Chasing Success: Overcoming Fear and Embracing the Path to Greatness!

As long as you love it, you have to keep going. You cannot quit. Maybe one day somebody does throw you a bunch of money and you can stop sleeping in your office. Or maybe it's just a slow grind up and it takes you 10 years to become an overnight success. You'll never know how long it will take you to be successful, but what you do know is that if you quit on something that you love, you will end up regretting it for the rest of your life. As long as you love it, you have to keep going. You can't quit. I would rather no one fail than not know. Because the things that you regret are rarely the things that you do. It's the things that you didn't do. The things that you had a chance to do, you had an opportunity, you thought about it, you felt it, but then you backed down because you were afraid. Those are the things that you regret. If you don't have the love anymore for the thing that you're in, you need to move on because you will never create great things doing work that you don't love. You're going up against people who love doing the thing, who love it. You're never gonna win. You're never gonna have success.

Hey, it's Nina Carmichael, and we made these videos because you're probably the most ambitious person in your circle, but you know you're capable of more and you need that push by surrounding yourself with the best. So today let's learn from one of the best, my husband Evan Carmichael, and learn to stop being afraid of what other people think. Enjoy. Okay, let's kick it off with rule number 1: Overcome the fear of failure.

The biggest fear we have isn't failure. You're not afraid of failing. The biggest fear we have is of failing in front of other people. You're afraid of people's judgments. The reason why we stay stuck, the reason why you still are where you are, is because you're afraid of other people's opinions. You have great ideas inside you. You have great ideas. If you're watching this video, you're subscribed to this channel, you have great ideas. You know you're capable of more. You know you want to serve. You know you want to help. And great ideas are flowing through you, and we shut them off. We shut them off because we find a logical reason why we can't do it, right? The logical reasons in our head are, well, the timing's not right, or I don't have the gear, or I don't have the connections, or, uh, you know, I'm in the wrong country, or whatever logical excuse that we come up with. That's, that's— listen, it's based in reality. It's actually based in fact, because you wouldn't— you're a smart person. You wouldn't believe a stupid reason. So the reasons that we're listening to are actually based on some kind of fact, but they're still an excuse. And underneath it, underneath that reason why you can't do something, is because you're afraid. You're afraid, I'm afraid, we're afraid of taking the next step. And the fear underlying that is not the fear of it not working out, it's the fear of it not working out and who's going to see you fail. We're so tied up into what other people think about us that we'd rather play small for life than actually go off and accomplish and risk failing in front of other people. We're so afraid of that that we never go off and chase our dreams down, and you're stuck in this mental exercise of what you could do and then never actually doing anything. My biggest fear is disappointing people. You know, it's that still fear of judgment. It's still fear of, I'm going to show up and speak at an event and it's just not going to go well, that people will be unhappy with my speech. And I put a crazy amount of pressure on myself, and in my head I think people are here, and if I struggle, then the whole thing is ruined. Right? I remember I was speaking at Brendan Burchard's event, and, uh, it was in Puerto Rico, and people are paying tons of money to be here. You know, it was a $30,000 to $50,000 mastermind, and everybody's got giant businesses, right? These are multi-million dollar business owners who are in the house, and it was a multiple day event. I think it was a 3-day event, and I'm, I'm speaking for one of them, not even a whole day. I'm speaking— I have one I've got an hour or something of time, right, at that event. In my head, it's, if I suck on stage, then people will freak out and be unhappy and say this was a total waste of an event. Well, really, I'm a really tiny nothing part of this event, right? I mean, people are there to see Brendon Burchard, to see Dean Graziosi, to see the other speakers there. If any one speaker sucks— I mean, if Brendon sucked, that's a big deal because he's speaking for 80% of the time. If I suck for one hour, nobody's really gonna care. Nobody's really gonna be asking for a refund. But even though that's the, the actual answer, it's not the— it's not the thing that's in my head. And that's what we need to fight. That's what we need to fight. Because I used to say no to opportunities because I was really deep down just afraid that I would not be able to deliver. I remember that I used to secretly hope people would cancel on me. I, I would, I would secretly hope that interviews would cancel on me, that meetings would cancel on me. I remember I would book something out like it's 2 months in advance, right? I don't know if this has ever happened to you. If this makes sense or if it's happened to you, let me know in the comments. I would book something out that was a month in advance or 2 months in advance and yeah, I mean, that's exciting. I'd be happy to do that. And then on the day of, I'd look at my calendar and say, ooh, that's coming up. And I would secretly hope, I would check my email, remember I'd be checking my email hoping that that person would cancel on me to