How to Find Balance in Life and ACHIEVE MORE | Powerful Tips for Entrepreneurs

Good morning, Believe Nation! It's Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe. I believe in you, and I want to see that thing you've got inside you explode out into the universe to have a big impact. And so to help you on your journey today, we're gonna learn how to find balance in life. Rule number 4 is my personal favorite, and I'd love to know which one you guys like the best. And as always, guys, as you're watching, if you hear something that really resonates with you, please leave it down in the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can be inspired. And when you write it down, it's much more likely to stick with yourself as well.

Wow, enjoy!

下星期來好好住好。 To achieve a good work-life balance, you must ensure that you are setting goals to cover the 3 most important areas of your life. These goals must stay in harmony with one another and not be contradictory. Just as a wheel must be perfectly balanced to rotate smoothly, your life must be in balance as well for you to feel happy and effective. There are 3 types of different goals that you must set in order to achieve personal development and balance. The first types of goals you need are business, career, and financial goals. These are the tangible, measurable things that you want to achieve as a result of your efforts at work. These are the 'what' that you want to accomplish in life. The second types of goals you need are your personal and family and health goals. In reality, these are the most important goals of all in determining your happiness and well-being. These are called the 'why' goals because they're the reasons why you want to achieve your business career and financial goals in the first place. They are your true aim and purpose in life. Many people become so involved with their work and careers and their financial goals that they lose sight of the reasons why they wanted financial success in the first place. They get their priorities mixed up. As a result, their lives get out of balance. They start to feel stressed and driven. Sometimes they become angry and frustrated. They need to get their goals back in the right order of priority and realize that achieving work and financial goals are the means to the end of enjoying family and personal goals. They are not the ends in themselves. The third types of goals you require are your professional growth and personal development goals. These are the how goals. Goal setting, learning, practicing new skills and behaviors are how you achieve the what in order to enjoy the why. By working on yourself, you become the kind of person who is capable of achieving your business career and financial goals. As a result, you can achieve and enjoy your personal, family, and health goals faster and easier. By working on all three types of goals simultaneously, you will keep your life in balance and continue moving upward and onward.

The thing that you have to do is immediately remove distractions. Most people aren't out of balance, they're in distraction. It's not that there's a lack of balance that's available to them, it's that they're watching hours of television, or hours of content that doesn't add value to their life. Doesn't— like this video, I hope, is adding value. It's giving you content instruction for what to do. A lot of folks spend time just looking at lifestyle magazines or, you know, People magazine or watching, you know, silly news that has nothing to do with anything but gossip and tripe and scandal. And that's not going to help you ever achieve balance. Get rid of those things that aren't adding value to your life and you start to realize, wow, I got another 3 hours to play with the day. Matter of fact, did you know that the average American watches 4 hours of television a day? Now, you might not watch 4 hours of television a day, but let's say you consume 4 hours of media between Facebook and Twitter and Instagram or Pinterest, between the television, between magazines, between all this random stuff that you pay attention to. If you didn't consume that and you got let's say 4 hours a day back, that would change everything. That 4 hours a day over the average adult lifespan is 13 years 24/7. If you got back more than a decade of your time, would it be worth it? Well, then all you would have to do is get rid of more distraction each year of your life, each week of your life, each day of your life. I really look at it very closely each day and I go, what could distract me? And I'm aware of when I'm in distraction because that time going to distraction is stealing from opportunity or joy or balance in all these other areas.

