How To WIN at the Game of LIFE -#BelieveLife

If you're looking for ways to develop a good morning routine, work on yourself, and focus, then this video is for you.

I used to be afraid, particularly from people who say, "Oh, she's so full of herself. Mm, she's so full of herself." And now I embrace it.

I think the single biggest reason why people have bad days is because they start them off by looking around at everybody else and seeing what they're doing instead of having the focus and the discipline to actually start your day off with you in control.

I made a decision. I want to be world-class, and it just takes such a desperate, obsessive focus to excel.

What's up, Believe Nation? It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in you. I believe you have an amazing gift inside you that I want to see explode out into the world. Now, we started the Believe Life Series to try to tackle personal development issues when you have the weekend, a little bit more time to think about some of these things. So let's live our best believe life and learn today how to win at the game of life. Enjoy!

I say to my girls all of the time that your real work is to figure out where your power base is and to work on the alignment of your personality, your gifts that you have to give, with the real reason why you're here. That's the number one thing you have to do. Is to work on yourself and to fill yourself up and keep your cup full. Keep yourself full. Now, I used to be afraid of that. I used to be afraid, particularly from people who say, oh, she's so full of herself. Mm, she's so full of herself. And now I embrace it. I consider it a compliment that I am full of myself. Because you only, when you're full, I'm full, I'm overflowing, my cup runneth over. I have so much, I have so much to offer and so much to give, and I am not afraid of honoring myself, you know. It's miraculous when you think about it.

You must come up with a morning routine that you do every single morning, or at least more mornings than not that puts you in control of yourself and in control of your day. This is what I do, and I cannot explain the power that I get from starting my day off and being bigger than my excuses and being in control. First and foremost, wake up on time. When that alarm goes off, get your butt out of bed. 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, go. Why is that important for persistence? The reason why is because the first decision that you're making of the day is to actually get up and get moving. That means you are persistently bigger than your excuses. You are persistently bigger than feeling lazy, and you are persistently beating the feelings that typically stop you. The second thing that I want you to do before you look at your email, before you answer your phone, before you start surfing Vox and Vice and BuzzFeed and, you know, TeamStream and checking out the sales on Zappos and looking at your Facebook newsfeed, before you pick up the damn phone, please, please, please figure out your two priorities for the day. These are the things that matter to you, whether it's saving money and making sure you're focused on that, or showing up at work work and being a contributor, or whether it's changing how you treat your spouse or your kids or the person that you're with, or heck, getting to the gym because you said you would. Whatever it is that your two priorities are, put them in your head before you pick up the phone. Why? The reason why is because of persistence. The reason why is because I want you to have a good day. Do you know what makes for a bad day? What makes for a bad day is snoozing, starting your day off late, starting your day off tired, starting your day off by mainlining everybody else's newsfeed on social media and looking at everybody else's life and saying to yourself, oh my God, they're on vacation, or gosh, they look so great, or their friends are so fancy, or my gosh, they've got so money. You start off your day looking at that shit, you're never gonna have a good day. You gotta start off your day by getting up on time, figuring out your priorities, and then getting to work on them. Do not pick up your phone until you have done those two things. I think the single biggest reason why people have bad days is because they start them off by looking around at everybody else and seeing what they're doing instead of having the focus and the discipline to actually start your day off with you in control and with your priorities front and center. So, you want a bonus round? Exercise every day. That's right, Get up on time, figure out your priorities, and exercise. You do those 3 things, you'll be kicking ass every single day.

In a world that's changing so quickly, the biggest risk you can take is not taking any risk. And I really think that that's true, right? I mean, a lot of people, I think, think that, um, you know, whenever it comes to— whenever you get yourself into a position where you have to make some, some big shift in direction or do something, um, you know, there are always people who are going to point to the downside risks of that decision. And locally, they may be right, right? I mean, for any given decision that you're going to make, there's upside and downside. But in aggregate, if you are stagnant and you don't make those changes, then, um, then I think you're guaranteed to fail, right? And not, not catch up. So to some degree I think it's really right that over time, the biggest risk that you can take is to not take any risks.

