THE MINDSET OF A WINNER - How To Become LIMITLESS & ACHIEVE ANYTHING In 2023 | Tom Bilyeu

all right first question without further Ado is from plastic funnel that's quite the name is your answer to coping with the feeling of being a fraud uh in your answer that makes a lot more sense in your answer to coping with the feeling of being a fraud you sound like a madman in your hunger to learn on a long on a long enough timeline you will win but where do you draw the line between a self-reinforced delusion that is strategically useful and not useful it's a great question so this is something that you have to get really good at being able to hold two competing ideas in your head at the same time being able to feel like I really have this I've got it I know what I'm doing I'm moving forward full steam ahead and checking yourself and making sure that that confidence isn't spilling over into destructive delusion I won't even say to monitor it just to make sure that it's not spilling over into delusion because almost certainly if you've never done something before to believe that you can is pure delusion to believe you can learn on the other hand does not but that's where you've got to have that balance you've really got to believe that you're going to pull this off that you're going to figure it out that somehow some way that you're going to be the one that figures out when nobody else could figure out and I'll say that really is delusional statistically speaking certainly and you have to then check that against okay where where is the the borders of usability here it's good that I'm thinking like that it's good that I have the energy it's good and this is the most important part that I have the willingness to act decisively which is where most people fall down but you really do have to then check yourself and say okay where are my points of weakness and what I find is a lot of times what you need over here on the I can do this side is a quiet self-belief that's inside you you don't have to trumpet that a lot but you need that quiet self-belief what you need to get other people rallied around you is they need to see decisiveness they need to see certainty there is so much intoxication to certainty so now we've got those things we believe in ourselves our ability to learn and adapt cool our team believes that we that we believe we know what we're doing awesome and they can get excited by that certainty the clarity of vision they know exactly how to execute there's no ambiguity there's no confusion those are the things that kill teams then on the other hand we have an ability to very clearly articulate to ourselves if nobody else but oftentimes I do involve the team on this to articulate to ourselves what our weakest points are and what the parts in the puzzle that we're trying to solve for now the reason I'm able to involve the team in that is because they can see that I'm not wavering on my certainty of what to do so I'm saying do this go here talk to this person say this get that think about it like this then over here I can say okay and now we're going to flip it over we're going to look at the underbelly of the strategy and see if we're actually right and I'll walk people through my logic now this is where if your logic isn't sound your team is going to revolt so my thing is by the time I'm talking to the team and certainly by the time that I'm revealing my soft underbelly I have thought about this so much that I really really have the issue conceptualized and as long as there's a logical through line in my plan that the team can hold on to they'll go okay I dig it his logic makes sense and the punchline of his logic is go do this for now we're going to revisit it we're going to come check back so there's a cell phone awareness in the process of knowing I could be wrong I'm always going to be checking myself I'm going to be looking to see if those things that I'm telling the team to go do if they're actually revealing or giving us results or not and if they're not then we're going to adjust strategy and because I've told everybody where we're at but I've kept everybody focused with the certainty the clarity of the decisiveness then other voices can be heard we're constantly looking and checking at that but this process of doing what they call Red Team blue team where you're actively trying to pick holes in your um the the way your plan what you're actually executing those voices have been in the mix they feel like they're being heard and that's another critical part to keeping the team going okay so there it is all right Ray paulus how do you limit yourself especially to New Opportunities oftentimes they get overloaded with the responsibility of each new opportunity okay 80 of business is knowing what not to do that's the really hard part most people have no dearth of opportunities and I think that that has certainly been true in my life I think that that's certainly true for most people the real hard part is being in that room with a thousand doors and knowing which doors to close so you have to get really good at creating certainty at being decisive at being willing to take a step and when it comes to that honestly the thing that I've noticed most is just a willingness I'm trying to survive the tail end of an illness here the willingness to make a decision even when you don't have all the information that's really where we separate the people that go on to win from the people that just stand still because remember the most data Rich information stream is action whether that action is a win or a loss is somewhat irrelevant the whole point is you have to be moving forward you have to be acting decisively because that gives you that data Rich information stream most people are so terrified to make a mistake they're so paralyzed by indecision because they don't know which is right that they never make a decision they never hit that data Rich stream and they don't learn very fast and so they move 10 times 20 times 100 times more slowly than the next person who's willing to act who's willing to make mistakes who's not afraid to look stupid so that's the key as I'm sure you've heard said the only thing we have to fear is fear itself I will modify that and say the only thing that we have to fear is indecision man this cough is like really messing with me all right I had to give a talk today at Google and for the first like 10 minutes I sounded just like this like I'm dying and then it wears off so let me just bear with me I'll make sure I give you nuggets of gold yeah Conor is gonna hate his job today all right next question David beer I have a question about how you research people you God you mentioned how deep you go understanding their world but how deep do you really go specifically what is your step-by-step process I'm laughing at myself here and how much time do you spend on it all right so I really do go deep and I spend probably average 10 to 12 hours on a main episode guest that's reading their book it's watching all of their videos um and doing all of that the key thing that I do and this is where there's really two things that I do that I think really separate my style number one I follow my Fascinations and oftentimes my Fascination will lead me to look up something really obscure and in doing that I stumble upon oftentimes like a real piece of humanity and that's where people really really end up connecting with the guests and certainly that's where the guest ends up connecting with me and don't underestimate the power of the guests connecting with me and then being willing to lower their guard and that's why a lot of times people say that I get something out of people that other people don't because the guest feels very safe and that that's a really critical part of my interview Style so um one example of this was with Seth Godin and I came across this tidbit where he said I once cried when um Leonard Nimoy died and I thought whoa that's so weird like what would make him cry about that what is that and so going down that rabbit hole and trying to figure out what his relationship is reading some of his blog articles around that around characters narration the difference between Star Wars and um and Star Trek and you really start to get an understanding of where he might go now I don't always live by the following Maxim but this may be one of the most important um things if you're trying to copy my interview Style one of the most important things to know is I try never to ask a question to which I don't already know the answer now hopefully it doesn't feel that way hopefully it feels very spontaneous on set but the reality is I'm trying to take the interview somewhere and when it's something that really fascinates me I want to understand why they say that and the reason I understand why they've