Why Indecision Will Ruin You | Tom Bilyeu AMA

Hey everybody, welcome to a very tardy edition of AMA live. I'm your host Tom Bilyeu and I'm going to be taking your questions, so submit them. You can submit them to while we're live anyway, you can submit them on Facebook and YouTube right in the comments. We have the amazing Chase and I think Cindy is helping us as well going through the comments, so pulling out the amazing ones. And then when we're not live, by the way, if you're listening to this on the podcast at a later date, you can also submit your questions to connect@impacttheory.com. And in fact, our very first question is from Joe Lee via the connect inbox. When pondering on a big decision, I find myself deciding on a path of action, but often wake up the next morning thinking that course of action would have been disastrous and would have been the worst idea in the world. Would you be able to provide some insights into this sort of drastic reversal in stance? All right, I think one of the biggest problems that people face is that they're afraid to take an action, any action quite frankly. And it is utterly fascinating to me the way the human mind works. And we have a really hard time coming to a decision and somebody told me I let's pretend the decision is based on Latin and it literally I mean the meaning is to cut something, to remove something. And once you understand that that's what deciding is, it is literally shutting doors. And so I like to think of it is all of us exist in a room with a thousand doors. And a decision is when you close 999 of them and walk through with aggression and dominance through that door. Now if you get to the other side of the door and your worst fears actually start coming true, then go back. Then walk back through the door and then choose another one. But don't just create panic in yourself. If you told me that this happened once, then it may just be that hey, you really thought better of it and you've got the right answer now and you're ready to move forward. But when your subconscious minds, your dream states, your next morning, however you want to think of it, when all they do is say no, it's not helpful. So, we can all imagine a thousand ways that something can go wrong. If you let that paralyze you, then you're never going to decide, shut the other doors, you're never going to go through one of the doors and actually have the opportunity to make something happen. So, I really believe indecision is the thing that's going to ruin your life. It is not making a mistake. Making a mistake isn't that problematic. It's when you're afraid to make a decision that you really run into problems in your life. And if you look, what do what does everybody complain about? It is I mean, we have like less than 7% unemployment, I think, and yet that's everybody's big fear, I'm going to be without a job. It is certainly possible that you would be without a job for a while, and that's scary and not fun, there's no question, but the other 90-ish percent, I'm leaving some room for people to actually love their jobs, but the other 90-some percent of the world [ __ ] hate their jobs, and all they want to do is build that life that they dream of, to have the level of satisfaction that they hunger for, to really be a deeply fulfilled individual. Everybody on their deathbed, all they talk about is the things that they didn't do. So, boys and girls, I present to you that the real problem you face is not that you will make a mistake. It is not that you will go hungry. It is not that you will be on the streets. The real terrifying prospective future is that you never take a chance, that you never pursue something that you might end up loving, that ends up bringing you the kind of fulfillment that people long for. That is the danger. That's the thing that you should be afraid of. And yet nobody seems to be afraid of that. So, my advice to you is charge through that door, whatever it is, don't talk yourself out of it. It doesn't mean that you do it thoughtlessly, but you decide which one of those thousand doors is the right one to try and go for it. And yes, you're going to be afraid and yes, you're going to panic. Don't let that stop you. Keep going and see what actually happens rather than what you're afraid will happen. All right. Next question is from Steve Cain. This is on Facebook. Hi Tom, two exclamation points. I feel like I have lost all credibility with myself and I'm struggling to commit to anything. Any advice on how to build it back again? Yes. So, here's the one that you've identified the fact that self-credibility is one of the most important things in your life. That's huge. So, already you have a little bit of credibility with yourself there. You have self-awareness. You're not afraid to admit the hard things. Do you see what I'm doing? I'm finding things that I realize I'm already doing that I can build some credibility with myself around. Now, I'm going to leverage that stuff to start setting really small micro goals that I know that I'm going to achieve. So, one of the greatest goals about the gym that I've ever heard is, "I'm going to go to the gym." And I forget who told me this, but they said, "I didn't promise myself that I would work out. I promised myself that I would go to the gym." So, if I go to the gym and I walk inside, you know what? "I'm just not feeling it." Then I have every right to turn around and go back home and leave. And I still will have done what I said I was going to do. Now, what I love about that is the hard part is going, getting up, getting dressed, getting in the car, driving there. That's the hard part. It's actually much easier to go in and maybe even do a lame workout. And then it becomes easier. "Well, I'm here. I'm doing a lame workout. Maybe on this rep, I'm really going to give it something. Maybe on this set, I'm going to go all the way." And then all of the sudden it becomes, "I'm going to work hard for 50 minutes, then 30 minutes, then an hour." Whatever it is that you wanted to do, but the hard part is getting there. So, the credibility with yourself doesn't come from crushing every single workout. The credibility with yourself comes from, "I told myself I was going to go every day, and I went." And then as you build that credibility, as you build the routines and the habits and things that get you to the gym, then you may want to set the next goal. That I'm going to work out hard for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, 15, whatever it is. And you just keep stacking it, but don't go right away from I'm sitting on the couch and I'm doing nothing and I'm going to earn all my credibility with myself by saying I'm going to get six-pack abs and that's it. And then you only earn credibility with yourself after you've lost 120 lb or whatever. It's it's way too big. Now, that is different than setting big goals. You need big goals. It needs to be something that's exciting for you, but when you're talking about earning credibility, make sure that it's things that you're not going to miss on. All right, so that is my advice. Step-by-step, find start with things you're already doing right now like self-awareness, uh which is actually pretty powerful. And then going into setting new goals that you're going to do for yourself every day that you know that you're going to hit. Um I find that the two easiest ones cuz they're so part of a daily routine and here's a a