How to Trick Your Mind to Achieve Everything You Want

There's a famous line that usually gets credited to Henry Ford that goes, whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right. I love it because belief is something that you can build through actual action. Your mind decides what you'll try before your body actually does anything. So tricking your mind means planning ahead so you can take the right action before your doubts can talk you out of it. Researchers Peter Gollwitzer and Pascal Schreiner reviewed 94 studies and found that people who make a simple if-then plan reach their goals more often than people who only set the goal. So an if-then plan looks like this: if it's 7 AM, then I put on my running shoes. Now, I opened my YouTube channel in November 2008, and I sat on it for 6 months before I posted anything. My first video was a profile of Walt Disney, and I wore a suit and a tie, buttoned-up shirt. I had a friend come and film it, and I spent 2 days trying to memorize the script. I still couldn't get through it, so most of the video is B-roll with just my voice behind it. It got 3 comments in its first year— one from my mom, one from my sister, one from some random stranger. What helped me was a trick. I started imagining the camera was a friend of mine, an entrepreneur who's really struggling, and I talked to him. My energy went up the moment the camera became my friend instead. So I wanted to make this video because I've never stopped needing these tricks. I still get scared before I go on big stages 15 years later. Believing in myself is still my number one problem. That's the whole reason that this channel exists, to help you believe in yourself too. And I'm still working on it every day myself. So if you learn how to work with your own mind, the goals you keep putting off start actually getting done. That big goal of yours won't happen if your mind talks you out of it every time you try to start. Now there are 10 ways to trick your mind. I'm going to cover them with you today. If you've been here before, drop a hashtag believe in the comments below so I can feature you here in a future video. And if you're new, welcome to Believe Nation, the only channel that helps you believe in yourself daily, one video at a time.

Believe.

