How to Build Willpower and Self-Discipline | Robin Sharma

Well, hello everyone and it's an absolute pleasure for me to be here on my first global webinar, World Class Willpower. And I can assure you over the next 60 minutes to 75 minutes, we are going to go on a roller coaster ride of what makes an expert, what you need to do in order to unleash World Class Willpower. The latest neuroscience on what makes people have huge levels of self control and really how to make this year and use it as a leverage point. So it's literally the absolute best year of your life yet. First thing I want to do, I want to welcome every single one of you we have according to latest count. Let me look at what my team has given me. 24,922 people. 24,922 people. I guess we didn't pass 25,000, or maybe we did, but there's a lot of people. There's a lot of people on this webinar right here from over 53 countries. We have people from North America, South America, Europe, Southeast Asia, Malaysia, Singapore, Japan, New Zealand, Australia, literally around the world. And I want to congratulate every single one of you because whether it's three o' clock where you are or some of you are, it's one or two o' clock in the morning. But by being here with me on this webinar, you've really displayed a commitment to your personal development, your commitment to some of our time together I want to share with you. You and I have not only an opportunity to leverage world class willpower to express our genius, I think we have a responsibility. And if you do not step up to the plate and express your potential and use each day as a leverage point to get closer to your mountaintop. And if you do not understand and appreciate that you were born into genius and maybe you've fallen into mediocrity, but you have a responsibility to express your absolute best, not only for your family and for yourself, but for the world. Then I think when you get to the end of your life, the world is going to be a lesser place. And I hadn't planned to share this, but my dad, when I was growing up, he shared a Sanskrit poem with me. And he put it on our refrigerator door so my brother and I could read it every morning before we went off to school.

And on the door were the words of Rabindranath Tagore, the great Indian poet.

And he wrote, spring has passed, summer is gone and winter is here. And the song that I meant to sing remains unsung for I've spent my.

Best hours stringing and unstringing my instrument. And as I got older, I asked my dad. I said, dad, what was that poem all about? He said, robin, that was a poem written by a man whose heart was filled with regret over a life half lived. He was always getting ready to sing the great song that his life was meant to be. But he got busy being busy, so his potential died within him. That's really what this webinar is about. How to get you to living a legendary, epic, iconic life so that the world is better for it. Okay, let me.

Share a story that I wanted to share with you. About four weeks ago, I was really blessed to spend the holidays with my children in Rome. And we stayed at a really cool hotel on Via DEI Condotti, right by the Spanish Steps. And we ate fantastic pasta, and we sampled great art on Christmas Eve. My kids said, dad, let's go to the Vatican. And I said, fine, let's go to the Vatican. I'd never been there. So we went to the Vatican. And once we went to the Vatican, my kids said, we have to go to the Sistine Chapel. I said, fine. I've heard so much about the Sistine Chapel. Goethe, the German poet and philosopher, said, and this is worth considering. Goethe said, until one has witnessed the Sistine Chapel, one has no adequate conception of what one human being is capable of achieving.

And so, with that in mind, I walked into the Sistine Chapel with my kids, and I looked up at the ceiling in the chapel, and tears came to my eyes, and I didn't expect it. And the tears came to my eyes, ladies and gentlemen, because I saw a beautiful example of artistry, mastery, integrity, brilliance on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. When I went back to my hotel room, I started doing a little bit of research on Michelangelo. And Michelangelo is really a great story on willpower and self control.

He was beaten severely when he was a young kid by his father. His father wanted him to pursue a more noble profession, a more lucrative profession. Michelangelo wanted to be a sculptor. His father beat him, and his father tried to get him off course. And Michelangelo said, no, I want to be a sculptor. Finally, through his grit and perseverance and unrelentingness, Michelangelo's father said, you know what? Okay, fine. You're 14 years old. Old. I'm going to allow you to go to apprentice with a Florentine master, and he will help you become a sculptor. Michelangelo moved to Florence, and he started to study, and he started to practice. And again, this is a story of self discipline and world class willpower. And through his mastery and through his practice and through his suffering and through his persistence and through his focus, all of these great lost traits that are no longer celebrated in this world where all too often people are card carrying members of the cult of mediocrity. Through this practice, through this devotion, he became well known. He became known far and wide. He created the beautiful sculptor David. If you go to Museum of Academia in Florence, you will see David, you will see some of his other masterpieces. Part of that whole region started to honor the way that Michelangelo was appearing and performing as a sculptor because of his mastery. A lot of the other artists like Raphael and the Renaissance painters became jealous, devised a very elaborate and interesting plan to discredit and to ridicule Michelangelo.

Michelangelo's peers went to the Pope who was Julius ii and they said to the Pope, why don't you get Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel? And the Pope said, sounds good. And so the Pope went over to Michelangelo and said, I want you to restore the greatness of Rome and the greatness of Rome is now on your shoulders because I want you to paint the Sistine Chapel and I want you to make it a masterpiece that holds the world in awe when they see it. And Michelangelo replied to the Pope, he said, you know, I'm not a painter and I've never painted, I'm a sculptor. But Julius II was very persistent and eventually Michelangelo said, fine, I'm going to agree. And over four years.

