The 3 Things Rich People DO That The 99% DON'T DO! | Tom Bilyeu

Don't allow yourself to get bogged down in a path which should be easily discarded, but don't give up easily on a mission which should be far more firm. All right, you guys ready? We're going to have some fun. We're going to take the energy, get a little bit crazy. I want to make sure that you guys end this on a high note, and honestly, I will be wildly disappointed in myself if all I managed to do in this is inspire or motivate you. At the end of this talk, I will consider myself a failure if that's all that happens. I will consider it a win on the other hand if you guys go out and actually take action. And at the end of the day, all of us were not judged by our intentions. We are judged by what we actually accomplish. And your accomplishments are going to be entirely determined by what you actually do. And my talk is going to be about that. How to take action, exactly what action is made up of, and why it's critical to recognize that humans lead with belief. And so at the end of this talk, hopefully I will get you guys to understand why right now you have everything that you need already to believe in yourself, to be capable to do something that is truly extraordinary. And we're going to walk through that path. But for my talk to make any sense, I'm going to have to give you guys a little bit of my backstory. Not that I can see a whole lot, but is anybody familiar with me prior to 7 seconds ago? When you learned that I wake up. Wow. Well, I'm completely shocked by that. Uh thank you, by the way. So, to give those of you who don't know a little bit of background, my story goes like this. Growing up, I did not show any signs of success. My parents taught me to be a good employee, which I'll liken to the slave's mentality, to keep my head down, do as little work as possible, and avoid punishment at all costs. And that's how I started. I grew up in a family in Tacoma, Washington that teetered between blue-collar and white-collar. And I was being trained to be a good employee. And when I left for college, my own mother, who's always been my biggest cheerleader, I think that's important to recognize, just quietly assumed I was going to fail. And every day since I left, by the way, my mom all but forced me to go to college, kicked me out of the nest. It was only one of I think two people to leave the state for my graduating class. Everybody else stayed home. I wanted to stay home. And my mom said, "You need to go chase your dreams." But then every moment since then, my mom has done everything she can to get me to move back to Tacoma. And so finally one day I asked her and I said, "Mom, I really don't get it. Like, why You were the one that pushed me. You were the one that kicked me out. So why are you working so hard to get me back?" And she said with no malice in her heart, "I just assumed you were going to fail." "I assumed you were going to fail and come home, but I never wanted you to ask what if." I have the chills on my face remembering that. Because that's the human condition. There is something inside of us that we all recognize that says we could do more. We could be more. We are capable of becoming something. But it's that path to becoming that we don't really understand. And it's that path to becoming that I want to talk about today. I love the theme of this event, pivot, making a change while keeping your center. That to me really is what life is all about. But that's that's the hype. Now how do we get into the practical realities of that? And to explain that, I'm going to walk you through some of my story. So my story starts when I go to film school. USC film school, statistically speaking, is harder to get into than Harvard Law. And I managed to get in. I had taken one of the teachers out who was on the acceptance committee and I said, "Look, I have really terrible SAT scores. I got a 990 on my SATs, by the way. I took it twice. That is my combined score." Monkeys with feces rubbing it on there get better scores than that. And I was mortified. I went to the committee to find out what I needed to do to get into film school, which was my dream, the thing that I most wanted in this world, and they said, "Hey, as long as you've got good grades and you have a 1300 on your SATs, no problem." And I was devastated because I was so far from that. So I took one of the teachers out and I said, "Look, I have a confession. I got really bad SAT scores. I took it twice. Look, I'm just not good on testing." La, the whole story. And he was like, "Oh, who cares?" He was like, "There's two points of acceptance. One as an incoming freshman, where yeah, we look at your SAT scores, but the other is as an incoming junior, and then we don't care about your SAT scores, which are merely meant to tell us how well you do in college. So I'm just going to look at your grades. So if you get good grades, I'm not even going to look at the rest of your application." Cool. So I locked myself in my dorm room for 2 years. I didn't date. I didn't drink a drop of alcohol. I didn't go to a party. All I did day and night was work. And I studied. Because my problem was my mom was right. I didn't show signs of early success. People that were looking at me expecting me to fail had accurately assessed what I was capable of at that moment. But what they didn't understand about me, what they didn't understand about the human animal, is our ability to adapt, grow, and get better. The most fascinating thing to come out of science in a long time was when they sequenced the human genome and they realized, and by the way, they thought they were going to solve everything. They thought they were going to cure cancer. They thought this was going to be the end of chronic aging, like all of the diseases that we struggle with now, they thought they were all just going to go away. Once we sequenced the human genome, that was going to be it. It was It's to be like a map to Xanadu. It's going to be amazing. And then they did it. And what they discovered was humans only have 20,000 genes. And some onions have 40,000. So they're literally looking at the data going, are we really meant to believe that an onion is more genetically complex than a human being? How can this be possible? Oh, and by the way, they were ignoring all of this stuff that they were calling junk DNA. Now, it didn't take them long to realize that that junk DNA plays a role. We are without question the most dominant species this world has ever seen. We are an apex predator unlike anything. You can find us in the Mariana's Trench, which is the deepest part of the ocean. You can find us in the Arctic. We have literally sent human beings to the moon. And what that junk DNA really is is epigenetics. Now, it's just a fancy word for we respond to our environment. And more aptly, we respond to stress in our environment. Anybody ever seen a professional bodybuilder? No? Okay. A professional bodybuilder hardly looks human to me. They are It's unbelievable what they're able to do, but they show in a very real and tangible way what you can do to the human body when you understand how to put it under stress. Now, if you've ever been to the gym, you know that the real money is in tearing the muscle down, not building it up. You actually build up the muscle while you're sleeping based on what you've eaten. So the act of bodybuilding, of actually going into the gym is an act of tearing down so that you can create the stress so that your body can respond. Now, if you remember nothing else from my talk, remember this. Humans are the ultimate adaptation machine. Just by being human, each and every one of you is capable of great change. Who you are today does not predict who you can become. Who you can become is the answer to a very simple question. What do you want? And what price are you willing to pay to get there? What do you want? And what price are you willing to pay to get there? Kobe Bryant, one of the greatest athletes of our time, would show up on game day, and if he saw anybody else at the gym as early as him, even though he was always the first on the court, he would end up practicing longer than that person. And I had the honor of interviewing one of those people one time. And he said, "I went up and asked Kobe, Kobe, we have a game in an hour. Like, what are you doing out here practicing so long?" And Kobe said, "I needed you to know that I was willing to outwork you." And in that game they ended up winning, and that lesson stuck with that guy forever. When you're willing to put in the work, when you're willing to take control of your environment and put yourself through the stressors required for adaptation, you literally can become anything. And my life is proof of that. So, I stand here as one of the founders of a company, company called Quest Nutrition, that we took from not existing to being valued over a billion dollars 5 years later. Thank you. That was the guy whose mother, not too long before that, just quietly assumed he was going to fail at college. But what I began to understand is that I could harness that ability to adapt. That we can learn in any direction. Nature has to make a choice with any species. Option number one, pre-program everything. Think of a horse. When a horse is born, it comes out, it can already run, jump, take care of itself. And then option two, be built for maximum flexibility. Be able to adapt to your environment. A horse is a horse no matter where you put it. But a human? Depending on when and where it's born, depending on what it allocates its resources to, its time and attention, it can turn into a basketball player, a neurophysicist, a parent, a coach, a hair stylist. You literally get to choose. You get to decide what it is that you want to be. And then I want you to think about the first time that you picked up a pair of scissors. You didn't know what you were doing. It didn't feel like it was an extension of your hand. But now, when you step into that role, when you show up, the way that everything feels, the way that you sit it around your station, it's all like it was meant to be. It flows. You know right where things are, how to cut somebody's hair depending on the texture of the hair, the length, the quality, the age of the person, what they've done to it. You know it all. You know how to mix colors. All of that stuff is from training. But the irony is people don't stop and think about, "Hey, I got this far in this thing simply by allocating the time and the energy. Where else could I go? Could I pivot?" And the answer to that question is yes. The human animal is designed to adapt. That is literally what we are sculpted to do. For me, the piece of advice that I always give to somebody, whether it's an entrepreneur or somebody who wants to be the greatest parent of all time, what is your goal? You've got to start with your goal. Everything works backwards from that. For me, I wanted to get rich. And the irony is, when I started on my entrepreneurial journey, I was literally saying that to people, I want to get rich. I just want to make a bunch of money. And so I started as a copywriter in a technology company because I'd failed to make it in film school. I actually ended up doing horrifically. And I, at the end of film school, I'd felt broken, embarrassed, lost. I had no idea where I was going. But I started teaching filmmaking. And as I was teaching that class, I realized, wow, I don't know enough to teach these students. I need to like research at night and practice to be able to come in and present this material. And a weird thing happened as I started doing that. I was actually learning a lot more. And so I was able to convey that to the students and I was able to help the students make their films better and it made me realize, whoa, there's this weird reciprocal loop. The harder I work over here, then go and explain it, they actually can take that knowledge and put it to use. Building skill sets, getting better at something. And I started thinking, is that something that I could do for myself? And at that moment, these