say, "Oh, I'm busy," or "I got sick," or "It's not going to work out anymore and let's reschedule." And I remember I'd check in the morning and I'd check 2 hours before and check an hour before and check half an hour before and check 10 minutes before. And like, if there was no email, then I would go ahead and do it. So I'm losing insane amounts of productivity, right? Like how many times am I checking my email before this thing happens, losing insane productivity and also not actually serving, right? Not actually living my mission, my message, not, not actually being proud of myself for what I'm doing. And it, it almost always worked out like I never had an interview or meeting or something where I just massively underperformed and actually sucked, right? That, that never really happened. But I was always afraid of it happening. And so I had to teach myself This is what I want to do. Like, the only thing worse than me not doing this is, is me doing this and canceling, right? Or them— me never doing an interview and me never doing a meeting. And just recognizing that it was just fear talking. And again, the fears of me disappointing people and failing in front of somebody else. I'm sitting here filming in, in the car. Nina just came back. We love you, Nina. Nina's, uh, doing some grocery shopping and I'm filming here, you know, in the car. We got the dogs here in the back seat. Timo's chilling. And this used to make me afraid, you know, that— look, there's a guy who just pulled up next to me. He's not watching, but in my head you'd be like, this guy's watching. You have to be afraid of filming in a parking lot, be afraid of filming, uh, walking down the street. I'd be afraid of filming with my sister in the room, you know. I used to be afraid of all of that. So what is that? It's just fear of other people's opinions. Why am I afraid of this guy? Why I'm afraid of that guy? I don't know that guy, right? Why am I afraid of him and his opinion? First off, he doesn't even care, right? He's not even looking at me. He doesn't even care. Maybe he never even noticed that I was filming, period. Right? So we think people care, they don't care. On the off chance that he actually cares, uh, maybe he is judging me and thinks I'm crazy holding this camera up with, with the tripod in my hand. Maybe he thinks I'm crazy. Great. Uh, if somebody's leading with that, then, then they hate their own life. Like, if somebody's leading with just negative judgment, he's got his own issues to deal with that have nothing to do with me. Or maybe he's inspired. Maybe, maybe this guy goes, look, he pulled out his phone, maybe he's making his own YouTube video. Maybe he's inspired. Maybe that guy is now going to be the next YouTube sensation. Let's go. So we assume that everybody's gonna watch us, everybody's only looking at us, and, and we're gonna disappoint and be a giant failure, and everybody's gonna laugh and ridicule us, right? Like, that's the thought that's, that's in our head, where the reality is most people don't care. Most people, right? Like, 90% of people don't even care. 5% of people might judge you. And they're in a really negative spot themselves. And the other 5%, maybe they're inspired by you and they see that and they go and do something with their life. But you playing small and listening to that fear instead of actually taking some kind of action will always lead to a negative spot. Like, you know that you could do more, you want to do more, you want to serve on a bigger scale, but listening to that fear instead is keeping you stuck. This is one of the biggest problems for entrepreneurs, is that you, you have all these great ideas that are flowing through you, right? You've got, you've got an endless list of ideas. How big is your list of things that you could do that you get excited by when you look at them? And then how many are you actually doing? Well, not very many. You're missing the momentum because at the end of the day, you could write down a list of all these reasons why it can't work out and, and when the timing is going to be just right perfect, right? I'll start this on January 1st, or start this next month, or next week, or Monday, or on my birthday, or some artificial day. You come up with some reason of when you should be starting this thing, right? But if you actually examined it, if you actually took a little step back and looked at your goals that you haven't hit, that you haven't started, that just remain an idea and you've never taken momentum on— if you actually took 5 minutes to step back from it, create a little distance and look at them and look at your list of reasons why you haven't started, really it's just fear. And when you can catch that, that's when you make a life-changing decision. Because as long as you are not chasing down the things that you want to do because you're afraid of somebody else's judgment of you, as long as that is the thing that rules you, you will never win. You you'll never accomplish anything great, and you'll, you'll live life with regret. So even now, my, my biggest fear is still disappointing people, and the ongoing challenge is to catch it. And when you can catch it, and when you can no BS catch it, to say, I'm just throwing up a bunch of excuses, but really I'm just afraid— when you can catch it, then summon the courage to go do the difficult thing. Summon the courage to say, I'm gonna, I'm gonna take this fear head on. Because as long as that fear runs your life, you stay stuck. And every time you catch the fear and you do it because of— not just feel the fear and do it anyway, feel the fear and do it because of— you start to teach yourself to be a little stronger, a little more courageous, and you move a little bit closer to becoming the person that you are capable of being.