Four hard years, four years that took incredible self control, incredible grit. We're going to talk about grit in this webinar. Incredible focus, incredible discipline. Michelangelo created the Sistine Chapel. Now let's put this into perspective. Michelangelo had never painted fresco before. Michelangelo had to paint something on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel that people standing many feet below could look up at and see with great detail. Michelangelo dealt with the fact that the painting on the Sistine Chapel was moldy. There were paint issues. He had to deal with the fact that the Pope was very ill and he thought he might not get paid. He actually developed this incredible elaborate system of scaffolding which allowed him to paint backwards for four years on the Sistine Chapel. And he damaged his back in the process. But he did it for the art. He did it for the discipline. He did it for what it made of him. He did it for his commitment. Because the great artists and the great performers are much less about ego and applause and money. And they do their work for what it makes of them. As human beings. And after four years, Michelangelo's eyesight was so damaged from looking at the images on the Sistine Chapel that he suffered permanent eye damage. But like I said, once he was finished, the world was awestruck at what he created.

And now 20 million people a year go to the Vatican and they do experience this breathtaking work of artistry and human ingenuity constructed by an ordinary man who exercised world class willpower named Michelangelo. And so, ladies and gentlemen, I guess what I'm suggesting to you is one of the fundamental points. The myth of the talented genius, the myth of the gifted genius is nothing more than a lie society has sold.

I don't know if I expressed that clearly, but what I'm trying to suggest to you is the world says the Michelangelos and the Beckhams and the Jay Z's and.

The great entrepreneurs, the Carlos Slims, the Warren Buffetts, the Jack Dorseys, the founder of Twitter, the Jeff Bezos, the founder of Amazon, the Mozarts and the Picassos and the Box. Society teaches us and trains us that these people are somehow born with special talents. And what I'm here to remind you, with deep respect for all 25,000 or 24,922 of you on this webinar from around the world, is that is a lie that society has sold us to keep us small. And if you look at the science, and science coming out right now is indisputable, we're going to get into that science. But what science says is genius is much less about your genetics and much more about your self control and your discipline. Genius is much less about natural talent and much more about practice, persistence, focus, grit, dealing with suffering, dealing with failure, dealing with laughter. While the rest of the world thinks you should stop, genius is much more about continuing practice, developing your craft. And so let me give you some examples right here, just to prove my point, that you were born into genius. You can be a genius. You can be so good at what you do in your work and in your life that when people watch you in action, tears come to their eyes. Just like tears came to my eyes when I watched Michelangelo's work on the Sistine Chapel. But it's up to you. And the starting point is remembering that the idea that genius is somehow genetic and somehow people are born with these gifts that you don't have is nothing but more than an illusion and a lie. And science has debunked it. Let's go to David Beckham. David Beckham didn't have a lot of natural talent.

David Beckham's father said David Beckham was so monomaniacally obsessed with being biw best in the world as a footballer that he almost lived on the field. It wasn't about natural talent, it wasn't about genetics. It was about having a necessary amount of talent, a minimum amount of talent needed to then practice, refine, focus, until he got to a place where the world pedestals him and calls him genius number two. Andre Agassi. If you haven't read his memoir Open, read his memoir Open. It was fascinating to me. Andre Agassi doesn't like tennis. He hated tennis. Andre Agassi got into tennis because his father wanted him to be a tennis superstar, because his father was never a tennis superstar. And Andre Agassi's father put him on the tennis court unrelentingly and said, 5,000 balls a day or don't get off the court, which is 150,000 balls, 150,000 balls a month, which is over a million hits a year for multiple years before Andre Agassi became a superstar. Let's go to Mozart. Everyone says Mozart gifted genius. Absolutely not. Here's what the facts and the science say about Mozart. People like Anders Ericsson, the preeminent researcher in the field of exceptional performance, has studied Mozart. And here's what the great Anders Ericsson has found Mozart. For the first 10 years of composing music, Mozart's compositions were curiosities. They were not the realm of genius. They showed no signs of exceptional talent. They were curiosities. Mozart's father was a piano teacher. And Mozart was pushed to compose music not because he liked it, but because his family survived on him going out there and composing and playing music. But after 10 years of relenting focus, practice, discipline, grit.

Attention, he showed his first signs of genius. I mean, most people, what do we do? We master in the minors. We try to be good at 50 things. We fill our life with complexity versus understanding. That genius and mastery in an epic life is the realm of simplicity. Let's go to John Milton. I don't know if you've read Paradise Lost. You probably have. I studied it when I was in university. I loved Paradise Lost.

John Milton.

Last 20 years of his life was blind. John Milton would get up every morning at 4 o', clock, 5 o' clock in the wintertime, and again on this point about willpower and exercising willpower and building a great life and doing work that matters. It's about willpower. Milton built up his willpower 20 years he was blind, but he got up at 4 o' clock, 5 o' clock in the wintertime. And he would write not when it was easy, but when it was hard. Nikola Tesla, another example of someone who wasn't born into genius, but the world calls genius. I didn't know this, but when I did my research for this webinar, Nikolas Tesla was Thomas Edison's assistant in New York. Nicholas Tesla would get into the office, into the laboratory at 10:30, and he worked till 5am consistently. And Edison said, you know, I've had a lot of hard working assistants. I've never had anyone who worked as hard as you. Nicholas Tesla. That his performance, his productivity was an example in the story of willpower. And one last example. Maya Angelou, a woman I respect enormously. The great African American poet, great example of grit and willpower. She wasn't born into genius, but she practiced it. She sculpted her talent. Because here's another big idea. Success is not inherited. Success is earned. Success is not inherited. Success is built. It's developed, it's earned. And that's a little scary thought because it means that your life right now is really a function not of luck, not of genetics. But you have the life you settled for. You have the life you've earned. Your choices have created your results today. And if your life is not exactly where you want it to be right now in terms of your productivity, your finances, your mindset, your happiness, your impact on the world, not to worry, we're going to get into some fantastic tactics on how you can rewire your mindset, how you can rewire your productivity, how you can rewire your life. But I got to get into this example, the final one of Maya Angelou.