Number 1, count backwards from 5. So your brain wants to keep you safe and comfortable. When you need to do something hard, you have a small 5-second window before your mind makes up excuses that stop you. Counting backwards from 5 interrupts your normal thought patterns. It distracts your brain from fear and turns on the part of your brain that handles taking action. You have to count backwards. If you count forward, you can just keep going to 10 or 20. Counting down forces you to physically move when you reach 1. So friend of the channel Mel Robbins is the most famous She actually created it and calls it the 5-second rule. Years ago, she was struggling with money and her career. She couldn't even get out of bed in the morning and kept hitting that snooze button. One night, she saw a rocket launch on television. She decided she would launch herself out of bed just like that rocket. The next morning, she counted 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, and forced herself to stand up. This simple trick helped her take control of her daily habits. She wrote a bestselling book about it, and now she's an awesome motivational speaker. 2, make a movie in your head. Your brain has a hard time telling the difference between a real event and something you deeply imagine. So when you play a success movie in your head, you're actually building new pathways in your brain. You're practicing the exact steps you need to take without even moving. If you see yourself winning over and over, your confidence naturally grows. When the real moment finally happens, you don't panic, you don't freeze. You feel completely calm because you've already lived that exact moment 1,000 times in your mind. Jim Carrey is a great example of this trick. Before he was a famous movie star, he was broke and he couldn't get good acting jobs. Every night he drove his old car up a big hill in Los Angeles. He parked and he played a detailed movie in his head. He pictured famous directors praising his work. He visualized himself getting huge movie roles. He even wrote a famous check to himself for $10 million for acting services and kept it in his wallet. He dated it Thanksgiving 1995, and right before that exact date, he booked the movie Dumb and Dumber and got paid. Exactly $10 million. Number 3, treat your goals like a video game. So video games are built to keep you hooked. They give you a clear mission, small steps, instant rewards as you make progress. And every time you level up, your brain releases dopamine. Dopamine is a chemical that makes you feel happy and motivated. So when you turn your real life into a game, you can hack the system. If you don't want to do a boring task, you could break it into small little quests. You give yourself experience points for doing the hard work, and once you get enough points, You buy yourself a real reward. Jane McGonigal is a famous game designer who uses this exact trick to save her life. She suffered a severe head injury that left her in constant pain. She felt deeply depressed and couldn't do normal daily tasks. But instead of quitting, she decided to treat her recovery like a video game. She created a secret identity that she called Jane the Concussion Slayer. She gave herself daily quests like drinking a glass of water or walking outside. She fought bad guys, which were things that triggered her headaches. She earned points for every healthy task she finished, and this simple game helped her heal. She later turned it into a massive program called SuperBetter that helps millions of people level up their real lives. Number 4, change your passwords to your goals. This is cool. So you log into your computer, your phone, your email dozens of times every single day, right? When you make your passwords your biggest goal, you create a powerful daily mantra. Typing the words out physically builds a mental trigger. You don't just see the goal, you feel it in your hands. It forces you to stop and think about your top priority before you start working. It stops you from getting distracted by Bad habits because you just remind yourself about what you actually need to do. Mauricio Estrella is the best example of this trick. He was going through a terrible divorce and felt deeply depressed. His office system forced him to change his work password. Now, instead of picking some random word, he made his password forgive her. He had to type that exact phrase multiple times a day for a whole month. It didn't happen overnight, but typing it out slowly changed his mindset and helped him heal. He realized the trick works so well that he kept doing it for his other goals too. He changed his next password. to things like quit smoking forever and save money for a trip. It completely changed his life, and millions of people have read his story online. Also, if you want to take real action after this video, I made a free worksheet just for you. It has the top lessons from this video, space for your own takeaways, and a simple action plan that you can start on today. Click the link in the description below and go grab it. I'll see you there. Number 5, act like your hero. When you face a massive challenge, your own brain tells you that you aren't strong enough, right? By pretending to be your hero, you step outside Your self-doubt, you borrow your hero's courage and their discipline. It helps you make decisions based on what a winner would do, not based off how tired or scared you feel in the moment. You stop listening to your own excuses and start executing like the champion that your hero is. So David Goggins is another perfect example of how to use this trick. Growing up, he was terrified. He was outta shape. He was struggling. He didn't like the scared kid that he was. So to change his life, He realized he couldn't just be the old David anymore. He had to build a new person. He created a tough alter ego that he just called Goggins. Whenever David felt tired and wanted to quit Navy SEAL training, he asked himself what Goggins would do, because Goggins wasn't afraid of anything and Goggins embraced the pain. By acting like this hero, he tricked his brain into pushing past human limits and became a legendary endurance athlete. Number 6, break big jobs into tiny steps. So when you look at a huge job, your brain panics. It releases stress chemicals and makes you freeze. This is exactly why you procrastinate. By shrinking the task down to something tiny, you remove the fear. Your brain doesn't feel threatened by writing one sentence or doing one pushup. And once you start, the momentum takes over. So you're probably not only going to do one pushup, you'll keep going. You'll do a few more. It's just always much harder to start than it is to keep going. Tim Ferriss, Perfect example of this trick. He's a massive author, entrepreneur. When he was trying to write his first book, he felt completely stuck. The idea of writing hundreds of pages completely overwhelmed him. He kept freezing and couldn't write anything. So to trick his brain, he completely changed his daily goal. His new rule was to write just 2 crappy pages a day. That's it. By making the step so small, he removed the pressure. His brain didn't panic anymore. He easily wrote his 2 pages and usually ended up writing for hours. That exact book became The 4-Hour Workweek and sold over 2.1 million copies worldwide. And it didn't just stop there. The book stayed on the New York Times bestseller list for 4 years and was translated into 40 different languages. Number 7, add the word yet. When you say you can't do something, your brain completely shuts down. It stops looking for answers. By adding the word yet, you keep the door open. It changes a permanent failure into a temporary problem. So your brain instantly switches from giving up To looking for a solution. It forces you to keep learning instead of just walking away. Carol Dweck is a famous psychologist who proved that this trick works. She studied a high school in Chicago that had a very hard test to graduate. If students failed the test, the school didn't give them a failing grade. They gave them a grade that just said, not yet. This simple change completely rewired how the students thought. Instead of feeling like they weren't smart enough, they understood that they were just on a learning journey and they need to get better. It gave them a clear path to keep working. Graduation rates skyrocketed. In 2005, the average graduation rate for Chicago public schools was only 52%, but the school using the not-yet grading model graduated 78.6% of its students. And it didn't just help them finish high school. A massive 87% of those graduating students went straight to college. Dweck wrote a massive book called Mindset about this exact trick, and it completely changed how successful leaders learn. Number 8, pair hard work with a treat. So when you hate tasks, your brain feels pain and wants to avoid it, right? It's natural. If you link a hard task with something you love, you change how your brain sees the work. You trick your brain into wanting to do the hard work because it wants the reward right now. This is a real science called temptation bundling. You take something that you naturally crave and tie it directly to a habit that you usually avoid. Katie Milkman is a famous scientist who proved that this trick works. When she was a student, she struggled to go to the gym. She felt too tired after a long day, but she also loved listening to exciting audiobooks like The Hunger Games. She made a strict rule for herself. She was only allowed to listen to her favorite audiobooks while she was actively sweating at the gym. Suddenly, she wanted to go to the gym every single day just so she can hear what happened next in the story. She stopped avoiding her workouts and actually looked forward to them. You can do the exact same thing by only doing the thing you love while you finish your hardest daily task. As a personal example, I only get my large one cream coffee from Tim Hortons if I go for my morning run. No run, no Tim Hortons. That's painful. Number 9, talk to yourself like a friend. Your brain believes the words that you tell it. So if you call yourself stupid when you make a mistake, your brain records that as a fact. You are stupid. You wouldn't talk to your best friend that way, so don't talk to yourself that way. When you treat yourself with kindness, you stop stressing. You allow your brain to learn from the mistake instead of just feeling ashamed and in guilt. It keeps you moving forward instead of getting stuck in a negative death spiral loop. Sara Blakely is a great example of this trick. So she's the billionaire founder of Spanx. Growing up, her father completely changed how she talked to herself about losing. Every week at the dinner table, he asked her what she failed at. If she didn't give any failures, he was disappointed. It taught her to talk to herself like a supportive friend when things went wrong. So instead of calling herself a failure, she learned to celebrate the effort. When she started her business, she faced hundreds of hard rejections. But because she used kind self-talk, she didn't quit. She just learned the lesson. She kept building and she became a billionaire in the process. And number 10, design your environment. So your environment controls your choices. If you want to build a good habit, make it the easiest thing to do in your room. If you want to break a bad habit, add so many steps to it that you just give up. Willpower burns out pretty quickly. A smart environment works for you all day. If your phone is in another room, you don't need willpower to stop checking Victor Hugo is a famous example of this trick. He was a massive author in the 1800s. He promised his publisher a brand new book, but he spent a whole year procrastinating. He entertained guests and he delayed his work instead of actually writing. His publisher finally got frustrated and gave him a strict 6-month deadline. Victor knew his bad habit was leaving the house, so he told his assistant to take all of his clothes and lock them in a large chest. He was left with nothing to wear except a large shawl because he didn't have clothes. He couldn't leave the house and get distracted. He designed his environment so that staying inside and writing was his only option. He wrote furiously and actually finished the book 2 weeks early. That book was a classic story, The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Believe it before you see it. So it's easy to look at all these successful people and think they were just born with more confidence than you or I. They had the same doubts that you and I have. What they learned was how to work with their own mind to overcome these doubts and sow So count backwards from 5. Make a movie in your own head. Treat your goals like a video game. Change your passwords to your goals. Act like your own hero. Break big jobs into tiny steps. Add the word yet. Pair hard work with a treat. Talk to yourself like a friend and design your environment. Those are the ways to trick your mind, and now you know them too. Pick one, use it on the goal that you have been putting off the longest. The you 5 years from now is already saying thank you. And congratulations, you're one video closer to who you're meant to be. Believe. Now let's learn everything you need to know to reinvent your life. 6 months is enough time to change your entire life, and you're wasting it waiting to feel ready. Take action. So many people talk about doing something or say, what if? They don't actually get up and do it.

