Keep Going And Believe in Yourself!

I want greatness for you, and I'm willing to bet that everyone in your life that loves you wants the same thing. They want to see you make your dreams come true. They hunger for it, to see you win, the way that you hunger for it yourself. But what they know that you may not yet be willing to accept is that, as Rabindranath Tagore said, you can't cross the sea merely by standing and staring at the water. If you're going to make those things come true in your life, if you're going to make that vision that you have a reality, you've ultimately got to go out into the cold and unforgiving water. You've got to be willing to face the swells. You've got to be willing to face the most terrifying thing of all: the unknown. It isn't that the sea is dangerous that scares people. It's that you can't see what's beneath the surface. And that is going to be the challenge that you're going to have to face. That is going to have to be the fear that you stare directly into the eye. Is the truth is you don't know what you're capable of. The truth is you don't know if you're going to succeed. The absolute truth is you may fail. You may get swallowed by the darkness. But at the end of the day, that's going to be your choice, because whether or not you fail does not mean you have to be consumed by that failure. You can get back up and keep going, but that is a choice you have to make. That's the fortitude you have to develop within, and it is a development process. It is something that you do. You choose to be stronger than the sea. You choose to be stronger than the unknown, and you choose to be brave enough to go out despite the unknown and try to conquer something, to try to build something in your life, to do the things that other people think cannot be done. It is in facing that fear that you win the battle. Understand, finding the island, making it to the new world, that's not the fucking point. The point is setting out. The point is being willing to get in a dinghy and to go off into the sea. The point is being willing to face the challenge. If you can do that regardless of what comes, you've already won because you've proven something to yourself that you're willing to try.

Hey, it's Evan Carmichael and I make these videos because in my first business I quit on my business partner. I was making $300 a month and I didn't have the motivation to keep going. And the thing that got me through was studying the stories of entrepreneurs who've had massive success. And I hope that in sharing these stories with you, you find a motivation to keep going. And if I'm being honest, I still need the stories for myself today too. So today let's learn from some of the best and pick up how to keep going and believe in yourself. Enjoy. Rule number 2 is never doubt yourself with Dean Graziosi.

I want my children to be richer, smarter, better looking, happier, joyful. I want them to be 1,000 times better than me. I want them to go, oh, Dean was 1.0, his kids are 4.0, his grandchildren are 6.0. Oh my God, by the time we get to my great-grandchildren, I want them to make fun of what a pathetic weakling loser I was. Like, that's what I hope, right? If we want that for them so much, and if you're not a parent, it's okay. You'll, like, you can still feel those same emotions. You can understand what we're talking about here. If we want them for— want that for them, then why the hell don't we deserve it for us? Right? Like, how do we pierce this heart? How do we pierce this self-doubt? How do we pierce the thinking that we have that got us here? Our best thinking got us right here. It takes another level of thinking, another level of passion, another level of feeling uncomfortable and being disturbed with where you are to move. It's the spaceship. It takes all the energy to get it like 100 feet off the ground. Once it's out of the atmosphere, it hits a little button and goes fast. But it takes all that energy to get off the ground. So my goal in some of my trainings each month is to give you that burst of energy to get done today and go, screw it, I'm freaking doing this. Like nothing is going to stop me. And I know so many of you are massively successful. This isn't about, oh, you're pathetic. And this is about where you are. You know, there's another level. That's all it is. And it doesn't mean that's never enough. Listen, God didn't put us on this earth to settle. I don't think, I think at the end of our life, if we have the opportunity to talk to our maker, he's not gonna say, I'm so glad you found your groove at 24 years old and kind of settled for another 70 years. Like, that's not what he wants. That's not what we're designed for. I always say Dale Carnegie's quote, my favorite one by him. He said, the biggest plight of the human race is knowing you have more potential and you're not using it. Like, you say that, you're like, yeah, yes, right? So how do we trick ourselves into knowing that we deserve this? We need— we deserve to take uncomfortable action, to fail forward, and to figure it out. Because if you think about that, how are we with— I know this is far away from business and stuff, but how are we with kind of our inner peace, like making amends with ourselves? We help our kids solve problems. We help our kids not have regrets. We help our kids not have enemies or let go of pain. Like, we— maybe I'm wrong, but like, we— wherever we are, we want what's best for them. We know you're studying personal growth, you're studying letting go, you're studying focusing on solutions. You're doing all this while simultaneously, internally, you might be fighting with yourself and still have that person that you need to forgive or forgive yourself for the mistakes in the past or forgive yourself for procrastinating. Or forgive yourself that you were scared up to this point, or forgive yourself that you screwed up the relationship. It was you. We want our kids to forgive themselves. We want them to forgive others. We want them to work on being grateful and having gratitude. And simultaneously, we wake up sometimes and our guts are spinning while we're helping someone else. Is it true? Let me know in the chat if anything I'm saying here today is resonating. Right? So if that's the case, why are we waiting to fix this in the next generation? You got a lot of years left on this earth. Let's fix it with us. Remember, like, just think this. This is what I try to do all the time is if I stay this way, my kids are going to be that way. I literally punish myself that way because if I stay this way, they're going to be this way. There's, there's nothing I can do to change it. Right? Another thing I wrote down is like, who are we when no one's watching? Like we think we can put this facade on in front of our children, right? It could be children, it could be spouse, it could be partner, it could be friends, but we get to put this face on in front of other people, right? But then who are we when no one's around? Because I still believe our kids become who we are when no one's around. I think kids are the biggest like lie detector, bullshit detector, excuse my language. Like they just feel who you are and they become it. Okay, who in here has ever had something that you do that you're like, oh, this is mine, or it's adult, or it's kind of quirky? I never want my kids to see this one thing I've done. And then if you've had kids, they're a certain age and they do that exact thing that you think you protected them from it their whole entire life. I see you laughing, James. Like, like, where did that come from? I didn't teach you that. It's like, it's intuitive. So who are we when no one's watching? Is even important, right? And that leads to our values, doesn't it? Right? What we do when people aren't watching is just— that's our character. We can say our character is one thing. We can pretend our values are one thing. When no one's watching, the things you do, that's who you are. But you know what the most congruent thing in the history of the world is? Is being the same human when no one's watching and when everyone's watching. That's one of the things I strive for more than anything.