two very successful entrepreneurs walk into my class. And at that time, I was obsessed with two things. I wanted to get rich and I wanted six-pack abs. Now, I grew up in a morbidly obese family. So, for me, that was real, man. And I used to be 60 lb heavier than I am now. And I wanted those six-pack abs, man. I just had no idea how I was going to get it. And I remember the first time that somebody told me, "I think you already have abs. It's just under the fat." And I thought, "What?" Like, that doesn't even make sense. Cuz I had done like a bunch of crunches, and I'm like, "I still don't see them. So, I don't know what the problem is." Maybe it was all the licorice. I had a thing. What is up, my friend? You and I are living in a golden era of self-improvement. We have books, platforms like YouTube, courses, seminars, virtual events, workshops. The list really is endless. The internet has been so good for people like you and me who want to accomplish greater and greater things in life. And now, my friend, it is about to get even better. I've been spending most of this year working on the single most entertaining tool that you're ever going to have around self-improvement, and it is called Project Kaizen. It's a web 3-based game experience that will be unlike anything else you've ever engaged with in your life, partly because the technology is new and it's amazing. If you're not familiar with blockchain, NFTs, and all of that, Kaizen is going to be the perfect introduction for you as it is an excellent intersection of entertainment and learning all backed by the blockchain. We're getting closer and closer to launching this project for you every single day. We are working our faces to the bone to get this thing out there. And my friend, I want you to experience it. So, click the link on your screen and head on over to my Discord channel to stay up to date and be one of the first to join me inside of Project Kaizen, which by the way gets its name from the Japanese term of never-ending improvement. All right, back to today's episode. So, these two guys walk in, very accomplished entrepreneurs, ripped six-pack ab bodybuilder types, and they said, "Hey, you're coming to the world with your hand out. If you want to control your art, you have to control your resources. So, if you want to get back in the saddle and actually become a filmmaker, you're going to have to learn to control the resources. So, come with us, be a copywriter, but understand this is a startup. You can have any role in the company that you want. You just have to become the right person for that job." And so, I took them at their word and I pivoted and I left my teaching career, which had safety. And I looked to my wife and I said, "This may fail, but I've got to at least give it a shot." And my wife said the words that have become famous for me, which is I bet on you. Thank you. Now, what my wife was betting on wasn't that I already knew how to do what they wanted me to do, because she knew I didn't. What she was betting on in me is the same thing that each and every one of you have, which is the ability to learn. And so, I went into it knowing I was not the right person for any job in that company. I'd never been in a company like that before. I'd been totally focused on film. This was software, it was security software, it was nothing that I had any interest in, but I wanted to get rich. And so, I did it. And for 6 and 1/2 years, I put my head down like those early days in my dorm room and I worked my ass off around the clock. I didn't take vacations, meaning if I went somewhere, I would literally, guys, this is real, I would take a camera so that I could watch what was going on back at the facility. I was always working around the clock and at 6 and 1/2 years, I was so different than where I started. I had worked my way up. I was now the chief marketing officer of the company. They'd given me 10% equity in the company. I was now on paper a multi-millionaire. I had done what I set out to do. I was capable of things that I never would have believed that I could do. Running a team, building a website, online advertising, marketing, all things that I didn't know. I didn't even know when I started the difference between sales and marketing. I had no idea what the difference was. But here I was now the chief marketing officer of a company that was winning awards, it was making money, standing in this beautiful conference room overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and I realize I'm miserable. And I've been miserable for a long time. And I learned a really powerful lesson that I want you guys all to think about right now. The goal that I had did not take me where I wanted to go. I was living the cliche of money can't buy happiness. And I began to realize the game we're all playing, it's not success. It's not money. It's brain chemistry. To sum it up in the simplest way possible, the only thing in this life that matters, the only thing in this life that matters is what you think about in your most quiet moments about yourself when you're all alone and the only thing you have are your thoughts. If in that moment, regardless of your worldly success, you feel good about who you are, you feel good about what you've done and how you've touched other people's lives, you feel good about what you're striving for and trying to accomplish, you feel good that in the times when it got hard, if it mattered to you, you pushed through, that matters. That matters a lot. But the money doesn't matter. And so I quit. And I realized I was just not interested in living a life, no matter how much money there was, where in my quiet moments I felt like I was wasting my life. I felt like I wasn't helping people. I felt like I wasn't connected. I wasn't connected to my wife. I'd been ignoring her for years. I felt like I wasn't connected to my business partners anymore. It was all just about the money. I didn't have a why. Who knows Simon Sinek? Big it up for Simon. All right. Simon and I did a video that essentially broke the internet about millennials. Somebody watched it. What got Simon on the world stage is this whole concept of why. You've got to know why you're doing what you're doing. If you're just showing up every day to cut and dye hair, to keep your lights on, you're going to have far less energy to make it through the hard times than somebody who is there to help transform somebody, to help make somebody their best, to help them feel their best. And I hope that you guys saw that video not too long ago of the hairdresser that went around and he was doing makeovers on homeless people. Right? Man. It was incredible. It was so beautiful. The look on their face at that moment where they see themselves for the first time in front of the mirror and they are seeing something totally new. They're seeing a version of themselves that they did not know was there. And the ability to give that gift, like it is so easy to get lost in the day-to-day grind of what you do, what any of us do. But if at the core driving you is a deep and unending why for what you're doing, you've got something. Now you've got a chance to transcend what you're doing. And the way that happens is very tactical. It has nothing to do with like woo-woo, being out in the air. It's none of that. You're going to have the energy that you need to fight through. People always ask me how I generate energy. There's two ways. Number one, take care of your body. There's just no way around that. At the end of the day, it's a biological thing that's going on, the production of ATP. And the second thing is you need to be excited about the future that you're trying to create. And when I went in and quit, even though I had millions of dollars in equity, and I was making more than I'd ever made, I quit because I didn't have a why. I didn't have anything that gave me the energy to keep pushing. I didn't have excitement for what I was doing anymore. My partners were stunned, totally took them by surprise. I'm driving home, I call my wife and I say, "I did it. I quit." Like we're actually We were going to move to Greece. We're going to live for cheap on some beach somewhere, and I was going to write. And that was going to be that. And then I am pulling into the driveway of my condo, and my phone rings and it's my partners. And out of love and respect, I take it. I say, "Hey, baby, give me a second. I'm going to take this. They're calling." And they said, "Come out to dinner with us." And I went out. And they said, "Look, we could do this without you, but we don't want to." And that was all I needed to reconnect to something other than money. And I remembered for a minute, these were guys that I loved. These were people that I had gotten to know through good times, through bad times, through the hard times, through the excitement of the company growing. And in connecting to something other than the money, I was finally able to really see and understand what it was that motivated me. And I confessed to them that money was not my highest priority in business. My highest priority was camaraderie. I wanted to connect. I wanted to bring something of value to the customer. I wanted to think about the customer. I wanted to be myself, and I wanted to market in a way that was inclusive and created a community. And in that community, we could do something more than just sell products. And so we decided to sell that company because they felt the same and they wanted to do something based on passion. They wanted to have the energy and excitement to see things through. And for three very different reasons, we decided to form Quest Nutrition. Now, as I mentioned, I grew up in a morbidly obese family. So for me, I was never going to chase money again. And I told them that. I was only going to focus on value creation. And it had to be something that I had a deep and personal connection to. So for me, I started thinking every day about saving my mom and my sister. My mom and my sister are both morbidly obese and have been essentially my entire life. And I knew that I was going to lose them too soon if I couldn't solve the problem of how they ended up there. I wanted to give them food that they could choose based on taste and it happened to be good for them. Now, if that doesn't sound hard, let me assure you that it is very hard. And there was one point in my life where we were making the bars by hand and it was so hard and so painful that I would wake up. This is a true story. I would wake up in the middle of the night with my hands cramping closed. That's a weird way to wake up. Let me just tell you right now. But I wanted it that bad. Now, we started producing the bars in Compton. And on the line, this is another true story. On the line, we had Bloods and Crips. And in the middle of it, you got the crazy white guy. Now, the reason that worked was because I was prepared to outwork everybody else. I knew exactly what I wanted. I had my why. I had my goal and it was very specific. And this is the thing about goals. They have to be incredibly specific. And my goal was to end metabolic disease. Not sell lot of protein bars, that was not the goal. I wanted to end metabolic disease and that informed every choice that we made as entrepreneurs, every time that we had to answer a hard question, one that might impact profitability or how late we were going to have to work or what we were going to have to do and it almost always was difficult including, by the way, we had to become our own manufacturers which we did not want to do. We wanted to outsource it. We just wanted to be marketers. But nobody would make the bar for us. Or they would but they said that we had to add sugar to it and we asked a simple question, will that help end metabolic disease, yes or no? If yes, we'll do it. If no, we won't and it wouldn't. So, we didn't. It starts with that specific goal. And then because I had my why, my hands cramping closed in the face of doing something to save my mom and my sister, it was not a hard choice. In fact, I wouldn't have been able to look myself in