Activate Your BEAST MODE and BEAT Your Biggest FEARS! | Evan Carmichael MOTIVATION

People aren't afraid of failing. You're afraid of failing in front of other people. You'll sing in the shower, but you won't sing on the street corner. You'll record a video, but you'll never release it. You'll be your own biggest critic, but you won't at the same time also be your own biggest fan. So my biggest fear is disappointing people. I'm terrified of disappointing people. The idea that you would come to my Thought Leadership Academy and I would teach you how to win on social media and get the ideas out of your head and pay $2,000 to do it. The idea that you would come and be disappointed destroys me. And I always overdeliver. I'm always obsessed. I'm always putting so much value to that. Even if you only get 10% of the value I'm giving, you still more than made the money that you invested into any of the stuff that I'm doing. But at the same time, it's still this fear. And so I want to attack the fear. I teach myself to attack the fear. And I think you should too.

Wanna soar? Get a mentor. Hey, it's Nina Carmichael. And we made these videos probably because you're the most ambitious person in your circle, but you know you're capable of much more and you get that push by surrounding yourself with the best. So today, let's learn from one of the best, my husband Evan Carmichael. This is everyone's biggest fear in life, and here's how to beat it. Enjoy!

An example was when I did my tour, 90 days, 23 cities, and I did a paid tour because I was afraid to do it. Initially, it was supposed to be a free tour. It was supposed to be coffee shop meetups across the US, low-res, super easy. If one person shows up, Great. If nobody shows up, awesome. If 100 people show up, great. There's no risk, right? It's free. You come, don't come, whatever. And my agent said, that's, that's playing it small. You got to charge for the event. And my first reaction was, oh my God, I can't charge for this event, right? Like choking up because I'm afraid, because I'm afraid that, that if I start charging for it, then I need to, I need to bring so much more value. And because that was the reason, then I had to go off and do it. If there was a strategic reason why I should do a free event, then that, that's fine. My next tour I'm looking at for 2020 is gonna be free, is gonna be ideally, fingers crossed, I get my book deal, it's gonna be at bookstores with my new book launch. So I want to do 20-something cities, East Coast, Texas, Mexico, with my book launch. And it's free to come, hopefully you buy a book, but it's, you know, not required. But it's free to come out because it's going to be supporting the book launch. That's a strategic reason why it should be free. I didn't have a good reason why the first one shouldn't be free, why the tour this year shouldn't be free. And so I had to do it. I had to step into the fear. You have to step into the fear and do it because you need to attack the thing that you're afraid of, especially when it's related to other people, right? I'm not afraid of failing. I'm afraid of failing in front of other people, right? I can suck all day here in the office, but I don't want to suck in front of somebody else. I don't want to make people feel like whether they're spending $50 to come and see me that was on tour or $2,000 to come see me at my Thought Leadership Academy here, I don't want people to feel disappointed. And because I feel that way, I need to step into it and I try to teach myself, attack it, attack it, attack it. If there's no good strategic reason why, then I have to do it because otherwise I'm playing small. And even just attacking it for the sake of attacking it is good. Even if it doesn't lead to a positive result for your business, It's good because you're building strength, because you're pushing your comfort zone, because you're getting better, because you're growing. That's worth something. That's a ton of value. Because if you can conquer your fear of doing this one thing, that translates to every area of your life. If you teach yourself to have more courage, that translates everywhere. So maybe you're afraid of— if you're on a cruise ship and they bring up couples and they do a game show, you're afraid of what might happen on that game show. Do it. How does that make you a better entrepreneur? Makes you 1,000 times better as an entrepreneur because that's the same fear that you face in your business. That fear of going on that game show on the cruise ship, that fear of taking your phone and recording a video in public on the street. These fears that seem like nothing, they show up everywhere in your life. They show up everywhere in your business. And so learning to tackle them, especially in low stakes, starts building the muscle. Who cares if you fail on a street corner making a video? Great, go do it. If that is scaring you right now, do it. Teach yourself. You do it. You have courage. You do scary things. You come out on the other side. You'll come out with more strength and then you'll start seeing things happen in your business. You'll have more courage. You'll have more boldness. You'll be more willing to do things and then your business starts taking off. You have to lose the fear of failing in front of other people. I'm going to give you 3 ways on how to do it. Tip number 1 is embrace your bold ideas. I'm a big believer that when you have these moments of boldness, maybe it's happening right now, maybe you're feeling bold right now watching the video. Amazing. You have these moments of boldness. We have moments of boldness. I don't think people are bold all day long, right? And if you are, then you have moments of even greater boldness. You have these moments, these spikes, these hits, right? You go to an event. I look at people come to my Thought Leadership Academy. They have these huge moments of boldness. Right? And then you fall back down. And that's normal. You're watching a movie, you get inspired, you fall back down. You have a conversation, you get inspired, you fall back down. The decisions that you make in the moments of boldness, I believe, are the right ones for you. Those are the decisions you have to follow through on and embrace. And then your head talks you down from them. The head brings you back down to playing small. And so when you're feeling bold, what have you come up with? I want to go do X. You have to go do it. You have to start building momentum. You have to start committing to some other people. Embrace the bold ideas. Recognize that those aren't the crazy ideas. Those crazy ideas that come up when you're feeling bold are not crazy. Those are actually the best ones for you. You just buried under a pile of garbage of limiting beliefs on top of you. Those are the things you have to go chase down. And when it gets hard, when it gets difficult, when you want to quit, remind yourself, this idea came to me when I was feeling bold. I have to do it because I do bold things. You teach yourself. Step number 2 is expect to suck. This is where it gets super liberating. Expect to suck the first time you do anything. Expect to suck. Why do you expect to be great the first time out? Why do you expect your first video that you make to be great? It's not.

