Pay THIS Price, and GREATNESS Will Be Yours | Tom Bilyeu

The very meaning of life is to find out how many skills you can acquire that have utility and then put that utility to the test in service of someone else. Your life is the exact reflection of the choices you have made. That's why so many people are paralyzed because they know that they're not the person that they need to be in order to accomplish. And I'm here to tell you it just comes down to price. There's a price to pay to become somebody new. Because let me tell you something right now and burn this into the core of your soul. There's always room for the best. Once you understand the whole reason to acquire a skill is that it gives you power. Now, I'm going to define power. Power to me is the ability to close your eyes and imagine a world, the world the way you wish it was, and then open your eyes and make that world come true. That's power. And the thing that stands between you, where you are today, and your goals, where you want to get, is a gap in skill set. It is a gap in abilities. And once you're willing to look nakedly at your inadequacies, to literally build your self-esteem, your entire sense of self-worth and value is built around one thing. Whenever you face an obstacle, whenever you face a difficulty, whenever you fail, you have one thing that you say to yourself, "On a long enough timeline, I can learn this." When you switch your life around to that, whatever your goal is here, whatever part of the honors club or the leading edge you're at, or if you want to go beyond that, whatever that is, wherever you want to go, plant that flag, identify the skills that you would need to get there, and then set about every day getting those skills. Here's the problem I find most people have. They judge themselves through the lens of a moment. They fail at something. They miss the honor club. They don't close that deal they thought they were going to. They embarrass themselves. They flub something. And they think that defines who they are. But I'm telling you right now, you're not defined by who you are, you're defined by who you want to become and the price you're willing to pay to get there. And if you're prepared to become the best, you can become unstoppable. You can build something other people think is impossible. You can build something out from under a mountain of doubt. There's a price to pay for change. And I've had a lot of you come up to me and ask questions. And there's a look in people's eye, and I will tell you one of the questions that hides behind what people are actually saying is, "Tom, am I going to make it? Do I have what it takes? When you look into my future, can you see me making it?" And I'm going to cut to the chase for all of you, and you're going to mistake what I'm about to say for good news. And then I'm going to tell you why it's actually the worst thing I could tell you. You all meet minimum requirements. So, whatever it is you want to do, I'm not going to say that it's going to be easy for you because you're ultra a or something, you probably aren't. But everyone that I've encountered here, literally, without exception, every single person that has come up to me and said something, you meet minimum requirements. Even you awkward [ __ ] that have a hard time like making eye contact, even you guys, I'm telling you right now, you've got some [ __ ] you're going to have to deal with, but you meet minimum requirements. Now, minimum requirements for what? For whatever you want. Now, that sounds great, right? Oh, [ __ ] Tom said I can make it. This is amazing. But all I've actually said is now, if you don't make it, it's on you. And that's it. There's nobody else to blame. Everything is your fault. Everything. The good stuff in your life, that's on you. You did that. You either put yourself in a position to deserve it, to be around people that want to help, to take care of you. Luck came by, you were able to capitalize on it. Because like we talked about earlier, luck's like a bus, another one's coming. But will you have the fare to get on? And maybe that's it. Maybe you just got really lucky. But you had the fare to get on the bus, and that's on you. So, you should be very proud of the things that you have in your life. But all the things in your life that aren't to your satisfaction, those are all your fault. Now, I'm going to tell you a story, and this story pisses people off. And it goes like this. My wife, who happens to be British, big it up for England, let's say that she is with her mom, and she's the bedroom that she grew up in. She's all safe and sound. The door is locked. The alarm is on. Her mom's in the next room making sure that she's safe. But right then, a meteorite comes screaming through the atmosphere, crashes into her bedroom, and kills her. Whose fault is that? I know some [ __ ] have listened to my content. I will tell you that right now. Now, if people don't know me, everybody goes to it's dumb luck, divine providence, it's nobody's fault, how could you blame yourself? Well, let me tell you how I can blame myself. And when you hear the reality of this, and you realize that I am in no way, shape, or form being hyperbolic, it actually is my fault. Here's why. I know right now there is an organization