"Choose to Think Differently, BELIEVE DIFFERENTLY!" | Tom Bilyeu

Is no matter what's going on, you can choose to think differently, believe differently, see differently. All of those things are a choice.

Here's the problem I find most people have. They judge themselves through the lens of a moment.

The one thing I will say is I was grandly ambitious. I always said, I'm gonna be rich, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that. Always, always since the time I was a little kid, but I didn't have the drive to see it through.

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He's Tom Bilyeu, and here's my take on his Top 10 Rules of Success, Volume 9. Enjoy. Okay, let's kick it off with rule number 1: Focus on the adventure.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson said, we're all inventors, each sailing out on a voyage of discovery, guided each by a private chart of which there is no duplicate. We're all lost at sea. We're all on this grand adventure, but the punchline is we have no idea where we're going. And the map that we have is private only to us, and it's quite frankly blank, and it's about filling it in. It's about learning where you are. It's about finding guideposts and beginning to build this map only from that which you've done. And so you have to go blindly forward. And the only thing that's going to give you the courage to step into that abyss, to step into the truly unknown, into the dangerous world before you, truly into a sea of infinite peril, the only thing that's going to give you gives you the courage to do that is that you can learn, that you'll figure it out. It's not going to be easy, it's going to be hard, and at times it is truly going to be life-threatening. But that is the nature of life. And as you're out there in the wilderness, as you're out there lost at sea, all you have to do is remember two things: it is an adventure, and adventures are never safe. But the rewards of an adventure are the discovery of something fairly new. And two, you can do it. You can do it. The very fact that you're a human gives you the ability to process your surroundings, to figure things out, to go in and fumble around. You're not going to look good. You're going to drink a ton of ocean water, and it is going to suck, and you're going to be vomiting over the sides, and it is going to be difficult. There are going to be times when you're convinced you're going to drown. But if in those moments you stay clear-headed and you focus on getting you focus on the adventure. You don't worry about the outcome. You just focus on right now, in this moment, with everything going wrong, what can I learn? To calm yourself and to remember right there, if you're panicking, you're asking the wrong question. If you're panicking, you're asking questions about how you look. You're asking questions about how this is going to end up. If you want to kill your panic in any moment, ask yourself right then and there, what can I learn? What can I learn from this? Life is nothing but practice, and as long as As long as you keep that in mind, as long as you understand it's never performance, it's always practice, it's simply an opportunity to learn and get better, then you can reframe the entire ordeal that you're going through. And as Paulo Coelho said, people are capable at any time in their lives of doing what they dream of, but it's only going to come true through that process of learning and discovery and putting yourself out there and going into the unknown. But if you're never willing to step off because all you can see are the all you can see are the things that could go wrong, then you never get the chance to learn. But the way that humans learn is through engagement, is through interacting. And if you don't dare to do that, if you don't dare to step out into the unknown and to flounder around and look stupid and embarrass yourself, then you're never going to grow. And if you never grow, then you're never going to make your dreams come true. So if you have that dream locked inside of you, know that the only way to get it out is to risk, to dare, to to strive, to try, to grow, to grope, to fall, to fail, to learn, and ultimately succeed. That's the only way that dreams come true.

Rule number 2, surround yourself with success.

So then these two successful entrepreneurs walk into my class, and up to that point I had promised myself two things. So I grew up chubby in a morbidly obese family, and with no money. And I said, one day I'm gonna be rich, and one day I'm gonna have six-pack abs. And that was my promise. And these guys walked in and they were rich and they had six-pack abs. And they said, look, we're starting a technology company, why don't you come be a copywriter? And I was like, absolutely. And it's one of those where people are like, what are you doing? Like, you're leaving the secure job. For me, I was like, they're like unicorns to me. They are literally the thing I'm looking for. They are rich and they have six-pack abs, and they're gonna let me into their company? And so their whole pitch was, look man, this is a startup. You can have any job in this company you want. You just have to become the right person for the job. So it was a tech company. It was in this beautiful office overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Every single person in that company had a floor-to-ceiling window overlooking the Pacific Ocean, except me. And they put me in the server room, which had no windows and a bunch of computers all whirring and making noise. And I remember one of the guys was like, who's the kid in the server room? And so that's how I became known. I was the kid in the server room. I didn't know anything about business. I would bring my wife to visit me in the office, and I'm like, look how beautiful the office is, and this is where I'm at. You know, and like, literally like those makeshift desks that are like really like a table that you would use on a picnic, but you've got a computer stacked on it. That's where I worked all day.

Do you believe big time that identity's shaped by these associations in everybody's life?

