The Truth About Money and Happiness | Tom Bilyeu AMA

Welcome to another edition of AMA live. I'm your host Tom Bilyeu and I'm here to answer all of your questions and today we are going to be talking about the truth of money and happiness. So our first question is from Sarah Chee. This came in via the connect inbox and she said I quit my job to start my own business, something I've always wanted to do. I'm earning less than I was earning in my corporate job but enough to cover my living expenses. In a world where success is typically measured by how much money you make rather than how happy and fulfilled you are, how do you keep the face faith whilst still being objective in your journey? All right, so here is the reality about money. So the reason that people chase it even though I know you've heard a thousand times and it is absolutely true. Money can't buy happiness. That if you're chasing money, the odds of you ending up with some level of dissatisfaction is incredibly high. But the reason that people ignore that and the reason that they keep chasing it, the reason that I myself lived the cliche of money can't buy happiness is because money actually does have power. Now the thing that money lets you do, the thing that gives it that power, the reason that people will chase forever and ever and ever is it is the great facilitator. Now being the great facilitator does not mean that it gives you the thing that you secretly want in your life. So here's the punchline about happiness. The goal of all of this, the goal of this game of life that we're all playing, it is not money, it is not success, it is entirely brain chemistry. It's entirely how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. It's about being deeply fulfilled. It's about being proud of who you are. Now those are all for me synonyms. It's the same thing which I'm just going to shorthand to fulfillment. The thing that you're chasing is fulfillment. It's the only thing that doesn't sway with the wind. So happiness in its typical definition is very transient. So I want to shift people over to thinking about fulfillment. Fulfillment is often born of suffering. It's born of not doing something you want to do. It's born of doing the hard things. Being proud of yourself comes from that. Being proud of yourself comes from working your ass off to acquire a set of skills that, by the way, in and of themselves, in acquiring it, you found that pleasurable. It's something that you're interested in. You've hopefully crafted, developed, built a deep passion around. And in acquiring those skills in service of that thing that you love and enjoy, you're able to serve other people. That's it. That's the truth of happiness. That's the truth of the thing that is going to give you that sense of fulfillment. That's going to allow you to enjoy your life. Money is never, ever, ever, in and of itself, going to do that. Money buys cool [ __ ] Money is able to give you those temporary dopamine rushes of going and shopping for something and getting it, and then it's cool, but then that coolness factor wears off very rapidly. The flip side of that, using that money to build something that you believe in, that not only empowers you, but helps empower other people, that will help you develop long-lasting fulfillment. So, that's the real thing. But if you're doing something that isn't making you a lot of money, but you're passionate about it, you enjoy the day-to-day, and it's allowing you to build skills that serve you and other people, I promise you, if you had to choose between the two, which by the way you don't, but if you had to choose between the two, always and forever, every single time, choose fulfillment. They say, a smart man never learn Sorry. They say a fool never learns, a smart man learns from his mistakes, and a wise man learns from the mistakes of others. I beg of you to be wise on this one, even though I couldn't be, and unfortunately, I was a fool for a long time in this issue. Smart finally, uh but never wise. So, I chased money. It took me down a very dark path. It left me so unhappy that I literally gave back $2 million worth of equity just to go be it feel alive again. So, be wise. Learn from my mistakes. Learn from the mistakes of the army of humanity that has come before me that said the same thing that I ignored. At the end of the day, the thing that you're going to be grateful that you pursued was that thing that's giving you that pleasure in the moment that makes you feel good about yourself. So, go after that. All right. Next question. TQ Maramba. This is on YouTube. One Man Talks Podcast. You On Man Talks Podcast, all right. You talked about being capable of producing the extraordinary. And that to be able to play on a world stage, you were willing to break yourself in half. What does that mean? So, for me, it I am literally willing to do whatever it takes within my code of ethics to achieve my goals. So, that's what I mean by break myself in half. I'm willing to work literally Monday through Friday. If I'm awake, I'm either working or working out. So, to the point where I brush with I brush my teeth with my headphones on so that I can get the last little eeks of the day out. From the moment I wake up, I go immediately to the gym. I work out, and then I immediately do my morning routine, which I've gone through so many times. I won't waste my time with it now. But, I go right into that immediately, and that carries me all the way through. So, like today, I woke up at what, 4:15? So, I wake up around that time every day. Somewhere between, let's say, 3 and 5. That's my typical wake-up window. And I am going to work or work out from that moment until I go to bed. And I go to