that track what are called near-Earth objects. In fact, I'm on the board of the X Prize. One of the prizes that they're trying to raise money for is for this problem, to track all these known objects, and to find some way, lasers, planted nuclear explosions, something, to make sure that if something is ever on a collision course for Earth, that we can stop it. Literally, four weekends ago, I had a chance to vote for this, to say this should be a prize, and I didn't. So, now, not only have I never sent a dime of my money to help, I've never sent an email with encouraging words, I've never called them up to tell them what I think they should do. Now, I literally voted against them. So, if a meteorite happens to kill my wife, I don't have anyone to blame but myself. That's so apparently true. Now, I think it's the right decision. I think that putting the time and energy into something that has such a vanishingly slim possibility of actually happening makes no sense. You have to know where to put your energies. All of us have a finite amount of energy. So, you at some point have to triage and decide what are the things that I'm going to attack. I'm far more worried about my wife getting into a car. The likelihood of her dying is almost certainly going to be, at this point, something to do with heart disease or something to do with an aneurysm, things like that. It most certainly isn't going to be a meteorite crashing through the roof and killing her, but if it did, I wouldn't waste time blaming anyone else. Now, the key here, the key, I wouldn't beat myself up over it. I would be crestfallen. My wife is my everything. It would be a loss so devastating I don't even want to comprehend it. But I just wouldn't waste time blaming anyone else because the reality is, and let this come home, your life is the exact reflection of the choices you have made. Love your life? Great, you've made awesome choices. Hate your life? I'm sorry. You've made bad choices. Humans lead with belief. That may be the single most important thing to understand. Humans lead with belief, meaning you don't do something and then believe you can do it. You won't even take the first step if you don't believe that your actions will be rewarded with results. That's why so many people are paralyzed because they think that they're not worthy, they think they're they know they're uneducated, they know that they're not the person that they need to be in order to accomplish. And the reality is you're probably not. The fact is your skill set has already taken you as far as it's going to take you. So, if you are unsatisfied with where you are today, I have some horrifying news for you. I'll chase it with some good news, but first let's start with the bad. The bad news is your life is an exact reflection of the choices you've made. That's it. It's not circumstance. It comes down to skill set and choices. You've chosen to build a certain skill set. You've chosen to do certain things, take certain risks, play certain things safely. Whatever the case may be, those were all choices. Now your life is a reflection of that. What I want you to understand though, the belief, the only belief that you need to have that thing that is going to allow you to take that first step is not to believe that you're capable of what you're trying to build because we all know you're not. I knew that I wasn't when we started Quest. I knew I wasn't the person that I needed to be. I understood that. It just didn't paralyze me. Because I believed one thing. And if you take nothing else from what I say today, burn the following statement into your soul. Humans are the ultimate adaptation machine. That's it. Charles Darwin is often misquoted as saying that it's the strongest of the species that survive. He never said that. What he actually said was it's not the strongest of the species that survived, nor the most intelligent, but rather the most adaptive to change. We're the apex predator for a reason, because unlike any other animal, we have the ability to go in any direction, any direction we want. We're the only species that you can find anywhere. At one point, James Cameron was actually at the bottom of the Mariana's Trench. I believe the very meaning of life is to find out how many skills you can acquire that have utility, and then put that utility to the test in service of someone else. It's what the ancient Greeks called techne. I've worked my ass off for this set of skills. They are unique to me, and they help other people. And in being able to help other people with something that I worked very hard for, I feel good about myself. And I will make you guys one promise right here today. The game you're playing, please listen to this, so that you don't end up wasting years of your life like I did mine. The game that you're playing is not success. The game that you're playing is not money. The game that you're playing is brain chemistry. It's about fulfillment. The only thing ultimately that's ever going to matter in your life is how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. The things you say to yourself quietly in your mind when no one else is around, that's what matters. And becoming somebody that you're proud of, in whatever way you define that, is completely