How to Level Up in 2018

Everybody, welcome to the 2017 Impact Theory Clip Extravaganza. I'm very excited about this episode. It is some of the best advice from the amazing guests that we've had on this year, and I'm eternally grateful to the amazing people that have shared all of this wisdom. So, sit back, lock in, get ready to take some notes because this stuff is guaranteed to help you level up in 2018. Just remember, it is all about taking action. So, get ready. Here comes some of the best advice you're ever going to hear. David Goggins. What would your advice be to that 16-year-old kid who's staring in the mirror, does not like what he sees, but is still running from adversity? Well, my biggest advice to him is that, first of all, he won't like what I say to him. Cuz I'm going to say the exact opposite of what the world, today's world, is saying. So, we read a bunch of books nowadays. As as humans, we we want to find out how to be someone else. What we don't do is we don't go inside. So, literally turn yourself inside out. Read the book that's in like like we're writing a book every day of our lives. But we never read that book. So, what I would challenge this young man or or or young woman to do is you have to look inside of yourself and see what you really want. What What are you passionate about? We use these words and these little phrases of only the strong survive and all this other crap. They're all just [ __ ] words. I get so tired of hearing people just talking. Like right now, someone may think Goggins is just talking. Uh you don't know me. So, when I speak, I speak from passion. I speak from experience. I I I speak from suffering. I have to tell this young man or woman that the only way I believe, and this is this my experience in life, the only way you're ever going to get to the other side of this journey is you have got to suffer to grow. To grow, you must suffer. And some people will get it and some people won't. But they have to see what their journey is to start their journey. Several people live to be 100 years old and they have great lives and they have great kids. Their kids go to college and all sorts of stuff. But somewhere in their life there was a point where they had a decision to make. They can go left or right on this path. Left was the easy route. Right was the hard route. A lot of people take the easy route. And they had a good life that way. But the better life was going to the right side. And you may have 20 years of pain and suffering to get past it. But a lot of us die never truly starting our journey. And I would tell this young person, you got to start your journey. It may suck. But it will it will come out the other side where you're coasting. Mel Robbins. In the scheme of life, hitting the snooze button is not that big of a deal. But here's the thing about life. None of us wake up and say today is the day I destroy my life. Mhm. What we do is we kind of check out because it feels overwhelming. Or we check out because we're afraid. Or we check out because we start listening to self doubt and then we make these teeny tiny decisions. All day long. We don't even realize it. Decision to not get up on time. A decision to not eat the right thing. A decision to snap at your kids. A decision to not speak in a meeting. A decision to not look for a job. A decision to not deal with your finances. A decision to not call your parent like whatever it is. All day long these tiny decisions that take you so far off track. And then you wake up like I did and and you you look at your life and you think, how the hell did I get here? And more importantly, how do I get back over there? Mhm. And you have no idea. And so I was so trapped and I know from your story you felt the same way. Like you knew that there was more in store for you. But you couldn't figure out how do you close that gap? How do you find the power that's in you? How do you discover your greatness? How do you solve these problems? It feels so overwhelming when you can't I mean, I would go to the grocery store and and the items would scan and I would be sitting there readying my excuse because there was no way that my check card was going to clear. Wow. So, um what I I got in the struggle with myself that a lot of us find ourselves in. And that is you get trapped in what I call the knowledge-action gap. You know what to do but you can't seem to make yourself do it. You ever had one of those nights? Probably before you started your company, but it where you go to bed and you're like, "All right, Tom, that's it. Tomorrow, it's the new me. Tomorrow. Tomorrow, I'm going to get up on time. I am going to go to the gym. I am going to look for a job. I'm not going to drink so much. It's going to be amazing. The new me, the future me. Woo, let's do this, right? Then you go to bed and you wake up 7 hours later and you're like I don't feel like the new me. It's the only who That's a stupid it See, motivation's garbage. It's never there when you need it. Ever. Ever ever ever. And so, here's what happened to me and thank you for wearing the NASA t-shirt. Of course. It's a really stupid story. It's a powerful story. So, one night, Chris had gone to bed. I'd been struggling struggling struggling. We still had all the same problems. I We still had a lien on the house, still facing bankruptcy, still fighting like crazy. I was still unemployed. He still They still hadn't figured out like the solution yet for the business. And I was about to turn off the TV and there on the the TV there was this rocket launching and I thought, "Oh my gosh, that is it. I am going to launch myself out of bed like