bed the same time every night, which is 9:00 p.m. So, somewhere around about 8:45 is when I begin my night time ritual of brushing my teeth and all of that. But even then, I am listening to a book or something along those lines. So, that is what I mean by break myself in half. And then on the weekends, by the way, on a lazy weekend, I probably work 5 to 7 hours a day. And then on a hardcore weekend like last weekend where I was working literally until midnight on a Saturday, um I'll clock say 13, 14 hours of work. That's on a weekend. So, that's what I mean by break myself in half. Now, the whole point is that I'm building something that I believe in. I'm building something that gives me a deep sense of fulfillment. I believe that not only am I empowering myself and making myself stronger and more capable of the things that I want to do and the things that give me joy and give me more energy than they take. But that I am doing something that serves a lot of people, that goes way beyond me. And the not-so-secret thing, I love the puzzle of seeing if I can figure out something that other people can't figure out. That is a deeply enjoyable pastime of trying to improve myself, to learn enough, to think of the problem in a new enough way, to challenge my own assumptions, to do all of that, to be able to see a problem in a way that nobody else can, to see a solution that nobody else can see. I love doing that. So, all of this energy and effort, it is in things that give me more energy than they take. So, it's just a pleasurable existence. And I don't want to hear people um I don't want people to hear in what I say that I'm just like grinding it out. I tried that. I did that for 6 and 1/2 years and it was a total [ __ ] misery. So, I'm not saying that. I'm saying work that hard in service of something that you believe in, that makes you feel alive, that you love doing. If you do that, then breaking yourself in half, that just becomes a metaphor for the amount of energy that you're willing to put into the things that you believe in. So, and I wish that for everybody, by the way. I wish for everybody that you could find something that interests you enough that you'd be willing to go down the path of gaining mastery and developing a passion so that you can engage so fully with that thing that as you get into this virtuous cycle and I think building a passion is a lot like falling in love. It is reciprocal. It is two-way. If it's just one way, it's not real love. If it's just you going down the path of gaining mastery and there's no reciprocal feeling positive about yourself and being able to help other people, if you're not getting that feedback, you're never going to be able to develop a real passion. And what it looks like is as you find that thing that interests you, you go down the path of gaining mastery, you're getting better at something that actually helps other people, so you start feeling good about yourself, and then you take that energy and you get even better at it, which allows you to serve other people more, which makes you feel even better about yourself, which makes you want to go out and get more skills, and you get in this feedback loop, and the more skills you get, the more powerful you are, the more you're able to help other people, the better it makes you feel about yourself, which makes you hungry to get more skills, and you now get in this loop. I wish for everyone to get in that loop, to create that level of love and enjoyment for something that you think about it the way that I think about building this studio, that it feeds you, that when you think about the people, the lives that you're touching, like that gives you so much energy that even if what you're doing isn't giving you the fi- the financial rewards that you want, that it's giving you that life satisfaction of knowing you're doing something that matters, that it has that purpose, that it's feeding your why. That is the thing that I want for everyone. That is the thing that makes me do this content. That is what I hope that you guys focus on because if you do that, then not only can we have a massive impact on the world, but you will enjoy your life. And that's the punchline. Thorg Hemmen. We're going to go with Thorg. Hey Tom, why don't you learn during school? Why don't Why don't we There we go. Hey Tom, why don't we learn during school that money doesn't buy happiness? It is so important to know. I will give you the real answer. The people teaching you, and my heart goes out to them, but the people teaching you haven't learned the lessons yet. The people teaching you often times have only been in that environment. They went to high school, they went to college, they got their degree to teach, they went they go into teach. The whole system is built by people that have only existed in the system. And so literally their frame of reference is the system to keep the system alive, to feed the system. And especially if the system gave them joy, if they loved learning, and if they loved the idea of teaching, they don't want the system to change. People fear that change, and so they want to give to other people that beautiful thing that was given to them, and they don't see that it's not necessarily affecting everyone the way that it affected them. And the more terrifying part is becoming a teacher Oh god, this is going to be horrible, but this is actually true. Becoming a teacher, if you haven't gone out and used the thing that you're teaching in the real world, is like becoming an influencer for being an influencer. The only reason that I can step in front of this camera and be very confident in what I'm talking about is I spent the last almost 20 years building businesses, not