said the saying that fascinates me the reason I need to understand that excuse me is because I need to know if their answer is going to be valuable to you the audience that's that's huge right my obligation is to you guys my obligation is to figure out how do I take this person somewhere where they hey haven't already said this that thing a thousand times and then B that when you hear this new piece of information that they have that you're actually going to be interested so I'm always looking for things that you guys can adapt into your own life and whenever something is an operational level belief system then I'm really excited so in a nutshell those are the things that I'm really trying to do I'm trying to follow my own Fascination to make sure that I'm really interested in what they're saying so I can be super authentic on set that they will feel that they will feel really heard and understood Connie you're gonna have to cut all these out man it's just getting [ __ ] crazy not yet um so I want them to feel heard and understood I want there to be a real connection I want to be going a layer deeper than anybody else and I want to know I know how they're going to answer that question so that I can follow it up with another question or if they say something um and it takes us into new territory maybe even my response catches me off guard on set to something they say and now we go somewhere new um then I know how to bring it back because I know all the areas that I want to touch on because I really have a 360 degree view of the person all right so I think that's enough on that Jenna Robinson I'm currently reading Mastery and there's a part where Robert Greene says in your 20s you should go through an apprenticeship phase does this contradict your idea of having a super specific goal where you can map out every zigzag how would you do that when you're in this experimental phase of your life when you're trying to figure out what career you want so it doesn't contradict it they're just different parts of your life different times in your life and the one of the most powerful parts of the Mastery phase is that you've I really identified what you want to do and once you've identified what you want to do going and working with the master is one of the ways to really rapidly gain the skills you need so there's two parts there's the exploratory phase where you're not sure what you want to do and I wouldn't try to prematurely optimize by going down the path of gaining Mastery I would just try to experience a lot of things I would play with them I would dabble and see which one really strikes your fancy once you know which one really strikes your fancy you're super interested that's the path you want to go down you maybe even begun going down the process of getting Mastery already and you realize I love this I love this enough to put in the work I believe in what it's going to bring to me in terms of what mission it's going to allow me to accomplish then you go and engage with the master and you pour yourself into that study and working with them and in doing so they're going to shorten your learning curve which is incredibly incredibly powerful so spending your 20s in that phase if you've already gotten to the point where you know that's what you want to do then that's amazing invitation to your 30s so be it but before you start optimizing which is what you're doing with the master you want to make sure that you first know that that really is the area that you want to go down all right Day Day many people do not execute on their goals because they lack a Clear Vision of all of their Pathways to success how did you go about finding options C and D instead of just choosing a and b um it's not really how I think about it if I'm honest so what I do is I play a game called No [ __ ] what would it take and I try to work backwards from success and I say that I'm working backwards in a slightly different way than I normally mean it what I'm talking about is I find a path where anybody you tell would be like yeah well 100 that would work no one would do it it's crazy it's not technologically feasible whatever thing they say then after that but yes if you could do that that would work like if I said you had to commute um you know 20 miles in LA and you had to do it in less than 30 minutes at rush hour well what would you do you would have to fly in a helicopter everybody would say yep that would work you can't afford it but that would work and then you can work backwards from there and you see people doing things like building drones now they carry a single person they worked with the FAA to actually get them legal so that's how something like that is really going to work is somebody started from well I know what success looks like now it becomes how do we make a feasible version of that rather than what most people do which is Think of where they are today and think how impossible it would be to get there in their car they first started a car and then they started thinking maybe they would do a motorcycle okay that's working from failure and trying to work forward instead work from success something you know guaranteed home run it works and then look at what are the things that stand in your way and if some of the things that stand in your way in the case of a helicopter cost then it becomes a question of can you reduce the cost of that method so we talked about this before we started Quest how would we end metabolic disease well we knew if we could make food that people chose based on taste and it happened to be good for them then it would work because we'd be leveraging people's own behaviors against them their desire to eat hyperpolatable Foods uh packaged convenienced well-marketed all that stuff that's what's driving eating Behavior so if we could take advantage of that and then just slide in something that was actually good for you then we really had a shot doing the same thing here at impact Theory I know to get the average person to adopt an empowering belief system it has to come in the form of entertainment has to be somewhat invisible it's got to be baked into the cultural subconscious and that over time people just begin to think like that so um that's why we're doing it that way so more than I'm you know I'm thinking uh oh here's path number one I'm thinking what's the most real um what's the most realistic plausible path and then does it meet other criteria can it be monetized am I going to have fun am I passionate about both the path and the goal so all of those things play into it as well all right Josh moranian I realize that I don't have a super specific goal but I have a clear vision of what my goal looks like I know I am going to be leading a team company in an industry I'm passionate about my question is how can I specify my goal without limiting my past to get where I want in my career how can I specify my goal without limiting my paths yeah so the the problem is you don't actually know what your goal looks like so this is the the quintessential question I get asked is somebody who says that they have a clear vision of their goal but then what they describe is something as super vague as I know I'm going to be leading a team company in an industry that I'm passionate about okay please understand that is a hopelessly vague statement like that is vague in the most aggressive way possible and it's the vagaries of that that then create the problem so because you don't know what to execute against you don't know what kind of products to make you don't know who your consumers are so when doing a business we're doing anything in life you you really have to get down to the level of just absolutely ridiculous hyper specificity so the example that I always use is of the Olympics the uh the goal that you have is as vague is saying I want to win a gold medal so first of all you want to win a gold medal in what the Olympics okay cool you want to win an Olympic gold medal winter or summer okay summer tennis swimming like what is it swimming okay great do you want to do the breaststroke do you want to do the medley like what exactly is it until you know the very specific event in the sport in the games that you want to play you're not going to know how you should train and at the end of the day it's the training it's the acquisition of skills that's really what you're trying to get down to that's why you need the hyper degree of specificity because without that you can't a drive forward you can't acquire the right skills and B if you don't know exactly where you're going then you'll never know if you're making progress so when you have a goal that's super vague like I want to drive around in my car okay great like you're driving around in your car now what you don't know whether you're going in the right