um hard working, disciplined, you're going to be able to find a job that will cover your basic necessities within 6 months, for sure. You may not find your dream job, but you will certainly be able to find a job that will pay your bills. So, 6 months to me is that bare minimum. Again, you can always cut your expenses back or make more money. Those are your two options, or save more money, I should say. Those are your two options. All right. Now, as I'm transitioning from my regular job to my dream job, personally, I would treat them exactly the same because I'm always trying to act as an intrapreneur, right? So, if I'm at a company, I know that my job description is just the things that I need to get done quickly so that I can find other things within the company to take on as responsibility and blow people away. And that really is the path to success within a company is to do your job to an extraordinarily high level of quality, and then to help other people, to take on other responsibilities. And as you do that and perform well there, you will find that you'll be able to move quickly through the company. Now, because I'm always doing that, I'm going to do that whether it's just the job that I'm doing to pay my bills, because I know that that's the way one to love what you're doing, to progress, to get better every day. Like that's a huge thing. And also to be able to really get that progression through the organization as well through over-performance. Uh so, whether it's my dream job or normal job, I'm going to be doing that. So, uh this is just about hitting the ground running, constantly getting better, doing your job extraordinarily well, having some element of that you're trying to be the best in the world at, and then going beyond. All right, the mental strategies that I employ. The key thing that you're going to have to avoid here is overwhelm. So, you don't want to get into a situation trying to go really hardcore, put a lot of pressure on yourself, because this is your dream job. It's we're going to show up every day, we're going to play in a sustainable manner, we're going to act in a way that we can do forever. So, I always tell people that I average 93 hours a week, and the reason that it's 93 and not 94 is 93 is joyful, and 94 is where I start to get diminishing returns. So, whatever your number is, that's where you're going to um put yourself, and you want to work hard, smart, and long hours if you want to progress and get ahead, but you have to be very protective of your mental health. And so, long hours needs to be defined against where you stop having fun, where you stop being able to progress in a joyful manner. Okay? So, joy is a huge metric. Stress is a metric. You need to be watching these things, because at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is fulfillment pursued in a joyful manner. Now, that doesn't mean that it's always going to be up. Fulfillment covers that difficulty, that there are going to be hard things. I use the word joy instead of happiness. Happiness to me feels far more ephemeral. Joy is that thing that you get out of doing something that really matters and making progress towards that. So, there's no doubt that there are going to be times where things are hard. There's no doubt that there are going to be times where you start to feel that overwhelm coming on. You need to stop that in its tracks. What I do is I always remind myself I don't do overwhelm. And I will literally say that. I don't do overwhelm. Now, that does not mean that I can carry an infinite weight on my shoulders because I cannot. What it means is that I know that in those moments when you begin to feel yourself overwhelmed, you need to stop. You need to take a deep breath. You need to meditate. And you need to remember that doing less is always an option. Okay? This is from the hustle porn guy. The guy that's like go hard 93 hours. Here we go. Let's do it. I'm telling you right now I can only do that because I exist within a framework where I know that if things for too many days are not joyful, they're too stressful, there's too much that doing less is always an option. That I can dial things back. And I like to remind myself that I always keep detachment in my back pocket. Now, what I mean by that is the Buddhist idea of detachment. That suffering comes from desire. It comes from wanting more, better, bigger. Now, I want all of those things and I find that engagement is the juice of life for me. But I remember that at any time I can detach from that wanting, that reaching, and trying to do more. And because I have that in my back pocket, it allows me to relax in those moments where I can feel overwhelm starting to build up. And I just remind myself now is the time to meditate. Now is the time to breathe from my diaphragm. Now is the time where I least feel like I have the time to relax. That I need to relax. And because I know that I can always slow down, take a step back, I never get overwhelmed. And because of that, I'm able to keep going and keep performing. But if I just tried to run in the red all the time, then I would stop having fun, I would not want to do it anymore, and I would give up. And the only thing that I have that's like a superpower is my relentlessness. And so, I don't want that to be broken because I'm overplaying my hand and going way too hard. What's your suggestion for leaving corporate and pursuing my own