being an influencer, not being in front of the camera, but literally going from laying on the floor of my unfurnished apartment, flirting with depression, not having any idea how I was going to do anything with my life, feeling totally hopeless and lost, and then having to build myself brick by brick in order to become the person that I wanted to become, in order to become capable of what I wanted to be capable of. And now, all I'm doing is telling you what I've actually done. So, it's not me coming on here telling you how to build a following because I built a following, and I built my following by telling people how to build the following, and so it becomes this like really [ __ ] weird loop. I'm telling you that in the trenches, from the bottom, how I rose up. So, I know it worked at least once. And that gives me the power to come on here and give you nuance that you're not going to hear somewhere else. And that is why teachers usually aren't able to give you such a different perspective because they're still chasing the same things. They haven't learned that lesson about money. They're struggling enough that money is still a major factor in their life. Because until you get all of your needs met, until you have enough disposable income that you're not sweating every bill, and I remember having to choose what bills I paid during the month. Until you get past that, money is an overwhelming amount of what you think about. So, there's no way that you're going to be able to teach people that money can't buy happiness. Because let me tell you, poverty can't buy happiness either. And we have myths on both sides of the equation. People that tell you that money's the root of all evil, that's a myth. People that tell you money's going to buy happiness, that's a myth. The truth, unfortunately, for the most part has to be experienced by people. That, man, if we could snap our fingers and create a world where people had to go out, build, and do things for 10 years, and then come back and teach. And that we rewarded people handsomely for doing so, that would fundamentally change the education system. But that is so easy to say and pretty much impossible to do. So, I have many, many times said I am not the man to fix the education system. So, take my pontificating for what it's worth. Next up, Noel Elise Facebook. How do you suggest chasing your passion career-wise when you have children and bills that demand you stay the course of making a safe and reliable income to survive? Okay, so this is brutally hard and everything I'm about to say I want to preface by saying you're in a super difficult situation. I don't want to cheapen that at all. I just hopefully want to give you a slightly different perspective. Now, when you have kids, which this is one of the reasons I don't have kids, there are people that are impacted by your decisions. And making sure that you provide for them and take care of them, that is that is noble in a way that I can't explain. Now, having said that, I think that when people are given context, when they understand why you're doing what you're doing, suddenly the needs that you have as a family aren't as big as you think they are. You just have to be willing to face scrutiny and embarrassment to shrink your lifestyle down. So, I once read about this family that sold everything, bought a boat, and then sailed their kids around the world. And they were like they ranged in age from like 12 to 6 or something. So, it wasn't like, "Oh, they weren't in school yet." or something like that. Now, admittedly, that seemed crazy dangerous to me, uh but pretending that there's a way around the dangerous side of it, I thought that it was just immeasurably cool how little they really needed to get by and to sail around. And it was just an incredible story of cutting their expenses to essentially nothing and showing their kids the world, different cultures, educating them on the boat. They had time to read. Obviously, they didn't weren't wasting any time with social media. Like all of that stuff, all the things that people complain about being these time sucks and stop people from really discovering who they are and discovering all these different things. They found a way to just reduce their expenses to next to nothing. So, that's going to be step one. How much can you reduce your expenses? Obviously, everybody needs to be fed. There should be a certain amount of security that we know where our meals are going to come from. We know that we have uh roof over our head of some kind, whether it be a boat um or a normal typical house. But, there are ways to cut your expenses to the quick. Now, kids aren't going to like it, they're going to squawk, they're going to complain um because they want all the things that their friends have and all of that. So, I get it. It's super brutal. But, that would be first and foremost, how much can you reduce your expenses? Now, once you reduce your expenses, then you're going to set about getting 6 months of um money in the bank so that you know that you can live for 6 months, you can take care of your kids, you can make sure that they have health care, all of that. I think that's super important to your well-being. Forget the kids for a second. When you have 6 months income saved up and you know without another dime coming in, you could live your life exactly the way that you're living it for 6 months, you're now in the driver's seat from your job. Now, you can go out and figure out exactly what it is you want to do while still having your job and spend an hour a day every day looking for jobs. What is your dream job? What company would it be with? What's the culture that you're looking for? What do you want