a rocket SHIP, LIKE NASA RIGHT here had launched me out of that bed and I'm going to move so fast that I don't think Mhm. I'm going to beat my brain. Now, here's a really interesting point. Um I talk a lot about your instincts and inner wisdom. And we can get into this a little bit later, but a lot of us talk about the fact that you have a gut feeling. But what all this research that I've done for the book and and all the speaking that I do, what I've discovered that's fascinating is actually when you set goals, when you have an intention on something that you want to change about your life, your brain helps you. What it does is it opens up a checklist and then your brain goes to work trying to remind you Yeah. of that intention that you set. And it's really important to develop the skill. And I I say that word purposefully, the skill of knowing how to hear that inner wisdom and that intention kicking in and leaning into it quickly. Mhm. So for me, my brain saying, "That's it, right there. Move as fast as a rocket, Mel." I wanted to change my life. And I think most people that are miserable or that are that are really like dying to be great and dying to have more, we want to change. We want to live a better life. We want to create more for our families. We want to be happier. The the desire is there. Again, it's about how do you go from knowledge to action. So the first thing in the story that's important is realizing that the answer was in me. And my mind was telling me, "Pay attention." Could have also been the bourbon. I had had a couple of Manhattans that night, but Anyway, the next morning the alarm goes off and uh um I pretended NASA was there. It's the stupidest story. I literally went 5 4 3 2 1. I counted out loud and then I stood up. And I I'll never forget standing there in my bedroom. It was dark. It was cold. It was winter in Boston. And for the first time in 3 months I had beaten my habit of hitting the snooze button. Naveen Jain What do you think is the most important um trait that an entrepreneur could have? The most important trait you can have in your children and in yourself is to have intellectual curiosity. I thought you'd say that. That's so powerful. Like listening to you talk about this I'm like man, because you find this stuff interesting, you're willing to like go out there and learn and learn and learn and learn and that's like interesting when it's your uncle and he knows a lot of weird facts about stuff, but it's really interesting when it's somebody that's built these massive companies around things that he knew nothing about right before he gets into the company. So intellectual curiosity is what makes us who we are. The day we stop being intellectually curious is the day we die. And then we become zombies and we know so many zombies in this world. They have absolutely no interest in anything else. So you've made a great analogy in the past which is don't worry about whether or not when you lead the horse to water it will drink. Focus on making the horse thirsty. Yes. I know there's a lot of parents watching this. How do you make your kids especially like thirsty for knowledge? And I think that's really interesting is that you know most parents and the teachers think their job is to you know take them to the water and then they're hoping and persuading them to hopefully they can drink the water. Our job as a parent should be is to make them thirsty and never take them to the water because once you make them thirsty they will find the water. And the way you make them thirsty is by allowing them to be intellectually curious. The minute you start to teach them how much fun it is to learn about something, to be able to go out and do something with it. And if you can start to show them that it is not the money that drives the society or it who they are. So, this is a couple of things I can tell you about and our children, as you know, we have three wonderful children. And one of the things we told our children is there's no amount of money. The success can never be about the amount of money you have in the bank. It is about how many people's lives have you been able to touch. And at the same time is your self-worth is never about what you own. Your self-worth comes from what you create. And there are lots of people in Middle East who may be stinking rich, but as far I'm concerned, they're worthless and useless because they haven't created anything, right? And the third thing to remember is the only way for you to know when you have become successful is when you become humble. Because if you still have arrogance left in you, then you're always trying to prove something to someone or yourself. And our president is a great example that someone who will never be successful. Because he's trying to prove He's trying to prove always telling me, "You know how much money I have. You know how smart I am. You know how big MY HAND IS." WHY DO YOU THINK PEOPLE LIKE BUYING into that? Like people the young entrepreneurs especially and just like a lot of young people. Like they are they are drawn like a moth to the flame around people's wealth, right? Like people love to showcase your money and they would love to show all your toys and all of that stuff. Like what is it that keeps bringing people back to that? So, I think it is just the flashy thing is the instant gratification that the money brings them is what they attracted to. And you realize that anything that generally brings instant gratification is probably the wrong thing to do in the long term, right? So, I would say that if you think about happiness, you will find that most people who have