She found that she could not really produce very well. And she wasn't very creative in beautiful circumstances, to use her words. So she would get up every morning at 6 o' clock and she would have cough. Excuse me. At 5:00 o' clock, she was a member of the 5:00am Club. And at 6:00 clock, she'd be ready to have coffee with her husband. I love this. At 6:30, she would get in her car and she would drive to a gritty motel room that she would rent. He talked about willpower. You talked about provoking, being uncomfortable. And she would sit for endless hours in this dirty, gritty, grimy motel room because it pushed her to get close to what was most important in terms of her creativity. So again, genius is less about genetics and it's more about the exercise of daily, unrelenting willpower. Okay, let me get into what I call Some first principles of success. Before we get into the latest science on willpower, I could not be more happy to bring the information and the science I'm going to bring to you on willpower, which is going to be coming up, because I just wish the world. I wish you knew about this. I wish your kids knew about this. I wish this was taught in schools. I wish this was taught in organizations like how to run your brain and the neurobiology of willpower. If we knew this, the world would be a better place. And you know that my fuel, my oxygen, my obsession is helping you express your talents and helping you live a gorgeous life that the generations who follow you will celebrate so that our world gets better. And why do I do that? Why do I do all the videos I do? Why do I do the Facebook posts? Why do I work as hard as I do? I do it to feel good about being an instrument of service. So let me get into the first principles of achieving common success. These are like the big ideas on success. Then we're going to get into the science of. Well.

So five. Number one, it's the one I've been saying. Genius is less about genetics and more about practice. Anders Ericsson, I mentioned him. He's the person who really deserves the credit on the 10,000 hour rule. Yes, it's been popularized by a lot of great books, but Anders Ericsson is really the preeminent researcher on the field of exceptional performance. And on this first idea, this first principle on success, which is genius is not about genetics, it's about practice. Anders Ericsson has found there's three things in particular that are absolutely necessary for you to be performing like a world class superstar in your areas, in your craft. Number one, you've got to practice it for a minimum of 10 years. Okay, again, this comes from Anders Ericsson. 10 years or 10,000 hours. So what do most people do? A skill that we want to be best in the world at, and we do it for a few weeks and then we give up. And what he's found is you've really got to have the focus and persistence for 10 years of daily practice before you start to perform at a level where the world calls you genius. Number one. Second thing he's found, you've got to practice every day. But it's not normal practice. It's what he called deliberate practice. For 10 years. So he studied brain surgeons. And the brain surgeons would go to the office or they'd go to the operating room and they would do the brain surgery every day for 10 years, but they didn't get to a level of genius. And so what he realized, it's not just 10 years or 10,000 hours of practice. It's a certain type of practice for 10 years. And the certain type of practice that you and I must practice every day to get into the realm of genius and Rare Air is deliberate practice. And that practice simply means it's practice done with a view to making every day better. So if you're a brain surgeon, it's like, okay, I'm going to go to the operating room and in my free time, I reflected on what I need to improve. And I'm going to consciously try to iterate and optimize the way that I did my surgery today, yesterday, so I can make today even better. That's what deliberate practice is, conscious practice designed to make it better every single day. And then the third thing that Anderson Erickson has found, when it comes to studying exceptional performance, almost every great performer, whether it's in sciences or sports or business or life, they were in talent hubs. They were surrounded by other people who also wanted to be the best pianist or the best chess player or the best skier or the best entrepreneur, like Silicon Valley. So he's called these talent hubs, which really speaks to the importance of surrounding yourself with, with people whose lives you want to be living and picking your associations really, really carefully.

The first idea, in terms of the first principles, genius is not about genetics. It's about the things I'm talking about. Practice, deliberate practice, 10,000 hours surrounding yourself with the right people. Before I get to the second point, simply remember that every expert was once an amateur and every master was once a beginner. You just got to start. Every expert was once an amateur, every master was once a beginner. And you just got to start. And then you got to start practicing. I know I'm giving you a lot of information, but this is game changing information. Here's the number one factor of success, according to a researcher at Penn, at Penn State. Her name is Angela Lee Duckworth. And she said the number one defining factor for your success and my success is a word she called grit, Willpower, perseverance, persistence. She called it grit. Second foundational idea.

Is that your growth is built not around your comfort. Your growth is built around your discomfort. The second idea on building epic success this year, your growth, your progress is not built around your comfort. Your progress is built around your discomfort. You see, society says to you, if you are uncomfortable and if you're suffering, there's something wrong. What I'm suggesting to you is when you study exceptional performance, you will realize that all masters suffered. Going to your limits is scary. Challenging your safe harbor is uncomfortable. But what I'm suggesting to you with deep respect is if you're not uncomfortable a lot, you're not doing very much. If you're not scared a lot, you're not making much progress. And so this second point is so key, which is I want you to pursue discomfort. I want you to remember. Remember that when you go to your edges, the edges of your potential, the edges of your capability, the edges of your mindset, the edges of your genius, your genius expands, and society, and maybe even your peers will say to you, why are you putting yourself in such dangerous, uncomfortable places? Is something wrong with you? And what I'm saying to you or suggesting to you is if you look at the Picassos and the Beckhams and the triathletes and the Olympic gold medalists, these are people who understood that when you go to the edges of your capability, your capability expands.

I was in Switzerland three weeks ago. I was in a little rustic village called Lausanne. Lausanne, Switzerland. Probably. I don't know. It was about an hour and a half by train from Geneva.

And.

