How to REINVENT Yourself (Like Michael Jordan)

Good morning, Believe Nation. Today we're gonna talk about how to reinvent yourself. Rule number 1 is my personal favorite, and make sure to stick around all the way to the end for some special bonus clips. Also, as people are talking, if they say something that really, really resonates with you, please leave it in the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can be inspired as well. Enjoy!

You have to reinvent yourself. If the person you are today is not allowing you to get to where you want to get to, you don't cry about it, you don't whine about it, you don't waste energy because you only have so much of it. What you do is say, I've got as much as I can get with what I have. I've got as— I've got as far as I can go with who I am, and who I currently am is not gonna me to where I gotta be, so I gotta reinvent myself. So you say, Eric, what do you mean when you say reinvent yourself? I mean Michael Jordan. That's right. I know you thought Michael Jordan won championships his first year in the league. Maybe you thought he won a championship in second, but no, no, no. It took Mike 7 years, right? 7 years to make that dream become a reality. So the first Mike, yep, he put up a lot of points. Yep, the first Mike, he won the dunk contest. You're right. Yep, the first Mike put up like 62 against Boston in the playoffs and still lost. That's right. The Michael Jordan that I'm talking about, he had the fresh gym shoes, the Nike Airs, and he had the t-shirts, right? Everybody knew him. But guess what? That Michael Jordan didn't win any championships. I'ma say it again. The Mike that could score 62, the Mike that could dunk from half court, the Mike that can wow you in the All-Star Game, the Mike that we all loved, that Michael Jordan didn't win one championship. And so guess what Mike had to do? Mike had to reinvent himself. And so what did he do? Mike started playing both plays. He just didn't play offense no more. He played defense. He didn't score a lot, but he started to pass. He started to work out a little different. He developed not just the dunk, but he developed a little 16-footer J, you know, the little fadeaway. And guess what? The new Mike didn't— the old Mike, he didn't say, well, you know what, putting up 62, I'm gonna get discouraged, you know what I'm saying? I'm doing all kind of shooting, I'm scoring, I'm winning titles, I'm winning championships. No, no, no, no, no, no, no. He didn't say that. He says, I'm not able to do that because the man I am is not taking me to that point. So I gotta reinvent myself. And so he didn't give up, he didn't quit, he reinvented himself. He started playing defense, baby. He started passing, baby. He started shooting instead of just dunking. And guess what? He went from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5 to 6 championships. And many of us believe, had he not retired, he probably would have won 8 titles, baby. That's right, diaper daddy, baby. 8 titles. And so it's your boy ET saying, number 1, you gotta reinvent yourself, right? If you're you want to be, don't quit, don't give up. If you're not getting the goals accomplished, if you're not making your dreams come true, don't quit. Reinvent yourself.

The breakthrough happens by conditioning your mind every day, by feeding it a role model or story. It's putting yourself in a peak state when you follow through by getting physically strong. It's creating a little ritual of doing a little bit each day, and then you get momentum. But the most important thing of all is what we started out with, why?

Absolutely.

Why is it a must for you? It doesn't have to be you're up against the wall, but it has to be something you're hungry for, 'cause the only difference in people is hunger. And if you're not hungry, get around people that are hungry and something will hit you. You'll watch a conversation, you get around people that are doing better, and all of a sudden you start going, "My life sucks." I remember I went to a guy in LA, he's one of the most, multi-billionaire guy, I'll never forget. And I lived in the Del Mar Castle and I was really proud. That was like the symbol of me having taken myself from being poor to providing for my family this great place. It's built from castles in Europe overlooking the ocean, not far from you. And I went to this guy's house, he's a billionaire, he took me down to his wine cellar. I don't even drink wine. Went through this whole thing. At the end of the night, I was depressed. I lived in the Del Mar tenement as far as I was concerned. I really was. I was like, I live in a crappy place. And all my standards changed. All of a sudden, I wasn't willing to settle for living there. All of a sudden, my back was to the wall in a different way because as a man, I knew I was capable of more. So people can change their standard by getting around where it's better. People can change their standard by getting associated what's true, like the bills they gotta solve, the problems they gotta do it, or they can do it because they're excited 'cause it's something new they wanna take on. Everyone's different, but they gotta find the why and they gotta come up with some daily rituals to get 'em going and just do a step at a time.