third one that I just thought of. So, um you've got food. So, this is what I'm going to eat for the day and that's it. You've got exercise. I'm going to do this and I'm not going to miss days. And then another one that's super easy, sleep. I'm going to go to bed by whatever you input the time that works for you. For me, it's 9:00 p.m. I'm going to go to bed at 9:00 p.m. Here's another one. I'm going to get out of bed in 10 minutes or less. All they're little [ __ ] things, but you can do them every day. All right. So, that's what I would do. Next question, turn up volume on podcast box. All right, let's do it. Here we go. Testing. All right, that took us into the orange, so we will stop there. All right, this next question is from April Gledhill. April Gledhill via Facebook. I have the hardest time telling people no. I find that I'm bullied into doing things that I don't want to do. This is in work and love, everything. What do you suggest? Okay, so the obvious answer is you need to just start saying no. But that is the world's worst advice and when I ask people questions like that in Impact Theory and they say, "Just do it." I want to crawl over that little table between us and strangle them. It drives me crazy. So, what is the real answer? You're really going to have to prioritize yourself. To do that, you're going to have to address your belief system. And this is one of the easiest ways to do that is through repetition. So, you need to start reminding yourself that in your life you are the single most important person. Until you believe that, until that's actually a part of your belief system, you're never going to act in accordance with it. So, you have, I'm going to guess, a deep sense of empathy for other people. You feel deeply connected to them. So, when they ask for something, you also feel deeply uncomfortable saying no. And what you're dealing with is that deep level of discomfort in yourself. It is nothing external. Maybe it was trained into you, but it doesn't matter. Now, it's in you. And so, what you're actually fighting against is that feeling. So, in order to get over that feeling, you've got to have that mental Pachinko machine where that feeling encounters a belief system in your mind, and that belief system is that I need to take care of myself first. You're not saying that you're better than anyone else. It's not what this is. This is we all live our lives from our perspective. At the end of the day, each and every one of us needs to look after our needs first and foremost. Period. So, it doesn't make you a bad person to say no. So, what I'm trying to give you here are the belief system elements that you're going to need to deal with that feeling, which is going to be screaming at you on a chemical level that you're a bad person, you're doing something bad. But the truth is that that's not true. And so, even if you just have to get behind the notion that you're going to fill other people's cups from the overflow of your own cup. So, finding your own gratitude, finding your own fulfillment, your own satisfactions in life. And then from there, you're going to be able to help other people. And just repeat in your head, even though this is kind of cheesy, uh that you can't fill other people's cup from an empty cup. So, and then you use the word bullying. So, I'm going to say, "Here's one of the hardest things to deal with with bullying." At the end of the day, at some point, the only way to get bullies to leave you alone is to say, "No." Is to show a sign of force, of resilience, that you're going to stand up for yourself. Bullies pick on the easy target. So, remember this. People treat you exactly the way you let them treat you. So, every time that you let them bully you into a yes, into doing something for them, it just trains them to do that the next time. And the first time that you stand up for yourself will be very jarring for them cuz they're not used to that. So, they're going to push back again. You're going to have to say no again. And over time, they're going to realize, "Jesus, like they can't bully you anymore." It's going to that which of course they don't perceive it as that, but they're going to realize that they can't um push you into it, cajole you into it, anything, however they conceptualize it. But, it's going to come from you having to stand up for yourself. So, the reality is at some point, as much as I don't want to say just say no, Nancy Reagan, at some point, you literally have to just say no. You literally have to stand up for yourself. You have to be willing to face that discomfort, to live in that discomfort, to wallow in it, to regale in it. And in that, I can literally feel myself doing this right now. You have to build into your mind a desire a desire to train yourself to sit in that discomfort, to pride yourself on your willingness to literally say no, and then hold eye contact with them long after it becomes uncomfortable. When you can start doing things like that, and that becomes the thing you're training into yourself, where you're practicing it, sitting in that that discomfort, leaning into it, like me at the the when it hurts and I want to push them away, I force myself to open my mouth wider so they can really get in there. I don't show any signs of discomfort. And I do that because I want to be proud of myself. I do that because I know that's what I need. My objective is to have clean and healthy teeth. My objective is not to go through life without any pain. So, in those moments, which will be deeply discomforting for you, you're going to have to learn to pride yourself on saying no, because it's going to take you to the thing that you want. And at the end of the day, it's all about what's your goal, and are you getting towards your goal? So, in the way that you're asking the question, we know that you're going to have to learn to deal with that discomfort. All right. Michael Richards, this is from YouTube. When presented with the opportunity to move into a career you are passionate about, what benchmarks would you use before leaving a steady, lucrative, yet fulfilling career you've been at for years? Okay, so I'm probably the worst person to answer this question because I love change, and I have absolutely no fear of uh loss. I'm not worried about uh the money. Um and that has been true for me even when I was broke. So, that isn't just, "Hey, because I have money now." This was I was teaching, I'd been doing it for a while, I was very good at it, I was rapidly moving up through the company, and then I had an offer to go be a copywriter in another company, which was starting all over in a totally new industry, and I was so excited by where it could go, I didn't care that it was a huge risk. And so, I remember talking to my wife, who was insanely supportive, and our whole thing was, "Meh, you might as well at least try it." And that was literally my attitude, "Meh, you might as well at least try it. You never know." And this goes back to the first question I was answering. You cannot live in indecision. Indecision, indecision, my friends, indecision is the great destroyer of dreams. It is not failure. You will learn from a failure. You will learn absolutely nothing from indecision. So, I would say, if you've thought through it in a reasonable fashion and there's at least a shot that it has of succeeding or maybe even more interesting that it's worth doing even if the odds are stacked against