tremendous wealth rarely have the happiness. Rarely have Rarely have the happiness, right? Cuz they've been chasing money? Because they're chasing, you know, chasing money. So, to me you know, making money is like having an orgasm. If you focus on it, you'll never get it. So, you have to let it happen. Just enjoy the process. Not bad. I like that. Why what is it? Like I hear that a lot about wealthy people really struggling to find happiness. There's no amount of material thing that can bring you happiness. Even if you buy whatever the thing today is the latest thing, someone somebody has more than that. And if you constantly think having the latest thing is going to make you happy, you'll always be unhappy because someone has the later things, right? And the day the minute you buy something, guess what happens? It no longer matters, right? And you always keep chasing the next thing and the next thing and you keep collecting the toys. And I think to some extent, happiness comes from being satisfied with what you have at the same time driving to use what you have, whether it's your skills or financial resources, to go out and do tremendous good in the world and always know that when you are going to go out and solve the problem that helps billion people, you'll in the meantime be creating a $10 billion business that's going to give you even more resources to solve even more audacious problems. Jason Maiden. Did you ever meet Tim Grover? I did, yeah, one time. So, Tim in his book Relentless, and I've had the very good fortune of meeting him and interviewing him, and he he was the first person that really talked about the darkness. Like when I So, I've seen so much footage on you, you can't imagine. And you are so upbeat and positive and bright and sunny. And when you're with your family, oh my god, like it just literally it pours out of you. But there's like you're so driven. Do you have like a foot in like the darkness? Do you know how like how to balance? Like how does that work for you? Yeah, I mean, you know, um it actually you have to have both. So, if there's extreme darkness, there has to be extreme light. There's duality to everything. So, I just tend to bias towards what I want to see in the world more, you know, what I want to see more in the world, which is joyfulness, which is being present, which is being, you know, um thankful. And so, that's what drives me. It's the things people told me I couldn't become. It's the the negative circumstances that I come from. I don't let that limit me limit me at all. That's my catalyst. Because I I look at it like, "Okay, why not me? I've already overcome this. Why can't I go and start a company? Why can't I build something that's meaningful? Why can't I create this new paradigm shift in the way we look at the world as big giant superhero training facility?" Because if I looked at it the other way and started to take, you know, um the count of, "Okay, well, I can't do this because of where I come from. I can't do this because of how I look. I can't do this." I wouldn't start anything. Everybody will wake up each day doing subtraction. I look at my life as addition. You know, I wake up and say, "What can I do today to add to my skill set? What can I do today to add to someone else's joy? What can I do today to serve someone else?" So, when you keep a mindset of service, your problems in that darkness become smaller cuz you're not going to focus on your own insecurities, your own problems. You're going to figure out a way to amplify someone else's experience. So, I go through life looking, you know, looking at people as as an opportunity for me to serve. Cuz while I'm waiting on my blessing, I can be a blessing. And that's how I kind of balance that. When you focus solely on your darkness, everything becomes about you, you become selfish, and you could be driven to a point where it becomes toxic. And that's why you see some people implode once they get to where they're going because they look up and no one around them really wants them there. For me, I I I have this mentality that if everyone around me is fed then no one is starving then I don't have to worry about people being um villainous or hungry and trying to take from me. So, the way I feed is through time, through joyfulness, through good energy because sometimes all you need to do is tell a person that they matter and show up. That's the greatest gift is to acknowledge people in a world that's so busy and so hurried to slow down and be present and to acknowledge a person's existence is to me how you balance out the darkness with the light when you're driven. I love that. I think that's amazing and as somebody that ascended so rapidly through Nike like a to move through a traditional um culture like that in a way that's positive is is pretty spectacular. Do you think that was part of why you were able to move so quickly cuz people wanted you to win? Um no, quite the opposite. Quite the opposite. No, you you know. No. Be honest. Yeah, no I you know I I never assume people want me to win. You know, just like anybody, man, I've had my setbacks in corporate, setbacks in life. You know, my strategy is very simple. I'm very honest with myself so I figure out the ways people can tell me no and then I take that no off the table. So, the last thing they can say to me is a yes. And what I mean by eliminating the way people can tell you no is taking an inventory of your weaknesses, taking an inventory of your gaps in your offense or your defense, your skill set, your mindset, finding someone to learn from or going and put yourself through a class to learn it. So, I knew