I met up with my ski instructor from New Zealand, who I skied with at the Remarkables in Coronet Peak. I'm sure we've got people on the webinar from New Zealand. So in 2009, I skied in Coronet Peak and at the Remarkables. And so he was teaching in Lausanne this season. So I went to hang out with him. I went to ski with him for a week. And on the first day, Michelle. His name is Michelle, he takes me up to.

The top of one of the Swiss Alps at this resort. And I was frightened out of my mind. And please don't think for one second just because I am leading this webinar, I'm any different from you. I'm just a simple guy who teaches elite performance and who teaches people how to live their absolute best. And I was frightened. So when I was at the top of this mountain with him, my tendency was to lean back into the mountain. And any of you who are skiers, you know that when you're scared out of your mind, the reptilian brain, which is the part of the brain responsible for fear, it starts to scream. And so, literally, I froze up on the top of the mountain. And what he said to me, he said, rabu, commit to the mountain. Lean into your fear. I mean, that's worth writing down, isn't it? Commit to the mountain. Lean into your fear.

Something really interesting happened when I just trusted the mountain. And when I did what was so counterintuitive, rather than clinging to safety on the mountain, I leaned into the mountain. I started to get some angularity and I started to edge into the mountain. And I actually skied down that mountain in great safety. And my point is simply this.

The seduction of safety. The seduction of safety is more dangerous than the perception of uncertainty. I'm going to repeat that again because I think it's unbelievably important for you and me. The seduction of safety. When it comes to our work and our lives and our dreams, that seduction of safety is actually more dangerous than the perception of uncertainty. And so point number two is really go for what's dangerous. Go to the places where your fear lives. That's where your growth lies. That's where your performance lies. The project you're most resisting is the project you need to do right now. The dream that most frightens you is the dream you want to do as soon as you finish up today. Number three.

Third big idea is I think it's your natural responsibility to be great. And I think for you not to do whatever it takes to learn how to run your mind like a superstar and to make this your absolute best year yet. I think for you not to invest in becoming the person you know you're meant to be. I think for you to play small with your life, for you to go to work and coast, for you not to do things that are difficult for you not to lean into your fear, for you not to read, for you not to invest in your learning, for you not to populate your life with people who are better thinkers than you.

Is being out of integrity. And I think it's being out of integrity to you, to your family and to the world.

And I know mostly we don't talk about high performance and peak potential in terms of integrity. But you have a personal obligation, as do I, to be the best human being and to express the gifts and the talents you were born with. And if you don't do that because you've fallen into mediocrity or because you've bought a bill of goods that the world has sold you, that your average, that you're average, that you're ordinary, that the Beckhams and the Jay Z's and the Mandelas are somehow different from you, well, that's just not true. And you are breaching your own integrity and your own responsibility. And if I do the same Thing, I'm equally responsible because the world is less of a place and your family is less happy because you are not living at your best. And related to that willpower and expressing your potential and playing it genius and creating a life that's legendary is actually the secret to happiness. I went for a little walk before the webinar and I thought to myself.

Full expression of your willpower is really how you express your genius and how you express the genius you were born into. But it's also the secret to happiness. I mean, we watch Breaking Bad or we drink too much or we gossip too much, or we spend too much time on the Internet and we think we're doing that to keep us happy. And you've read my books and you've followed me. So, you know, I believe that victims love entertainment, leaders love education. You know, ordinary people love leisure. Extraordinary people invest in their learning. I mean, I look at the best of the best. I look at the billionaires that I've coached, NBA players who follow my work. Taylor Swift reads my books. FC Barcelona reads the Monk who Sold his Ferrari. Jon Bon Jovi read the Monk who Sold His Ferrari. And I say that simply to share with you. If you look at the best of the best, they are the best of the best. And full of passion and excellence and exuberance because they stretch, because they want to be the best. Let's go to the science. Every time you do something uncomfortable, every single time you exercise self control and willpower, you release a neurotransmitter called dopamine. Dopamine is the secret to happiness. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter of motivation. And it doesn't happen playing Grand Theft Auto 5. It doesn't happen gossiping at the water cooler. It doesn't happen being addicted to distraction. Dopamine is released when you do difficult things, when you are focused, when you achieve a small win and you say, yeah, I did it.

I know I'm excited. I know I love this material and I hope it's interesting and valuable to you. Fourth, big idea on success is the goal is the process. I need to get into the science of willpower. So let me just finish up on these five foundational ideas. Number four. The goal is the process. Don't get too hung up on achieving your goals this year. More important than achieving your goals. Whether it's the new house, whether it's losing £25, whether it's getting the promotion, whether it's finding the love of your life, those goals are great. But the Real value of the goal is what the process towards the goal makes of you. Key point. And if you look at the Beckhams and the Mozarts and the Zuckerberg and the Warren Buffetts and the Jon Bon Jovi's, those people are more in love with the process of mastery. I mean, you know, Bach and Beethoven and Shakespeare were in love with the process of moving towards mastery versus the accolades that fame brought. And then the final idea is really, please remember that the secret of all great success lies not in transformation, but in evolution. Here's what I mean by that. I call it the super tiny win effect. The super tiny win effect. If you want to get to world class, productivity, creativity, performance, it's much less about doing something huge on one sunny Wednesday and much more about consistent, improving and making small, tiny wins every single day over time.

And so what I would say to you, it's a key brain tattoo, but small daily improvements over time lead to stunning success. You want to wire that in as a key guiding belief or brain tattoo. Small daily improvements over time lead to stunning success. And so if you look at Apple and you look at Amazon and you look at Google and you look at Mozart, you look at Shakespeare and you look at Madonna and you look at Lady Gaga and you look at Ferran Adria, the great chef, and you look at any exceptional performer and their lives and their productivity and their results are much more about little tiny wins. There's a great article in the Harvard Business Review called.

