Learn to WIN Future Battles with CRITICAL Thinking | Jordan Peterson's Advice in 33 Minutes

If you're looking for ways to think critically, stop making excuses, and make something of yourself, then this video is for you.

You need to learn to think because thinking makes you act effectively in the world. Thinking makes you win the battles you undertake. Like, there's no excuse whatsoever for not getting at what it is that you should be doing. Stand up for yourself like a respectable human being and Be a bit of a light on the world instead of a blight.

Need motivation? Watch a top 10 with Believe Nation. What's up, it's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in you. I believe in that amazing gift you have inside you that I wanna see come out. So let's get your motivation to a 10 and get you believing in you. Grab a snack and chew on today's lessons from a man who grew up in a small town in Canada to a librarian mother and schoolteacher father to becoming a Harvard and University of Toronto professor and having over half a million subscribers on YouTube. Not bad for a professor. He's Jordan B. Peterson, and here's my take on his Top 10 Rules of Success Volume 2. Alright, let's kick it off with rule number 1: Set up criteria for success.

But one of the main reasons that people don't get what they want is because they don't actually figure out what it is. And the probability that you're going to get what would be good for you, let's say, which would even be better than what you want, right? Because, you know, you might be wrong about what you want, easily. But maybe you could get what would really be good for you.

Well, why don't you?

Well, 'cause you don't try.

You don't think, "Okay." Here's what I would like if I could have it.

And I don't mean— I don't mean in a way that you manipulate the world to force it to deliver you goods for status or something like that. That isn't what I mean. I mean something like, imagine that you were taking care of yourself like you were someone you actually cared for. And then you thought, okay, I'm caring for this person, I would like things to go as well for them as possible. What would their life have to be like in order for that to be the case? Well, people don't do that. They don't sit down and think, "Alright, you know, let's figure it out." You've got a life, it's hard, obviously. It's like, 3 years from now you can have what you need. You gotta be careful about it. You can't have everything. You can have what would be good for you. But you have to figure out what it is. And then you have to aim at it. Well, my experience with people has been is, if they figure out what it is that would be good for them, And then they aim at it, then they get it. And it's strange because they don't necess— it's a strange thing, it's not quite that simple because, you know, you may formulate an idea about what would be good for you, and then you take 10 steps towards that, and you find out that your formulation was a bit off, and so you have to reformulate your goal. You know, you're— so you're kind of going like this as you move towards the goal. But a huge part of the reason that people fail is because they don't ever set up the criteria for success. And so, since success is a very narrow line, and very unlikely, the probability that you're going to stumble on it randomly is zero. And so there's a proposition here, and the proposition is: if you actually want something, you can have it. Now the question then would be, "Well, what do you mean by 'actually want'?" And the answer is that you reorient your life in every possible way, to make the probability that that will occur as certain as possible. And that's a sacrificial idea, right? It's like, you don't get everything. Obviously you— obviously. But maybe you can have what you need. And maybe all you have to do to get it is ask. But asking isn't a whim, or today's wish. It's like, you have to be deadly serious about it. You have to think, "Okay, like, I'm taking stock of myself." And if I was going to live properly in the world, and I was going to set myself up such that being would justify itself in my estimation, and I don't mean as a harsh judge, exactly what is it that I would aim at? Sit on your bed one day and ask yourself, "Ah, what's— what remarkably stupid things am I doing on a regular basis to absolutely screw up my life?" And if you actually ask that question, but you have to want to know the answer, right? Because that's actually what asking the question means. It doesn't mean just mouthing the words. It means you have to decide that you want to know. You'll figure that out so fast it'll make your hair curl.

I love this message. And rule number 2 in the Top 10 Rules of Success, the one that comes up over and over and over again, is have self-awareness to understand what it is that you want to go out and achieve, what it is in your daily schedule that is holding you back. Having that self-awareness, having the courage to ask the question and then having the ability to create goals for yourself that are in line with who you are and what you actually want to accomplish, that's the game. So I love this number 1, great way to kick us off. Let's move into rule number 2: learn to think critically.

The best thing you can do is teach people to write, 'cause there's no difference between that and thinking. And one of the things that just blows me away about universities is that no one ever tells students why they should write something. It's like, well, you have to do this assignment. Well, why are you writing?

Well, you need the grade.

It's like, no, you need to learn to think because thinking makes you act effectively in the world. Thinking makes you win the battles you undertake, and those could be battles for good things. If you can think and speak and write, you are absolutely deadly. Nothing can get in your way. So that's why you learn to write. It's like— And I can't believe that people aren't just told that.