Rule number 2: Do scary things.

Doing what you are afraid of is your path to success. Every time you take on something new that scares you, that pushes your comfort zone, that requires you to stretch, on the other side of that scary thing is the new you who is now capable of more. Most people, they shrink from scary things because they're scary. But if you want to win, If you want to hit your ambitious goals, then you have to teach yourself that you do scary things. So I recently came back from two pretty significant speaking gigs in my career as I'm building up and speaking on bigger stages. The first was when I was speaking at Brendon Burchard's event, and it's his Growth.com event, and Brendon, one of the greatest speakers in the world, invited me to come and talk to his group of a couple thousand people, and then I went to Ed Mylett's event, just recently in Whistler, and this is a smaller group, 100 or so people, but they pay $60,000 a year to be a part of his program. And so they're coming to learn from the best. He sandwiched me between David Goggins and Peyton Manning. So it was David Goggins, and then me, and then Peyton Manning. That was the lineup. And so when I was backstage at the Brendon event, I remember moments before going on stage, I was the most scared that I'd been in a long time. The most nervous, the most anxious. I was afraid of disappointing people. My biggest fear is letting people down. My biggest fear is that I'm gonna let Brendan down and Dean Graziosi, who they both brought me there, and I was just gonna suck on stage. That was my biggest fear. And so I had a mini panic attack backstage. 5 minutes before going up, I have this mini panic attack and I'm forgetting what I'm gonna say. I imagine myself going on stage and just blanking out. And I tell myself, I'm Evan Carmichael. I do difficult things. I love difficult things. If I don't do difficult things, I'm never going to accomplish great things, so I have to do difficult things. I love it. I thrive on difficult things. And then I remembered what I was going to say, and then I went out and I did my thing. And now when I went to Ed's event, I wasn't as nervous. I wasn't as afraid. I was still scared. I was still afraid of letting down Ed Mylett, letting down Andy Frisella, who they both brought me there. Being between David Goggins and Peyton Manning and just being outshone, you know, everybody knows them, they may not know me. All of it, all of the fears and doubts, but less than what I had at Brendon's event. Not because it wasn't as big a deal, but because I had just done it. Because speaking on stage to a couple thousand people at Brendon's event and having that panic attack and getting through it changed who I was. Made me stronger, made me more capable of doing the next thing, and the next thing was Ed's thing. And so if I hadn't gone to Brendan's, I would be terrified going to Ed's thing. So every time you take on these difficult challenges, you might have the panic attack, you might have the anxiety inside you, you might have that little voice that says you can't do it. What if you fail? What if you disappoint people? What if you lose respect? What if it doesn't work out? But you know what's worse? You know what's worse than going up? And failing? Not trying. Not doing it. Finding some reason, finding some excuse to say you're sick, you're busy, you can't make it. But in the back of your head, you know you were just afraid. And the last thing you want to do is teach yourself that when you are afraid, that when you have an opportunity in front of you and you're afraid to do it, that you say no. You don't want to teach yourself that. You teach yourself the opposite. That when you're afraid, that when there's something in front of you that you want to do but you're scared, you're anxious, you're worried about letting people down, that you jump in and you say, "I'm all in because I do scary things." So how do you do it? I'm going to give you a 3-step process I think will help. Step number 1 is ask yourself if you could not fail. If you could not fail, what would you do? If you could not fail, what would you do? What would you do? Just blue sky it. You know you're not going to fail. What would you do? For me, I'd be