Rule number 3, keep going with Mel Robbins.

When life suddenly changes and you feel like you have lost control and you start to feel stuck and powerless, how do you take control when you don't know where your life or the world or this moment is going? And here's the number one thing I want you to know. You don't need to know where this moment or where the world is going. You just need to know where you are going next. And one of the things that has happened, uh, certainly in the pandemic, but it always happens when there's any kind of reckoning in your life, is that when you have something suddenly happen and your life is fundamentally changed, whether it's a death or somebody says, I don't love you anymore, or you're fired or you find yourself, uh, with a scary health diagnosis, there is a line in the sand. There is a life before that happened and then a life after that moment happened. And that line in the sand, that reckoning that happens— and it happens for all of us, whether it's happening for you right now or it has happened in the past— I'm telling you, there is a gift inside of this even the darkest moments, because every single sudden change in your life that makes you feel like you've lost control and you no longer know where you're going, it's like hitting the giant pause button. And if you lean into the moment, there is a chance for tremendous wisdom and growth. There are things that you can do right now in order to take control of where you're going, of what you're thinking about. And you can start to take this moment of change and you can use it to be able to take and make an intentional pivot in the direction that is meant for you next. And one of the things I want to say about this moment is, look, if you're losing loved ones, you are terrified, this has made you lose your job, you feel like you're in that moment where everything, you know, you're falling off a cliff, you're trying to pack a parachute, you're grieving. And so you got to give yourself space to grieve the losses that you're feeling. And when you get a little bit of distance from the grieving and the waves of grief and fear that you're feeling start to space out— they don't ever leave you, but over time those waves of holy cow and I don't want this and I can't handle this and why is this happening me. Time will start to lessen those waves. You will gather your feet underneath you again, and you will absolutely be stronger and be a better version of yourself based on this incredible challenge that you're facing. And I can say that even though you may be facing a tough time, because if you think about your life, you faced extraordinary challenges, and there hasn't been a single one that hasn't made you a better and stronger version of yourself. And this moment will be no different. So I want you to understand that when you get out of the cycle of grief, this is an enormous reckoning, an enormous opportunity for you to hit the pause button and for you to start to ask yourself the question, what do I want my life to look like? Because I think too many of us are sitting here going, I can't wait for my life to get back to normal. I can't wait for this to end. I can't wait to things to go back to normal. And in any moment of reckoning, what happens is there's actually parts of your old life that you don't want to go back to. And there is a tremendous amount that you're learning in this moment that you need to pause and take in and say, okay, based on what I've just learned, based on my old life, when I look ahead to my new life, what is it that I want my I want my new life to look like. This next chapter, I can turn to a blank page. I can take all this wisdom, all this resilience, all this strength, and I can write something new. That's what I want you to know. You don't need to know where the world or where everything is headed. You just need to know where you're gonna head next.

Also, to make sure you're actually taking action after watching this video, I've designed a special free worksheet just for this video. The worksheet will highlight all of 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, hustle hard with Ed Mylett.

I wanna get started today by asking you a couple things. Number 1, are you clear on what you really want? Like with all the information being thrown at you, I want you to think about this for a minute, right? Because complexity is the enemy of execution. So the more stuff that gets thrown at you, if you're not completely clear on exactly what it is you want, okay, You're never going to get it. And we're going to talk about getting clear on those things today. But somehow inside of you, finding the version of you that's capable of doing those things is the most important thing. So what I want to have happen today, I hope, is this experience that we talk about happiness, but we also talk about fulfillment. I don't want you to make all your financial goals happen and find yourself unfulfilled. I know more people with money that aren't fulfilled than I do people without money. If you can't find a way to be happy in this moment, in this time right now, I promise you when you arrive at wealth, you are going to bring you with you, and it will only magnify the things you don't like about yourself when you get a bunch of money. I learned that firsthand. But I think it's important that you not always just see the after, that you also see the before, because as an entrepreneur— you're all entrepreneurs now, right? You're gonna have false start after false start. You're gonna get it going, and then it's gonna go backwards. You're gonna make progress, and it's gonna go backwards. You're gonna think you have a deal, and then you don't. You're gonna make money on 3 deals and then you won't. It's going to get going and go backwards. It happens as an entrepreneur over and over and over again. So I tell you, when I tell you that I have respect for you, that I admire what you're trying to do with your life, I mean that sincerely. I know what it's like to want to change your life's conditions. I know what it's like to want to win for your family. And I know what it's like to not be totally sure you're going to do it. So when I tell you I understand the journey and I admire and respect you, I may admire and respect you even at a level most people don't. I know what it's like to fail. And then once I started to turn it around, I wanted to win so bad, I was gonna fake it till I made it. I tell you that to start out today. It's a long way of telling you I relate to where you are to some extent. Some of you are too cool. You're like, well, I'm not like in that kind of a condition. Yes, you are.

You're broke.

You're broke. And until you admit where you are and define where you are and quit playing it cool, and trying to fool everybody about where you are, you're gonna keep losing. Let me be real with you. Now that I've been funny with you, now we're gonna get real. Stop bullshitting everybody. You're not fooling anybody. You talk to a real wealthy man, I know what you really got going on. And by the way, your Uncle Larry the lawyer making $350 grand a year, that ain't money. That's not money. If you're not at least at multiple 7 figures in this world, you are still broke, trust me. My brother-in-law makes $280,000. He lives in Chino Hills. He can't even afford to buy a damn house right now where he lives because he can't save. Now, if he had these strategies, he probably could do it, right? But do not fool yourself that you got it going, or you need to be in a big damn hurry. Time is running out on you. There's 86,400 seconds in a day. The separator between me and you and people that win and lose is what we do with those seconds. And you're too slow, you're too cool, you're too casual, you think too much, you need to get in a hurry. The separator in this room, you're all learning the same things. The separator is gonna be who takes massive action quickly. You all learn the same things. I know all you know. Lots of guys know what I know. Why aren't they wealthy? Why don't they have a $40 million jet? Why don't they live oceanfront in Laguna Beach? Why don't they have the most unbelievable homes in the world in Coeur d'Alene, Idaho? Why don't they retire their parents? Why don't, when their daughter breaks their nose, they go to an urgent care and some doofus snaps it back? I go to a $25,000 surgeon, write a check, and don't think about it for my kids. And I'm the guy driving the Chrysler LeBaron, man. I'm the guy whose water was turned off. So listen to me, look at my hands. You need to stop playing around. I'm looking around this room. Not all of you are 19 years old. Time's running out on you.

