The Concrete Steps You NEED to take to Get Ahead In Life & Become UNBREAKABLE | Tom Bilyeu

What we're going to talk about today is how to build your mindset so that you really are unbreakable. You really can't be stopped by the things that normally overwhelm people and shut them down. And through this entire class, we're going to break it into the things that are going to hold you back, why most people fail, and the exact things that you need to do to get ahead. If you don't know, my name is Tom Bilyeu. I'm the co-founder of Impact Theory and the co-founder of billion-dollar company Quest Nutrition. And I, myself, the thing that I had to overcome in my life is exactly what we're going to learn in this class, which is I started out emotionally weak. I started out insecure, afraid. I am not a born entrepreneur. I had to learn all of this stuff through the school of hard knocks at a time before the [ __ ] internet. It was a lot harder back then. Carol Dweck had not written her seminal book Mindset. And so, I literally had to fall on my face over and over and over to figure this stuff out. But, I ultimately did figure it out, and I took myself from scrounging in my couch cushions to find enough change to put gas in my car, feeling like I was never going to be smart enough to succeed, to building a company, building multiple companies, and creating the kind of emotional and financial success in my life that I'd always dreamed about. And what I want to do is walk you through the ultra concrete steps that I went through, the changes that I had to make to truly become unstoppable. So, that's what this is all about. Now, I want to define unstoppable. It's a cool headline that led you this far, but the notion for it to really be usable, we're going to have to pull it out of the ether and bring it right back down to life. Now, here's the truth. Life is [ __ ] hard. That is just a truth, but you have a choice. All of us have a choice. Whether we're going to be weak or we're going to be strong. And one of the things that I had to learn in my life is that choice is mine. It is nobody else's. And that if I was going to make a choice to be strong, that I was going to have to take complete ownership of my life. I was going to have to hold myself to a standard, and this may be the most important, I couldn't tolerate weakness in my life. And look, I'm not saying that hardships don't befall people. I'm not even saying that some of you watching this, the deck is stacked against you so viciously, it is clearly not fair. But I will ask this question, and now what? If life is inordinately stacked against you for whatever reason, bad genetics, bad parenting, grew up in the wrong neighborhood, whatever the case may be, for whatever reason the deck is stacked against you, and now what? What are you going to do about it? The only thing that you can really do is get [ __ ] strong, toughen up, carry whatever burden you have, and show people that you can do anything you set your mind to. But to do that, you've got to take responsibility for becoming great. And greatness is not some [ __ ] pie-in-the-sky thing, it's a set of [ __ ] skills that let you climb up the competency hierarchy to actually get better, to outperform people, and to do what the ancient Greeks called techne, to build a set of skills that means something to you for whatever reason that you've worked your ass off to acquire, that allow you to serve not only yourself, but to serve other people. All right, in life, there are two ways to lose. Way number one is to be weak, to lack grit, to be emotionally unstable, to be stubborn. That's where a lot of people fall on their face. They have these [ __ ] ideas in their head, and they're constantly looking for things to affirm that instead of doing what they need to do, which is constantly looking for ways that you're wrong. And once you start seeking out ways you're wrong, cuz you're like, I've gotten this far in life being wrong, what happens if I stop being stubborn, I start looking for ways that I can learn more, that I can get rid of old ideas that aren't working for me, and really move forward. And the thing that I think is probably the most foundational, they have a fixed mindset. Now, what is a fixed mindset? It means that you believe your talent and intelligence are inborn traits. You're born with it, and that's it, and life is about making the best of that, and we're going to debunk the [ __ ] out of that. The second way that things can go wrong is they're chasing the wrong thing. I'm telling you right now, the punchline to life is not success, it's not fame, it's not money, it's not accolades. It is very simple. It's brain chemistry, aka fulfillment. The only thing that really matters at the end of the day is how you feel about yourself when you are by yourself. And this class is really going to be about building in those things that make you feel confident and secure in who you are, impervious to the slings and arrows that come from other people. And that really is something that you can do, but it's going to take a lot of earning credibility with yourself, putting in the work to really become extraordinary. But we're going to walk through the step-by-steps of how you do that. Now, what's the cost of weakness? As somebody