When are you going to do it? When are you going to do it?

You've got to create a sense of urgency.

I'm going to do it right now.

Researchers at University College London found it takes an average of just 66 days to make a new habit automatic, which means the behaviors that reshape everything about you can lock in before this year is even over. On average, they found that about 66 days is the time it takes for a new habit to be built. Every single qualification for success is acquired through habit.

People form habits and habits form futures.

The person you decide to become in the next The person you get to be for the rest of your life. Focus has always been a strong part of my personality.

If I get interested in something, I get really interested. The most successful people are very focused.

Let me tell you about a broke actor sleeping in a bus station in 1975. His name was Sylvester Stallone. He was so far behind on money that he couldn't afford to feed his dog, a big bull mastiff named Butkus. So he stood outside a liquor store and sold his best friend to a stranger for $50, then walked away crying. That's how low it got for him.

So I went to California and I moved in the Valley, and things weren't going very, very well there. As a matter of fact, I had to go out and try to sell my dog because it was either do that or, or he just was not gonna be very well fed around the house.

A few weeks later, he watched a nobody boxer named Chuck Wepner go 15 rounds with Muhammad Ali, and something lit up inside him.

One night, I went to see Muhammad Ali fight. One brief moment, this supposed stumblebum turned out to be magnificent in the fact that he lasted and knocked the champion down. I said, now that, that is probably what I need as a catalyst for an idea. A man who's going to Stand up to life and take one shot and maybe go the distance.

Here was a man nobody believed in, standing toe-to-toe with the greatest in the world and refusing to fall. Stallone went home and wrote the entire script for Rocky in about 3 days.

So I started to write, and it was one of those writing frenzies, and 3 days later I came up with the script of Rocky.

When he tried to sell it, the studios loved it.

Originally, when I brought the script to them, They were fairly enthusiastic about it. The one thing they were not enthusiastic about was me playing the part.

They offered him $360,000 for the script, which to a man who just sold his dog for $50 was life-changing money. And he said no. He said no because they wanted a real star to play Rocky, and Stallone knew in his bones this was his role and his one shot.

But the temptation started to come forward. At first it was First it was $25,000, then $100,000. I never heard of $100,000 because I had like $106 in the bank. And like I said, I had to sell my dog and things were not looking very, very good. I heard it went up to $360,000. So I thought, you know what, if I know in the back of my mind, if I sell this script and it does very, very well, I'm gonna jump off a building. And if I'm not There's no doubt about it, I'm gonna leap in front of a train. I'm gonna be very, very upset. So this is one of those things where you just roll the dice.

