Go AFTER Your Dreams | Simon Sinek’s Bold Advice for Success

Good morning, Believe Nation! It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe that you have something special that when you unleash it, it will be able to change the world. And so to help you on your journey, today's message is Break the Rules. Over to you, Simon Sinek.

Lemme tell you a story. So a friend of mine and I, we went for a run in Central Park. The Roadrunners organization, on the weekends, they host races. And it's very common at the end of the race they'll have a sponsor who will give away something. Apples or bagels or something. And on this particular day, when we got to the end of the run, there were some free bagels. And they had picnic tables set up. And on one side was a group of volunteers, on the table were boxes of bagels, and on the other side was a long line of runners waiting to get their free bagel. So I said to my friend, "Let's get a bagel." And he looked at me and said, "Ah, the line's too long." And I said, "Free bagel." And he said, "I don't want to wait in line." And I was like, Free bagel. And he says, "Nah, it's too long." And that's when I realized that there's two ways to see the world. Some people see the thing that they want, and some people see the thing that prevents them from getting the thing that they want. I could only see the bagels. He could only see the line. And so I walked up to the line, I leaned in between two people, put my hand in the box, and pulled out two bagels. And no one got mad at me, because the rule is you can go after whatever you want. You just cannot deny anyone else to go after whatever they want. Now, I had to sacrifice choice. I didn't get to choose which bagel I got. I got whatever I pulled out, but I didn't have to wait in line. So the point is, is you don't have to wait in line. You don't have to do it the way everybody else has done it. You can do it your way. You can break the rules. You just can't get in the way of somebody else getting what they want. That's rule number one.

So I'm not necessarily a huge advocate of cutting in line to get what you want, and I think it's mostly because it's getting what you want at the expense of somebody else, right? Like, you're cutting in line and that means somebody else is losing out. It's the same thing for me when I'm driving and there's this really long left turn lane. I hate when people suggest like, "Hey, just drive up on the right side and at the last second kind of cut in," because to my own benefit, I'm screwing over the people behind me. I don't think the world has to be that way. Like, you can go and see the world as, "I'm going to make things better for myself and in the process help everybody else instead of hurt everybody else." And I think that's what entrepreneurs do. And I think in terms of breaking the rules, anytime there's a rule that I feel is really holding me back, I'm frustrated. Understand that most rules were created by people who, who are just like you, who are no smarter than you, and they're created for the average person, right? It's like how average people should live their life and should operate, and that can be very frustrating for somebody who doesn't want to be average at something. And so it's understanding what are the rules that you can break, and then from an entrepreneur's perspective, how do we do that in a way that can serve to serve other people. I think that's one of the key differences between entrepreneurs and the rest of the world is that when we see something that we don't like, when we see a rule that is really frustrating, most people will just complain. They'll complain, they'll whine, they'll tell their friends, they'll post on social media, they'll just get really upset. Where entrepreneurs, we will still get upset, but we'll use that anger and frustration and turn it into something positive. Out of every crisis, out of every negativity, out of every frustration, there's a positive. There's something that can be created on the other side that can solve that frustration, not just for us but for other people as well. And the bigger that frustration is, the more people are complaining about it, the greater the opportunity there is to create something really, really meaningful and special for the planet. So I think the key understanding is to figure out which rules you can break and which ones you shouldn't. If you just follow life around and you follow every single rule, you're never gonna create anything amazing, extraordinary, insanely special. Because you have to be a bit of a rule breaker to create something new, otherwise you're just living an average life. But if you're breaking every single rule that ever exists, you're probably gonna end up dead or in jail really, really, really quickly. And so it's understanding what are the rules you can break, and again, having that perspective of I'm gonna break this rule not just to help myself, but I'm gonna help the people around me as well. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what is a rule that you have broken recently that has helped you and helped the people around you? Really curious to find out. Leave it down in the comments below. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Tom Bennett. Tom, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. I really appreciate the support and I hope you enjoy the read. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, and I'll see you guys again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.