the eye and say I was not able to help them because it was hurting my hands. Right? It sounds ridiculous when you say it like that but most people don't have a personal tie to what they're doing. Mother Teresa has an amazing quote, no one will act for the many but people will act for the one. And so as you guys go into your jobs and you think about what you're trying to do, find a way to stop making it a job, find a way to make it a calling, a vocation, something that really meets that why, your desire to connect or do something great for people. Which by the way, when I say that the game that you're playing is brain chemistry, what I'm talking about is fulfillment. There's a difference between happiness and fulfillment. A bowl of ice cream brings me happiness. It does not bring me fulfillment. Fulfillment is often born of suffering. Fulfillment is about doing the things that are hard. In fact, the Greeks have a word for it, it's called techne. Techne means that you acquire a set of skills that is unique to you. The acquisition of those skills was very difficult, and here's the important part. Those skills serve other people. To me, I believe that the very reason that we're all here is to see how many skills we can acquire that have utility, and then put that utility to the test in service of others. That's going to be the thing that lights you on fire. That you're busting your ass. You're really getting good at something. You are taking action. You're moving forward. You're doing the things you need to learn to do to learn and trigger that adaptation response that humans have. You're putting yourself under the stress. You've identified a goal. You're working your way backwards to where you are today. And that's the key. It's what I call minding the gap. There's a gap between who you are today and who you will need to become in order to execute against your why. That thing in you that's burning, that you really care about enough to get across the finish line, that you care about enough to keep doing even when it's making your hands cramp closed, that you care about enough even when you've got to come in and work between rival gang members. It's the thing that you care about enough that you really will work so hard that the rival gang members fall in line behind you because you're leading by example. Thank you. And that became my mission every day. I'm going to show up and outwork everybody. I'm going to be the first one here. I'm going to be the last one to leave, and most importantly, guys, I really hope you were listening to Robert Cialdini, whose books I have read and all but memorized. The key is you want to connect with them. You want them to fall in love with you. You want them to be inspired. You want them to feel better about themselves when they're around you than when they're not. And if you can pull that off, they will go to war for you. And in the beginning when all we could do because we didn't know production, we just had to throw human capital at it and I needed people there, not kidding, at 2:00 a.m. on a Friday night. I had a bunch of ex-convicts in their early 20s with the tattoos on the face, the teardrop and all that, grinding it out to make protein bars because I gave them hope. Because I showed them that it doesn't matter who they are today, it only matters who they're trying to become and the price that they're willing to pay to get there. And so when you guys walk out of here, that's what you've got to ask. This whole theme of pivoting, this whole theme of keeping your center is about knowing what you want and believing you can make it a reality. But the only way to make it a reality is to put in the work. You've got to put in the work. The change is hard. The change is difficult. The change will demand everything of you. But man, if inside you really believe in what you're doing, you really see how you can get to that goal that you want. If you really see how you can serve other people doing what you do with this skill set that you've worked your ass off to acquire, then you can actually make change in people's lives and that's what motivates me. Getting the skills has real-world implications. It took me from scrounging in my couch cushions to find enough change to put gas in my car to building a billion-dollar business. It is absolutely limitless what you can accomplish. Now, think about that. If that's really true, if what I just said is true that human potential is limitless, then how you spend your time becomes a spiritual consideration. You're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. That's just true. And but now it's become so common to say and it's like every Instagram post that I fear it's going to lose its meaning. Who are you spending time with? Because if you're spending time with people like you, you're spending time with people like me, I'm I'm raising you up or I'm just not going to spend time with you. So, it's like now if you get in a mix of people like that who are like, "Man, we'd love for you to raise up to this level." But if you don't, it's fine, but we're just not going to spend time with you. All of a sudden that desire to belong to something powerful that you can see is going to lead you to your dreams. And I remember saying to my wife over and over and over, "They are the surest path to my success." I don't know anything else. I just know if I can hang on to these guys, they're going to make me better. And so, that was through all the years of being embarrassed and developing actually massive anxiety because I was always behind. I was always the dumbest person on the phone. I was always the dumbest person in the room. And it was like, "Was I going to be willing to emotionally go through that to get great?" And most people can't. So, here's the thing. Now, imagine, I'm not the only person they said, "Hey, this is a startup. You can have any job you want." They I I saw 12 people, maybe more, come and go over the years. They just couldn't emotionally deal with it. And so, I remember thinking to myself, "Why is it that I'm able to do this?" And the answer was I could self-soothe faster than anyone else. So, I would get kicked in the face and I would do something really dumb. I'd be called an idiot, told how stupid I was. And then I'd just be like, "All right, I need to recenter." And that just became my obsession. I need to be able to emotionally get back to complete neutral so fast that you don't even see it register on my face. How did you do it? How do you do that? Literally practicing. So remember, at the same time I'm reading about the brain voraciously, I'm reading about people that understand human behavior. I'm getting into cognitive science, neuroscience, like really going into it. So I'm reading all this stuff going, "Whoa, we're just a chemical processing plant. There are physiological hooks into these chemicals. So, hey, if you're mad, scared, whatever, but you force yourself to laugh out loud, you will change your neurochemical state. And you literally your experience is the neurochemistry." So I was like, "Whoa, so I could get I could be in a situation where I'm being berated or or I legitimately mess up and it costs money and it's like, whoa, that's on me and it is nobody's bad but my own." And I realized that what most people do, their strategy is to deflect it. It's your fault, not my fault. Yes. So I started thinking of this as a metaphor. People are throwing gold at me. They're throwing it really hard and I can put a shield up and deflect it, but then I lose that piece of gold. If I drop my shield and just take the pain, let it hit me in the head, then I bend down and go, "This thing, which was me being stupid, there's a lesson here." And now I have this piece of gold. But the whole thing is I have to be defenseless. So I have to own it, I have to take it, I can't fight. If someone is like this to this day, if our team is like, "Hey, there's something we need to point out to you," I'll do this. I square up to it. I want them to know, like, "Hey, I want to hear it. I want to know." Like I want to be literally physically open. I'm not going to close down. I'm going to do everything I can to square off, to open myself so that they know I'm receptive to the criticism, right? Because that's the nugget of gold. What I know is it's going to hurt, it's going to sting. But if I can emotionally re-center so fast you don't even see that I went through something, now I can just process, how do I take this information you've given me and get better? Everything in my life is driven by how something makes me feel. And I really believe all you have in this world is how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. So in that dark, quiet night, when you're all alone, do you feel good or not? And so I steer by that. And when I start losing sleep because something is stressing me out or I think I handled something poorly, I have to correct that. And what are the tactics? So, part of this is you have a belief system through which everything is filtered. So, my thing is, okay, belief system, I can get good at anything I set my mind to. Uh belief system number two, having a growth mindset is the absolute ideal. So, that means that just because I'm not good at something now, it doesn't mean I can't become good at it, that I should only value myself for being a learner, I shouldn't worry about being smart, right, good, talented, just the willingness to stare nakedly at my inadequacies. So, if I've done something and it's making me feel badly about myself, I start running through those filters. Also, does this beating myself up, is it moving me towards my goal or away from it? Now, a little bit of beating yourself up actually probably does move you towards your goal cuz it kicks you in the ass, it gets you moving, taking it seriously, you're really thinking about it. But then too much of it begins to erode yourself, and so I have to balance, like, am I just beating myself up, and now I've taken it too far, and I'm losing sleep over something I just need to let go, and focus on getting better instead of punishing myself? Like, just get better at it. Um so, those those are the tactics that I use. The word yet is a huge tactic for me. Tom, you suck. Oh, I'm not good at that yet. Okay, cool. Thank you, got it. Um I can get good at that. Um and and just keep coming back to those very simple basic building blocks of my belief system, what I value, where my priorities lie, what my goal is, having total clarity, am I actually moving towards it, and then just really holding yourself accountable to that without damaging your self-esteem. One of my like guiding principles is, never do anything that diminishes you, and then never do anything that moves you away from your goal. So, again, goal, you have to have that clarity, so I know what I'm trying to do, okay? Well, if I know what I'm trying to do, does beating me beating myself up over this, is that going to help me or hurt me? Oh, it's going to hurt me because I'm going to be more likely to slide toward depression, to think less of myself, to be less bold, to take less action. Okay, well then we're not going to do that. And I don't think people have researched cognitive behavioral therapy nearly enough. Pattern interrupting is like everything. Get better at pattern interrupting than LeBron is at shooting. Like you just have to be a ninja. Like you've got to be so hardcore. You've got to know about how to do that with yourself. So, if I have a negative thought that's recurring, I just tell myself, "Nope, you can't think this anymore." So, and every time it will come up because I can't stop myself from it popping up into my conscious mind, but you absolutely can control how the next thought goes. The next thought can be oh, I'm and here's what I'll do with a negative thought. That's so rad. I'm so glad this negative thought appeared in my mind because that reminds me to be grateful for the fact that I'm friends with Jay Shetty or that reminds me to be grateful the fact I have a marriage that is so insanely cool that like I legitimately some