How to UNLOCK Your MIND | Morning Training That Transforms Productivity in 56 Minutes

Do you ever feel like you're living the Groundhog Day of mornings? Wake up, snooze button, scroll through social media, rinse and repeat. If you're feeling like your mornings are a chaotic mess, then it's time to shake things up and get on track for a productive and successful day. In this episode, we'll reveal some of the most effective morning habits that will supercharge your productivity and help you start off your day right. Whether you're a morning person or not, these habits will help you maximize your energy and focus and set you on a path to success. From simple tips like getting enough sleep and making your bed to more advanced practices like meditation optimizing cognition, and managing a calendar, we'll share actionable insights and strategies that will transform your morning routine from chaos to clarity. If you're ready to ditch the snooze button and start living your best mornings, this episode is for you. So pour yourself a cup of coffee or tea and get ready to learn how to create a morning routine that sets you up for a successful day. Enjoy. Okay, let's kick it off with rule number 1, establish a powerful morning routine with Tom Bilyeu.

Morning routines are one of the most important things that you can create in your life. And the reason is when you start the day, if you get early momentum going, the rest of the day is often gonna follow in that. It's an idea called entropy. Everything moves towards chaos. And the only way to combat that is to put energy into the system. You are not going to wake up and randomly have a good day. You're going to have to structure your day in a way that sets you up to overcome all of the entropy, all of that chaos, all of the thousand things going to come at you on a daily basis that are going to knock you off course. And the easiest way to do that is to have a routine that you follow every morning so you don't have to think about it, you don't have to reinvent the wheel, you don't have to wonder or think about what you should be doing. It's just right there. It is baked into the routine. So by doing that, now you can actually accomplish the most important things first. So the thing to doing your morning routine well is to optimize for what Tim Ferriss refers to as the lead domino. What's the thing that if I did this, it's gonna make everything else easier down the road? So number one, 1, a morning routine actually starts the night before. You want to get plenty of sleep. Why? Because that's going to optimize your, your cognition. The next thing you want to do is either meditate or work out. Typically I will work out first. The reason that I work out is because it optimizes your cognition so that everything else is going to get easier. It also dramatically impacts your energy levels. Talk about 2 things that are incredible lead dominoes. If I'm getting sleep and optimizing my cognition, if I'm working out and optimizing my cognition, and I'm making sure that I have the energy levels that I need to get things done, now I'm really making sure that everything that I do after that is easier. The next thing that I do is meditate. Why? Because it optimizes your cognition. You want to make sure that you're getting all of your background radiation, the stress, the anxiety, you want to get that as close to zero as you can. That way you can think clearly. You get into what I call a calm and creative state so that areas of your brain that don't often communicate are able to communicate, get better ideas that way. Again, lead domino, improving your cognition, lowering your stress levels, making sure that you're centered and that you've got that energy to move forward. Then I'm gonna go down my list of important things. I make that list the day before so I know exactly what I should be doing at any one time. And again, it's a lead domino strategy. What the first thing that I'm going to do is gonna be the thing that makes everything else on my list easier. I'm gonna do everything that I can do on the most important thing. And by the way, they should always be rank ordered. There is no such thing as a tie. There is a number 1, a number 2, a number 3, a number 4, so on and so forth. There is not 2 number 1s. There's not 2 number 2s. There is a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. So on and so forth. I do everything that I can do on number 1. Once that's now where I'm waiting for something else, or, you know, I just have to let it bake, whatever, then I'm going to move on to number 2. I'm going to do everything I can on number 2. Then I'm going to move on to number 3. You set your day up like that, and you're not checking your phone, and you're not responding to other people, because that's letting them control your schedule. And what are the odds that somebody other than you knows better what you should be doing to make your goals come true than you? The answer should be zero, because if somebody else knows better than you, we already have a problem. It means that somebody else is paying more attention to your own life than you are. That would be problematic. Get that morning routine down, get that momentum going, do the Lee Domino strategy, make sure you're optimizing for energy and cognition.

Rule number 2 is make your bed with William McRaven.

Every morning in SEAL training, my instructors, who at the time were all Vietnam veterans, would show up in my barracks room And the first thing they'd do was inspect my bed. If you did it right, the corners would be square, the covers would be pulled tight, the pillow centered just under the headboard, and the extra blanket folded neatly at the foot of the rack. It was a simple task, mundane at best, but every morning we were required to make our bed to perfection. It seemed a little ridiculous at the time, particularly in light of the fact that we were aspiring to be real warriors, tough battle-hardened SEALs. But the wisdom of this simple act has been proven to me many times over. If you make your bed every morning, you will have accomplished the first task of the day. It will give you a small sense of pride, and it will encourage you to do another task, and another, and another. And by the end of the day, that one task completed will have turned into many tasks completed. Making your bed will also reinforce the fact that the little things in life matter. If you can't do the little things right, you'll never be able to do the big things right. And if by chance you have a miserable day, you will come home to a bed that is made, that you made. And a made bed gives you encouragement that tomorrow will be better. So if you want to change the world, start off by making your bed.

Rule number 3 is get quality sleep with Andrew Huberman.

