The Psychology of Self-Motivation | How to Talk Yourself into Achieving Success | Dean Graziosi

If not this, what? If not now, when? If not me, who? If not this, what? Say it when you're alone. Say it to yourself. Say it out loud. Go take a walk. But when you say it to the world, it comes back, and it gives you this visceral feeling that it's hard to explain. So I want to tell you the story with Joe Stump. He came to my house. I hired him as a consultant to help me in my business. I wanted my students to get even more results. He said, have you ever done the seven levels deep? I said, I don't know what it is. He said, let's do it. I said, just tell me. I'll give it to my students. He goes, no, I want to go through it with you when he gets there. Just like I said, why are you here? Who would say, you're here because you'd like to make more money? Raise your hand if you'd like to make more money or make more impact on the world. Raise your hand if you'd like to have your relationship on another level, Your health on another level. Right. That's a why. I'm here because I want my health to be better. I'm here because I'm sick of procrastinating. I'm here because I want to launch my business. I'm here because I want to reach my goals. He said to me, why did you give me ten grand to be a consultant here? And I remember saying something like, I want to impact more lives. He said, great. So he writes down, I asked you why we're here, and you said, you want to impact more lives. Why do you want to impact more lives? Oh, you know, I want to raise the standards of this industry. I remember saying, to a whole other level. He said, oh, that's a good one. I asked you why you paid me. You want your students to get more results, and you want to raise the standards of this industry. Great. Why do you want to raise the standards of this industry? I remember saying something like, I want to leave a legacy for my kids and expand my business. I don't even know what the next couple were. I was kind of in my head, which most of you are, when I say, why are you here? If the first answer of why you're here, it's usually not the true why. And I want to tell you, this is how I felt it. Kay, I see you shaking your head. When I first got asked, it was like, in my head. And then all of a sudden, he got to the fifth time he asked me, oof. Everything changed. It went from my. It was like I felt this physical, this physiology. I felt my physiology change. Like I felt it go from my head to go boom and landed in my heart. And he said to me, why? Why? Whatever. My fourth answer was, he said, why? And I remember I said something I had never said before. I said, I never want to go backwards now. I don't know. I don't know where that came from because it had never come out of my mouth before. But when I said that, I felt an emotion that you couldn't believe. And all of a sudden these things started flooding into my life. I. I didn't like my mom working three jobs and coming home at 9 o' clock at night. Me and my sister were latchkey kids. We'd come home and do our homework, do the laundry and probably make dinner. My sister more than me, but make dinner for my mom, right? I didn't want to go back there. I remember my mom struggling for money. I remember when we got evicted from our trailer because my mom couldn't afford it anymore. I remember my mom and dad, they split when I was three, but they would still fight over money because my dad didn't give enough and all that kind of stuff. I just had all these things flooding into me, like, I don't want to go back there. I remember wishing to go to fancy restaurants, wishing we could go on a real vacation. Man, my life is amazing and I have choices. I am not going backwards. I remember this feeling and I remember getting emotional. I'm not going backwards. I thought I was done. And then he looked at me and said, I want you to really think, because I'm asking you this. I want you to think through for you again. If you have accelerated, successful, and we go through this process, you have the forms, you have everything. But this will give you a good teaser of it, right? When he said, well, why don't you want to go backwards? Now I'm in my heart. I got tears filling up in my eyes. And I said something I had never said up to that time. I said, I want my kids to have choices. Now for those of you who have parents, you know what I'm talking about. Now I'm not talking about raising two entitled brats or three. Now the world doesn't need any more entitled children. Can we all agree on that? That's a fact. But I felt as a kid I didn't have choices and I wanted them to have choices. Now I'm completely emotional. I'm sitting around with his team and my Team. I remember where I was sitting outside at this big old table. I literally had tears coming down my face. And I just remember thinking, I want my kids to be able to do what they want and, like, impact the world. Not be lazy, not be entitled. But I want them to have choices. And I remember thinking, that's it. But it wasn't the six levels deep. It was the seven levels deep. And he said, dean, I asked you. And he repeated all the things I said. And he said you didn't want to go backwards. You. You want your kids to have choices. Dean, why do you want your kids to have choices? And I remember I said my why. For the first time in my life, it still stick with me. It's 14 years ago, and I still do this exercise every single year. I said, I want to be in control of my life now. I don't mean a control freak. And everybody's got their own why. This is my why. What? My control. What came flooding back into my soul and my body at that moment is that I was out of control. I moved 20 times by the time I was 19. I had stepbrothers, stepsisters, step parents, step mom, stepdad. I had steps that were so amazing. Leo and Martha Rizzo. They took me hunting and fishing and cooked for me. They were part of my life for like, five years. But then I was out of control. I had to move. Move in with dad, move in with grandma, move to a different school. I was so out of control as a kid. I had no decision making. Not that maybe kids shouldn't. This is what landed for me. I decided in that moment that no one is going to tell me what I can do with my time, how I raise my children. I wear a gray T shirt every day of my life. Why? Because I'm in control of that decision. I live where I want. I. I go on vacation when I want, and no one tells me. I can't listen. Every day my children are with me. I can't today because I'm with you. But when my kids are with me, every day, I pick them up from