"IMPROVE Your Level of THINKING!" - Timothy Ferriss (@tferriss) - #Entspresso

Good morning, Believe Nation. My name is Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs will solve all of the world's major problems. So to help you on your journey, today's message is ask great questions. Over to you, Timothy Ferriss.

I find that levels of success in almost any industry or area correlate to a person asking great questions. In some cases they seem absurd. In fact, the hallmark in a way of great questions is that they sound completely ridiculous. So someone might ask like, Peter Thiel, why can't you achieve your 10-year goals in the next 6 months? As a thought exercise, that's a good question to answer for yourself. And these types of questions come up surprisingly often. With very, very impressive folks, whether it's in business, military, entertainment, or otherwise. And the way you can get better at questions is by studying interviews, in part. So I studied Larry King, I studied Charlie Rose, I studied Terry Gross, I studied, da, da, da, da, da, go down the list. I studied Tony Robbins, who does in-person, one-on-one interventions at his events in front of 10,000, 5,000 people, and he's just genius with how he uses uses questions to pattern interrupt and grab someone's attention and divert them in a more productive direction. Now, why is that relevant? It's relevant because thinking is the process of asking questions. You're asking yourself questions and then you're answering them in your own head. So if you get better at asking other people questions, you get better at asking yourself questions, which means you are improving your thought performance. And level of thinking.

One of my favorite exercises to do, both for myself and for entrepreneurs I'm working with, is try to turn limiting statements into how questions. Turn limiting statements into how questions. So as an example, turn a statement like, "I can't do this because I have a full-time job," into a, "How do I do this while I have a full-time job?" "I can't start this company because I don't have any money," into, "How do I start this business without having any money?" As soon as you can move from a limiting statement that you absorb and feel like, well, this is just true, I have a limited life, I have limited resources, I have limited access, I'm limited, everything's limited, I'm never going to achieve anything. As soon as you can move to that state to a how, how do I accomplish it with these restrictions and limitations, then you start to break out of your box. Then you start to have the ability to do more amazing things. And so it's catching yourself to know when you're saying really limiting statements, and then asking that question of how can I accomplish it, accepting these limitations that I have right now? Part of the challenge though is catching yourself and knowing when you're actually saying a limiting statement, because again, so much of it is subconscious. So much of the time we're just automatically living on small mode, automatically living on autopilot, living by other people's expectations and limitations, Constantly. We're not constantly going off, living big, doing huge things. We're living in survival mode so often. So being able to catch those limiting statements can be difficult. Here's one of my favorite exercises on how to fix it. Look at yourself in the mirror. Go do it. Look yourself in the mirror. Pull out your phone and look at yourself in the phone and ask yourself, why am I not more successful? Why have I not hit my goals? Why have I had this goal for the past 3 years and I haven't made progress on it? Why is it still up someday going? Why have I not done the thing that I said I want to do that seems important to me? Why haven't I done it? And somewhere in there is going to be an answer, right? Like, don't look away until you get an answer. And then from there, that's one of your limiting statements. That's probably the most powerful limiting statement that you have. Well, I'm not able to be a success. I haven't hit my goals because I didn't go to university. And everybody who has success went to university. Right? That's a story that you kind of replay over and over and over and over and over again in your mind. Great, that's your limiting statement. Let's turn that into a how. How do I accomplish my goal and start my business without having a university education? How do I surround myself with resources and people who prove to me that it's possible to go off and do this? Because lots of entrepreneurs have done it. Right? So I find that exercise so helpful. Look at yourself in the mirror, or write it down on a piece of paper, I have not accomplished my big goals yet because, write it down, maybe there's multiple reasons, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, maybe fill up the whole page of reasons why you're not more successful, why you haven't hit your goals. Each one of those are limiting statements, and as long as you continue to believe them, as long as you continue to act by them, most of the time subconsciously, it's not like you every day wake up and just remind yourself, I don't have a university education, so I'm not going to be successful. It's not like you have these negative mantras, you just do it automatically. It's how you're living your life by default. The limitations are hard to catch because it's just default. So if you build your list of the reasons and then start attacking them, ask yourself how questions. As soon as you ask yourself how, how can I, instead of just accepting this negative situation, the box starts to open. The possibilities start to open. You move from a negative place to a positive one. You move from a resourceless state to a resourceful one. Because you're forcing your brain to answer the question, "How can I do this despite not having this, or despite being this, or despite growing up like this? How can I still go off and do it?" And if you get used to asking those potential-filled questions, then your brain will find the answer. You're asking better questions as opposed to living a really limited life that for the most part is self-imposed. So the question of the day today is, I'd like to quickly go through this exercise with you. Ask yourself, what is the one reason, just pick one, you may have a huge list, but what is one reason why you're not more successful, why you haven't accomplished your main goals? Write it down in the comments below, and then next to it, write down the how-to version of it. How can I? Version of it. And if you really want to take it to the next step, answer that question. Answer the how-to. I think if you do that consistently, it'll open up a world of difference for you, and I'd love the spark right here on this episode. So leave it down in the comments below. I'm really curious to see what you have to say. I also want to give a quick shout out to Mike Phillips. Mike, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. I really appreciate the support, Mike, and I hope you enjoyed the book. So thank you guys so much 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 keeps me going. How would you tell us to develop a habit of curiosity?