you to paraphrase Elon Musk, when something is worth doing even if the probable outcome is failure, you should still do it. So, is this something that's worth doing? Is it something that's exciting to you, gives you more energy and as you look at what the disaster scenario is, can you live with it? And usually the disaster scenario is you try this new thing, it utterly fails, you're broke, you maybe have to move back in with your parents, live on a couch, whatever the case may be until you get your feet back under you and get another job. And here's the reality, you can always get another job. Um, that that's just real. It may not be the job you want, but you can always get another job. So, there it is. Mickey Melankovich, hello Tom and IT team. By the way, I just want to take a second to note Mickey put the exclamation point after IT. You got to love that. Thank you, Mickey. The often missing exclamation point. How does one overcome the problem with perfectionism that often causes procrastination and how does one focus on one thing without being afraid that he'll lose on the other? I have a problem with FOMO, fear of missing out. So, procrastination, perfectionism, I'm going to separate those two. So, procrastination one isn't always a bad thing and that's probably the worst thing to tell somebody who's a serial procrastinator, but if you're using it like read Leonardo da Vinci by Walter Isaacson and he talks about how much time Leonardo spent procrastinating, but Leonardo in his own defense said that when you have this thing you're trying to create that you really that you really believe in you're deeply passionate about it and you've got to just you can't [ __ ] yourself on this one. But it's something that you're really passionate about, something that you're very excited about, and you want to get it right that what you're doing instead of procrastinating really is marinating on it. Now, it is so easy to slide into the realm of [ __ ] that I would give yourself some if this is something you really struggle with, give yourself some finite amount of time that, you know, I'm only going to do this XYZ. So, um I'll do that a lot where I'll bracket out time for me to think and it's literally just open-ended thinking. Now, that could be a total waste of time or it could really be something and you guys have heard me talk about it a thousand times, I call it thinkitating, I do it right after meditating. And then other times I'll do it throughout the day where I'll carve out really large chunks of time and I have found that in doing that, in letting my mind wander, in letting it play and dance across the things that it wants to dance across, that some percentage of the time that I actually get a really powerful answer. Now, if you know that you do it to time waste, start putting constraints. Give yourself 10 minutes, 30 minutes, set a timer, whatever you need to do, actually write down the time in your calendar. Only do it during that time. At other times, force yourself to have metrics of productivity. Stephen King is the king of this and every day he sets himself a number of words that he has to write for the day and if he finishes that by noon, then he's got the rest of the day to himself. If he doesn't finish it until midnight, then so be it. So, if you have those metrics in place and you hit those, great. If you corral your procrastination time, great. And then in terms of perfectionism, I think it's amazing that you want things to be perfect, but just remember what Steve Jobs said, real artists ship. And there's something like only 14 paintings attributed to Leonardo da Vinci because he left so many of them unfinished. So, there is at the end of the day, um something to getting things done. So, you're going to have to decide what's important to you. There's not necessarily um any um moral obligation to be ultra ambitious or anything like that. Now, the fact that you end your question with a statement about FOMO, um I wonder if some of your procrastination has more to do with going and hanging out. And can I just be a dick for a second? I've no [ __ ] sympathy. Here's the reality. Sell your 20s and your 30s if you have to. If if and only if you are ambitious. But people that come to me and they're like, "Oh, I really want this thing. I want to do this. I want to achieve this. I want to have this. Oh, but I go hang out with my friends all the time and even during the week I'm going and hanging out." I don't know what else to say. The reality is the thing that you say you want, you actually don't want that badly. Until it's like something that you are all in on, you're going to have a thousand different excuses. So, if that's your issue, that it really is just you're afraid of missing out on something, you haven't found that thing yet that you Oh, I can't believe I used that word. You haven't developed the thing that you're going to go after. You haven't decided that you love that feeling of being into something, being obsessed by it, that you fanned those flames. And I think this is where a lot of people lose. And I don't know if it's just the nomenclature of using the word find in regards to passion, purpose, mission, or if that nomenclature exists because that's sort of the default setting of most people and that's why most people will never do anything with their lives. I honestly don't know. But here's the reality. You can create stroke develop a passion, an obsession, a mission, a purpose. All of that is crafted. No one is literally no one is born with it. No one. Zero people are born with a mission, a passion, a purpose. So, the only question becomes why does it seem like some people have an easier time creating that in their life? I would for those listening to the podcast, I shrugged. I don't know. But here's the reality. Don't waste your time on FOMO, please. Create something in your life that you actually want badly enough. Whatever that thing is, lean into it, go all in, pour yourself into it if you're ambitious. If you're not ambitious, embrace that. There's no obligation that anyone has to be ambitious. Patrick Rivera writes, "Tom, rapid-fire. Should I be patient or work with urgency?" I'm I'm tamping back the fury in my soul right now. Uh urgency is the only answer. Patience is the most ridiculous concept I've ever heard. So, you need to go all out every day knowing that it's going to take you years and years and years. So, this is not entitlement. I would like to differentiate entitlement from patience. If you are acting entitled and think you should have it all right now, sure, you need patience. If, on the other hand, you want to accomplish something great in your life, it will never happen without urgency. The people that that achieve at the highest levels went all out every day for years and years and years. It is the only way to win. Rob Gearing, "Hey Tom, quick question for you. Whenever I brainstorm about my business by writing it down, I always stop halfway through. I just can't seem to get my ideas on paper even though they're in my head. It is almost like writer's block. Do you have any suggestions to be more efficient in this?" Absolutely. And there is a man Oh, why can't I picture him so clearly? He wrote The Game, Truth, Neil Strauss. Neil Strauss says writer's block is [ __ ] So, I'm just going to second that. At the end of the day, force yourself to write, get words on paper. And I get it. You may not be impressed