open to you. Humans are the ultimate adaptation machine. We can grow in any direction. It is what we are designed to do. What scientists used to call junk DNA, and they were so confused because humans only have 20,000 genes. Some onions have 40,000 genes. And they thought this can't be. Onions just aren't more biologically complicated than humans. So, what's going on? And then they realized all that junk DNA that they were dismissing, that's epigenetic information. Meaning, this one animal, this human animal, is designed to respond. We don't come pre-programmed. We come ready to adapt. We come ready to change. We come ready to grow. And once you know that that is the nature of being a human, that that is the beautiful gift of this life, is to see how much you can grow in whatever direction you want, towards whatever end you want. But the gift that you have been given is the ability to change. So, if you don't like who you are today, that's okay. It doesn't matter who you are today. It only matters who you want to become, and the price you're willing to pay to get there. And once you understand that you can always make a different choice and get a different reaction. And that's the power in your life. That's the power that you have. Is no matter what's going on, you can choose to think differently, believe differently, see differently. All of those things are a choice. Read Man's Search for Meaning by Victor Frankl. Lost his whole family to the Holocaust. Was in, I think, five different concentration camps. And he said, "The thing that people die of in a concentration camp is the loss of a why." And Nietzsche said, "If you have a why, you can survive almost anyhow." Because you can always change how you think about something. And when you change how you think about it, it's what we've been talking about all day. When you change how you think about it, you actually change the event. We have to construct a narrative about it that moves us forward. And this is why I'm such a firm believer that you should do and believe that which moves you towards your goals. People get the do part. They understand their actions should be actions that take them towards what they want to accomplish, but people often miss the most important part, which is only to believe things that move you towards your goals. And I see people every day that tell themselves a story about themselves that they are worthless, that they're meaningless, that they're pointless, that their friends and family would be better off if they just died. So, we have to find a way to construct a narrative about ourselves that empowers us, that lifts us up, even though even though we make mistakes, even though we fall down, even though we're never going to get things right all the time, and even though terrible things happen to us. Or maybe we do terrible things. But in that, the erosion of the self, that's the danger. The erosion of the self, that is the danger. And when I talk to people about the 80/20 principle, 80% of the time you should be focused on the things that you love, the beautiful things that you want to bring to this world, the beautiful things that are already in the world. And 20% of the time you should be kicking yourself in your ass and saying you can do better. It's such a powerful idea. But the problem is when people get to the 20%, they forget that it's only supposed to be 20% of the time, and that it's meant to be these acute moments where you're pushing yourself to be more, to do more. It isn't so you can tear yourself down. That's why you have to do and believe that which moves you towards your goals. And if thinking that you're a worthless piece of [ __ ] moves you to your goal somehow, then fine, do it. But I can't literally fathom a universe in which that would be a logical way to move forward. So, I'm going to give you the magic words that you need right now to never fall prey to that. Believing I'm worthless does not serve me. And I don't do things that don't serve me. Repeat that in your head every time you begin to disparage yourself. Because here's the problem. You're going to believe it's true. You're going to believe that you really are worthless, that you've really done something that makes you worthy of punishment, that means you ought to suffer. And in that moment, you're never going to be able to convince yourself that that's not true. So, you need something else that's going to get you off the hook. And it has to be that core belief system in your life. A belief system that you put in place when you were emotionally sober, and you said to yourself, "I'm making a pledge. I do and believe that which moves me towards my goals, period. Not when it's convenient, always." And that becomes a guiding light in my life. If the guiding light in your life is that you only do and believe that which moves you towards your goals, when you get into that loop of beating yourself up and thinking that you're worthless, or that you're never going to make it, remember that. That belief does not serve you. And you don't do things that don't serve you. I've often said the point of life the meaning of all this chasing you're doing is one simple thing. How do you feel about yourself when you're by yourself? I know a lot of people that fear