It'll suck.

That's the best. It should suck, right? If you are, if you are amazing at making your first video, then you should have started making videos 4 years ago. I believe that. You waited too long. Your first at anything should be terrible. It doesn't mean that you suck. I think you're amazing. You're a genius. You're Michael Jordan. You're the best of all time at something. But Michael Jordan didn't, didn't dunk his first ball, right? He didn't, he didn't shoot and it went in right away, right? You suck at the beginning. That's normal. Learning any skill, you suck at the beginning. And it's really hard because you know what looks good. If you want to be a basketball player, you know what a good basketball player looks like. If you want to be a YouTuber, you know what a good YouTube video looks like. But then you can't do it yet. Your first one sucks, and that's where most people quit because they expect to be good. They're worried about looking bad in front of other people. They're not good the first time out, and so then they never go back to it. And this is what happens when people are growing up. You fail all the time. It's normal. It's okay. You fall down. Awesome. You get back up. You keep going. And then we stop trying. As adults, how often are you trying new things? How often are you willing to risk failure, to risk losing, to risk looking like a You don't want to. And so you're not trying as much anymore. And you never find the thing that you could be Michael Jordan at. You never find it. And you get stuck in some life and some job that you hate forever. That's most people. I don't want that to be you. You need to try more. You need to explore more. You need to expect to suck. The first 18 times of doing something, you may suck. Amazing. Keep going. The most important thing is, are you liking it? Do you like the process? Successful people love the process. I love making videos. I like this process. This fires me up. I'm just sitting here by myself in my office talking to a camera. I love it. This is great. I love it. For other people, they may hate it. Amazing. Don't do that. Go do something else. Go build little Timo toys, right? Awesome. Whoever made this, who made this? Designed in California. Oh, they didn't even give them credit. All right. Designed in California. Right? Go make toys. Go do something. Go do the thing that you love. Expect to suck, but if you love the process of it, you will get better. Think about when you— whatever you learned in school, most of it you've forgotten. But the things that you remember, the stuff that you connected with, that you liked more. So when you love something, you're going to just learn a lot faster. When you like something, you're going to get better a lot faster. Even if you suck at the beginning, you'll get better a lot faster. You have to find that thing. And step number 3 is tie your self-worth to the effort, not the result. What I want you to do is go home and then sleep and think, am I proud of my effort? Am I proud of what I did today? Am I proud of the effort that I put in today? I want to be proud of my effort today in making videos. I'm trying my best. Maybe it's not good enough. Maybe today sucks. Awesome. But I'm trying. I'm proud of my effort. I'm proud of the attempt. Most people tie their self-worth to winning, to the results, to the money, to the gold medal, to the, to the whatever, right? To the YouTube, to the plaques back there. You can't do that because if you tie your self-worth to winning, You're only going to do things that you know you're going to win at, and therefore you play small for life. If you value winning above everything else, you'll only do the things that you know you're going to win at, and so you play small for life. You stop trying new things because you're going to fail at the beginning, right? Expect to suck. You don't expect to suck, you expect to be great, and then you're not, and so you stop doing that thing. You'll only take on small projects, but you're capable of way more. You're capable of doing something much bigger. And so when you tie your self-worth to the effort, when you say, "I am proud of my effort today," if you did that every day, you're gonna probably lose way more than most people, right? You're gonna be getting up and losing almost every day, and then you have these big wins. But when you look back on this year of losing, you'll see, "Holy cow, how much have I grown?" And you're actually winning way more than most people, way more than who you used to be. 'Cause you're proud of your effort. If you get up every day and you're proud of your effort, your life will change. Your business will change. Like, every day for the next year, do something that makes you proud of your effort. In your business, in your relationship, proud of your effort. You tried your very best today. Your life will be dramatically different. But it's because you're so focused on winning. You're so focused on the results that then you play small. 'Cause you don't wanna risk losing. You don't want to risk failing. You don't want to risk looking like an idiot. You have to if you want the life that you're after. Michael Jordan missed more shots than most people. You're gonna fail at most things. Most of my videos suck and don't go anywhere. It's the best. Get up, try again, be proud of your effort every single day.

Rule number 2: Go brick by brick.