Rule number 5 is follow your dreams with Lewis Howes.

I started to steal every single day in order to gain friends. There are two kids in the neighborhood who said, hey, do you want to join our club? And I said yes because I don't have any friends. So what's it going to take? They said, well, there's one of two options. You can one, answer a question to see if you can join, you're smart enough to join the club, or two you pay money. And I didn't have any money, you know, I'm 8 years old. I said, okay, what are the questions? And there were 2 questions that they asked. I didn't know the answer to either one of these. And so they said, sorry, you can't join the club unless you pay us money. So I walk home with my head down and ask my mom, hey Mom, can I have some money? It was $5 at the time, which was a lot for me, 8 years old. I said, can I have $5? And I go back to this, their house, and I'm in the club for a day and I give them the money. And I remember feeling so, you know, shameful and just like a loser because I literally had to pay money to have two neighborhood boys be friends with me and add me in their club. But I was doing it only for myself. It was to prove others wrong. It was to prove the kids that picked me last on the dodgeball court in, in fourth grade that I'm gonna prove you wrong, I'm gonna be something of myself, I'm gonna be better than you. It was to prove the kids that I had to pay $5 to join their club so I could have friends that I'm gonna prove you wrong about me. It was always to prove someone wrong. I wanted to achieve my dreams so that I could be right, they could be wrong. I started to achieve all my dreams. Every dream that I had, when I realized the power of dreams, they all started to come true. Everything I set myself I was about to do, it happens. And I remembered feeling so ungrateful and unfulfilled within minutes after I achieved all these dreams. All-state in multiple sports in high school, All-American in two sports, playing professional sports. I was like, a dream when I was on my sister's couch to make $1,000, and I did that and I was ungrateful. Then it was $5,000, I did that and I was ungrateful. Then it was $20,000 a month months, $100,000, I need to make my first million. It was never good enough. I was always ungrateful, right? Why am I so upset and so unfulfilled when I'm achieving my dreams? And it wasn't until I started to say, you know what, I got perspective. It's not whether or not I achieve the dream, it's what I learn and who I become in the pursuit of the dream. Now yes, I want to achieve all my goals and all my dreams, but some of them haven't happened. And I look back and I say, you know what, at least the last 10 years or 5 years or 2 years of this journey of going after this dream, look at the relationships I've made, look at the lessons I've learned, look at how much I've grown. It's about how can I win and also make everyone else around me win in whatever that looks like for them. How could I create that? So follow your dreams. They matter because you matter.

And rule number 6, the last one before some very special bonus clips: is Use Negativity to Grow with Marie Forleo.

So, curious, have you ever had someone not believe in you or they said something really horrible about your work where it felt like a punch in the gut and just left you thinking, oh my God, how could someone be that mean? I have, so let me tell you what it did for me and, more importantly, what it could do for you. So back in 2009, my program B-School was getting ready to be brought into the world and I was trying to do everything I could to make it a success. I was trying to network, find promotional partners, basically get the word out all over. So I went to this business conference in Washington, D.C. and I was so excited to be there. I had my little conference badge around my neck, I had my big conference binder under my arm, everything was going good. So I'm on the escalator heading to go up to one of the main sessions and there was this guy in front of me and he was part of the conference too. So of course, as you do at conferences, he turned around and he asked me, he's like, oh, So what do you do? This was the perfect opportunity. I was so excited. I started telling him about B-School. I said, oh, I'm launching this incredible online business program for women entrepreneurs. And so he says, oh, that's cute. Is that a hobby? Do you actually make money doing that? Or do you have a rich husband who's bankrolling you? For one of the very few times in my life, I was absolutely Speechless. I felt like I just got gonged by the ultimate business D-bag. I was thinking to myself, I cannot believe a-holes like this still exist. And thank God it was a short little escalator ride, because I wanted to throw him over that freaking escalator. I got myself together. I mustered out something about that I had been successfully supporting myself in business for the last 9 years. And then I did whatever I could to get away from that turd muncher as fast as humanly possible. Now, here's my point. While that guy was a total ignorado for what he said to me, I actually thank him for not believing in me. I thank him for underestimating me. I thank him for being a totally ignorant, chauvinistic piece of poop. You know why? Because he actually fueled me to make B-School even more of a success. I was already committed to it, but after that interaction, Nothing was gonna stop me. Now I know that not everybody is wired in the exact same way, but for me, when I want something really bad and someone basically says, you can't do that, it just gets me totally fired up and motivated to prove them wrong. And yes, I know in a certain spiritual framework we don't wanna be reactive to life, but what I'm saying is this, is that every single thing that happens to you, including what I now call escalator moments, are fuel for growth, and sometimes even more so than the encouraging moments.

All commitments require investments in time and money. All commitments. You cannot make a commitment without time and money being invested. Time and money has to be invested. You have to invest time and money. If it's not on your schedule, you are not committed. If you don't have money back by that time on your calendar, if it's not costing you money or you don't have money deposited right there, you are not committed. Where you have your money is where your personal, spiritual, emotional, physical commitments go. Wherever your money is, is who you are most committed to. Wells Fargo, Bank of America, Citibank. You guys, many of you got more money at Wells Fargo than you have invested in your own average advertise in the market because you guys are committed to the lie, the big marketing scam of the universe. Save your money. Save your money. What you should do is you should get a good job. First of all, you should avoid borrowing money unless it's for something that we think is good for you, right? So First of all, you should not borrow money unless it's one of our credit cards where we give you points, and one day you too will be able to stay at a Holiday Inn for free. Where, by the way, the buffets at the kitchen are free. You can eat all you want, not to mention that you're already already overweight, but you could go there and eat all you want for as long as you want, by the way, if you just borrow enough money on this card to buy enough stuff you don't need to pay us back one day if you can, right? And then during the week when you're not borrowing money from us, what you should do is spend your time getting money to pay for the belt that you bought and put on your credit card that you can't write off, by the way. So this is what Americans are doing. People all around in the world spend 40 hours a week running around hustling. They get $100. What do they do now? They run over here to the bank, drop off the $100, then they run back out, do another 40 weeks, pick up $1,000. Man, I had a great week, didn't I?