That talks about the small win theory, but success and mastery is much more about small, daily little wins over time that amount to a tsunami of great results.

Slow and steady consistency wins the race. I want to get into after these big ideas, I want to get into the science of willpower. And you want to fasten your seatbelts. I want you to turn up your listening. Now, you might want to just get some movement going, but this is game changing. Share what I'm going to share with you right now, with your family, with your team, with your customers, with your kids especially. I mean, imagine if this was in school. So let me get into the latest science of willpower. Number one, willpower is like a muscle versus an inherited quality.

What people like Roy Baumeister, one of the preeminent researchers in the neurobiology of willpower, has found is willpower is like a muscle. And neuroscientists have found that willpower lives in a part of the brain. You really want to pay attention to this called the prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal Cortex. And so what researchers have found is we're not born into willpower. When you see people getting up at 5 o', clock running or building financial fortunes, or people with, you know, they just develop a schedule and then they run their plan, they are no different from you. I say that with such respect. That is a myth. You are not born with great willpower. It's like a muscle. The first point is you can build willpower because it's like a muscle. There's this part of the brain called the prefrontal cortex. And as you flex the prefrontal cortex and I'm going to share how, as you develop it like a muscle, the gray cells and the neural connections within the prefrontal cortex start to grow. And neuroscientists call this neuroplasticity. In other words, the idea that your brain is fixed, that you have to have the brain you were born with, is a myth. It's a lie. It's been debunked by science. The fixed brain theory is not true anymore. Neuroscientists are realizing that you actually have a growth brain and that the brain you have right now, all 24,922 of us on this webinar, I guess with me it's.

24,923. We don't have the brains we were born into. We have the brains we have earned.

And as you start to learn that and practice neuroplasticity and work, work on the part of the brain, the prefrontal cortex responsible for self control, you have more self control. To me that's a game changing insight and I call it the London Cabbie syndrome. And here's why.

London cab drivers were studied and the part of the brain responsible for spatial reasoning was found to be larger than the part of the brain responsible, responsible for spatial reasoning in most people. And that's if you've ever been to London. It's because of the complexity of London streets. The London Cabbie syndrome, the fact that their brains were bigger on the part relating to spatial reasoning confirms that your brain can grow. And it's an example of neuroplasticity. So on this point, you want to get into a program of willpower training. You want to start thinking about training your willpower, training your brain. And here's another game changing insight. I mean.

This is truly an epic point. I know I wrote that it takes 21 days to build a habit. Other people have written it, we've all heard it. It's not true. And I'm growing I'm learning. I learned that years ago. Here's what the latest science, according to the University College London has said, it takes 66 days to install a new habit. 66 days to work on your prefrontal cortex, to wire in getting up at 5 o'. Clock, to wire in not having dessert. To wire in scheduling your week. To wire in all the things that I teach my elite level coaching clients that allowed them to be some of the most successful people in the world. World. 66 days. And here's a key word, 66 days for automaticity. 66 days of practice. So what do most of us do? We say, yeah, I want to start getting up early, I want to start getting to the gym, I want to start working harder, I want to start saving more money, I want to stop gossiping, I want to read every night rather than watching too much TV. And ladies and gentlemen, we do it for five days or 10 days and it gets uncomfortable and we give up.

But you need 66 days to overcome the escape velocity of your habits. You need 66 days to wire in the new neural pathway so that it's automatic. And again, that word, automaticity. Think about automaticity. 66 days to wire in a new habit that will serve you incredibly well for a lifetime. Okay, second thing, we're learning from.

The science of willpower. The more choices you make, the less willpower you will have. The more choices you make, the less willpower you will have.

Roy Baumeister, the preeminent researcher on willpower, he calls it ego depletion. And what he's found is this. When you wake up in the morning, you have a full well of willpower. And that's why in the morning, for most of us, we make better choices. And that's why for most of us, we make our worst choices from 10 o' clock at night to midnight. And what Roy Baumeister is teaching us through this concept of ego depletion is as you go through your day and you're making choices like picking up your cell phone and answering the phone and calling your partner and picking up the phone and calling a customer, you're making all these choices. And because of all of these choices, you're exerting your willpower. And because you're going through your whole day exerting and exercising your finite supply of willpower, by the time 10 o' clock rolls around, you're suffering from what he calls ego depletion. I hope I'm making sense here, but to me it's incredibly powerful, which is the more choices you make during your day, the less willpower you will have at the end of your day. Related to that, the more choices you make on things that are unimportant, the less choices and the less willpower you will have for the things that are truly important. And to me that's an absolute game changing insight. And that's why people like Einstein, you'd say, einstein, what's your phone number? And they, you'd say, I don't know. I mean, if you ask me my home phone number, I can hardly remember it because I personally, and I'm no guru, I'm no different from you, but I have built my life around minimalism. And basically I only make a few choices. I try to make as few choices as possible so I don't deplete my finite supply of willpower. And so therefore I have a ton of willpower for the few things that are most important. Okay, so ego depletion. And studies have been done, people who make more choices when.

Their hands are put into cold water, which is a standard test of willpower, they pull it out more quickly based on the more choices they have to make. Okay, number four, Self awareness is the DNA of transformation.