speaking on bigger stages. I'd be speaking more often. I want to speak on bigger stages, and that's now become— even asking that question sets into motion action, right? Now my goal is to speak on 2 stages a month, and so traveling to speak on 2 different stages every month and putting that plan into action for the next 6 to 12 months, right? If you knew that you could not fail, what would you do? Eliminate the risk of failure, right? Eliminate, because that's how we'll default back to, like, I'd love to do that, but, but, right? "but I might fail, but this is gonna happen," then you get back into negative small thinking mode. Just for 2 minutes, forget about that stuff. For 2 minutes, let yourself dream again and imagine if you could not fail, what would you do? Step number 2: Expect to fail. Expect to fail. Expect to suck, especially if it's your first time. If it's your first time speaking on stage, for example, you're not gonna be great. You're not gonna be Les Brown, you're not gonna be Tony Robbins, you're not gonna be Brendon Burchard, you're not gonna be great. It's your first time, your first video. You're not going to be great. It's why I kept my first video up on my channel too. You can go back and watch it. The first time you do it, you're not going to be great. This is one of the biggest fallacies in human thinking is we expect to be great the first time we do something, and if we're not great, we don't do it anymore. As kids, we learn that when we fail, we get up and we try again. As adults though, we're so terrified of failing that we don't try most things, and then we have this constant thought in our mind that we know we're capable of more, but we're too afraid afraid to go off and start. And so expect to fail. Step 1 is know that you're not going to fail. Great, that gives you the freedom to dream, to do the thing you actually want to do, and not get in your own way anymore with your thinking. But step 2 is then you expect to fail. Micro, not macro, right? If you keep going, if you keep doing it, you keep making videos, you keep doing your speeches, you keep reaching out, you're gonna win. But the first time, expect to fail. Reduce the expectation that your first time of anything has to be amazing. And then step 3 is tie your self-worth to the effort. So many people tie their self-worth to the result instead of the effort, right? Did I give a good result? Did I give a good speech? Did I give a good video? Did I get a result from my customer, right? Did it work? Did I win that race? Did I XYZ, right? You're tying your self-worth to the result. What you wanna do is tie it to the effort so that even if you go up on stage and suck, You tell yourself, "I'm the best. I did it." When I look back at my Brendon video at his event, I could have done better. I can always do better. I look at it and even though people loved it and standing ovation at the end and Brendon was freaking out and he loved it, I look at that and see all the holes, all the places where it could have been stronger, could have had more energy, could have been better. And if I was doing that speech in a smaller group, It would have been better if I was doing that speech just to a camera with nobody in the room. It would have been way better because I would have been able to practice it over and over and over again until it was perfect. But I'm really proud of the effort. I was 5 minutes ago before going on stage freaking out, having an anxiety attack, forgetting everything I was going to say in front of this massive audience. And I went out and I did it. And so I'm proud of my effort. That's what I want for you too. You have some big ambition, you let go of the fear of failing, you then expect to fail, you expect to suck at the beginning, and you tie your self-worth and you pat yourself on the back even if you failed, even if you stumbled, even if it sucked, and you say, "I did it. I tried. I tried my best." Because every day you woke up and you tried your best, I promise you, you're going to get amazing results. Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special 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 the 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 number 3: Never quit on something you love.