or inspired by your writing. In fact, you may be downright embarrassed. There's absolutely absolutely nothing stopping you from putting words on paper other than yourself. So, if you have to practice the two bad pages every morning, it's a Tim Ferriss technique, get two bad pages down in your journal, and just start publishing that [ __ ] That's the reality. If your ideas are strong enough, they're going to survive even if they're ineloquently articulated. It used to take me, brace yourselves, it used to take me 9 hours, I took 9 hours to write an Instagram post. That's so embarrassing. I want to assault myself in a dark alley. So, we're not going to do that. Finally, what I realized was, I'm going to give myself 20 minutes. You have 20 minutes to write this post. And all of a sudden, I got 80% of the way to my 9-hour post in 20 minutes. And I thought it was absurd that I spent so long trying to make it that perfect. That was some writer's block [ __ ] Now, I'll do six posts in 20 minutes, no joke. So, boys and girls, get stuff out. Stop being so precious. Write it down. Move on. Refine your ideas. Let that angst over not being good enough propel you to do more, not less. Sarah Hughes is from YouTube. Hey Tom, I'm a manager at a pizzeria. Pizza's amazing, and thank you for your service. I have a hard time getting employees to do their job because I'm a pushover and want everyone to like me, so I let them slack. Do you have any suggestions? I have many suggestions. Buckle up. Number one, as of right now, stop being a pushover. You're telling yourself a story about yourself, and that story is that you're a pushover. That's absolutely not true. You're not going to let it be true anymore. So, here's the reality. If you want to get anything in your life, my friend, you've got to become extraordinary at that thing. Now, you're in a position of leadership. That's amazing. Being a leader is not about slapping people around and getting them to do what matches their job description. It's about showing them how to achieve greatness in their own life. So, you're going to be doing them a service by saying, "Okay, guys, we're going to set a goal for this pizzeria." And look, some of them are going to leave, and they need to [ __ ] leave. But, we're going to set a goal for this pizzeria, and we're going to become, let's say if it's a chain, that would make it nice and easy, we're going to become the best performing chain in our district, region, whatever. And then keep going until we're going to be the best in the state. Cuz let me tell you, if I come into a pizzeria, I'm going to have a map I'm going to transform that [ __ ] business. And I'm going to roll up thinking like that, I'm going to get people amped up, I'm going to get them excited, I'm going to show them how much they can do. I took a ragtag group of gang members, some Bloods, some Crips on the same production line, and helped them become the best protein bar manufacturers on the planet. And that's what we focused on. We focused on getting great, and I watched them blossom and realized that they'd never had anybody hold them to a standard before. They'd never had anybody push them to be better than they thought they could be. They'd never had anybody that believed that they could grow and get better over time. And that was intoxicating to them. So, lead with that. Stop being a pushover. Start telling yourself a new story. Set [ __ ] goals. Everything comes down to the goals. So, set some amazing, incredible, exciting goals, and then start getting better as a leader and grinding it out. And it's all going to come from you. You've got to set the tone. So, at first, you're not going to walk in and make the big proclamations. You can just start talking about what you're going to do for yourself. You know what? I'm excited to push myself. I really want to do something great with this store, and I'm just going to start, you know, working way harder. I'm going to push more. I'm going to read. I'm going to bring in what I learned. All that stuff. Your elevated performance will inspire some of them, not all of them. The ones that start to be like, "Wow, you're really like doing a great job." Then you want to encourage them to do the same. You're going to have to trim the staff if they don't respond, then you're going to start setting the goals. You're going to lay it out. Uh if you don't own the pizzeria, work with your boss who by the way when you say I'm going to set a goal to make this the best pizzeria in the state or increase our revenue or profitability, whatever the goal's going to be, they're going to love that. So, that's my suggestion. Zack James is next up to bat. This is from Facebook. What is your definition of self-awareness? How would you suggest differentiating between what you're naturally good at and what is ego? Lastly, what book skills would you suggest to utilize in order to become more self-aware? All right, self-awareness is the ability to recognize that you're having a reaction, to rapidly identify what is causing that reaction, and then the underlying like real nitty-gritty thing that is um the cause of that. So, I know we've got two causes there, so I'm going to break it down. One, reaction. I'm angry. Well, that's weird. Why am I angry? I'm angry because somebody tried to take my food. Why am I angry about somebody trying to take my food? Um I've got an issue with personal space. Uh it's mine and it just seems just, and then ding ding ding, it triggers like this sense of um fear of weakness in me. And now I have this really uncomfortable feeling of I don't want to have to fight for my food cuz I'm afraid that I'm going to get beaten up, whatever, right? But once you get to that thing about yourself that is just the raw naked truth about why you're angry about someone trying to take your food. tried to take my food, I would start with bemusement because it would be so weird and so random. Then, because I'm not afraid to stand up for myself, I would tell them to stop. I would take my food back, and it would only escalate to like weirdness and insecurity to me if blows start being thrown because I'm not confident in my ability to fight. But I would rapidly assess, "Whoa, hey, I have an ease about this." And then I can decide whether I want to address it or not. So, being able to rapidly grow go through that process, that is self-awareness. Um how would you suggest differentiating between what you're naturally good at and what is ego? I don't think people are really naturally good at much. I think they might have gotten early wins, and so that fed into them practicing it more. Um So, I I don't under- Like the ego part of that is you could say thinking that you're better than other people. Um but I the far more terrifying part is whether it's insecurity or some manifestation of ego, which is usually insecurity anyway, uh where you stop being open to learning new things because you like the identity of yourself as the master. So, I would say be very careful with that. You cannot learn that which you believe you already know. That's a quote, that's not me. It's an amazing quote. I forget who said it, but live by that [ __ ] Um lastly, what book skills would you suggest utilize in order to become more self-aware? Um I don't know that these actually help you become more self-aware, but anything written by V.S. Ramachandran, David Eagleman, um that talk about the way that the brain