I certainly believe that our state of mind and body at any point in time is strongly dictated by our state of mind and body in the hours and days prior to that. And on the one hand, people are going to hear that and say, "Well, duh. If you're sleep deprived, you're going to feel like garbage. And if you're well rested, you'll feel great." That's kind of the top contour of it. But when one looks at the neuroscience, for instance, of sleep, you start to realize that the amount of rapid eye movement sleep that you're going to get in any 90-minute bout of sleep, because your sleep is broken up into these 90-minute segments more or less, is strongly dictated by the ratio of slow-wave sleep, aka deep sleep, and rapid eye movement sleep that you had in the previous 90-minute bout. And then when you start to look at the research in terms of waking states, you start to find that your ability to be focused say for a bout of work in the morning or the afternoon or a creative brainstorm session, or I don't know, to maybe drill into some personal issue that you're dealing with during therapy or just on a walk or while journaling is not a square wave function. None of us should sit down and expect ourselves to just drop into that state. Much of our ability to move into that state effectively, whatever effective means, whatever the target or goal of that bout, as I'm calling it, is going to be dictated by what happened in the previous moments and hours. And so when I zoom out from that, what I've doubled down on is this idea that there are just a core set of foundational things that we have to re-up every 24 hours. I think thanks to the incredibly hard work of Dr. Matt Walker at Berkeley, the sleep diplomat on Twitter, It's such a great name because it's so appropriate. I mean, a decade ago or so, it was like, "I'll sleep when I'm dead." That was the dominant mentality out there. And yeah, sleep's great, but getting stuff done is more important. I mean, Matt has really impressed on everybody that our mental health, our physical health, and our ability to perform is so strongly dependent on our ability to get quality sleep. Maybe not every night of our life, I mean, we have to be realistic, but that sleep is vital. A hat tip isn't sufficient. So sleep is critical. In the absence of quality sleep over 2 or 3 days, you're just going to fall to pieces. In the presence of quality sufficient sleep over 2 or 3 days, you're going to function at an amazing level. There's a gain of function and a loss of function there. It's not just if you sleep poorly, you function less well. You sleep better, you function much better. So sleep, I would say, is at the top of the list.

Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special free workshop worksheet just for this video. The worksheet will highlight all the lessons learned in this video, as well as pull out our 3 favorite learnings and quotes that will inspire you to actually do something. The worksheet will also give you space to write down what your key takeaways are and your specific plan of action to make sure you're getting results. If you want the worksheet designed specifically for this video, absolutely for free, There's a link in the description below. Go click on it and start building the momentum in your life and your business. I'll see you there. Rule number 4 is stop killing time with Alex Hormozi.

I had a young entrepreneur reach out to me and he said, hey man, I'm really struggling. He said, I'm doing something that my mentor told me to do. And he told me, and so he said, my whole morning routine takes me 3 hours. And he, he basically did that whole checklist. He's like, I walk outside barefoot 30 minutes so I can like center myself. And then I do the red light sauna and I do float tank and then I do like all this stuff, right? He's like, and it's just like, it's killing my day. He's like, by the time I start, it's like, you know, 11 AM. And he's like, 'cause he also needs me to sleep this amount of hours and all this stuff. And I was like, dude, sometimes the work just needs doing, man. Like everyone, I think a lot of this stuff is productive procrastination or people think it's productive procrastination, but it's just another form procrastination. They feel like— it's like watching TED Talks. It's like you feel like you learned something, but like you're not making more money. Like, you got to make 200 dials. Whatever way you want to do that, go for it, you know what I mean? But for me, like, the longer I'm putting it off, the longer I feel like I'm guilty about not doing it.

Rule number 5 is manage your calendar with Jay Shetty.

If it's not in the calendar, it won't get done. It's not really a priority, right? You have to make sure that it's in your plan, it's in your day. So I'm going to show you quickly what my calendar and schedule look like. That is my life this month. As you can see, it's color-coded, it's beautifully designed. And as I flick through this, what you realize is that every single day I have everything from workout time to meal times to scheduled off time all in my calendar. What this allows me to do is it helps me prioritize both both personal and professional commitments and helps me see both things in the same place. If you haven't put something in your calendar, even if it's something social, I promise you, you'll either forget it or you won't plan effectively around it. When I know I have a really big podcast or a really big interview, or if I know that I have a big deadline on a day, I don't then surround that day with other difficult and challenging tasks. Sometimes I'll start my day with the most challenging task of the day because I feel that I need to start with a challenge. And sometimes I'll actually put it as the last most challenging task of the day because actually I want to build that momentum. When you have a schedule, you get context around how you feel. That way you manage your mental health and well-being a million times better and you do more with less time.

Rule number 6 is organize your time with Mark Cuban.

How do you do all of this? I mean, honestly, like your schedule between the Shark Tank, Shark Tank, all those companies, doing like these things. I mean, like, what time are you waking up in the morning?

6, 5:36.

Like, what's the day— like, give me a day in the life of you.

So, you probably shouldn't admit this, but like, I'll get up at 5:36, particularly during the school year when my kids are going to school.

You have 3 kids, too.

Yeah, 12, 15, and 18. Yeah.

Are you involved? Do you see these kids? Yes. Because how are you able to do all of this?

I don't travel that much unless they're out doing stuff.

Really?

Okay.

So like, right now, my middle daughter, um, Alyssa's at camp. My wife and my youngest son Jake, who's 12, are in Iceland right now. They went on a trip because while I'm shooting Shark Tank, that's when they all know to go do their trips.

That's a good idea.

Yeah. And then my oldest is on a trip as well. So with her class, and so all, you know, so while we're shooting, they're gone. And so that's when I pack everything in.

And then you do everything.

Yeah. But otherwise, you know, I can do one-day trips here, one-day trips there, because, you know, I'd rather spend time with my family.

So you, so you are like, you spend a lot of time with your—

Yeah, of course. Yeah, that's the best part of my life.

Okay, so tell me the day, give me your daily, you wake up at, you said 5:36.

Do you know, say hi to everybody, guess everybody going to school if that's what's up, and, um, then do my email and typically get back in bed, do my email, get through any emergencies, go back, take a nap.

Really?

Yeah. Oh yeah.

So wait, so you did the emails first before you do anything else, right?

Yeah, I saw that you'd said that a bunch of times.