It's like—

it's the most powerful weapon you can possibly provide someone with. And I mean, I know lots of people who've been staggeringly successful and watched them throughout my life. I mean, those people, you don't want to have an argument with them. They'll just slash you into pieces. And not in a malevolent way. It's like, if you're going to make your point and they're going to make their point, You better have your points organized, because otherwise you are gonna look like, and be, an absolute idiot. You are not gonna get anywhere. And if you can formulate your arguments coherently, and make a presentation, if you can speak to people, if you can lay out a proposal, God, people give you money, they give you opportunities, you have influence.

I agree. I think the ability to think critically as well as to communicate, whether that's writing, whether that's making videos, whether that's giving speeches, the ability to influence people is important. You're on a mission, you have a dream, you're trying to accomplish something. You can't do it alone. You need people to come on board with you, and that's gonna come from your ability to persuade them that your mission is important and they should join you in your cause. So the key for me is just practice. Practice, practice, practice. Practice writing, practice speaking, practice making videos, practice having conversations. You will suck the first time through, and the more you practice, the better you're gonna get. Let's move to rule number 3. Don't be harmless.

If you're harmless, you're not virtuous. You're just harmless. You're like a rabbit. A rabbit isn't virtuous. It's just— it just can't do anything except get eaten. It's not virtuous. If you're a monster and you don't act monstrously, then you're virtuous. But you also have to be a monster. Well, you see this all the time. Harry Potter's like that too. It's like, he's flawed, he's hurt, he's got evil in him. He can talk to snakes, man. He breaks rules all the time. All the time. He's not obedient at all. But, you know, he has a good reason for breaking the rules. And if he couldn't break the rules, him and his little clique of rule-breaking, you know, troublemakers, if they didn't break the rules, they wouldn't attain the highest goal. So it's very peculiar, but it's very, very, very, very, very common. Mythological notion. You know, the hero has to be— the hero has to be a monster, but a controlled monster. Batman is like that, you know. I mean, it's everywhere. It's, it's the story you always hear.

So I really love the idea of the entrepreneur hero being the rule breaker, of being the person who sees something in a different way. We don't accept the status quo. We're not doing something to harm people. We're not breaking rules that get us into massive trouble, or it's is causing somebody death or some major problem, but we're going against the status quo because we believe in a better future, and to make that happen, we have to break the rules of what's happening right now. Moving on to rule number 4 is compare yourself to who you were yesterday.

Rule 4: Compare yourself to who you were yesterday and not to who someone else is today. Yeah, because if you're comparing yourself to someone else, I mean, first of all, you You don't know very much about the life of the person you're comparing yourself to. You don't know it across all of its dimensions. And second, people are very different. And so comparing yourself to someone else, it's kind of useful, I guess, when you're young. But as you get older and more singular and more particular, it becomes increasingly less useful. Better to compare yourself to a previous version of yourself and work for improvement in that way.

The only thing I would add here is that I think comparing yourself to somebody else can be useful if it's to get yourself to move forward. If you compare yourself to Steve Jobs and that inspires you to want to do something bigger, then that can be helpful. If you use it just as a, I'll never be as good as Steve Jobs or have that big an impact, then it's not that helpful. I think the comparison is good as long as it's a kick forward and not a kick down. And again, comparing to yourself of who you were yesterday and measuring that impact and improvement is also super helpful. Let's go to rule number 5: Start small. I know you stated in the last lecture that the importance for setting aims in life and to kind of have goals to work towards, right? So my question was, how do you do that if you don't know where you want to go? Because that's kind of where I got stuck on your your future authoring program? Because—

Okay, that's a good question.

That's a really good question.

So there's this notion in the Old Testament that morality is following a sequence of prohibitions. There's a bunch of bad things you shouldn't do, and then basically you're good enough. And I think there's wisdom in that. I think that's kind of where children start, right? I mean, I love children and all that, but they're crazy little creatures, and they need to be be, you know, civilized. But partly what you do is you lay prohibitions on them, and mostly what you're trying to do is lay prohibitions on them for the behaviors that, if they manifested, would make their life miserable. So this is why this thing that I've said to people has become this crazy internet meme, but that's to clean up your room.