If you want to go brick by brick to make it stick, you have to pay attention to 2 critical pieces. The first is mindset. The second is action. You need both or you're going to give up on your goals. You know you're capable of something bigger, but you'll give up because you don't have these two simple things settled out. I'm going to show you how to fix them in this video. Step number one is mindset. What you think you're capable of is what you're actually capable of. If you think you can go off and do it, you're much more likely to do it. But if in your head, no matter how many skills and resources and people are telling you you're great, if in your head you don't believe you can do it, guess what's going to happen? You're not gonna do it. And so you can apply brick by brick in a methodology that I call Big Y, Little y. Your Big Y is the big reason why you're doing this thing. Why are you doing this thing? Your purpose comes from your pain. You got a big goal, big ambition. You wanna change the world. You wanna have a huge impact, right? You wanna solve giant problems and change people's lives, right? That's your Big Y. You wanna put a dent in the universe, right? You wanna make an impact that's beyond your lifetime. It's a huge why. I'm waking up trying to solve the world's biggest problem. I don't think people believe in themselves enough. I'm trying to solve the world's biggest problem. I think that's the world's biggest problem. I'm never going to solve it. Even if I touch a billion people, I'm never going to solve it. That's the best. I think you should wake up and have a big why so big that you're never going to accomplish it. You're going to climb forever. You're going to be on your journey forever, forever, forever. It's the best. And oftentimes that big mission that big vision you have is so motivating for you that it gets you out of bed, gets you motivated, like, let's go, here's what I'm trying to do, and it gets you pumped up. But sometimes the big picture is too big. Sometimes your big why, right, is big Y, little y. Sometimes the big why is so big that you feel you can't do it, that you're not capable, that you don't have the skill sets, that you'll never be capable. And so you throw in the towel because it seems too big. And I get that too. You know, I'll look at me and my goals of solving the world's biggest problem and say, who am I to solve the world's biggest problem? Right? How am I capable of going off and doing that? And especially in my— I'm trying to think the last time I actually thought about that. Especially in my earlier years as an entrepreneur, I really struggled with that. I'd go do a speaking gig and be so fired up and so motivated, like, man, I know I'm crushing it. I'm helping people so much. This is amazing. This is oxygen. This is what I'm breathing. This is amazing. Thank you so much. And then I wake up the next day and be back to normal. I'm like, oh, can I do this? I don't know if I can do this because there's lack of momentum. And so that's where the little whys come in. And the little why is the reminder that what you do is important. I think it's so important that you feel that the work that you do is important. If you woke up and felt every day the work you do matters, means something, is having an impact, Man, the commitment level you're going to have is so much greater than if you feel like nobody cares, what's the big deal, meh, right? So how do you remind yourself that the work you do on a daily basis is important to at least one person? That's the little why. The big why is the big vision, big dream, big mission, like where you're going.

Awesome.

The little why is you may not be able to help a billion people, but you can help one. Just reminding yourself that you helped one person. How I get that now is in my YouTube comments. Even now, as part of my morning routine, I go to my YouTube comments and I just see what people are saying. And these are people, they're you, you know, amazing people who many, many of whom I've never met and maybe never will meet. Hopefully, hopefully I'll meet you. Come on my tour, meet me on tour. Probably I won't meet most of you. And to see the warmth and the love and the comments that you guys are leaving makes me feel like this is why I do it. This is why it matters. This work matters. If I stop doing this, it would mean something to people and you'd have to go somewhere else. Now, not so full of myself that you couldn't find another solution, but the work that I do matters and your comments feed me every day. I'm spoiled now that we get hundreds of comments and tons of DMs and lots of messages that come in daily. But when I was first getting started, I didn't get that many. When I talked about my early days as a speaker, I would speak and have a great time and then the next day wake up and feel like, what's the point? I would save— the thing that made the difference was I would save the messages that people sent me or emailed me or said at the end of one of my workshops, and I would put them together in a PowerPoint file, and I would watch that PowerPoint file every morning. That became part of my morning routine. This is when I really first started doing morning routines. This is— this was such an important piece for me, was showing the messages from these people as a reminder every day that What I do makes a difference. And maybe I will never hit my billion. But these 18 people that I helped, I helped them. That was me. I did that. Right? If you felt like you helped some people every single day, even if just remembering old people that you helped every day as a reminder, it'll give you the ammunition, the momentum, the fuel that you need to keep going every day. So brick by brick, sometimes it's big why, right? It's the mindset. Sometimes it's the big why. Sometimes it's just, man, I'm going to go crush the world. I'm so excited. I'm going to go solve this giant problem. And change humanity, right? Sometimes you feel like that and it's amazing and you go, you go, you use that boldness and energy to create something amazing. And sometimes you're going to feel like I can't do that big thing. And so you just look at the comments, you look at the, the one person that you helped or the 5 people that you helped, or think back to people that you have helped in your life to remind yourself that you are valuable, that you make a difference, that the work you create is meaningful, and to get the momentum and energy you need. Because for the most part, the biggest thing that you're missing is just momentum. And momentum comes from mindset. If you believe you can create great things, you can. So Brick by Brick starts with mindset— big Y and little y. So I said there were two things, right? There's mindset and then there's action. So step number two is action. So you, you think you can do something, then you have to go off and do it. Thinking it is not enough. You got to do something. You got to act on it. And Brick by Brick here is we often will plan this giant thing, right? You have this bold vision, this big idea, amazing, and You default into planning mode, and you think, I got to do this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this and this, and it's exciting and it's fulfilling. It's amazing to think in planning mode of what you can potentially build. But then you step back and look at that behemoth that you just built in your head or on paper, and you think, wow, that's really big. To do that, I need venture capital. I need partners, I need a team. I need all this stuff that you need that you don't have. And then that becomes scary and then you don't act. And so I believe in what I call the 2% difference. The 2% difference is as soon as you come up with an idea, we're taking immediate action on the first 2%. So what we typically do is we'll plan to get to 100%. You'll plan to 100. You'll plan your entire vision out until it's complete, right? Then that becomes too scary. Instead of planning as your first step, planning is important, but it's not the first step. Your first step is action. Your first step is doing. Your first step is the first 2%. What is the first 2% version? So if your plan is to build the next YouTube channel that's going to dominate the world, I love it. It's easy to think, well, I need a camera person, I need a team, I need an editor, I need a scriptwriter, I need, I need, I need, I need, I need, I need, I need. Great.

Awesome.