days have to stop myself from just curling up in a ball with her and just chilling all [ __ ] day. Like that is I'm super stoked. Even now Jay, it's so funny. I had to stop and think, "Wait, I'm going through this list of things that I'm grateful for. What started this?" And I'm like, "Oh yeah, the negative thought." Like that actually just happened to me right now. So, you can imagine in real life when like you train yourself every time the negative thought kicks up, don't don't sit in the emotion of the negativity that it will bring. Instead, use it as a habit loop trigger to think about something you're grateful for. And at first, it feels so awkward and it's like the negative thought just keeps coming back. But if you're diligent and suddenly negative thoughts become a habit loop trigger to gratitude, to positivity, to repeating your rules about I don't allow myself to think things that tear me down. So, I'm not going to think about that. Even just saying that crowds out that thought and telling other people that hey, this is what you're doing. It is unbelievable. But this is why I'm saying I'm literally just a patchwork of all these like tools and techniques that allow me to protect myself from negative self-talk, from anxiety, from depression. I don't think I've ever officially been in depression, but I've been super [ __ ] close enough to know the feeling of staring into the void, which I don't think is accurate. It feels like the void is collapsing in around you and just everything is meaningless and it is all utterly hopeless. And I've had a just enough of a glimpse of how hopeless that is to to get where people are in those moments, but anxiety, that I've been in the thick of. So, that one I know and I've used CBT, uh cognitive behavioral therapy to do interrupts on that. Um I have a very well-developed negative voice. So, I have had to um use tools and techniques to stop that. I never would have become a successful entrepreneur if I couldn't um learn to self-soothe. And at one point, that was what I would have said was my secret power. That my secret power in business was I can self-soothe faster than anybody else. I just keep coming back to being the learner, right? So, your identity isn't group A, politic this, politic that, tribe this, tribe that. It is I'm a learner. First and foremost. I'm somebody that wants to bring value to myself and to the world, first and foremost. So, it's like once you get to that, then as people are assaulting you, chances of them triggering a self-esteem like in like if somebody wanted to hurt my self-esteem, they would need to call me out on on are you really spending time learning or have you really improved? I think you're the same that you were 2 years ago. Like, "Whoa." Like if I really, like you said, felt that that might be true, then I would really that would call some [ __ ] into question for me. Cuz that's my identity. Right. If somebody came to you and said, "Actually, you're not a learner." For me, where my belief is now, that's so absurdist that I would brush it off. But if they were able to like compel me to see it, the funny thing is being a learner then kicks in again and I'm like, "Shit, if they're really right, then here's my chance to finally actually be a learner." But so, that's why I think that one's antifragile. But that's where it's like you can get yourself into trouble if they're hitting on the very thing that your identity and self-esteem are tied to. Recognizing that brain plasticity is real and so much of who we are, let's say it's roughly science says it's roughly 50% is not me making it up, that 50% is hardwired and you're not going to be able to do anything about it. But 50% is insanely malleable. Mhm. And um I love this quote, so great, that you can't make a racehorse out of a pig, but you can make a really fast pig. And I thought, okay, cool. So maybe I'll never be a racehorse, but I can be a really fast pig. And so whenever I'm feeling badly about myself or something knocks me off center, I just come back to that idea of what's useful? How do you move forward? Like even if you're not going to be the greatest of all time, does it benefit you to act as if you could become the greatest of all time if you pour yourself into it. And so I don't know that I'll ever end up being the greatest anything, but dude, acting like I can and like really practicing and moving through the world like I can become the greatest has propelled me forward. Yeah, because acting like you can't won't get you there. Yeah. Won't make you good probably or great. If you're constantly obsessing over why I'm not good enough or why I'll never become great. So acting like you can at least gives you a much better chance of getting somewhere than nowhere. 100%. It's what I call the only belief that matters. The only belief that matters is that if I put time and energy into getting a new skill, I actually will get better at that thing. And if you then extrapolate that and say and skills actually have utility, they matter. So knowing how to build a business that doesn't fall or build a business, build a building that doesn't fall down is very, very useful. Or build a business that doesn't fall apart. that too, right? So those skills actually let you do things. And so that's become sort of my obsession is getting people to understand you don't read a book to check a box, you don't go to school to impress your parents, you do it because the skill that you will acquire lets you do something in the world that other people can't do or you wouldn't be able to do and that has a material impact on your life. Yeah, I feel like you and I are very similar in the fact that we talk about skills a lot and acquiring new skills. And I think when you have a down phase or a breakdown phase, that's when you should think about what are the skills I'm lacking that could benefit me so this doesn't happen again. Everybody lean in if you're listening to this. This is one of those things that audacity is is nothing. Don't don't worry about being audacious. The reason people fear being audacious is they don't want to be me 10 years from now when this all fails, right? They're thinking, "Oh man, what if this doesn't work? This guy's going to look like an asshole." And it's like, yeah, maybe other people will think that I'm a total dumbass. It doesn't matter. And why doesn't it matter? Because of techne. Because if I know how to build a house, I can build a house. So my thing is I'm not trying to posture or be cool. I'm telling you I have a set of [ __ ] skills. That set of skills lets me do things. I'm just interested in doing those things. So whether or not I hit my timelines does not matter. I'm in the skill acquisition game. Skills let you do things. I'm in the game of doing the things that my skills allow me to do. So I want to impact people's lives. Maybe I'm not able to pull it off at a film level. Oh, I'll find another way. Or maybe it takes me a lot longer to pull it off. Okay, fine. As long as I love what I'm doing even when I'm failing, there's nothing to lose. No, because, you know, on this idea of techne, along the way you are fulfilled with every step on the journey, right? Every time you upload a new, you know, conversation, new episode of your show, it's a it's a it's a cool feeling to be able to put that out there and know that it is, quote unquote, you know, impacting people. And it is. It is. And that's the thing, you know this. Like you you say something into a microphone. Like right now, the the feeling that I have, well, I know people are listening. The feeling I have is it's just us in this room. But one day somebody's going to come up to you or me and say I heard that podcast you guys did and it really touched me and it changed me in this way. That's all I need. So I'm not I'm not afraid to be audacious cuz I know that you're never going to exceed what you're aiming at. So, your only your hope is to hit some percentage of what you're aiming at. So, I might as well dream massive. And one, it excites me. And then two, I'm not afraid of the failure. So, once you have that like, oh, it's exciting for me to dream big and I'm hyper conscious of you break it down in small pieces. Like, I'm not I'm not worried about building theme parks and all that stuff right now. What I'm doing right now today is make a good comic. Put out a good interview show. That's it. That's what my life consists of. Stay in business. Be profitable. Like, those are the things that I think about. So, I keep my you know, my goals, my immediate term goals very manageable, but I make sure that they're feeding naturally into the grand vision. But I don't get scared or lost in thinking, oh my god, I have to do all that. Nope. Right now today, I need to read a script. I need to make sure it's okay. I need to authorize it to be drawn. That's it. That's today. And as long as you're able to focus on that and get good at that, and then just always push yourself to make your skill set better and better and better as long as it's leading towards that thing and you have clarity on where you're trying to go so that you make sure the skills you're acquiring will actually lead you there, you'll be fine. I love the mindset stuff. I love it. And it's changed my life. And I love watching somebody's eyes light up when they get it for the first time. And so I created Impact Theory University. And it is the book, but in lecture form. Yeah. And so, I've already created that stuff. Now, I know that I would open up a much bigger market if I were to make the book so that those people could go, oh my god, this stuff is life-changing. And then I say, you like the book, you'll love Impact Theory University. Sign up today. And it would quintuple our business overnight. I I can pretty much guarantee it. When you say no to something that comes with a lot of zeros, you do so because of your value system. And what I value when I think about Tom Bilyeu on his deathbed, if I may speak in the third person, I think to myself on my deathbed, I don't regret not writing the book, but I regret tremendously not telling stories. Because I think if I want to impact 100% of the world, 2% of them can be impacted with what we're doing right now, where you say, "Think like this, act like this, it will make your life better." And 2% will do it. It's amazing. Now, I don't mean 2% of your audience. Your audience is the 2%. They have selected themselves out. They watch your show. So now, some ungodly number of them are going to go out and do it because they belong to that very rare group. The 98% though, they will not. And the I became obsessed with this because working at Quest, I had 3,000 employees, 1,000 of them grew up in the inner cities, and many of them could process raw data faster than I could. They were smarter than me, but they had done nothing with their life. And they were not going to do anything with their life. Not that would be remembered or anything that even they valued. Right. And when I boiled down to why not, it came down to they didn't have a growth mindset. They didn't have the only belief that matters. So I thought, "Okay, well, how do I get it to them?" So I we created Quest University, and I would show up early, I would stay late, and I would tell anybody anything they wanted to know about mindset, building a business, whatever. And 2% of them did it, and it was life-changing, and it's amazing. And I still get phone calls from people who are like, "You changed my life." It was amazing. But it's only 2%. The other 98% are either apathetic or actively antagonistic to change. So how do you reach them? Entertainment. The punchline is you have to get to the Olympic system, which you do through entertainment. So you tell them stories. TV, movies, yeah. I really believe that the way that humans assimilate truly disruptive information is through narrative. And so, part of the way that I've changed my life, that I've opened my mind to things like a growth mindset, is through, like The Matrix. It's not a mistake that The Matrix came out the year that I was going through this