How to Stop Doubting Yourself and Start Winning | Tim Ferriss Mind Training in 31 Minutes

If you're looking for ways to develop great habits, outwork everyone, and push through failure, then this video is for you.

I could just outlast other people, and I enjoyed being an instrument of competition. The people we see on magazine covers that we might idolize and feel we could never possibly emulate because they have it all figured out, they have no insecurities, they wake up every morning and with a mental karate chop they just master the day. That's not how it works. Over time, you will make mistakes, you will have what people perceive as failures, but over time you will win. It's just, it's almost an inevitability.

Need motivation? Watch a top 10 with Believe Nation! What's up, it's Evan, my one word is believe and I believe in you. I believe you have an amazing gift inside you that I want to see explode out into the world. So let's take your motivation to a 10 and get you believing in you. Grab a snack and chew on today's lessons from a man who went from working in sales for a data storage company to becoming an entrepreneur, investor, influencer, and writer of one of my favorite books of all time, The 4-Hour Workweek. He's Tim Ferriss, and here's my take on his Top 10 Rules of Success, Volume 3. Enjoy. All right, let's kick things off with rule number 1: outwork everyone.

I think what I could attribute my successes to is more the fact that I was confident I could train myself to absorb or tolerate very high levels of pain to outwork other people to win in sports like wrestling, which is all pain, right? And so I chose arenas in which I felt like even if I lacked the technical gifts, even if I lacked certain coaching advantages, that I could still win because I could just outlast other people. And I enjoyed being an instrument of competition. How much? And I still do. I mean, I love competing. I'm better in competition than I am in rehearsal. I understand. Yeah, it's like, it's really weird, but that's just me. I like, I feed off it.

What I love, love, love, love, love about this is Tim Ferriss is known as the 4-Hour Workweek guy, and everybody is trying to build this passive income machine where they don't have to do any work. And here he is, the guy who builds the 4-Hour Workweek, saying that he works harder than everybody else, and that's how he wins.

It's both.

It's working hard and working smart. Smart. Stop trying to just work off of 4 hours a week. You win by working hard. I love it. Let's go to rule number 2: learn before you earn.

Find a situation where you can be in the room with masters of a craft, and that could just be deal-making. It could be joining a small company, say fewer than 50 people, where you simply get to observe one of the principals negotiating. In an industry that you don't even care anything about, right? It could be waste management and you want to go into high tech, but if you sit in a room with someone who is an absolute pro at crafting deals, negotiating, getting past no, those skills and maybe those relationships start to snowball, all right? And this is what Scott Adams, the creator of Dilbert, would call systems thinking. So instead of being wedded to the outcome of a given job, you are accumulating skills and relationships that transcend that job, okay? And if you choose your environments well, because as I've said before, and as people like Drew, the CEO of Dropbox, who's a friend, have said, you're the average of the 5 people you associate with most, right? So if you take just a few years, have the patience, a few years, to really develop core competencies that allow you to craft your own reality and life, negotiation, deal-making, getting past no, et cetera, learning how to pitch, how to get someone's attention in 30 seconds so that you can then create the desire and ultimately ask for some type of action. Once you develop those, then you can really just create the map for the next decade, in the next several decades. So that would be it. It would be learn before you earn, and it's never too late to do that. So I don't care if you're coming out of college, coming out of high school, 30, 40, whatever it is. Systems thinking, focus on the skills and relationships first, and then you can just create a blank check for how much money you want to make if that is your goal.

I love it, I agree. I often say work for a company that has 10 employees or less so you can really get in the dirt of doing multiple jobs and learning as much as you can. And I'd also say learn from videos. Learn from people who you'll never have a chance to go learn from in person because they have great content in videos, in books, the Top 10 Rules, the Mentor Me series. Every time I watch a video from somebody who I look up to and respect, I learn something. It makes me a better version of me. Let's go to rule number 3. Develop habits and routines.