when I got to Nike that I was very good at drawing. Drawing and designing are two different things. I can draw anything but designing something is very different. It's a process. It's it's it's strategic. It's intentional. It's driven through research and empathy and I didn't have that skill set. So, I went and I found people that did and I learned from them. But then when I learned from them I added my layer to it which was narrative. That was my core differentiator. I said everybody else can do that well, I'll tell stories really, really well. So, I'm going to double down on being known for this one thing but I'm going to go and ask for help from other people. The second thing I did is I didn't focus heavily on building deeper relationships in my discipline. I went to parts of the company where they normally didn't see designers. So, I spent time in supply chain and finance and inventory management and compliance and legal and I asked them how did their job impact my job? So, I humbled myself cuz I knew even though I draw this picture, somebody had to have the budget. Somebody had to get this thing produced. Someone was making sure it shipped and got through customs. How did my job impact theirs and vice versa? In doing that, my name was now in rooms of really big decision makers that had never would have interfaced with me had I only focused on being cool with the cool kids. And so, um you know, my strategy is is very it's methodical. It's almost like I look at life like chess. I'm thinking five steps out and in order to do that, I have to be honest with what I'm not good at. And I learned that from Michael. He always would say turn your weakness into your strength. And you know, they said he didn't have a jump shot, he developed a jump shot. He didn't have defense, he won the defensive player of the year. So, every year I do a a teardown and I do an inventory of what I did well, what I wished I could have done better, and what I liked about, you know, the experience in between. So, it's like I like, I wish, I wonder. You actually write these things down? Mhm. That's my New Year. I don't do New Year's resolutions, I do like New Year's inventory and say, "Okay, I like, I wish, I wonder. I like, I wish, I wonder. I like that I did this. I wish I would have done that. I wonder if I tried that, what would have happened? Um that constant introspection is almost like in a lot of ways, it's um driven through my love for stoic philosophy. I'm a big fan of Marcus Aurelius in the book, you know, um the um the emperor's handbook. He did a very great job of, you know, jotting down his thoughts in an introspective manner about his troops and his country and what he wanted to be as a leader. And I try to do that with myself, you know? So, at heart, I'm part Lucius Fox, part stoic philosophy. Jay Williams, how did that notion of you have to be crazy to be great find its way into your mind? Uh first of all, I've seen it on a multitude of levels. Um, you know, it was really funny. My rookie year, you get so damn excited cuz you're playing against these guys that you've been dreaming of [ __ ] playing against your entire life, right? actually cross over Jordan, right? Uh, well, yeah, I I I did even though he he dropped multiple buckets on me and then told me how he was going to do it, which was impressive cuz he was 40 years old. It still pisses me off to this day. I don't know if you can tell. Um, but I remember we were playing against the Lakers, Tom, and we were out here in LA. And um, you know, like I always try to outwork people, right? That's just how I made my mark. So, the game was at 7:00. I was like, you know what? I'm going to come to the Staples Center cuz we're playing This is when the Lakers had Kobe and Shaq. Okay? This is This is like the championship Lakers. I was like, you know, I'm going to get there at 3:00 cuz I want to make sure I make 400 made shots before I go back into the room and then I sit in the sauna and I get ready for the game. So, you know, get in the car, get to the gym, get there and as I'm walking onto the court, who do I see? I see Kobe Bryant already working out. And I'm like, okay, this's kind of cool. This's Kobe. What's up, Kobe, you know? And uh, you know, so I'm putting my sneakers on and you ever get lost in what you do where you end up like, wait, it's been an hour and a half? I got I'm just I'm I'm here. I'm in it. So, once I set my foot across that line, I started working out. And so, I worked out for a good hour, hour and a half. And when I came off after I was done, I sat down and of course I still heard the ball bouncing. I look down and I'm like, this guy's This guy's still working out? He's He was working out for like It looks like he was in a dead sweat when I got here and he's still going. And it's not like his moves are nonchalant or lazy. He's doing like game moves, you know? Um, I sit there and I unlace my shoes and I'm like, I want to see how long this goes. I sit out there and watch another 25 minutes. And he got done. I was like, okay, I think I've seen enough. Go play, you You come back, get in the sauna, get ready for the game. That game he drops 40 on us. Wow. Okay? And after the game is over, I'm like, I I have to ask this guy. I got I have to understand like why why he he works like that. Right. So, after the game is over, I'm like, "Hey, Kobe, like why why were you in the gym for so long?" He's like, "Cuz I saw you come in." And I I don't wanted you to know that it doesn't matter how hard you work that I'm willing to work harder than you. Wow. And he's like, "It's Don't hold this There's nothing wrong with