I realize that when— to have the level of success that I want to have, it's difficult to spread it out and do multiple things, you know? It's— in order to be world-class— and I've made a decision, I want to be world-class— and it just— it takes such a desperate obsession obsessive focus to excel on a certain— on the level that I want to make movies. You know, I was— Star Wars. When I was young, I sat in a movie theater and watched Star Wars. And I just couldn't believe that that movie made me feel like that, just floored and just stunned by the creativity. And just I'm realizing that in order to move people in that way, in order to touch people in that way, you really got to focus with all of your fiber and all of your heart and all of your creativity.

You went to Harvard and you dropped out. Have you ever thought how your life could be better off if you had gotten your Harvard degree?

Well, I'm a weird dropout because I take college courses all the time. I love Learning Company courses and things. So I love being a student. And there were smart people around and, you know, they fed you and they gave you these nice grades that made you feel smart. So I feel it was unfortunate that I didn't get to stay there, but I don't think I missed any knowledge because, you know, whatever I needed to learn, I would— I was still in a learning mode.

When something is considered quote-unquote impossible, how do you reframe it so it becomes possible in your mind, and how much of that is mindset?

I think Impossible is not a fact, it's an opinion. When someone tells me it's impossible, I always just look at them. Anybody around me knows that they can't do that, so that's part of it. But if they didn't know me, it's your opinion. Then they'll say, "No, science shows." And I say, "Yeah, and how many times has science showed something's impossible, now science shows it's possible?" Things are impossible until somebody does it. And so I find that most of you are business people. You look at businesses and what does it take to make a business grow? It's not impossible to make a business grow. A business has been shrinking for a long time, It's been stuck. The real problem is always, the chokehold is always the psychology and the skills of the leader. Always. And 80% of that is psychology and 20% is the mechanics. Like if you don't know how to read your financials and you're trying to fly the plane of your company, I mean, come on. If all you do is go down, you look at profit loss and you see what it is and you have a beer either way, you either celebrate or you get depressed, you know, something. You're gonna be in trouble. Right? But if you have the skill sets, that's one thing, but you can get any skill set if you have the psychology. And anytime a business is not growing, it is not because it's impossible. It's because they aren't innovating, and they're not innovating because they're believing it's impossible. I mean, if we all know what does it take to transform— obviously, I'll— people, it takes 3 things to create a breakthrough in anything, in your personal life, in your business, anywhere. You need a strategy, but that's not the first place you should look, and it's the first place all of us look. Me too. It's our inherent thing. You want to lose weight? Well, how do I do it? I want to grow my business, how do I do it? It's instinctive. We've been trained to think that way. But the problem is the how-to is usually not that complex. I mean, come on. 70% of America is what? 75% of America now is overweight. Is that because it's so complex how to be fit and strong? Right, you know? Only the 1% know the answers. They hide it from you. You have to work your ass off to not hear what it takes, right? And so, So, you know, I remember I went to this, I went to a TEDMed Center, and I watched about 12 doctors, one after another, get up and do these stories about how we could just get patients to take their medications, and try to figure out the whole thing, and I was just looking at them going, "You're all talking about strategy, and you've forgotten psychology." Because strategy's wonderful, I'm a strategist, I spent my whole life figuring out strategies, as we both know, a strategy could save you a decade, right? In business, strategy could save you, you know, You could make the difference between success and failure. But most people have strategies available, or they could get them, or you could create them, but the problem is you got a story. And your story is why it isn't working. And the story is, I've tried what? What? Everything. If you tried everything, you'd be fit, right? If you tried everything, you'd be profitable. If you tried everything, you'd be there. But people say it, you know, I'm big-boned, that's what I used to say. I'm still big-boned, but I'm— 38 pounds lighter than I was 25 years ago, and I've never gained it back, right? When I was big-boned, that was my story. All the good ones are gone, that's why I'm not in a relationship, or they're gay and I'm not, or I'm gay and they are, whatever the story is. There's always a story. And what I tell people is, you know, if you can just divorce the story of your limitation and marry the truth of your unlimited capacity, then the whole game changes.