who spent year decades of my life, much to my dismay, um accepting weakness in my life, being very okay with performing below my standard, constantly asking myself what is what is the least I need to do uh to avoid getting in trouble. And the cost of that is a loss of self-respect, or just never building self-respect in the first place. Certainly, you're not going to make any progress in life. You end up leading in this downward spiral because weak people are bitter people because they feel like they're being taken advantage of. They're not taking ownership in their life. They're putting the blame on other people, and because of that, they start to get pissed. They have some really [ __ ] dark fantasies, and I'm going to imagine that many of you are like me, and in my weak days, man, I used to think about just bad [ __ ] happening to other people. The people that I imagined were the people that were holding me down. When in truth, what was happening is I wasn't standing up for myself, and what I was really pissed about was that. Or maybe not even that. I really was pissed at the other people, but what was stopping me from making progress, what was focusing me on vengeance and wanting to see other people go down in flames, was that I didn't believe that I could rise up. And because I didn't believe I could rise up, the only thing I could think about was tearing other people down. We're going to break you out of that. All right, what's the cost of strength? Eternal vigilance. You always have to be on the lookout. It's so easy to slide back into a fixed mindset. It's so easy to get angry or bitter or to look at somebody else and how much easier we perceive them as having it, especially on [ __ ] Instagram or Facebook where you're seeing people putting their highlight reel and you think, "Fuck them. Like I want some of that in my life. It's not fair." And once you find yourself there, you have to catch yourself every [ __ ] time. You've got to get out of that pattern. You've got to break those notions of one, comparing yourself to other people, which comparison is the thief of joy, and you've got to realize you've got to take ownership. If you want the same results somebody else is getting, you've got to build the same skill set. And that brings us to clarity. What do you want? If you want to be strong, you're going to have to know exactly where you're trying to get to, and you've got to accumulate the skills necessary to take you there. And to do that, it's all going to take a lot of hard [ __ ] work. All right. I told you a little bit about my backstory, but I'll go into a tiny bit more detail. Uh when I went to film school, college, um I did really well in the beginning and I really thought that I was naturally talented and I was so stoked and I thought I was one of only four people selected to do a senior thesis in a school where you're more likely to get into Harvard Law than you are to get into this school. So I thought I was hot [ __ ] I got into the school. Everyone told me I'd never get in. I got in. And then, on top of that, everyone's like, "Well, you got in, but you're never going to direct a senior thesis." And I got selected to do that as well. And so I thought I was going to kill it on the senior thesis. I was going to graduate, get my three picture deal in Hollywood, and my life was going to be set. And then I completely [ __ ] up my senior thesis film and realized one cold, hard fact. I wasn't talented. Now, if I'd had a growth mindset and realized I just wasn't talented yet and I could build those skills, then everything would have been would have been fine. But the reality was I didn't realize that. I get into this downward spiral. I start sliding towards depression. I end up getting fired from a stupid job. I called myself the king of remedial jobs at that time. I was having trouble paying my bills at once. I was on unemployment for a while. I couldn't pay my student loans. I mean, it was it was gnarly and I didn't know how to get out of that and I ended up being able to completely turn my life around, but I wasn't able to do that until I took full and complete ownership and realized one of the most important things when you think about change, which is that the human animal is the ultimate adaptation machine. We are literally designed to change. We are designed from the ground up to adapt to stressors, directed stressors. We have to decide in what way we want to change, but we can change in any way that we want. And I ended up after going through that whole process being somebody who was not only capable of lifting themselves up, but I ended up running a production line in a manufacturing company that I helped found that went from nothing to being number two on the Inc. 500 list and on the production line there were both Crips and Bloods and able to help keep the peace, keep that going and running smoothly because I had taken myself from that broken, scared, insecure kid who didn't think that he could get better to realizing that I could own myself, that I could be confident, that I could develop the skill set both leadership skills, soft skills, hard skills and then I could go in there and I could command that kind of respect. In fact, a better way to say it, I earned their respect by working