How To Think Like A Genius (Without Being One)

Elon Musk seems to have a formula for taking an impossible dream and making it a reality.

There are only four entities that ever sent a space capsule into space and brought it back. Us, Russia, China, Elon Musk.

So in this video, we'll go through six tricks you can steal from Elon to achieve your most ambitious dreams. Specifically by learning to think like a genius and find solutions that no one else sees. The first obstacle that holds most people back isn't actually lack of talent. It's it's fear of failure. Sadly, it's super common for someone to be so scared of failure that they don't even make a real effort at achieving their dream. From the outside, it's easy to assume Elon has superhuman confidence that he'll always be successful. But listen to him talk about founding Tesla and SpaceX.

I mean, I thought both Tesla and SpaceX would fail. Nevertheless, you put all your money in that. I expected to lose it.

So the question isn't how to be fearless, it's how can you feel fear and do it anyway? Here's Elon explaining why he was able to invest $100 million into something he didn't think would work.

I feel fear quite strongly, but I if what we're doing is what I'm doing I think is important enough, then I just override the fear drive.

Overrides fear drive overrides fear. Sounds great in theory, but unfortunately, we've all had something we thought was important to us but couldn't find the courage to pursue. That's because vague dreams aren't motivating. The trick is to create a very specific picture of the future that energizes you. For example, listen to how specific Elon's vision was for starting SpaceX.

So actually, what I sort of thinking I would do is send a small greenhouse to the surface of Mars with seeds in dehydrated gel, and then upon landing, hydrate the gel. I grow the plants. And the public tends to respond to precedents and superlatives. So this would be the furthest that life's ever traveled. The first life on Mars.

In your own life, if your goal is vague, like quit your job and start a business that's unlikely to overcome fear. Instead, create a specific vision for your future. This can be as simple as you waking up every day without an alarm, walking to the beach, and drinking a coconut in a hammock. The more detailed and inspiring your vision is to you, the more it will motivate you to act. Now, despite Elon's high chance of failure. He's been incredibly consistent at making his visions a reality. The number one thing he attributes this to is his ability to use first principles thinking. Here's a quick explanation from Elon.

You boil things down to the most fundamental truths you can imagine and you reason up from there. And this is a good way to figure out if something really makes sense or if it's just what everybody else is doing.

That's a bit heady. So here's a real example from SpaceX. Most people looking to start a space exploration company would look at how other rockets had been built and copy their design. This copycat approach is called reasoning by analogy. Elon found that rockets in their current form were too expensive. So he asked, why are rockets so expensive? They're built from scratch every time and only used once. Well, does it have to be that way? That last part is the magic question with first principles thinking, does it have to be that way? It's the question that led Elon to create reusable rockets. And it will let you find solutions that no one else sees and live a life that most people think is impossible. Watch here as Elon lays out why it makes sense to always question your imagined limitations.

You should actually take the approach that the constraints that you are given are guaranteed to be some degree wrong. Guaranteed to be some degree wrong.

So let's say you think you can't achieve your dream because you need to work full time to pay the bills. Does it have to be that way? What if you use technology to automate part of your job or hired a virtual assistant to help you? What if you quit, moved abroad somewhere inexpensive, and now you only need to work part time to pay the bills so the rest of your time can go towards your dream. So do you really need to go into the office and work eight hours a day, five days a week? Today, those are constraints worth questioning. What an employer wants isn't to have you physically located somewhere 40 hours a week. They want you to add value to the business beyond what they pay you. This ties directly into the next habit that has led Elon to incredible a focus on delivering value. Listen to this extremely simple mental framework for what a business actually is.

A company is just a group of people that are assembled to create a product or service that's the purpose of a company. People sometimes forget this elementary truth.

Most people focus on themselves and what they get from work, which ironically tends to make them less valuable and therefore they don't get paid much. Elon became absurdly wealthy by focusing on making a product that's good for the world and good for his clients.

If you don't have a compelling product at a compelling price, you don't have a great company.

