In this motivational video, Evan Carmichael opens with his mantra “believe” and urges viewers to be who they were born to be, using Michael Jordan as a model of discovering and relentlessly practicing one’s unique talent. He argues that many people never find their “Michael‑Jordan‑level” gift because they don’t explore enough or fail to put in sustained effort, illustrating the point with the metaphor of a Starbucks manager who never picked up a basketball. Carmichael then challenges the audience to say “yes” to new experiences, experiment, and discard ideas that don’t ignite passion. Robin Sharma follows with the principle “nothing fails like success,” warning that early achievements can breed arrogance and lead to rapid decline. He advocates playing the long game, staying humble, working harder as you succeed, and continuously caring for your product, learning, and personal growth. Sharma uses examples from restaurants, entertainment, and a veteran clothier to illustrate how sustained humility fuels legendary, enduring success. The segment concludes with George R.R. Martin recounting the spontaneous birth of the first Game of Thrones chapter, describing how a sci‑fi novel idea transformed into a medieval fantasy world populated by direwolves, castles, and epic battles. Martin emphasizes the power of imagination, the desire to create a complex, timeless story, and the willingness to pursue a vision despite industry setbacks. The overall message blends belief, exploration, humility, and creative daring as the keys to unlocking personal greatness.
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Good morning, Believe Nation. It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in people more than they believe in themselves. And my sincere hope is that if you see in yourself what I see in you, you'll be able to change the planet. So to help you on your journey, today's message is be who you were born to be. Over to you, Michael Jordan.
I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going. I wake up every morning, It's not about the shoes.
It's about knowing where you're going, not forgetting where you started. It's about having the courage to fail, not breaking when you're broken, taking everything you've been given and making something better. It's about work before glory and what's inside of you. It's doing what they say you can't. It's not about the shoes. It's about what you do in them. It's about being who you were born to be.
Michael Jordan did what he was born to do. He found what he was born to do, and the unique thing about it was he found it, and then he actually took action on it, and he worked hard at it. It wasn't just, I'm naturally gifted at this, and so I can coast and achieve some kind of results. He took the work to find the thing that he was great at, and he put in the effort consistently to become an icon at his chosen profession. And it's great, and we look up to him, and, and I use Michael Jordan as an example in a lot of my videos, and he's perhaps the greatest basketball player of all time, but you are no less an icon. You are no less great at something. I believe that we all have Michael Jordan-level talent at something, and that's what you need to find. And you either haven't found it yet because you haven't done enough exploring to find the thing that you're great at, or you haven't put in the effort to get really, really good at it. You have this thing that you have potential to be the Michael Jordan of in your field, and and you're kind of coasting on it. You're not putting in the work. You're not practicing your jump shot and your free throws and getting to the gym, whatever that equivalent is in your industry. I like to say that Michael Jordan is not the greatest basketball player of all time as an example, and I say that the greatest basketball player of all time is a manager at Starbucks, because that person, that guy at Starbucks who's a manager now, should have played basketball, but he either never picked up a ball He never explored enough to find out what he was great at, or he never practiced. And I think if you don't know what you will have Michael Jordan-level talent at, then you need to explore. So often we discount things that could immensely serve us without even trying because it goes against our culture, it goes against how we, you know, what was on our radar at the start. Like, I never thought I was going to be an entrepreneur. I didn't have entrepreneurs in my family. We didn't talk about entrepreneurship growing up. It wasn't something that was ever on my radar, and so I never thought I was going to be an entrepreneur. And I had the good fortune to connect with two entrepreneurs in university and join their business and be an owner in that and learn about entrepreneurship, even though I had all these entrepreneurial tendencies growing up. And I would be probably working at some bank and hating my job if I didn't go down that entrepreneurial path. I would be the manager at Starbucks instead of being the entrepreneur that I want to be. And so if you don't know what you are great at, you don't know what you have that genius-level talent at, then you need to go and start to explore. Try stuff. Say yes. When somebody invites you to something, say yes and go do it. Instead of coming up with all the reasons why it's never going to work out, all the reasons why this is not a good fit for you, just say yes and try it. How many times have you discounted something in your head because you've run through the analysis without ever actually taking action and saying yes to something. So if you're insanely happy, your life is amazing, you have the career you want and the life you want and the friends you want and the family you want, everything is amazing, great, you don't have to do any of this. Keep doing what you're doing because life is amazing. But if you're not happy, if you haven't found the thing that you love yet, if your relationship isn't perfect and your business isn't perfect, then You are daily unhappy, don't sit there and complain, and don't sit there and just dismiss ideas that can help you grow because it might be scary or new or foreign and different to you. Just say yes and try it. Don't be that manager at Starbucks who never picked up the basketball and could have been the greatest basketball player of all time. Be Michael Jordan. Explore. Say yes. Try it. See if it makes you come alive. If it does, do it again. If not, stop it and go do something else. You have Michael Jordan level talent at something, and I want you to find it. So the question of the day today is, do you know what you have Michael Jordan level talent at? And if you do, what is it? Leave it down in the comments below, really curious to find out. Also, if you leave a comment within the first couple hours of this video, you have a good chance of winning one of our two daily prizes. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Ricardo Gareñani, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. It really, really means a lot to me, man, and I hope you're enjoying the read. Thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.