direction you don't know if you're making any progress so you really have to pin this stuff down to a just an insanely clear and specific Place once you have that then you'll know what you should be training in and whether or not you're making progress Stephen schrembeck I've been working on Ray dalio's radical truth principle for two months now but radical transparency is a huge hurdle how do I practice radical transparency without pissing off everyone in my life who doesn't get it do I need to ask permission to be honest is that good enough I will say that this is near impossible to do with everyone in your life if people don't buy into it it is absolutely not going to work one Ray dalio's principles is written within the context of people who have agreed to be a part of a team so whether it's at a job I think you can get people to agree there if it's in your immediate family you can get people to agree there but once it starts going farther than that like unless you have a soccer team or something where you can actually get people to come together you can present the idea and see if they buy into it it's pretty hard to abide by Ray dalio's principles without people actually buying into that so that's first and foremost it's got to be applied to a group that will actually buy into it it really won't work it'll be totally dysfunctional for you to just try to do it now you can live your life by principles and you can be read radically honest and transparent about yourself you can even decide that you want to be radically transparent with other people and you can train them to only ask you questions if they really want to know the truth but what you've got to ask is what do you hope to get out of that because if people haven't bought in to radical transparency you will come across like a jerk it won't be read well chances are they're going to diminish the frequency with which they invite you to be a part of their group but if you're okay with that if it's not groups that you want to be a part of if you only want to be around people that are living in principles then maybe that's perfectly fine but you need to really think through exactly what it is you're trying to get and I would say that ultimately Ray dalio's principles are specifically for people who are in a group that will all Buy in all right Mischief Co I started an online business a year ago and things were going really well recently sales have dropped to the point where I'm quickly eating my way into my savings every month I don't know if I should quit this business and start a new one go back to a nine to five or stick this out what advice do you have for someone who's struggling with a rough time in their business to me this all comes down to none of those are wrong answers so this all comes down to what do you really want like what's your identity what's your mission in life what are you really trying to accomplish so if that business is just a path on a way to a bigger goal that you believe in with all of your heart and soul then it might be worth shutting that one down and starting something new it might be worth buckling down and figuring out where you're going wrong using austerity measures in your company cutting off every ounce of fat getting super lean figuring out what's happened in the marketplace pivoting like finding that solving that problem if you're not emotionally hung up on the money and having to step backwards financially like if you can really hunker down and solve that problem could be beautiful maybe some of the most powerful lessons that you'll learn in business on the flip side if you've didn't notice the changing in sales fast enough that there's just a tsunami of debt on the business or something and you can't get out from under it then closing that business down and starting something new with the fresh knowledge maybe that's the way to go but it really all comes down to what exactly it is you're trying to accomplish I know none of these are easy and I know especially if you have debt in the business or you took money from friends and family or something like that this can be incredibly incredibly stressful I'm not downplaying that but just make sure that you're looking at yourself on a long time Horizon that you're not judging yourself through the lens of a moment and that you know what your ultimate goal is and so if this business is a failure but it teaches you something that you needed in order to actually get where you're ultimately going and just to differentiate like for instance with impact Theory my mission is to pull people out of the Matrix to give them an empowering belief system I think the way to do that is through social content and traditional narrative content should I find that that isn't right or that I'm not good at it and that I'm not able to do what I want from a business perspective with those two paths and I have to Pivot at some point and and do it another way hey so be it I'll take my losses I'll figure it out I'll regroup and I'll move forward again but that all comes down to me knowing where I'm ultimately trying to go I'm not ultimately trying to build the studio that's a very fun way that I happen to think is the right way but it's very possible that over time I learned that that's not true and that I have to Pivot and do something different and it just so happens that I'm more passionate about the end result of pulling people out of the Matrix than I am the struggle of building a studio so building the studio is only worth me risking my fortune and all of that because I so believe in what I think it's going to let me do on a cultural subconscious level embedding an empowering belief system so if it didn't have that then I wouldn't be doing it so the truth is hitting your career goals is not easy you have to be willing to go the extra mile to stand out and do hard things better than anybody else but there are 10 steps I want to take you through that will 100x your efficiency so you can crush your goals and get back more time into your day you'll not only get control of your time you'll learn how to use that momentum to take on your next big goal to help you do this I've created a list of the 10 most impactful things that any High achiever needs to dominate and you can download it for free by clicking the link in today's description alright my friend back to today's episode that's where that plays out so none of those are bad like going back and taking a nine to five there's no reason why you shouldn't like if that feels awesome right now and you're like so tired carrying all the responsibility on your shoulders and it sounds awesome to go find a company that you really believe in they're really doing something you're passionate about and they're good people like go plug-in man that's amazing this is a know thyself moment and so just really take careful assessment of what your um what your identity is what you want it to be have compassion for yourself and really plan for long-term fulfillment don't worry about whether that business was a win or a loss on a long enough timeline it's just really not going to matter all right next up Ryan Jacobs hi Tom you're doing an amazing job with the show especially your communication skills thank you how did you learn to communicate so well were there any certain books or people that helped you learn how to use appropriate language and effectively communicating explanations or ideas to others first yes I mean I've just read so many books it'd be impossible to list them out here but you can find my top 27 now I think that it is at impact theory.com head there and by the way today's episode is brought to you by the impact Theory logo shirt so head to shop.impacttheory.com right now to pick yours up and remind yourself through self-signaling of what this whole ecosystem and way of thinking is all about but yeah a lot a lot a lot of books like I said the 27 are there in order that I think people should read them beyond that just an insane amount of practice and being willing to hear feedback so I've been doing speech and debate since I was like 14 years old maybe 13 I started in high school and just really threw myself into that and you're actually getting judged and critiqued and you're getting feedback and from the beginning I just had to take that feedback and then as I've gotten older as a leader really accepting your losses accepting things you really mess up allowing yourself to hear from employees how you could be doing it better just always lowering your defenses lowering your ego hearing the hard things being hungry to adjust and grow and get better all of that is super key so when you really want to know the truth when you really hunger to understand what you're doing wrong how you could be doing something better that's when you're