like, am I able to improve myself or not? The movie comes out, ends up becoming the dominant metaphor of my life. I'd love to say that it was a lightning rod moment when I saw it, my life has changed forever. It wasn't like that, but it planted a seed that I just kept coming back to. Oh man, it's like Neo in the Matrix. Oh man. And you just start piecing together like these fascinating belief systems because a lot of times the wisest characters in films are often taken from like Yoda sounds exactly like Laozi from the Daodejing. Yep. So it's like basically you've got George Lucas who's very familiar with Eastern philosophy talking Eastern philosophy through this little puppet, but especially if you hear it when you're young, man, like your mind is really open to it. So because of Star Wars I ended up becoming obsessed with the Daodejing. And then because of that, that ultimately was my doorway to a growth mindset. If there are only three books you could recommend to people that this all the books they could read in their life. This is the hardest thing probably, but if you were like three books to live a better life, to understand the world, and to just thrive, what would you say are those three books? It's not a hard question, but it's one that I'm sure I will answer differently every time somebody asks. Uh number one is Mindset by Carol Dweck. it's great. It's the most important book in the English language. Uh number two is The Obstacle Is the Way by Ryan Holiday, which is an absolutely extraordinary book. And then number three is Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink. He's great. And Leif Babin, shout out to Leif. The first is read the book Mindset by Carol Dweck, period. It's it it's so critical, man. And it just lays the foundation for how to think. Um that that's step number one. Step number two is you will only ever get in your life what you absolutely must have, your absolute obsession. Is it you that says your obsessions become your possessions? That is so true. And so getting people to understand that that level of like I must have this. Until it is that, like whatever it is, if it's taking care of your wife, if it's doing something rad for your mom, if it's having a beach house, whatever it is, until it you need that like you need oxygen, you won't get it. It it is going to demand so much of you. You're going to fall so many times, there's going to be so many obstacles, and unless it must happen in your life, one of them will make you stop. Like you said, you can't be for sale. Like if your will can be bought, it doesn't make you a bad person, man. It really doesn't. But if your will can be bought, you're just not going to get it. It's all your fault. Everything. Every bad thing that has ever happened to you is your fault. And if tonight a meteorite comes screaming through the atmosphere, crashes into my bedroom, and kills my wife, I will know that that is my fault. Now, I use the word fault to shake people up. I know that it's making you mad right now. I know that it winds you up, and you think that I'm victim-shaming. And when you get beyond that, and you realize all I'm trying to do is remind you that you were never, ever, ever, ever a victim unless you choose to be, everything in your life will change. You're always in control, even if that's a lie, and I don't care if it is. Even if a meteorite coming in and killing my wife couldn't possibly be my fault, I'm going to own it because the second I give away my power to somebody else, I'm now at something else's mercy, and there is some line that I can't cross, that I'm no longer in control, and I refuse to do that. Um if I could give anybody a gift, it would be that, for you to own that completely top to bottom, and to know that every good thing that's ever happened in your life, no matter how much it seemed like luck or coincidence, that was you. You earned that. You put yourself in that position. And as you move forward, life is one of two things, the result you wanted, or the result you didn't want. If you don't get the result you want, you are by definition doing the wrong thing, and you must change. If you get the result that you want, then you did the right thing. Simple as, no gray, nothing in between, that's it. It's all your fault. And that's the best news possible. I don't think that thinking something or saying something makes it true, but I think that thinking something and saying something makes you believe it. And the things you believe you will unintentionally guide yourself towards. I think your belief about yourself and what you're capable of influences your accomplishments more than you can imagine just because you don't put in the extra mile of effort or whatever that it was going to take cuz you don't believe that you can. Mhm. Or you don't even allow yourself to dream it. And if you don't dream it, you're never going to come up with a plan. So, it it is wildly influential in terms of what happens, just not in a mystical way, in a very like tactical, you just end up either doing or not doing the things you should. To me, greatness is leaving it all out on the field. Like, you can't guarantee results, but you can guarantee like, did you really play to win? Mhm. And this is something that I am heartbroken for other people if they're not playing to win. And the only reason to not play to win is if you don't think you can win and you value yourself for winning. So, my thing is, maybe I can't win. I think the odds are actually against me building the next Disney. But, it's such a fun game to play because I only value myself for the sincere pursuit. So, greatness to me is not about achieving something, it's about playing all out, sincerely pursuing it. So, I'm chasing money for eight and a half years. My mantra is I want to get rich. That's it. There's no Father-in-law wants you rich. You've promised you're going to be rich. You always wanted to be rich when you were young. 100%. And so, and that didn't that wasn't a dirty word for me. I didn't understand people who were conflicted about money. I was like, it's powerful. So, I want to get rich and and I just made it all about that. And so, for six and a half of those years, I didn't take days off. Even when we would go to London for Christmas, I had like a video camera that would allow, well, this is actually slightly in the future, but a great example. I would take a video camera that would let me watch the production line at Quest. Oh my god. So, like that kind of obsessive, like I'm all in. Yeah. Back in the technology company, same kind of thing, but I would either be working on the tech company or trying to start other companies at night. So, we talk a lot about we had like five or six companies fail, all side hustles. Yeah. But, it was like we just kept trying to learn and figure this out. And so, growing in that, becoming better, understanding marketing, helping elevate the company, really rising up to a peer status, watching other people fall away cuz they couldn't emotionally hang in the environment. And yeah, then they made me the I didn't ask for a raise for 5 years. I was like, I want to be I want to be so valuable that they feel gross for what they're paying me. Yeah. And so, because I wanted the equity. I didn't want the I didn't want the salary. Yeah. So, I was like, dude, I'm in this for the equity. You don't have to worry about me. Equity, equity, equity. I just kept it on their mind, like, hey, you said that was a possibility. I want you to know that means everything to me, and that's why I'm here. And so, hit the 6 and 1/2 year mark, I'm 10% owner in the company, and I'm completely miserable. And I've burned out, and I realized that entrepreneurship had given, given, given. It was making me stronger, bigger, faster, and now it was beginning to take away because I didn't care about the product. I didn't love what we were doing. I wasn't passionate. I was just chasing money, and money just wasn't that interesting. I At that point, on paper, we both know the difference between paper money and real money. Right. But, on paper, I was a multi-millionaire. And I went in and I said, "Guys, here's your equity back. I I'm quitting. Um I'm not crossing the finish line, so I don't think I should get anything for this." And it actually ended up being like a really cathartic moment where we could all say what we'd been feeling, which is yeah, none of us are happy. Mhm. And so, it became, well, if we're going to keep doing this, if we're going to keep building businesses, because by then it was very clear to me the struggle is guaranteed, the success is not. Mhm. And so, I'm going to go do something I love. And they agreed, they felt the same, so we said, "Okay, well, what would we build that we would love even if we were failing?" And so, for three very different reasons, that became a nutrition company. And for me it was I grew up in a morbidly obese family. My uncle essentially ate himself to death when I was 12 years old and it was scary and sad. My mom is morbidly obese, has been my entire life. My sister's morbidly obese, has been almost her entire life. Um my dad at one point was morbidly obese and then lost weight, but it was like that's just where my family lives. And so I was like they're going to die far sooner than they need to and there's this great Mother Teresa quote, "Nobody will act for the many, but people will act for the one." And so I just needed to wake up every day and think about my mom and my sister and that was it. And I thought I can show up every day and fight for them. It's not about the money anymore. I can fight for them. And look, we a lot of business acumen went into this. This was not just We had good intentions and it built a big business. It was we understood business, right? I'd now been in business for eight and a half years grinding it out building this technology company, which was hard as hell. And but now we were able to marry that and by the way, we took the tech company through the recession and everything. So I mean it was like I'd taken some knocks. So we really understood business at this point. And so now we were going to start something predicated entirely on value creation. That was like our mantra. Doesn't matter what's more profitable. It matters what adds more value. And so we we literally were saying these things. And we also we didn't actually throw our hands in a pile. I wish we had, it'd be a cooler story. But like all but that said and each of us needs to have fun every day. What makes you happy? The the easy answer and and the most truthful answer is time with my wife. The other answer to what makes me happy, there's really two things. So time with my wife and then the pursuit, which I'll put in all caps, right? So the pursuit of whatever, the pursuit of getting better, the pursuit of impacting the world, the pursuit of building something big that that matters. The pursuit. Maybe I never get it. I don't care about that. I care about the pursuit. I care about whether sincerely I'm actually trying to make it happen. Not bullshitting, not just like empty dreams, but like for real. I'm actually giving myself over to this. And I spent a lot of time in the inner cities. I big-brothered for this one kid for eight and a half years. Completely changed my life. And then having 1,400 employees and about a thousand of which grew up hard in the inner cities. Hard, I mean most of them grew up in Compton. I mean it was just some of the most extraordinary stories I've ever heard. And I realized those people are as extraordinary as anybody. Barack Obama, um Oprah Winfrey, um Tony Robbins. Like they all those same raw materials exist in people in the inner cities that nobody believes in, nobody think will ever go anywhere. And they won't cuz they don't believe in themselves. And so we were talking at our most honest, like what what are we really driven by? And I'm driven by that moment of awakening, which I had in my own life where I finally realized, wait. I can learn new things. So just because I'm not good today doesn't mean I can't be good