As long as you love it, you have to keep going. You cannot quit. Maybe one day somebody does throw you a bunch of money and you can stop sleeping in your office. Or maybe it's just a slow grind up and it takes you 10 years to become an overnight success. You'll never know how long it will take you to be successful, but what you do know is that if you quit on something that you love, you will end up regretting it for the rest of your life. As long as you love it, you have to keep going. You can't quit. So look at my story. It wasn't easy being an entrepreneur growing up. That's why I do so much to help entrepreneurs, because I don't want you guys to struggle as much as I did. In my first real business when I was 19, I had to decide between earning $100,000 a year and traveling around the world in my dream job versus owning 30% of a company making $300 a month and being unsure if anything's going to work out or not. And I decided that I had to keep going. I had to try because I didn't want to end up being 85 years old looking back and saying I never did it, I never went for it. I would rather know and fail than not know, because the things that you regret are rarely the things it's the things that you didn't do. The things that you had a chance to do, you had an opportunity, you thought about it, you felt it, but then you backed down because you were afraid. Those are the things that you regret. That's what you regret most, and I didn't want that to happen. But starting off my business wasn't easy. I struggled, I sucked, I made it harder on myself because I told my friends that I was living the entrepreneur life and I couldn't hang out with them. Meanwhile, that $20 was just too expensive for me me to go out and have beer with them. I isolated myself and made myself lonely. I felt worthless as a human being. And the worst day of my life came when I told my business partner that I quit on him, that it was just too difficult, that I couldn't keep going, that I needed to feel like I was contributing, that, that my time meant something, that all this work I was putting into something— I just need to feel valuable again, that I was contributing to something. When you wake up every day and and you're working and it's just not getting results, it can be real hard to keep going. And so I told them that I quit. I hung up the phone and then just started crying. And the next day I woke up and I just thought, I can't, I can't, I can't quit on this. Not yet. I haven't given everything I've got. Because I felt like in a year, in 2 years, in 5 years, in 20 years, I would look back and regret that I gave up. If I knew that I gave everything I had and it didn't work out, I was okay with the failure. It was just the idea of that thing lingering, that I could have given a little bit more, that I still like this thing and I needed to see it through and I didn't, that I quit on it. I knew that would eat me up forever. And so I had to get up that next day and tell myself, I'm not gonna quit yet. I just have to find a different way to stand. What I've tried so far has not worked. It has not worked. I'm making zero money. Well, $300 a month. But it's not working out, and I hate myself. I hate my life. I hate how I feel about myself. I have to find a different way to stand. And that energy allowed me to keep going. That energy allowed me to then ask myself, who else has done this before? And I looked at Bill Gates and how he started Microsoft, and that started the path up for my business. And then 2 years later, I sold my company. It happened pretty quick. All because I refused to quit on the thing that I knew I needed to see through. So how do you do it? I'm going to give you a 3-step process for you to follow that I think will help. Number 1 is you quit when you don't love it anymore. And I think people often even stay in things for too long. I think people have fallen out of love with things and they stay with it because they don't want to be seen as a failure. I think a lot of entrepreneurs stay in their businesses for too long. I think a lot of people stay in their relationships for for too long because you don't want to be seen as a failure for quitting on things. If you don't have the love anymore for the thing that you're in, you need to move on because you will never create great things doing work that you don't love. You're going up against people who love doing the thing, who love it. You're never going to win. You're never going to have success. Meanwhile, you deserve to be doing work that you love because you could be the Michael Jordan at something else. And so Stop thinking your way through it. Stop saying you need to wrap your head around it. You don't. You need to wrap your heart around it. Ask yourself, are you excited to go do this thing? Do I still love doing this work? And if the answer is yes, then you have to find a way to keep going. You have to go one more day, one more day, one more day. And if it's no, then you have to get out immediately, ASAP. Stop spending your time doing work that you don't love. Step number 2 is flip patience and impatience. You got to flip patience and impatience. Most people are very patient with themselves and impatient with the results. You want results today. Where are my results? Let's go. Where are my results? I want it to happen. Why doesn't it happen fast enough, right? The entrepreneur mindset. But you're patient with yourself. I'll do it tomorrow. I'll get started on that thing on Monday. You know, start of the next month. You know what, next year, January 1st, that's when I'm going to hit it hard. You need to flip that. That mindset will destroy you. You have to flip it. You flip your patience with impatience. Instead, what you want to do is be patient with the results. You're patient with the results. You know that you have a big goal. It's gonna take a little bit of time to get there. If you have any goal that's worth anything, you're not gonna accomplish it today. That's a tiny little goal. You're worth more than that. You're chasing down big dreams, but you need to be more impatient with yourself. You're patient with the results and impatient with yourself. Did you give your most today to the