really going to start to win so make sure that you actually want to know the truth because the thing that you have just forced into your life the thing that lights you on fire emotionally is actual Improvement when you're lit on fire by actual Improvement and all your dopamine and serotonin come rushing in as a result of actual Improvement suddenly a hunger to hear the truth even when it's harsh that's how you get better just practice practice practice practice all right Anonymous how do you go about removing people from your life who you feel are not in line with your principles and lifestyle how do you wean them out of your life without being a total [ __ ] about it so my thing is honestly I just let space happen naturally and space usually does happen pretty naturally like everything in your life if you want to build something new don't focus on tearing down the old old focus on building the new so rather than worrying about eliminating old friends from your ecosystem focus on building new friends into your ecosystem go spend time with those guys fill your life with that with awesome stuff and then it's up to you like exactly what you want to tell people Vanessa van Edwards says that she thinks people should actually break up with friends and actually have the conversation to sit down with people and just say look I think we're in different places in our lives and I don't think this friendship makes sense anymore that never hit me well and I think she is brilliant but this is one place where she and I agree just seems super awkward to me and unnecessary and maybe this is a super dude thing but the friendships in my life that have evolved into something else I've just let them evolve into something else the reason that I do that is I never know man we could evolve back in the same direction again and having made some big thing about breaking up with them just seems super weird to me so I like leaving it open and maybe we'll reconnect and plus hopefully at least in the people in my life the vast majority not all but the vast majority of people self-love for and so if we were to find Common Ground again it'd be awesome so yeah I just let time and space do its work all right time for one more question Daniel Breeze hey Tom did you hey Tom you mentioned that you finally figured out how to read while working out how so the key for me on this is there's only certain types of things that I can read while I'm working off I need to be taking a lot of notes I can't do it um so it needs to be something like uh when I'm reading for somebody coming on the show because I read in swarms so I'm not so worried about taking every little detail in so if I'm doing a set and the set's Really intense and I miss you know 10 or 15 seconds of the book not a big deal because I'm going to listen to eight videos or you know 15 videos on them talking about the book anyway so I'm going to get that information from a thousand different angles so it's basically anything that I can read podcast work for this where it's like it's a flowy conversation so as long as you're getting say 80 you're getting most of what you want to get versus what I'm really trying to read like raid Elio's principles I would never read at a first pass while working out it's just two and information dense and I want to take notes and you know I want to make sure that I'm really focused on it and really writing things down so it really comes down to things like biographies where it's not like I'm taking a lot of notes per page or when I'm prepping for somebody and thusly I'm reading in swarms or when I'm um listening to a podcast which is more conversational one of the keys to maintaining a positive mindset is to stop worrying about what other people think I go into great detail about this topic in the next clip first question comes from Imani I mean najari one of the two how do I not how do I not to care how do I not care about what people think about me I know I should not care but it's really hard for me not to and it usually affects my motivation and productivity okay so this is about getting a hold of your emotions so I think all of us have a desire to be looked at favorably especially by the people that we care about that we respect but you have to like Victor Frankel said understand that there's a gap between stimulus and response and in that Gap you have the ability to choose something as a way of reacting that isn't your emotions dictating that so you're gonna have an emotional reaction when you do something people disapprove almost certainly certainly happens for me you're going to feel that sting of like oh that sucks I really wanted people to be behind me I really want people to cheer I really want people to clap for me that's amazing but at the end of the day you've got to be able to say what is my goal and what reaction to this stimulus actually moves me towards my goal and that needs to be the thing that overrides everything else so Step One is having that clear goal knowing what you're trying to accomplish and then step two is the ability to assess whether or not your emotion that which is the subconscious speaking to your conscious mind so if you think of emotions as the subconscious which processes data in a faster and faster as they say fashion meaning it can process a whole lot of information that your conscious mind would not be able to process through rapidly and it can do it much quickly so it coughs up instead of speaking in the language of that little voice you actually hear articulating words in your head it's coughing up an emotion so it's all of that experience all of the things that our brain does to make sure that we protect ourselves that we don't get ostracized by the group which makes sense in a evolutionary context but not so much in a modern context that's why the subconscious is speaking in Emotion but you can take that emotion and say hey this doesn't make sense for my goal feeling badly about myself worrying about what other people think about me it's only going to slow me down it's only going to hold me back I need to be able to trust my instincts which I have trained and now move towards what my goals demand and so when you're able to do that when you're able to read the emotion check to see if there's a lesson to be learned but if there's in wallowing in that emotion if it's going to move you away from your goals then you set that to the side and practicing that and getting good at that and filtering everything to your goal is how ultimately you're not going to spend a lot of time caring about what other people think and so the Savior for me has been the belief and the part of my identity which says I only do and believe that which moves me towards my goals so obsessing over negative thoughts about what other people think doesn't and so I just let it go and move on and it literally comes down to what you allow yourself to think about so just stop yourself using cognitive behavioral therapy techniques stop yourself from thinking about what other people think all right next question is from Jody Deming hey Tom I'm 20 years old and I've done some real soul searching over the past few years I am certain that I don't want the conventional life and I want to do my own thing but whenever I start something I quit because I find I'm not really passionate about it enjoying it but I fear I may not just want it bad enough how do I differentiate between being honest with myself and just pure laziness Jody this is an amazing question and first of all it is addressed brilliantly by Duckworth Angela Duckworth in the book grit which you guys are going to want to read that absolutely phenomenal book and it breaks down how it's a very natural process to begin something to be very excited and then as you go down that process to realize yeah I actually don't like this it's not giving me as much energy as I thought it would as taking energy away and therefore I want to give up and quit that thing and she said if you do that once or twice like hey so be it but if you're doing it every time if you just love that initial Rush that excitement of something new but the actual nitty-gritty reality of getting good at it of doing what mitchu Kaku calls having butt power meaning you sit your butt in the seat and you do the work if that's really your problem and nothing is interesting enough for you to sit there and do the work you haven't developed grit yet and so grit is the ability to persevere to see things through to go past the point at which it has stopped being fun and it becomes boring because you believe in your end goal enough you're excited by what you're trying to accomplish so much that you're willing to fight through all of that difficulty you're willing to fight through the boredom you're willing to fight through the unease