harder than anybody else, by having a deeper set of skills and by empowering them and lifting them up all with the things that I'm going to be walking you through in this class. Now, the way that you earn respect with yourself and others is through [ __ ] performance. So, I'm now I'm to walk you through the concrete steps that you're going to get to that level of performance. Step number one, you have to own your life. If you haven't heard of the notion of extreme ownership, I highly encourage you to read the book by the same name by Jocko Willink and Leif Babin. And the punchline of all of it is if you're blaming other people for the state of your life, you are [ __ ] my friend. Because you're pointing at the wrong person. You're looking in the wrong place. Why? Not because you won't be victimized. You will be victimized in your life. Unfair [ __ ] is going to happen to you. Bad breaks are going to come your way. Things that shouldn't be that difficult are that difficult. There may be systematic injustice against you. But if you don't believe to the core of your being in cause and effect, you're never going to be able to set yourself free. The whole idea behind extreme ownership is not to victim blame or to say anything harsh or negative about you. It is simply to remind you that when you take ownership, when you're not looking to deflect blame, you go into a proactive, solution-oriented mindset and you start asking what could I have done differently to get a different result? That's it. What could I do differently that will get me a different result? Once you put yourself in that frame all the time, always and forever, over and over and over, not only do you earn people's respect cuz you're never looking to blame somebody else, you're always asking yourself, "What did I do to end up here? How did I put myself in the situation?" Even if the response from the outside world is unjust, unfair, all of that. But you're looking at it and you're not asking, "Oh, I want this to change. I want it to be different. Woe is me. I'm a [ __ ] victim." Which is passive, which is giving up your power. You retain your power. You say, "I believe in cause and effect. I can do something different and I can get a different effect." When you own that, then you are able to make progress. And the other thing that you remember is the human adaptation response is the way I like to think of it is it's a response to adapt or die. You're putting your body and your mind under directed stress, meaning it's disciplined practice. You're really looking at what what do my goals demand? Where am I trying to get to? We're going to talk more about clarity in a minute. But where do I want to get to? What's the skill set gap that I have to cross? And then how do I actually be How do I actually practice those things? How do I put myself in that very specific stress environment where I'm getting to the edge of my bill abilities, I'm going a little bit beyond, and then I get a little bit stronger, I'm able to do a little bit more, I push myself into those areas, and it's not about just doing what you're good at. This is the thing that drives me crazy when people give that advice. It is not just about doing what you're good at. It's about figuring out what do I need to get good at in order to achieve my goal, and then going into the areas via practice where you are weak, breaking those down and saying, "I'm going to need to get good at this thing, which I may not be naturally good at, but I'm going to have to practice and get good at that thing." And once you understand the way the mechanisms of brain plasticity and the way that your brain is trying to rewire itself to optimize for the thing that you repeat. So, when you go in and you start practicing and you're pushing outside of your comfort zone, you're doing it over and over and over, your brain reorganizes itself, and you can quite literally change the form and function of your brain in order to accommodate the new skill that you're trying to acquire. It's what I call the only belief that matters. The fact that as you put your your time and energy into doing something, into getting good at it, that you will be rewarded. Your energies and efforts will be rewarded with a new set of skills that have utility. You can deploy that utility to be able to do different [ __ ] So, the easiest way to think about it is to use the body as an analogy. I think everybody agrees if you go into a gym and you lift weights and you lift them to failure and you're pushing yourself to lift things that are a little bit heavy, they're a little bit outside your range. You can't do it three times, maybe you can only do it once or twice. You go the next time and oh, you could only do it once before, but now you can do it twice and then you can do it three times and then you can do a heavier weight for once and then that one's a three times and then all of a sudden the one that you could only do once a while ago you're now doing for 15 reps and you get bigger and you get stronger. People get it when it comes to the body, but a very similar process is happening in the mind when you go to learn new skills and if you believe in that, which you don't have to take my word for it, you can go look up brain plasticity, it's [ __ ] real. This is not debated anymore. This was highly debated back in the 90s. Nobody's debating this [ __ ] anymore. Brain plasticity is real. You can learn new things. You do create new brain cells at any age, literally until the day you die. So, once you understand, once you take ownership, once you start looking at skill acquisition, once you're doing you're forcing yourself into that adaptation response, you're putting directed stress on your abilities, then you're going to be able to expand your abilities. Everybody, Tom here. Quick question. Are you enjoying today's episode? Certainly hope so. If you are, here's the deal. Today's class is a preview of a workshop that I gave from Impact Theory University called how to own your life. Over the last few months and years, I have to imagine all of us have been given a lot of valid reasons to stop chasing our goals and dreams and give up ownership of our future. It's a pretty weird time, but like I said at the start of this workshop, life is brutally tough and you're going to be tested over and over again. The lessons and tactics you're learning right now are going to be needed now more than ever. In this free preview here, I'm giving you the first five strategies to truly take ownership of your life and if you want to get free access to the second half of this workshop, you can register to watch part two at ownyourlife.impacttheory.com or just click the link in the description. When you do, I'll also send you the worksheet that accompanies this class, which includes action items and summaries of everything we're covering here. Again, your link is ownyourlife.impacttheory.com. Go register now, then come back here and finish this episode. All right, let's get back to it. All right, step number two, learn to create new values. This is where people fall down. This is the thing that I don't think anybody is talking about, which is that your value system is malleable. Now, the easiest way to explain this is to talk about how South Korean Airlines used to be the used to have the worst safety record in all the airlines. And there was this really cool documentary that was done called something like Fox Tango Charlie or something. It's three call signs anyway. I need to remember this so I can [ __ ] just tell people what it is, but be very easy for you to find. And in that documentary, they reenact like a play the black box recording of some of the most famous airline disasters in history. And one of them is from South Korean Airlines. And the way that the co-pilot, who could tell that they were about to crash into a mountainside, was he was so afraid to break cultural protocol, didn't want to push too hard, didn't want to be disrespectful, and so literally let them crash into a mountainside because he didn't want to offend the pilot who kept saying no, everything is fine. And when I was watching that, I was like, are you out of your [ __ ] mind? I'd be freaking out. I would grab the sticks if I had to. And I thought, but I'm not foolish enough to think that if I were raised in that environment that I wouldn't have that same value structure where hierarchy means everything, respecting your elders means everything. And so the only way that they were able to break down that value system was in the cockpit, and this completely reversed their safety record. In the cockpit, they were only allowed to speak English. They had to refer to each other by their first names, and there was a written protocol for how you can interrupt them and tell a pilot that they're wrong and that they're making a mistake. And I thought that's so interesting. They're doing everything they can with the different language, with the first names to get them out of that traditional value system, shake them out, and let them know there's a different value structure when you're inside a plane. Now, it's really That's where it's really interesting to me because we have here at Impact Theory a South Korean person who grew up here in America. And for them, that value system seems just as weird because they were raised here in America. And I thought that's so interesting. From a DNA perspective, obviously, matches very well in with the South Korean values that we would typically think were Oh, no, it's just innate. It's just It's It is a truth. And that is often what people mistake their very changeable values for is they mistake it for truth. That of course you afford your elders that level of respect. Of course you would never dare to challenge somebody who's your superior. And it seems self-evidently true to somebody who grew up in that. Now, the reason that I believe with that point is I want you to understand growing up where you grew up, with the parents that you had, in the culture that you had, all of that stuff has shaped your value system. And you don't even realize you've been making choices all along the way that have developed a value system for you. And what I want you to start doing now is challenging those values and asking, what do I want to value? Now, the reason that this makes sense is because once you invest in a value, you say, okay, this thing I'm going to choose to value this. Like I value speed. I value efficiency. Now, because I have chosen to value it, because I've invested so heavily into