school. Every day my kids are with me, it's exactly half. I get them a week. They go with their mom for a week. When they're with me, I drive my kids to school every single day. I still make my kids lunches every single morning and still put a little note even though they're getting so old, they're kind of fed up with it. I do it every day. I take them to school, I drive them to school. I take my kids to every practice. My son plays baseball. My daughter plays softball. Why? Because that car time is priceless. There's no electronics. I learn about their friends. I learn about who they like, what they're doing. I learn about school, I learn about their teachers. No one is ever going to tell me, sorry, we're in the middle of something. You can't go pick up your daughter today. Screw that. I will chew through a brick wall. I will melt steel. There is no one going to take that control away from me. I live the way I want, I dress the way I want. I raise my children the way I want. I date my wife the way I want. And no one's going to take. And that is so powerful for me that I would die for that. I would literally die to be the father and the husband and the leader and the team leader. I want to be. That why is so ingrained in my heart that nothing can stop me now. What is your why you got to go through this process? I don't know if it affected you today, it might not be in your heart right now, but I want to tell you, this is the biggest game changer. I used to do this exercise on stage for about five years straight. Every month we had a big old event in Las Vegas. I would fly down there and I would pick people to come on stage. And I just remember this story. And again, those of you that already have accelerated success formula, you know, I tell the story and others to really anchor it in. But this gentleman comes up on stage. Cool, good looking dude, probably like six foot five, dreadlocks, just like, just so cool, so good looking guy comes up on stage. I call him up. And I used to call someone up every month and I'd go through this process with them live. So I call him up and he raises his hand. I'm like, come on up. There's hundreds and hundreds of people in the audience. I sit him down and I said, let's get to your why. He's like, ah, you called on me, Dean. I already know my why. I'm like, oh, crap. Because the transformation is usually huge. People get to see the transformation through someone else. And I'm like, damn. He's like, I already know my why. I'm like, all right, so why are you here? He's like, because I need to make more money. I know I need to get my head straight. I need to make more money because in my neighborhood where I grew up as a kid, he said, there's not enough dads. There's Hardly any dads. I didn't have a dad. And it's still the same way in that neighborhood. So I built this charitable arm where he had dads. How cool is this? Dads going into this program on weekends and adopting a kid for just hours at a time. Like big brother, probably, but his own thing. And he was doing his community. It was so beautiful, guys. So beautiful. And he was smiling. He's like, I know my why. And that's a good one, right? That's a good one. And I said, I'm going to just keep going. There's got to be something deeper. It's got to be something deeper for those tough days when things go sideways and they're gonna. You need a why so strong that it. When people say they need a time management program, you don't need time management. You need a stronger why. Hear me on that. You don't need time management. You don't need to be younger. You don't need to be older. You don't need tech to be easier. You to don't need. You need a strong enough why that gets your ass out of the seat, and you take the uncomfortable action and you boldly move forward even though you're scared to death. And your why will do that. Hear me on that. When I have a tough day, I don't say I want to make another million bucks. I go, my kids deserve choices. I am not going backwards, and no one's going to control my life. Boom. I do the things even if I don't want to. So this guy comes up on stage. Awesome. He tells me that. I ask him why. I ask him why. I don't know if it was the third time I. The fourth time, the fifth time, I get to a moment, and I realized I got him. He didn't have his why figured out. He thought he did. I said, why do you want whatever? He said. I said, why do you want to do that? And I watched him go from this to this. And all of a sudden, tears start coming down his face. And I was so happy that he would be so open. And he said, wow, you got me, Dean. He said, when my mom was alive, I was a drug addict. She raised me as a single mom with nothing. She taught me better than that. She got me to go to college. She did all these things for me. She sacrificed her life for me. And at the time she died, I was doing drugs. And he said, the moment she passed away, I have not done a drug since, and I'm going to make my mom Proud in heaven. And I say that to this day. I can get emotional thinking about it because I felt his emotion and I felt that why? And I'm not trying to make people cry. I'm trying to get you so in your heart for him. He's going to face hard days. People are going to tell him he's crazy. He's going to feel like an imposter on the inside. And those are the days you need to pull this emotion. If he says, well, I just want to create this charity, I, well, the grant didn't come through. I don't think I can. When he looks up to the sky and says, I'm going to make that woman proud, you think someone who turns down his loan is going to stop him? Or someone saying, you can't meet at this hall is going to stop him? Nothing will stop him. When I look at my children and say, I'm going to do what I want when I want to do it with them, do you think anything could get in my way? A bulldozer couldn't stop me. So go back to the whiteboard. If we know where we are and then we know where we want to go, if we do the emotion of why, then nothing can stop us. When I said this before, I really want you to hear me When I said this before about a strong enough why can make you unstoppable, I meant it when I said you don't need a time management program, you don't need an anti procrastination program, you don't need to be younger, you don't need to be older, you don't need to do less tech. You need a why so strong that your resourcefulness. Hear these words. Your why is so strong that your resourcefulness is a 10 out of 10. Because when you have a strong enough desire, you could figure out anything. Is that true? Is that true? Let me hear