thing? I'm here trying to make a video for you guys. I'm trying to bring the best that I've got today that I have on this day for this video. Are you proud of yourself? When you go to sleep tonight, are you proud of yourself? I gave my best today. Because if you are impatient with yourself and your effort every single day, that's a fast track to actually getting the results you're after. Flip your patience and impatience. And number 3 is think big, act small. You got to think big and act small. You have a big dream, big mission, big vision, something that you're trying to accomplish, and it's going to change the world, and it's amazing, and you're so excited, and being visionaries is what makes us entrepreneurs so amazing, right? I love your big dream, but sometimes that big dream is too big, and then you feel like you can't do it unless you have venture capital and you have a team and you've quit you quit your job and all these things have lined up. That stuff is never going to line up. That's the problem. And then it's 5 years later and you still haven't done anything on it. Meanwhile, dummies are winning off of your idea just because they started. And so you need to act small. You think big and you act small. You have this big dream, big vision, amazing, and then what are you going to do right now today? What's the smallest possible, easiest, simplest way to just build momentum? Because that's the thing that's missing. For most entrepreneurs: momentum. You don't have enough momentum. You're a genius, you have great ideas, you're Michael Jordan, all of this stuff can work out. It's a beautiful business, a beautiful world you're going to make, but there's no momentum behind it because you're not doing enough every day. Because you're thinking too big and you're not acting enough. So think big and act small.

Rule number 4: Take your shot.

When I was 20 years old, I missed my shot because I was scared, and I vowed never to do it again. I was in Paris, I was on vacation, I was in university, and I'm sitting here with my map outside the Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris, and a girl comes up and asks me for directions. But she was a French girl, and it didn't twig until later that why would a French girl be asking me for directions in English? Didn't really make sense, right? And then I thought, you know what? I should ask her out, I should see what she's doing tonight, I should take her to, you know, ask her out for coffee or dinner or something, see what she's up to. But I was afraid. I was afraid to do it. I was afraid to do it, and I let her walk away because really I was afraid of rejection. And as she's walking away, the Notre Dame is on a river, and I'm on one side of the river, and she crosses over to the other side of the river. And I was so upset at myself. I was so upset that I didn't take my shot. I was so I was so upset that I didn't try. At least try. And what I did was I ended up taking a picture. And as I took the picture, she actually walked behind one of the market stalls and I didn't actually get her picture. It's fine. So I had this beautiful picture of this French, you know, riverside. And what I did when I got home, I was still upset about it, so I blew the picture up and I put it on my wall. And I was actually trying to find the picture to show you guys, but I couldn't find it anywhere in my files. I blew it up though, and I put it on my wall. So I'm in university, I blow it up and put it on my wall. Everybody who walks in asks me about the picture, and it just looks like a nice, beautiful French scene. But I didn't tell anybody what it really represented to me, why it was really so important. And I looked at that picture every day because the next time that I had to take my shot, I wanted to go out and do it. I didn't want to be afraid. I wanted to conquer my fear and say yes. And this served me really well a year or so later when I had to make the really tough decision: do I take this job that I always wanted? I had these high-paying job opportunities, $80,000 to $100,000 starting salary with the companies that I really wanted to go at, or continue with my startup that was failing, that was making $300 a month. The logical, practical, safe, easy thing to do would have been to take the job. It's what I thought I always wanted. It's what my friends want. It's what you're supposed to do coming out of university. I didn't want to live with the regret of not knowing what happened with my business. And looking at that picture daily reminded me to take my shot the next time it comes around. And so I gave myself a year to say, I'm going to push off those jobs. They'll still be there in a year, even if it's not those jobs. It's some other job. I'm going to give this a shot. I can deal with the failure. I can deal with the rejection. I can deal with it not working out, even though that's a really kind of short-term intense pain. What I can't deal with is the regret of not knowing, because that's not some short-term minimal pain. That's forever. If I chose not to focus on my business and and I took that job, I would forever look back on that moment and think, what if? What if I just tried a little bit harder? What if I gave it a little bit more? Yeah, you know, but it wasn't working. I wasn't getting results. But what if I gave it a little bit more? I did not want to live with that regret. And I'm sure you've had moments in your life too when you didn't take the shot, when you had an opportunity, right in front of you and you didn't go for it. Like Eminem says, if you had one shot, one opportunity to seize everything you ever wanted, would you take it? And that picture on the wall helped me take my shot. And I hope sincerely that the next time you get your chance at something, that you don't shrink down, that you don't you don't say no out of fear, that you don't say no because you find some practical reason why you can't do it, that you take your shot. And if you've had those moments that you regret where you wanted to take your shot and you didn't, give yourself a visual reminder like I did in my room to say, this is not happening again. Next time, I'm going to take my shot. I hope you take yours.