Yeah.

And you know, I've got an iWatch like you, right? So I look at my sleep, right? So I wear it while I sleep, and I'll see how much sleep I got, you know, because you don't really— you might feel okay and you don't— you know, when you didn't sleep, but sometimes you don't know how much sleep you got.

100%.

Exactly.

And so, like, if I got my 200 deep, deepest sleep, right, my 2 hours rather, then I'm usually pretty good. Right, right.

So wait, what time do you go to bed at night?

Typically anywhere from midnight to 1:30.

Okay.

And then you wake up around—

okay, so you get like— you're in bed for 5, 6 hours.

And then if I didn't really get good sleep, Okay. Then I get my email done.

I go back to bed.

Go back to sleep. Yeah.

Really?

Yeah.

I am just getting shocked.

Yeah. So I get an hour. Like, I'm not one of these people that's just like, oh, I just got to slug it out, whatever.

Yeah.

Because remember, everybody's got to kiss my ass.

And rule number 7, the last one before some very special bonus clips, is stop the productivity overload with Gabby Bernstein.

Many of us have issues with productivity. Maybe we are overly productive, but we're feeling burnt out all the time, or we're not productive at all because we don't know where to start. I found personally being in business for myself for the last 20 years that I have been a little overly productive. I almost did too much, and I was constantly multitasking and making things happen and just moving so fast that ultimately I really burnt out. And I started feeling brain fog. I was feeling disoriented. I couldn't focus. I was feeling like even though I for so many years was priding myself on the fact that I could get so much done at one time, I actually don't think I was being nearly as productive as I could have been. So I hit a bottom recently with this productivity overload, and I realized that I had to change my patterns. I had to change my ways. I was then blessed. I said a prayer. I said, I need some help with my brain fog, and I need some help with my productivity issue. And I that day got an email from the Dr. Oz Show asking me to come on and do a segment with this lovely author and doctor, Dr. Mike Dow. And me and Mike had been in touch many years, for many years, just because he had been an author, we were published by the same publishers, and Mike had written a book about brain fog. So that day I'm like, thank you, universe, you're giving me exactly what I need. I go on Dr. Oz with Mike and I'm backstage with him and I'm like, listen, I'm feeling so chaotic and I'm multitasking so much and I feel like I've got brain fog and I'm forgetting things. And he looks at me and says, how much are you doing at one time? And I said, oh, Mike, I'm doing a million things. I'm doing a million things at once. I have 1,000 tabs up on my screen. And he's like, these are big brain no-nos. And they're also productivity no-nos is what he said. Because he said that the more I try to do and the more I try to multitask, the less I'm actually getting done. So he gave me a tip that I wanna share with you that has changed everything for me. And his suggestion was to just do 5 things a day. To make a list of the 5 most important things that I need to do that day and not do number 2 until I've completed number 1. And then once I complete number 1, move on to number 2, then on to number 3. And if I don't get through all 5 in one day, I'll just pick up the 5th the next day, or wherever I left off, I'll pick up the next day. And to really stick to that list and not move back and forth and not try to make a million other things added on to that list and just be really committed to that 5-task list. I did it. I started to just be very clear about the 5 things I was doing in a day. I told my team, I made a, a list in my Basecamp, which is where we keep all of our notes notes, and I made it really clear to myself these are the only 5 things I'm doing throughout the day. As a result of making it super clear and conscious to myself that I was only gonna do 5 things, I have been more productive, I have created more, I have been more intuitive, I have been more inspired, and I've been more creative.

Something that a lot of people don't understand about procrastination is it it really has nothing to do, for the most part, with being lazy. If you think about the word procrastinate, right, is to put off until tomorrow, basically, is the Latin root or derivative of procrastinate. And a lot of people think, you know, you procrastinate because you're lazy. And the answer is no, you don't. There are really 3 main reasons why you may procrastinate. Number 1, there are some people, a few people, that procrastinate because it's an arousal mechanism and they know they need to get something done but they just don't feel like doing it right now and they wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait and actually the energy builds up and if there's a deadline, something called Parkinson's Law kicks in which says that you will get done what you need to get done in the time allotted to get it done in. And so Parkinson's Law basically says, you know, if you wait right until that last minute, for some people it creates this arousal and it brings out the best in them. Is that you? I don't know. Number 2 is fear. When somebody has something that needs to get done, if there is any self-doubt, if there is is the risk of being embarrassed, ashamed, ridiculed, judged, failing at it, then your subconscious is automatically going to put a block on the motivation and the motor cortex of your brain is going to say, "Don't do it!" Just wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. Number 3: Self-image, self-esteem, self-worth. When there is a project, something you want to start, something you want to stop, and you don't feel like you're worthy of it, or you feel like it's not going to measure up to what you have imagined it to be, you're going to bump against your self-image or self-esteem, self-worth type of stuff. And this tends to create perfectionists that in their own mind they think that, well, let me wait till it's perfect. And what they're really saying is, if it's not perfect in my mind, then that's going to show how imperfect I am, and therefore I'm not good enough, I'm not worthy, etc. See how this cycle works? So arousal, fear, and self-esteem. So forth, which is really tied to fear. And so what do you do? First is become aware which is causing you to procrastinate. And certainly, by the way, there's another area here of things like, "I don't want to make my bed." We've all heard that if we have kids, and we've also been that. "I don't want to clean X, Y, or Z. I don't want to tidy up. I just don't want to do it because I don't like it or hate I just don't want to. Ah, well, that's—

guess what?