that arises when you step outside your comfort zone you're doing things you're not good at and things that are boring those are the two things that I find kill most people they just cannot handle the things that make them go oh God like I'm not very good at this and I'm feeling really badly about myself and they forget that they can get good on a long enough timeline and then two inevitably in any pursuit of greatness in any Endeavor where you're trying to gain Mastery you're going to get bored because practice is repetition it's doing something over and over and over and over to really train yourself to get to the point where you're truly exceptional and there's just so much boredom inherent in that process so building in the resilience to see all that stuff through is the key part of grit so take that that's the Nugget that you want to apply but I would also recommend that you go and read Angela Duckworth's book grit it's phenomenal and she goes into more detail all right Alberto Garza do I need to have a solid idea of the person I am today in order to be the person I want to become yes I think that would be very powerful for you the ability to accurately self-assess is incredibly powerful now people that have the highest levels of self-delusion also have the highest levels of happiness it is one of the great ironies of being a human so this is advanced class [ __ ] but you don't want to spend too much time looking really rawly at where you are and how bad you are at this thing that you're trying to do but at the same time you do need to be able to accurately assess where you are now the key that I've found to being able to stare at nakedly your inadequacies is that you have to build your self-esteem around something else but when your self-esteem is tied around this it can be pretty gnarly emotionally to spend a lot of time looking at that which is why people don't do it but if you build your self-esteem around this little thing here that I'm doing with my fingers which is the willingness to look at that to get better to sincerely apply yourself to getting better to recognize that the only difference between who you want to be and who you are is a set of skills and that you can acquire those skills But first you have to understand where you actually are and where you're trying to go and then be able to identify that Chasm that you have to cross and if you take your pride your self-esteem from the willingness to cross that Chasm then suddenly you actually get self-esteem by looking at that by assessing where you really are and so that is one of the most powerful things anybody can do so I highly recommend you guys spend your time there what is up my friend Tom bilyu here and I have a big question to ask you how would you rate your level of personal discipline on a scale of one to ten if your answer is anything less than a ten I've got something cool for you and let me tell you right now discipline by its very nature means compelling yourself to do difficult things that are stressful boring which is what kills most people or possibly scary or even painful now here is the thing achieving huge goals and stretching to reach your potential requires you to do those challenging stressful things and to stick with them even when it gets boring and it will get boring building your levels of personal discipline is not easy but let me tell you it pays off in fact I will tell you you're never going to achieve anything meaningful unless you develop discipline right I've just released a class from Impact Theory university called how to build Ironclad discipline that teaches you the process of building yourself up in this area so that you can push yourself to do the hard things that greatness is going to require of you right click the link on the screen register for this class right now and let's get to work I will see you inside this Workshop from Impact Theory University and tell them my friends be legendary peace out all right Daniel Brees the man the ever contributor to impact Theory thank you Daniel for your question how do you deal with wanting to help those closest to you while knowing that until they take action there's nothing you can do all right I'm going to quote my boy Naveen Jane and he said that don't worry about leading a horse to water try to make them thirsty and I thought that was brilliant because when somebody's thirsty when they really want that thing then they're going to go and do it of their own accord you don't have to worry about leading them to water now this is one of the most difficult things to do which is to get somebody thirsty now first before I explain how to make them thirsty I'm going to say that meet them with compassion I wouldn't spend a lot of time and energy trying to change them or even try to make them thirsty I think the vast majority of your time the people closest to you that you love the most you should just spend it loving them you should spend it being happy to have a relationship with them of being able to have themselves in yourself and good enough Health to be able to enjoy each other's company so even though I get it trust me I get it I know why you want to make change spend your time just being compassionate with where they are now if you want to make them thirsty the key is to find some hook some emotional resonance with them something that they're excited about becoming some goal that they're amped about having some way that is pleasure based to get them to go down that path because that's what that thirst really is that's what that hunger to learn really is is it something that is grabbing a hold of the pleasure sensors in your brain and making you want to do it and that's the key to anything that's why people say stay hungry they're saying you've got to still want that thing you've got to be driven by something internal you've got to be moving towards something and not just away from something so that's really critical and then I will say also that find out what is that person's language do they naturally move towards things or away from things are they somebody that operates out of excitement or out of fear what's their language of appreciation how can you talk to them in a way that they're really going to understand and internalize but a lot of times the punch line of all of this with those closest to you is simply live your life life and when they see you lit on fire excited about the things you're pursuing and you're not trying to preach them you're just doing your thing and they see it and they see how amped you are and you share that enthusiasm with them without trying to preach or trying to convince them of anything you're just letting them see how excited you are then over time some of them will want that excitement in their own life and they will ask the magic question which is how do you do that and then you can give them a much more direct answer but till then I would say meet them with compassion and just try to show them your level of enthusiasm for what you do vipin thiagi what advice do you have for dealing with fomo for those who don't know fear of missing out for those in their 20s I understand the necessity of the grind but sometimes become distracted by thoughts of how I should be perhaps devoting more time to friends dating Etc since those things matter as well in life how do I settle this in my mind so I am not constantly at battle with the two sides thanks all right this is super important I want everybody to stop what you're doing I want you to lean in and I want you to really hear me and remember this is coming from the guy that's like Do or Die do the [ __ ] work in fact I think yep I have that shirt on right now today's episode is brought to you by do the work go to shop.impact3.com right now and get yourself signaling now having said all of that and I really do believe that because it makes sense in my life for what I want to accomplish and what I want to do but the reality is there isn't a better way to live your life there's no right way and wrong way there is only the way that gives you more energy there is only the way that gives you fulfillment when you have those things when you're fulfilled by what you're doing and it's giving you the harder you pursue it it's giving you more energy you're on the right path as the Greeks would say say I can't believe I messed that up segolo duromo which means you're on a good road and that's what I want people to understand like yes I Peach a or I preach a very specific path but I don't think that it is a universal path and so the only Universal path is to do the things that give you fulfillment and energy so if spending time with your friends gives you that then you should be spending more time with your friends if dating gives you that then you should be dating so you don't need to