business? I feel prepared to do the work. It's just upholding the house, car, and expenses that are a huge risk. I'm a single mother with two children. Any advice will help. First of all, thank you for your service. So, having children is brutally difficult, and I am so grateful that people are doing it, that love their kids, and that are doing their best to raise them. That's amazing. Um so, you're definitely in a difficult situation here. You've got a lot of obligations. So, what I will say here is that getting super efficient with your time is going to be incredibly important. Because we're going to not leave our corporate job, not until we've got the bills taken care of from the other option. So, if you're starting your own business, you want to start it nights and weekends. Now, this is advice that I've taken myself. So, when we started Quest, we were also running a technology company. So, we ran the technology company all day, and then nights and weekends, we would work on Quest. And we did that for a long time until Quest got its feet under it. And so, taking that strategy, while I know how sexy and cool it is to say burn the ships at the shore, and come on, there's no turning back, like it's do or die. That puts a level of stress and pressure on you that is not going to be fun. And if it is true that like I said in the first answer, there is no accomplishment so great that you can just stand in that moment forever. You will always and forever have ups and downs, moments of success, moments of failure, victories, defeats, moments where you look amazing, moments where you're embarrassed. Okay? They're all coming for you. And there is no get there and stay there forever. So, this is about learning to do that dance well. It's about structuring your life so that you can survive when it gets hard, or when you fail, or when there's a downturn, right? So, you need to be really thoughtful about how you structure that, especially given the fact that you have kids. And you don't have anybody else to rely on. So, we're going to do nights and weekends. We're going to get hyper-efficient with our time. That's incredibly important. And we're going to spend whatever time we can allocate, cuz of course you're going to want to allocate a bunch of time to your kids. But we're also going to need to find time for you. And in that time for you, we're going to focus on building your new business. Now, this is why it does not make sense to build a business unless you are passionate about it, unless you love the idea. Because if you love it, and you have a strong why, there is a reason why you're doing all of this, then you'll be able to push through all the hard times, you'll be able to stick it out, you'll have that desire, it will energize you, and all will be well. But given that, we're still working to make sure that we're paying the bills. We have the tremendous responsibility of raising our kids and keeping a roof over their head and paying for the car and all of that stuff. So, when we take time away from our kids, or from just relaxing, we want to make sure that we're doing something that energizes us. That is critically important. So, as you figure out what that business is going to be that you're growing, make sure that it's something that you would love doing every day, even if you were failing. Okay? That's the key. Something that you would love doing every day, even if you were failing. If you do that, now you've really got a shot. But if you don't and you pick something that you think is going to make you rich or it's going to allow you to execute your own life or it's going to allow you to pay for your kids college tuition, all of those things are going to set you up for failure because now you're not making decisions based on what you love and what you would struggle for and fight for, you're making decisions based on things you think are going to bring you a lot of money. And I will just repeat, the struggle is guaranteed, the success is not. The struggle is guaranteed. The success is a question mark. You may not ever make the kind of money off of this that you want to. So, make sure that it's something that you believe in and you're passionate about. All right, my friend. I have a big announcement. My incredible and talented wife Lisa is about to launch her new book, Radical Confidence. In it, she has managed to perfectly capture the process of how to go from feeling lost and insecure to taking control of your life and doing amazing things despite feeling fear, sometimes a lot of fear. Now, let me tell you, nobody knows Lisa better than me, but when I read Radical Confidence for the first time and heard her describe what it was like for her to go from having these big exciting dreams as a kid to then as an adult scheduling her life around the TV shows that she wanted to watch or how lonely and isolated she felt instead of pursuing her dreams, it was brutal for me. I would never say though that it was worth it for her to go through all of that just so that she could write something down that allows others to avoid it, but I will say that at least she was able to capture the strategies that she used to break out of that rut, find her voice, and begin doing incredible things despite her insecurities and fears that she wasn't going to be good enough to achieve great things. So, while it hurts me to know the dark place that Lisa went through, I really am excited