I wish we had a day to talk about this. But the fourth thing that the science of willpower is teaching us is between stimulus and response, between being offered the cake and saying yes or no, between a temptation and your behavior, you have a 25 second window of opportunity. And in that window of opportunity, the more you can become aware, you see, most of us, key point, most of us go through our days on autopilot. We're making thousands of choices, thousands. And most of us aren't even aware of all the choices we're making. So the more awareness you can start building, the more you can start thinking about your thoughts and your behaviors through journaling, reflection, personal development, contemplation. It's really powerful to start thinking about these things. The more that when that stimulus, that temptation shows up like the chocolate, like wanting to go back to bed at 5 o' clock when you know you should go for a run, the temptation of too much alcohol, too much gossip, too much distraction, literally you can say in that 0.25 second window of opportunity, you can make a better choice. And, and the more you practice that, in that 0.25 second window for opportunity that I call the growth point, you start to develop, remember the prefrontal cortex, more gray matter. And you start to build that muscle through neuroplasticity. And as you build the prefrontal cortex through flexing your will in the 0.25 second window of opportunity. As that gets bigger, you have more willpower as you keep on practicing it every day. Of course you are going to develop epic world class levels of willpower.

Before I get into tactics, let me give you. I don't know if you want this, but let me give you the three miracle drugs of willpower. Based on the science. The three miracle drugs of willpower. Anyone want that? I'm sure everyone does. Number one. And based on science. This is not anecdotal. None of this is motivation. This is hard hitting science research. Based on my 17 years of working with the best of the best, influencing the NBA players, the NFL players, the rock stars, the royalty, the CEOs I work with and the clients we work with like Nike, FedEx, General Electric, IBM, Oracle, Yale University, etc. Okay, the three miracle drugs. Number one, meditation. Meditation. There was one recent study that said one hour. This is incredible. One hour. Only one hour of meditation. I'm not talking about a year of meditation. One hour of meditation was. The subjects were studied. Eleven hours later, the prefrontal cortex, the area of the brain responsible for self control, had grown significantly. In the group that meditated, only one hour. Obviously you want to work in meditation every day. But what it has been found is this. The bottom line. Meditation grows your prefrontal cortex. Is that not incredible? Is that not incredible? Meditation will grow your prefrontal cortex. And as your prefrontal cortex grows, automatically your willpower increases. And then you start finding you have the power to make better choices. You have the power to resist temptations. You have the power to get giant things done. You get the power to stick to your plan. You get the power to do the things that are most important to you. The second miracle drug, according to the science, to build willpower. And you'll love this one, it's exercise. Exercise has been called the wonder drug of willpower. One of the great researchers in the brain the effects of exercise on the brain is John Ratey, MD. And he's written a brilliant book called Spark. And he called exercise Miracle grow for the brain. But here's what the science has found. There was one study that said 15 minutes on an exercise. 15 minutes. 15 minutes on a treadmill. 15 minutes will grow your prefrontal cortex. 15 minutes on a treadmill every day will reduce your cravings. If you don't believe me, and I know you do, go for a run or go for a walk and you will find that your cravings for sugar automatically start to degrade, decrease. So the second miracle drug for willpower is exercise. And again, like meditation, ladies and gentlemen, exercise increases the part of the brain responsible for willpower. What is it? Your prefrontal cortex. And then number three.

Sleep. Those of us who are sleep deprived suffer from a syndrome called mild prefrontal dysfunction. I'm giving you the science. I said this would be intense. But I want you to know these breakthroughs, this is cutting edge neurobiological, neuroscientific information on building great willpower. Why? So you can be a Beckham, so you can get great things done. Because like the Sistine Chapel, like a great business, like a great life, all of those great achievements are based on willpower. And so the third thing you really want to do is get great sleep. Otherwise you suffer from this mild prefrontal dysfunction. And that's why when you're exhausted, you can't make great choices. It's also been shown that when you're exhausted, there's the release of a neurotransmitter called cortisol, which increases your cravings. Okay, I'm going to go to some questions here. Questions are piling in and then I'm going to give you some tactics and then we'll going to move towards the end. The tactics are really where the ideas hit the road. You do not want to miss these because ideas are valueless without execution. Okay, so I'm going to give you some tactics. Let me go to some questions here. So I have Jasmine, how can I maintain discipline everywhere where there's so much interaction? Well, that's sort of what I'm suggesting, Jasmine, which is.

You have to start small. Start small by making some commitments. When I start talking about the tactics, I'm going to talk about pre commitment strategies. You might say, to avoid some of the distraction that 9 o' clock to 12 o' clock every single day you will turn off your technology. You might say to yourself, Tuesdays and Thursdays, you will work in a distraction free zone. I mean, you have to start building some structures into your life to get rid of these distractions. Let me go to another question here.

What amount of sleep? What role does sleep play in maintaining willpower? I just addressed that one. So that comes from Jayesh. Let me see some more questions here.

One more question. Can we get an example of going to the edge of your comfort zone so your comfort zone expands? Absolutely.

Let's say.

You read a book a week. You go to your edge by reading three books a week. Let's Say another example, you are working at a certain level in your performance as a sales professional, as an entrepreneur, how do you go to your edge? Well, you start doing the things that are hard. You start asking for the big orders. You start innovating. You ask yourself questions like, what is the one thing that if I did, it would take our sales to the next level of sales? Going to your edge is literally asking yourself, how can I amplify and multiply the results that I'm getting? Another example of going to your edge. Go to your edge physically. If you study the Navy SEALs. I mean, Navy SEALs are great examples of willpower. They go to their edge by running farther than they've ever run, eating less than they've ever eaten. They have something called hell Week. I think over a whole week they sleep something like eight hours. I'm not recommending that. I'm simply saying, physically, you go to your edge by doing the things that are most uncomfortable. Mentally, you go to your edge by training yourself by saying things like, I'm going to go 24 hours without complaining or I'm going to go 24 hours with no TV or I'm going to go 24 Hours with no Twitter or no Facebook. So you go to your edge by doing things that are difficult and by giving yourself tests that are uncomfortable and that push you to build your capabilities. Let me get into some tactics, and these are key right here.