it. Is that true? Say it in the chat if that's true. Right? So if you know where you are and where you want to go and then you attach an emotion to it. Damn. We're almost there. We're almost there. The next thing, I added a couple quick things I want to share with you in here. The fourth one. I want you to have a mantra or an incantation that is your 2022 calling cry. It is your battle cry for 2022. Now, you don't have to figure it out now, but I would love for you to figure this out. And I wrote down some simple ones because in I would say I told you I went broke. And it was probably 20 years ago that I made a big shift in my life. I went from being in the collision business and the auto sales business and apartments and real estate, into the self education industry. What I'm in now. And in that transition, it was difficult. It was before the Internet. So I had to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars for an infomercial and I had to put product in a warehouse. It's not like today's world where we're all connected online. Look what we're doing right now. Those things didn't exist. You wanted to do a live event, you had to spend the money, get an event. You wanted to sell a course, you had to create a $200,000 infomercial and buy media and all this stuff. And man, I was burning up all the money I had and it was just in a tough spot. And then the money I did have, I had an accountant at the time. Guy was 55 years old. Wow, the same age I'm almost now. Never gambled a day in his life. The guy started gambling, lost all his wife's money, went into my account to borrow money to go gamble to get it back. And without knowing, he burned up all the money I had. So now we hit a little hiccup. I go to the reserve money, it's all, all gone. And he hadn't paid bills for a couple months. Like I just happened to meet a guy at 55 who. Things went sideways in his life. And I remember like, there's no way I can get through this. And I started telling myself really shitty stories. And I remember feeling like, what am I going to do? And I'm going to look like a failure. And everybody who told me I was crazy for going in the self education industry was right. And all these kind of things, man, thank God for Tony Robbins, thank God for courses and getting my mindset in the right place. I remember going through all these processes that I'm sharing with you today. But one thing that really helped me is I remember taking a walk and I got this mantra in my head and I said, if I can get through this, I can get through anything. And I remember, excuse my language, I only swore once today. My mantra was, if I can get through this shit, I can get through anything. I'll leave the S word out for the rest of it. But that's what I was saying to myself. And I remember just walking every day. The gym was like two miles from my house and I'd walk to the gym and as crazy as this Sounds. I remember thinking, if I can get through this, I can get through anything. If I can get through this, I can get through anything. And I said it over and over. Like, literally, I'm walking down the street and I remember cars passing me. I had earbuds in and I'm just repeating this. Probably. People probably thought I absolutely lost my mind. But I remember thinking, if I can get through this, I can get through anything. And I just said it over and over. I would love for you to come up with a mantra for this year. Maybe it's, if not now, when? If not me, who? If not this, what? If not now, when? If not me, who? If not this, what? Say it when you're alone. Say it to yourself. Say it out loud. Go take a walk. But when you say it to the world, it comes back and it gives you this visceral feeling that it's hard to explain. This is my year because I'm going to be the man or the woman God meant me to be. I'm going to. This is the year I tap into my full potential. This is the year I make no excuses. I don't know what yours is, but I'm going to encourage you to find a simple one. That when you're having those tough days, you go back to your why. You let your why sink into your heart, that emotion. And then you repeat your mantra, get yourself back on track. Let me honestly right now, if I was going to judge your state, if a state, if 0 is lethargic, tired, defeated, I can't do this. Life sucks. And 10 is, I got this. I'm doing it. I feel it right now. Your state on a 1 to 10, where are you right now? 15, 20, 100. Thank you. 10 million, 100 million. Intense. All like, look at this. We had 1 5. Sorry. We'll get to you. Right? 10 hundred thousand. 10,000, 23. Right. I want to get you back to this state because this is the state where anything is possible. This is the state where you go, I got this. Hand the problems over to me. You can't handle it. I got it. This is the state where you're bold. This is the state we want to live in. So what are the things we can. What can we do to get us back in this state when we're having a tough day, Right? That's what we have to think. So come back over here. So if we know where we are with honesty, we know where we want to go. Pretending it's a year from now. It was the best year of our life, we write it down like crazy. That's where we want to go. If we know where we are and we know where we want to go. We have this gap that we have to fill before we get the capabilities to fill the gap. What do we need to do? We need to get into our hearts, we need to get into our emotion and we need to create a why so deep. You know, one of my students said once, if your why doesn't make you cry, you didn't go deep enough. And I'm not trying to say that, but you need a why that when you think about, you either get tears or goosebumps. And if you're not there, you got to go through the process. You got to go through the. I went through it quick today. But you got to go through the real process of the seven levels deep so you're so in line with it, so you're so connected to it that when you're having a tough day, when stuff goes sideways, because it will. When people don't believe in you because they won't, when every sign points that it's not going to work, that you're not going to accomplish it, you need to go back to this why and go, I don't care. Listen, you can't look at success through odds. You don't have the odds of being happy, healthy, wealthy. Who cares about odds? You throw the odds out, you have a compelling enough why, nothing can stop you. What's up? What's up? Hey, don't forget to look at the action steps we've posted below. They are the perfect way to take your success abundance in this crazy world to a whole another level.