works, those have been very beneficial for me in understanding biases and things, cognitive biases. Um but the real thing that helped me become more self-aware was that the thing that I walked you through before. Hey, I'm having a reaction. Uh it's a strong reaction. Catching myself in that and then trying to identify the dual-layered cause of that. Um so, there it is. Frivolous TV, welcome back, by the way. This is from YouTube. What does your relationship with money look like? Has it always been like this? Who helped you better your relationship with money? Um so, my relationship with money used to be a total and complete obsession. I wanted to be rich. It was the driving obsession of my life, and I suffered for nearly a decade because I wanted it so badly. I was chasing it blindly and not worrying about the neurochemical realities of my day-to-day life. Um so, that was a misery, and it's all All the things that I went through there are what people mean when they say that money can't buy happiness. Now, money is insanely powerful. It's actually more powerful than you think it is. It just isn't at all what you've been told. So, my thing was I thought that money was going to not only allow me to buy things, facilitate my dreams, all of that, which was always a part of my fascination with money, but I also thought it would make me feel about myself the way that I felt about other people who were rich, which it absolutely does not. So, I looked at people that had built companies and done all this amazing stuff to gain their wealth. I looked at them with absolute adoration. And I thought that I would have that same adoration and admiration for myself if I got rich, and then it just isn't the way that it works. So, I have lived through a really fascinating scenario, which is I did not make my money sort of slowly over time. We built a business that went from We didn't We weren't taking money out of the business at all at all at all for years and years and years and years. And then at like year five or six, I think, like one big, massive, lots of commas, lots of zeros hit my bank account in a binary moment. In a binary moment, I went from very wealthy on paper, which is exactly the same as being poor, to being very wealthy in bank account. And so, it was so sudden, and I realized, "Wow, the money, while exciting, amazing, cuz it's going to let me facilitate my dreams, it does not at all impact how I feel about myself. From one second to the next, I feel exactly the same." Now, in becoming the person that I had to become to build the business, regardless of its ultimate success, becoming the person that was able to do all of the things that we had to do in order to build the business, to have lived through all the failures leading up to that point, to live through the other successes that came and went, now that made me proud of who I was. That changed my perspective on myself. That all changed my belief about who I was and what I was capable of. Diving deep into the growth mindset, that had a tremendous impact on myself, my vision of myself, my life, and was quite frankly the thing that allowed me to build a business. But the money didn't change anything. So, I have a very nonchalant relationship with money. I love it. It's super powerful. I'm very grateful that I have it. Um I'd be lying if I said I didn't do things to do what I can to protect it, but I also am not afraid to take risks with it. So, Alisa and I are spending um millions of dollars on Impact Theory because we believe that that will allow us to do it the right way. Um but it's a huge risk. Maybe it won't pay off, and we may find ourselves having lost just millions and millions and millions of dollars when all is said and done, and I'm just not worried about it. So, one, the only thing I There's two things that I'm afraid of. My wife dying because I'm just way into that chick, and then brain damage because there ain't no coming back from it. So, those two things scare me. Everything else, uh it would suck to lose the money, but you can always build it back. First of all, and then second, the only thing that really matters in life, I promise, is what you think about yourself when you're by yourself. That matters, and that matters a lot. The game you're playing isn't money, it's not success, it is brain chemistry. Next question, Heather Arend. This is from Facebook. What do you do when you're not fulfilled in your job, but are surrounded by great leaders? Stay and wait it out. I don't take good leaders for granted. So, I would say it's amazing that you've got these leaders around you, and if what you're learning from them is worth the fact that you don't like your job, and you feel like it's progressing you, and that you're going to be able to leverage that stuff to go build the life of your dreams, great. It's like anything. When you're learning, there's going to be some downsides, but make sure that you understand that you're learning. Make sure that the rate of knowledge is fast enough, dense enough to be worth the sacrifices that you're making, and the second that it's not, get out. So, I I just don't understand. I think the the most rapid way to hating your life is to hate your job. You spend over 50% of your waking hours at work, and remember there are going to be amazing leaders in companies that are more aligned with your core values, that are helping you be more fulfilled, that might be more exciting to you. So, while I won't say that there's an overabundance of great leaders in the world, I I wouldn't agree that there is a dearth. I think there's a lot of people out there that are solid to truly extraordinary leaders. Um and if you get good at interviewing the leadership at a company, um as good as they are at interviewing you, then I think you can really find something that fits. So, there you have it. But, congratulations on being around great leaders. That's amazing and will accelerate your learning, no question. Keela Harara, Facebook. How has David Goggins influenced your life? If nothing else, it has shown me just how much more a human being is capable of than I already thought. I already thought humans were capable of some pretty extraordinary [ __ ] but this whole notion of when you're at your breaking point, you don't think you're capable of giving anything else, you're only 40% of the way there. I love that. And then it gave me just like a mantra, it gave me someone to visualize when I need that extra bit to really push myself, and it's the um Richard Bannister. Why does that sound wrong? The 4-minute mile guy. Anybody? Anybody? Anyway, um the guy that broke the 4-minute mile, he was the first person to do it. That record had stood forever, no one could break it. They thought it was impossible. People were saying, "Your heart will explode if you tried." Roger Bannister. There we go. "Your heart will explode if you cross the 4-minute mile." He just didn't buy that, and he kept going, kept going till he finally broke it. So, now imagine, a record stands for all of human history, one guy breaks it and then three like three weeks later a dozen people had broken it. I mean it's crazy. People just needed to know that it was possible. So, David Goggins is my Roger Bannister of suffering. Simland, he's going to be here soon, like really soon. When is he here? Two weeks I think. Wow, Sim, we're all excited. It's going to be amazing. Tom, if you had the god-like power, I like where