I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.

The people who became the most successful in our society are people who broke the rules. You know, there was no precedence for 24-hour news cycles until Ted Turner did it. There's so many people who got out of the box. Look at Apple and the birth of the whole notion of Apple, or Nike. I talk about in the book of the birth birthing of that corporation, how they did something with the tennis shoe that had never been done before. If you only base your decisions on empirical data, you can only repeat what somebody else already did. If you follow your instincts and your own God-given creativity, we could go where we have not been before. And our nation used to do that.

We have so many rules in life about everything. I say break the rules, not the law, but break the rules. My wife has a t-shirt My wife has a t-shirt that says, "Well-behaved women rarely make history." Well, you know, I don't want to burst her bubble, but the same is true with men. It is impossible to be a maverick or a true original if you're too well-behaved and don't want to break the rules. You have to think outside the box. That's what I believe. After all, what is the point of being on this earth if all you want to do is be liked by everyone and avoid trouble? The only way that I ever got anyplace was by breaking some of the rules. After all, I remember that after I was finished with my bodybuilding career, I wanted to get into acting and I wanted to be a star in films. You can imagine what the agents said when I went to meet all those agents. Everyone had the same line that it can't be done. The rules are different here. Just look at your body, you have this huge monstrous body, overly developed. That doesn't fit into the movies. You don't understand, this was 20 years ago, the Hercules movies. Now there is the little guys that are in, Dustin Hoffman, Woody Allen, Jack Nicholson, before he gained weight, of course, that is. But anyway, those are the guys that were in. And the agent also complained about my accent. He says, no one ever became a star with an accent like that, especially not with a German accent. And yes, I can imagine with your name, Arnold, Schwarzen Schnitzel or whatever the name is on a billboard. Yeah, that's going to draw a lot of tickets and sell a lot of tickets. Yeah, right. So this is the kind of negative attitude they had, but I didn't listen to those rules, even though they were very nice and they said, look, we can get you some bit parts, we can make— get you to be, you know, playing a wrestler or bouncer. Oh, maybe with your German accent we can get you to be a Nazi officer in Hogan's Heroes or something like that. But, you know, I didn't listen to all this. These were their rules, not my rules. I was convinced I could do it, that if I worked as hard as I did in bodybuilding, 5 hours a day, and I started getting to work, I started taking acting classes, took English classes, took speech classes, dialogue classes, accent removal classes I even took. I remember running around, "A fine wine grows on a vine." You see, because Germans had difficulties with the F and the W and the V. So fine wine grows on the vine. I know what some of you now say is, I hope that Arnold got his money back. But let me tell you something, I had a good time doing those things and it really helped me. And finally I broke through. I broke through and I started getting the first parts in TV, Streets of San Francisco, Lucille Ball hired me. I made Pumping Iron, Stay Hungry, and then I got the big break in Conan the Barbarian. And there the director said, "If we wouldn't have Schwarzenegger, we would have to build one." Now think about that. And then when I did Terminator, "I'll be back," became most of— one of the most famous lines in movie history, all because of my crazy accent. Now think about it, the things that the agent said would be totally a detriment and would be impossible for me to get a job, all of a sudden became an asset for me. All of those things, my accent, my body, and everything. So it just shows you, never listen to that you can't do something. And you have to work your way up, of course, run for something else first. I mean, it was the same when I ran for governor, the same lines that you have to work your way up, it can't be done. And then, of course, I ran for governor, and the rest, of course, is history. They said you have to start with a You start with a small job as mayor, and then as assemblyman, and then as lieutenant governor, and then as governor. And they said, that's the way it works in a political career. I said, I'm not interested in a political career. I want to be a public servant. I want to fix California's problems and bring people together and bring the parties together. So, like I said, I decided to run. I didn't pay attention to the rules, and I made it, and the rest is history.