I'm basically programmed from 6 AM to 11 PM every— there's not a single day Monday through Friday that I get home outside of this time of year where there's some Jewish holidays where I get home before 11 PM. I don't— like, my wife and I have won on extremities. Monday through Friday, I'm gone. Saturday and Sunday, I'm home. All in, not even on the phone, and we've now started taking 6, 7 weeks of vacation, which is up from 2. And so we figured out, we hacked, but that's just us communicating. There's no, I can't give that advice to other people. Where I'm getting caught is Misha, my daughter's now 5, Xander, little guy's 2, so here we go to the next chapter, right? The ballet recitals, 'cause she's a little, she's got daddy's DNA, she wants to be in front of people, whatever he's gonna do, is going to be into, you know, they're starting to become real people. Like, I always, like, I knew that at the beginning it was going to be easy for me because I'm super not interested when they're— I'm super not interested in my kids up until about 2 and a half, 3. If you're not communicating with me, I'm not interested. And so my brother's 11 years younger than me, and we have a very kind of brotherly, fatherly relationship. And that happened with my bro. Like, my sister always talks about how she spent every minute with him from like 0 to 4, and then I got involved and he was gone. And so I'm now already starting to think about what's gonna be my new hack. I've prioritized my health recently, only for the last 75 days, and I eat perfectly and work out every day. I hired a full-time employee to babysit me. That's how I hacked it. It's obnoxious and I even hate saying it out loud 'cause it makes me hate me, but it was the only way I was gonna take care of my health, so that's, but you keep hacking. I thought I was the busiest guy of all time there wasn't a minute to spare, you know, 90 days ago, and now I'm working out for an hour every single day somehow. And so clearly it's manageable. So the real answer is effort. It's, you know, I really think it's effort and being flexible. Back to like what I said to you earlier on the product stuff, like I'm a counterpuncher, I react. That gene makes me a good entrepreneur, it's also making me a happy guy because I'm able to turn on a dime and say, okay, This is not working anymore. Misha is playing field hockey and has recitals, and I have to leave at 2 o'clock in the afternoon sometimes, and so I have to change the way I work.

I think balance is really important, but I think it looks different for different people. I think you need to understand what is balance for you. As an example, I remember listening to an audio series by Tony Robbins, and I love Tony Robbins, and he was going through, write down your list of goals and talk about you know, if you want to be a painter, write down, "I want to make this painting," or, "I want to write this masterpiece," or, "I want to create this poem," or, "I want to make this sculpture." And because he was so excited and into it, like, "Yeah, I want to make a painting, I want to make a masterpiece, I want to create a sculpture," and it started building up my list of things that I wanted to do kind of outside of just the business world. And then when I looked at it, I realized I don't actually really want to do those things. I got kind of externally motivated by Tony, in that moment, but it's not really what balance means to me. And so I think it's super important not to just look at somebody else's life, but to do a regular audit. I think one of the most important things that you can do as a human being is do a quarterly audit of your life and see where you're spending your time and does it match to the goals that you're trying to accomplish. So if you're feeling like you're working too hard, then what are the other activities that you're doing? How much time are you spending? And doing that quarterly audit, because your life will always change and your goals and your priorities will change. My schedule changes at least once a month, but in a major way, probably once a quarter, where I need to adjust my priorities based on how I'm evolving as a human being. Some things I just don't care about anymore and I'm still spending time on, so I need to eliminate those. Some things I need to spend more time on that I'm drawn towards, and so I need to factor that in and put it in my calendar. I can tell what your priorities are by looking at your calendar. And so if there's something that you think is really important, if you're trying to find more balance, if you're trying to work harder, you want to make sure these priorities get done, schedule it into your calendar, both the personal things and the business things, and stick to it. If you do that, then you'll be able to build the life that you want to lead.