2% difference. Take your phone, make a video today. Teach yourself to go from idea to action, idea to action. The smallest possible version. That little video you make from your phone, what difference is it going to make? Not a lot in terms of output, but a ton in terms of momentum. A ton in terms of momentum. Most people just don't start. If you want to lose weight, you want to get in shape, the best thing you can do is do 10 push-ups right now. I had a person on one of my lives who said that their goal was to get in shape. Okay, great. Go do 10 push-ups right now. Don't, don't come back on into the live until you've done 10 push-ups. Are those 10 push-ups going to actually make that person lose 20 pounds? Of course not. But the difference between no push-ups and 10 push-ups is the whole game. Because if they do that 10 push-ups, they taught themselves to go from idea to action, idea to action, idea to action. That's the thing that's missing for most people. You have great ideas. I believe you have Michael Jordan-level talent at something. You're not acting enough. Not in a big enough way. Not consistently enough. There's too much time planning and thinking and overanalyzing and worrying about judgment instead of just getting out there and actually doing. So planning is important, it's just not the first step. You burn all of your boldness and creativity and energy on the planning, you wake up the next day and you think, "I can't go do that big scary crazy thing." Or instead, as soon as you get the idea, the best thing you can do with your energy, with your boldness, with your confidence in that moment, in that idea that you just created, is go do something about it. And teach yourself that you're the kind of person who comes up with great ideas, who trusts their great ideas, who doesn't overanalyze anymore and just puts them out into the world and builds momentum. That's going brick by brick. Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special free worksheet just for this video. The worksheet will highlight all the lessons learned in this video, as well as pull out our 3 favorite learnings and quotes that will inspire you to actually do something. The worksheet will also give you space to write down what your key takeaways are and your specific plan of action to make sure you're getting results. If you want worksheet designed specifically for this video absolutely for free. There's a link in the description below. Go click on it and start building the momentum in your life and your business. I'll see you there.

Rule #3: Conquer Fear.

Everything that you want out of life is on the other side of your biggest fears. You want something more. You know you're capable of something more. You'll come up with a great reason why you can't do that something more. But really you're just afraid. If you want a breakthrough, if you want that dream life, you need to change the way you think about fear or it will handicap you for the rest of your life. So my biggest fear is disappointing people. I'm afraid that whatever I'm going to do, I might disappoint somebody and that keeps me playing small. And so whenever I can recognize it, then I have to go all in and do it just to show myself because it allows you to play on a bigger stage every time. And that big fear you have, It's still there. It doesn't go away. You're just capable of slaying a bigger dragon each time. So what used to count as disappointing people, or my fear of disappointing people, might have been going to a coffee meeting and helping an entrepreneur. I remember one time super clearly that I was booking a meeting with an entrepreneur, and I was so worried that I was going to disappoint her that I was hoping that she would cancel. And the story I told myself was, I'm too busy. I got all this stuff to do. You know, the realistic reasons. That you can convince yourself, right? They weren't stupid reasons, they were realistic. But deep down was, I'm just afraid. I'm afraid that she's gonna show up and I'm not gonna give her value. It's a deep fear. And then once I went to go meet her, it was amazing. I remember sitting in my car and saying, wow, like an hour and a half ago, I was hoping that she was gonna cancel on me and this is the greatest thing of all time, right? Your biggest fears prevent you from living the life that you want. And so I'm afraid of disappointing people. I'm going on my tour starting next year. If you wanna join the tour, there's information in the description below. We're hitting 20-something cities over almost 90 days. Come see me on tour. Please don't let me disappoint people. And I'm afraid. I'm afraid I'm gonna let people down. I'm afraid nobody's gonna show up. We're gonna be streaming live on my YouTube channel for the members for 8 to 12 hours a day. I'm afraid nobody's gonna be there. It's a constant— every time I'm doing something new and outside my comfort zone is a constant battle that I might disappoint people. And so because I'm afraid of that thing, now I have to jump in and do it. Most of the time you can't catch it. I think we play small by default. I think your greatest fear owns you and is giving you tons of logical reasons why you can't do that thing. But whenever you catch it, whenever you do actually catch and say, I think this is just my fear talking, that means it's go time, that means you have to do it just to teach yourself that you're able to conquer it and move to a greater level of success. So how do you actually change your relationship with fear? I'm gonna give you a 3-step process that I think will help. Step number 1 is understand that self-confidence comes from doing scary things. Self-confidence, self-love, self-respect comes from doing scary, difficult things. If you're scared of something, right, your heart's going boom, boom, boom, you're scared of it, you're worried it's not gonna work out, and you catch it, this is the thing, again, 95% of the time you'll never catch it, you'll just subconsciously play small. But in the 5% of the time that you actually catch it, if you go off and do it, even if you don't get a result, just trying, just by doing it, you teach yourself that you're awesome. You teach yourself that you don't play small. It's better not to catch it than to catch it and not do it. If you don't catch it, you just keep living life, right? Ignorance is bliss. But when you catch it, say, I think I'm just actually afraid of this thing. That's why I'm not following through. And then you don't do it, You're telling yourself you suck. You're telling yourself you're afraid, and when you're afraid, you don't do it. I want to flip the script. As soon as you catch it, in 5% of the cases, right, you catch it, you have to do it. You have to do it. You have to just go off and do it because that way you're telling yourself, I'm amazing, I rock. It may not work out, but I'm crushing this fear. Let's go, right? It's a self-signal for self-respect, self-confidence, Self-love, all of it, comes from doing scary things. You love scary things. You eat scary things for breakfast. Because the opposite of doing scary things is doing things that you know how to do, which means you're bored, you're photocopying your life every day, and that's not the life that you wanna live. Step number 2 is trust your bold ideas. When you get an idea, trust that it is the right thing for you. When you're feeling bold, and this doesn't happen every day, we don't wake up and say, "Oh, I'm amazing!" Happy Thursday!