Whether it's Jocko Willink, you mentioned, retired Navy SEAL commander, used to be in charge of all West Coast training for the SEAL teams, which is intense, highly, highly decorated. Whether it's Jocko saying discipline equals freedom, or you look at, say, some of the writers or musicians or directors or others in the book across pretty much all of them, you find that they find freedom in constraints. So what does that mean? Sounds kind of weird, also sounds very, sounds like an oxymoron, right? And what I mean by that is all of these people have routines, they have set recipes that they repeat on a daily and weekly basis so that they are not making a lot of extraneous decisions about mundane things. And they also recognize that we all have our lesser selves, our impulses. I love chocolate croissants. If it were, if I left my entire schedule to whim, I would just eat chocolate croissants all day long. I love them. They're incredible. And I still do have them once a week. I have my cheat day and I'm allowed to do what I want. So I let my monkey mind and my lesser self just go nuts. But these people all have typically, these, and these are folks we might be inclined to think of as superheroes, and maybe Jocko's a superhero, but the vast majority have one or two strengths. They might not even be the best in the world, but one or two strengths they combine in a really unique way, and they build habits around those strengths, and then they have 1,000 other weaknesses, but the habits and routines are what help them from going off the rails. And this is really encouraging. This should be really encouraging because the people we see on magazine covers that we might idolize and feel we could never possibly emulate because they have it all figured out, they have no insecurities, they wake up every morning and with a mental karate chop they just master the day, that's not how it works. I know these people, almost everyone in this book, certainly on the podcast, I've become friends with hundreds of these people. Not true. They have tons of, not everyone, I don't wanna speak for everyone, tons of neuroses, tons of terrible self-defeating habits. And the safety net they create is habits and routines. That's why Jocko, in part, says discipline equals freedom. Okay, so you have trouble waking up in the morning? No problem. You wanna stage, this is something that Jocko does, takes his clothing, prepares, gets his sort of coffee ready to brew, clothing on the floor for the workout, right next to his bed, prepared the night before, so there are no decisions, there are no opportunities to make mistakes between him opening his eyes and Jocko working out. And you find this across everybody.

I love this point, and I'm really taking a deep dive into learning about habits and routines. I agree, I don't wake up every day like, "Yes! Believe! Amazing!" It's my morning routine, it's this office, right? It's the environment, it's what I do every single day, every single morning, that gets me set up to have a great, bold, amazing day. And you've all had moments in your life that you felt that boldness, but it's just not consistent. And so understanding what the triggers are for you, what led you to feel bold, what led you to feel extremely passionate, and then planning that into your morning routine so that you woke up and then fell into that, didn't have to think about it, it automatically happened that you were going off and doing something bold, thinking bold. Do that for a year, your life will transform into something unrecognizable. Recognizable from what it is today. Let's go to rule number 4: learn how to make decisions.

Another would be— and I don't know if you've ever had any interaction with Kyle Maynard. Kyle Maynard's a fascinating guy. He's— he was born a congenital quad amputee, so he has his arms end before the elbows and his legs before the knees. Nonetheless, he is in the National Wrestling Hall of Fame, like collegiate wrestling, and is the first person to ever climb Mount Kilimanjaro without prosthetics. So he military crawled the entire mountain. He's such a stud. And he was taught by a CEO at one point— the CEO used this for hiring, but you can use it for anything. This particular CEO, very successful, would have his current employees rank prospective employees from 1 to 10. And that's not interesting by itself. His rule was you can't use 7. So I want you to rank them from 1 to 10. You can't answer 7. And what What ends up being so beautiful about that and leveraged is that 7 is a safe number. It's kind of like the non-offensive Switzerland of answers. It's not committal. It's not too bad. So you can wiggle out of it. Whereas if you're choosing a 6, that's barely passing. That's not good. If it's an 8, you're indicating you are pretty stoked. Like, you're vouching. He forced them to make a decision. Exactly. I love it. So you can— 1 to 10, no 7. And so I've used that, and Kyle has used it for, say, Invitations, right? For anything. Invitation to conferences, invitations to coffee, whatever it might be. It's like decisions in life. Decisions in life.