that, into And I do it, by the way, because it's good for business. So, I want to have this neurochemical reaction, which is the big reason for developing your values. You want to have a neurochemical reaction so that you get a positive reward when you move fast, when you create momentum. So so when I'm doing something that aligns with what a business needs. A business needs momentum. Okay, so if a business needs momentum, I need to prize momentum, which means I need to make it a value. So, what do you do? Write your values down. Journal about your values and why they're important. That is a really critical part of all this so that you're reinforcing it in your own mind. And then when you're aligned with it, then you want to um reward yourself and you're going to have to get good at that of congratulating yourself, telling people that you love. Like I always tell my wife, if I did something that I'm super excited about and that's really important to me, I'll let her know so that I'm not only writing it down, I'm getting that external reinforcement, and then that over time hardwires that neurochemical reward into you. So, repetition is going to be a big part of this. But decide what your values are going to be, realize that they're malleable, and then build, which is step number three, the ultimate value stack for becoming unstoppable. Number one in the value stack that you should build is self-reliance. You need to know that nobody's coming to save you. That you shouldn't want anyone to save you. That you should want to be in control of your own life. You should look at what you're trying to accomplish, recognize what the skill set is that you need to get, and then realize that no one's going to push you to do it. You have to do it. Don't wait for somebody to remind you or hold you to a standard. Hold yourself to that standard. The next is self-respect. You need to have integrity. If you say something, do that thing. You want to know that you can trust yourself. When you know you can trust yourself and you're doing things that are worthy, that you value, then you begin to develop that self-respect. You're not going to get anywhere until you're able to build that self-respect and it really does start nice and small, nice and simple. If you say you're going to do something, do it. So, pick things in your real life, whether it's going to the gym, whether it's cutting out sugar, whether it's taking a cold shower. You want to have bright lines in your life that you use, that you make sure you're building into your self-respect. I said I was going to do it and I do it no matter how [ __ ] hard it is. If you do that, if you start sticking to what you say, like you're going to commit to yourself in this course. And if you actually stick through, win or lose, succeed or fail, you're going to build your self-esteem. All right, the next thing that you want to have as a value is growth. You want to make sure that every day you're checking yourself. Am I actually getting better? Am I pushing myself outside my comfort zone and improving? And if you're not improving, then that needs to be one of those things that oh man, it sucks. You're like, [ __ ] I'm just stagnant. I'm not really getting anything done. That needs to bother you. A big part of this is that it's going to bother you on a body level, no matter what, because the human animal is wired to be chemically rewarded for growth. Progress is a foundational part of getting better. It's a foundational part of fulfillment. And if you want to have that level of fulfillment in your life, then you've got to be focused on growth. The next is resilience, aka toughen the [ __ ] up. I know a lot of people don't like to hear it like that, but I want to get your attention. You need to toughen up. You cannot tolerate weakness in yourself. That's just the [ __ ] truth. And you've got to, when you know that you're acting weak, you've got to call yourself out. You've got to say, I don't allow that in my life. And valuing resilience is going to be one of those things that, one, it's it is a skill set that you can absolutely develop. And when you value that, then you're going to get stronger and stronger and be able to carry more and more weight as you go. And if you want to talk about earning people's respect, let me tell you, when you're the one that in the middle of chaos is calm, is steady, can provide leadership, all of a sudden you're going to see how that begins to advance you in any aspect of your life, from self-esteem to moving up in a company. So, that is the ultimate value stack. Step four, you're going to have to get mentally tough. So, going back to resilience, now I want to detail out exactly how you build that. You're going to develop grit. If you haven't read Angela Duckworth's book Grit, read it. She defines grit as passion and perseverance over time. So often people say that they want to do something, but then ah they got into it, they did it for a couple months, and then they lose interest, and they stop doing that. If you do it once or twice, fair enough, you're finding that thing that really resonates with you. But if you find you're doing it over and over and over, chances are you don't have the grit to persevere when things get hard or when they get boring. And