for people who are going through something similar right now to read this book. Radical Confidence is an instruction manual for how to become the hero of your own life even when you're scared to death. Look, I know better than just about anybody how easy it is to get off track in life or to just not have yet found your calling. And it's even easier for people to feel so insecure and unprepared that they don't even want to pursue the things that they want. But what Lisa shows people in Radical Confidence is that the radical part is that you can accomplish extraordinary things even when you feel fear. That's what Radical Confidence is. Being afraid and unsure and having a toolkit that allows you to still make massive progress. Pre-order your copy today because if you act now, you can claim the bonuses that Lisa has created for you at radicalconfidence.com. They're only available if you pre-order, so act now. Then, once you've done that, we'll get back to today's episode. All right, guys. Read the book and get ready to be the hero of your own life. Peace out. If you went back to your 20-year-old self knowing everything you know now, what would you tell yourself to have a fulfilling career? I would tell myself to only do things that matter to me. In the beginning, I didn't have a why and I lost almost a decade of my life pursuing something without a why and I will just tell you that it's utterly miserable. And once I finally said, "I'm never pursuing anything ever again that doesn't have a strong why," then my life got a whole lot better. As a human, as a social creature, I'm telling you right now, it is very easy to wake up to fight, to go to war for people that you love and care about and to build something that's going to help them. That you can do. But when you're showing up just trying to make money, you're not going to make it. It is a brutal slog and no amount of money in the world can ever touch how you feel about yourself. And I'm telling you, the reason that I harp on fulfillment all the time is the formula for fulfillment is very simple. You're going to work very hard to gain a set of skills that matter to you. That are exciting to you. In service of a goal that's exciting and honorable. And by honorable, I mean that it serves not only you, but other people. Now, if you're doing all of that, now you're going to have that energy that you need to keep going, to keep fighting, to keep pursuing it. If you don't have that, it really becomes miserable. And since at the end of the day, the only thing that matters is joyful fulfillment, I wish that I could have spared myself that decade, so I would very much focus myself on that idea. I was so hardcore about wanting to get rich so that I could go build the thing that I wanted to build, but I didn't even know why I wanted to build a film studio. I just knew I loved film. That was it. But even that would have been way too hard to do without a reason why I wanted to do it. So, creating is amazing, but I know plenty of people that are in the film industry that don't control their own destiny, that are extraordinarily frustrated. So, even this thing that they love so much, there's so many other people that are involved with it, that even that can be a very difficult path. So, you better have a really compelling reason why you want to tell those stories. Because if you have that reason, when things are hard and you're asking yourself, "Why the hell am I doing this? What is the point?" that you have an extraordinary answer. And if you've not yet read the book Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl, read it. In fact, don't even finish this video. Go read Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. It is extraordinarily important to get those ideas in your mind. This was somebody who survived Auschwitz, who watched his whole family be destroyed, and realized that the only way to make it through what he was going through was to have meaning and purpose. To give his suffering meaning. Now, once the suffering had meaning, he could endure it. There's a great Nietzsche quote, "Whoever has a strong enough why can endure almost any how." You need to know why you're doing this stuff. You need to know why you're fighting. Once you know that, everything gets a whole lot easier. But if you don't know that, you will give up. I would anchor myself around that. I came to the idea, but it took me way too long. Are humans wired to be subservient, making it so hard for us to commit and move towards what matters to us? What practices help you step into the fire and help you consistently embody your highest self? Are humans wired to be subservient? No. But, we all have different personality types. I've heard it said that humans are 50% hardwired, meaning unchangeable, and 50% malleable. To live life well, you need to recognize both of those things in yourself. So, what are you like? The parts that are hardwired, that are going to be immutable or close to it. And once you understand that, then you can focus on the 50% that's malleable to make the adjustments that you need in order to be able to move towards your goals. Now, when you recognize that you may have a personality type that makes you better suited to be uh a number two, a number three, a number four, whatever in a company rather than to be the CEO, if you can actually get comfortable with that, then you can begin to craft your life in a way that's going