I really love this clip and I've used this myself and also help other entrepreneurs with it. The idea of not using a 7, you have to eliminate 7 and you have to pick an 8 or 6. I love it. I love that concept. It's such a great strategy to use. I hope you guys apply it to your business because it's gonna make a huge difference. Time for rule number 5. Overcome your fears. What you have been doing hasn't been working, so you have to try to say, all right, well, what is something new, a new way I can approach it?

There's a lot of parties that involve alcohol. What if there's parties that are catered around fitness and health and smoothies and juicing and all that, you know? So you're excited about it, and you're like, you're convincing me. I'm like, yo, Timmy, that's fun. I want to get my green smoothie on.

What happened, though?

It's like, oh, how do I do that? What was the worst thing that could have happened if you actually went for it? I guess the worst thing would be just no one shows up.

As a thought, it might be interesting to have her right now try a coffee challenge.

A what?

The coffee challenge is where you go up to some random person, the guy in there, they don't know about it, and you ask for 10% off.

She's very timid. She can be extremely timid and shy. Why would I ask for a discount on coffee? We have to train her to get to the point where she can walk through those irrational fears And you start with silly things. Have you had people ask for discounts on your glasses? Um, I guess I could do it. I think that means she should do it. Yeah. It's all yours. I'm kind of nervous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. This is great. Don't make me nervous. Yeah, knock 'em dead. You'll do great. All right. Fear is a really interesting animal. It's something that we all face in different ways. Can I get one latte with 10% off on there? You have to inoculate yourself— Would that be okay? —against the fear of rejection. Rejection, uncomfortable conversations, asking for things you think you might not deserve but really need. Yeah, it's like I've done it one day. Yeah. Hey, hey, so what happened? He's like, yeah, sure, what's the special occasion? Like, okay, congratulations. Yeah, thank you. You can really train for the big stuff that you're afraid of by practicing with the really little things.

Man, that was another great clip. Tim is bringing it on this one. All the great things in your life come on the other side of your fear. It's your fear that are you back from achieving great things. I love this clip. Watch it again. Ingrain it in your system. It's super important. Thank you, Tim, for the reminder. Let's go to number 6: love yourself.

I realized, I'd say 2 years ago, but especially in the last 6 months, very recent, that, uh, and this is the part that would make my Tim of 5 years ago just cringe, like vomit a little in his own mouth, which is— I'm not going to mince words. I still have trouble saying this, but like self-love is not an indulgence. It's not a nice to have. It is a prerequisite. Even if all you want to do is feel successful and take care of the people you love the most, to really take care of them, you have to as I've heard said, put on your oxygen mask first. And if you don't do that, like, you are also shortchanging your ability to care for other people completely. And that's been a very, very much a 180-degree about-face for me. Right? Because for a long time I was like, I don't need to care for myself. Like, that's— the word keeps coming back to me, which is self-indulgent. Like, this is self-indulgent. Like, who cares?

So this is a great clip. I think the message itself is fantastic. You hear it over and over and over again on these top tens. You have to love yourself. But I love especially the 180 for Tim. I love the recognition of his his own growth and his own evolution and questioning some of his other beliefs that he used to have that he's outgrown and don't serve him and finding new ones that do. I think that's super important. And in watching these videos, if you find something that you keep hearing over and over and over again and you don't agree with it but you keep hearing it, like, you may want to just question yourself a little bit because all these super successful people are saying the same thing. Maybe there's something to it. Maybe just You just need to take a little bit of time and reflect on it, 'cause it might actually make your life better. I love that part of this clip. Let's get to rule number 7: find the right mentors.