That's, that's a valid reason not to. But let's go deal with the other 3. So awareness of which reason is causing you to procrastinate, that's step 1. And then step 2 is to say, okay, if I don't take action, what pattern am I reinforcing? Am I reinforcing Am I reinforcing the fear? Am I reinforcing the self-worth and self-esteem that may be in question here? And is that what I really want? Because if I keep reinforcing a disempowering or negative or destructive pattern, I become more of the pattern that I actually need to let go of if I want to succeed more in my life, right? So create some what I call our pain frames. If I continue to procrastinate, if I continue to be perfect or try to be, if I continue to have these fears, I'm going to become more of what I don't want to become. That's a negative reinforcement pattern. Now let's shift the frame to saying, now what if I just take a little bit of action? What if I take one or two little micro, easy to follow through on steps so that I can interrupt the disempowering pattern and B, reinforce the pattern that I'm an action taker, I have some confidence, I can create some certainty, I can move forward, and I can become the person that I want to become. One pattern keeps you stuck. One pattern creates freedom. Guess what I want for you? I want freedom for you. Mental freedom, emotional freedom, and behavioral freedom so that you take inspired action and do the things that you know you should be and could be doing to achieve your success.

I know you all have big goals, big dreams, big aspirations just like I do. You've got ambitions to become an amazing person, to build your career, to create, contribute, to give, to be an awesome human being. But all of that is impossible without great habits set up. If you don't have routine and structure set up in a way that will keep you on track, then you'll fall off. And having new goals without new habits is kind of like, you know, having a new car without wheels. You know, the habits are the wheels. They're the things that make you able to achieve the goals. So you gotta have good habits, but the challenge for most people isn't that knowledge. I mean, you know you need to have good habits. It's you can't keep the habit going, right? Have you ever started at the new year, you're gonna get healthier, and you start that habit of working out on a more regular basis and then it goes away? Or you say, you know, I'm gonna be more kind and more patient and more awesome to my partner, my lover, and you start being nice for 2 or 3 days and then on the 4th day you're a jerk, you know, and you're like, what happened? I said I was gonna be nicer. It's that you didn't set up the most important thing you needed to maintain a habit. So what's the biggest secret I've learned almost 20 years in this field. It's so simple, but most people don't have it. It's called trigger moments. You have to set up trigger moments to activate your habits. What do I mean by that? Well, let's say you want to become a better person. You know, you want to become more kind, more patient, more loving with people. Now you can just set that intention or write that down in your vision, on your journal, or set up on a vision board that you look at once in a while, but in day-to-day life, it's not enough. You need things to trigger you, to remind you to be that particular kind of person, right? It's almost like if you could have a little angel speaking in your ear all day long to tell you what to do and how to be, you'd obviously become better. Well, that makes sense. Well, let's use that idea. Let's use that idea by setting up alarms on our phones that trigger us to do the very things we need to do. This is gonna be so basic you're gonna laugh, and then I'll also tell you how I've literally taught this to Fortune 50 CEOs, and they said it was the one thing that changed their life the most dramatically. So let's start with this. Let's have a goal in mind. Let's say you want to become more present and calm throughout the day. Again, you could write that down, down on a journal, I'm going to be more present and calm. You could meditate in the morning, say today I'm going to be more present and calm. And you can start out with good intentions, but those fall apart without a trigger moment set up throughout the day to remind you that. So what if you did this? What if you just set up on your phone 3 alarms during the day with a label that said close your eyes, take 10 deep breaths in, Remind yourself to be calm. So let's say you're going through your day, it's crazy, right? It's 10 AM and all of a sudden, bing, your phone goes off. You look down and it says, close your eyes, take 10 deep breaths. And then again, it happens at 2 o'clock. And again, it happens at 6 PM. And again, it happens at 8 PM. What's going to happen? You always look at your phone, don't you? It's going to go throughout the day. You're going to forget. And the funniest thing is I've had so many people I've taught people to do this worldwide. We're talking about hundreds of thousands of people I've taught to do this, hundreds of thousands. And they tell me all the time, "That changed everything." And you'll think once you set it up that the next day you'll forget about it. No, that alarm will go off. You forgot you set the dang alarm. There it goes off in your face and you're like, "All right, I'm trying to be calmer and more present." Close my eyes, take 10 deep breaths, reground and remind myself, here we go. You can't do it once a day. You have to have moments throughout the day that trigger you to enact the new behavior. I know this makes sense to you, but it's a challenge for a lot of people because they never set those things up. So what if you did it with an alarm? So for example, for me on the opposite spectrum, I don't want to just be calmer and more present, I want more energy throughout the day. So here's what I do. One of my big trigger moments is every time my butt butt hits a chair. I don't care if I'm on a plane or I was like where we're shooting here. I wrote a lot of my books here. I wrote The Motivation Manifesto here. I wrote The Charge here. And if I'm going to write, my butt hits the chair, I grab my phone, I open the timer, and I set 50 minutes. Now at 50 minutes, the timer goes, it starts buzzing, and I look at that and I go, oh, that's my trigger to get energy. So I stand up, I go get water. I take a glass of water, drink it down. I do some stretches and I do some exercise just really briefly, or I'll go for a walk, whatever it is, but I'll do something that usually takes just 2 to 5 minutes. Then I'll sit back down, I'll set that 50-minute alarm, and I'll work. And what that does is every 50 minutes it triggers me to change how I'm physically moving. It changes my attention so that throughout the day I'm continually refreshed. So I never have that 2, 3, 4 o'clock time where I'm like, ah, you know, why? Because I've triggered my day so that my energy is maintained throughout the day. Makes sense, right? This could be as simple as, let's say you want to be healthier in your life. Okay, let's set up some trigger moments for you in this way. Let's say every time you drop off the kids, on the way back to the house, you stop at the grocery store and get some fresh produce. That's just a trigger. It's like, okay, did one thing, drop kids off. Now tied to that, triggered from that action, drop kids off is go to health food store. Or let's say you want to get healthier in the morning. One of the easiest ways to help people maintain a better exercise program is this. Set a trigger, you wake up in the morning, your first action is to drink water, put your exercise put your shoes on, might get dressed if you were naked, just saying. So you get dressed, put your shoes on, you go downstairs or you go to the gym and that's the trigger. You woke up, you do these actions. Nothing interrupts those actions, that's the action. And you have to have those set up. One of my other favorite trigger moments to set up is doorframe triggers. What do you mean by that? When you walk into a new room, to have a psychological trigger go off in your mind that you've associated with that doorframe. So let me give you an example. If I walk into my house at night after, like, if I've been working all day and I'm gonna walk in, I'm gonna see my lady, I have it so when I ever walk through the doors of my house, 3 words repeat off immediately in my mind because I've done it so many times consciously. I went to the door, I said the 3 words, said the 3 words, said the 3 words, and I did this so many times that now when I walk through a door, my mind automatically triggers those 3 words, and I remember to be those 3 words. So what words would you love to have describe you as a person that you would be happy if that was how people described you? What would those words be? Have those and now set them up in your life. I teach executives to do this as well. I have them have a doorframe trigger when they walk into their office in the morning. As soon as they walk through that doorframe, they have, boom, 3 words go through their mind about how they want to be perceived as a leader. I have them set up another doorframe. Every time they walk into a meeting, into the conference room, when they walk through the doors of the conference room, they have another 3 words that trigger off for them. And it just reminds them how to be. So these aren't big, crazy things. A lot of people, they think they have to completely change their life. What would change your life completely is setting up more trigger moments and associations that when you see something, you do this. That when this action is taken, then that happens. That when you have the opportunity to set up alarms on your phone, you set them up so that you're interrupted in your everyday life to remind yourself to stick to the habits, to stick to the to the intention. You do that enough on a continual basis, you'll find yourself in so many ways completely rejuvenated, and I promise you'll stick to your habits even more. And once you do that, you know that everything changes.