He turned down $360,000 with almost nothing in his bank account. He held out until they finally agreed to let him star, and he took around $35,000 and the lead. Rocky was made for about $1 million and went on to earn over $200 million and win the Academy Award for Best Picture. And the first thing Sylvester did with his money was buy Butkus back. paying $3,000 to get his dog, and he put that dog in the movie. Stallone didn't need 10 years to change his life. He didn't need perfect conditions or rich family. He needed a decision. He refused to walk back and a simple plan he refused to quit on. That's exactly what the next 6 months are going to be for you. Now, I know what you might be thinking. You're thinking, 6 months, Evan? I've tried to change before. I've started diets and routines and side businesses, and none of it stuck past the third week. Like, why would this time be any different? And listen, that's a fair thing to feel, but here's the real reason it kept falling apart, and it's not because you're lazy or that you're a broken human. You were leaning on motivation, and motivation is a feeling, and feelings come and go just like the weather. You were also trying to change 10 things at once, which is why the whole tower collapsed the first hard week. That 66-day number from University College London is the key that unlocks all of You don't need superhuman discipline. You need one small behavior repeated in the same way, in the same spot, long enough for your brain to wire it in and stop asking permission. Do that and the changes stops being something that you force every morning and it becomes something that you simply are. It's who you are. So for the next few minutes, let me hand you the exact 6-month roadmap month by month so you always know precisely what to do and when.

When.