Right?

That's not how most people wake up. We're tired. We don't have a lot of energy. We're not feeling bold. But you have moments. You have moments in your life where you feel bold, confident, unstoppable. Maybe it was after a meeting. Maybe it was after a video. Maybe you got inspired. Maybe you're on a walk, a meditation. It doesn't matter. You have moments in your life. You know what I'm talking about. You've had moments in your life where you felt inspired, bold. An idea comes to you. It's like, man, if I could do that, it'd be amazing, right? You know what I'm talking about. And then the next day you wake up, so I can't do that, that crazy thing. Who am I? I can't do that. I don't have the XYZ, right? The money, connections, time, resources, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I can't do that, right? Trust your bold ideas. I believe that the ideas that come to me, that come to you when you're feeling bold, are actually the right ones for you. And then your brain, which is designed to keep you safe and only understands the world that currently exists, your brain starts talking you down from it. And if you wait till the next day, it's over. Then your brain has already taken charge. It's in control again. You're back to being safe, boring, photocopy your life over and over and over again. So trust your bold ideas. When you're feeling bold, an idea comes to you, say, "This is right for me," and then take some immediate action towards it. It'll make a huge difference. And then step number 3 is your bucket list is your excuse list. This might be a little more controversial, but I think, I think when people add something to their bucket list, I think it's an excuse list. I think most people die with a bucket list full of ideas. Just because you call it a bucket list doesn't mean it's going to get done. As soon— this is the way you want to train yourself. As soon as you put something on your bucket list, go do it. Find the smallest possible way and start building it, right? That experience that you want, you could go off and do it and teach yourself that you're the kind of person who comes up with bold ideas and starts immediately taking action. Not in 5 years when I'm XYZ, then I'm gonna do it. That's garbage. That's loser thinking. You might think you're crushing it by having this bucket list of dreams and goals. You're not. You're teaching yourself that you suck. At least I think that. Because you're teaching yourself you make a list of ideas and then you don't follow through. The best thing, You want to— there's a guy who came to my event in Phoenix and said, well, my goal on my bucket list is I want to climb Mount Everest. Okay, great. Go do it. Even just believing that that's possible in the next year instead of waiting 20 years for that thing to happen, right? Already changes your mindset. You could do it. What do you need? You need money? You need training? You need resources? What? Figure it out. You could figure it out if that really was so important to you. If that really was so important to you, you could do it in the next year. You could. And if it's not that important to you, why is it on your bucket list in the first place? People die with their bucket lists full. Your bucket list is your excuse list. Instead, start making an action list and get to work.

Rule number 4: Be productive.