Very frequently we'll ask someone, for instance, what advice would you give to a 30-year-old just getting started here in your industry? What is the best advice you would give? And just as important, I think you should ask what advice should that person ignore? Are what is the worst advice that you hear repeated often in your industry? What is the conventional wisdom that you disagree with? Those type of questions give you a not-to-do list, and it is what you don't do that provides the space for what you can do. Anyone who says, "You should do this the way I did it," without any caveats, should be maybe ignored in many cases, but certainly viewed with suspicion. The type of mentors who tend to be the most helpful are those who don't necessarily give you an answer, but they give you a better way of finding that answer. I'm leaving my second job, I want to start my own company, what should I do? And they say, well, I can't tell you what you should do because I don't have enough information, which is a huge credibility point in my mind that they have the awareness to I don't know how to say that. And they said, but if I were in your position, here's how I might think through it. So look for mentors who don't necessarily give you answers, but who walk you through the process of how they might think about making the proper decision given all of your particulars. And I think that's what, in my experience, separates a mediocre or decent mentor from a great mentor.

So I know I named this clip "Find the Right Mentors," but in watching it, I really resonate with the mentor side, not the mentee side. I try to apply that philosophy to the people on my team, to my son, to the people in my family who I might have to mentor, and not just saying, "Here's how it has to be done because that's how I would do it," but helping them think through a better answer. I think that's really hard. It's really hard, especially when you know that you've had it made and you know how to do it yourself, to not force force people to have to do it the same way you did it, but allow them to uncover themselves and find the right path for them. I think that's the toughest part of being a mentor, and I'm really glad Tim brought it up in this clip. All right, time for number 8: push through failures.

I like the idea of showing people both the successes and the failures so they can see net-net that it's actually low risk, if that makes sense. I guess like, net-net, if you're, if you're developing skills and relationships and that's how you choose your projects and you're not trying to appeal to the entire world, you're trying to find your 1,000 true fans who are just as crazy about cricket protein or whatever it might be as you are, over time you will make mistakes, you will have what people perceive as failures, but over time you will win. It's almost inevitability. And so if I can showcase that for people, where they're like, oh, I saw Tim Ferriss publicly faceplant when he did A, B, and C in television, that didn't work out. I saw him try this new thing with this one book, that didn't work out. But still, in between, he had this huge success and this huge success.

This is a consistent message again for successful people, that you fail and you fail and you fail and you fail and you fail your way to success. That's how you end up winning. What I love specifically about this video though is Tim putting the failures on a pedestal and showing it off and say, look, here's my failure, I'm proud of my failure, instead of just trying to hide it, to make it easier and to give permission to everybody else watching to say it's okay if I fail too. So I really I really respect that about Tim and huge fan of this clip. Let's go to rule number 9: Define things clearly. How do you define risk?

Yo, this is an important question because I realized that a lot of the knots we tie ourselves into and a lot of the anxiety that we feel is actually due to using words that are not defined very well. Like success. I just want to be successful. Well, you better have a very clear definition on what that is if it's going to be one of your main obsessions. Young lady or young man. Yeah. Happiness. Yup. Ooh, that's a slippery one too. And risk is another one. Risk to me is the likelihood of an irreversible negative outcome. Yes. That's it. That's it. So defined that way, there are actually very few serious risks. And I choose to take very few serious risks. People might view me as a risk taker. I don't view myself that way at all.

I really love the perspective Tim is bringing really on all of these clips. I think if I look at this series, the Top 10 Rules of Success, it's why I profile so many different people from so many different walks of life. Success to Tim is different than success to the Dalai Lama, is different than success to Elon Musk and somebody else. And my goal is to show you a bunch of different perspectives, not so that you can just copy them, but so that you can define what success looks like to you. Take the best parts for you and apply it to your life. Let's go to rule number 10, last rule before the bonuses: meditate.