Before I went back to work after my year at home, I sat down and I wrote out a detailed step-by-step description of the ideal balanced day that I aspired to. And it went like this: wake up well rested after a good night's sleep, have sex, walk the dog, have breakfast with my wife, and children. Have sex again. Drive the kids to school on the way to the office. Do 3 hours work. Play sport with a friend at lunchtime. Do another 3 hours work. Meet some mates in the pub for an early evening drink. Drive home for dinner with my wife and kids. Meditate for half an hour, have sex, walk the dog, have sex again, go to bed. How often do you think I had that day? We need to be realistic. You can't do it all in one day. We need to Elon Gate the time frame upon which we judge the balance in our life. But we need to elongate it without falling into the trap of the "I'll have a life when I retire." When my kids have left home, when my wife has divorced me, my health is failing, I've got no mates or interests left. A day is too short, after I retire is too long. There's got to be a middle way. We need to approach balance in a balanced way. A friend came to see me last year, and she doesn't mind me telling the story. A friend came to see me last year and said, "Nigel, I've read your book and I realize that my life is completely out of balance. It's totally dominated by work. I work 10 hours a day, I commute 2 hours a day. All my relationships have failed. There's nothing in my life apart from my work. So I've decided I decided to get a grip and sort it out. So I joined a gym. Now, I don't mean to mock, but being a fit 10-hour-a-day office rat isn't more balanced, it's more fit. Lovely though physical exercise may be, there are other parts to life. There's the intellectual side, there's the emotional side, there's the spiritual side. And to be balanced, I believe we have to attend to all of those areas, not just do 50 stomach crunches. Now, that can be daunting, because people say, "Bloody hell, mate, I haven't got time to get fit. You want me to go to church and call my mother?" And I understand, I truly understand how that can be daunting. But an incident that happened a couple of years ago gave me a new perspective. My wife, who is somewhere in the audience today, called me up at the office and said, "Nigel, you need to pick our youngest son up, Harry, from school." She had to be somewhere else with the other 3 children for that evening. So I left work an hour early that afternoon and picked Harry up at the school gates. We walked down to the local park, messed around on the swings, played some silly games. I then walked him up the hill to the local café and we shared a pizza for tea. Then walked down the hill to our home and I gave him his bath and put him in his Batman pajamas. I then read him a chapter of Roald Dahl's James and the Giant Peach. I then put him to bed, tucked him in, gave him a kiss on his forehead and said, "Good night, mate," and walked out of his bedroom. As I was walking out, of his bedroom. He said, "Dad." I went, "Yes, mate?" He went, "Dad, this has been the best day of my life. Ever." I hadn't done anything. I hadn't taken him to Disney World or bought him a PlayStation. Now my point is the small things matter. Being more balanced doesn't mean dramatic upheaval in your life. With the small With the smallest investment in the right places, you can radically transform the quality of your relationships and the quality of your life. Moreover, I think it can transform society. Because if enough people do it, we can change society's definition of success away from the moronically simplistic notion that the person with the most money when he dies wins, to a more thoughtful and balanced definition of what a life well-lived looks like. And that, I think, is an idea worth spreading.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I'd love to know what do you think of this video? What did you take home that you were going to immediately apply somehow into your life or your business? Please leave it down in the comments below. I would love to hear from you. I also want to give a quick shout out to Anila F. Whitney Miller. Anila, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and posting about it on your LinkedIn. I really, really, really appreciate the support, and I'm so glad you enjoyed the read. Thank you guys again for watching. Have an amazing day. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love.

I'll see you soon.

It's time to set some boundaries and stop saying yes to everything. And this is the point where Brendon says to People say to me, well, Brendon, you don't understand. I can't say no to these projects. I can't say no to the meetings. I can't say no to these things. I can't protect my time. I can't do these things, as an example, at work because, you know, my boss wouldn't like that. And I always go, hey, there's probably a lot of things your boss doesn't like about you already, right? So who cares? It's one extra thing your boss might not like about you when you start setting boundaries. At least it's protecting your sanity Set the boundaries. Start saying no to people. And don't apologize for it. Just be real about it. Say, you know what, I'm sorry, I can't do that because I've previously agreed to these other things. Sorry, I can't do that because I have this I must go do. I have this email response in my life that I send out to people. I always get these requests, Brendon, can you do this, can you do this? And they're always last-minute requests. So I write to them, I say, you know what, thank you so much for thinking of me. I'm sorry I can't participate. Participate. The reality is that I have projects and priorities that have been scheduled for months and some of them for years, and I can't drop those off or cut in line for you because of your last-minute request because that would be unfair to the other people who were thoughtful and scheduled a long time in advance. I know this is important to you, but unfortunately I'm already scheduled and unable to participate. I wish you all the best, Brendan. No apologies. Sometimes you have to learn to say no because where you've said yes in too many areas, that's all these hours you're handing out, right? That's the way I want you to think about it. All your yeses to other people, those are hours. And the more hours you hand out, the less balanced you feel. So at some point you have to stop handing out so many hours to people. Now at this point you might be thinking, but you don't understand, my life is out of balance because I just had recently had kids. Or I recently got sick, or this recent thing blew up in my business and everything's crazy. And to those times, all you can do is to do your best and allow yourself to struggle for a little while, but have the intention to get back to balance. That's where people get jaded, is they struggled for so long but never had the intention or the goal or the ideas or the structure or the ability to say no or get rid of distractions And so they gave away their balance and never tried to return to it. Sometimes life takes away our balance. You know, many of you know I had a brain injury in 2011, and when I had that brain injury, it took me out of balance for a year and a half. But every day I was working back towards getting more balance in my life. And it just has to be a desire, and I don't make it light. It's hard. It's a struggle, but you deserve to give yourself that permission to start saying no to start protecting your time so that you can move back into more hours. And with more hours, then you can be more judicious about where you spend your time to getting back a little bit more of that balance. You might not be able to get all of it, but you'll get more of it back.