100%.

Talk about that for a second.

So, it's so aggressive, and it's now getting repeated, so I fear trite words, but words become trite because they're so true that people repeat them, Repeat them until they lose their meaning. So you're the average of the 5 people you spend the most time with. That's just true. But now it's become so common to say, and it's like every Instagram post, that I fear it's gonna lose its meaning. Who are you spending time with? Because if you're spending time with people like you, you're spending time with people like me, I'm raising you up or I'm just not gonna spend time with you. So it's like now if you get in a mix of people like that who are like, man, we'd love for you to raise up to this level, but if you don't, it's fine, but we're just not gonna spend time with you. All of a sudden that desire belong to something powerful that you can see is going to lead you to your dreams. And I remember saying to my wife over and over and over, they are the surest path to my success. I don't know anything else. I just know if I can hang on to these guys, they're going to make me better.

Rule number 3, don't have a victim's mentality.

Literally the first time I wrote this whole article, it was my first blog article and it was all about how if I were hit by a drunk driver, I would take ownership of that. I would say that is my fault. And people were pissed, and I was so shocked. I literally thought, I want to pull people from the Matrix. What's the one gift that I could give people that will change their life forever? And I wrote this whole thing, and I was like talking about like, oh man, you're in this spot and it ends up being a kill box, and there's cars on either side of you and a car in front of you, and your horn dies and you can't even start your car and move. You look in the rearview mirror and this drunk driver's plowing down, they smash into you. And it's all your fault. And thank God, because now you remember that you're in control. But people thought I was victim shaming. People were outraged that I would say that that was anyone's fault but the drunk driver. But I don't want to do that because I choose not to ever be a victim. I cannot choose whether I'm victimized, but I have the ability to say I will never be a victim. Because there's always something you can do differently. There is always something you can do differently. And once you understand that you can always make a different choice and get a different reaction, And that's the power in your life. That's the power that you have, is no matter what's going on, you can choose to think differently, believe differently, see differently. All of those things are a choice. Read Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl. Lost his whole family to the Holocaust, was in, I think, 5 different concentration camps. And he said the thing that people die of in a concentration camp is the loss of a why. And Nietzsche said if you have a why, you can survive almost any how. Because you can always change how you think about something. And when you change how you think about it, it's what we've been talking about all day. When you change how you think about it, you actually change the event.

Rule number 4: Don't hold yourself back.

Here's the problem I find most people have.

They judge themselves through the lens of a moment. They fail at something. They miss the honor club.

They don't close that deal they thought they were going to.

They embarrass themselves. They flub something. And they think that defines who they are.

But I'm telling you right now, you're not defined by who you are. You're defined by who you want to become and the price you're willing to pay to get there.

Also, if you want to learn how to have confidence like Tom and other successful entrepreneurs, check out my 254 Confidence series. It's in the description below and it's free.

There's a gap between who people are and what they tell you they want to accomplish.

Rule number 5: Continue to push.

Here's the hard truth about getting great. It takes time and dedication. It takes a willingness to accept that you're not yet good enough. It takes the ability to stare at the places that you know that you're weak, to really look at those things and not let it affect your sense of self-esteem and not let it affect your sense of self-worth so that you can still get the momentum going. But you have to understand that in the beginning, we're all terrible. And as Henri Cartier-Bresson said, your first 10,000 photographs are your worst. And so the thing that really makes great art are the people that continue to push and the people that continue to work and face how inadequate they are and really understand that at the end of the day, greatness is a craft. Greatness is a process. Greatness is a habit. Greatness is the little things that you do every day over time, going out every day unafraid of whether or not this is one of the 10,000 terrible things that you're gonna do. It's being unafraid to make those mistakes. It's being unafraid that you're not yet great. And as Marianne Rademaker said, courage doesn't always roar. Sometimes courage is the quiet voice at the end of the day saying, I will try again tomorrow. And that's it. If you want to be great, that's what you have to do. You've got to get up again tomorrow. You've got to be willing to face another day. You've got to be willing to accept that you've got to get through the bad ideas before you can get to the good. You've got to understand that you have to start as an apprentice. You have to start as a person going and getting tea, and you have accept that that's the job that you should be playing, that you should be working for somebody else, you should be looking up to somebody else and seeing what they can teach you, because what you know is that you're there to learn. What you know is that you're there to get through the 10,000 bad photographs that you need to get through to ultimately achieve greatness. And if you make the catastrophic error that so many make to try to tell the world that you're extraordinary today, to try to get the world to follow you and look up to you and think Be your something today. Because the people that really win are the ones that invest today. The ones that listen today. The ones that spend every ounce of their energy amassing mastery, getting better every day, working their asses off to improve their skill set, to relentlessly look at the things that they're not doing well, to understand that they have to break themselves down and get rid of all of their ego before they can really find greatness. Those are the people that we remember. So if you want to be remembered, if you want to achieve real greatness, you just need to have the courage to show up every day and take another swing, take another photo, try another task, do something that scares you, and do those little things over and over and over over until you win.