What matters is that you're productive, that you get results, that you stop wasting time. Too many people default to thinking that if they just wake up an hour earlier, they're going to be way more productive. If you're not productive in a 16-hour day, what makes you think that you're going to be more productive in a 17-hour day when you have less sleep? So this is an interesting message and timing for me right now because I, I love beating the sun up. I love it. I love working. I like— it's my default state. If Nina is off on a Friday night with her friends or something, 80% chance I'm working. I love it. I look forward to it. When I go close my eyes, I can't wait for it to be the next day. Like, I'm pumped to go off and do the work. I recently did a sleep study, and my doctor was concerned I wasn't getting enough quality sleep. So I went to go do a sleep study, and the doctor, after going through the results, told me that I need to be sleeping 8.5 hours to 9 hours a night. And it, and it like super disappointed me. 8.5 hours to 9 hours? Are you kidding me? I'm trying to go from I was trying to go from 8 to 7. I was waking up after 8 hours sleep and feeling still a little bit tired. And so that's why my doctor recommended even going to the sleep study. And I'm trying to figure out how do I hack it to get down to 7 and still be fully functional, not be lazy and slow and not having my cognition. And yeah, he said I need to be sleeping 8.5 to 9 hours a night. And he said, is that normal? Like, are you not worried? He's like, no, as long as you're under 10, it's normal. People range from 6 to 10 and they're totally fine. Like, this sucks. I mean, I'm not happy about it. I'm still looking at how can I hack my sleep more? And we've tried a lot. I have the chili pad. We've got, you know, meditation before sleeping. I'm lying on the bed of nails with the thing behind me, the pillow, the nail pillow. No, you know, phones or computers X amount of time before going to bed. Red light filters on everything. Red lights, no lights at all in the place, right? Like just these real red headlights glowing around after sunrise, after sunset. Lots of it. Cool down the temperature. I don't know, all of it. Don't eat past 8 o'clock. No caffeine past 2 o'clock. All of it. I'm doing all of that stuff. All of it, right? Plus probably a lot more stuff. I've studied and hacked away. I still believe there's a lot more hacking. I still want to get it from 9 to 7, but, but if I'm at 9 and I need 9, I think you should get 9. I'm at the point now where if I wake up and the sun is still not up, I stay in bed. And, and that's actually, uh, boosting of confidence. It's like, okay, so I wake up and sun hasn't come up yet. Okay, this is hard. This is difficult. It's difficult for me to not get out of bed. I'm going to stay in bed just because. Now I'm, I'm a, I'm a weird duck, so maybe this works for you, maybe it doesn't. But I was having a great conversation with, uh, Jeremy, who's on my team, who, who I've invested in his business. He's helping companies scale their YouTube channels. And he was going through the same thing where he was feeling a little tired in the afternoon. He wanted to nap on some afternoons, and that's never been me. So dude, you need to just try waking up without an alarm. And normally he's up at 4:30 in the morning or something. So just wake up without an alarm and see how it goes. And he ended up sleeping for 9 hours and hating himself for doing it. It's like, dude, maybe you need 9 hours. Like much more important than that extra hour or two is what are you doing during the day? If you're losing energy during the day and you wanna nap every afternoon, you're not being productive. Like there's no way. Sleep and be productive. You need sleep to win. I think everybody should get a sleep test. I think it's a brutal experience. You don't— you barely sleep, right, when you're there. You got stuff up your nose and a million sensors all over you. But to know how much sleep you actually need, uh, and making sure that you're productive during the time that you are awake— that's the most important thing. That you are productive during the time that you are awake is way more important than if you wake up before the sun gets up. Okay, so how can you do it? I'm going to give you a 3-step process that I think will help. Step number 1 is fix your calendar. Fix your calendar. You got to make sure that you're productive. Make sure that your actions map to your ambitions. The reason why so many people say wake up early is because your evening hours for many people are not productive. Because when you wake up, you're more likely to be productive and you're going to, you're going to do your work and you get on your morning routine. You're going to feel like you got a kickstart on the day. You're going to go off and start to crush it. Where if you're staying up late at night, you're going to find yourself playing games or watching Netflix or doing things that aren't productive, right? Like waking hours, make sure you're productive. Put it in your calendar. You're waking up around this time, right? How are you going to spend your morning routine? What does that look like? And then what are you going to do? And mapping it out so that when you can step above your calendar and look at the week and the month that's ahead, you say, if I did these things that's in my calendar, I'm going to be more successful. I'm going to be closing in on my goals, right? Your actions map to your ambitions. So you create your calendar and then you go and live it and then you go and do it. The most important thing again isn't making sure you're up before the sun. It's making sure that you're doing the things that you said you were going to do and the things that you said you were going to do are going to lead you to accomplishing the success that you want to have. You have to be more productive and fix your calendar. Step number 2 is understand how much sleep you actually need, right? I, I've heard it, I guess, before, but I didn't really buy it until I went and did the sleep study. And again, I'm still trying to hack it. I still believe I can get it lower. Even if I go from 9 to 8, that's amazing. But I have to be fully refreshed. I have to be ready to start my day. And so understand how much sleep you need, right? Here's a challenge for tomorrow. Don't set an alarm and see what time you wake up. And if you sleep an extra hour and you feel more refreshed, like you're probably living in a massive sleep deficit for you. And so maybe you need 7 hours, or maybe you need 8 hours, or maybe you need 9 hours. And if you need a lot more than that, then maybe, you know, there's a problem. You got to go get it fixed. I was hoping that he could give me, uh, like if I had sleep apnea, amazing. My problem is sleep apnea, awesome, give me the machine, I'll sleep with it every night, I'll sleep 7 hours and I'll go and crush it. It's like, no, you don't have sleep apnea, you don't, you don't have any deficiencies. I did a bunch of blood tests, no deficiencies, there's nothing actually wrong with you, you just need I need 9 hours sleep. It just tears me apart. But you have to figure out how much sleep you need, because again, sacrificing 1 hour of sleep and being tired all day is not going to make you more productive. Understand how much sleep you need and then factor that into your calendar, factor that into your life, so you can be happy, you can be fulfilled, you can have energy, you can go and crush your goals. And then step number 3 is work to your rhythm. Some people work better at night than they do during the day. Right? Again, as I said earlier, the reason why so many people advocate for a morning start is because at night most people aren't productive. At night you're losing time. At night you're watching Netflix and playing games and doing things that aren't in supportive of your mission, right? Listen to Grant though. He goes to sleep at 9. Grant Cardone goes to sleep at 9 and he wakes up before the sun comes up. He's getting enough sleep to do it, right? But your best productivity might be at 9. Like maybe you don't even turn on until 9. Maybe you should be working from 9 until 4 in the morning. I don't know, right? Work to your style. Because if you try to be somebody else and you try to work to a different style that's not suited for you, you're not gonna win. It's more difficult if you're working from 9, you know, PM to 4 AM. How many hours is that? 10, 11, 12. That's 7 hours, right? If you're working from 9 to 5 the other way, that's gonna be hard to do meetings. It's gonna be hard to have team calls. It's gonna be hard to scale up your business, right? It'll be difficult because most people don't want to work for a midnight meeting with you. But if that's where you are your most creative and that's where you get the most productivity out of you, then you need to factor that in. If you're more of a night owl and you're going to work every night, you're going to move forward on your ambitions every night, then don't beat yourself up because you didn't get up before the sun came up.

Rule number 5, the last one before our very special bonus clip, Celebrate yourself more.