that quiet. I know a lot of people that don't want to be alone with themselves. And the reason they don't want to be alone with themselves is because they don't think they're worthwhile. They're not happy with who they are. That's what adaptation is about. If you're not happy with who you are then let's step into the ownership of that. Let's remember that's our fault. There's no one else to blame for that. The people that did horrible things to you are not to blame for that. Because if they are, there's nothing you can do. But if you're the owner of that in fact, don't even worry about the word blame. You're in control. That's what this is about. It's about retaining control. It's about knowing that you own your life and at any time if you want a different outcome, you can make different decisions. You can do different things. You can start a new narrative. And once you begin that new narrative, you realize the power that's in that to take you where you want to go. But it begins with identifying what is your goal? Once you have your goal, then you can work backwards to what you need to do in order to accomplish that goal. And that is the chasm of adaptation. It's the acquisition of skill set. It's getting better at something. It's becoming capable of something that you weren't capable of before. But that change the fear of the unknown is the thing that paralyzes people. We are designed to adapt. So, wherever your business is now, whatever your skill set is now, whatever your vision of yourself is now, you can change it. You can become anything you want to be. But, life is going to ask you one simple question. What price are you willing to pay to get there? And that's it. That's the hard truth. If you're willing to pay the price and you can become whatever you want. You can become truly capable of the extraordinary. But, you've got to go through the process of building that skill set. You've got to be willing to stare nakedly at your inadequacies to understand that you aren't yet the person that you want to be or need to be to execute against your goals, but that you can become that person and then start walking down that path. And day by day, brick by brick, build the skill set that you want. The person that you are has gotten you as far as it's ever going to get you. So, you've got to become a new person. You literally have to adapt. Now, the great news is, like we talked in my first talk, that is what humans are wired to do. Humans are the ultimate adaptation machine. The reason that we are the only species that you can find in every corner of the globe. At one point, James Cameron was literally at the bottom of the Mariana's Trench. We have sent human beings to the moon. We are going to send human beings to Mars. And the reason we're going to be able to do that is we can adapt to our surroundings. There was a woman who swam the Bering Strait. Really think about this. The Bering Strait is the space between Russia and Alaska. So, you can imagine it's not quite a swim in the Bahamas. To make the swim, she had to change her fat from what's known as white adipose tissue to brown fat. Brown fat is more thermogenic. So, it actually kicks off heat. To do that, for over a year, she had to expose herself routinely to cold temperatures, sleeping in the winters in Alaska with the window open. But, in doing that, she actually put her body through an adaptation response. Her body got the message, adapt or die. So, it adapted. And when you're willing to put yourself under those kinds of stresses to become that new thing you want to become, to be the new person that you want to be, to go farther than anyone you know has ever gone, to be the [ __ ] goat, it is possible. But, it demands a price. It demands a price. And what this weekend is about, it's about you deciding for yourself where do you want to go? And what price are you willing to pay to get there? Now, if you guys have been keeping up with brain science, I am here to tell you right now, you can become anyone you want. Now, the process of taking myself from scrounging in my couch cushions to find enough change to put gas in my car to building a billion-dollar business was all about building a set of beliefs. Now, I believe that the Matrix has us all. I don't actually think we live in a simulation, but I think the movie The Matrix is the perfect metaphor for the human experience. We have all pulled a web of lies over our own eyes, and the web of lies is what you tell yourself about what's possible for you and for the world. And once you get that web of lies over your eyes, you simply see it as reality, and you don't understand that each one of those fundamental beliefs is alterable, that you could choose to believe something else. In fact, you don't even realize that they are beliefs. Einstein has a quote. It's one of the most important quotes in my life. The most important question any man must decide for himself is whether or not he lives in a friendly or hostile universe. Now, what I love about that quote, what's hiding in it, is that it's a decision. You get to choose whether you're living in a friendly or a hostile universe. There's no objective reality. It just is what it is. You're going to get what you see. You're going to get what you focus on. And