this question is going, of creating a utopian human society, but in so doing eradicating suffering, would you do it? Or would you maintain the scenario where humans have to still suffer so they could learn from it? Oh dear god. This is an amazing question and my gut instinct, while it could be wrong, my uh I'm going to take the word utopian out and I'll I'll or I'll add instead a word a um supposed utopian human society because I utopian implies it actually is amazing and if I could create a society that I knew was actually amazing, meaning that the brain chemistry state, the experience was just unequaled. It really was amazing and anybody in that situation that tried both, one where they had to suffer to learn and one where they were in that utopian society, everybody would take that utopian society, I would create the utopian society. But assuming that that actually isn't possible with the way that humans are wired, then I would say definitely suffering cuz it's so powerful. But now let's ask the really crazy crazy question and for those of you paying attention to what Impact Theory Studios is doing, we're actually writing a comic book that is dealing with some of these issues and so this is going to be fun. What would you do if you could augment the brain and you could literally rewire it to not require suffering or you could rewire it with a different set of uh this isn't the quite the right word, but a different value system so that they didn't even um need progress. They didn't need advancement, which right now I would say is one of the fundamental building blocks of um human fulfillment is progress. But what if that wasn't? Like that's literally nature's way of making sure that we procreate and that we're able to protect our young, but what if that wasn't an issue? So, that's where it starts to get really fascinating and potentially super dangerous. So, right now I would say probably best left alone. Suffering is amazingly powerful, but I will watch with growing curiosity as AI and computer uh brain interfaces become a thing to how far we can push it cuz I'm all about that cyborg life. All right. Next up, Eric Scott Williams. Tom, I have a medical procedure that though it's needed seems to go against my goals of getting out of debt, 12K after insurance. It's not a procedure required so for for survival, but will improve quality of life. What would you do in this situation? I would have the surgery. So, I'm like living in a world where it's really improving my quality of life in a meaningful way. Dude, the whole point of life is not to be out of debt. The whole point of life is brain chemistry. So, if you're telling me that it makes your life better, you're still going to be able to get out of debt. 12K sucks, but it's not exactly a mountain of crushing debt. So, um at one point in my life I was $25,000 in debt and while it wasn't fun, it was really [ __ ] manageable. And it just meant that I couldn't go out and do all the things that I wanted to do. And in my darkest of hours, it was paying some bills this month and some bills the next month. None of it fun. Not saying I enjoyed that. I'm just saying if what you're doing is going to increase your quality of life and you can judge how much um the additional 12K is going to be a burden on you, I would do it. Um but then I'm not super weird. Like if I had to move back in with like my mom or something or I had to sleep on a couch or I had to live with five guys in uh studio apartment, I would do it. Um the actual solution that I did by the way for anybody who's really paying attention, I managed apartment complexes. And so, my rent was at one point nothing, and then at another point $100, and then at another point $400. Um and it was going up only because I was getting better and better apartments. So, there are so many things that you could do um to make that not a problem. And then and then there's always make more money. And I I'm so curious to know if people hackled at that because that's a weird reaction to me. In fact, the very first thing that I would have gone to was make more money, acquire more skills, do more. Like I remember people thought and this this is horrific advice, but I didn't save for retirement. And the reason I didn't save for retirement was because I always planned on getting rich, and every action that I took was to do that. And it worked. So, there's always the option, and I'm not saying get rich, and trust me when I say don't sell years of your life being miserable in the hope that one day you will be rich, make the demand that you make more money doing something that you love even more. And I think if you make that demand, you will find that that can actually come true. So, that's all I have to say about that. Jose Gabriel Gonzalez, Facebook. Tom, given that you are a man of obsession who takes his life mission to the extreme, how do you approach your leisure time? No joke, with the same obsession. How do you justify to yourself spending time watching movies and or playing video games, for example, when that is time that could be spent working on your goals? All right, my man, lean in. I'm so grateful for this question. First of all, you will note that I play video games with my wife because I want my relationship to grow stronger. So, I find that things like that I've got to have a secondary um thing to make it worth doing. So, for instance, for almost 15 years I saw virtually zero movies and zero TV. And then one day I realized, "Whoa, we're becoming a studio. My whole life is finally coming full circle." But I didn't start watching movies and TV again until God, it was probably about November. So, that meant even 11 months into building a [ __ ] studio, I still wasn't watching TVs and movies because I couldn't justify it. The video games is also a way to spend quality time with my wife. Reading nonfiction, I do it once a year. I may have to start doing it more, but again, it would be for the studio. But right now, I read nonfiction with That's a lie. My wife and I now listen to auto audible fiction together as a way to spend quality time. It's actually really fun. Um because we're together, sometimes we do it like and she'll like just sit between my legs and so we're just literally hugging and listening to a book, which is I never would have guessed that that would be so emotionally satisfying for me. There's something about the amount of oxytocin or something vasopressin that I'm secreting during that, listening to the story, cuddling with my wife. It's super dope. So, but that's like that's how my life always is. It There's always dual actions. And then video games, another thing, practicing going from the sympathetic nervous system to the parasympathetic nervous system. Now, I think when people hear like that I don't just relax, they think that I'm unhappy. I [ __ ] love it. Understand all the things that I preach it because I really dig it. I like being obsessed. I love that about myself. I get a neurochemical rush from being obsessed. Will you allow me one example? When Altered Carbon was announced, which I spoiler alert [ __ ] hated, when it was announced, it's everything I love. It's cyberpunk. It's dealing with like AI. It's dealing with future technology and augmentation and living forever. It's visually it looks like Blade Runner. It's a serialized show, so you can go from one episode to the next. And I I watched the trailer and I remember thinking, this