tomorrow. And and that filled me with so much excitement. I want to see that in other people. And I want to see what the world looks like when other people realize, wait a second. That Steve Jobs quote that the world is made by people no smarter than you is actually true. And so if you're believing that these people are smarter than you cuz you did bad on your SATs, I'm just going to tell you right now, stop. So you can develop yourself. So my obsession became that humans are the ultimate adaptation machine. We are literally wired from the ground up in order to grow and improve under stress and pressure. So it's like what's the phrase? Uh pressure can burst pipes, but it also creates diamonds. So it's like you need the pressure. And yes, it can hurt, but it can also make something amazing if you're willing to put yourself in that situation. So it's a weird twist of fate that humans um to in order to build the muscle you first have to tear it, right? So uh but once you accept that that's how it works, you can do extraordinary things. Today we are going to be talking all about dealing with disappointment. This is something I know a lot about. I'm sure all of you know a lot about this, but there is a way to get over it and to make sure that we don't waste any time stuck in that period of disappointment. We may need to do a period of mourning, but that we don't allow ourselves to get stuck there. We're able to mourn, move past it, and get going again. All right. First question is, how do I stop myself from beating myself up for trying to do something that failed miserably and then continuing to overthink everything about what happened? Thank you so much for any advice and assistance that you can provide. Okay. Here is how to conceptualize failure and the disappointment that goes along with it. Once you understand that what the human animal is designed to do is learn, then you have to ask yourself if what has made the human animal the most apex of apex predators the world has ever seen, the most capable of completely changing its environment, what is it that allows them to learn fast? And the answer is failure. Now, the reason that failure is truly useful and I'm not just saying that to make you or myself feel better. In fact, I wish that it wasn't the way to learn the fastest, but the reality is the reason that it works so well is that when you fail, you trigger areas of the brain that are focused on memory and focus. So, you've got the memory side, so you're going to remember this. You've got the pain. This is not feel good. I do not want to go through this again. So, you've got that, which heightens your emotions, which makes you more likely to remember this thing moving forward, and then it also narrows your attention. So, you're really looking at why did this go wrong? And when you have this sense of I never want to repeat this, and you're looking very closely at why did this go wrong? Now, all of a sudden, failure is because of what it does to your brain, and quite frankly, because you're in the mix. You're trying things, and we learn better from doing than from reading about it or hearing about it. So, failure suddenly become the most information-rich data stream on planet Earth, heightens your likelihood of remembering, and it focuses you in on exactly what's the problem. So, now, even though failing sucks, part of what makes it valuable is that it sucks. In fact, it may suck in order to make it valuable. Let that sink in. That nature went, "Huh, when this happens, in order for this to be useful for this animal, for this evolutionary creature, I need to make sure that it becomes advantageous. So, that as they make mistakes, assuming that they don't get eaten by a lion, I want to make sure that they don't put themselves in that position again. And so, we have to learn from some method. And the method that gets us moving, taking action, trying things, feeling the pain, focusing, that's going to be the thing that we're going to get the most takeaways from. So, now, as you reframe what failure is, failure is not proof that you're a loser. Failure is the process by which you become better. Okay? Failure is not the process that reveals that you're a loser. Failure is the process by which you become better. That is the name of failure. So, now, when you fail, why would you beat yourself up over it? It's the nature of progress itself. There is no way to get better without failing. It's the fastest way, it is the most effective way, it is necessary, you have to do it. And by the way, for you to have failed at something, you showed the courage to try it. So, instead of wasting time beating yourself up over the fact that something went wrong, we're going to say, "That's the nature of progress. We have to try something. It's not going to work as well as we want it to, or I may fall flat on my face. I may outright embarrass myself. And if I let that break me, I will fail to learn the lesson." But if I do what nature is compelling me to do, and I focus on what went wrong, why did this happen? Because I never want to go through this again. You stack enough of those what went wrong, I never want to go through this again, enough of those together, and you actually get good and translating potential into skill set is the name of the game, and you will never do that more efficiently than you will through failure and mistakes. So, allowing yourself to wallow in disappointment doesn't make any sense. It's the learning process. This is what you have to do in order to get good. So, there's no reason to spend a lot of time being disappointed. You brush yourself off, you pick yourself up, you dust yourself off, and you get going. That's it. That is the physics of progress. All right, guys. If you're going to unlock your potential and achieve everything you've ever wanted, you are going to have to constantly be making progress towards your goals. So, what do you do when you get stuck? The bad news is getting stuck happens to everyone at some point. It's pretty much unavoidable. But the good news is that if you're willing to take action, there is a framework that you can follow to get back on track. If that sounds familiar, or if you're stuck in a rut and not achieving your goals as fast as you want, I've pulled a class out of Impact Theory University that you need to watch right now. It's called Six Steps to Getting Unstuck, and you can watch it for free at unstuck.impacttheory.com. Inside, I'll teach you about how to use cognitive re-frames, my four-level value stack to becoming unstoppable, as well as the single most important thing to start doing today to regain momentum. To watch this free preview for Impact Theory University, go to unstuck.impacttheory.com. I'll see you on the inside, guys. All right, take care, and I'm back to the episode. How do you restructure yourself and your goals after falling off of a designated path? Should goals be fixed or malleable depending on the journey undertaken? All right. First of all, everything in life is ultimately malleable to some extent. We are not blank slates, so you can't just infinitely change yourself. But, things are pretty changeable. Uh as Heather Himes says, we are not a blank slate, but we are the blankest of slates. And I think that's the right way to look at it. So, here's how I break it down. I've got my mission, my North Star, my like proper goal, the thing I'm trying to do. Then I have what most people think of as goals, which are the paths. So, I want to win a gold medal in the Olympics. That's a goal. Maybe I think I'm going to win a gold medal in gymnastics, but I find that I can't pull it off, I aged out and I never quite got there, and so I switch over to archery. I'm making this up, but this archery is actually an event where you can be successful deeper into your life. The goal, win a gold medal at the Olympics. The path, swimming, tennis, archery, whatever. And so, I'm going to be flexible on what my path is. Now, in business, man, let me tell you, I'm trying to build the next Disney. All right, Rad. Now, the path to get there, I wouldn't have told you 2 years ago was going to be NFTs. And now, NFTs are a huge part of my strategy. So, the goal of pulling people out of the Matrix at scale using storytelling, that remains true, and that's why I'm building the next Disney. So, that's my goal, that's my mission, that's my North Star, that's what I'm trying to do. Now, do I do that through YouTube videos? Do I do that through um NFTs? Do I do it through getting a show on Netflix? What's it going to be? I don't really care, to be honest. I want to do what is whatever is most efficient and effective at getting me to the goal, which is to pull people out of the Matrix at scale through storytelling. Okay? So, you have to learn to differentiate between your mission and the path to get there. Because you could say that my goal is to let's say make a in fact 5 years ago I would have told you that I want to have printed comics and comic book stores and absolutely killing it. I want one of those comics to be turned into a major motion picture that, you know, ends up in theaters. And that would be one path. But now I'm like I want to do an NFT. Forget about printed comics. They're absolutely laughable. We do web comics now, but that was a whole big transition that I wouldn't have anticipated. So, that was already one switch of some would say goal, I would say path. Now NFTs has become a huge part of that. And so not focusing on the web comics in isolation, but the web comics and how they can feed into the NFTs or even the NFTs can feed into the comics. And then how we translate that ultimately into let's say a series that's going to end up on streaming. Okay? So, a lot of the elements, if you'd asked me 5 years ago, would have sounded very different than they sound now. So, I don't think of that is I would never want those to be fixed where it's either I get printed comics to work or I don't. It's like you get in there and if it doesn't make sense anymore, there was a whole host of reasons why it didn't make sense to pursue printed comics, but I didn't know until I failed at printed comics. So, that's another thing to think about. Because by getting in there, trying it and seeing what the problems were, I was like, "Wow, why would anybody do this? This does not make sense. This is absolutely antiquated. This is the past. I want to be involved in the future." But I needed to get in there and do it. And until I did that, I wasn't going to be able to figure those things out. I couldn't think my way through that problem. I had to feel my way through that problem. So, that's really the key. My North Star, my mission, that's pretty static. And I won't say that it never changes cuz it was at when I was at Quest, it was ending metabolic disease. I moved over to Impact Theory and it became pulling people out of the Matrix at scale using stories, okay? So, two different things. Um was able to pivot that. But now, once I'm in there, until I give up on my North Star, which something absolutely major would have to happen, meaning I would have to believe it is no longer worthy of pursuit. Now, if I believe it is no longer worthy of pursuit, then I will change it. Or I'm not having fun pursuing it, whatever the case may be. But my paths My paths are just questions of good sense. What's working? What's not working? What can I change to get there more efficiently, more effectively? So, don't allow yourself to get bogged down in a path, which should be easily discarded, but don't give up easily on a mission, which should be far more firm. All right. Next up. What should someone do when trying to make a career out of passion, and that fails? The answer is, what do you mean fails? So, we've already covered that failure is a key part of the process of progress. So, I think a key insight that will help is that if you want to achieve anything significant in your life, you have to understand that it's a game of attrition. Okay? It's a game of attrition. What do I mean by that? Most people quit. It isn't that the people that end up winning