Rule number 6, don't be an empty dreamer.

The one thing I will say is I was grandly ambitious.

I always said, I'm gonna be rich, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that.

Always, always, since the time I was a little kid, but I didn't have the drive to see it through. So I really, really was an empty dreamer when I was a kid, and it was learning to hate that in myself, if I'm completely honest, and to not allow myself to be an empty dreamer, to force myself to get the skills to actually execute against it, to not be in any way, shape, or form pacified by saying I'm gonna do something, which is actually super dangerous. Most people just thinking about the fantasy of what they're gonna do gives them some partial sense of, oh, I've done it. Whereas I stopped letting that be okay for me, which largely came down to embarrassment I felt around my wife working when I had no job. And that was the time, she was my fiancée at the time, but that was when I really started to go, okay, you've made a lot of promises to this woman, and you're not on a path to keep any of them.

Rule number 7: Take responsibility.

Tom, am I going to make it? Do I have what it takes? When you look into my future, can you see me making it? And I'm going to cut to the chase for all of you, and you're going to mistake what I'm about to say for good news. And then I'm gonna tell you why it's actually the worst thing I could tell you. You all meet minimum requirements. You all meet minimum requirements. So whatever it is you wanna do, I'm not gonna say that it's gonna be easy for you because you're ultra smart or something. You probably aren't. But everyone that I've encountered here, literally without exception, Every single person that has come up to me and said something, you meet minimum requirements. Even you awkward motherfuckers that have a hard time like making eye contact. Even you guys, I'm telling you right now, you've got some shit you're gonna have to deal with, but you meet minimum requirements. Now minimum requirements for what? For whatever you want. Now that sounds great, right?

Oh, shit.

Tom said I can make it. This is amazing. But all I've actually said is, now if you don't make it, it's on you. And that's it. There's nobody else to blame. Everything is your fault. Everything.

Rule number 8: Change your mindset.

Once you understand the whole reason to acquire a skill is that it gives you power—

now I'm going to define power. Power to me is the ability to close your eyes and imagine a world, the world the way you wish it was, and then open your eyes and make that world come true.

That's power.

And the thing that stands between you, where you are today, and your goals, where you want to get, is a gap in skill set. It is a gap in abilities.

And once you're willing to look nakedly at your inadequacies, to literally build your self-esteem— your entire sense of self-worth and value is built around one thing. Whenever you face an obstacle, whenever you face a difficulty, whenever you fail, you have one thing that you say to yourself.

On a long enough timeline, I can learn this. When you switch your life around to that, whatever your goal is here, whatever part of the Honors Club or the Leading Edge you're at, or if you want to go beyond that, whatever that is, wherever you want to go, plant that flag, identify the skills that you would need to get there, and then set about every day getting those skills.

Rule number 9: Empower yourself.

People get the do part. They understand their actions should be actions that take them towards what they want to accomplish. But people often miss the most important part, which is only to believe things that move you towards your goals. And I see people every day that tell themselves a story about themselves that they are worthless, that they're meaningless, that they're pointless, that their friends and family would be better off if they just died. So we have to find a way to construct a narrative about ourselves that empowers us, that lifts us up, even though, even though we make mistakes, even though we fall down, even though we're never going to get things right all the time, and even though terrible things happen to to us, or maybe we do terrible things. But in that, the erosion of the self— that's the danger. The erosion of the self, that is the danger. And when I talk to people about the 80/20 principle— 80% of the time you should be focused on the things that you love, the beautiful things that you want to bring to this world, the beautiful things that are already in the the world, and 20% of the time you should be kicking yourself in your ass and saying you can do better. It's such a powerful idea, but the problem is when people get to the 20%, they forget that it's only supposed to be 20% of the time and that it's meant to be these acute moments where you're pushing yourself to be more, to do more. It isn't so you can tear yourself down. That's why you have to do and believe that which moves you towards your goals. And if thinking that you're a worthless piece of shit moves you to your goals somehow, then fine, do it. But I can't literally fathom a universe in which that would be a logical way to move forward. So I'm gonna give you the magic words that you need right now to never fall prey to that. Believing I'm worthless does not serve me, and I don't do things that don't serve me. Repeat that in your head every time you begin to disparage yourself.