First tactic. Well, if rest is so important to willpower, then why don't we build rest into our lives? And so the term I want to offer to you is called ritualized refueling. Ritualized refueling.

How do you avoid ego depletion? You build rest into your days. Here's a game changer. Work in 90 minute increments. If you get to work and it's 8 o', clock, pull out your phone or pull out a clock or your smartphone and set it for 90 minutes. And for those 90 minutes, work in an intense burst of total focus and performance. Performance. And then take 10 minutes and rest. This comes. I wish we had more time, but this comes from studying Olympic athletes. And the best Olympic athletes were all practicing something called periodicity. They would perform in incredible bursts of total focus. And they would rest and renew. As you go through your day, do 90 minutes. 10 minutes off. 90 minutes, go for a walk. 90 minutes, meditate. 90 minutes, go for lunch. Second thing. Every day, every week. One day. No technology, no work. Total rest, total recovery. I know this is a bit disruptive. Every six weeks, take a weekend off or take a week Off. If you're an entrepreneur and you can run your own business, but you will find then that you have much higher amounts of self discipline by building rest into your days, into your weeks and your months. Second tactic. If exercise is one of the three wonder drugs of willpower, then every day you want to do some form of movement and exercise. Here's what I Recommend. The first 20 minutes of your day, you absolutely must exercise again. Exercise will then grow the prefrontal core cortex, which automatically, as that becomes more dense, more gray matter, you will have more willpower. First 20 minutes of your day in exercise, it could be skipping, it could be doing burpees, it could be doing push ups, it could be swimming, it could be going for a run, you can just do it in your bedroom. But 20 minutes, an absolute red line. At the beginning of your day, watch what happens in terms of your willpower.

Number three, in terms of a tactic, the vocabulary of can. Your words are powerful. You cannot develop world class willpower. You cannot create epic results. Saying I can't all day long. I hate this. I'm not someone who can exercise. I'm just weak. Your words are unbelievably powerful. And so no more victim speak. Start using the vocabulary. If I can, I will do this. I will get a bit disciplined. Start using declarations every day to rewire your mindset. I am a disciplined person.

I am. I don't know. I have a will of iron and a mind of steel. Repeat that 100 times a day. So you start reprogramming, programming your self identity and your self consciousness. Fourth tactic, Deliberate minimalism. Deliberate minimalism. I spoke about that.

High performance, productivity, getting giant things done is much less about what you do and much more about what you don't do. You really want to make this year the year you become a master of the diplomatic? No. Steve Jobs said, you know, at Apple we're more proud or just as proud of the things we said no to as the things we said yes to. And if you look at Beckham and you look at Tiger woods and you look at Mandela and you look at Mother Teresa and you look at Bach and you look at Shakespeare and you look at Lady Gaga and you look at Buffet, they all had one thing in common. They had a monomaniacal focus on one or two things. And again, let's go to Roy Baumeister. Ego depletion. If you're making choices, too many choices, then you're going to have less willpower to make choices on the things that are most important and what Was the term. He called it ego depletion. All geniuses and all masters have literally built lives of simplicity, so they avoid ego depletion. And basically, they make only a few choices around the best things, which gives them huge amounts of willpower. And so this year, if you want this to be the best year of your life, I want this to be the single greatest year of your life yet. Strip out complexity. Pursue simplicity. Start practicing deliberate minimalism.

Rather than 50 books this year, master one book rather than 30 projects this year, master one project this year rather than 50 friends, why not have one amazing friend? Rather than trying to be great at all things? I mean, Confucius said it beautifully, a thousand times better than I ever could. He said, the person who chases two rabbits catches neither. Deliberate minimalism will prevent this syndrome of ego depletion from depleting your willpower. So you have the willpower to be brilliant in just a few things.

What else? In terms of tactics, elevate your associations.

Again, I wish I had more time with you, but please read about something called emotional contagion. Emotional contagion. And science is finding that we are a bunch of animals. Even our species, as human beings, we are a bunch of animals. And we pick up on the emotions of the people around us. And through a new type of brain cell that neuroscientists are recognizing called mirror neurons, automatically, we behave like the people we spend most of our time with. It worked really well when we were on the savannah, in a herd, in a tribe, because we would model the people who were the survivors. We would model the people who discovered fire. We would model the most powerful person in the herd. But now, here it is in modern society, and we've forgotten that we become our conversations. We become and behave like the people we associate with what I'm suggesting to you. And it's so powerful. But your performance and your results are a mirror reflection of the 10 people you spend most of your time with. And the science behind it is mirror neurons and emotional contagion. And so if you spend time with weak people, if you spend time with gossips, if you spend time with takers, if you spend time with victims, it'll be no surprise why you are a victim. And I pray that you can make a commitment right now in this webinar, all 25,000 of us from 50 countries or whatever, how many countries are on this call? On this webinar, let us shift from any form and any realm of mediocrity and start playing in the club of mastery. And you know, this, but to have the results only 5% have, you must be willing to do what only 5% are willing to do. And you must live a contrarian life and you must start cleaning out your false associations. Okay, and then the final thing I'm going to share with you is in terms of the tactic is mess free environments. I'm here at my office right now. But if you were to look at my our office. Thank you to my team. By the way, I've got a great team, incredible support on this webinar. But if you were to look at my office, if you were to come to my office home, you would see minimalism and I just don't want mess around me. If you look at Steve Jobs, when he exited Apple and he was building next computer, he wanted everything in that workplace white and stark. If you look at our office, I am a fanatic about a mess free environment. I just read a research report that sort of proves here's what was found. Those in a control group that were in a disorganized laboratory scored lower on willpower and self control and focus than those that were working that were studied in a clean and organized laboratory. And my point is simply this mess creates stress. If your workplace is a mess, if your home is a mess, if your life is a mess, you will have far less willpower. So one of the best things you can do for the next 30 days is to clean out your messes and go minimalist. Well, that was a lot of information, a lot of hopefully inspiration, a lot of tactics, hopefully a lot of science. And so people are always asking me, robin, we've heard you. We feel like we want to change the world.