Your brain is keeping you afraid and preventing you from achieving everything that you want because your brain is practical. It's logical. It only understands a world that currently exists. And if you want to change the world and you don't learn how to hack your brain, you are going to play scared for life. So I was trying to think about, as I was watching this video, what the— when was the last time that I felt really overwhelmingly scared? Like, I might not be able to do this. I can't do this. I'm not capable. I'm not worthy. I don't think I'm going to deliver a good job. And the only idea that came to mind recently of a big thing was when I was speaking at the event in Phoenix and I was invited by Brendon Burchard and Neil Graziosi and I was speaking at their event and before me was Eric Thomas on day 1 and I was the last speaker on the last day. And I remember the day of, I was pacing backstage about an hour, 45 minutes before the actual event, I'm there, I'm pacing, I'm walking back and forth. Brendon Burchard said he's gonna watch my entire speech and give me feedback after, which only adds to the pressure. And there was a moment where I blanked out. There was a moment maybe 10 minutes before I went on stage, I'm standing backstage and I blank out. I blank, like I don't even know what I'm gonna talk, what am I gonna talk about right now? I don't even know what I'm gonna talk about right now. It's been a long time since I felt that level of desperation, insecurity, overwhelm, because usually as soon as something, as soon as I hear myself saying this is hard, this is difficult, I say, okay, let's go do it. The challenge in this situation was I couldn't just get up on stage whenever I wanted. And so I'm left sitting there walking backstage thinking, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, what if I don't win? What if I don't? What if I don't give a great performance? What if I let everybody down, which is my greatest fear? What if I let the audience down and Brendan down and Dean down? And I totally, I just forgot what I'm gonna say. How do I even start my presentation? I'm gonna wake, I'm gonna get up on stage and just faceplant. It was this, I don't know, minute of just real desperation, of feeling like, oh my gosh, I'm going to get up there and suck. I don't know what I'm going to say. And then the thing that caught me, and I'm so grateful that it did, because like the training, the training, this is how you train yourself. The training came in. I said, what are you doing? You're Evan Carmichael. Let's go. And that may sound super egotistical, but I think, I think the self-criticism only works when it's based off a foundation of self-love. Like, I think you need to celebrate yourself more. I think you need to recognize yourself more. Not bragging on social media that you did some fake goal that you know didn't take a lot of work, but you might get some accolades for from your friends and people following you. I'm talking about what do you tell yourself? Like, when you walk past yourself in the mirror, do you see a rock star? Do you see a stud? Do you see somebody who's gonna go change the world? Most people is no. And if it's a yes, it's not consistent. And so I think doing the work to tell yourself that you're amazing, I think that should be a default answer every time you're nervous is to say, I'm fill in your name. I'm you, your name, right? I'm Evan Carmichael. Let's go. And that motivated me to then instantly remember what the thing was. It wasn't that I forgot what I was going to say. I was just too stressed out and blocked that I couldn't actually get through to what I was supposed to go out and talk about. And so that shift in my state by telling myself, "I'm Evan Carmichael, let's go," allowed me to connect to it and then go off and deliver at least what I thought was a pretty great speech at an event. So how can you do it for you? How can you hack your brain? I've got a 3-step process that I think will help. Step number 1 is scary, difficult, or hard. This is where I might have a different strategy compared to Marisa Peer. She says when you're feeling nervous, tell yourself that you're excited. And because it's the same emotion, because you're sweaty, your palms are, you know, sweaty, your speech is elevated, your heart rate's going faster, right? The signs of being nervous and excited are the same. So trick your brain by saying you're excited instead of nervous. I actually don't like that. And lots of people say that. Simon Sinek says that. Marisa Peer Pierce says that, a bunch of people say that. I like to tell myself I do things that make me nervous, right? Scary, difficult, hard are usually the 3, but let's add nervous as a 4th. Scary, difficult, hard, and nervous. That is not an acceptable reason for you not to take action because you do scary, difficult, hard, and nervous. You love scary, difficult, hard, and nervous because the other side of scary, difficult, hard, and nervous, the opposite is what? Is comfort, is complacency. is boring, is photocopying your day over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over again. You don't want that. The opposite of nervous is boring. It's boring. The opposite of nervous is not excited. The opposite of nervous is boring. The opposite of nervous is you hate your life. If there's nothing in your calendar in the next month that makes you nervous that is scary, difficult or hard. You hate your life. And most people are so busy running away from the things that make them feel nervous because. because it's too scary, difficult, or hard. And then they know that they're capable of great things, but they never do it. It's unrealized potential. But you know you're capable of more. It's not ignorance is bliss. You know you're capable of more, and you're not doing it because you're afraid. Watch your language, right? Whenever you say scary, difficult, or hard, that means it's go time. That means you have to do it just because, because you love scary, difficult, and hard. And ask your friends and your family and the people around you to catch it. Anytime you say scary, difficult, they're hard, tell them to call you out on it. Now they may say, "What are you talking about? You're always the one going off and doing scary, difficult, hard things." Don't buy into that. They just have lower standards than you do. Ask them to catch you on it because you are, you are doing it, you are making mistakes, you are saying that to yourself. And if it ever comes out of your voice, if it ever comes through your head, then you have to go off and do that thing just to show yourself that you can. Step number 2 is the boom boom test, and that's when your heart's going boom boom boom boom boom boom boom. Again, that's go time. The first one, scary, difficult, hard, and nervous, is words, right? It's vocabulary. It's you hear yourself thinking it or you actually say it out loud. For some of you, it might be more physical, which is when you feel your heart going boom boom boom boom boom boom boom, you might not be even thinking something properly. You might not even have words in your head because you're so nervous. Right? But when you feel your heart going like this, that means it's go time too, especially when it's because of somebody else's potential opinion. If you're going boom, boom, boom because of fear of judgment, then you have to do it again, just because. Not, not worrying about if it works out or not, but just to show yourself that you can do it. Because whenever you play small based off of somebody else's opinion of you, you're telling yourself that you suck. You want to do something, you're afraid of how you're going to be judged for it, so you don't do it. I suck. That's how it works. You're telling yourself that you suck every time that you don't follow through on the thing you want to do because you're worried that somebody else is going to judge you. We're not afraid of failing. Don't fool yourself. It's not that you're afraid of failing. You're afraid of failing in front of somebody else. You will sing in the shower, but you won't sing on the street corner. Why? Because you're afraid of public failure. You're afraid of failing in front of somebody else, and that's what you need to destroy. So when your heart's going boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, let's go. And step number 3 is trust your bold ideas. Trust your bold ideas. I believe that the idea was given to you for a reason. Where did the idea come from? I don't know. It came from somewhere. It's flowing through you. Now you have to go off and do it. I believe that the ideas that come to you when you're feeling bold, unstoppable, powerful, confident, those ideas are actually the best ones for you. And then your brain talks you down from doing them. That's why the most important first step is momentum. The biggest thing missing in your life is momentum. As soon as you get an idea, do something about it. Stop planning, stop thinking, stop being perfect, stop worrying about other people's opinions, stop researching, because you're going to be bold and using all of your best bold creative energy on planning, thinking, researching, and then you wake up tomorrow and your brain takes over again, tells you you can't do it, and then what happens? You don't. Instead, use that first moment when you're feeling the bold energy, the confident moment. You come up with an idea, immediate action, momentum instantly. You do that, you'll change your life.