That's where you get momentum. When I travel across the country and I talk to basketball players, right? When I talk to football players, when I talk to baseball players, right? This is what I tell these guys. You are this close to going to the league and making your dreams become a reality. Do yourself a favor, don't sabotage yourself. Listen to me, you gotta hear me. I'm telling you to reinvent yourself, but after you reinvent yourself, I'm telling you, don't sabotage yourself. What do you mean that? I tell my boys, listen to me, if you don't make it to the NBA, let it be because you had an injury, not because you got kicked off the team because academically you weren't where you were supposed to be. That's sabotaging yourself, right? Don't sleep in, right, when you're supposed to be in practice. That's sabotaging yourself. Don't get a DUI, don't get kicked off the team because you've broken some school policy or some team policy. That's sabotaging yourself. If you get kicked off, let it be because you put in 120%, somebody was better than you, or something happened to you physically and so you couldn't stay in the game. But don't sabotage yourself. You say, Eric, what do you mean? Don't sabotage yourself by pushing the snooze button. Don't do it, man. When you tell yourself you're gonna wake up at 5 o'clock in the morning, you look at the clock and it's 5 o'clock, don't sabotage yourself by pushing the snooze. Don't sabotage yourself by coming to class late. Don't sabotage— get there on time. As a matter of fact, the Vince Lombardi rule says that if you get there 10 minutes early, you on time. If you get there on time, you already late. Don't sabotage your success. When you get in there and put all your heart, put all your mind, put all your soul, and at the end of the day you put in 120 and you still didn't get an A, you got a B, or you got a C, at least you can walk away feeling good knowing that you put everything you got on the table. You put forth 120%. So don't sabotage yourself by hanging out with the wrong people. Remember, birds of a feather flock together, and eagles and pigeons don't hang out together, baby. All right, once again, it's your boy ET, and remember, baby, today is your day, man. Today is the beginning of a brand new life. Today is the beginning of making all your dreams become a reality. And how do I know? How do I know? Because I started off as a high school dropout. I started as somebody who was homeless. I started from the bottom and by God's grace worked my way up to the top, baby. So if I can do it, you can do it. But listen to me, you You gotta understand that if you're on your way to the storm, count it joy. If you in the storm, count it joy. If you coming out of the storm, count it joy. 'Cause it ain't about the storm, it's about your heart. It's about your mind, and it's about your effort. Everybody goes through a storm. Are you listening to me? As ET was blowing up, my mother-in-law got diagnosed with terminal cancer, and they told her she was supposed to die last December, and she's still living. My number one fan, Sister Turner, while I was blowing up on YouTube, she was dying. Are you hearing what I'm saying to you?

Life happens.

But when the tough get going, when things get tough, man, when things get tough, the tough get going. And I like my man Tip. Tip put it best. Tip said, when you're going through trials and tribulations, the best thing you can do is handle it. The worst thing you can do is panic. Use it to your advantage. Why? Because if you've ever studied that eagle, baby, what you know about that eagle is the eagle flies best when there's storms, when there's winds. Because what does the eagle do? It doesn't have to flap. What it does is it uses the wind from the storm to push it and elevate it. And so I'm here to tell you today, baby, I don't care what your trials are, what your tribulations are, elevate like that airplane. Get beyond the clouds. Elevate. Don't worry about your haters. Your haters are like pigeons. And guess what? Pigeons can only fly so high. And so you don't have to worry about people and circumstances and situations. You just fly to a place that they can't go to. You elevate yourself and you fly to a place that nobody else can go to but those who are willing to be successful.