to give you energy. But, when you buy into narratives around what people are supposed to want, what is cool, then all of the sudden you find yourself crafting a life for yourself that ends up becoming a torture chamber. So, it's pretty fascinating as people get older, they tend towards growing more peaceful with what they're really like. Now, that's about the 50% that's hardwired. I'm always saddened when people ignore the fact that they have this massive part of them that they can change and that their life would be unrecognizable if they did it. But, to err on either side is to blind yourself to a fundamental truth that failing to acknowledge will worsen your life tremendously. So, don't buy into a narrative that you need to run your own business or that you need to be an entrepreneur or anything like that. What you want to figure out is where would you love existing? Where can you chase fulfillment the hardest? Where can you engage with your passions most deeply? That's the question. And if that means that you are um a mid-level engineer. In fact, one of the most fascinating examples of this, Steve Wozniak, okay? Co-founder of Apple Computer with Steve Jobs. Steve wanted to be an engineer. He never wanted to get to the point where he was like the president of the company and dealing with business meetings all day. He wanted to engineer. He wanted to be in there, in the hardware, writing the code. That was the thing that gave him juice. And the fact that he had the self-awareness to understand, I don't want you to keep promoting me until I'm running the company. I want to be here as an engineer in the thick of this solving these problems. That is going to be a joyful life for me. So, recognizing what it is that you actually want. What speaks to your personality? Where are you going to be most energized? Where are you going to be the most alive? Then, put yourself there. And then pursue it with everything that you have in a joyful way, where progress is a key and that you can, as you say, step into the fire. But I want to make sure that people aren't blinding themselves to what they really want. That people are taking the time to develop that self-awareness. If you can't say in a single sentence what really fills your tank, what gives you that energy, what makes you feel alive, if you can't say that in a single sentence, you're in trouble. So, journal. Write about it. Think about it. Work on it. Because getting that right is critically important. And what I see a lot of times is people have a feeling. They never stop to ask what that feeling is. They never stop to ask where it came from, what it means. They just have a feeling that they should be doing XYZ thing. And they go pursue it, sometimes with their head down for a very long period of time. I know I did that. Sometimes people never look up and they spend their whole career pursuing something that they don't love, they don't care about because they think they're supposed to. Either the world has given them that idea, right? We're living through a time where being an entrepreneur now is cool. Certainly not everybody is going to enjoy that. We're a social animal with a competence hierarchy and progress feels awesome. And so often times people want to just progress blindly without thinking about do I need to progress within the hierarchy of a company or do I just need to get better at something so that I can do things that other people can't do? Because it's very different. If you gave Steve Wozniak the lowest you called him the janitor, but he creates the next piece of game-changing technology. Does his title matter? Or did it matter to him that he got so good that he could actually create that groundbreaking piece of technology? Now, if you like the climb, amazing. Climb. But if the climb is misery and you're finding yourself in progressively jobs that suit you worse, which is why they say that people rise to the level of their incompetence because you end up getting promoted until you get to that job that you kind of suck at and then you just stop. So, if you know what you love and want and where you fit in and whether you want to be the person that's leading or whether you want to be in a pack and part of a community, figure that out about yourself. And then figure out how within that framework, what do I need to improve to chase, to do all the things that I want to do that make me feel alive. That's the key. That's how you embody your highest self. Be honest about the 50% and then be honest about the 50% that you can change. Because your life will be unrecognizable. And I think Tony Robbins is right that a foundational pillar to human happiness is progress. All right. I'll leave you with that. That, my friends, is how to think about passion versus chasing that dream, taking risks, financial stability. It's all important. And while I would love to just tell you to ignite the ships on the shore and storm the castle, the reality is that most people that do that end up dying. So, one, make sure that the castle that you're trying to storm is the right castle, and that the mere act of trying to storm it is going to be fun. That's a huge part of this, and then do everything you can to protect your downside and to make sure that your finances are taken care of. All right, everybody. With that, I bid you adieu. Till next time, my friends. By the way, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Peace.