Well, you know what? People do look at me and see me as creative because I've written so many books, and I am curious. But when I started off in college, in my freshman psych class, they gave us a test for each student to take on creativity. And there were 17 in that class. I can remember it well. And I was at the bottom of the class on creativity. I mean, I was like number 17 out of 17. And the teacher posted the scores. And so, I mean, I saw how bad I was. And then I really felt bad, not only because I wasn't creative, but I was going to go pastor. I was going to go into ministry. I was going to teach. I was going to do sermons. Then I got to thinking to myself, I'm gonna be another boring preacher. That just gripped me. I thought, oh, this is gonna be awful. I'm gonna bore people all my life, you know what I mean? Then I'm gonna ask them to pay while they hear me. I mean, this is an awful deal. So two things I did, and I talk about it in the book. One is I started filing. I started taking thoughts and quotes. The reason I started doing that is I thought, if I'm not gonna be good at what I say, I need to quote somebody that is good. And so I started filing things that other people would say so I could go around and I'd say, well, Ken said, you know what I mean? And Joe said and Susie said, and so that at least I would be a little bit more interested. And that's how it started. But the big breakthrough, the big breakthrough I had was, and this will help everyone. How many of you would like to be more creative? Let me see your hands, okay? How many of you would like to just absolutely have an imagination that just took you to a new level? You know I'm saying, okay. How many already have that because you're on drugs? Okay. Okay, okay, here's the key. This'll work for you, I promise you it'll work for you 'cause it worked for me. I made a major change in my early 30s from just having answers and being a leader that just had to cast vision, show everybody what I was doing and where we were going, and I started asking intentional questions. And I became a person, I ask questions all the time. Every day I ask questions. I have found just asking questions will take you on exciting journeys more than anything else. You excel in that, Ken. I've watched you over the years. You'd excel really in that. But for my early years, I didn't ask enough questions, and so therefore I didn't get enough ideas and thoughts from others. So when people say, I want to be more creative, what's step one? Step number one is ask more questions. Just go to people and start asking questions. It's amazing what you'll learn.

But I'm obsessed with this idea of of no standard terms. So when we were first getting started and took financing, our lawyers would take us through the documents and they'd say, "Oh, don't worry about it. It's all standard." And at the time I'm like, "Oh, sure. Standard. That's great. No issues." Standard. No problem. And I've since learned that standard means either the person who's walking you through the documents doesn't understand them, or you could be— getting taken advantage of. So when someone says something's standard, just ask why. And why and why and why until you really understand, you know, intricately, I think, how the deal's structured. And so I think the big thing that we took away from that is, you know, standard terms is a huge red flag. And beyond that, just don't be afraid to just continue asking why.