My career, my entire career, is a study in reinvention. You know, I started out as a comedian. That was it. I never planned on hosting a radio show, hosting a game show, or hosting a daytime talk show. I never did. Writing books? None of it. Making movies? None of it. Reinvention happens when you diversify your gift. There lies your greatest secret for success. You've got to discover your gift, and when you discover it, you got to soak it. You got to wring it out, man. You gotta diversify it. Most of us only have one talent, but do you know that that's all you need? Mine happens to be to take information and immediately transfer it into other kinds of platforms. Now, when I was younger, I actually thought that I could only do that with comedy. But as I've gotten older, I discovered through diversification that it was a little bit more than that. That I could also take information, immediately transfer it into inspiration. I could turn it into motivation. I can offer it as guidance. So now, sitting on a talk show, I actually have something to talk about. All the failed marriages, I got something to talk about. The being homeless, I got something to talk about. Being dead broke, I got something to talk about. Having bad credit, Tax problems, I got something to talk about. Whatever hole you been in, I done just about drug myself through it. But I came out of all of it because I was not afraid to diversify my gift. Even the book, Act Like a Lady, Think Like a Man, it was all about me diversifying the gift. Okay, I had taken two failed marriages and I had taken the love for my daughters and I combined those things. I taught my daughters what I knew about men. Now little did I discover that I had a little over 4 million daughters in this country, cousins and nieces and stuff like that who needed that same information. And that was a huge part for me to take that information and turn it into a book that turned it into a mega star movie that, and it produced a lot of things for me, but it also helped a lot of people. One of the other tricks for reinventing yourself is not letting your background become a limitation. If you take that background that you're from and never let it define you, but allow it to redefine you, all that stuff works for the good. Do you understand that you needed everything that's happened to you to happen to you in the exact order that it's happened in order for you to be the person that you are today? All that failing and getting over, you needed all of that. So it's good to be steeped in the traditions of your gift, but don't get stuck in 'em. Look, if your gift is baking, don't assume that there's only one way to do it.

If you bake, bake.

But you can't just bake for people you know, bake for people you don't know. You a musician, let yourself explore other types of music. I'll tell you an example. The Roots, who play on Jimmy Fallon's show, they steeped in hip-hop, but they're also great musicians. So what they do is they take all of that talent, and now guess what? Hip-hop, jazz, R&B, classic, pop, rock. They didn't just get stuck on hip-hop. I'm doing hip-hop, that's it. No, they do whatever. LL Cool J, hip-hop, one of the top actors on TV today. Queen Latifah, hip-hop, big actor right now, you get it? Jerry Seinfeld, nothing but a comedian, one of the biggest actors on TV today. Remember, you can win if you're not afraid to reinvent yourself. Stop getting stuck. Just go ahead and give it a try, you never know.

So how do we cultivate this idea of kind of reinventing, but it's more like innovative ideas for ourselves to create something new. How do we cultivate these innovative ideas?

Well, let me ask you a question. When you switched into, I don't know, did you play handball since you were a kid?

No.

Okay. So, so how did you decide I'm gonna be an Olympic level athlete in handball? Sure. And what did you do? What was the first thing you did?

I, I saw it on TV. I watched the 2008 Olympics. I was sleeping on my sister's couch still with the, I just got my cast off from playing football from a surgery. And I watched the Olympics and instantly I just had a new idea. I said, that's something I wanna do. I just like, I'm gonna play on the USA team.

So, so something, something stirred inside you. Yes. Like you, you felt it.

It's like a dream. A new dream was created.

And that happens to people, I don't wanna say every day, but like once a year, a couple times a year, once a month that you feel that. And you don't always pursue everything, right? I'm sure there's many things you would like to do that you don't pursue.

Yeah.

Don't have the bandwidth for, it's not the right timing or whatever. Yeah.

But you already had training as an athlete.

Yes.

So you knew, okay, this is another sport. This is something where I, it's like almost like a backdoor door into the Olympics because, or, or into the US team because who else would think to do this?

No one else is playing.

Right.

Yeah.

So it seems like an old man's sport. I could probably squeeze in here and get good enough. Okay. So what's your, what, what did you do next?

So next I started researching. I, I went online and started researching like USA handball, handball teams in Ohio. There was nothing in Ohio. Then I said, okay, where are the teams in the country? And, and then I started looking at like, what are the best teams? Because if I'm gonna learn this quickly, I need to learn from the best. So I learned that the New York team had won the national championships over the last few years. So I was like, okay, when I make enough money, I'm gonna go to New York City and learn from these, this play, these players, this team. And, uh, for about the next year I was like, well, how am I gonna do that? 'Cause I have no money. I'm broke on my sister's couch. That's when LinkedIn started kind of opening up for me and I started to make like a few hundred bucks a month teaching LinkedIn. So I said, okay, when I make enough money doing this, then I'm gonna leave Ohio and go to New York City to like see what this is like.

And by the way, when you were in New York City, it's not like you stopped making money on LinkedIn. No, no, I was still doing that.

No, these things were interweaving each other.

They're all interweaving.

Yes.

So I, about a year later, year and a half later, I, um, started really making a lot of money. Like just kind of started happening. Everything started to unfold and happen after a lot of action taking. And so I moved to New York City for a month. Now the whole time for this year, year and a half, no one would respond to me on the USA national team for like the headquarters. No one would respond to me at the New York team. I would email people, I would call numbers. No one would get back to me.