Rule number 5, the last one before our very special bonus clip, make your decisions.

You need to make the big decisions in your life with your heart and the small ones with your head. This is where so many entrepreneurs fall down. This is where so many entrepreneurs make mistakes because you see a trend, you see an opportunity, you see something that makes sense. It just makes sense on paper. It's so clear that this is going to happen, but if it doesn't energize you, if you don't love it, if it's not in your heart to say, man, I can't wait to go off and do that thing, you're never going to win. You're never going to win because you're going up against people who love it. You're going up against people who love it, who breathe it, who sleep it, who dream about it. And for you, it's just an opportunity. You're never going to win big. Look at all your heroes, all your mentors, people you look up to, the people who've done it. It's like, I want to be like this person in my field. I want to be— I want to do it like she did it, like he did it. They love doing the thing. They love doing the thing. Doing it gives them energy. I look at what I do. I'm here in Dallas. I'm about to speak at Video Marketing World, an annual summit of some of the top creators on YouTube to help share, give back, help the community, give feedback, train on YouTube. I love doing this stuff. What am I— I'm in the parking lot filming videos for you guys, not because it's a strategy, not because I need to make a video a day, because I love it. This, this is, this is the best. I'm about to go into this meeting, to this conference, and I'm gonna hang out with entrepreneurs all day long. From the time I get in there until whatever time AM, I'm gonna be hanging out with entrepreneurs and helping them with their business, helping them with their channel, because I love it. And if that sounds exhausting for you, amazing. Don't do it. And if it sounds energizing for you, yes, go and do it. You need to make the big decisions with your heart, and then your head's still important. It's like, don't listen— it's not— the message is not don't listen to logic. The message is not don't look for opportunities. It's look for opportunities within the thing that you love, right? If I love making videos and I love making content and I love helping entrepreneurs, but I went all in on MySpace right now, I'm gonna lose. It's not the right strategy, right? You need both. It's working hard plus working smart. It's following what you love doing plus chasing opportunities. But what takes precedence? What's the most important thing? Your heart. The energy. If you are saying, "Ah man, Monday." If that's your mindset around Monday, you're doing the wrong thing. You're in the wrong career. You're in the wrong business. You will never be the top player in your industry. Never happen for you if that's your mindset. If you're itching to get back to it, if you can't wait to go to that meeting, can't wait to code, can't wait to make that piece of art, can't wait to go and make that video, can't wait to sit down and write lyrics for your next song, if that's the thing, then you're gonna be successful. It's not gonna be easy. It's still a long road. It's still a path. You still have to put in the grind and the effort and use strategies to help you get there faster, but it has to start by doing things that are energizing to you. You're going to spend so much time working. Guys, you're going to spend so much time working as an entrepreneur. Why not do stuff that makes you come alive? Why not do stuff that gives you energy? And so I want you to get out of your head. I want you to stop making decisions first from your head. I want you to stop making decisions only because it's going to help you get some goal. It's short-term thinking, and you're never going to win doing it. Big decisions with the heart. Big decisions that give you energy. Look at your calendar. Are you energized about the week that's coming up? Look at your calendar. Go load your calendar right now. Load it on your computer, load it on your phone, however you load your calendar. Look at it. Look at your calendar. Look at the week ahead. Are you excited? Are you excited about what you're about to do? If not, you're doing the wrong stuff. If you're only excited about 10% of your calendar, you're only pouring your genius, your mental Jordan-level talent into 10% of your time, you're not gonna get to where you want to go. You need to flip it, even if it doesn't make practical sense at the beginning, because all great things are made from the heart. All great things— every great business, every great song, every great creation started from here, from a place of passion, from