that. Like I'm not saying I dislike you as a person. You just You inspire me to be better." Right. And it was the first time I started to see this level of competitiveness where I said, "I need to start doing more." Right. Wow. Michael Strahan Everyone thinks it's easy. Everyone thinks you're not scared. And I tell you Everyone thinks you haven't had failures. I've had I've had plenty of failures. But I don't look at failure I've never looked at a failure and said, "Uh woe is me. Oh." I don't know. I'm just programmed to say, "Oh, it didn't work. Okay, let's go. Next thing, work harder." Finish something else up. Keep going. I'm not programmed to go, "Oh, it didn't work out. And let me contemplate and feel sorry for myself. And you know, and and and go over here and get sympathy." I just I don't know if it's where I was brought up or if it's from the business of football where it's a win or lose. Right. It's like success or failure. And if you lose the football game, I don't have time to think about how I lost it and what I did wrong because if I'm doing that, the next the guy I'm playing next week is getting ahead of me. Mhm. So, I got to worry about what's coming up next and push for what's next and get better for what's next. Not get better for what's in the Not not worry about what I wasn't good enough for in the past. Right. And I've done sitcom fail. Um the business of fail. You know, you but you figure it out. Life is about figuring it out. Life is not going to be perfect. And if you expect it to be perfect, you're fooling yourself. And a perfect life without a challenge is not a perfect life. It's a boring life. Boring. Did you see the movie War Dogs? Oh, the gun runners? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, I did. there's a great line in there, which they don't intend this way, but when you were talking, it really hit me. They say the money's made between the lines. Mhm. Now, in the movie, they're talking about something a little bit different, but when you were saying like, I fail and I think about okay, what's next? How do I learn from this? You know, what's the pivot? How do I move or you know, reinvent yourself? Um that's that's the money. Like if people want to know how you've had such astronomical success in so many crazy different arenas, it's that when you said life is about figuring it out, I was like, no one's going to write that down. Like people at home and I'm putting a [ __ ] pin in it, so people will write it down because once they get that the magic of Michael Strahan is that that you take the time to assess and figure it out. Like you were saying with GMA and watching you on GMA has been so cool to see you really changing from what you were doing on Live with Kelly and Michael. Like what you were calling the It was personality, you know, roll up and shine. Yeah. And then now this, I see you and you've talked about it and talk about it in the book about I wanted a challenge and I needed to know, am I am I saying no to this because I'm scared? Because if that's it, then I'm going all in. Because fear is something that you can overcome and figure out. That, dude, that to me like Yeah. The juice is worth the squeeze, right? Yeah, the juice is worth the squeeze. Jessica O. Matthews I think that for me, I used to believe that that meant that I could never really achieve what they achieve. That there were certain parts of the world, certain levels of success, certain um levels of business that were just going to be too big for me. It's like, how can I dare say I'm going to run an energy company? Like that I'm going to build wealth for a community. Like, who who the hell am I? Um How did you get over that? Cuz I think most people have that, but they stop there. The first thing that I did was not think too far ahead. So, the idea was instead of imagining from day one, oh I want to build an energy company, it was more imagining or really envisioning, well why am I getting up in the morning? Why am I You know, what's the point of my day? Um And so, for me, I'm really, really excited by self-actualization. I'm really excited by the idea of figuring out ways to one kind of recruit people to be part of the the solution that to the world's problems, because I I truly believe that there is, given how complex our problems are, there is no one person or company that's going to solve all of them. The only chance in hell that we have is if as many people as possible are engaged and feel empowered to be part of that solution. Um And so, I think it's like, how can I then create systems and products that I almost want to call them domino innovations. Like, they basically beget other innovations. They inspire the right people to start to solve the things that I could never imagine solving. Um and in doing that, they make that one life that they're living, that one life that they have feel like it was worth it, you know? And whatever day happens to be their last day. Um and so, that really excites me. Especially also, I think I would add to, recently wanting very much to make sure that little girls who look like me believe that they can do anything. Um and believe that they can do more than just media and entertainment in particular, and believe in the value of their perspective and so that's what gets me up in the morning and then everything else, the details is like it kind of I can push through that day. And what I found is that instead of trying to live a successful life, if you aim to have a successful day, you know, just you know, 12 if you have 13 out of the 24 hours of your day, if you won those hours, um you won the day. And if you win