want to be the best in the world at something you don't need to want to make a lot of money you don't need to want to be an entrepreneur like all they're literally just stand-ins they're proxies for fulfillment and energy creation that's it so those are the punch lines of what's the meaning of life and all of that stuff it is to do something that makes you feel a deep sense of well-being which I'll call fulfillment and something that gives you energy where you're literally excited to attack the day that's it all right Michael Richards The Michael Richards from Seinfeld wow that would be amazing for those wondering I've contacted my doctor on this never-ending golf my friend mentor and I have been working together for about a year now developing both of our passions further it has always been a mutually beneficial relationship but now he has asked me to come work for him full-time how would you approach the transition to employee employer I would approach it with absolute raw and unadulterated honesty people treat you exactly the way that you let them treat you you guys are about to move into a very different dynamic in your role you're going to want to know what your expectations are of them what their expectations are of you you want to have that all clear and upfront you want to make sure that you understand how to communicate in this new role you want to make sure that those channels are open so that if something starts to not feel good that you guys are communicating it you're not internalizing it this all comes down to Ray dalio's principles read that book if you're both open to two things these are the important two things write these down this should be the fundamental core of every relationship you have business or personal number one you need to be able to hear truth and number two you need to be able to speak truth those are the two most foundational skills that anyone should develop in terms of communication you need to be able to hear truth and speak truth now a lot of people can do one or the other but not both some people have a very easy time criticizing others and telling them what they're doing wrong but they can't hear it themselves and other people can actually hear it they don't mind that but they have a really hard time communicating that to other people because they don't want to hurt their feelings or whatever so make sure that you're able to do both that is an absolute Cornerstone of communication so if you guys have that you'll be just fine Lucian Millet how do I get over my block of I am never good enough especially when my significant other has high expectations but does not support me in reaching those expectations okay so we have two issues so first of all getting over your block of I'm not good enough for me the thing that absolutely destroyed all of that is my unflagging belief in one simple thing I can learn anything so I may not be good at that thing now I may really not be good enough like when I think about building a studio to rival Disney I'm not good enough yet there's a huge Chasm and skill set between me and Bob Iger and being able to do that I fully understand that and I have to do something different which is found this create all the energy whereas Bob Iger came in wait I mean they've been in business for like 75 years or something by the time he came along so it is a really intriguing skill set to be able to both build and create something scale it and then run it once it's big so I know full well that I am not yet the person that I need to be in order to do that and so my time and energy is spent in building that skill set so I don't freak out over the fact that I'm not good enough that's very easy for me to admit I instead spend my time thinking about how do I acquire those skills in order to actually become good enough so don't let your self-worth be tied up in that notion of good enough humans are the ultimate adaptation machine from that I derive my sort of high level sense of worth that hey every human being has worth because they're an ultimate adaptation machine and they can become anything they want that's just really cool and amazing and then also I just am deeply compassionate for The Human Condition so um yeah regardless of where people fall on that path of actually executing against that potential um I get it man being a human is both beautiful amazing all this potential and it's really hard so have compassion for yourself which I think is incredibly important and know that this is hard and then believe that you can become anything that you set your mind to and then just be honest with yourself you don't have have to want to be the greatest in the world so whether you let somebody else apply those high standards to you or not is completely your choice just remember it's a choice and you're not not great because you can't be you're not great because you haven't applied yourself to that so that is the key for me like understanding that my life is an exact reflection of my choices is entirely liberating so remember your life is an exact reflection of your choices if you want a different result you simply need to make a different choice that's a name right there should I try executing from the start or should I learn to get to the level needed for Mastery first ultimately the question is experience or knowledge so my advice is nothing there is no more data Rich information stream than experience than going and diving into trying something failing learning from that so I never worry about whether or not I fully know how to do what I'm about to do I go into it however I am trying to fiendishly get as much experience as I can as humanly possible so like with Comics I knew nothing about it but I was making a pledge long before I knew anything about it hiring people against it taking steps to move in that direction but as fast as I could I was learning as much as I could about the industry and I continue that education to this day and that's been that's a huge first step for us in terms of building the TV and film stuff that we're doing and so I'm doing both I'm getting in it I'm learning and let me tell you that doing it is going to teach you far faster than anything else um but I don't worry about whether or not I have Mastery before I act if you do that you're never going to act so I would say it's it's really parallel pass it isn't one and then the other it's doing both at the same time Brandon Alexander Carl in the early days of your business how did you deal with business debt and how did you fuel your success all right so in the beginning you're really gonna have to be a direct seller meaning if you spend a dollar you need to get a two dollar return on that and so not taking in debt if at all humanly possible is my advice now if you just don't have any way to start um then you might if your business idea speaks to it and you know how to raise Capital then I would say go raise capital and I wouldn't be overly sensitive about the ownership I'd be way more sensitive about the control that matters a lot to me personally maybe it doesn't matter as much to you but that's a big deal to me so if you don't have the capital go get somebody else's Capital but that means you really have to be passionate about the idea you have to understand how to execute against the idea and you have to be willing and able to convince other people that you're worth that investment now if you're none of those things then you're going to want to do something like affiliate marketing which has virtually zero startup costs you're leveraging someone else's product you're even leveraging their sales infrastructure and you need to only put up a website you're gonna have to create content but that can be written content so it doesn't have to cost you any money but at some point to do a business you have to be better than other people at something and whether that's something is social content whether that's something is um SEO whatever it's going to be you've got to be better at other people than somebody and that thing that you're better at has to lead to sales there's just no way around that but these days literally with no startup costs you can start a business and I'll give you an example the one business I started that had absolutely no startup Capital was Bill you photography it was I think the very first real business that Lisa and I did and that was literally I had a camera that I'd gotten for my birthday and I took headshots with it and that was it and I charge people God back then it was like 300 for an hour session which for me was like unbelievable I couldn't believe I was getting paid that much and so then from there you learned very quickly oh but I have to go process the film and all that and what does that do to my expenses blah blah blah so but in all of that