Here's the key to achieving work-life balance: choose to manage your time. Choosing to manage your time effectively is the starting point of overcoming previous disprogramming and eliminating mental blocks to time management. You must decide right here and now to become an expert in time management in order to improve your quality of life. So your aim should be to manage your time so well that people admire you and look to you as a role model for their own work habits. Think about that. So here are 4 tips for time management that will help you to achieve a work-life balance and improve your quality of life. Number 1: Use the power of positive affirmations. Positive affirmations, or what they call positive self-talk, are commands that you pass from your conscious mind to your subconscious mind that you either say out loud or say to yourself with emotion and enthusiasm to drive the words into your subconscious mind, sort of like a pile driver. It's sort of like instructing yourself to follow new operating instructions. Begin by repeating positive affirmations over and over to yourself, such as, "I am excellent at time management. I am excellent at time management," or, "I already have a balanced work work and life. My favorite time management affirmation is, 'I use my time well. I use my time well. I use my time well.' Just say that over and over. When you repeat positive affirmations over and over, they are eventually accepted by your subconscious mind as commands, just like you've programmed it. And then you'll find that your external behaviors on the outside will start to reflect your new internal programming. We say, as within, so without. Now, Tip #2 in managing your time and achieving work-life balance, if there is such a thing, is to visualize your time management skills. Mental pictures almost immediately influence your subconscious mind. So begin to see yourself as well organized, organized and efficient and effective in time management. We say mentally fake it before you make it. So recall and recreate memories and pictures of yourself when you were performing at your best and getting through enormous amounts of work. Through positive affirmations, you can create a picture of the upcoming event and see it unfolding perfectly in every respect. See yourself as calm, positive, happy, and in complete control. See the other people doing and saying exactly what you would want them to do if the situation was perfect. Play this picture of yourself over and over again on the screen of your mind. Tip #3 is take action based on your visualizations. Now that you have concentrated on and visualized what your day and your future will look like with proper time management, it's time for you to put it into action. You do this by working the entire time you're at work. When you walk into the office, you should work the entire time you're there. Be pleasant and friendly to your coworkers, but get to work right away. And work until you are finished. Peter Drucker says that if you spend more than 10% of your time socializing, your time is out of control. Now, by doing this, going straight to work, you'll get on top of your work and will walk away feeling accomplished at the end of your day. When you don't have lingering tasks to worry about, since you'll have worked as hard as you could have during your time in in the office, you'll be left with plenty of quality time to spend with your friends and family after work.

So let me give you the one word secret to happiness. One word.

This is all you need to be happy.

The most important word ever.

If you had to think of one word that's most important to you, or that sums you up, or that would be kind of like a little beacon.

Hey, Believe Nation, if you want to know what the most important one word is for Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah Winfrey, will.i.am, and Howard Schultz, I have a very special secret video for you. Check the description for details.