Month 1, decide who you're becoming before you change a single habit. So most roadmaps start with a to-do list, right? Yours starts with an identity. And this is the step people skip that wrecks everything that comes after. There is a truth I come back to over and over again. Being leads to doing. If you want to run every morning, you don't start by just white-knuckling yourself and forcing yourself out of bed. You start by deciding You're an athlete. An athlete doesn't debate whether to train. An athlete just trains because that's who they are. Stallone believed he was Rocky before a single person on this earth agreed with him, and that belief is what led him to turn down $360,000 when he was dead broke. So your very first job isn't a task, it's a decision. Get specific about the person who already has the life that you want. What do they do on a random Tuesday when nobody's watching? How do they talk to themselves when they mess up? What do they say no to without flinching? So get a notebook, uh, try a real physical one, write it all down. Carry it with you. Don't treat your mind just like this filing cabinet because the moment you write, I am the kind of person who keeps my word to myself, you've already started becoming that person. Then every morning before the world grabs your attention, read that identity back to yourself out loud. It'll feel strange at first, and that's fine because you're not describing today's reality. You are casting a vote for tomorrow's reality for yourself. But in month 1, you're not measuring results yet. You're installing the identity that every result over the next 6 months is going to grow out of. And if that feels too simple to matter, good, Because the simple stuff done daily is exactly what separates the people who change from the people who spend their whole lives just talking about it. Pick your one number and only 3 ways to move it. Here's where a huge number of people drown. They set 15 goals, get crushed by the weight of all of it, and quit on all 15 at once. So you're gonna do the opposite. Pick one number. I call it your wildly important number, your WIN. It's a simple, measurable thing. If it moved, would prove your life is genuinely changing. So dollars saved, pounds lost, clients signed, videos posted, days in a row you kept your word. One number you can actually count. Then pick exactly 3 drivers, 3 actions that move that number. Not 10, just 3. And one of those 3 always has to be learning or experimenting because you don't know everything yet and you have to keep testing new ways forward. So say your number is 5 new clients in 6 months. Your 3 drivers might be reach out to 5 people a day, publish 1 helpful post a day, and test 1 new approach a week. Or say your number is you're going to lose 20 pounds. Your 3 drivers might be hit 8,000 steps a day, keep protein high at every meal, and test 1 new healthy recipe a week. Same shape every time, 1 number you can count and 3 actions that move it. Here's why 3 is so powerful. When you wake up foggy and you're unsure what to do, you don't have to think. You can't hide behind just being busy. You already decided. You just run your 3 drivers and the day is a win. Clarity is what Murders overwhelm, and three is a number that keeps you clear when your emotions try to make everything complicated. Write your one number and your three drivers on the first page of that notebook. Make it big, so it's the very first thing you see every day. Months one and two: build your 66-day habit stack so momentum runs on autopilot. Okay, now you build the engine, and this is where the University College London research really earns its place on your wall. You've got about 66 days on average before a behavior. Behavior turns automatic. So months one and two, it's your runway. Don't try to bolt on twenty new habits all at once. Pick the small handful that quietly upgrade everything else and stack them so one triggers the next. So here's an example stack that you can use. So the night before, you put your phone outside your bedroom. So the first thing you touch in the morning isn't a screen full of other people's noise and agenda for your time. When you wake up, get sunlight on your face within fifteen minutes and take a fifteen-minute walk. I call it my believe walk. It sounds too basic to. Bother with, but that simple move sets your energy and your focus for the entire day, and it costs you nothing. It costs you 15 minutes. When you get back, open your notebook and write down your 3 drivers. Keep the new habits stupidly small at first, so small that you can't say no, because a 5-minute walk you actually do beats a 60-minute workout that you skip. Then at night, run a 60-second audit. Did I run my 3 drivers? And where did I get in my own way? This isn't about shaming yourself. It's just about Creating some data for the next day. And every single day, whether you feel like it or not, press your inner I believe in myself button. Self-belief isn't something that you're born with. It's a muscle that you build by choosing it on the days where it feels ridiculous. Stack all of this and then the magic happens. By the time month 2 ends, you won't be forcing any of it. You'll feel off on the days that you skip it. That's the moment the habit owns you now instead of you dragging it around every morning. Eliminate, automate, delegate, and clear the runway. Here's a fact that almost nobody wants to hear. The reason you feel like you don't have time to change your life is that you're pouring your hours into things that don't actually matter. So audit your days and run any recurring task through 3 filters. Eliminate. What can you simply just stop doing where nobody would even notice if it's gone? For years, I wrote detailed notes after every mastermind call because I assumed people needed them. One day I just I forgot, I stopped. Nobody said a word, nobody was reading them, and I got those hours back. Find your version of that. Number 2, automate. What can a tool do for you so that your hands never have to touch it again? Set it up once, let it run for years. And number 3, delegate. What can you hand to someone else, even if it just starts as 1 hour a day of help? This connects to one of the most freeing ideas that I know. 10 times is easier than 2 times. To really double your results, you grind harder at everything you already do, but to grow 10 times, you're forced to drop the 80% that's average and pour everything into the 20% where you're genuinely great. Clearing the runway isn't lazy. It's how you open up room for the version of you that's ready to be the airplane and take off. Be honest about where your hours are really going. How much of your day gets eaten by things that don't even move the number one inch? Cut them guilt-free. A plane covered in clutter never leaves off the ground, and neither does a life crammed with busywork that just makes you feel productive while you stay exactly where you are. Months 3 and 4, do 100 reps before you let yourself judge anything. This is the exact stretch where you'll want to quit. So we need to walk in knowing what's going to happen. Around month 3, the newness wears off, right? The habits are in, but the big results, they haven't showed up yet. And that little voice starts to whisper, see, this one isn't working either. That voice is the single most expensive thing that you own. And here's how you beat it. You're not allowed to judge your progress until you've put in the reps. So let me give you a number that changed my life. When I started on YouTube, I made about 350 videos before I stopped being completely embarrassed by them. Not 3, not 30, 350. If I graded myself at video 10, you would've never heard my name. So give yourself a hard rule for months 3 and 4. No evaluating, no quitting, no big dramatic decisions about whether this is really for you. You just hit your reps, you post the content, you make the calls, you do the workouts, you save the money. Volume across these tombstones is what builds the skill, and the skill is what makes the results explode later. Look at Sara Blakely. She started Spanx with $5,000 she saved selling fax machines door to door, and she spent 2 full years getting doors slammed in her face before it became a billion-dollar company. 2 years of unglamorous reps before the world ever called her a genius and a billionaire. You're only asking yourself for a few months. You're standing in the exact part of the map where people give up 10 feet just before the treasure. You've seen those, those graphics turn around and then they go home. Do not be one of those people. And when you slip, and you will, remember one rule that saves everything: never miss twice. A single bad day is fine. 2 in a row is how quitting sneaks its way back in. So if you missed a walk, take a short one at lunch. You blow one meal, the next meal you're back on plan. You don't need to be perfect. You need to refuse to let one bad day become 2. Months 5 and 6: borrow belief, then outgrow the goal you started You cannot do this alone and you were never meant to. There's an image that I love. Uh, it's a bird sitting on a branch, isn't afraid of the branch breaking because her trust was never in the branch, it was in her wings. So right now, your own wings, they may not be strong yet, and that's normal because you can borrow belief from other people until yours is strong enough to get you flying on your own. So get around people already living in the thing that you're chasing. Find an accountability partner that checks in with you whether you did your 3 drivers. Join a community where your goal is normal instead of super Super weird. Get a mentor, even from a distance, even if just playing their videos while you work. You become the average of the voices that you surround yourself with. So choose that circle like your life depends on it. And by the time you reach month 5, something has shifted. The habits run on their own. The reps have stacked into skill. The number starts to move. So do something that scares you a little bit on purpose. Look at the goal you set in month 1. Make it just a little bit bigger. If you can hit 5 clients, that was a good start. Now how about we go for 20? If you saved your first $1,000, now build a system that saves $10,000. Leaders don't cling to the goals that they set when they were smaller and more scared. They outgrow them. So think of the paper airplane, the logo on paper, the idea that a folded sheet of paper could break the sound barrier. That's the sound effect of my plane going across the screen. That's doing the impossible. And the impossible is exactly what you're here to do. Your purpose comes from your pain, from the exact struggle you're climbing out of right now. And 6 months from now, you'll be standing somewhere you'd call impossible today. Your 6 months start right now. All right, you have everything you need. The identity, the one number, the daily habits, the reps, and the people around you. The only thing left is to begin. And you know when the best time to start is? It's right now. How about right now? 6 months from today, you'll either be telling the story of how you finally changed your life or telling yourself another story about why you didn't. And I'm betting on the first one, because if you have the ability to do this, and you do, Then you must. Now let's learn the 7 silent killers of success. The habits that kill your success are silent, and that's exactly why they win. When I was at the peak of my career, I felt like I'm unbeatable, and I feel like I could do anything. I'm kind of walking on the water. We all experience that in our own lives in a certain way, and it's a great feeling. But then the ego takes you places where it's hard to come back from. You're always going to encounter somebody better, stronger, Faster, more pious, more worthy, more whatever. So if you live in a world of comparison, it will rob you of your joy. Researchers found that about 43% of everything you do every single day isn't a decision at all. It's an automatic habit running in the background of your mind. If you haven't deliberately chosen the types of friendships that you want, that's a problem.