most of the days in a week, you won the week. You know, we're we just need a simple majority here, right? And if you And if you if you win, you know, most of the weeks in a month, there you go, most of the months in a year, most of the years It all adds up. and and all of a sudden, look at that, without even trying, you've been able to kind of get somewhere. The Nerdwriter, Evan Puschak. So, I'm looking at the Nerdwriter and I'm thinking, [ __ ] like this content is on another planet. Like it's so good and I could just sit there and watch it. But the the real question that you should be asking is, why do I think it's good? Because it's going to be very different for other people. So, for me, usability is all that matters. So, I'm watching the content and I'm saying, oh [ __ ] like I can really use this piece of information. Like you totally [ __ ] up my life, you changed it in the most beautiful and amazing way with um the Hemingway quote and the notion of what's it, Kintsugi? Kintsugi. Kintsugi, thank you. Yeah. So, I'm watching that episode about Kintsugi, the record player of my life skips, grinds to a halt. And I'm like, this is unbelievable. Yeah. And the Hemingway quote that you threw in, which I had never heard, immediately put it on my list of like life-changing quotes, is life breaks everyone and some are stronger in the places that broke. Yeah. I was Great quote. Woah. Great writer. Walk us through that concept, that art form, what it is, how it's impacted you. So interesting because that's a video that I've probably gotten the most um personal feedback about. Um and the concept is is sort of simple. Um in Japanese culture, they have an art craft art called kintsugi where when uh ceramics are broken, they they don't throw them out and buy another or, you know, or create an another one from scratch. They put the ceramic pieces back together. Mhm. But the way that they had adhese them is with gold a kind of gold adhesive gold sparkly, you know, It's almost like a mortar material. Yeah, it's it's beautiful. And so you get these these pieces that are broken, but at the cracks are are more beautiful. And I thought that is such, you know, a perfect metaphor. And it's not my metaphor because it it it, you know, it goes into the Buddhist concept of wabi-sabi and But the idea that, you know, we are going to go through trauma and it's particularly relevant right now, I think, in the in the post-election period. Um we are going to go through trauma. But trauma is an opportunity to change and to um reorganize the elements that made up your life. You know, I I gave a a speech in um Singapore a couple weeks ago and you know, what I spoke about was that when a person's mind is traumatized, it's like the story that they were telling themselves has ceased to be persuasive. Right? And when a story stops being persuasive, um it is disorienting and that, I think, is what trauma is. The period between when you when your old story breaks apart because of this last straw on the camel's back thing. I mean, we're going to continue to tell ourselves the old stories until it's so glaringly contradictory that it doesn't hold up. So, trauma is the period between when that breaks down and when you from the pieces of the old build something new. Um and we'll never glorify the trauma itself. But recognize that in that period you have a very unique opportunity that will only come along a handful of times in your life to reorganize the story that you tell about yourself to yourself. So, that for me is what um Kintsugi is all about and I think a lot of people just really connected with that idea. For sure. Vanessa Van Edwards. And you've talked about breaking up with friends. Like so how do you sculpt that garden of friendship? It's so hard. So, I think that adult friendships is you know how when you're a teenager everyone's talking about like bullying and cyberbullying. I think that as adults this adult friendship issue is the next sort of frontier of talking about how do we court friends? How do we build a friendship when it's not romantic? How do we break up with a friendship when it's been too long? And the biggest thing that happens with friendships is they do go stale. And that's a very weird thing to say, but there are people I'm sure you can think of someone in your life where every time their number pops up on a text message you're like uh it's been a while. I better call them. Or you know, you see them out of convenience or out of location. And I think that those are the kind of friendships that really drain you. There's actually a study that was done on ambivalent relationships. Yeah, this is so interesting. Yeah, I'm thinking about ambivalence a lot. So, toxic people, we get it, right? We all understand that we want to get rid of toxic people. That's more obvious. The real danger I think is ambivalent relationships. So, these ambivalent relationships are the people where either you don't know how you stand with them. So, you don't know if they like you or not. And they're also the people where you don't know if you really enjoy hanging out with them or not. Have you ever had that? Yes. And you're like, am I Is this going to be fun? Was that fun? Is this fun? Um and I think that those are the ones that take the more energy. There are also the more dangerous ones because they tend to creep in and stay in. So, the whole notion of frenemies I find really really intriguing. And this is something certainly that I have dealt with in my life. And it was weird to me how until I read that that it didn't register why that would be so insidious. So, what the study what the science