How are you getting better during this time?

I was just training as an athlete, but I was, I still hadn't played handball yet. But I still had this idea of like, I need to go and at least explore it so I don't regret not trying to see if I could make this. I was like, at least I gotta go and try it so I can kind of eliminate it from my mind as something I, I wanna do or don't wanna do in the future. But if I, for me personally, I, I know that if I think about something and I wanna do it, if I don't at least explore it, I'll think about it for the rest of my life and I'll regret not trying, not giving it a go. So, um, so I say, okay, no one's getting back to me anywhere. I'm emailing people every month. I'm trying to call people every month. No one's getting back to me. So I say, screw it, I'm gonna go to New York for a month. I had a couple speaking gigs in New York for like LinkedIn something and at some social media conferences. And I was like, I'm just gonna go stay for the month and I'm gonna show up at their practice cuz they had the practice address of where they practice on the website for the New York team.

So you, you, so you, so you got ready. I got ready. By, by constantly training.

Yep.

And then you just, you fired.

That's it.

I just showed up and I just showed up to practice when I said they were playing cuz no one picked up or got back to me.

No one gave you permission to do that.

No one gave me permission. I showed up and the first day I got there, I was the only American on who was in the court and it was all these former professional players in Europe who now moved to New York and kind of like live and play for fun.

So, so as a white man, you were basically the minority on the—

I was the minority. I was like, they barely spoke English. I was just like this outsider. And, um, I got there and I go, hey guys, my name's Lewis. I'm, I'm here from Ohio and my, my goal is to make the Olympics and play with the USA national team. And they just all started laughing. And then I just showed up every single week. I ended up moving to New York. I didn't go back to Ohio. I stayed there for the next year and a half. And 9 months later I made the USA team, but I was there every single week practicing and just like learning and taking action.

And so, so what you did was exemplifies something that I, and this isn't original to me, I'll describe where, where it comes from, but I call in my book, I call this, um, uh, you reinvent yourself by finding your plus minus equal. So Your plus was all these people you wanted to be around, the best in the world.

People better than me.

Right. So you could learn from them. So you have to find your plus. And at first they're virtual. You maybe watch YouTube videos of them. You read books about them. You study things that they write or photographs they take or videos they shoot. So then they became real for you because you actually joined them and started hanging around them. Then you have to find your equals. Because if you're just crushed every day in a game of handball, it's gonna be hard for you. You need lessons, but then you need people who challenge you.

Yes.

So people who you can say, oh, I got that one more point off him.

Mm-hmm.

I feel challenged. And you get better and better and you can measure your results.

And there were people there that were like that who were on the team who were kind of beginners. So I was—

Right. So you, you found, you found your peer group, you found your, your, your new cohort, and then you find kind, um, it's almost a bad word for it, but you call it the, I call it the, the minus, which is people you could teach. Mm-hmm. I don't know if this was, uh, you know, uh, a catalyst for your reinvention.

Mm-hmm.

But ultimately you've play people in handball that you're a lot better than, and then you could teach them and that solidifies your learning.

Right.

So, and that's almost every reinvention. You know, you and I have both had hundreds of people on our podcast. They've all reinvented themselves. And I bet you in every single case there's a plus minus equal.

Yeah, for sure.

So that, that, that happens with all of them. Like I talk to anybody from, from a rapper to a, a huge entrepreneur, like a billionaire entrepreneur. They've all had their plus minus equal.

What are some of the steps that you guide people through of how they can reinvent themselves?

