Facts Beat Feelings

In May of 2016, I predicted that Donald Trump would win the presidency in the biggest video that I've ever done on this channel. And since then, a lot of people have asked how I saw that coming so early on in the process. And the truth is, a lot of the answers are in those videos. The way that he spoke to crowds, the way that he would choose a particular word to get it to stick in the mind of the people who are listening to him. Check those videos out if you want to know the specifics. But there is a more important higher order mindset that really led to me coming to that conclusion. And it's this. It's facts before beliefs. In my circle of people, it was just accepted that Donald Trump was a joke candidate. No matter what happened, no matter what primary he won, no matter what poll said, he was not going to be the president. And I certainly found myself going with the normal way that my peer group thought until I got a lot of questions from you guys saying, look at Donald Trump. I said, okay, I'm gonna take a look. And what I saw at that point when I looked with clear eyes was that he was a serious candidate with serious persuasive skills. So I realize, and I've seen this in other areas of my life, that we often have these beliefs that are unfounded, right? There's no facts really that support them, but we cling to them because other people in our life tell us to. Or it's the zeitgeist of American society. Whatever it is, it messes up our life and creates limiting beliefs. So I want to talk about how you can sort of spot these and hopefully that will help you to make a better 2017, because welcome to 2017. It's the new year. So the first thing comes from a story from my little brother. And he had this beat up MacBook. It was an all MacBook Pro. It had a screen that, like, could not support its own weight, so it would just fall on itself. It had busted speakers and not only that, a busted earphone jack. So if you wanted to get any sound out of the thing, you had to place this USB card in and then put an Audiophone into that and not disturb it because the USB thing was very finicky as well. The Internet cut out every 15 minutes. It was an old MacBook, but it was a piece of junk. And one time he and I and another friend were sitting, we were talking, and the friend was saying, should I get a Mac or a PC? I'm not sure. And my brother chimed in he said, man, gotta go with the Mac. They just work. And I looked at him, I said, you gotta be kidding me. That's what the commercial says. The commercial says they just work. Your own experience every single day, for hours a day tells you that they don't work, they just break sometimes. And I remember him looking at me like, not connecting the dots. He was like, no maths, just work. He couldn't pair his experience to what he was told. His belief and the facts were just not communicating. And I realized that this happens over and over again in our lives to the point where it can actually be detrimental. Another story. I'm walking through security, coming home from Christmas with my family to Brazil. I'm actually in my room right now in Brazil. I don't have a studio yet. I'm working on it, but I'm walking through security. And there's two ways to enter into the line. There's the right way and the left lane. There's a bunch of signs and I'm walking. I've got a bunch of things. I pick the right way. I walk through, I take a couple steps, and the guy says, hey, you're going the wrong way. You gotta come back out. Oh, sorry, man, come back out, walk around, show my thing. As I'm doing that, somebody else comes down the corridor without having seen me, makes the same kind of decision, picks the right hand path. I hear the guy say, hey, you're going the wrong way. You gotta go down this way, guys, sorry, does that. And I'm standing there thinking, how many times is this guy going to yell at people for going the wrong way and for being stupid before he realizes that there is something wrong with his process? In fact, as I walked past, I heard them mutter themselves like, man, people are so stupid. And the truth is, what's stupid is not recognizing that the facts and your belief that, namely that people should know that the sign says to go this way are not matching up. But that guy needed to do was say, something is busted. I need to go close down that right hand lane so people only go on the left hand side. The point of this is that if you ever find yourself saying, man, people are stupid, they're just not getting it, you are probably being the stupid one. And I don't mean that in a mean way because I want to help you change. And I realize this happens with promotions. I see people who are diligent workers adding tons of value to the company and they get passed over for promotion. Somebody who knew the boss better gets the job, happens over and over and over again. And they're going, this is broken. This is stupid. How could they possibly get it? And what they don't realize is that their job description is to, yes, be good at your job, be competent, but also make friends with the boss. That's part of life, is that there is a degree of nepotism. Or. Or I'll see people who go out, right? Guys who look at some guy who has a girlfriend that maybe they'd like to date and he doesn't have the muscles or the money that they think he should, and they go, how could she be so dumb to be with him? Instead of going, wait a second. Maybe my blueprint for what women want in a guy is not what it ought to be, and I need to adjust. So if you find yourself constantly thinking that the world is crazy or that things are not happening as they should. Pause. You probably have a limiting belief that is really stopping you from getting what you want. Which brings me to my second major point here of this video, which is something I've come up against over and over again in 2016. Donald Trump is certainly an example, which is when you see a cultural phenomenon that you just don't understand, whether you don't like it or not, you think it's dumb. Pause. Because there is something very important that you need to learn. I count myself in the group of people who like when something popular comes out. I'm not always the first on board. For instance, I thought Snapchat was silly. Fifty Shades of Gray, completely ridiculous. Trump, when I first heard about him, was like, this is a total joke. Let's play videos. Don't get it. Why do people watch them? I didn't get it. But what I've realized this year is that there is such powerful insight that comes from looking into these cultural phenomenon and trying to understand what makes them so impactful. I'm not saying that you need to write like the author of Fifty Shades of Grey or that you need to scream like PewDiePie on a let's play video to be successful on YouTube. What I am saying is that when there is a breakout success, there is some fundamental piece of human psychology that is being hit right on the head by something that they're doing. And I'll tell you, having gone through and do the video that I did on PewDiePie, PewDiePie last week, I learned so much for this channel that I truly believe will help expand my reach by millions of people in the next year alone. It was absolutely worth it. And it's not by becoming PewDiePie. It's by taking the fundamentals of what works on YouTube, what captures attention, and bringing them in so I can spread my own message better. So this is just to say, Happy 2017. Happy New Year. I hope that you go into this new year with eyes open. I hope that you're able to learn and even from people that you might not think that you could have learned from before, because I know that I certainly have in 2016, and I want to keep that going in 2017. So hopefully this is the last video that I do here in my bedroom in Brazil. I'm looking for a studio right now for a place where I can talk to you guys. I miss these kinds of videos. I will still be doing breakdowns. Gonna be lots more animated videos as well. But I like talking to you guys like this. These are the kind of stuff where I can kind of riff and tell you stories and these fun things. So hopefully more of these once I get a studio. If you have any suggestions of things that you'd like me to cover, go ahead, write them in the comments, please. Please subscribe to this video. There's now a little bell, I believe, that is right next to the subscribe thing. If you want to see us on the homepage, you gotta hit the bell. If you don't hit the bell, we might not show up on your homepage. Same thing on mobile. There's that little bell. I'm sure you're hearing about it now because everyone on YouTube is furious about it. So if you would and you wanna see our stuff, you hit that bell, you'll get more of it. And I will see you, as always, in the next video. Happy2017.