you see what you focus on. So, the more you focus on, the world works against me, I've got bad luck, the more you're going to see proof of that. You're going to seek it out. You're going to act in accordance with that belief. If, on the other hand, you believe the human potential is nearly limitless, that the human animal is, by its very nature, the ultimate adaptation machine. Think about this for a second. Humans are the apex predator, unlike anything else the world has ever seen. We can live in any corner of the globe, from the Arctic to the deserts. At one point, James Cameron was literally at the bottom of the Mariana's Trench, which is the deepest part of the ocean. Humans can not only they can thrive. Now, nature had to make a decision with every animal. Do we create something that comes pre-programmed? Think of a horse. When a horse is born, it can already run, jump, walk, eat. A human, on the other hand, takes the opposite approach, where nothing is pre-programmed. But, now you can go in any direction. When humans are born, we can't hold our own head up. This is something that really freaks me out. Humans are so incapable of taking care of themselves, you could literally lay an infant next to a bottle and it would still starve to death. We can't hold our own head up. We poo in our diapers. We are literally in need of constant care for years of our lives. Now, this comes with a benefit, which is that we can adapt in any direction that we want. And the most beautiful part of this is it never stops. Even as you get older, you can decide that you want to go in a different direction. You can change the course of where you're headed. And so, in this role that I found myself as budding entrepreneur, I set out to learn everything that I could. To understand what is my goal and then to work my way backwards. One of the most profound things that ever happened to me, and if you guys haven't read the book Antifragile by Nassim Taleb do. In that book, he lays out the difference between something that is resilient and something that is truly antifragile. I'm going to say somebody that's unstoppable is truly antifragile. And what antifragile is, the more you attack it, the stronger it gets. So, something that is resilient or tough, it is still defined by its breaking point. The more you go after it, eventually it will break. Something that's antifragile grows with that. And I believe each and every one of us can build a mindset that is truly antifragile. There's only one thing that I have found that is actually antifragile and it looks like this. I was there with my partners. They routinely made me feel stupid all the time. They were older than me. They were more than 10 years ahead of me on their entrepreneurial journey. And so, I was just wrong all the time. Now, up to that point in my life, I actually called myself the king of remedial jobs. Up until then, I'd only gone for jobs where I knew I'd be smarter than the person interviewing me. I knew that at some point during the interview they were going to ask that magical question which made me feel so good about myself. Which was, why are you here? Why are you interviewing for this job? And I lived for that because it made me feel smart. So here I am now not in that world anymore. I'm with guys who are way ahead of me. They're way smarter than me. And I feel dumb all the time. And one day I find myself arguing for this path in our business because it was my idea. And I knew it was wrong. That was the hilarious thing. I knew it was wrong and yet I was arguing for it like really passionately. And then all of a sudden it actually worked. And they agreed to do it. And I thought, oh [ __ ] Now what? I've been telling my wife that I'm going to make her rich and here I am arguing for something that just makes me feel good about myself. And I had this moment of crisis. And I asked myself, no judgment, what do you really want? Because if what you really want is to feel good about yourself, to feel smart, to be right, to be worthy, if those are the things that you want, then get out of this company because you're wrong often. You're making mistakes all the time and your partners are so far ahead of you that they make you feel stupid. So this is like, that doesn't make any sense. So if you want to just go feel good, go back to being the king of remedial jobs, be in places where you're always feeling smart, where you're usually right, and live that life. But if on the other hand, what you really want is to actually reach your goals, then you're going to have to stop worrying about feeling good about yourself. And both of those felt flawed. Everybody needs to feel good about themselves. That that's just the reality of being a human. You've got to find a way to feel good about yourself. But I really believe everything you do in life should be in service of your goals. And now, in this moment where I'm hoping the people that are left here right now are the die-hard [ __ ] that are going to make change, no matter what. I want some people to step forward. And I want you to tell me what you're afraid of. I want to know why you don't think you're going to make it. We have a brave soul. Let's hear it. Yeah, give it up for that. I'm afraid of getting to the end of my life and