to do on a day-to-day basis? And the way that I always tell people is, ask yourself one simple question. What do you want to learn more about than anyone else in the world? Once you know the thing that you want to know more about than anyone, that's going to be the thing that fuels you. That if you were reading about that, then you would have fun. If you were getting pushed and you had to work late nights, but you were doing that thing, learning about that thing, then you would still love it. And who do you want to serve? And once you know that, once you have those things in place, something you want to learn about in a culture that makes you feel good and you're serving people that you really care about serving, when you have those three things and you know that you've got the 6-month savings so that if you get into the job and it's not quite what you wanted, that you can then get out of it and go find something else, that's just hugely important. And then, I am actually not I think people think I'm a fan of burning the ships to the shore, but the only time you should burn the ships to the shore is when that's what you have to do to succeed. I did not do that. When we started Quest, we kept our software company during the day. And then, yes, I took a risk by cutting my salary in a third and going out and being the first one to go full-time at Quest, but even then I had enough coming in that I knew that we could make ends meet if we were willing to just lock it down, stay in the house, not go out, not eat out, things like that, get rid of one of the cars, all that, just cut our expenses to the quick. So, that is exactly what I would do. Once you have that clarity, you know what you're after, you've got the 6 months saved, you've cut your expenses down to the quick, now you can really go look for the perfect job and do it while you still have your job, and then when you find the perfect thing you're able to take the risk. There it is. And you just because you don't need to make as much money, you may be able to start at a lower rung and then work your way up, which is just a thing for me, not everybody wants to work their way up, but I'm super ambitious like that, so I would always leave myself that opportunity. All right. Daniel Bro, Dan Bro Fitness, Facebook, I have been watching Amy Cuddy's TED Talk about powerful body language and how it impacts your brain. What methods have you found to lower anxiety in a networking situation? So, the thing that I have found that I use on a routine basis is I stand upright, I breathe through my diaphragm, I do the shoulders back, and I don't put my hands in my pockets, and I smile a lot, and that has been huge. So, in a networking situation, I adopt my goofy neutral face, which is a little something like that, and then I try to smile as much as humanly possible, and I try to be effervescent. I try to like when the cameras come on and I really push my personality out and I try to sound fun and inviting and warm and engaging and all of that stuff. Um, those have been the the the physical techniques that I use, and then I will also say as not a physical technique, but a very powerful technique in networking situations that allow me to lower my anxiety is asking questions of other people rather than trying to step in the spotlight myself. So, I find that asking questions is a lot less anxiety provoking than feeling like I've got to be on and I've got to impress people. Um so in a networking situation, I use one tactic for impressing people and that is um I try to really be curious about them, ask them a lot of questions, get them to feel good about themselves talking about themselves, and then they paint that feeling onto me. And so just by asking questions, I find that I can make a good impression. So as the saying goes, if you want to be interesting, be interested. So ask a lot of questions. Adrian Cubby, this is on YouTube. Hi Tom, I heard you talk about winning to Naveen Jain by saying that he already won by making a lot of money. Do you always associate success to making money? Absolutely not. So going back to the topic of this um whole AMA today is the truth about money and happiness. So I asked that question and I use those words and I remember thinking at the time people are going to think I mean this from my perspective. I'm saying I know people looking at Naveen think you've already won, dude. You've already made all this money. So why do you keep pushing? So I was asking that question so people would hear themselves, their own thoughts in the question because I knew what he was going to say to the answer. Now as they say in law, never ask a question to which you don't already know the answer. So a lot of times when I'm doing um an interview, I'm asking questions in a way that definitely hopefully seems fresh, but I know what they're going to answer because I've seen so many videos on them. I know the direction that they're going to go and that way I can steer the interview to give the people watching hopefully something that is massively impactful and gives them the takeaways that I think that person really has to offer. Um so that's why I asked it like that. I don't think money um is success. I think money's super powerful and um I think it's very usable, but it is one thing and one thing only and that is a great facilitator. So once you know what you want, once you know what you're trying to accomplish, once you know what you want to build and all of that, money is incredibly powerful. But Naveen is the perfect example. He's taking the money that he's made and he's building companies that he thinks are game-changing. And so, I knew that was going to be the punchline of asking him that question is