Bang!

And then they run over here and drop it off at the bank. These are the good Americans. The bad Americans go pick up $1,000 and go to the club and blow it. The good Americans run run around collecting $1,000, $5,000, $10,000. Hustlers, hustlers, man. Hard workers. They, they get sophisticated. Uh, I'm going to put a little money in the bank over here, over here at Wells Fargo. I'm going to have a little over here at Citibank. I'm going to spread this around. I want to be a slave to many, not a slave to a few. I'm going to give a little to Bank of America. I'm going to give a little bit to Citibank. I'm going to give a little bit to the Wells Fargo. Fargo. I'm going to give a little bit to Fidelity and Merrill Lynch. I'm going to give a little bit to my IRA and my 401k. I'm going to bust my ass. I'm going to spend 40 years killing myself to make sure all these institutions have my money where they pay me nothing for the sake of security, right? And then you guys look up one day, you're like, where's my money at? It's in all these accounts. By the way, what do those people do with your money when they get it? They call me up. Hey, Mr. Cardone, we got another dummy. Guy spent, God damn, he must have spent 160 hours, put together a little bank, extremely disciplined dumbass. And he saved $100,000 with us, and we'd like to know, Mr. Cardone, if you would like to borrow that money.

His money.

Yeah, I sure would. Because we know, Mr. Cardone, that you'll put that money to work. Okay. This guy that gave it to us, all he wants to do is work. I'm like, yeah, send me that money, bro. Send me that money. Okay. And they, by the way, they're not done calling me. They're going to call 9 other people. They're going to take his $100 grand and they're going to say, they're going to, they're going to lend it out, $900,000 of it. And this is the banking system. And that is debt, by the way, that US dollar.

Okay.

They're basically multiplying money. If the bank doesn't keep it, why do you spend all your time giving it to them to keep for you?

The reality is that those who can delay eating the marshmallow the longest do the best, because you're right, delaying gratification is an absolute superpower. Now, one of the most extraordinary experiments was done at Stanford University. It's called the Marshmallow Experiment. There's a whole book written on this, utterly fascinating. They followed the participants in this study for like 25 years, absolutely incredible. They bring these kids into a room, they give them a marshmallow, And they say, hey, you can eat the marshmallow now if you want, but if you wait until I come back, then I'll give you 2 marshmallows. So it's basically double your money. It's not going to be that long. Now, what the kid doesn't know is that the researcher isn't coming back, and they just want to see how long the kid is going to wait until they eat it. They do eventually come back, but they leave them really to struggle for quite some time. And what they found was the kids that could come up with games, whether singing to themselves, not looking at the marshmallow, whatever, The kids that were able to delay the gratification the longest ended up doing the best. They got the best grades, they got the highest paying jobs, they had the most successful relationships. Now, the reason that that works is in any one moment, if you're just operating around optimizing for momentary mind states, brain states, neurochemical states, then you're always going to be in short-term thinking. You're always going to get short-term results. If, however, you have this goal that excites you and is honorable, and you're able to push through all the boring stuff and all of that, then what you get is a set of skills that allow you to do things other people can't do. And as we established in the last question, if you can do things other people can't do, that is by its very nature success. And you will be rewarded in a way that other people will not be rewarded because they can't do the things you do. And as long as the things you do are valued by society, then you are always going to do very well. But that ultimately is the key. You have to be able to delay gratification. Now, for me, understanding that that was the nature of things, that if I can delay my momentary wishes for something longer term, then I could get these very different results that separated me from other people. And because I'm excited about what I'm pursuing, I use that excitement as my trick to stay focused when things get boring. And I've said many times that boredom kills more entrepreneurs than failure. So everyone will tell you that fear of failure is what stops people, and that is a huge deal. But honestly, like, I think it's the fact that people don't want the outcome badly enough to fight through all the boring, painful stuff that you have to go through to get to the other side to ultimately be successful. So make sure that you are hyped up on your goal. If you're not, then you're not going to be willing to go through all the difficult things.

Why is identity so important for us to shape a positive, powerful identity?

Well, first of all, so everybody understands what I mean by identity is we all have a way of identifying ourselves. We have a way of labeling ourselves. So most of us came up with our labels based on how we behaved. But really smart people can do stupid things. Really nice people could be mean. Mean people can be nice. And so if you judge yourself too soon, and most people's identity, their labels for themselves, who they think they are, has been based on their past, and often many years ago, and so they don't update it. So the metaphor I'd give for identity is like, it's your comfort zone. It's not your goals. So if you, like, if you took a temperature in the room and said 68 degrees is my comfort zone, physically, emotionally, financially, I want more in my relationship, I want more I want more physically, energy-wise. I want more financially in my career, but this is what I'm used to. And so what happens? People stay in their comfort zone for the most part. And then let's say something happens and you dip. You're a 68-degree-er, that's your mentality, and you drop down to 62, 61, 60, somewhere around 60 or 59, the heaters kick on and go, whoa, whoa, whoa! You're a 68-degree-er, what the hell are you doing? We've all experienced that. All of a sudden you go, I'm not gonna live like this anymore. I'm not gonna be in this relationship. I'm not going to be fat like this.

Boom!

And you get this drive and you start to change. But what most people don't understand is it happens on the upper end too. Meaning, let's say you got momentum, you start crushing it, you start doing even better than you think. You go from 68 to 78 to 88, you're 98 degrees financially, emotionally, spiritually, whatever the metaphor is. And then what happens? You're going to say, hey, hey, hey, you're bringing us— who the hell do you think you are? You're not a 98 degree here.

Right?