Nothing fails like success. You're successful, maybe it's in your health, maybe it's in your finances, maybe it's in your career, maybe it's in your family life. Maybe it's in the way that you show up in the world. Awesome! You're in a really vulnerable place right now. It is one thing to be successful. It is another thing to sustain success over the coming decades. Is that not a powerful idea? I mean, let's go to the entertainment industry. It's very hard to be a one-hit wonder. Let's not knock a one-hit wonder, but it's even harder to become an iconic rock band or hip-hop band. Let's go to the arts. It is very hard to come up with your Sistine Chapel. Got it. It is even harder to become a Michelangelo. So are you playing the short game or are you playing the long game? This is rule number 2, you know, or lesson number 2 that life has taught me. Play the long game. Aim for legendary. Don't just Say, "I want to be world-class in my dominant pursuit for a little window of time." Say, "I want to have the guts and the grit and the acumen and the mindset and the capability and the commitment to create enduring success." And that's why I say nothing fails like success. You look at the restaurant that is hot in your neighborhood right now. They're on the path to obsolescence if they're not really careful. Sure, they went from a little neighborhood shop that made beautiful pasta, that had great service, that had the owner on the floor shaking your hand, getting to know your name. Then they got written up in the magazines and they— then they got interviewed and then word of mouth spread like wildfire. And what happened? They became arrogant. You see, success can be so toxic. And it happens— it is such a pull on every human being. It just plays with your mind. And you literally shift from humility to arrogance. You shift from humility to arrogance. And once the arrogance sets in, in a mindset, it starts to populate every other person on the team, every other person in the culture, every other person in the community. And it is a very short fall from success to irrelevance. So lesson number 2 is nothing fails like success. As you become more successful, become more humble. As you become more successful, work even harder. As you become more successful, Care even more about your product. As you become more successful, learn even more. I invite you, when you are the titan of your industry, be sitting in the room with 18-year-olds beginning their game. When you are the icon of your field, be the person who is up not at 5 o'clock anymore, let's play at 4 o'clock, reading, listening to the podcast, writing in your journals, setting your goals, focusing on your intentions. As you become more successful, be more humble. As you become more successful, be even more punctual. As you become more successful, become even more passionate. As you become older, become even younger. Yesterday I was walking on the street and I met this man in his 80s. He said, Robin, I finally retired. He's probably close to 90. And he is, um, a legendary clothier in the country that I live in, and he just retired. And he started his shop, which is now an empire, in 1954. So I don't know what that is, but that is decades and decades and decades and decades. And he did not want to retire. He just retired, but he is still on fire to do amazing things. Age is just a number. Do not let an old person into your body. Nothing fails like success.
I started actually writing a science fiction novel that had been an idea I've been playing with a long time, a book called Avalon. And I was working on Avalon, and it was coming pretty well, um, and suddenly the first chapter of Game of Thrones came to me, where they find the direwolf pups.
It's a freak.
It's a direwolf.
I knew it wasn't part of the science fiction novel I was writing. This was clearly a fantasy, medieval, had these wolves and this large family. I'd been reading a lot of historical fiction, and it might have been in the back of my mind, but suddenly it all gelled, and I wrote that chapter in like 2, 3 days. It just came to pour out of me.
Lord Stark. You have 5 pups. One for each of the Stark children. The direwolf is a sigil of your house. They were meant to have them. You'll train them yourselves. You'll feed them yourselves. And if they die, you'll bury them yourselves.
When I did return to books, I said to myself, "Okay, I've had many things optioned, they never make 'em. I've done pilots and TV shows, tried to keep them within budget and producible, they never make that." I'm gonna, you know, I have a big imagination, I have an epic story I wanna tell, I'm gonna make it as big as my imagination, I'm gonna have all the castles and battles I want, I'm gonna have hundreds of characters, 'cause the real world is complex, I want my fictional world to be complex too, not a kind of simplified thing. I wanna have giant battles, I wanna have incredible castles that each one is distinct from the other, that people remember for all time, I wanna have dragons and beasts, dire wolves and mammoths and a wall of ice that's 700 feet tall. I want something huge and epic that can stand up there with Tolkien.