Well, again, everybody wants the sort of quick magic pill. And I think in the time that we've got available here, what I really want to do is guide people into some areas of focus that can really add some value. And the first one that I always pick is about asking better questions. Questions direct our focus. And if you're not directing your own focus, I've got news for you. There's a lot of people that pay a lot of good money to Madison Avenue to figure out how to do it for you. You. That's not the life you want to live, being programmed by other people's agendas. I liken the mind to a compass needle. It can only point in one direction at a time. The challenge is just like if we take a needle and magnetize it, like back in high school, you take a magnet, a power source, and you align it and keep stroking that needle in one continuous direction till that needle aligns binds to the magnetic field and becomes coherent, pointed, all of the ions point in one direction, it becomes magnetized. Now, our mind is very similar. If we are open to unconsciously being programmed, which unfortunately, as human beings, we are, we're a 24/7 constant adaptation machine, our mind and our body. Now, we understand the body part, that's easy. The physical side of life, everybody gets because they have experiential evidence of Your body will adapt if you put it in McDonald's or if you put it in the gym, it doesn't mind, it will adapt accordingly. That's its job. But our mind is far more programmable, far quicker than our body. If the strong force is constantly magnetizing us, it's usually the media and our peer group. If those two aren't optimal, then we're going to be sucked along for the ride and don't really magnetize our true north for ourselves. Themselves. So by asking better questions, what it does, it shifts the direction of that needle. Now, the challenge is you can only do that for 10% of the time that you're conscious, or sleeping awake is how most people are 90% of the time. That's why when we're driving to work, we can't remember the last 2 kilometers on the freeway, what happened. But if we focus on being able to magnetize or take charge of which direction our compass needle is him, we have a chance to start reinventing ourselves. Because otherwise, yeah, again, you're going to be drifting, especially in that 90% of the time when we do things out of habit unconsciously, that compass needle drifts back to its preconditioned magnetic north. And most of the time, that doesn't serve us, whether it's media conditioned, peer group conditioned, society conditioned. Look out of your window, there's not many examples who we really want to emulate and become that surround us on a day-to-day basis. The first question is, or the first step is ask better questions. What ignites you? What causes you to come from a place of wanting to really give your gift, not survive in today's world because you've got a mortgage to make, not take the path of certainty, which if for entrepreneurs, if they haven't figured it out yet, as I'm sure you let them know as well, there is no certainty in life. The ability to handle uncertainty is one of the core characteristics of an entrepreneur. To be able to do that, ask yourself bad questions. Now, what resources do I have that I'm not using yet? Great question, because it'll start you looking in different areas. This is one of the best things about the human brain is if you ask a question, it'll give you the answer. The challenge is most of us ask lousy questions. Why does this always happen to me? And it'll give you an answer. It's programmed to, right? Because you're worthless, because you deserve it, because you're not smart enough. By asking better questions, we can search for better answers. That's really the first place to start.

I love it. Is there a series of questions that you recommend everybody ask themselves regardless of their situation? What ignites me? What gives me passion? What resources do I have that I'm not currently using? Are some that you mentioned. Are there others that you recommend people get into the habit of asking themselves?

Yes, and it really ties into what I would call really the next part of getting into reinventing who you are, and that is to check your why. We're driven by reasons as human beings. Everybody does things for reasons. Now, they may not be your reasons, may not be my reasons, but we do things for reasons. Most of the time, unfortunately, we do very little out of logical reasons. We do a fair amount out of passion, but most of what we do, we do out of habit. Those habits are formed based upon the repetitive questions we tend to ask ourselves, which usually are suboptimal. If you were to ask questions that elicited your reason why, and here's what I found in the 3 decades of being an entrepreneur now, that is almost universal and consistent. If your why is focused on you, you are not powerful. You are not present. You don't have the ability to dig deeper than you could unless it was— rather than if your why is focused on something greater than you. We can see this in evidence everywhere. I'll give a classic example. You take the New York or the Boston Marathon, not Boston because it's more pro, but say the New York Marathon is a goal for a lot of people in their fitness resolutions. For those that haven't run a marathon before, it's a big goal. It takes a lot of training. I've run crazy stuff before, and it's not easy if you're not a professional athlete. Athlete. If you take New York, 35,000 people lining the streets cheering you on, the amount of people that run the New York Marathon for the first time, not the people that do it for fun as an athlete on a regular basis, but for the first time, there is way more percentage of those people that complete the marathon that are running for something else, not themselves, not their ego, not the medals, not significance, not the bragging rights, to support support somebody they love, in memory of somebody they cared about, to raise money for a cause they believe in, something beyond themselves. That's because those that are running for themselves, most of those quit before the day of the marathon. It takes a lot to dig deep when you're just looking at going out of ego. Questions that ask you to reevaluate your why, and most people's why by default is grounded in an area that really is fear-driven. What if I fail? Therefore, my why for doing this is because I think it's going to give me the best chance of success, not because I'm passionate about it, not because it's giving my gift to the world, not because it's something I've always wanted to do. Asking questions like, if I knew it was impossible to fail, what would I do then? Remove the fear of failure away and open up possibility thinking. What it'll do, it'll start getting you in touch with what inspires you, what lights you up, what gives you that lift, not the motivational factor, which is usually avoiding pain and needs willpower to get you through getting up at 5:00 AM when it's cold. Inspiration, you don't need motivation. Motivation is a fuel tank in a car, it runs out, it needs topping up. Inspiration is a deeper wellspring. Asking questions like, if I could only spend my life doing one thing, what would it be? Start tuning yourself into that passion center that a lot of the time we build bars around to imprison it through not having to face the possibility of failure and therefore admit to ourselves we're not enough, which is usually what I see with so many entrepreneurs that are burning themselves out.