Get back to 68. And if nothing else, the heaters stop, you lose your drive, and that'll drift you back. And not enough, the air conditioning can kick on, you start to kind of sabotage yourself till you get back to your comfort zone. So unless you expand your identity, change is temporary. It's like when someone says to me, I stopped smoking, it's been 8 days. I go, why do you count? And I say, why are you counting? So you can tell people how long you lasted this time? Like if I went to somebody and I said to you, hey, you know, Lewis, you want a cigarette? You're not gonna say, what brand is it? You're gonna go, no, I'm not a smoker. Notice how people, I'm not one of those. That's not my identity. Identity is the strongest force in the human personality. If you look at Lance Armstrong, who has a mixed identity now in the culture, this is a guy that had to win and found a way to win. So when he was told he had cancer, in his lungs, in his brain, and in his testicles, and he rides a bike, and he's gonna die, his answer was, no, I'm a champion, I find the way, I will find the answer, and he did. Now unfortunately, he bent the rules around the sport, and it kind of ruined his reputation, obviously, but that mentality, his identity, is why he survived. Other people told they have cancer, and they're like, it's over, they give up, they start arranging their affairs. And so that psychological difference is the number one thing I work with people on, because unless you expand your identity, you're going to basically keep where you are. You might improve a little or not. You might go up and down a bit, but you're going to stay within a realm. If you're going to have an explosive breakthrough to another level physically, mentally, financially, spiritually, then we got to not only give you the tools, we got to shift that internal sense of who you really are and have you find that you are more than anything that's ever happened to you, that you can handle whatever shows up, even if it's incredibly scary or uncomfortable.

I was born in Belarus in the former Soviet Union. I came to the US when I was 3. We lived a very humble beginning. As you can imagine, the economy wasn't super great. We didn't speak English. We had $100. I lived with 7 family members in a studio apartment in Queens. So it was super humble. And, you know, obviously my parents are very much my heroes. One, because my mom is the greatest parent of all time, and two, because my dad worked his face off, and even though I slept under the same roof literally every day of my life with my dad in the first 14 years of my life, I literally never saw him because he left at 7 AM or 6 AM, and he came home at 10 PM, and he worked 7 days a week. How many people here are immigrants or children of immigrants? Raise your hands. Awesome. So this group that just raised their hands, they know that immigrants in America have absolutely figured out one of the core secrets, which is, you know, work your face off and don't buy dumb shit. And so that's kind of what my family did for 7 or 8 years. You know, my dad wasn't making that much money, but a funny thing happens when you buy nothing, but food at the lowest possible price and save, save, save, save. And very quickly, only 6 years after coming to America with $100, my dad was able to buy a small liquor store in New Jersey. We moved to New Jersey. That is where my entrepreneurial career began. When I was 6, I had a 5 lemonade stand franchise. I manipulated my friends into standing behind the lemonade all day. And that is when I became obsessed with attention. And this is really interesting, as you can see up here, I day trade attention, culture, and build businesses. At 6 years old, I would spend my summer days literally walking up and down the streets of New Jersey, sitting down on the curb, watching cars drive by so that I could figure out which tree or post was better for me to put a sign that said lemonade across. Quarter. That is DNA. That's like somebody singing, that's like somebody throwing a pitch, really, like, that is just pure DNA. I didn't read a Seth Godin book or go to Harvard Business School to figure out that attention was the number one asset. The one thing that combines every person here, from the cameramen back there who are producing, to the industry that is in this room, to me, to Mickey, to anybody else that sneaked in, the one thing that fundamentally connects all of us is before you tell me how great your product and service is, you need my attention so that I listen. I am obsessed with attention. I am obsessed with this device because it has the attention. I am unemotional if it's ruining the kids and they don't know how to engage, or that you are sad that people go out to dinner and don't talk to each other. Technology does not care about your feelings. And so I, as a human, may have some opinions about parenthood and society and privacy as a human, but as a businessman, I am unemotional and not romantic. All I do is follow where the attention is, and I figure out how to storytell in there to create the action that I desire.

One of the things that will help you to do the work to create the things that you want in your life is it will help you if you train your mind to start spotting evidence as you're doing the work, as you're going through your day. It will help you if you train your mind to start scanning the world and spotting evidence that, yes, indeed, the world is sending you positive signals that things are going to work out. Now, why is it important to train your mind to help you get what you want? Well, the reason why is because if you get into a negative mindset, if you start thinking this business is never going to work, why even bother, I'm never going to meet anybody, it's nothing but losers out there, look at all these idiots on Hinge, why the hell should I keep doing this? If you allow your mind to start to rest in a pessimistic negative, protective, scared, and doubtful stance, your mind will continue to show you reasons why there's nobody on Hinge worth talking to. Your mind will continue to show you all the reasons why you will never make it in business. Your mind will continue to show you all the reasons why you're never gonna lose that weight and be able to tuck in your shirt, as my friend Corinne Crabtree always talks about. About that transformational moment. And when your mind goes negative, your mind starts to scan the world and will show you more reasons to stop. And the power of training your mind to spot positive signs is very simple. The power is that your mind will start to show you reasons to keep going. Your mind will help you take the step. Your mind I will encourage you to feel optimistic, to feel empowered, just like you woke up today on a Tuesday and it was February 22nd, 2022, and those numbers are lining up and that makes you in your heart and soul go, whoa, something cool could happen today. Like, that only happens like once in my lifetime, those numbers are going to line up like that. Today is a really cool day. Let's go do something this. You could create that kind of attitude every single freaking day of your life. You could, if you train your mind and if you start taking action. And training your mind is the key piece that we're going to talk about. So for those of you that have read The High Five Habit, one of the things that I talk about a lot is every single day find a naturally occurring heart-shaped object in the world. It could be a stone, It could be a leaf. It could be a cloud. It could be a shape in your coffee. Hey, Chris, if we've got anything around here that looks like a heart, hand it to me. And the reason why I love telling you to start playing a game with yourself where you start your day going, mind, brain, show me some heart— oh, what is this? Come here.

Dog treat.