I get a lot of questions about how to start meditating, keeping in mind that I had a a very severe allergy to the word and concept of meditation for a very long time, more than a decade, and I've only really consistently started meditating and implemented meditating for the last 2 to 3 years. This is why I think meditation can be viewed in a way as Stoic training or in some ways similar to CBT, cognitive behavioral therapy, because the objective is to help you to observe your state and your thoughts so that you are less controlled by them. What does this mean? I'll use an analogy that I think was originally shared with me by Andy Puddicombe, who is the founder of something called Headspace, which I'll talk about in a second, which is the difference in effect being, say, standing out in the storm, getting pelted with rain and hail and wind and stinging your eyes and so on, being soaking wet, or standing inside looking through the glass at the storm. The latter is meditation. The way I've put it before, which is slightly different, it's the difference between being in the washing machine or standing outside looking into the washing machine. And when you have that somewhat detached observer perspective, you can just be much calmer, much more appreciative, and ultimately effective. I do not think that meditation causes you to lose your edge. This was a concern of mine, and I think it's a concern of a lot of Type A driven people. But even if it did cause you to lose, say, 10%, who cares? Ultimately, you're trying to succeed and make more money, do all these things, build a bigger business, to improve the quality of life for yourself or others, and you achieve that, I think, more directly in many cases by, even if you had to take, say, a 10% haircut on your edge, by improving your present state awareness by much, much more, 50 to 100%. So let's jump into a couple of options, right? So if you're not a dog, 'cause dogs are always present state aware, mwah, then, you need some human tools. One option, and this is the way I started very early on meditating, was listening to one song. So find one song that puts you into a good mood, and in the morning all you're gonna do is sit comfortably. So this could be sitting in a chair, feet on the floor just like this, hands in your lap. You generally are going to want some type of back support You do not need a dog chewing on a squeaky toy, so I may intervene. Molly, come here. Or hold ground. There we go. Or you can sit like this, which is how I tend to sit when I meditate. So this is not full lotus, this is half lotus. It's not even half lotus, really just one foot tucked into the crease of my calf and thigh. And then I'm going to kind of pull the butt cheeks so that I have a nice little seat here, back flat, and then my hands are either going to be in my lap like so, or I will actually post my hands on my thighs like this, which can also help if you have a tendency of slouching to keep your back straight. All right, listen to one song. For me, it was "We're Gonna Party Like It's 1999," Prince. It's hard to be stressed out worrying about things if you listen to that song, trust me. You can pick whatever poison you like, but this was shared with me by Kamal Ravikant, and he suggested listening to one song, doing nothing in particular other than listening to the song and breathing, and that's 3 to 4 minutes. That's it. So you could try that in the morning.

So meditation has been a source of stress for me. I believe meditation works. I've never felt the benefit of it. I think in general I'm not highly emotional in terms of making decisions, and I don't get caught up in the storm that often. So maybe that's not— maybe that's why I'm not a huge practitioner, or maybe it's just an excuse I'm telling myself. I don't believe that it takes off your edge, and I believe the science where you see, you know, people's brain activity, and I believe that it can make a big difference. And I've tried multiple versions to try to get it to work, including Headspace, and haven't found the thing. I'm encouraged by the fact that Tim went from absolutely hating it to being a regular practitioner. I am looking for the right resource to help me finally be able to feel the benefits. I'll look into more what Tim is doing. If you guys have suggestions, I would love to know it because that's one of those things that keeps coming up over and over and over again. Highly successful people are very often meditating, and I can't get it working for me, so I'd love, I'd love some help, Believe Nation. So that's my take on Tim Ferriss's top 10 10 Rules of Success Volume 3. My favorite rule, that's a tough one. So many great ones on here. I would probably go with number 1 though. Rule number 1, outwork everyone. Not because it was super insightful to me, more because of how many people look at him and see, hey, I just wanna work 4 hours a week, and they miss, they miss the fact that the guy is hustling his face off. Like he is working extremely hard to get his goals accomplished. And it's not just about living a 4-hour week. You can't accomplish big things in your life and have the huge impact that you can have if you're only working 4 hours a week. So that's my favorite rule. I'd love to know from you guys, is rule number 1 your favorite, or is there one that is better for you? Leave in the comments below. I'm really curious to see what you have to say. Now, I made this video because Chris7820 asked me to. If there's someone you'd like me to profile in a future top 10 video, check out the link in the description. You can you can go cast your vote on the request line and maybe we'll pick your choice. Finally, I want to give a quick shout out to Joe Cosgrove Jr. Joe, thank you so much, man, for picking up a copy of my new book, The Top 10 Rules of Success, and posting it to your LinkedIn account with a pretty bow on it too. I love it. Thank you, man, for 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.