And rule number 10, the last one before a very special bonus clip, is want it badly enough.

Here's the harsh reality: you're just not good enough yet. As Brian Tracy said, said, your true success in life begins only when you make the commitment to become excellent at what you do. This is the gap that I see in most people's lives. They've not yet made the commitment to become extraordinary, and the reason that they haven't made that commitment yet is they don't believe that they can. They're afraid of what it might take to get there. They just don't want it enough. That's the reality. Most people don't want it enough to face all of that. They don't want to face their inadequacies. They don't want to accept that they're going to have to go through that process, that gut-wrenching, back-breaking process of becoming great. And every day lulls them into this sense that there's always time to do it tomorrow. But the reality is there is only now. There is only today. And if you really want to do something with your life that leaves your your own jaw on the floor, that leaves you in awe of what you've done, you're going to have to admit you're not yet good enough. You've got to put in that work, that you've got to develop a set of skills that simply can't be denied. But if you do that, on the other side of getting that good at falling in love with something and working so hard that you can feel yourself changing as a human being, on the other side of is something unimaginably beautiful. And as Les Brown said, if you set goals and go after them with all the determination you can muster, your gifts will take you places that will amaze you. That's what I want in my life, and I hope that's what you want in yours, is to be amazed. To be amazed at how extraordinary this life really is. This opportunity to make of yourself anything you want to be. Really think about that for a second. You can become anything you want to become. You could become an astronaut, a world-class athlete, a musician, the best parent that this world has ever seen. Anything you want is yours for the taking, but it takes effort. It takes a willingness to stare nakedly at your inadequacies. It takes a willingness to really gut-check yourself about where you are today, and it doesn't mean that you can't go and be something better tomorrow. And falling in love with that process, that knowing that being a human and really getting the most out of your potential is that— to know that tomorrow I can be better than I am today. And that doesn't make you a bad person today. It's okay to know that you can be better tomorrow and still love yourself today. But it's also okay to love yourself today and demand that you get better tomorrow. And once you can do you do that, there is literally nowhere you can't go.

Now I've got a special bonus clip from Tom on how to focus on the light that I really think you're going to enjoy. But before that, it's time for the 3-point landing questions. Let's go from just watching a video to taking action. Here we go. Question number 1: What will you do to empower yourself right now? Number 2: What's the mindset change that you need to make? And number 3: What do you need to start taking more responsibility for.

Find a place inside where there's joy, and the joy will burn out the pain. Now I get it, life inevitably comes with some degree of misery, and I get it, for many of you, things have happened in your past that are unspeakable. And whether that's something big or whether it's something small, each one of of us has something inside of us that hurts. It's something that we wish weren't so. It's something that we focus on when we're alone. It's the thing that keeps us up at night. It's the thing that wakes us up in the morning. It's the thing that we obsessively come back to over and over and over for whatever reason that we think means that we're not good enough. But I also know that inside that each one of us is something beautiful, that even in the midst of pain, if you allow yourself to focus on that, to feel the joy, to not just think about it but to actually feel the joy, it will begin to crowd out the pain. It will actually take that room. And just like when you're trying to create something amazing in your life, do not waste time trying to trying to tear down the old. If you're trying to create something beautiful in your life, spend all of your time trying to build that new thing. So if you want to feel joy, don't try to eradicate the pain. Instead, focus all of your energy on that joy and let it become so bright that it ultimately takes over the pain. And as Aristotle said, it is during our darkest darkest moments that we must focus to see light. And that's the thing with pleasure and pain. When you've got that ache inside of you, when you feel that something in your past is stopping you from moving forward, it is in that moment that you must put your focus and attention on the things that are good, on the things that you've done that are good, on the joys and the beauty and the things in your life that you're grateful for. All of that. That, if you take your time and you put your focus on that, even when it hurts, especially when it hurts, if you're able to do that, if you're able to find a way to take all of your energy and put it on that, to repeat it, to let it become a mantra, to let it be the first thing you think about when you wake up, the last thing you think about in the night, and the thing that you cling to when you wake up and cannot fall asleep, if you let it be that thing that you can put all of your attention on that, then you can actually change your chemistry. You can actually change your own story. You can actually change your life. But you've got to know it's in our darkest moments that we must focus on the light.

If you want more Tom Bilyeu, check out the top 50 rules video I made on him as well. The link is right there next to me. I'll see you there.

Is something that you have no natural inclinations for, then go learn that. Go get extraordinary.

Go become the best of whatever it is you want to be, but go become the best of it.