I didn't need any startup capital I was able to get it going and get it off the ground for nothing and then later I did some affiliate marketing as well again same thing it cost like literally what eight dollars a year uh to buy a domain name so I mean it's virtually nothing and you can spin up Amazon web service anyway I'm not going to get into the specifics but there you go affiliate marketing if you have no other way Jonathan Sereno what books are you reading to understand the world of comics okay so um one I listened to a lot of podcasts too there's a book called self-publishing comic books or how to self-publish comic books and not just write them I think is the exact title is very long it's by the guy who does devil Devils do Comics I highly recommend that book uh it is if you're into this business it is really informative and it would have saved me about ten thousand dollars in legal fees had I read that a year ago so uh the most expensive book I've ever read um but yeah I would do that I would listen to podcasts I don't have the podcast that I listen to memorized forgive me um but uh hit me up socially and I can ping me with that stuff uh if you have a continued interest all right Blake Reed any advice on how to determine if your goals are super specific and getting feedback from someone on where you where uh your plan might fail okay so yes I have all kinds of advice on this so number one figuring out if your plan is specific enough if you know exactly what to do right now at this moment to take a very concrete and real step forward meaning it's not thinking about something it is actually doing something then chances are that you have have a very specific goal now if you can map out all of the steps that you're going to need to take to get where you're going and that when you tell it to people there's an internal logic to it it may not work by the way but at least there's an internal logic and people like yeah I get it that might actually work then you've got a very specific goal but if it's and this is the best example that I can give in fact I'll give you an example the one that I normally give is from the Olympics and when people come and say I want to I want to win a gold medal okay a gold medal in what the Olympics great summer or winter you guys have heard me talk through that before and it gets all the way down to exactly what event in what sport that you want to do it so that you know how to train and that's really where that level of specificity now an example from my own life okay I want to make I want to pull people out of the Matrix right that's spiritually very interesting but then I need to really Define that what does that mean okay it's all about limiting beliefs all right I want to get rid of people's limiting beliefs and give them empowering beliefs okay that's really specific now I can start to think about how do you do that once you know exactly what you want to do I want to in fact I'll go even more specific because this is the truth at scale I want to be able to switch out limiting beliefs in somebody for empowering beliefs even if they're antagonistic to change in a growth mindset that's really the mission statement in my head the one that I don't often are take regulate and I just say we want to pull people out of the Matrix so the keys of at scale that it needs to work on somebody who is actively antagonistic to change and they're actively antagonistic to a growth mindset how do I get them to have an empowering belief system okay now that's specific and you can execute against that and it's very easy for me to step back and look at all that starting with how do people change their beliefs looking at neuroscience and just seeing one answer come up over and over and over narrative okay narrative well if I know I'm going to be in the world of narrative what are the areas of narrative there are five books comic books TV shows movies video games maybe a six VR in the future but right now those are the dominant forms of narrative I'm not saying there aren't other Splinter factions but those are the dominant forms of narrative okay cool and then breaking down who's doing that well and there's now social content that you can publish that speaks to a lot of this that's obviously what we're doing here and then you've got traditional narrative content which is what we're doing on the comics and ultimately film and TV and you can see you just you start working it back once I was able to see okay I can create a plan of execution I knew that my goal was specific enough if I was like oh it starts getting nebulous in the middle of how I actually execute against that then I would say I need to make my goal more specific Blake Reed nope that was the one we just did Marie Baker do Journal if so do you keep to a specific topic and how often do you do it I don't do what most people call journaling I did very briefly and I actually found it useful to be honest but I didn't find it useful enough to make it a permanent part of my morning routine so what I do is I keep notes on everything so every time I have an idea I write it down I write it down I write it down I'm obsessive about writing things down and so I have two lists that I keep one is called important things ideas which I like to then differentiate to important things my important things list is what I should be doing I should be executing against this my important things ideas those are things like hey this might be interesting I should really think through this more that kind of thing or maybe it seems a little bit crazy but I don't want to forget it I'll write it on important things ideas and then I'll go as I chip away at my important things list I'll go over to my important things ideas and see if there's anything that's matured enough that I can move it over to my important things list which is pure execute so that's that and then I write something on one of those two lists almost every day I won't say it's every day but wow it's got to be 95 of days that includes weekends that I'm writing something on one of those two lists um and that comes from largely really caring about your goal and then getting energized by what you're pursuing so if the things that you do if executing against important things of all that is giving you more energy than it takes then suddenly it's fun to think about that stuff and you'll find yourself thinking about it all the time all the time all the time Benny M oh no did I miss one yes Dan G Ingram what Legacy do you want to leave the world I don't really think in terms of Legacy but I'll give you an answer that you'll take his legacy um anyway which is what's the impact that I want to have in the world and that is I want to at scale pull people out of the Matrix so I want to give people an empowering belief system I really think that that is what um I have built my skill set to execute against that will give me the deepest level of fulfillment I absolutely love doing that I love that it implores uh employs my understanding of narrative and psychology and all that's endlessly fascinating I love that I get to create social content build community things that just really really mean something to me so that's what I want to do the reason I don't think of it as Legacy is I'm not worried about something living beyond me and that would be great but the reality is I want to enjoy my time on this Earth I want to do something while I'm here while I can experience it that I think is value-added that makes me feel good about myself that gives me that deep sense of fulfillment so because I think if it's so much about the now like I wouldn't do something that was going to be remembered forever but made me completely miserable in my one go round here so that's why I don't think of it as Legacy but I'm sure that answers your question all right Benny M uh are video games a waste of time I'm 48 I have been told all my life that video games are a big waste of time I'm torn they give me so much pleasure but on the other hand I can waste hours and hours gaming okay so this comes down to goals purely we started this episode by talking about there is no right way to live your life so if you're playing games and you love it and it gives you a sense of fulfillment and you're exploring Mastery and you just love being in that universe and it's helping you improve sets uh your skill set which it does me and you love that and it's making you better at something else you really care about then I could see totally giving yourself over to that or if you love creating games and you have to play them in order to be able to go out and create something amazing for other people and you love that then truly there's no conflict between playing games and doing what I think provides people with the most fulfillment which is to build