In that year when I was really broke and I was really broken, I was working at LA Unified School District. I was miserable. I was miserable because I wasn't living in my dream. I was just doing a J-O-B. And then one day I said, well, what, what do I need to do? I need to, I need to buy my freedom. That's what I need to do. I need to buy my freedom. Well, I don't know about buying my freedom. I don't know about buying. I don't know about having money saved up. My family didn't have money saved up. My mother used to tell me, oh, this money is burning my pocket. So I know two things about money: it's hot and we can't keep it long. We'd always have one week where we had all the food in the refrigerator, and then one week where we were— the refrigerator was empty, right? Come on, come on, some of you guys know about that. To this day, I spend so much money on groceries, you guys. Oh my God, it's like I'm feeding like a family of 10 because I'm so afraid of anybody ever being in my house and being hungry. And so I, I wrote a check to myself. Jelani was 3. $110. I took it to the bank, Wells Fargo. I started a new account. The next check I wrote, $125. And just like the first check, I put in the memo line, "Funding my dream." I wasn't even clear what the dream what my dream was, but I knew there was something in my belly. Who in this room know you got something in your belly? There's something here. I'm not even clear about it. I don't know how clear you are, but I wasn't clear about it, but I knew there was a calling on my life greater than working for LA Unified School District. And no disrespect to LA Unified School District, it just wasn't my destiny. I wrote another check in 2 weeks, $146, funding my dream. Now I started mailing the checks in because I didn't want to see my balance because I didn't want to go shopping. Because I— you're gonna repeat what you learn, right? Until you decide to not repeat what you've learned. So I mailed the check in, and I wrote another check, and I wrote another check. And every check I wrote, I made sure it was 5% more than the first check, the previous check. I sold my Altima. I had a car note. Sold my Altima, bought a clunker because it didn't have a car note. Now I can write a bigger check, funding my dream. I moved out of my 3-bedroom, 3-bath house and moved in, became a roommate with my friend who smoked. I put towels at the base of the door so the smoke wouldn't come through the door. I was willing to be inconvenienced.

Are you?