If you want to be a successful entrepreneur, you're going to have to deal with a lot of pain. There will be a moment when you feel like things just can't get any worse. You're at the bottom and then pow, life hits you in the face. And that moment will define you. Either you're going to quit and give up, go back to having a job, or you're going to learn to rise above and start having success as an entrepreneur.

The strategy that I like to use is it's the best.

You take whatever negative situation you're in, whatever that thing that feels overwhelming, all-consuming, impossible to deal with, and you tell yourself This is the best. This thing's happening to me right now is the best. This is my chance to show myself and the world what I'm made of. It's the best. And in actuality, it is the best because we very rarely get chances to show ourselves what we're made of. We very rarely actually put ourselves into these situations where we get hit in the face. I broke my neck. Right? I broke my neck in Colorado. We would normally wouldn't put ourselves in these kinds of situations where you break your neck and you have to put staples in your head and you have a concussion. Like, we don't do that to ourselves, but when it happens, it's the best. This is the best. I love this. I'm thinking of doing a tour in 2020 around the new book launch, East Coast and Texas, maybe Northern Mexico. It's not gonna be as good. Like, pushing through the, not even just the people who are DMing me and saying, hey Evan, this is so inspiring, I can't believe you're still going, I was complaining about being tired this morning and I saw you making videos with your broken neck and realized I have no excuse. Like, all of that is amazing, but it's for myself. It's to show myself what I'm made of. This is the best. I really think that looking back in 10 years, like from 10 years from now looking back on what's happening right now in the pushing through, in the still making videos, in the finishing my tour, in the not quitting and going home even though everybody would understand. Like, this is actually the best. I think that I'm— even though I'm telling myself it's the best, this is actually an understatement compared to how much it will be the best.

Because in 10 years, I'm going to look back and say, holy cow, that was crazy.

I can't believe we did that.

That was nuts.

That's how you build self-respect. That's how you build self-confidence and self-love, by doing difficult things and being proud of your effort. Now, I haven't been 100%. I had to cancel my event in Denver because I was in the hospital. My next event was Kansas City, and I had to refund everybody the money, but I still showed up and said, hey, I'll do this for an hour, and I actually went for an hour and a half, but it wasn't the full 3 hours, and so I didn't charge them for it. It wasn't my best performance compared to if I didn't have a broken neck, right? But it's actually the best. And so when you can flip your thinking, what it does is it puts you in a state of resourcefulness. When you get hit with an adversity and it's hard, right? You get hit with something, this sucks, right? When you get hit with that and you're overwhelmed by it and say, this sucks, this can't— I can't believe— I can't believe this has happened to me. Why me? Which is most of America, right? What most people will say. You've lost. You've just lost. And it's compounded by everybody saying, "Oh, it's okay. Don't worry.

You should quit.

You should give up.

Stop.

Don't worry about it.

Everybody understands." You feel worse.

But if you can rise up and say, "This is the best," it puts you in a state of resourcefulness. It makes you feel like you can do it. When everybody's telling you to stop and you keep going, because of this adversity that's hit you, that's the best. That's actually the best. And so it's about being proud of yourself right now. I couldn't do the event in Denver. I couldn't do the full event in Kansas City. Did I complete my objective? No, right? Did I follow through 100%? No. But I'm proud of myself in all of this. I want you to be proud of yourself. Are you proud of yourself? If every night you went to sleep, put your head on the pillow and said, I did, I'm proud of myself today. Like the work I did, I'm proud. I may not have gotten the result. It may not have been perfect. I may have still let somebody down. I may still have lost money, but I'm proud of myself for what I did.

Your effort.

And so it might seem a little weird, Duck. Maybe you'll have to watch the video a couple of times or hear it repeated in a few other videos. But try it as an experiment. The next time you're faced with something overwhelming, impossible, negative— I can't believe this, why me, why is this happening— next time you find yourself thinking those things, try to flip the script. Try to catch it and say, this is the best.

Because you made it this far in the video, I want to celebrate you. Most people start and don't finish. Most people never actually follow through. Most people say they want something, but they don't ever do the work to actually get it. But you are different. You are special. Believe Nation, you made it here all the way to the end, and I love you. So as a special celebration, if you put a hashtag #believe down in the comments below on this video, I will showcase you and celebrate you somewhere on the screen in a future video because you are awesome.

And if you want to watch Evan's top 10 rules for success, check out the video next to me. I think you can enjoy. Continue to believe. I will see you there.

How to not procrastinate. Best way I found is you create a calendar. So you create a calendar and you put in your calendar the habits that will lead you towards success, right? So you have ideas for what you want to create.

Amazing.