a place of purpose, from a place of energy. And I want to put put some pressure on you guys to go off and chase it down because so many entrepreneurs fail and they lose a lot of money. It's not an easy game, but one of the biggest reasons, if not the number one reason, is because people pick an industry, people pick a business idea solely because they're chasing an opportunity down and they didn't love doing the work. You have to love the work. You have to love the work. Stepping into my schedule should be torture for you, and me stepping into your schedule should be torture for me. I shouldn't be able to last a day in your schedule because I hate it so much. But for you, it's the juice. You love it. So look at that week. Look at your week ahead. And if you're not pumped for it, at least for 80% of it— you're not going to love every single moment of every single day. But if you're not pumped for at least 80% of your calendar of what's ahead, you need to sit down and decide to make a major change in how you're living your life and running your business. Because you're never going to make anything great if you have a calendar full of low-energy decisions. The mind is getting in your own way. If you want to lose weight, you know how to do it. You got to eat less, you got to work out more, you will lose weight. Why are you not doing it? Self-discipline. Your mind is getting in your way. But I see self-discipline as a positive. I think self-discipline has a really negative connotation a lot of times. I think in a lot of the messages that people are putting out, it comes across as this really negative thing. Like, you have to force yourself to do all of the stuff that you really hate, and it's gonna suck, but you have to keep going. You gotta do it. You gotta be disciplined. If you're not disciplined, you suck. Everything's terrible. It just comes across as this really negative forcing yourself to do stuff that doesn't resonate with me. I see self-discipline as a really positive thing. I think it's really helpful. I think it's amazing and beautiful and golden. Let's look at weight as an example. I am the lowest weight that I've been all year. I'm on a routine. It's working. The specific strategies that don't really matter: 1, intermittent fasting. So I'll only have water and a coffee until noon and then after that I'll start eating. I do that 7 days a week. I run for 30 minutes, usually at night while I'm watching a show with my wife, 7 days a week. And then 6 days a week I'll restrict my calories, not really forcing myself not to eat food, just not eating Doritos and not eating junk, right? Eating healthy food 6 days a week, and then Saturdays I get to do what I want. 6 days a week. Those are the strategies that I use. It may seem like torture. But it's not. And the thing that helps me get through it is the mindset, because the positive of all of this is I'm losing weight, I'm feeling great, I'm making progress, I'm, I'm super pumped that I'm getting closer to my goal, I feel amazing about myself. So I think self-discipline, usually it seems to focus just on the actions that you just have to grind your way through it without enough focus on the mission of what you're trying to accomplish and how beautiful and wonderful beautiful that is. And so yes, some of it might suck, right? But you're moving towards something amazing and beautiful. So I think people just focus too much on the negative part of it. And if you force yourself to do something that you hate, you can only do it for so long before you give up. If you can't tie it into the bigger picture of what you're trying to accomplish, then you will give up and you will quit and you will feel terrible. And then I think having other people yell at you about how you need to have self-discipline doesn't actually help. I think it actually makes it worse because you develop the identity for yourself of I don't have any self-discipline. You can build it. It's not that difficult to do. In my perspective, in my view, all you need to do is make sure that you have a really strong why. Make sure that you have an outcome that you are really looking forward to and you love doing. And then the process itself, how do you make the process as enjoyable as possible? How do you make the process just not absolutely suck? Every single day going in, right? If you figure that out, then you win. 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.

The next Evan is on the other side of even more belief. Self-belief comes from doing difficult things. So the more that you do something that you didn't think you were capable of doing, all of a sudden you say, "Oh, I can do it." Every time there's something hard in front of you that then you