that's the boredom is something a lot of people don't see coming. So you want to make sure that you're able to develop your passion and persistence over time. Next thing you want to do is move towards fear. I find that fear is a very useful thing. It can keep you safe, but it can also keep you small. Fear is an indicator that there are stakes. Now, if you look at it and the stakes are life or death, don't do it. That doesn't make any sense. But if you look at it and the stakes are embarrassment, the stakes are you might fail, then that is almost certainly something that you should move towards. That's one of the ways that you begin to build that mental toughness is when you expose yourself to fear, what the literature shows is you're not actually getting less afraid. What you're doing is getting braver. That is a big deal. You want to make sure that you're pushing yourself and you're actually getting braver as you go. The next is emotional stability. Get control of your emotions. So many people believe their emotions. Because they have an emotion, they actually allow themselves to embody it and act as if it is true. The reality is you need to learn to get control of your emotions so that you can go from that the In fact, I'll explain it a better way. Um it is famously said that there is the space between stimulus and response. And that little gap is where you get to elicit control. Someone may do something to you that offends you, but how you respond is up to you. You can't control the incoming stimulus. You may not even be able to control that it offends you, but you can actually, absolutely control how you react to that. And so you want to make sure that you understand something about the brain. The brain tries to justify the size of your reaction. So if your reaction is small and you don't let it upset you, you stay centered, then the brain goes, "Oh, I guess that wasn't that big of a deal." If on the other hand, you freak the [ __ ] out. Like this is something in my real marriage. This this is hilarious. My wife cannot [ __ ] stand it. If somebody cuts in front of her in line, man, that is such an offense to her. It violates her principles and she wants to get super pissed. And worse, she wants me to get pissed. But because I value the staying calm, equanimity, and I don't value raging out or freaking out. So I weigh, is it really a big deal if they cut? If it is and I'm like running late for a flight or something, then I'm going to say, "Yo, [ __ ] you got to get out." Because there's something else that's going on that makes that an important moment to me. But if it's a moment where it doesn't really matter and I know that by having a big reaction, my mind is going to reinforce that it's a big deal and it's only going to bother me more the next time, then I keep my equanimity, I stay chill, and my brain goes, "Oh, I guess this isn't that big of a deal." So you really want to make sure that you practice that stuff. One of the best ways to practice that, uh, believe it or not, is a cold shower. But we'll get more into that later. All right. You want to increase your ability to deal with stress. So part of this comes down to identity. So what kind of person are you? So I use the phrase, "I'm the type of person that." So I'm the type of person that stays chill in the face of stress. Now why do I do that? Because to run a business where things are constantly going wrong, you have to be able to stay chill even in the face of stress. So I need to value that. Going back to what's the value hierarchy? What are the values necessary to achieve my goals, and then I know my values are malleable, so I'm going to choose to value being chill, and the way that I'm going to reinforce that and really make it something that influences my behavior is to remind myself of what kind of person I am, to value being that kind of person, to tell other people that I'm that kind of person, and then want to be congruent with that notion, and the feeling of congruence of saying I'm a certain way, acting that way, and then actively valuing it. So, when I act in alignment with that with that, I feel good about that because I've done the hard work of building that value into my neurology so that I have this this neurological, neurochemical cascade of actual feel-good chemicals so that I really feel this sense of psychological um positivity as I act in accordance with that identity. So, identity's huge. Identity drives behavior. So, you want to really take control of that. Make sure you're crafting an identity and telling yourself a narrative that empowers you and makes you feel good about yourself. All right. The other thing you want to do is reframe stress as a challenge. Just reframing it, in fact, this this true of anything. There's a an amazing Shakespeare quote, "Nothing is either good or bad, but thinking makes it so." And once you reframe stress instead of being something that's dangerous, something to be avoided, you reframe it as a challenge, something that you can learn from, then all of a sudden it becomes something that you're willing to move towards, and obviously moving towards the things that are stressful, which signal that there are stakes, right? Going back to that notion of fear. When you are moving towards the things that