realizing that I did not become the best version of myself. Knowing that I got to the very end of my life and I did not accomplish every single thing I know I believe in my heart that I deserve to have. And I know the only thing that's stopping me is myself. I love that. I think that's the right fear, and I think all of us should have some form of that fear, which if you didn't hear is to have a vision of the person you could become and to reach the pearly gates, as it were, see who you could have been, contrasted with who you actually are, and be disappointed by the gap between them. And I love chasing that. I think it's a beautiful chase. But what I hope you guys will do, if you ever find yourself at the pearly gates disappointed in how much farther you could have gone, to simply ask one question of yourself every day. Did I give it my all today? Doesn't mean you're always going to win. Yeah. If your life is a series of [ __ ] yes I did. You've won. You've won. Guys, the struggle is guaranteed. The struggle is guaranteed. The struggle is guaranteed. The success is not. And like the thing that I beg you guys is to have the guts to fail at something that you love. And when you were on the mud, on your face, and people are laughing, the I told you so's are coming out, that you remember one simple fact. You loved what you were doing. And you left it out on the field. What the [ __ ] else is there? Legitimately, like I'm getting emotional. What the [ __ ] else is there? What more can you ask of yourself than to really [ __ ] try? To really say, I give a [ __ ] ABOUT THIS. THAT'S THE LIFE to live. That's the life. Like to say, I care about this. It matters. It gives me purpose. I'm going to fight for this. This is a group of people I want to serve. And I'm going to go all the way out every day. And look, you're not going to hit it every day. There's going to be days where you're off. There's going to be days where you're weak. Weak. But if that day, instead of bullshitting yourself, instead of saying I wasn't weak today, what are you talking about? If that day you [ __ ] own it, and you say, yeah, I was weak today, and I'm not going to be weak tomorrow, but I'm not afraid to face that. I'm not afraid to accept that I'm not perfect. I'm not afraid to look in the mirror and say, today was a bad day. That I didn't make myself proud today. But that shouldn't diminish who you are. It shouldn't diminish your view of yourself. Why? Because it wouldn't serve you. Because if you beat yourself up today, you make it harder for you to be rad tomorrow. It's a game that has to be seen in total. It's not a game where you can take a [ __ ] snapshot. And this is like what I want you guys to understand. In any one moment, I've looked like a fool so many [ __ ] times I can't count. But when I look at my life in 10-year chunks, I'm freaked out by what I've accomplished. And so, I want you above all to focus on truth. So that somebody they may walk out of your clinic, they may never come back cuz you either solved their problem or you weren't going to be able to solve their problem, you knew that, and so you sent them elsewhere. But that person becomes a referral. If you're taking notes, write this down. Never never go for the sale. Always go for the referral. Never go for the sale. Always go for the referral. When that person believes in you, they trust you, you had a moment to monetize them to get the quick dollar and you didn't, that person now wants to give you money. It's literally incredible. And I can't tell like I'll I'll give you guys an example. So, I create content now. I create a lot of content. I put about 5 to 7 hours, depending on the week, of content out every week. And I don't monetize it. I don't charge anything for it. And I know people are waiting for the other shoe to drop. And at the end of this, you're waiting for me to hit you up with something, anything to buy from me. There's nothing. I want to add value. Now, my full disclosure is one day I may have an ask cuz I create My new thing is creating movies. And so, maybe one day I just want you to tell people that the movie exists. I don't even need you to go see it. But if I've ever added value to your life, just tell somebody it exists so that I can find my audience. I'm not joking. I have had people show up at the gate to my house saying, "I just want to work for you for free because I dig what you're doing." Three or four people have come up to me in the back already just since I was here and saying, "Thank you for what you do." That's it. Thank you for what you do. Imagine that. But that's the world we live in. That's the opportunity that you have is to just play the long game. And I don't believe in patience. In fact, I have a shirt that says F patience. I am not a patient man. I'm the least patient person you were ever going to meet. I am actively anti-patience because you will accomplish nothing in your life if you're patient. Nothing. And anybody that tells you to be patient, I want you to be immediately skeptical. But what I always do is I play the long game. I play the game of reputation. That's what you guys have to do. You're in a battle for your reputation. And I would say the thing that you guys need to do is turn inward and not tolerate it.