Maybe I've betrayed some of my potential. I want to live an epic life. What do we do next? How do we sustain what you've given to us?

People have been saying, where do we go? What's next? So I'm super excited to share something incredibly important with you and to tell you about an incredible opportunity. A few weeks ago, I opened up doors to my famous online course, your absolute best year yet. It's a course that I'm really proud of because of the thousands of people around the world who have used this online course to build financial fortunes, grow their confidence. We have so many testimonials from people currently in the program who've lost 30 pounds, 40 pounds, run triathlons, some people had diseases through the program. It gave them insights and confidence to start dealing with that. People were in jobs they didn't like and they learned how to get their confidence back, their focus back and their power back to create better businesses or create better opportunities in their professional lives. And so we're going to be closing doors for another year very, very shortly. And so what I wanted to do is more than anything else, I want this to be the absolute best year of your life. And your absolute best year yet is an extraordinary vehicle. It's an extraordinary resource for you to make this year the single greatest year of your life yet. I mean, you definitely do not want this year to be a repeat of last year. But you know this. If you don't make some new choices, if you don't make some new commitments, then this year will be last year and next year will be the same year. And you do not want to get to the last hour of your last day and say, I coasted through life and I left most of my potential, my genius, my willpower, my passion, my love on the table. And so I want to tell you about this program that's really taken me 17 years of working at this to really bring together in your absolute best year yet. It's an online program like I'm sharing with you. First of all, you get nine life changing video modules that my private coaching clients pay $12,000 for. So you get all nine of these modules for the lifetime. You can watch them for the lifetime of the site, these nine video watches. You then get 12 webinars, 12 pre recorded webinars which walk you through how to build epic willpower, how to unleash your confidence, how to think like a Navy seal. So your mindset's unbeatable. I mean it's a complete system from A to Z for personal development, Self mastery, building a legendary life. This year you get those 12 webinars, how to double productivity. There's another one on the specific habits of the ultra rich. There's another one on building epic levels of confidence based on the science, you know how powerful this information is. And then there are 18 bonus webinars. If you register for your absolute best year yet right now, closing doors shortly, you're going to get 18 bonus webinars. And why do I do that? Because anything I do, I want to give you 10 times the value of your investment. Otherwise I don't want to even be involved in it. So I want to give you 10 times the value of what your investment is in this personal development program, this personal transformation program. So I'm giving you 18 teleseminars as well on personal mastery, how to be a genius. What's most Important in life and how do you live a life that's truly legendary? So the program in terms of real value is worth over $20,000. This is not some pie in the sky number. This is real value, over $20,000. Before we close doors, I want you to know this. I'm offering the entire program right now. So that's all nine webinars, all 12 pre recorded webinars, sorry, the nine video modules, the 12 pre recorded webinars, the 18 teleseminars, as well as there's a community right now on the site, there are thousands of people interacting, supporting, sharing. We need that to get to our absolute best. So you actually get membership in the community as well. So it's all $477. Why do I do that? Why do I give you a program that's worth over $20,477? Why do I take all the risk and put it on my own shoulders by giving you a 30 day money back guarantee? I mean, join the program right now. If you're lucky enough to get one of the remaining memberships before we close the doors, go into the program. If after 30 days, it's not everything I said, you don't love it, we'll give you your money back, no questions asked. Why am I doing that? Because I want you to, to try the program. I want you to go, just be fair to me, go through the material, go through the program because you will see how powerful it is and it will start giving you results that you haven't been able to see in years and it will inspire you and it will give you the kinds of game changing insights that you have received on this webinar. There's a button on the right of your screen. Click on the button. Closing doors shortly. There's roughly 25,000 people on this webinar right now. So obviously not everyone is going to be able to get one of the last block of memberships before we close doors. If I were you, I encourage you, get off the fence. There's absolutely no risk to this 30 day money back guarantee. Thousands of people have changed their lives with your absolute best year yet. Click on the button that says go ahead and I will see you in the program. And you're going to actually start the program today and you can start interacting with the people in the program today. And you will totally be blown away by the value that I'm given and how much I'm trying to help in this program. If the program's not right for you, no problem. I hope I've given you tens, if not 50 plus ideas in the webinar that will help you build world class willpower. But if you're ready to make this year the single greatest year for your life yet, I want to work with you. I would love to serve you and I would love to teach you and walk you through how to make this year the year you changed the game so that you started living your potential. So that you don't get to the end and say, my music is still within me. And I coasted along and I was busy being busy, but I didn't change the world. And I think that's the true definition of heartbreak. So for everyone from around the world who has made time for your valuable day to be with me here on this world class Willpower webinar, I don't do these very often. This was the first global one I've ever done. I want to say thank you. I want to say go get your dreams. I want to say remember that you were born into genius. Clean out any mediocrity. I want to remind you that it's your responsibility to go out there and express your best for your family and and for the world. And I want to wish you every possible success this year. Green lights. My very best. 100 thanks for giving me the gift of your time. I hope the webinar has been a vehicle of service and I hope I've been helpful. Take great care and I'll see you very soon. Bye. Bye.