never failed. It's that they didn't quit when they failed. Now, why do people quit when they fail? It isn't because they lose money. That hurts. That's going to make it harder, but that's not why they quit. Why they quit is it becomes emotionally devastating and they're not able to recenter themselves, self-soothe, remind themselves why they started, right? That North Star, the mission. Why am I doing this? Why do I care about this? To reorient themselves around, I care about this for a reason. It is bigger than myself. This is not just about money. I'm here to add value, to help people, to elevate, whatever. Trust me, you want to attach yourself to that because when you're doing something that only stands to benefit you, it won't have the motivating factor that helping yourself and other people is going to have. Definitely want to help yourself, but you also want to help other people. And when you have a North Star goal mission that is that, it's what I call honorable and exciting. Okay? It's honorable in that it elevates not only yourself, but other people. It's exciting. You're just into it. Whether you should be or not is irrelevant. You are into it and it serves humanity. Okay, when you have that goal that's exciting and honorable, now all of a sudden, when you, quote unquote, fail, you're just asking yourself, am I still into this? Do I still love this? Is this still my passion? Because if it is, I'm going to get back up and keep going. I'm not going to quit. I'm not going to allow myself to be another one of those people that when they fail and it hurts that they just give up. Don't let that be you. There is a phenomenal quote from Winston Churchill and it goes like this. Success is the ability to go from failure to failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. Now, when you can go from failure to failure to failure without losing your passion, you're really onto something. But that's going to be up to you because there's not going to be anybody there to encourage you, to coach you, to push you on. You have to do it yourself. And so you've got to do the work of making sure that you're really connected on a deep emotional level to that thing that you're pursuing. Now, if you do that, then that real passion and belief will be there waiting for you when the absolute gripping sting of failure occurs. Because at that moment, you're going to ask yourself one question. We all do it. Why am I doing this? And if you don't have a compelling answer, you will quit. But if you have a compelling answer, and you really are passionate about this thing, then it's just about self-soothing and recognizing that failure is part of the game. And so we pick ourselves up, square ourselves off, and get moving again. And that is the only way to succeed. Emotions should never stop you from achieving your goals. So, if you feel stuck, overwhelmed, low on confidence, you're beating yourself up, or you feel like you're not deserving of the things you want in life, I have something to tell you. Emotions are not facts, and you should never let them hold you back. And yet I find that people do this all the time. They mistake that feeling for objective truth, and it sends them in this downward spiral. Reaching greater levels of success in life means knowing how to use your brain. And if you're in a rut right now, or if you've been struggling for a while to achieve your goals, then I've pulled a class from Impact Theory University to help you get back on track. It's called six steps to getting unstuck, and it's for anyone who wants to know the exact steps to achieving big goals when life puts challenges in your way. If you want to check it out, go to unstuck.impacttheory.com to get access. It's a free preview. All right, guys. I'll see you on the inside. Now, let's get back to today's episode. How do you discern preventable mistakes from ones we simply could not see at the time with the knowledge we have? How do we truly appreciate and learn the lessons of these failures? Okay, so I wouldn't worry so much about whether a mistake was preventable or not cuz that implies you want to know when you should beat yourself up for the mistake and when you shouldn't. The only thing that you should be doing when you make a mistake is learning. Immediately go into learn mode. Assume everything is {quote} {unquote} your fault, that all of this could have been prevented if you had made a different decision, but we're not going to punch ourselves in the mouth over this. We simply want to understand, okay, what could I have done differently to get a result that I wanted? Because to me, there is an answer to did I make the right or wrong decision? And it goes like this. If you made the right decision, it moved you closer to your goal. If you made the wrong decision, it held you neutral or moved you away from your goal. Once you understand, everything just goes to that filter. Now, it's just oh, okay, cool. So, this was a wrong choice in that it held me neutral or moved me away from my goal. And if either of those two two things is true, it doesn't say that I'm a bad person or I'm a loser or I'm a failure. It just says what I tried didn't work. Now, if what I tried didn't work, my next question is, what could I have done that would have worked or at least had a higher likelihood of working? Now, to do that, you have to completely take responsibility. This did not work because I made the wrong decision and it was the wrong decision for this reason. Now, when you can do that and say that sentence without feeling badly about yourself because you're going to push back, you're not going to want it to be your fault, you're going to want it to be anybody else's fault. But when you do that, you failed to learn the lesson, which means you failed in vain, which means you're not going to get anything out of that other than emotional distress. You're going to have to constantly try to wall yourself off from the reality. When, on the other hand, you embrace that this really is important. I have to figure out to get to my goal. I have to figure out what to do differently. So, by owning it, you keep the control. You recognize that you can do something different. And then it's just all about figuring out what that next thing is. So, don't worry about um whether you should have known better any of that because if you fail, even if you couldn't have known better, how was that helpful? You just need to figure out, cool, what can I do next time? What can I do next time? How do I start again more intelligently? That should be the only question on your lips. Next. How do you deal with the time lost from failure, especially when you have nothing to show for that time? For example, I just got rejected from a job that would have changed my life, but now I have to spend upwards of three to five years just to get to that level of income experience somewhere else. Okay. That's not true. So, right now, the only path you see before you makes it seem like it's going to require you three to five years just to get to that level of income experience. But let's remember, we had that opportunity present itself once before. Who says it's not going to present itself again tomorrow? Now, the fact that we didn't get that role, that's what we have to figure out. Why not? And what can we do next time to ensure that we do? There's a great quote, I forget who it's by, forgive me, but it goes, this is a paraphrase, but it goes like this. Luck is like a bus, and another bus is going to come 5 minutes later. The question is, do you have the fare to get on the bus? That [ __ ] is dope. Once you understand that luck favors the prepared, meaning that the people who are {quote} {unquote} lucky are the ones that actually have the skill set to take advantage of that luck. And that's why the awesome way to think about it is like a bus. There's going to be another one coming all the time. They're constantly coming. But if you can never get on one because you don't have the skill set to take advantage, then you're never going to be quote-unquote lucky even though all of those opportunities have presented themselves. So this is really a question of skill set. Now I promise you, if you gave me 3 to 5 years and pointed me at whatever it is that you're trying to do, I would by leaps and bounds I'm going to try to get there in 6 months. So if we really think it's going to take 5 years, I'm going to try to get that good at that thing in 6 months. And I would just tell you I have a history of being able to pull that off. Now, why? Am I better? Am I smarter? No. I am definitely not. Remember, I'm the guy whose mother quietly assumed I was going to fail. My best friend said, "I just assumed you were going to marshmallow your way through life." My now father-in-law, when I asked for his blessing to marry his daughter, he said no. These were not people that misidentified me. They had accurate identified me. But what they didn't factor in is that I could change. And so I just set about turning my potential into actual skill set. So instead of being somebody with a lot of potential, like we all are, I became a person with a lot of skill set. And that skill set I have leveraged to do extraordinary things with my life. But it was a lot of [ __ ] hard work around one, making massive demands of myself. So not allowing myself to say, "Oh my god, it's going to take 3 to 5 years." [ __ ] that. It might take the average person who's not willing to do what I'm willing to do 3 to 5 years. I'm going to spend way more time. And I'm going to be constantly owning everything in my life so that I can get better. I can try different things, new things. I'm going to stare nakedly at my inadequacies and figure out why did I get rejected? I will ask, "Hey guys, out of curiosity, and trust me, I have thick skin, it would really be powerful to me and my career if you could tell me what made you choose somebody else? What was it about me, and I can take anything. If I don't seem educated enough, knowledgeable enough, I'm not uh I don't speak fast enough, I'm not funny enough, whatever. I just want to know the truth. You hated my shoes. I just want to know the truth. And you'll be surprised. People will actually give you an answer. May not be the full, totally unfiltered answer, but they'll usually give you some pretty useful information if you make it clear that that's what you want. You don't want them to pull punches, and that this is really something designed to help you get better. And that's the key. And if you can make them see that, boom, you're off to the races. But in all of this, you've got to really want it. You got to really want it. And you have to be willing to fail over and over and over. Because success is going from failure to failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. And there it is. That's how we do it. That's how we avoid wallowing in disappointment. That's how we put ourselves back together and get going and learn and learn at a supercharged rate. Failure is your greatest teacher. But you have to be willing to admit you've made a mistake. And that's it. If you can do that, oh my god, the universe will open up to you. Never retreat. Never explain. Get it done and let them howl. And that's the point. Get it done. Do the thing. The accomplishment is what you're after. The performance is your opportunity. It doesn't matter what other people think. It doesn't matter if they want you to win. It doesn't matter if they actively want you to lose. What matters is building that set of skills, becoming capable of doing the thing. And in doing the thing, you will silence the critics. It's the man in the arena who knows that he's showing up with the abilities that he has to do battle. The question is, will you prepare? The question is, will you do the work? The question is, will you be able to get the thing done? And everybody spends their time focused on what other people think instead of realizing the only thing that matters is how good you get. Right now, I want everybody listening to this. The only thing that matters is how good you