Oh my God, it's a dog treat. Look at this, guys. What shape is that? That right there is a heart. There we go. Check that out. If you say, brain, mind, show me a heart today, guess what's going to happen? That damn dog biscuit, it's going to show— it's going to— you're going to be like, there's a heart. You're going to look out at the sky and you're going to see a heart shape. Oh, right there in the mountains, there's a heart shape in the mountains in southern Vermont. You're going to see it in the clouds. What you're doing when you tell your mind what's important to you is you're telling your mind and the filter in your brain to change in real time and allow into your consciousness what's important to you. And if you want to see hearts, by God, those damn dog treats are going to start looking like hearts, everybody. That's how you train your mind. It's freaking incredible. And if you want to see evidence of this, follow me on social media. If you follow me, Mel Robbins, on social media You will see every day I am reposting your stories of finding heart shapes around the world. Now, why is this important? Well, it's important because it's a simple way to prove to you that your mind changes in real time, that if you get serious about becoming more positive and optimistic and encouraging of yourself, if you get serious about saying, fuck this, I don't want to see all the reasons why I'm unhappy, I don't want to see I see everybody else in the world that's launched a business or that's lost weight and is healthy or that has a really good marriage or relationship. And I don't want to see that and have my mind process it as evidence that it's never going to happen for me. I want my mind to reprogram itself and see other people's businesses and see other people getting healthy and see other people in relationships and I want my mind to say, yeah, if they can do it, I can do it. That's evidence. If that person can get healthy, so can I. If that person can find somebody on Hinge, so can I. If that person can reconcile with their child, so can I. Other people can become evidence that you can have it too. Right now, your mind is so fucked up from your past that when you see what other people have and you don't have it, you can't actually translate it through a negative mind and, and see that that's evidence that you're going to win. You see it like, oh, somebody already stole what I wanted. That sucks. And so what I want to start to open your mind to is that you have the power to train your mind to filter the world differently. Just like you woke up and you saw the date today, 2/22/22, and your brain saw that was like, whoa, this is a once-in-a-lifetime day, everybody. You are never going to have another day that lines up like this, ever. What are you going to do with this day? Your mind already interpreted this as, wow, something cool could happen. And if you tell yourself something amazing is going to happen today, something will, because you're going to be looking for it. I swear to God, something will. Something will. If you want to see the good all around you. You got to tell your mind you want to see the good. And this just isn't a bunch of horseshit, everybody. This isn't toxic positivity. There is a filter in your brain called the reticular activating system. The reticular activating system, I call it the RAS. I like to think about it like a giant hairnet on your head, and this RAS sits over your brain. I'm probably getting this wrong, I'm not a neuroscientist. I could give about getting it right. I just need you to know the basics here so that you can apply it to your life, okay? You don't need a PhD to use the science that super smart people have been working really hard on in order to apply it to your life. That's what I'm here for in your life. I'm here to translate this stuff into simple, believable, and actionable things that you can do to take all this super cool stuff that are researching and apply it to your normal person's everyday life to help you change from the inside out. And one of the coolest things that you have at your disposal is you have a whole system in your body that you can train and change. And one of those things that you can train and change that is impacted by that real— that word you're hearing a lot of, neuroplasticity. That just means that things are able able to twist and bend and change, and you're able to learn new things for as long as you're alive. As long as you're breathing, everybody, you got a chance to change the way that you think. As long as you are breathing, you got a chance to change from the inside out how you experience your life. As long as you are still here watching me, people, you got a chance to create a new experience in your life. And one of the things that helps a lot is understanding that right now all of the bullshit from your past has jammed the filter in your mind, body, and spirit, the reticular activating system, and it is clouding your ability to look at the world around you and see hearts. Remember this? Dog treat, hearts. Look at that, there's a heart right there.

If you're trying to reach the decision maker at a retail organization That guy or gal is also the same person that I want to reach to sell a bottle of wine or a book to. And that space in his and her Facebook feed is only one space. So that is supply and demand. I used to buy that space 4 years ago for $1 for every 1,000 impressions. Now it's $7. The longer you think this world doesn't exist, and you fearmonger it, the longer you don't put money in, the longer I can extract all the value. I've lived this game. I'm not a hero because I took it from $3 to $50 million, $60 million, my dad's business. I actually am a schmuck. I should have spent more on Google. I had it figured out. Every time you typed in Cabernet Merlot, Silver Oak, Caymus, Napa, Bordeaux, I was showing up first because nobody realized it was good real estate and it was only costing me 5 or 10 cents a click and I was making between $7 and $80 in profit for something that was costing me $3 to get you through the funnel on the average of 60 people coming and 1 converting. I was stupid. I'm being serious with you. I stand here and have passion about LinkedIn and Facebook marketing in a B2B environment today out of regret for what I did from 2002 to 2005 because I should have spent more. It was basic math, but I just didn't understand because I was young in my career, and it just— I don't even know how to explain it to you. When it's too good to be true, it's too good to be true, right? I'm an immigrant. I was cynical. I just didn't— plus, I also thought it was important to do direct mail and local commercials and magazine. I was doing it all, but in hindsight, it was the great mistake of my career. The great mistake of my career. Was not spending more money on Google, and I promise you the great mistake of your accelerated growth for the 80% that just raised their hand is not taking advertising on LinkedIn and Facebook seriously because you don't think your person is on it. I've heard every— guys, I've been doing this for 10 years. I know what your excuse is gonna be. I can't wait till the Q&A. I'm gonna stand here and one of you, but Gary, my target person is a 63-year-old man man, he's not on it.

Bullshit.

Of course he's on it. Who do you think is spreading all the Democratic and Republican propaganda on Facebook?

Let's play a game and let's call this game What Would Tom Do? Now I want you to ask, do you think that Tom is going to stay in a bad job for long?

No.