Out.

They're running patterns of chasing things that they think will give them the success that will validate them in the eyes of others, whether it's their parents, their business studies teacher, their elder brother who they perceive they're always trying to be in the shadow of. It doesn't matter. We've all got our reasons. Whereas if you're independent of what I call swimming in GOOP, G-O-O-P, the good opinion of other people, most people spend their life swimming in GOOP. And it's a sticky, nasty, smelly mess that will lead you to a fast track to mediocrity and nowhere. And so if you can escape the good opinion of other people and stand proud in your truth, that win, lose, or draw, I'm not taking it with me. Yeah, the only people that tried that were the Egyptians, and what happened? 3,000 years later, we dug it up and stole it. You know, I'm here to make the time I've got count. I'm here to make a difference. I'm here to give my gift. And yeah, you can only do that with the freedom of being independent of the fear of not being enough, or the fear of having to adapt myself consistently like a chameleon to fit the pictures of what I think other people should see me as, rather than say, listen, yeah, I respect where you're at. We're always going to see things differently because that's who we are as human beings. Let's celebrate. I'm in my truth and I'm walking this way and no one's talking me out of it. And providing that nobody's less than because you crossed their path. You know, there's a moral basis to that. Then, you know, swing the bat with a smile and strike out or hit a home run, but swing the bat.

So my quick take on reinventing yourself is that it needs to be a constant. This isn't just one thing that every now and then you reinvent yourself. You are constantly evolving and changing as a human being, and the things that you do, what's scheduled into your calendar on a day-to-day basis, needs to change and evolve as you change and evolve. I am I am an extremely rigid, scheduled person. If you look at my calendar, it's packed full of stuff that I have to do every single week, and I love that schedule. But at the same time, I'm very hyper-focused and aware of where I feel like things are out of whack. If I feel like I need to spend more time on my YouTube channel, I'm being pulled in that direction, or I need to spend more time with my wife, I'm being pulled over here, or I need to spend more time I need to spend more time at Toronto Dance Salsa and I'm pulled this way, or I need to spend more time as a father and I'm pulled that way. I'm constantly analyzing and adjusting and then changing, making modifications in the schedule to support what I'm currently feeling. And I think too many people, your schedule is out of whack with your priorities. Maybe when you first set up your schedule, maybe when you first set up your business, everything was in alignment. Here's what I want to do. Here's what's important to me. Here's my priorities. Okay, great. I'm gonna create a schedule that's gonna focus my efforts on achieving those goals. Amazing. As your priorities change, as life happens to you, you need to adjust your schedule accordingly, or you're gonna be unhappy. You're gonna be dissatisfied. You're gonna constantly be feeling a pull to go over here, but you feel stuck here. And as long as you feel stuck here, you're never gonna be happy. And too many people are too afraid to then make that change. As an entrepreneur, entrepreneur, you have the ultimate freedom, being able to create the schedule that you want. If you're not an entrepreneur yet, stop blaming other people. It's not your boss's fault that you can't do what you want. It's not your parents' fault or your wife or husband's fault. It's not your kids' fault. It's not your friends' fault. It's nobody's fault. It's your fault. You're not doing the thing that you want to do. It's nobody else's fault but yourself. Own it, accept it, and start making some changes. As soon as you feel like you're being pulled somewhere, that you want to go try this thing out, that it's calling to you, then you need to make an adjustment in your schedule to allow for it, even if it's a temporary thing. Maybe it's to learn salsa dancing. Maybe you go and you have a great time with that first class, you want to keep doing it. Maybe you take that first class and say, you know what, that's not for me, and you pull back. That's okay. What's not okay is the regret. What's not okay is continuing to think of this idea that you have, continue to wish you had more time to spend on this thing that's way over here and you stay stuck here. Because until you find out, you're gonna constantly live in regret, and it's gonna get worse and worse and worse and worse. The more that you want this and you're stuck here, it's gonna get worse. You're gonna get increasingly unhappy. And so for me, it's not about getting so unhappy that you have to make this huge change. It's constantly adjusting what you do, constantly adjusting your priorities, constantly adjusting adjusting your schedule. And I strongly encourage you guys to, whenever you feel like something is out of whack on the business side, on the personal side, on the development side, whatever it is, you feel like you're being pulled to do something else other than what you're doing right now, find a time to adjust your schedule and make it happen. It's on you to do it. Nobody's coming to save you. This is your responsibility to live your life, to be the best version of you. And that happens when you follow that intuition. And you find out. Because finding out and getting a no and getting a failure and getting, you know, understand that that's not for you— finding out is way better than never finding out. Finding out and losing is way better than never finding out.