a set of skills that not only serves you but serves other people if it is just purely a thing of pleasure for you like doing things you think are awesome that you think are rad like I totally get that and building in time in your life to do that is is amazing but if it's not helping you generate a deep sense of fulfillment and you're conflicted and you feel like like sometimes where it's like oh man did I really just spend like six or seven hours playing that game and I feel a little bit icky about that then it's like okay it's it becomes a little bit like I think about drinking which drinking alcohol is fun it makes me feel like I'm suppressing the urge to dance on a table but it moves me backwards from a longevity standpoint and at the end of it I didn't really get anything it was a very transient experience so I do it occasionally call it three or four times a year with my wife it's a lot of fun I really enjoy it but I definitely limit the amount of time that I do it so that may be where video games fall for you for me I spend video game time with my wife and my sister we play as a fire team so that's already fun it's bonding for the three of us and then second it's huge for me and learning to calm my anxiety because it's the only thing that I can think of where it feels like they're really high stakes but there's actually no Stakes whatsoever so your heart is racing your anxiety spikes and you can practice rapidly calming it down so that's been a way for me to engage with video games and sort of kill multiple birds with one stone and keeps it from at all ever feeling like a waste of time but I have rules around it like I almost never play by myself I'm always playing with my family so that you get that extra element of bonding and then I really do force myself to practice going out of the sympathetic nervous system into the parasympathetic so that's my take all right Ricky Superman [Music] what should I do if things I want to succeed what should I do if things I want to succeed in constantly feel as if it's a competition it feels as if it hinders me from finding value and improving myself hmm I don't entirely understand your perspective on the question but I will say this being a competition is not a bad thing and I think that being willing to compete with others is a sign of confidence it's a willingness to put yourself out there to really see if the skills that you're gaining actually have real world utility or not for a long time I was afraid to compete with people because I thought I was just going to lose at everything and I thought that that meant that I was bad and untalented unworthy all of that stuff and so I just avoided it like the plague because I never wanted anything to make me feel like less of myself then I realized I'd get better at anything at any time and if I really care about winning at something that I can pour myself into getting great at that thing and if I don't care about that thing enough to get great at it then just enjoy it whether I win or lose is pretty irrelevant so I wouldn't be afraid of competition now you find that it hinders you from finding value and improving yourself because it has a competition that's the part that I don't understand so Ricky if you want to send us in a little bit more clarification on that I can go deeper otherwise hopefully the first part of that answered your question Dan Conrad if you were creating a plan for personal development to be more intentional about growth what would be some essential pillars and tasks to include and what metrics would you use to help assess your progress at each of your goals um so really the last part about making sure that I have the metrics by which to judge whether or not I'm moving towards my goals is going to be the important part and that's really how I judge my progress so keeping a list of the steps that you're going to need to walk down in order to get where you're going so like I'll give you really a great examples so if I believe that film and TV is the ultimate way in which you can change the narrative in somebody who's antagonistic to that change then okay I know that I need to get to that point it's very easy to assess every day whether or not I've got a TV or a TV show or film being made so we wanted a way where we could follow a traditional path so that it wasn't this binary All or Nothing moment so we want to start at comics comics is very easy to understand if I publish one or not and so we're able to march towards that because we can afford to do it so I know I can create a comic no one is going to be able to stop me from doing that people can stop me from doing TV and film because the expense is so extraordinary that I'm not willing to just do that um you know without convincing others to join me in that endeavor financially but Comics I can so Comics becomes that very easy road to get something across the Finish Line to figure out whether or not it resonated figure out whether or not we're building community and then leverage that to pitch to film and TV um so our belief is that if we get enough intellectual property at the comic book level that we will be able to build community around that with Community I really believe we'll be able to get that turned into a film or TV show so it becomes that very clear path of whether or not that I'm making progress on getting the comic published and then it'll become the very clear path of whether or not I'm building Community around that or not and if it resonates enough to build a community then I know that I did something right if it doesn't then I need to go back to the drawing board and start over and just keep replicating that process over and over and over until it works or until I realize that it's not my execution of the process that's flawed it's actually the process itself it's the very path is broken so that's it all right last question this is from Russell Regan Tom in a recent AMA you describe the emergency pamphlet for Life consisting of two steps which are step one tell yourself self-empowering statements about potential and step two build accountability around that step one is a clear actionable directive but step two steams seems nebulous to me can you talk more about step two give concrete examples of what step two looks like and explain how to get from step one to step two okay so I'm gonna use different words for step two than you used and hopefully this will clear it up so step one is about what you say to yourself step two is about what you tell other people that you're going to do so it really comes down to what you repeat so what you repeat to yourself human potential is nearly limited I'm the type of person that will put in the work I'm the type of person that gets out of bed in 10 minutes or less I'm the type of person that judges Myself by my results all of that stuff okay so those are all the things you're telling yourself you're repeating it over and over and over you're solidifying that in your mind literally from a brain wiring standpoint so all of your beliefs are going to kick in when you mess up somebody says something mean whatever all the things that might otherwise emotionally knock you off you're gonna have what I call the mental pachenko machine where any negative emotion or any negative thought hits all these beliefs until it comes out the other side positive that that's the key now the second part is what you tell other people that you're going to go what you're going to do and that triggers a process um of uh congruence where you want to act in congruence with what you tell people that you're going to do and I find that also in doing that you're repeating it again and hopefully you're embodying it which is a big part of it so as you're telling people you're allowing yourself to feel the excitement which is why you want to do this thing and so you're embodying that over and over and over but it's all essentially that same mechanism it's really hard wiring this stuff into your system that's that's the foundational key is to really reinforce these beliefs and to trigger that process of congruence that isn't going to get you across the finish line of success or anything like that but those are like the two really foundational things um in the I know I don't remember calling it the emergency pamphlet for life but this is the steps to really building and enacting a growth mindset and I'm going to do it like the emergency pamphlet on an airplane which is where the emergency came from so very simple drawings very simple words because I want people to understand that to really solidify growth mindset in yourself those are the two things you really need to do if you want to achieve success faster than 99 of people click on this episode here failure is the single most information Rich data stream that exists