actually matter, that actually have stakes, those are probably the biggest areas for opportunity. So, when you look at that as something that is a challenge, then you can begin to make progress. And like I said a minute ago, meditation is one of the best ways to get into this. Like if you want to get mentally tough, ironically enough, you're going to want to practice your meditation so that you can practice rapidly de-escalating your emotions, rapidly de-exciting your nervous system, going from the sympathetic nervous system, which is fight or flight, to the parasympathetic nervous system, which is rest and digest. All right, you guys are going to have to get super comfortable being uncomfortable. Whether that means that you want to go run a marathon or ask somebody for their phone number, whatever your uncomfortable is, you want to be able to live in that space and be chill about it. And this is another area that cold showers are amazing because cold showers suck and they're going to send you into fight or flight immediately. Everything in your body is going to be screaming for you to get the [ __ ] out of that cold water. It's actually going to feel like it's life or death, but it's not. And so you can stand in there in the cold water, relax yourself, calm down, and realize, "Okay, nothing bad is happening." And when you push that and extend the time, you get better and better with dealing with discomfort. Now, depending on what your goal is, this may be incredibly valuable. If you have any um notion of developing leadership in your life, if you have any idea of wanting to take on more responsibility because you want to do more with your life or you want to make more money, getting comfortable in those areas of discomfort is going to be absolutely critical. Even telling the truth can be completely uncomfortable because you're upsetting somebody else or it's a very hard truth. And so getting comfortable there is is very critical. All right, for me, one of the things I struggled with was standing up for myself. I was always worried about hurting other people's feelings. I was always worried of potential confrontation. And so getting comfortable in that friction, sitting there until we actually find a solution instead of wanting to make everything okay as fast as possible, that was really, really critical. All right. You need to get up every time you fail. This is one of those things that you can practice. Look, there's no way to guarantee that you're not going to fail, but you can certainly practice getting up every time you fail. And the way to do that is to develop a growth mindset. So, we describe or defined a fixed mindset earlier. A fixed mindset is when you believe your talent and intelligence are fixed traits. A growth mindset is when you believe your talent and intelligence are malleable traits. That you can actually change them, you can improve them, you can get better over time, smarter over time, more competent over time. And to do that, you just need to reframe the failure as a learning experience. So, that's one of the big ones. People that can really fail without losing their enthusiasm. In fact, it's a Churchill quote. He says, "Success is going from failure to failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm." So, reframe that failure as a learning experience because failure is truly the most information rich data stream there is. All right, step five. You've got to push yourself physically. If you want to get tough, you've got to test yourself. And there's no better or more reliable way to test yourself than to push yourself physically. You've got to stop asking how little you can get away with and start asking one of the most powerful questions in the universe, which is how much can you bear? Adaptation only happens when you get way outside of your comfort zone. When you get to fatigue, when you get to absolutely not being able to lift another rep, that's when your body shifts over into adapter die mode and you begin to actually make progress. If you haven't read David Goggins book, Can't Hurt Me, he talks about how to callous your mind through physical activity. How to do some really hard [ __ ] and hold yourself accountable so that you're actually asking yourself, "I said I was going to do this. Did I do it or not? Am I doing hard things physically? Am I challenging myself?" And because the mind and body live in this reciprocal loop, if you're not optimizing one, you're never going to be able to fully optimize the other. So, I wish I wish, personally, that I could just treat myself like a brain floating in a jar somewhere. That would be ideal for me, but I know that I cannot cognitively optimize. I know that I will never reach my maximum mental toughness unless I'm testing myself, putting my body through the paces, making sure that physically I'm in a good place. And every day that passes, science is showing another way that the mind and body are connected, and that if one is in ill health, the other is going to be in ill health. So, you've got to make sure that as a way to really toughen up as a total ecosystem, that you're getting your body and your mind together. And I love Goggins' notion of the accountability mirror, of looking yourself dead in the [ __ ] eye at the end of every