I'm just saying. I'm just showing you the story I just— the charge I just told you. I just gave you. I stopped getting my hair done. That was when I started going natural. I stopped going out. I stopped going out dancing. I stopped going out to dinners. My family didn't know what was going on. They thought, "Oh my God, you know, it's LA. She's on drugs, but she's not losing weight, so maybe not. I don't know what's going on." I kept writing bigger checks to myself. $900. $900. I mailed it to Wells Fargo, funding my dream. $1,100, mailed it to Wells Fargo, funding my dream. I still wasn't clear what the dream was. I just knew I had one, and it was being born through me, and I needed to give it a chance. That's all I knew. You don't have to see 2,000 feet in front of you. Just see 200 and run to the 200. You don't have to see it all. 3.5 years later, I'd written a check to myself every 2 weeks for 3.5 years. I didn't go out for 3.5 years. I didn't go dancing. I didn't get my hair done. I didn't get my nails done. For 3.5 years. Are you willing to be inconvenienced for your conviction? I walk into Wells Fargo 3.5 years later, and I said, "Hi, God bless you. Hi, my name is Lisa Nichols." She goes, "Oh my God, you're the funding my dream lady." I was like, "Yeah, I guess I am." And all of a sudden, all the tellers came running around. The manager came, they're like, oh my God, okay, oh my God, we have been wondering, we all got the same question. Y'all know what the question is, right? What's your dream? I was like, I'm not sure, but I know that it includes inspiring people, having people believe in themselves again, teaching them how to get back up back when they've been knocked down. Having them be willing to give themselves 1,000 second chances. And every time they get to 999, press reset. I'm not sure what it's gonna look like, but it's just gonna help people. I said, I came to check my balance. I've been writing a few checks to you guys. They said, yes, you've been writing a lot. I said, I just wanted to check my balance. They said, you don't know your balance? I said, no, I got this really big I keep a big stack of summary bank statements at home, 'cause my mama said money burns her pocket, and I don't want it to burn my pocket. I want it to pay for my freedom. I said, I just came to see what my balance was, if I had enough to fund my dream as it gets clearer. She wrote it down. Everyone's excited. She wrote it down, turned it around to me. I looked at it. I said, oh no, my name is Lisa Shante Nichols, and my— So, security number, I said, "That is not my money, and I am not taking that money because you're probably going to want it back. So, just fix that error right now." And they looked at me. They said, "You really don't think that's yours?" I said, "No, my family's never had $5,000 in the bank or $10,000 in the bank." That's $62,500 in the bank. They said, "Miss Nichols," and everyone teared up. The manager teared up, the tellers teared up. They said, "Miss Nichols, whatever your dream is, I think you can fund it now." I looked at my son Jelani, who now was 5 or 6, and I said, "Jelani, our lives are gonna be a little different now, baby. Jelani said, yeah, Mommy, can we— can we now go to McDonald's? See, for 3 years I've been telling Jelani, I'll make you a Big Mac. Mama makes Big Macs better than McDonald's. And so it began with a $110 check. So I don't know what yours is. I don't know I don't know what your radical looks like. For some of you, your radical was coming here, right? Yes, yes? Yes, yes. And this is the beginning. Yes, yes. This is the beginning of your radical. This is the next best step. This is the first step. And so I just stopped by to let you know you're on the right path. And as you ramp up, as you ramp up, you're going to have questions. You're going to be afraid. I do more things afraid now than I do fearless. Because the bigger you play, the bigger your breakdowns. Every single one of my errors in the last 5 years have cost me 6 figures. Like, every single one. Every single one of my errors has required me to call an attorney. Like, they're just big. 'Cause I'm playing big. I'm playing big, so be willing to go to the edge. And this is where you are here. Be willing to go to the edge and not just lean over and feel the breeze and watch the people jump and watch them soar and look through the windows at all the people who are living great lives. Don't just go to the edge and feel it. Be willing to lean. Feel your heartbeat. Feel it. That lets you know you're alive. That lets you know you're okay. Fear fuels you. Fear lets you know, go get more information. Fear lets you know, stay up a little later and study. Fear lets you know, get up a little earlier. Fear lets you know, ask ask for help. Fear is informing you. It's not stopping you. It's just another emotion like love and compassion and gratitude. We just made it paralyze us. See, fear doesn't stop me. Fear informs me. And when you get intimately connected with the fear, I feel it and I'm moving forward anyway. I feel it and I'm going to love anyway. I feel it and I'm going to invest in me Anyway, I feel it and I'm going to show up and play anyway. When you get connected with fear, it becomes your best friend. And when you stand on the edge, you feel the breeze, you feel the fear, and you leap anyway.

Your personality literally, Ed, is made up of how you think, how you act, and how you feel. And how you think, how you act, and how you feel is your personality. And your personality is is intimately connected to your personal reality, your life. So then if you want to change your life, your personal reality, you got to change your personality. And here we go again. You got to start becoming conscious of your unconscious thoughts. You got to start noticing how you act, how you speak. You got to pay attention to how you're feeling. Some people would live in guilt their whole entire life and don't even know it's guilt because at least it feels like them. So then when you start doing that, you begin to object Rectify your subjective self. So then when you begin to make small changes, back to thought, a new thought should lead to a new choice. A new choice should lead to a new behavior. A new behavior should create a new experience, and a new experience should create a new emotion. And that new emotion is teaching your body chemically to understand what your mind has intellectually understood. Now your body is embodying the truth, right? So then the new emotion emotion should inspire new thoughts, and that's called evolution. So how do we get stuck? It's really simple. The stronger the emotion you feel from some event in your life, be it a betrayal or a trauma or whatever, yes, the more altered you feel inside of you, the more you pay attention to the cause outside of you. So the brain takes a snapshot, it freezes an image and embosses that pattern neurologically in the brain. That's called a memory. So we create long-term long-term memories from strong emotional events. Okay?

So is that true?

I just want to understand.

Maybe the larger the event in terms of its emotion to you, the stronger of a hold it has over you?

Yeah, well, the more it's embossed in your biology. So some certain people have a strong experience in their life and it catches all of the brain's attention. So now they think neurologically within the circuits of the past experience and they feel chemically within the boundaries of those emotions. And so how you think and how you feel creates a state of being. Now here's the problem, that if you don't know how to mediate or control your emotional reaction to that event, and you keep that refractory period of chemicals going on for extended periods of time, so that the event produces a chemical change and the body needs to return back to homeostasis or balance, but if it can't, then the elongation of that emotional reaction for weeks, say, for days or weeks, is called the mood. So you say, "Ed, what's wrong with you?" "I'm in a mood." "Why are you in a mood?" "Well, this thing happened to me 5 days ago, and I'm having one long emotional reaction." So then what you do is you keep telling the story about it, keep firing and wiring the same circuits, and you keep conditioning the body into the past. So then you wake up in the morning, you look for the emotion. So then now, all of a sudden, you keep it lingering. For weeks or months, that's called the temperament. Well, why is he so angry? I don't know, let's ask him. Why are you so angry? Well, this thing happened to me 8 months ago. I'm having one long emotional reaction. I'm memorizing my emotions. You keep it going on for years on end, that's called a personality trait. So then a person then is memorizing themselves by living in the past. And so then you say to them, well, tell me the story. Now the latest research on memory says that 50% of what we talk about in our past isn't even the truth. So we make stuff up about the past. In other words, people are reliving a life that they didn't even have.