This is true of any ambitious dream, not just business. If you want to be a rock star, focus on making music that hooks people and moves them emotionally. If you want to be a pro athlete, then focus on being a player that can help your team win at a high level. Another trick related to first principles thinking that has helped Elon be so successful is to define your top priority. Let's look at this interview for a concrete example. Elon is asked a reasonable how do you protect your Tesla patents so you can maintain your edge over the competition? Listen to his answer.

If we created a patent portfolio that discouraged other companies from making electric cars, that would be inconsistent with our mission. So we open sourced all the patents in order to help the other Anyone else who wants to make an electric.

Car Reasoning by analogy, AKA looking at what other people do, you would never give away your intellectual property. But Tesla's top priority is to get the world to use sustainable energy through that lens. Sharing your patents is obvious even if no one else has done it before. So if you want to achieve your dream, you need to ask yourself, what is your top priority? This trickles down into everything you do. If your priority is to stop global warming at all costs, you work 22 hours a day like Elon. If your priority is to be your own boss, then turning down millions in investor money is easy. Decisions are only hard when you lose sight of your top priority and start looking around at what other people do. And whether your dream is to be a celebrity or to create a billion dollar business that changed the world. Another mindset you can steal from Elon to get there faster is be willing to polarize. Most people try to please everyone and avoid anyone having a negative impression of them, so they share little of themselves and they make no impression at all. Elon does the exact opposite. He leans into his quirky personality and throws out the normal PR playbook. He smoked weed with Joe Rogan, produced a rap about Harambe, and hosted meme review with Pewdiepie. He's like a magnet that creates a strong pull or push depending on who you are and what you like. This has helped him to create a massive cult following that will support him in anything he does. Even when it's someone he cares about very much. Elon doesn't let other people's opinions control him. For example, retired astronauts Neil Armstrong and Gene Cernan were critical of Elon when he started SpaceX. Watch his reaction here.

I was very sad to see that because those guys are, yeah, you know, those guys are heroes of mine, so it's really tough. I wish they would come and visit and see the hardware that were during camp and I think that would change their mind.

Elon is clearly hurt by their lack of support, but it never stopped him from pushing forward. With SpaceX, you're likely to face something similar as you try to pursue your dream. Some friends or family are going to tell you it's a bad idea. Just know that that's a part of the process. When you achieve something extraordinary, try to limit your downside as much as you can, but don't let someone else prevent you from pursuing your dream. Once you succeed, they'll say they supported you all along. The last mental trick to achieve your massive goal is to celebrate small victories. Elon is still many years away from achieving his goals of terraforming Mars or powering the entire world with renewable energy, but he's made great progress and is happy to celebrate each benchmark along the way. Similarly, in your own life's big goals, they may take years or decades to achieve. If you don't give yourself permission to celebrate small wins along the way, you're much more likely to get discouraged and quit. But if you can take pride in your little wins, it will energize you to keep going. And before you know it, you'll have made massive progress towards your goal. Now, if your dream is to start a business that lets you live wherever you want, work whenever you want, and do something you're actually passionate about, there's one more tip for you. I highly, highly recommend checking out the Four Hour Work Week. Charisma on Command. Wouldn't exist without it and you can get it for free. Thanks to our sponsor for this video. Audible the four Hour Workweek is a bit of a step by step guide for starting a business. But beyond that, it's the single best resource I've ever seen for opening your mind to the possibilities that are out there as an entrepreneur. If you hate your job, the four Hour Workweek will excite you and it can give you that concrete vision to take action. If you want to check it out for free, you can go to audible.com charisma or text charisma to 500 500. Audible is my favorite audiobook platform and something I personally use all the time. It's a great way to take time that's normally dead time, like doing errands around the house or driving and transform it into productive time where you're learning and improving yourself. By joining Audible, you get a credit every month to use on any title in their premium selection, regardless of price, and you also get access to their PLUS catalog, which has thousands of audiobooks, podcasts, and guided meditations that you can listen to for free with your membership. Again, if you want to try it out, you can go to audible.com charisma or or text Charisma to 500500 and get a free 30 day trial including any audiobook you want. And I highly recommend the four hour work week. Either way, I hope you liked this video and I want to thank our video editing team, Andre, Therese and Ivan for working so hard to edit it. I also want to thank you so much for watching it. Hopefully we'll see you in the next one.