I think that the people that are on— that are discovering how to unleash their greatness are people who have the mental resiliency and the courage to face failure, that you will fail your way to greatness. That most people allow their fear of failure— 80% allow their fear of failure to outweigh their desire to succeed. When you're willing to fail again and again and again, when you make up your mind to become unstoppable, when you make up your mind to become a no matter what person, then that will then give birth to a part of yourself that you don't know right now.

If you gonna do what you say you gonna do, be what you say you gonna be, you gonna have to lion me out. That gazelle stuff, I'm trying to tell you, you a gazelle, you gonna come up short. You a gazelle, you not always gonna get what you want out of life. You a gazelle, it's gonna be— you gonna have an average experience. You a student, I need you in lion mode. You a teacher, I need you in lion mode. You an entrepreneur, I need you in lion mode. You trying to lose weight, lion mode. You can't do nothing significant in gazelle mode. Nothing. Nothing impressive happens in gazelle mode. Nothing happen when you running. Nothing happen in run mode, give up mode, quit mode, scared mode, fearful mode. Nothing happens. Everything happen in lion mode, like I'm coming to get you. I love it. Y'all ever seen the one where the lioness is kind of sitting there and she double dutching and all the The Beast is running by and they just keep going. And she just in preparation mode. And out of nowhere, there is no, no music, no, no preparation. You just see my man come out of nowhere and just boom, bam, grab one, boom, boom, rip the heart out. That's lion mode. And you got to get to a place where you start executing. Somebody just help me out. Last year The greatest news in the NBA, the greatest story in the NBA last year was what? Greatest story told in the NBA last year offseason was what? Kevin Durant left to go to Golden State. Durant like, I'm out. I don't know where y'all come from, but that hurt hard because they supposed to be boys. Look at this picture for a minute because this why if you gonna be successful, This is where I need you to go right here. What a pick! This was the one where you play your boy first game, you and your homie was cool, right? And this is where you emotionally cut him. This is when you cut my man. This is when you see my man and he trying to be cool, he trying to act like he ain't leave you high and dry, he trying to act like the goals and the dreams y'all have. This the one where he clapping and you look my man in his face and say, "You dead to me." And that's why most of Most of you will never be successful because there's some stuff in your past you keep holding on to. And you gotta get to a point when you ready to grind and you ready to get to the next level. You look at people you used to be close to and say, you dead to me. You dead. 42 triple-doubles? We shouldn't even be talking about the MVP. Ain't nobody else even— if somebody else make it close to the MVP, the NBA is rigged and I'm through with them. They saw my man at the beginning of the season, I'm talking about I'm talking about high octane. They said if he keep doing that all season, what's gonna happen? They said he keep running himself like that, he gonna burn out. My man ain't burnt out. He don't look like— he ain't close to burnt out. But you know why they said it? 'Cause they can't operate on that level for that long. So people will try to put their limitations on you. I can do 6 gigs. I can do 7. We can leave here tonight. You can take me to a church. I'll give you another hour. You can't do it. Put your limitations on me. I'm dead to your limitations. Your limitations don't exist in my world. Those are your limitations, keep them. Go home, watch them on TV. Go home, read the newspaper about them. Go home and look in the mirror. Go home, call your homeboy and y'all talk about your limitations. I ain't got none. I get off the plane from going to Dubai and get on the ground and I hit it. And some of y'all holding on to stuff you shouldn't be holding on to. It should be dead to you. Dog gone, go do a funeral if you need to. Get rid of that junk, like bury it, do whatever you got to do. But it's weighing you down, it's killing you. Every day you waking up thinking about it. You shouldn't be thinking about it no more. It should be dead to you. Move on and move towards your greatness. I forget those things which are behind and I press, I press toward the thing. I press. I don't got time for that no more. It's nothing personal. I ain't got nothing against you. I don't hate you. But I love me!

Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I'd love to know what did you think of this video? What lesson did you learn that you're going to immediately apply this weekend to your life or your business? Leave it down in the comments below. I'm really curious to hear from you. I also want to give a quick shout out to Ian from thenextlevelguy.com. He had me as a guest on his podcast to talk about my book. Ian, thank you so much for the support, man. I really, really appreciate it, and I'm so glad you enjoyed the read. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.

Raise your standard.

Apple, at the core, its core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. Not one drop of my self-worth depends on your It's something to me.

I don't ever give up. I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated.

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