says, they did a a research study with police officers. And they asked police officers to identify the amount of toxic people in their workplace and the amount of ambivalent people. And they found that the police officers who had more ambivalent relationships um were sick more often, had less happiness at work, and didn't like their job as much than police officers who had toxic people. Just Just think about that for a second. And the reason for this is because if you have a toxic person, boundaries are easy. They ask you to go out to lunch and you're like, "No, thanks." Right? Like you know it's a no thanks. Whereas if an ambivalent person asked you out to lunch or asked you to their birthday party or, you know, asked you to work on something, it takes this mental energy where you have this thing where you're like, "Ooh, like will it be good? Would I rather eat alone at my desk or would I rather have lunch with this person?" And it when it's not always easy, that's an incredible drain on our emotional energy. And if you're an introvert or an ambivert, an ambivert is someone who is kind of splits between extroversion and introversion, your energy is finite and our mental space is finite. And this is something that I did not realize until much more recently. I thought that mental space was sort of endless, right? You could learn forever. Um you could think about things forever. But actually, we only have a certain amount of mental time every day. And if we are dedicating that to trying to figure out if someone likes us or not, which is a very important thing. We all like to be liked whether we admit it or not, that I think is a waste of mental energy. Why would we want to spend it towards that? And that's why I think ambivalent people are more dangerous. Do you have a checklist? Cuz I'm like thinking back to the people that managed to become friend of me is in my own life. It's kind of scary how long it took me to be able to put that label on them to like sort of wake up to the fact that either they always were or the relationship had evolved to that. Like years, right? Years. I know. So, I don't have a checklist. It's actually just one simple question. All right. Let's hear it. Are you ever doubting that they're really happy for you? Wow, that cuts right to the heart of it. I mean, that's it. And that that happens actually quite often. Like there are these people who make these very passive-aggressive comments where you're like, "Was that nice or was that mean?" If you're ever questioning that, that means they are not truly happy for you. Or if you have a piece of really good news, they a really true good friend will mirror and match that excitement with you. Someone who's not as happy for you will come in with dream killer questions. You know dream killers? Yeah. Dream killer questions are when they question your success, they doubt the success, they think of all the negatives. And dream killers are not always bad. I I have dream killers in my life and I call them when I need someone to poke holes in a business idea. Right? Like I'll pitch them cuz they're great practice. But I know that they are not the people that I go to when I have something I'm truly excited about. So, you know that that's the only question you have to ask yourself and it might be an inconvenient truth. Like don't answer it off the cuff. Like don't answer it really quickly. Like try to think of all the times in the last 6 months that you've seen them and shared something. Did you feel like they were as happy as you were about your happiness? Jay Samit, what's one of the most important things you hope people take away from the book? That all the big famous people that you hear about, you know, Richard Branson and Steve Jobs and and and Zuckerberg and everyone, they're no different than you are. Right? 70-something percent of world's billionaires are self-made. So, you can achieve this. Now, it's not going to be easy. You don't just wake up on Tuesday and become rich on Wednesday, but it doesn't take any more effort than going to a job that you hate. And unless you believe in reincarnation, you got one shot on this planet. One shot. So, don't you want to make a difference? Don't you want to leave something behind and make the planet better than you found it? Why are you here? What do you want to accomplish with your life? And it doesn't have to be being rich. And it doesn't have to be money oriented. The same principles in Disrupt You, you can change the educational system, you can change healthcare. I mean, I am humbled by what I'm seeing people create around the world with so little. But, we are on this ball together. We can solve problems together. We can make a better future together. You know, it's an optimistic story that you get to write your piece of the the story. I mean, why wouldn't people want to push their potential? So, aim for the stars. If you didn't make it all the way, you made it to the moon, you know, not bad. All right, guys. I hope that you got as much out of that as I did. I was really blown away this year by everybody that came on the show, and I would be remiss not to say a big shoutout to everybody here on the team that put this clip show together. They went through and pulled out some incredible gems that have really become a part of how I think and are going to help me really make the most out of 2018. I hope it does the same for you. If you guys haven't already, be sure to subscribe. We are pumping out this amazing stuff every week. And until next time, my friends. Be legendary. Take care. What's up, Impactivists? 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