Wow.

Just to reaffirm that they can't change, right? So then what's the significance of this? Where you place your attention is where you place your energy, period.

Yes.

So then the stronger the emotion that you have, there's some problem or condition or person person in your life, the more you're paying attention to them. So they captured your attention. So you're giving your power away to that person, right? Because they're capturing your attention. So then there's an energetic connection to every person, everything, everything in your past, present reality has your energy connected to it. So now this is the significance. When a person really decides to be defined by a vision of the future instead of the memory of the past, The hardest part about it is all of a sudden becoming conscious and not making the same unconscious choice. So then if you lower the volume to your frustration, to your hatred, to your anger, if you truly knew how to do that, if you lowered the volume to that emotion, you would take your attention off that person, which means you would begin to break those energetic bonds. And now you're taking your power back. Yes, you're calling energy back to you. We've measured this, and all of a sudden it builds this bigger electromagnetic field around the person's body. That's energy to heal. That's energy to create a new future with, right? And then if you didn't want to lower the volume to the emotion, then just take your attention off the person. And every time you take your attention off the person, if you became conscious of that, you wouldn't feel the emotion. Now the body though has been addicted to that emotion because you're using that person to reaffirm your addiction. To hatred or frustration. And if that person died, you'd find another one. So then here you go now. So now you're in a position now where you begin to lower the volume to that emotion, and the body's going, wait a second, you've been, you've been doing this for the last 20 years, and all of a sudden you're just going to stop hating? And the body says, well, I've been conditioned this way, and conditioning is based on the past. So when the body feels the, the lack of that emotion, just like a drug addict. It says, hey, you're off schedule here. So now the body starts influencing the mind to think about experiences that are embossed in the brain that are based on that emotion. So the emotion now is causing you to think in the past. If we teach a person then how to trade that frustration or that hatred for an elevated emotion, and they'll say, yeah, but you know, it was my ex's fault, or I got betrayed by my partner in business. Yeah, Yeah, yeah, we know that. Okay, so let's take your partner in business or take your ex. Let's duct tape them, put them in a cannon, and shoot them to the moon. Now what are you going to do? Sooner or later, you got to reckon with yourself and change, right? So then teach a person then how to trade that emotion for an elevated emotion.

Now trade the emotion for an elevated emotion, right?

So you're going to give that up and you're going to practice feeling gratitude. For as an example, yes, the person says, well, I can't feel gratitude. And I say, absolutely Probably you can't because you don't practice feeling it. You practice spending most of your time feeling hatred and frustration. So now it's going to take a little time to cause that heart of you to bloom— or heart of yours to bloom. Once they're able to feel even the smallest measure of gratitude, where they start feeling appreciation, thankfulness— gratitude, its emotional signature, when you get something, when you're receiving something, When something has happened to you, or when something is happening to you, you say thank you because you're receiving something. So the emotional signature of gratitude means the event has already happened or it's happening to you. So the moment you open your heart and you feel gratitude, well, that emotion then is telling the body that the experience has already occurred, and the thought then can make it into the body because it's consistent with the thought. So now you're beginning to program the autonomic nervous system into a very specific destiny. You got to maintain that modified state of mind and body your entire day, independent of the conditions in your outer environment, independent of your body's cravings of those emotions and habituations, and independent from time. And if you can, get ready, because something weird or unusual something unusual, some synchronicity, some coincidence, some opportunity is going to land in your lap, and you didn't have to go and get it.

Yes.

It came to you. Now you're the vortex of creation. So if you say to me, well, I was feeling gratitude, but then there was traffic, or my coworker sent me a nasty email, then I would say, oh my God, you mean you're allowing your environment, your outer environment, to control how you feel and think? You're back to the unconscious program that you're the victim to your life.

You got it.

But when you start producing those outcomes in your life, you're going to pay attention to what you did inside of you, and you're going to believe more that you're the creator of your life and less of the victim of your life.