So do it.

So thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Jude Silvera asked me to. So if there's a topic you'd like me to cover in the next edition of Believe Life life, please leave it in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'm also super curious to find out what are the clips resonated the most with you? What did you learn today that you're gonna immediately apply to your life or to your business? Please leave it in the comments below and I'm gonna join in the discussion. Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Torsten. Torsten, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. It really, really, really means a lot to me. I love seeing that picture of you holding it up. Thank you for posting it. Thank you guys so much for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. Have an amazing day, and I'll see you soon.

My question: How can I go about projecting myself as a writer first and a teacher second? What business steps can I take to make this transformation? "Thank you for all you do, Christina." Alright, so Christina, we got some good answers for you today. There's actually 3 very simple, very effective things that you can do right now to make that transformation and make it happen fast. The first one is speak it. So words have tremendous power. All you gotta do next time you find yourself at a cocktail party, just say you're a writer first. So anytime you introduce yourself, talk about writing, talk about your books, talk about about everything else before you start saying you're a teacher, and that's going to make a huge difference. So, um, what we like to say is just do it. Just do it. Just do it. Because, you know, number 2, number 2, you want to write it. So all language that goes out into the world— think about this— what does your email signature say? What does your business card say? What about any social media profiles? The very first thing that you should is, ding ding ding, writer. So if you don't have writer as the first thing listed on all of your written paraphernalia, go and make that change right now. I'll wait. Do it? Did you just do it? Okay, good. Number 3, and this is the most important one of all, is be it. You have to write as much as you can. So if you don't have a blog, I would highly suggest you start blogging, perhaps journaling, Maybe storytelling will be more your thing, but just really be the writer that you actually are, and it becomes pretty simple if you're doing something habitually. You're writing every day. You're putting out blog posts. You're publishing more books. Naturally, it's going to be the first thing that pops out of your mouth.

Do you think people are screwed if they don't start thinking about how they're going to reinvent themselves?

I think so, because I think Kevin Kelly, who is— he's got a great blog. I've known him for a long time. He has this great quote, um, and he's a founding editor of Wired Magazine. Uh, he has this great quote, productivity is for robots. So, so what that means is it's not about like rushing around being as productive as possible 20 hours a day. And some people say that, that you have to like work, work, work, work, work, and then, you know, reap the benefits later. You know, what he's really saying with productivity is for robots is that everything, um, that is not about you learning personally is gonna eventually be outsourced or automated. And so you kind of have to have, create your own, have your own ideas about what you wanna be and what you wanna do. And then, you know, work to create it and then eventually either outsource it or move on. So, you know, and of course Tim Ferriss talks about this in the 4-Hour Workweek where eventually he started to automate his processes. So he moved his work week down from 80 hours to 4 hours. That was the premise of that book. But I think it's more, it's more happening on on a corporate level, on a Fortune 500 level, where entire layers of middle management and middle employees and even the workers working at the factory, that's all being automated or, or moved to another country. What's going to happen when self-driving cars are driving everybody around? It's 90% of the auto industry is just going to disappear. And it's not like they're going to be just transferred into the self-driving industry. That's going to be a smaller industry.

So they're gonna have to themselves.

They're gonna have to reinvent themselves. That's just one industry. Same thing's happening in publishing, in the music industry, in accounting, in the legal industry.

Yeah.

There's new softwares coming out that makes everything simpler for accounting. You don't even, you know.

Yeah. And also like, let's say, let's say you and I were doing a contract. We're gonna be partners in some new business. I don't need a lawyer. I'll go to LegalZoom, download a document and we'll sign it. And so, so, so many things are, are happening now and companies are catching up. Up. Individuals are catching up, and, you know, hopefully the listeners are catching up.