You have to put yourself in a state of perpetual Discomfort in order to manifest your greatness. You've got to reach outside of your comfort zone.

So nearly half of your life is on autopilot right now, and if the wrong habits are flying your plane, they'll take your dreams straight into the ground without you ever hearing the engine stall.

Focus has always been a strong part of my personality. If I get interested in something, I get really interested. The most successful people are very focused.

Let me tell you about a man named James James Dyson. James Dyson. James Dyson. James Dyson. He had a simple, stubborn idea for a vacuum cleaner that wouldn't lose suction, and he decided to build it. What he didn't know was the idea would take over the next 15 years of his life. He built a prototype and it failed, so he built another one and that one failed too. He kept going, prototype after prototype after prototype. By his 2,627th prototype, he and his wife were counting every penny they had just to keep the lights on. By 3,727 prototype, his wife was giving art lessons on the side to bring in extra money because they were so deep in debt. Just think about that— over 3,700 failures and he still wasn't done. It's a wonderful process of failure and overcoming failure and improving. Everyone in his life had every reason to tell him to quit, that a few thousand failures is the universe screaming at you to But the voice that whispers, you're a fool, give up, never got the final say with him. He kept treating every dead prototype as just one more thing that he now knew that he didn't know before, one more dead end that he could cross off the list. Every single prototype you do that fails— I mean, failure is much more exciting than success because why did it fail? You know what, wait a minute, why did it fail? Why doesn't it work? You know, what do I have to do to make it work? And finally, on prototype number 5,121, 27. After 15 years, it worked. You famously had 5,127 iterations on your vacuum cleaner before the final product. Approximately. Approximately. Is that still your approach? As many as it takes?

Yes.