could go one of two ways. This could either be amazing or it could be total crap. But I love having something that I'm excited about. I love having something that I'm obsessed with. So, I started fanning those flames, telling everybody how excited I was, really embodying the excitement. And so, the week or two leading up to Altered Carbon, I was jazzed, man. I was super stoked on that. The actual act of being obsessed and excited about something that I care about is in and of itself fun. So, even though it ended up being terrible and I did not enjoy it in any way, shape, or form, and for my detailed thoughts, go to youtube.com/impacttheorystudios. Impact Theory Studios. We did a whole breakdown of it. Um even though I didn't like it, it didn't diminish the enjoyment that I had leading up to it. So, once you learn how to do that in your life, you can actually enjoy the obsessions and find things like healthy eating. You can actually have fun being obsessed about that. Now, you can also take it to the [ __ ] level and nobody invites you out anymore, but that's a whole 'nother talk. But like things like that, like really getting amped about what you're trying to accomplish, that [ __ ] is fun, at least for me. All right, Jordan Robinson, Facebook, do you have any strategic pointers to become a paid speaker in developing this as a lucrative career? Yes, I do. Jordan, it goes like this. Whatever it is that you want to get paid to speak about, go get really [ __ ] good at that. Execute against that for a decade or more, then go speak. That really is the way. It is crazy. Speaking is so much fun because you can really impact people's lives. And doing it in person, there's really no substitute for that. Getting that feedback, getting to talk to people afterwards. By the way, if you ever see me at a speaking gig, I want to take selfies. I want you to come up and say, "Can I take a picture?" People are always really sheepish about that. Dude, it is so fun to know that you've impacted people, and it is absolutely 100% amazing only if you're actually [ __ ] good at that thing that you're talking about. I would hate speaking if I didn't have deep expertise in the thing that I was speaking about. So, my advice, if you really want that to be a fun and amazing movement in your life, first, totally forget about doing that and just go get really [ __ ] good at something. Find the love and the passion and the equal level of excitement for that thing, and then the rest will take care of itself. Alberto Garzo Ocampo Hi Tom, I have low self-esteem because I haven't achieved anything special. When I start having momentum with my goals, I start to panic over the fact that there are people out there better than me. How can I correct my thinking and overcome this? So, first of all, dude, there's always going to be somebody better than you, so don't Uh it's not even that I'll say don't worry about that cuz I really do want to be the best, but follow me on my logic train here for a second. I simultaneously hold these two ideas in my head. I'm going to become the greatest of all time. No one has ever going to be better than me. And I know nothing, and I need to learn, learn, learn. Everyone is my master in some way. Virtually everybody I encounter is better than me. It's insanity. When you can hold those two competing ideas in your head and not sketch out and not be demoralized by the fact that people are better than you, but instead excited that it will be so easy to find people that are going to teach you, that you can learn from, and really be excited about how what you're learning, what is being taught to you, what you're employing in your life is going to allow you to consume the world, to one by one, the student will become the master over and over and over again. It's pretty fascinating to live in that dichotomy, that duality, if you will. It will serve you well. I'm never worried about the fact that there are people way better than me because all I think about, my total obsession, that thing that sits at the core of my identity, like the sun radiating out warmth. On a long enough timeline, I will beat anyone at anything. And that long enough timeline part becomes the thing that helps me through the periods where I'm terrible, where other people are better than me, where they're way farther ahead than me, all of that. But I never let it slow me down because I know that I'm willing to be in Goggins style relentlessness, stay in pursuit of that thing longer than anyone else. I will just go longer, harder, farther. I won't break. When other people are giving up, I will just keep going. When you have that, everything just becomes a question of timeline. So, build that into your life. It's going to seem fake at first. Tell yourself that story enough, it will start becoming real. Just stick with it. All you have to do, by the way, for that story to be real, is just not give up. So, when you want to give up, just don't. In that just don't give up. You can slow down. Instead of sprinting, you can walk. Just don't ever [ __ ] stop. And as long as you don't stop, you've stayed true to the fact that you were the person that doesn't give up and you keep going. All right. Shivam Kashiwala, that is a name I can get behind. Going back to making money, are you saying it is not possible to make money with your why? Everyone says to dig deeper, but are you saying financial freedom can't be someone's motivation to achieve that? Um yes, I am saying that making money for me is a horrific why, but if it's legitimately your why, and let's paint a picture. Let's say that you grew up in a household where money was scarce, and you never knew where the next next meal was going to come from. Could you get so interested and so fascinated with the protective qualities of money that you really Even that, it's really about the protective qualities. Look, with the way that I think, I can't do it. Every time I try to like come up with some [ __ ] thing where people are really just into the money, I just can't do it. The closest that I ever got to was Warren Buffett. That [ __ ] really seems like he just cares about the money, but the truth is what I think he cares about is winning. And when you think of him as an athlete and money is just the scorecard, then it's like he's just trying to become the greatest athlete of all time. Okay, I can respect that. But it it doesn't seem like for anybody it's just about the money because money is literally inert. In and of itself, it does nothing. Even if you want to extract its heat potential, you have to first light it on fire. So, money is in and of itself totally inert. It only has value because we agree it has value. It is utterly meaningless until you give it meaning. And so then I would say that the thing that you have the meaning that you have imbued it with becomes the thing that you actually care about. If it's a scorecard, fantastic. If it's its ability to facilitate your dreams, which is my huge driver, fantastic. Like whatever it is, it really is that meaning. So, yes, I am saying that. There you have it. All right. This is got time for two more. Crystal Marie, YouTube. How does a person with a history of an eating disorder stay focused on being healthy, but still care about their image while looking to break into the media industry? Okay, so it's it's layered. So, first of all, battling an eating disorder is something where you're going to need