he believes that there are these huge fundamental world problems that needs to be solved and commerce is the way to solve them. And so, he's going to build these self-sustaining economic engines, but he fuels them with his own capital so he can get them off the ground so he can do them the way that he wants to do them so he's not beholden to other people, on and on and on. So, uh but money in and of itself is um while what most people call success, I am just terrifyingly consistent on one answer. To me, the only thing that I care about is how I feel about myself when I'm by myself. That is my true definition of success. Steve Hurley, YouTube. Hey Tom, I like my job now, but the pay is very meager. Should I take a job I'm not passionate about with a kill date when I'm in a better position financially so I'm no longer making ends meet? I'm super open to that strategy. Um however, I will say that there's almost certainly another way to go about it, which is to find a job that's in that zone of things that you like, in your wheelhouse, the thing that you want to do, the universe of stuff that you want to be around that pays more. And it's probably, maybe not just as easy because I'm guessing you're asking this question cuz there's another job that's already presented itself that you could take, but I'm guessing it's going to be almost as easy to just go out and find a job that's in line with what you want to do, in line with what you want to get great at, that's going to pay more and more as you bring more and more value. So, I would focus on that. Be in that universe of things that you want to do, but I've got no beef if there is some unique situation in your world where you know, I could go and I remember um people back in Tacoma used to do this all the time, they would go spend um a summer in Alaska fishing and it was a super brutal job, but they could make a ton of money doing it and then they would come back and, you know, use that money to do something else. So, by all means, if you've got that opportunity, I've got no hate for that. Um personally, having done that where I ended up chasing money in a position that I thought was like sure fire and going to make me all this money, uh and then it didn't and it took me years of my life to finally realize that all right, the struggle is guaranteed, the success is not, so I would much rather pursue something that I really care about and that's when we built Quest, which ended up being way more successful. But Quest was born out of me saying I'm not just going to do anything to make money, I'm going to force myself to only do something that I actually care about and care deeply about and so I'm going to go down that path and hey, if it allows me to make more money, amazing and I certainly worked to make sure that the foundation was there so that it could make me more money, that I could move up, that it could grow and be bigger, but I was chasing fulfillment. So, that is my suggestion to you. Tamira Benitez, YouTube. I found out my definition of happiness doesn't list any feelings. It's all basic material stuff. If there was one thing I could do to change my definition of happiness, what would that action be? That action would be to really go recursive and go inside yourself and figure out the times where you feel most alive and you most feel like I want to bottle this feeling. What are those moments? What is creating that? And while I'm going to guess that you get like a pretty rad feeling when you buy something that you really wanted, that you see that that declines and that there's no way for you to sustain that. Whereas there going to be other things where it's you're learning something new and you think "Whoa, this is so cool. Like I want to learn more about this. You're losing track of time. You're totally swept up in that thing. You want to talk to your friends about it." All that stuff. And here's the real thing. There's no insecurity around it. Now, here's the problem with money. When you buy something and you think it's cool and you want to show it to your friends, in that moment, there is a deep sense of unease and insecurity because you know if your friends reject it, they laugh at it, they say it's not cool, all of your emotional energy and attachment to that thing will go away instantly. The reason 99 times out of 100 people want to buy something cool is because it's going to impact other people, which now means you're beholden to the way that they think about it. And so you have that sense of what if they don't think this is as cool as I do? And you know that if they don't, that then yourself, that feeling of coolness will go away. When it's something that you just love, when it's something you find interesting, when it's something that you've gone deep, and I'll use music as an example. So let's say you love playing the cello. Everyone else thinks that the cello is [ __ ] stupid, but you love the cello. Because the way it makes you feel when you play it, when you're able to express yourself in a way you're not able to express yourself in words, when you write something down or in any other way in your life, nothing makes you feel like you're really externalizing your internal state like the cello. And so you work, and you practice, and you fumble, and you get better, and you work through the things that you're not good at. Not so you can impress other people. That's awesome, and you love it, and when people love your music, you're way into that, and that feeds you, and you enjoy that part of it. But even if they didn't, even if they laughed, if they laughed at you, and you felt terrible about yourself, you'd want to play the cello. You'd want to go home and be by yourself and play