I mean, that's what you have to do is trial and error. That vacuum, the DC01, went on to become the best-selling vacuum in the entire country, and James Dyson became a billionaire many times over. The thing that almost killed his success was not the engineering. It was the silent voice after failure number 3,000, the one whispering that any reasonable man would have stopped by now. He heard that voice for 15 years. He just refused to let it drive the car. Okay, so the objection people say, okay, that's great for Dyson, Evan, but he was some kind of genius. He had 15 years to burn. I'm not him. I don't have that kind of time or that kind of brain. And here's the thing, you don't need to be a genius, and you don't need You don't have to wait 15 years. What you need is to stop letting these hidden habits make your decisions for you. That's what makes them so dangerous. A silent killer never kicks down the front door and just announces itself. It doesn't feel like failure. It feels normal, even responsible, right up until you look back years later and realize that it stole a decade of your life. You don't lose to these habits in one dramatic big moment. You lose to them one ordinary Tuesday at a time, hidden in the 43% of your life that's already on autopilot. But the moment you can name them, you take away their power because you can't fight what you can't see. And today you're gonna see all 7 of them clearly. So let's pull them into the light one by one. Silent killer number 1, your comfort zone. The first killer is the one that feels the safest, and that's exactly what makes it so deadly. Comfort. Staying comfortable rarely looks like a mistake. It looks like you're being smart, you're being stable, you're not rocking the boat. But A comfortable life lived on repeat is just you slowly declining and telling yourself that it's safety. You chose the clear, easy path towards a small goal instead of the unclear, uncomfortable path towards a great goal. And you do it 1,000 tiny times a day until one day you wake up and years have slipped past with nothing to show for it. Greatness isn't found in comfort zones. It never has been. Every meaningful thing that you want is standing on the other side of something that scares you. So here's a tool that I use on myself all the time when a decision makes me nervous, When it makes my stomach tighten, I've trained myself to move towards it precisely because it scares me. So if it's scary, that's a signal that it matters. And I've tried to develop a healthy disrespect for safety because safety is where your big dreams go to die of old age. And I refuse to make decisions that make me feel weak. That's the filter. Does this choice make me feel small and comfortable, or does it make me feel like the person I'm trying to become? So I try to pick the second one every time. You have to get honest about what comfort is actually costing you. It's not costing you a dramatic disaster. It's costing you the extraordinary version of your life, one comfortable choice at a time. So the camera that you're not gonna turn on, the pitch that you're not gonna make, the message that you won't send out, the ask you keep putting off, all of it protected in the name of just staying comfortable. So start today. Go find your uncomfortable spots on purpose and walk right into them. Do the scary thing while your hands are still shaking, because comfort is the quietest killer of all, because it kills you with your own voice. Silent killer number 2, the people around you. The second killer works on you so slowly that you'll swear that it isn't happening, and it's the people that you spend your time with. Standards are contagious. If the people closest to you think small, play it safe, and treat coasting as the goal, it becomes almost mathematically impossible to hold your own high standards. You will slowly drift down to the level of the room that you stand in every day, and you won't even feel yourself sinking into it the same way you don't feel the temperature drop 1 degree at a time. There is a person in your life who is constantly telling you There's a person on almost every weak team that leaders hold onto out of just pure comfort long after they should have let them go. Call it the Susan problem. There's someone barely treading water, not really moving the mission forward, but you keep them close because letting go feels hard and confrontation feels worse. Here's the damage that it does. Your high performers, they walk in, they see exactly who you're willing to tolerate, and they lower their standards to match. Or what do they do? They walk away and leave completely. Completely. Who you accept around you sets the ceiling for everyone, including you. The circle doesn't rise to your hopes, it sinks to what you allow. So audit your circle the way that you would audit your money. Who lifts you towards who you're trying to become and who anchors you to who you're trying to leave behind? You don't need a ton of people. You need a few people who genuinely believe that the impossible is possible for you. You become the average of the voices you let get closest to you, so choose them Like your life and your future depend on it. Silent killer number 3, chasing too many things. The 3rd killer disguises itself as ambition, which is why smart, driven people fall for it the hardest. It's chasing too many things at once. You have a dozen ideas and each one feels so exciting, so you chase all of them a little and none of them end up taking off. Taking on too much is the number one killer of your creativity and your momentum. Your brain simply cannot process A flood of goals at once without your execution suffocating underneath it. You feel busy, you feel productive, but you're just bouncing between tasks and finishing none of them. The main thing is to keep the main thing the main thing. So here's an exact framework that you can use to cut it through. First, define your WIN, your wildly important number. That's one single measurable number that you are driving towards. It could be a revenue target, a subscriber goal, a number on a scale, one number. Then pick exactly 3 drivers, the 3 actions that actually move the number. Just 3. Every other shiny object idea that pops into your head gets ignored on purpose. You're only allowed to review or change those drivers once a month. The rest of your time is spent doing them, not rethinking them. That focus feels almost painful at first because saying no to a good idea is really hard for entrepreneurs. But focus is a competitive advantage precisely because so few people can hold it. There's one more move that changes everything here, and it's pretty ruthless. Let go of 80% of the little tasks that you're doing right now. And that might sound extreme to you, but getting rid of that 80% is the only way to free up the, your space, your runway, so you can go all in on the small number of things that you are uniquely built to do better than anyone else on earth. If you try to be great at everything, you'll be great at what? At nothing. So pick your spot, protect it with your time, and let the rest fall away. Chasing everything is a silent killer because Because it feels like drive and the whole time it's just keeping you busy enough to never actually win. Silent killer number 4, your ego. The 4th killer wears a mask that looks like strength and it's your ego. This is not the loud kind of arrogant kind. It's the quiet kind, the part of you that is so busy protecting this perfect image that it refuses to grow. becomes a shield that high achievers hold up to hide their vulnerabilities. And while it's protecting you from looking foolish, it's also slowly destroying your ability to actually get better because getting better requires being coached. It requires, uh, trying things that you're bad at. It requires raising your hands and say, hey, I suck at this. I don't know, show me. And the ego would rather die than say those words. The shift to make is from protecting your image To embracing being a beginner. You have to become willing to look like the person who needs help because that person is the one who actually improves. The most successful people that I know are shockingly quick to say, I was wrong, and shockingly fast to apply new