day or at the beginning of the day, and evaluating your past performance, and what you're going to do in the future. I think it is extraordinarily helpful to be honest with yourself, be very direct, not as a way to beat yourself up, and I know a lot of people get stuck there. It's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about being honest with yourself about what you're doing, about how you've performed, about whether or not you're being weak in something. Because if you're being weak, the only problem with that is ignoring it, is pretending like it's okay, is not holding yourself to a standard. It's going to happen from time to time, but if you're not honest with yourself about where you are, if you're not having that hard direct talk, then you're never going to make progress. All right, I'm going to give you a few things that I think really play into testing your body. Number one, we've talked about cold showers. These are the [ __ ] like that's the gold standard of daily things to do to really push yourself. It's not fun, you're not going to look forward to it, at least not if you're me, but it is one of those things that you get in, at first you do it for a very brief period of time, then you extend it farther and farther and really begin to see just how much you can handle physically and mentally. Cold exposure also has some pretty extraordinary effects. And another one is getting your diet right. I think that a lot of times people are pretty lax on their diet has a big impact on you mentally. I think you can have a very hard time um becoming unstoppable if your body's weak, if you're um you know, wildly overweight, if you're out of shape. Like these are things that really matter. I think they matter psychologically and I think they matter physically. So, getting your diet on track is super important. It's beyond the scope of this to talk about what a good diet looks like. I've talked about it. We have a whole show called Health Theory. It's all free. You can go check it out. Um and then fasting. I think fasting is an awesome gut check mentally. You're going to find out real fast what you're capable of in terms of the fortitude of sticking with that. So, it's a great physical test to put yourself through to see where you're at. All right. I want to issue a challenge to you guys. One, I want you to take ownership of your life. I want you to say what you're going after. I want you to write it down. I want you to write down your values. Then, I want you to live by them and do the accountability mirror and see if you're actually doing it. And I want you to immediately begin interrupting the victim mentality. So, when you have that woe is me, it's not my fault, it was so-and-so, they did it to me. I want you to stop that immediately. Remind yourself that you own your life. Remind yourself of cause and effect. Remind yourself that you are in control. You could make a different decision and you could get a different outcome because you can't control the world. You can't control other people. You can only control yourself. And between that stimulus and that response is your ability to make a different choice. All right. If you're reframing your failures in your life, seeing them as lessons, you've got a real opportunity to progress. If you create a compelling future for yourself and write it down. Know where you want to be. Know who you want to be. Know the skill set that stands between you and that by really contemplating it, writing it down, being very specific. That will be incredibly powerful. Just make sure it's something that actually excites you. Complete the PDFs so that you have something that's really helping to organize your thoughts and your behaviors and then engage with the community. If you do that stuff, everything that we just talked about in this section of the course is going to begin to solidify. All right, there's more. This course is four parts. Next up, part two. If you thought today was valuable, I think you're really going to be blown away with what we're going to be talking about. We're going to talk about becoming anti-fragile, tapping into your dark side, what Jung called the shadow side. I think it's incredibly powerful, one of the most underutilized tactics. We're going to get way up in that. And then we're going to talk about how to super be supercharged by your own failures and a whole lot more. All right, guys, be sure to come back because at the end of this, you really are, if you put in the work, going to be unstoppable. Until part two, my friends, be legendary. Take care. All right, my friend, that wraps up this preview from part one of the own your life class from Impact Theory University. If you like this and found it helpful, don't forget to grab your free access to part two by going to ownyourlife.impacttheory.com or clicking the link in the description. Like I said at the start of this preview, you have to figure out what you want in life, what skills you need to get there, and then you have to work to acquire those skills at basically any cost with any of your code of ethics, of course. All right, the next five steps to owning your life are waiting for you at this link. And I look forward to seeing you in there. Until then, my friends, be legendary. Take care.