this thing to really get that emotion out of yourself. That is the thing that I hope for for people. That's the thing that you should be trying to cultivate in your life. That's what you need to look inside and find that thing. What's that thing that when people hurt you or you're feeling down, what do you turn to? When you find that thing, that's the vein that you want to go hard down. That's the thing that you want to cultivate in your life. And when you start turning inward and looking at that, and realizing that that's not something money can buy, that's you pouring yourself into something that makes you feel alive, that gives you that energy, that's not beholden to what anybody else thinks, that's the magic. Go after that. Jayla Ali, how important is rest and how much do you get of it? I'm trying hard at the moment to pursue my dreams, but sometimes I feel out of balance because I lack sleep, for example. All right, boys and girls, I'm telling you I'm just going to be super arrogant for a second. I built a billion-dollar business without setting an alarm. Prioritize sleep. I work a lot. In fact, I'll take the Pepsi Challenge. Anybody that wants to go head-to-toe with me in terms of what you get done, not just raw number of hours aimed at a computer or whatever it is that you're supposed to be doing and performing totally suboptimally, I I'll just take the Pepsi Challenge on that. I always prioritize sleep. I always prioritize my um psychological optimization. So, for instance, if I'm working around the clock if this happened not too long ago. I was just working so many hours and it ended up encompassing too many things that took more energy than they were giving that I started to feel um anxious isn't In fact, I started to feel claustrophobic. That's exactly how I felt. I wanted to crawl out of my own skin. I don't know how else to explain it. It's just like ah, it was driving me nuts. And I realized I need to chill for a minute. I need to meditate. I need to take an hour and go do something that's still moving me towards my dreams because that's my thing, but that I really enjoy. And so, maybe in those moments I go read a comic because we're building a comic book publishing empire. So, that's part of what I need to do anyway, but reading the comic is fun. I also need to meditate and just literally breathe from my diaphragm. So, get the sleep that you need. That's super critical. You do not need to set an alarm. Sleep as much as you need to. And by the way, if you're doing things that are exciting to you, you're I know people some of you are going to believe me cuz I hopefully I've earned the credibility with you up to this point and some of you are going to call total [ __ ] You can ask my wife. I can set an internal alarm clock in my mind only if I'm excited about something or really stressed out, but that's a whole 'nother thing which I try hardly to do ever. But when I'm really excited about something, I can set an internal alarm clock. This morning, I told myself, "Wake up at 4:15." What time did I wake up, boys and girls? Not 4:14, not 4:16. I woke up at 4:15 because that was the time that I told myself to wake up. I can usually get within 5 minutes of what time I tell myself to wake up. It doesn't always work, and if I'm tired, I don't give myself that edict. I tell myself to sleep as much as I need. But when I'm really excited about something, there's something I want to get up and work on, and I'm afraid there just won't be enough time, and it's a reasonable amount of sleep, I'll say anything north of 5 hours, I can usually get myself to just wake up. So, get the sleep, prioritize cognitive optimization, because then you're efficient. Efficiency is the name of the game. So, sleep, sleep, sleep. I'm not a guy proposing um the you know, set your alarm, get up at 4:00 a.m. no matter what. It's not me. Go to bed early, get your sleep, meditate, get in a good, peaceful, calm, creative state so that you can really crush it. Brian Lettner, this is from YouTube. "Tom, I think my goal may be too big." Anybody else going to chime in on that one? Um I write it every day, but it makes me feel heavy, daunted, and terrified to pursue it rather than excited. Okay, that's powerful. Have I chosen my goal poorly or or do I need to man up? Okay, the dude, Brian, I love you so much for this question. In In this question is like everything that people go through. So, first of all, your goal is not too big, okay? You're just not yet the person you need to be to execute against that, and that is absolutely fine. I'm not yet the person I need to be in order to rival Disney. I know that, and so every day I'm waking up not saying, "Am I there yet? Am I Am I Am I there yet?" I'm thinking, "What's one really simple thing that I can do right now today to learn something that moves me down that path? Or who can I partner with? You know, what's the idea that I need to get other people excited about what I'm doing? So, that's super important. So, your dream is never too big, even if you said you want to terraform Mars, I'm with you, right? That's our boy Elon Musk is literally thinking about that. So, your dream isn't too big. Um you just don't think about like the end goal and let it overwhelm you, which is what is happening to you. You're writing it every day, okay? So, you're obsessing about that end goal, that end outcome, which first of all, if that end outcome is about a thing, like the thing that I um think about every day is not building a studio to rival Disney, even though that's often what I externalize to people. What I think about internally, the thing that warms my soul, is I think about the people out there that are extraordinary. They could do