feedback. That's not because they're weak, it's because their identity isn't glued to being right. They've untied their self-worth from looking perfect, and that freedom lets them learn at speeds that the ego protectors can't match. So the test. When someone gives you feedback, what's your very first reaction? Do you rush to defend yourself? Do you explain why they're wrong? Do you try to protect your image, or do you get quiet and actually consider, huh, maybe, maybe they're right? The people who win treat feedback like it's gold, even when it hurts, especially when it hurts. Refusing to take feedback and apply it is not some personal weird quirk. It is the silent killer that keeps you frozen at the exact skill level that you're at today. So we gotta drop the shield. You gotta let yourself be a student again. Your ego wants you to look great today. Your growth needs you willing to look like a beginner so you can be great later. Pick later. Silent killer number 5, comparison. The 5th killer is one that nearly everyone struggles with in the age of the Instagram highlight reel, and that's comparison. You scroll, you look at someone who's further ahead than you, and something inside your chest just says, sinks. You start measuring your behind the scenes against somebody else's greatest hits, and it makes this quiet, constant unhappiness that drains the energy that you need to actually build. They say comparison is a thief. It steals the joy out of real progress and replaces it with this low vibe of not enough that follows you everywhere you go. So the first fix is to demystify your heroes, the famous people that you measure yourself against, the ones who look untouchable. They're not nearly as far ahead of you as they appear, and a lot of them are wrestling with the same insecurities that They put on their pants the same way that you do. They have bad days, they have self-doubt, they have fear just like you. When you stop treating them like gods and start seeing them as just people who simply started earlier and kept going, everything starts to change. You realize that you're not measuring yourself against magic, you're measuring against time and repetitions, and both of those are things that you can start stacking today. The second fix is to change who you're actually racing against. So we stop lining up against strangers on the internet and start racing against the only fair opponent that you have. have the version of you from a year ago. So look honestly at where you started and count the ground that you've covered in the past year, the skills that you didn't have then, the fear that used to run your life that hopefully barely touches you now. When you measure how far you've come instead of how far you have left, you start to refill your belief instead of draining it out of you. Your only real competition was always yesterday's version of you. So beat that person and let everyone else run their own race. Silent killer number 6, neglecting your energy. The 6th killer is the one that people brag Which is how you know that it's got them. It's running yourself into the ground and calling it hustle. Neglecting your health and your energy doesn't feel like a mistake in the moment. It feels like dedication. But your physical state sets the ceiling on your mental state. When you're exhausted, you're sleep deprived, uh, you're eating trash, your decision-making automatically, what happens? It gets worse. Your patience, it gets shorter, and every excuse in your head gets louder. You can have the best strategy in the world and still lose because you are too depleted to actually go out and execute it. So protect your energy like it's gold because it's the one resource that everything else runs on. So start with how you end your day because that controls the next one. Your mind is not this filing cabinet. If you go to bed with 100 open loops spinning in your head, your brain will keep you up trying to hold them all down. So write them down. Get every task and worry outta your head onto paper before you sleep so your mind is finally allowed to rest instead of being awake all night. And it's hard. It's, I still struggle with it. That one habit alone though can change the quality of your mornings. And if the racing thoughts still won't quiet down, you can use a simple breathing pattern to slow your whole nervous system. It looks like this: breathe in for 5 seconds, hold for 6, and then breathe out slowly for 7. Then do it again. The long exhale tells your body that it's safe to power down. It works better, at least for me, than lying there fighting your own mind with mantras, because you're not arguing with your thoughts, you're changing your actual physiology. Silent killer number 7, waiting to feel ready. The 7th killer is the most patient one of all, and it's waiting. Waiting to feel ready, waiting for permission, waiting for the perfect moment, the perfect plan, the perfect version of you to finally show up before you begin. That moment is never coming. Playing small feels safe because you're paralyzed by the pressure to be perfect the second you start. So you keep polishing and planning and preparing, and years slip by while you get ready to get ready. Perfectionism is not this high standard. It's just fear. You're just afraid. So here's the rule that beats the paralysis and it stops perfectionism cold. When you start anything new, refuse to judge yourself until you've done 100 reps, 100 videos, 100 sales calls, 100 posts, 100 whatever it is. Your first ones are going to be rough. You're going to suck at the start. And that's the whole point. You're not supposed to be good at rep number 3. You're supposed to be building the momentum And the skill that only comes by creating volume. So burying your head and committing to 100, you make it impossible for the perfectionism to stop you at number 4 because you've already decided in advance that the early ones don't count as final products. They count as practice. And that shift, it can take the pressure off in the beginning. And the beginning is exactly where perfectionism does its killing. So we're gonna stop waiting for someone to hand you permission. Nobody is coming. to tap you on the shoulder and say, you, it's your turn now. If you see the thing that needs doing, then do it. Don't ask, don't wait to feel ready because ready is not real. And the most capable people that you admire all felt unready the moment before they started anyway. You know when the best time to start is? Now. Have it right now. Being leads to doing. You decide to be the person who begins before they feel ready. You act like that person today and the action starts to make it true. The one who wins isn't the one who felt ready. It's the one who moved and started while they were still afraid. You already have everything you need. So there they are, the 7 silent killers that we pulled out from the shadows. Comfort, your circle, chasing too much, ego, comparison, neglecting your energy, and waiting to feel ready. None of them will ever show up and announce themselves. They win by staying quiet, by feeling normal. By hiding inside your habits that you never think to question, but you can't be beaten in silence by something that you're staring at right now, and now you're staring right at all of them. So here's what I want you to do before moving on with your day: Don't try to pick and fix all seven at once. Pick the one that's been running your life for the longest, the one that made you a little uncomfortable when I said it out loud, and go take that single one away this week. Just one. That's a great start, and one real win changes more than you think because the moment that you beat. it, the rest also get weaker too. Dyson didn't quit at prototype 3,000, and you don't have to quit right here either. If you can see them, you can beat them. And now you can see, hopefully, every single one. The impossible is exactly what you're here to do. If you want to delete your old self, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there. You can't just plan your way into being a different person. You change who you are one small habit at a time. The thing is, is that we become creatures of our own habits. You can have any habits, any, any patterns of behavior that you wish.