Burnout is real, but I think most burnout happens because people are not doing the thing that they actually love doing. It's not just about being busy and keeping your mind occupied all day. You can be busy and hate your life and get burnt out. If I was an accountant accountant, I would hate my life and burn out in a day because I don't like being an accountant. But doing this thing that I love, I put in way more effort, way more work, and I love it. It's been 10+ years of still having my YouTube channel and I'm not burnt out. If anything, I'm pushing harder than ever before because I love it. And so I think it's not just about being busy, it's about being busy on the thing that is your mission for life. Now, compassion fatigue is a thing. Doing it so much that you burn out yourself is possible, but again, that is not why most people are burning out. Most people, I believe, are burning out because they're spending too much time, too much energy, too much effort doing things that they hate. And if you wake up and hate your life and hate the job you're about to go to, then there's no wonder why you feel like you're burning out. So I recently came back from going to Tony Robbins' event in Dallas. He invited me to sit in the front row, and I'm super blessed and grateful to have Tony's support. And I went there with Alex, friend of the channel who helps me run Toronto Dance Salsa, and we're on a super crunch timeline because Alex was teaching classes the, the evening before we left and then the day of the last event. And we, we rushed down there. Alex was flying in just to get to the event. He's late on the first day. We're rushing to leave on the last day, and it's non-stop. If you, if If you've been to a Tony Robbins event, it's all day, all night. It's 8 in the morning to midnight and then up again the next day and doing the same thing. And it's wild and it's fun. It's amazing. And my favorite thing to do whenever I travel is actually meet Believe Nation, meet you guys. And so all through the event, I wear my Believe hoodie and I'm not wearing Grant stuff. I'm wearing Evan Carmichael stuff with the plane and the Believe on the back and people are stopping me. And that's actually the best. That doesn't take away from my experience. Tony's often on stage at the top at the beginning of every event saying, "Hey, I have some friends of mine, you might know them, they might be celebrities, leave them alone, don't talk to them, let them have their own experience." And it always makes me sad when he says that because for me, meeting you guys, meeting people who recognize me, and that's a group that I over-index because people who watch Tony videos, you know, they're probably going to find my content. I like it more when people come and say hi. It adds to the experience for me. And then on the last day before we rushed out to go to the airport, I set up a meetup. I had an hour open before having to get to the airport, so let's do a meetup. Let's do a local Dallas Richardson, Texas meetup. And I could have spent the time doing something else or sleeping in or writing my book or doing anything else, but It's not burnout for me. Like, that fuels me. That gives me more energy. I love it. Hanging out with Believe Nation gives me more energy than it takes away. And I then took an Uber to get to my— to the airport, and the guy who drove the Uber was actually in the meetup in Richardson. He's like, I gotta leave early because I got to start my job. Okay, great. And then I book an Uber and there he is. Total fluke, but amazing. And so it's a lot of work, you know. I was all day, all night not connecting with my team, not doing the things that I'm supposed to be doing, and I still make time to be with people and, and make a 1-hour meetup because that hour was open and it fuels me. But if it was something that I hated, just that half an hour, just 15 minutes, I'd start to feel like I'm burning out, like I don't want to be here. I'm out of here. This is terrible. And so I think it's really important that you're doing work that you love, that would be a burnout for other people, but not a burnout for you because you love it so much. So how do you find it? How do you find the work that you love? I got a 3-step process called Who, Why, How. I'm going to talk about it in depth in my next book, but let's do a super quick analysis here to help you guys who might be struggling. Step number 1 is Who. So your Who is your most important core value. What is your most important core value? Stand for as a human being. Mine is believe. It's the one word most important core value for me. So when you figure out what it is that you stand for as a human, you can then look at your life and see where you're falling short. If you are unhappy with life, it's because you are living incongruently with your most important core value. So someone whose core value is freedom, as an example, you can look at your life like, are you allowed to be free? Are you free at work? Are you free in your relationships? Are you free, you know, in these different areas? If not, then you're not gonna be happy. That's why you're not happy, because your boss doesn't allow you to have freedom. Mine is belief. So belief has to be in everything that I touch. If there's a situation that's lacking belief, I'm not gonna be happy with it. So that just gives you already an indication of who you are and starts to make sense of your life going backwards and allows you to plan it better going forward. So it's one of the most important exercises I think anybody can do—

figure out what you're who.

Is who I have. Step 2 is why. So why is your purpose? Your purpose comes from your pain. Your purpose comes from the deepest, darkest, most painful moment in your life, whatever that was. Your purpose is to help other people who are currently going through that thing. Whatever you struggled with, suffered with, endured, felt like you never want to wish that on your worst enemy, never want to go back and experience again— that pain. That's what I'm talking about. You want to help other people who are currently going through that pain because the There's a lot of people who are currently going through that thing. Who you were X number of years ago, there's a lot of people who are currently like that right now. That's who you want to help for life. That'll never get old. That's your purpose for life. I want to help entrepreneurs for life. I believe in entrepreneurs for life because I struggled so much as an entrepreneur and I want to make the path a little bit easier for everybody else. So that's your why. And your who and your why are constant. They never change. Your core values and your purpose are for life. And that's amazing. The last step is how. Who, why, how. How is your passion. How is how you got out of the pain that you're in. So you struggled with something, how did you get out of it? You may not be fully out of it, maybe you're still on your journey out of it, but you're further ahead than you used to be. How did you get out of it? Did you read books? Did you watch videos? Did you meditate? Did you walk your dog? Did you listen to music? Like, how did you get out of it? How did you get out of it? And that is a recipe that you can teach other people. How you got out of it was not some random one-off situation. You can teach other people. So I struggled a lot with my business. I felt worthless as a human. I wanted to quit. I told my partner that I quit. How I got out of it was modeling success. I looked at Bill Gates, how he started Microsoft, and I applied those strategies to my business, and we started to see some success. 20 years later, what am I doing? Still modeling success, right? I want to learn from Grant. I want to learn from Steve. I want to I want to learn from these people. It's why I keep creating this content. How I got out of it was studying success, and now I teach other people how to study success, right? How you actually go about doing it may change. When I first started doing it 20 years ago, it was through books, right? Now it's through videos, and in 10 years, 20 years, it's gonna be through VR and a bunch of other technologies that I'm sure are coming. But the how you got out is a teachable recipe recipe that you can give to other people. So if you're struggling with burnout and you think it's because you don't love the work that you're doing and you know that you're destined for something greater, that you do have Michael Jordan-level talent at something but you don't know what it is and you want to figure it out, figure it out. This is, this is the process. This is the easiest process I know of to get there. Figure out your who, your one word most important core value. Figure out your why, your purpose comes from your pain. And figure out your how, which is your passion, how you got out of it. You can teach other people, and that will set you up for an amazing life with hopefully very little burnout and definitely a lot of purpose. Because you made it this far in the video, I want to celebrate you. Most people start and don't finish. Most people never actually follow through. Most people say they want something, but they don't ever do the work to actually get it. But you're different. You are special. Believe Nation, you made it here all the way to the end, and I love you. So as a special celebration, if you put a hashtag #believe down in the comments below on this video, I will showcase you and celebrate you somewhere on the screen in a future video because you are awesome. To learn the 7 habits to beat procrastination, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there.

I want you to stop dreaming, and I want you to just start doing small things.

I want you to go back to curiosity and less into crushing your big goals. The thing about life and business