That's the, I'll skip to the last page. And Tom has a bad job, skip to the last page, Tom leaves the job. Now, Tom is gonna be very thoughtful because I completely understand that this is largely about, yo, I have to pay bills. Hey Tom, nice for you, you don't have kids and you've already been successful. So that's not really helpful for me. Now I will say that Joy and fulfillment are the punchline of life, not money, not success, not adoration. So you are losing, losing, losing if you're staying in a job that makes you unhappy. I promise if you have kids and that's the thing that's really making this difficult, you are bringing that unhappiness home. And so we have a moral obligation to break that, to make sure that we are pursuing things that are joyful so that we can show our kids, hey, this is how it's done. Now, you're not stuck at a job. There is something that's making you feel stuck at the job. I'm going to assume for now that it's money, keeping a roof over your loved one's heads. That, that to me seems like the scariest. So okay, assuming that it's that, remember there are always two levers. Lever number one, make more money. Lever number two, need less money. Okay, you can pull on either lever you want. Now if you say, uh, Tom, I can't need less money, it's just we're all— we've already cut it all to the quick, You know, my kids just need a certain amount. It just is what it is. Okay, amazing. So now we're going to make more money. Awesome. How do we go about doing that? First of all, let's identify what we hate about our job because there might be— are there other roles within that company? If it's just the job but not the company, is there somewhere that we could move? In which case we go ask, hey, I want this job which pays more money. What would I need to do? What skill set would I need to have? What expertise would I need to demonstrate in order to get there? And then go do that thing. If it's the company and we just— the company's toxic, we can't be there anymore, then I will ask, how many resumes have you sent out in the last 48 hours? If the answer isn't 250, then we've got some work to do. Now, let's assume that the answer is 250. Then we have to figure out why aren't we getting a response? Do we not have a skill set that's marketable? Is our resume terrible? Are we not going out to the right places? Have we not framed ourselves well? Could be any one of those things, but we have to be honest and real and figure out what we need to do to get out of this situation. But we certainly don't just accept defeat and go, wow, this sucks, this is my whole life. Nights and weekends is also going to come to our help, our aid here. So nights and weekends, if you know, whoa, I just don't have the skill set that I need to go find another job. Then we're going to start building that skill set. Maybe the skill set is interviewing, getting good at interviewing, and then we're going to get good at that. But we are going to find a way out of our situation, and we are going to find a way out of our situation quickly. So do not accept defeat. Hold yourself accountable to the truth, to what you need to do to get out of that situation, and then get out. Because as you said, our time is truly limited.

We live in a world that reinforces a scarcity mentality, and that mentality keeps us in an energy of lack. It keeps us from attracting the career path that we want, the abundance that we want, and allowing us to really live our purpose. There are 6 common blocks to abundance, and we all experience them in different ways. The first block is a lack mentality, and when we have a belief system around lack, we create more lack in our life. We all have stories from our childhood, how our parents experienced abundance or how they didn't, and those stories start to create an inner dialogue that gets us into a vibration of feeling like we don't have enough. And if we feel like we don't have enough, we do a lot of work to try to prove to the world that we are enough. The second block is the belief system that there's not enough to go around. We often overwork to try to get it all. We're constantly trying to get, get, get because we don't believe that there is enough. It makes us feel like we have to work so hard to get what we want, and that effort and that anxiety is really, really blocking the natural order, which is the flow of abundance. The third block is the block of comparison. We literally just turn on our social media and we're immediately into compare, compare, compare. And comparing blocks our attracting power because it focuses us on what we don't have rather than feeling good and feeling faith. The fourth block The fourth block is the need to win in the place of having fun. Because when we're so focused on winning, we lose track of what it feels like to enjoy the process. And that winning can really get in our way of allowing. The fifth block is the fear of rejection. When we fear rejection, we don't take action. And in effect, we create more lack in our life because we're not actually trying, we're not actually putting out our desires, we're not actually taking that leap towards what we want. But it's important to understand that rejection can be protection. When we have some form of rejection show up in our life, it's the universe guiding us to something better. And the final block is the fear of judgment. You may be so terrified of being judged that you don't take that action, you don't show up for your dreams, you don't even contemplate a world where you could do to do the thing that you've been dreaming of. You're so afraid of judgment because you think that other people won't support you. But what's really important to recognize is that if you're afraid of what other people think and how they won't support you, it's typically a sign that you are not supporting yourself. Now that you know the 6 blocks to abundance, I want to give you my methods for clearing those blocks so that you can allow abundance to flow to you. It's called the Universal Abundance Method. The first step of the Universal Abundance Method method is to protect your desires so you can stay in alignment. So if you have a really important desire, something that you care about, something that you want to manifest into your life, it's extremely valuable not to talk about it with anyone who might resist it. Step 2 is to focus on giving rather than getting. The more we are in that service mentality, the more positively the universe responds to us. This puts you into an abundance mentality quickly, because the more you give, the more you will receive. And step 3 is to want more for others. It is an opportunity for us to see that we all can succeed, we all can have abundance in our life. And the second you start to intend for others to have more of what you want for yourself, you start to feel good, you start to feel like you're contributing, you start to feel like you're connecting, and you're no longer comparing or jealous, and you're no longer separating yourself from others. Redirect your focus from what can I get to how do I feel, and really allow that feeling of abundance to propel you forward and create momentum and allow the universe to bring to you all that you desire.