get. That's the point. That's the purpose of all of this. Don't [ __ ] worry about what people think. Just get so good that you can't be denied. Get so good that you can't be stopped. Get so good that your performance speaks for itself. If you get that good, my friends, you and you alone control your life. If you are honest with yourself about where you are, and you know exactly where you want to go, you can go anywhere. As Jim Rohn said, "Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value." What do you want badly enough to suffer for? What price are you willing to pay to become the person that you want to become? When you do that, when you have the skills, no one and nothing can stop you. Really think about that for a second. There is a level of ability, a level of skill set where you can get so good at something, no matter how much people hate you, no matter how much they want to bring you down, no matter how actively they come for you, you can stand before them and say, "I will not fall." Because you can outperform. It's not about convincing, it's not about politicking, it's about getting better. And when you understand that that is what the human animal is capable of, when you understand that that's what you're capable of, everything in your life changes. It just becomes a simple choice. What do you want that badly that you're going to turn that want into a need that you're going to do the work that you're going to show up nights, weekends, you're going to put in the work when other people are out partying, all you can think about is becoming so good that they can't stop you. Becoming so good they can't stop you. That's the greatest joy you're ever going to experience in life is being truly and uniquely yourself. Through a cruel twist of fate, the only way for a human to really develop themselves and to become what they're capable of becoming is through suffering. It's by pushing yourself. And as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, "Unless you try something beyond what you've already mastered, you will never grow." But to push yourself beyond what you've already mastered is to really embrace discomfort. It's to push yourself to the edges of what you can take. It's to go beyond the physical, emotional, and intellectual limits. It's about redefining who you are. It's about redefining what you can stand. It's about redefining your breaking point and literally becoming capable of more, but that process through that twist of fate requires us to put ourselves in tremendous stress and pressure. But if you can do that, if you can find a way to step to that edge, to look over the abyss, and to push yourself farther into the unknown, into a realm of danger, if you can do that, if unlike everyone else who seeks comfort, if you can push yourself past pain, then you can become something more than other people, but your life will ultimately be defined by what you do. Not by what you think, not by what you want, what you actually do. And as Leonardo da Vinci said, "I have been impressed with the urgency of doing. Knowing is not enough. We must apply. Being willing is not enough. We must do." And that's got to be the guiding light of your life. If you want to find out what you can do, if you want to impact people, if you want to help, if you want to touch lives, all the proclamations that people make, if you actually want to do that and not just be talking, you've got to push yourself. You've got to make demands. You've got to hold yourself to a standard that other people think is crazy. You've got to become stronger. You've got to become more capable. Because when you get to that point, when you are stronger, when you're more capable, then you're actually able to execute against the things that you want to do. You're able to help people. You're able to push yourself. You're able to become something more. But that process of becoming is an active process, and it is an active process of discomfort, pain, pushing, suffering, and growth. It's beauty. It's wonderment. It's hurt. It's anguish. It's all of it rolled together. But at the end of the day, it's your control. It's your willingness. It's your why. It's knowing why you're pushing yourself that's going to determine whether or not you push beyond what other people think is possible. In that, standing at the edge of uncertainty, not knowing if you're going to succeed or fail, not knowing if you're going to live or die, it's in that moment that you realize who you really are. We've all had days that go wrong. Where despite your best efforts, everything crumbles. And as you near the end of that day, you realize that this was a lost day. Nothing came together. You weren't able to do what you told yourself you were going to do at the beginning of the day. But as Eleanor Roosevelt said, with new day comes new strength and new thoughts. But that's up to you. You control what you think. You don't have to let your thoughts run away with you. You've got to take that moment to decide that you're going to think those new thoughts, to let it be a rebirth, to let it rejuvenate you. And you can't live in the past. You can't let the noise of what didn't work. You can't let the noise of the ways that you failed, the things that went wrong. You can't let that noise drown out the signal of your life. You can't let it become the only thing that you hear. You can't let it begin to shape the actual structures of your mind to overly focus on the things that went wrong. And so you have to make that choice every day to decide that today is a new day, to decide that you're going to have new thoughts, to decide that you're going to see potential in this new day. I want greatness for you. And I'm willing to bet that everyone in your life that loves you wants the same thing. They want to see you make your dreams come true. They hunger for it, to see you win the way that you hunger for it yourself. But what they know that you may not yet be willing to accept is that as Rabindranath Tagore said, you can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. If you're going to make those things come true in your life, if you're going to make that vision that you have a reality, you've ultimately got to go out into the cold and unforgiving water. You've got to be willing to face the swells. You've got to be willing to face the most terrifying thing of all, the unknown. It isn't that the sea is dangerous that scares people. It's that you can't see what's beneath the surface. And that is going to be the challenge that you're going to have to face. That is going to have to be the fear that you stare directly into the eye. Is the truth is you don't know what you're capable of. The truth is you don't know if you're going to succeed. The absolute truth is you may fail. You may get swallowed by the darkness. But at the end of the day, that's going to be your choice because whether or not you fail does not mean you have to be consumed by that failure. You can get back up and keep going. But that is a choice you have to make. That's the fortitude you have to develop within and it is a development process. It is something that you do. You choose to be stronger than the sea. You choose to be stronger than the unknown, and you choose to be brave enough to go out despite the unknown and try to conquer something, to try to build something in your life, to do the things that other people think cannot be done. It is in facing that fear that you win the battle. Understand finding the island, making it to the new world, that's not the [ __ ] point. The point is setting out. The point is being willing to get in a dinghy and to go off into the sea. The point is being willing to face the challenge. If you can do that, regardless of what comes, you've already won. Because you've proven something to yourself. That you're willing to try. The truth will set you free. But first, it will piss you off. The reality is, if you want to achieve something great in your life, you've got to be willing to accept who you really are right now. You've got to know exactly what you're good at and what you're not. And the reason that the truth is going to piss you off is it's going to hurt. It's going to hurt to acknowledge that you're not yet who you want to be. It's going to hurt to know that you're not yet capable of the things that you want to be capable of, and it's really going to hurt to know that the things that people say behind your back, the things that they say to hurt you, that they're actually true. That they're right. They have a point. You aren't good at that thing. You aren't as good as you could be. You did embarrass yourself. You have fallen down. All of those things are almost certainly true. But when you can look at those things, when you can stare nakedly at your inadequacies, when you can really stop and not protect yourself with ego, but protect yourself by knowing that you're going to learn from where you failed. You're going to learn from the places you've fallen down. You're going to learn your inadequacies so that you can build something new. And as Michio Kaku says, all great ideas come from a picture. You've got to know what you want. You've got to know what that thing is that you're building towards. You've got to know exactly who you're trying to become. And once you have that crystal clear vision of who you want to be, it is far easier to acknowledge who you really are. So you've got to start with that picture. You've got to accept the reality, pain and all, but you've got to have that picture. You've got to know where you're going. You've got to know what the skills are that you need to build in order to get there. And once you do that, once you have that picture, and that picture is your obsession, it's the thing that you think about, you dream about, you put it up on your wall, you tattoo it in your mind, you know exactly who you're trying to become. If you're honest with yourself about where you are and you know exactly where you want to go, you can go anywhere. Knowledge isn't power. Used knowledge is power. Putting that to use to actually do something. Understanding it well enough to create from that thing. That's the end goal. So, don't worry about what other people think. Don't worry about what other books other people have read. Don't worry if you ever make it to the last page of anything. Simply ask yourself, do I understand what I need to understand to build the life I want to build, to bring to this world the things that I want to bring? However counter-intuitive, however weird, it doesn't matter. If it's a moment of beauty for you and you understand how to build it, build it. That's the greatest joy you're ever going to experience in life is being truly and uniquely yourself. But first, you have to do the work to understand who you really are. Do that work. And as Brene Brown said, you can choose courage or you can choose comfort, but you can't choose both. So, as you look out at what you want to do and it scares you, in that moment you've got a choice. It's not about not having fear, it's about rising up in the face of it. It's about accepting that this is going to be hard. It's about accepting that you might fail. It's about accepting that right now you really aren't good enough. You're not good enough to do what you want to do, but you can become good enough. And if you make that choice, if you step out into the unknown, if you wade into the water, if you go with everything you've got, regardless of whether or not you could fail, if you do that, then you've got proof. You know that you have value because you're willing to take that chance. And the willingness to take the chance is courage itself. The only thing that you should demand of yourself is courage. If you don't stop, you can't be beaten. You control your mindset. You control how you feel about yourself. Nobody can actually get you to feel some kind of way about yourself. You allow that [ __ ] in, right? That's like the cheesiest self-help [ __ ] you're ever going to hear, but it got cheesy because it's so true. So, people repeated it a lot.