somebody from the outside because you have body dysmorphia. You know you can't trust yourself. And so, have somebody that you trust that will give you real feedback. And if you're looking great and you're being super strict and religious about your diet, but you're looking good, your blood markers are on point, then great. And whether people perfect example of this is Furious Pete. So, he went from being anorexic to being a bodybuilder. And he says, "Look, I pay attention to my blood markers. I know what it felt like to be anorexic." Cuz people are saying, "You just went from anorexia to bigorexia." And he was saying that's not what happened and it's a whole different cascade of emotional feelings, and the state of obsession, and all of that. Um and assuming that he's watching his biomarkers and things, even though he's now got that obsession for his physique, it's not something that is diminishing his life in any way. So, that's really what it comes down to is do you have something, an external metric, that is either somebody you care about that you know and trust that's going to give you honest feedback? Um are you working with a doctor or self-educating yourself on biomarkers? Are you paying attention to your biomarkers? Um so, I think the natural outcropping of um looking good is usually feeling good. Now, we have to be careful about how we define look good, but um being strong, having high performance, and a reasonable level of body fat, um I think is going to correlate pretty naturally to good biomarkers, feeling good, and looking good. So, you start carrying too much fat, you're not going to feel good. You start carrying too little fat, by the way, and you're not going to feel good. Um most of the photos that you see on um Instagram and elsewhere, if you're sub say 8% body fat, it starts to suck, and your body is really pushing back against that. Now, there's going to be some people, of course, genetic variation, they can stay a little bit lower. Um but for the most part, yeah, you're sort of in that range. Um and then again, on the high end, it can be problematic as well. All right. Marilyn Mosquita, Facebook. Hi Tom, what's the best way to get out of your comfort zone and stop being afraid of speaking in front of so many people when you're so shy? Thank you. Um it's got to be based on a goal. There's got to be something that you want. I don't think there's any um intrinsic need to get up and speak in front of people, but if that's something that you want, if there's some thing that that does that you're really excited about, then it's really about immersion therapy, practicing it, doing it over and over and over, and putting yourself in an environment where you don't mind really failing. May I suggest Toastmasters? Um that's exactly what they're there for, to allow you to speak, but everybody's a speaker, everybody knows the anxiety and the terror that often goes along with that. So, they're going to be very supportive. So, if you have to go up and um, Lewis Howes did a whole breakdown of this where he first he started he was like, sweaty palms, he had note cards and he had to read verbatim off the note cards and he couldn't look up. And then the next one was he started to read off the note cards, but occasionally he would look up. And then it was he could just put bullet points on a note card. And then it was he didn't need note cards. And then it was he was actually getting good at it. And then by the end of it he was getting standing ovations and getting paid to speak. So, just over and over and over and over, um, really really practicing that. But you've got to have something on the end of that that you really care about, that you really want, that you're willing to push and suffer for. All right, we actually have time for one more. You just want to see me say this. Mukul Dev. So, I think this is a fake name, so I won't hurt myself too bad. Mukul Dev Raksh Pati. Dear Tom, you talk about ruthlessly pursuing dreams, but at the same time you speak about sleeping properly. Doesn't ruthless pursuit mean less sleep, too? Is everybody listening? Lean in. Absolutely [ __ ] not. And let me tell you why. The only thing that matters is efficiency of thought. Being cognitively optimized. Now, if you can find a place where you're able to get away with it, I'm all for it. If you need 9 hours, but you find at 7:00 you're just fine and you're crushing it, hey, no beef. Get the extra 2 hours. If on the other hand, you find that you're performing suboptimally, and be honest with yourself. When I am tired, I am performing suboptimally. I know that about myself. I also consider being tired like that, sleepy, fatigued, I'm all for. Sleepy is a unique form of torture. I [ __ ] hate it. So, I literally don't want to exist in that state A and B I find that I don't perform well there. Now, I used to until about, I don't know, a month and a half ago, I used to get about 5 to 6 hours of sleep a night and I was rock solid. I felt great. I was cognitively optimized. Like you guys have seen all my content. I doubt you can tell the difference between when I was getting 5 and 6 hours and now where I'm getting between 7 and 9, which is super [ __ ] weird and I am really trying to figure out what is going on cuz I'd love to need less sleep, but because I don't use an alarm clock, I get the amount of sleep that my body needs. So, those are not two mutually exclusive things, but you're going to need to get deadly efficient with your time. So, one part of getting efficient to me is getting the sleep that you need. Two, also I pride myself on longevity. So, think about this. Can you accomplish more in your life if you're working, you know, let's say 20 hours a day for 20 years or if because you truncated your life by getting so little sleep, are you going to be beat by the guy that lives for 110 years because he's getting all the sleep he needs, but is only working, let's say, 16 hours a day? Um I think it's pretty clear just on an hour-by-hour basis that the other guy is going to crush you. So, that's also something to factor into what you accomplish in your life. Um but for me, cognitive optimization, not being fatigued, having deep efficiency in my ability to get things done, um and longevity, those all make it just an absolute no-brainer for me to get as much sleep as I need. Uh but if you find that you've got, um you know, a magic formula in there to slim it out, man, go for it. Uh just doesn't work for me. All right, there it is. We're at the end. 11 straight up. Today's episode, by the way, was brought to you by Do the Work. Go right now to shop.impacttheory.com. It's all about self-signaling. Get yourself the shirt. Remind yourself of who you're trying to be. We've got some really empowering ideology there, so check it out. Thank Thank as always, for the questions. I am super stoked that you guys uh put questions in. After this episode you can still send them to connected@impacttheory.com. It is amazing. By the way, if this content is adding value to your life, please share it. Also, subscribe if you haven't already. That would be amazing. And while I'm making all the asks, go to Amazon and leave a review for my Alexa skill if you're in on that. And go to iTunes to leave a review for the podcast. That would be amazing help. All right guys, thank you so much. Again, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe and until next time, be legendary. Take care.