What you believe about yourself is the only thing that matters at the end of the day. No matter how much outside affirmations you get or other people telling you that you're amazing, if you don't believe in your heart that you are amazing, it won't None of that will last. Like, have you ever gone to an event or you ever made a video or created something, or you're hanging out with a friend and they tell you how amazing you are, and that feels good, right? Like, the external affirmations and validation feels great, but then it fades. That stuff doesn't last. You don't have somebody being a cheerleader for you every day, showing up in your bedroom saying, "Hooray, go do this, you're amazing," right? We don't have that. You have to be that for yourself. If you're constantly only getting your value as a human being from other people when they tell you that you're amazing, you're never going to love your life. You're never going to love yourself. It has to come from you. It has to come from you telling yourself and you believing that you are amazing. Okay, so that's a lot of words. How do you actually go off and do it? I think for me, this is why I believe that lack of belief is the world's number one problem. You know, I can go and meet somebody and fill them full of belief for a moment, but if they still don't believe in themselves and they're going home back to a life that they, they had before because they don't believe in themselves enough. And so you have to design habits and routines and systems and schedules to slowly shift your belief in yourself forward every single day. And a good chunk of that is what you say about yourself. When you look at yourself in the mirror, what do you say? When you think about yourself, what do you say? A lot of, a lot of the stuff that we say about ourselves, we wouldn't, we wouldn't say to our worst enemies. It's rough. I actually think it's great to be your own worst critic. I think it's great. I think, honestly, I think For a lot of people, we're not hard enough on ourselves. Let me— let me— stick with me for a minute. We're not hard enough on ourselves because in order to get to where you want to go, you actually need to push yourself more. The problem is why we can't do it is we don't love ourselves enough. We're not our biggest cheerleader enough. You have to balance those two things. We are very hard on ourselves, but because there's no self-love, we're not cheering ourselves on enough. We're not our biggest cheerleader, you can't handle it. Most people are already at the breaking point, you know, like sitting here in a parking lot, these, you know, those— I guess it's kind of blurry, you can't really see them, but people hate their lives. They're barely hanging on. Most people are barely hanging on. We're barely hanging on to what we're doing. We can post all these great things on Instagram or wherever and make it look like we're enjoying our life, but most people are barely hanging on. The people who are judging you for your life and telling you that you suck hate their own lives. They are barely hanging on. So how do we get through it? Well, yes, we can be harder on ourselves, but we need to balance that with more self-love. You have to remind yourself of why you're great, what you're proud of, what you're grateful for, and it has to be consistent. Otherwise, you'll never get to where you want to go. And when you love yourself more, that actually allows you to be harder on yourself. When you love yourself more, you actually feel it. You can push yourself harder. You can, you can be more demanding of yourself because it's not going to push you over the edge because you're not tying your self-worth to you accomplishing that thing. And when you don't accomplish it, you feel like a loser. It's starting from a place of I'm amazing. That allows you to be way harder on yourself. When I go to events, a YouTube event for example, if I'm talking about anything entrepreneurship or YouTube related, I'm going in thinking I'm kick-ass. And because I feel that, I don't need to say that. Like, a lot of times we feel like we need to say that because it's masking an insecurity, right? It's like those people who— you've seen those memes where when people make a little bit of money, they've got all these chains and everything, but then the people who are ultra-rich, who have all the money— you look, even Jay-Z, like early Jay-Z, you know, he's got all these chains and everything. Now he's like, doesn't care, you know, he's walking around in a t-shirt and some jeans because he doesn't need to front because he's just so self-confident now that it doesn't matter. Now it's actually expression instead of masking an insecurity. Most of us are just masking insecurities instead of actually being self-confident. And so when I'm going to an event, if I'm talking about YouTube, I'm walking in feeling amazing and I don't need to— I don't need to walk around and say, hey, look at me. And It's actually the opposite. I can go up and say, hey, where do I suck? It's my favorite question to ask. Why do I suck? Where do I suck? Can you point it out? If I can find one person to tell me where I suck at something, how my videos suck, my thumbnails suck— I don't believe that they suck, right? I think they're amazing. But because I think they're so amazing, it allows me to go a lot harder on myself. And so people will give their honest opinion and say, hey, here's how I think you could be better. And so I think we need to do that more in our lives. We need to cheer ourselves up more. We need to cheer ourselves on more. So how do we do it? Let me, let me share some practical tips for you to execute. Number 1: music in the morning. Every morning, one of the most important things that I do is I put music on. And it's music that makes me move, makes me dance, makes me— there's some songs that if they came on, you would have to move, right? Doesn't mean that you're up and like dancing through the whole house going crazy in your underwear first thing in the morning, but something that even if it's just making your head bob, there are songs that if they came on would make your head bob and you'd probably be singing, maybe not out loud, but singing under your breath. Humming a tune along, and be intentional with the lyrics. Because if we're singing out lyrics that are negative, that has a lasting impact. But if you're singing out lyrics that are positive, that also has a lasting impact. So be intentional with music that you put on every day. First, start your day with music. It's the fastest way to change your state, to go from feeling low and tired and just What day is it? What am I doing? I wake up every day like, what day is it? What am I doing today? Yes, but I demand excellence, and that starts with music because I don't have— I don't want to spend a lot of time trying to get into the right state of mind. I can command it whenever I want just by putting on the right song. So be intentional with your music and the lyrics being positive. 2, connect to the work that you're doing. And how meaningful it is. So the next thing I'll do is I'll take the dogs out and then I'll go for what I call a believe walk. And it's probably the most important part of my morning routine is I go for a believe walk, and it's a minimum of 20 minutes and it's a maximum of an hour. And I'll go for a walk by myself with 20 pounds on my back, I'll go rucking, and a walk to Tim Hortons usually, get a coffee. You know, this costs $2, $2-something. So if I only had, you know, what's the, what's the best money I spend every year? Well, it's the $700 of going on my Believe Walk and getting the coffee every morning. And I'm thinking about what's my intention for the day, and I'm thinking about what I want to accomplish today and the lives that I want to serve and the people I want to help, and, and what am I about to do today? And it's a mini celebration where most of the time we wake up like an accident, right? You wake up, you're probably late for something, you immediately look at your phone. What's on your phone? It's other people's demands for your time, other people's emergencies of what they think you should do with your schedule today, right? That's what's in your phone, all the DMs and the emails and the texts and the missed calls and all— it's all other people's agenda for your time. That, that is not an intentional life. We wake up like an accident and start falling into what other people want us to do today. That's not what you need to do, and you need to protect your time. So the morning, having a Believe Walk for me— if you want to go on your own, whether it's 20 minutes or an hour, that's really just a feel thing too. I don't book anything until 10:30 at the earliest in my calendar. Most of my meetings would be 11. First meeting would be 11. Movement Makers and Brandlytics, I'll start at 10:30. And before that, there's nothing officially planned or scheduled so that it gives my morning free to do whatever I want to do. And so if I want to go for an hour-long Believe Walk instead of 20 minutes, I can do that because I'm thinking, because I'm brainstorming, because I'm going through an idea. I treat that as walking meditation. If you like to meditate, meditate. I mean, it's the same thing. I just find meditation doesn't really help me that much. I like something a little more active, so I go for my belief walks. Do those two things. Put on a playlist, put on music every morning with lyrics that inspire you. And then go for a believe walk, 20 minutes, to think about what you want to do today, what you want to accomplish, how you want to spend your time, where you want to be intentional, so you can start living the life that you want to live. Because the only thing that matters is how you feel about yourself. Are you proud of you today? Are you happy with what you've done today? Are you joyful and how you showed up for you today. And yes, we ultimately want to serve and help others, but the only thing that matters is how you feel about yourself. So we can stop relying on external validation and somebody else's words of affirmation for us to feel worthy, and flip it to say, I am worthy, I am amazing. I can do great things. And when you can shift into that energy, you will do great things. 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 are 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. Now it's time to watch the most eye-opening 60 minutes of your life. Check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there.

Here's the hard truth about getting great. It takes time and dedication. It takes a willingness to accept that you're not yet good enough. It takes the ability to stare at the places that