something amazing with their lives, but they won't because they don't believe in themselves. So, what I think about, the thing that drives me, that obsesses me, and fills me with excitement and joy to get good enough to actually do it, is helping people develop an empowering mindset. That's my obsession. The whole rival Disney thing is a path, and I think it's the right path, and I'm excited to do it, and I love it, but at the end of the day, the thing that keeps me going when I'm feeling overwhelmed is helping other people. So, figure out what that thing is, that huge goal that you have, why you want it, because chances are that you're going to be able to do it in smaller ways along the way as well. So, it's not like this, you know, 20-year chasm of of binary nothingness where you're not at all doing what you want to do, and then suddenly one day it either happens or it doesn't, like, you know, winning the lottery. Um that it's, you know, these incremental steps. Okay, so you write it down every day, start writing down the the beautiful thing that you want to bring into the world, and also even that, like, you should be spending time What are you grateful for right now? Thinking about what you want to learn, thinking about things that excite you. Makes you feel heavy, daunted, and terrified to pursue it. Okay, so if it makes you feel heavy, daunted, and terrified to pursue it because you're obsessing over the end goal, it's some like traditional marker of success, money, a big company, whatever, and not how you want to help people, then it's just a matter of reframing. If on the other hand it's because you think you're supposed to want that thing, but you don't actually want it, and so the idea of pursuing it and all that you would have to do to get there is just horrifying to you, then yes, you picked the wrong goal. Only you can answer that question. I have no idea which of the two is true. Um just remember, don't chase something because people have told you that you should want it. Literally just look at what gives you more energy than it takes. What's exciting for you? What's fun? What do you think about when nobody's looking? Um what do you do when you're like in your default mode? Um what do you go to? Reading, playing video games, whatever it is. Like that thing is pointing you in the direction of the things you like, sports, who knows. That default thing that you go to to recharge, to enjoy, to play, to have fun, finding a way to make that a part of your big grand goal is really really important. Okay, and then um the whole notion of do you need to man up? All right, manning up is awesome, and I think that pushing yourself to be more, to do the hard things is always always always a um good idea if you've already taken the time to love yourself. If you've taken the time to love yourself and see yourself as a um a vehicle for potential, and that the fun of life is seeing how much of that potential you can actuate, cool, then I'm down. Then man up. Then push yourself. Then do the hard things. But if you haven't taken the time to love yourself and be like, "Hey, what I love myself for is that I am human, and I am literally wired from the ground up to be an adaptation machine." Meaning, if I put stress on myself, pressure, and I put myself uh under pressure, I can grow, and I can get better, and that's awesome, and that's the thing that I value in humans. And hey, I am human and therefore I value myself for having this intrinsic potential. Now, the weird thing to me is that then some people get freaked out. I have this potential and I'm not doing anything with it. These are not the droids you're looking for. You want to spend your time thinking that's rad. I'm stoked that I have that potential. And I want to play and I want to have fun and I'm not going to overly or prematurely optimize. I'm going to find something that means something to me. And I'm going to put that meaning and that purpose at the center of my life. And I'm going to pursue that and I'm going to man up in service of that and I'm going to man up in service of doing things that I love and getting better at them and finding joy in pushing myself. But it all has to start from change comes from loving yourself. You don't change because you hate yourself, okay? Now, look, you've heard me talk 80/20, right? I spend 80% of my time there and I do spend 20% of my time, don't tell anybody, but 20% of my time being deeply dissatisfied with myself. But that's a conversation for another day. For right now, you need to love yourself first. You need to get out from under this overwhelming pressure of this thing that you're trying to do. Just remember, you can learn anything if you put your mind to it and you give yourself a long enough timeline. If that's something that you love, it's something that you enjoy, it's something that you want to know more about than anybody else and you actually enjoy the process of investing time and energy there, then go down that path. But man, anything that chips away at you, makes you you feel less of yourself, makes you feel heavy, daunted and terrified, we're just on the wrong path. Not necessarily to the wrong place. You may have already picked the right goal, but you're on the wrong path. You're going about it the wrong way. The whole point is to enjoy your life today. I like to remind myself, even though I'm trying to live forever, that I may have an aneurysm and not finish this AMA, right? That that's the reality that we all live under. And when you remember that, then suddenly it becomes so important to enjoy today. So, I'll give you an example. Lisa and I were taking a shower together this morning, which my wife absolutely loves. Um and it doesn't