I'll see you soon. I've spent a lot of my life really angry and using rage and anger, a lot of it directed at myself, as a fuel for becoming a competitor because the only way that I felt validated or valuable was to win, period. That's it. I was an instrument for winning and competing. And I only felt good in relationship to other people by somehow being able to tolerate more pain, work harder to be number one. And it was more a relief of not feeling terrible about myself for a fraction of a day than it was the joy of winning. Yeah. If that makes sense. It totally makes sense. And so for my whole life I've been so completely brutal to myself. And I've realized through a number of different means, you know, one of which anybody can pick up, which is actually a book called Radical Acceptance by Tara Brach, which terrible title. Love Tara Brach. But a very, very helpful introduction to thinking about the potential idea that if you want to really help people or you want to really love people, you can't do it if you, if you hate yourself. You just cannot fully do it. You cannot. I don't think it's possible. So the last few years have been, and especially the last 1 or 2 years, a process of asking different questions. And one of the questions— there are many different questions, but one of the most important, which is right up front in this book and the reason the book kind of exists in a way, is what might this look like if it were easy? Things are hard enough, or they can be. And there's so much uncertainty in the world that for Type A personalities or people who have been wounded and have become very highly competitive as a result— Or highly driven. Or highly driven. Yep. Right? Driven we usually use as a very complimentary descriptor, but, you know, a horse that's being whipped to run faster until it dies on the track is also being driven. Yes. And that's not always a good thing. Right. And very often a bad thing. That question, what might this look like if it were easy, is a really deceptively leveraged question because you start to look for elegance. And ease instead of the path of complexity that allows you to absorb and tolerate the most pain, which some people, myself included for a long time, viewed as an indicator of doing the right thing. Or, and sometimes for me, of strength. Yeah. Yeah. It's like, oh yeah, no, I can redline for longer than all of you. Yep. It's like, wait a second. Yeah. Wait, what are we talking? Yes. And this is good? Wait a second. Like— and there— don't get me wrong. There is strength and there are advantages to having endurance, but only when you're enduring things that are worth enduring as opposed to just making your life painful. So long answer, long monologue, but I do think it's very important to talk about the darkness and the failures and the hard times. And when I interview people, I always try to bring that out because it's so easy, like you said, to listen to an interview or to see someone on the COVID of a magazine and think to yourself, "Wow, I really wish I could do something like that." But I'm me and they're them and they've got it figured out. And they always wake up at 6 in the morning with like a mental karate chop to conquer the day with no insecurities. And that's just bullshit. It's not true. And I can tell you with firsthand knowledge, knowing some of the most impressive people I've ever come across in the world who've become my friends, we all have our demons. So I want— I make a real conscious effort to talk about those so that people can try to create a safety net against self-destruction and certainly at least self-flagellation and berating. Raise your standard. Apple at the core Its core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. Not one drop of my self-worth depends on your acceptance of me. I don't ever give up. I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated.

Hey, Believe Nation, if you want to see my all-time favorite top 10 rules of success, I have a very special secret video for you. These are the individual clips that I have personally learned the most from and applied to my life and my business. Check the link in the description for details.