hurt my feelings either. And she was saying how she has this like impulse where she starts to feel guilty if she takes an hour off a day. Now, imagine that. And your your entire day, from the time you wake up till the time you go to bed, you feel guilty about taking an hour off. Okay? As much as I preach like, "Hey, if I'm awake, I'm either working or I'm working out." Let me tell you, the second I feel like, "Man, I don't want to do that right now today." I wouldn't. I'm only doing that because it gives me energy. And so, I was telling her like, "Whoa! Like, you've got to remember to love what you're doing." And she was like, "Yeah, I'm starting to like feel like, you know, I'm spending so much time doing things that I don't love, but they've got to get done." Again, that doesn't make sense. Even when you're trying to do something big, you've got to remember to have fun. And if you're not having fun, you're doing something wrong. So, if any of you need permission, here's your permission. Enjoy your life, please, as a matter of priority. Enjoy your life. Nothing else matters. Accomplishing at the highest level, but not enjoying your life, is a waste of time. Never accomplishing anything of note, but loving your life, that's a win. All right. Fleming Vilouna. I think that's about right. Is there anything wrong with taking a shortcut when there is one available? I.e., not using the shortcut to complete the quest, but to take it to new heights. Uh if I can take a shortcut, I will take it every last time. I'm all about what I'm trying to bring to the world. So, yeah, I don't get it. Doing something the hard way just because it's hard and you feel that that makes you tougher, that doesn't make any sense. Either you actually want your goal to come true or you don't. And so, I would say absolutely take the shortcut. Now, in life, I find if all you're doing is asking yourself, "What's the least I can get away with?" instead of asking, "What's the most you can bear?" you just won't accomplish as much as you want to accomplish. Um But, at the end of the day, I'll take any and every shortcut that I can because I know that I'm going all out every day to bring as much value to other people as I can to optimize my love of life. Um And it just so happens that for me, with my personality, going hard like that is so deeply pleasurable and makes me feel so good about myself and creates that thing inside of me that nobody can take away from me because I know who I am when nobody's watching. I know what I'm doing. So, that is um the single most important thing that you could do. So, you'll have to know why you're taking the shortcut. But, yeah, man, I'm all about it. Igor Koniev, YouTube. Tom, logic dictates that you should try all sorts of things to find your passion purpose, but in Start With Why, Simon says that it's the thing directly tied to your past childhood. Who do I believe? Man, believe what you feel. So, I think that there is often a correlation between something that you loved in your childhood or um something that was important to you or that you encountered in your childhood. But, you don't need to. If you didn't encounter anything, like think about those people that were like beaten their entire childhood. Like some of the stories out there are just too heinous to even contemplate. So, are they supposed to spend their entire life in the darkness because that's what they grew up with? [ __ ] that. So, absolutely at any time, find something that sparks your interest and go after that thing. I didn't get into entrepreneurship until I was 26, I think. Uh and it's become one of the deepest, most thrilling passions of my life. So, yeah, get after it. Find something that you believe in. Find something that allows you to build your skill set and serve other people in a way that you find incredibly meaningful, whether it came from your childhood or not is completely irrelevant. And I will leave you with one amazing, I think it's Buddhist, reference. Don't mistake the finger for the moon. And what that means is when somebody's pointing at the moon, don't mistake the thing, the metaphor, the story that they're telling you, which is the finger, for what they're actually trying to get you to, which is the lesson, the experience, that thing. Simon is merely trying to lead you on a path so that you can find that deep sense of fulfillment, that sense of energy, that wellspring of energy that comes from having a why, from having a mission and a purpose. So, if he's trying to help you get there by saying, "Hey, it's probably something that comes from your childhood." That's the finger. If you find that the moon is something entirely different for you, the moon is all that matters. All right, guys. Thank you so much for joining me for this episode today. By the way, today's episode is brought to you by the Be Legendary shirt. If you haven't already got one for yourself, head to shop.impacttheory.com right now. We're going to be launching, by the way, a whole new set of cool stuff in the very near future. I won't uh steal Will's thunder yet, but it's coming soon. I'm super stoked on this. Uh we're we've been going ham behind the scenes and the rest of this year is going to be ham central uh as we build towards a very climactic end to 2018. So, head over to shop.impacttheory.com right now. And by the way, if you haven't signed up for the newsletter, sign up for that bad boy. I think it's pretty awesome. Uh and it's something unlike you're not going to get that content anywhere else. So, go check out our newsletter, which is also found at impacttheory.com. All right, guys. If you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Be legendary. Be legendary. Oh, oh.