And—

which is a lot better and more useful than people think. It's a lot harder too, but The thing— the first thing you do, I think, and I learned this in part from Solzhenitsyn, when he was trying to iron out his soul when he was in the Gulag, because he was trying to figure out how he got there, how he contributed to how he got there. You know, not Stalin and Hitler, even though they were kind of to blame, you know, but there wasn't much he could do about that. I think what you have to do, and this is part of humility, is you have to look around you, within your sphere of influence, like the direct sphere of influence, and fix the things that announce themselves as in need of repair. And those are often small things. You know, and they can be like— your room. Put it in order. Because the thing is, it isn't exactly so important that your room is in order, although it is. What's important is that you learn how to distinguish between chaos and order, and to be able to act in a manner that produces order. And I think you can do something as simple as just sit on your bed, think, okay, there's probably like 5 things I could do today so that tomorrow morning is slightly better than this morning was. At least, or at least I'm not falling behind. And those will usually be— it's like having to eat a toad in the morning, right? It's like, it's not going to be something you want to do. There'll be things you're trying to avoid. They're snakes, essentially. But if you ask yourself, like you're asking someone, which I think is a form of prayer— if you ask yourself instead of telling yourself you know, what is it that I could do to set things more right today that I would actually do? It's usually some small thing because you're not that disciplined, you know. Then you can go do it, and then you put the world together a little more when you do that, and that spreads out. But you also put your— you also construct yourself into something that's better able to call order forth from chaos. And that makes you just incrementally stronger. And then the next day, you can maybe take on a slightly larger task. And, like, you get the benefit of compound interest if you do that. It's a tremendously powerful technique. And I think if you do that, at some point, instead of just having to fix things up that are not good, you'll start to get a glimmer of the positive things that you could do You know, the positive things that you could do that would actually constitute a vision. And that, that's what I would recommend.

It's another message that you hear over and over and over again is to start small. You have this big goal of where you want to go, and there's a lot that can be done, a lot that you can do, and often that can be super overwhelming. And so the key is to start small and to do one small step today and then another small step tomorrow. And over time, those small steps, when you look back, you'll have accomplished this huge thing. But you don't just take a giant leap overnight, especially at the beginning, because you suck at at what you're doing. And so start small, and every single day make a little bit more progress to achieving your goal. That's how you do it. Let's go to rule number 6. I'm gonna like this one: don't make excuses.

When people are beset with a catastrophe, like let's say the death of their father, that they are prone to use that as an excuse for not going about the business that they should be going about, because they can say to themselves, well, I would Accept. And accept there's always good reasons. I mean, believe me, there's always good reasons for not doing what you should. That's for sure. The reasons pile up day after day to not do what you should, especially because you're aiming at things in the future. You can put them off indefinitely, right? Because of the demands of the day. Like, there's no excuse whatsoever for not getting at what it is that you should be doing. It's absolutely reprehensible to justify your inaction with a catastrophe that extracts mercy from other people, right? There's a tricky, tricky game that's going on. Well, of course I can't do that. Look at the terrible thing that's just happened to me. It's, yeah, okay, I understand. You're absolved of any necessity to move forward because of your current catastrophe. It's like, well, actually you're not, and it's rather rude of you to use it as an excuse, and it's certainly counterproductive. Productive.

So every time I include a clip around not making excuses, it always comes off as some like really harsh, really hard, non-caring, non-emotional front. And the thing though is, it's true. Like, the more that you live a life of excuses, that you have somebody else to blame, something else to blame, some circumstances to blame, even if it is rightly holding you back in some circumstance, as long as you have that other thing to blame, then you never move. You stay where you are. If you're not happy with where you are, ask yourself the reasons why. And if you're looking at anybody else besides you, then you will never get out of where you are until you stop making those excuses and take personal accountability for your life. Let's go to rule number 7: change yourself.

When I was 25 or so, I probably weighed about 138 pounds. I smoked like a pack cigarettes a day. I drank tremendous amount of alcohol. I was from Northern Alberta, this rough little town up in northern Alberta called Fairview. And, you know, there were long winters there, and my friends were heavy drinkers, and most of them dropped out of school by the time they were 15 or 16, went off to work on the oil rigs. And, you know, it was a rough town, and we drank a lot. I started when I was 14. And, you know, um, and so I was— I had a lot of bad habits, let's say, and, uh, things that were— and I wasn't in great shape physically, and I was also still intellectually obsessed by, as I am now. And, uh, so that would have been, that would have been in '85. But when I, but I decided around then, about '85, '84, something like that, maybe a little earlier, that I was really going to try to get my act together. And, uh, so I started doing that. I, you know, I, first of all, I, I quit smoking, though that took a long time because I eventually had to quit drinking too in order to quit smoking. And I started working out, started playing sports, which I'd never done. I had a fine time when I was a kid, and— but I needed really to get disciplined. And I had to do it because I was working on these hard problems that, you know, that I've been discussing with all of you. And I've been working on them really, you know, obsessively since I was probably about 18, maybe even earlier than that. And got to the point around 25 when I was in graduate school trying to get my PhD, doing all my research. Like, I published 15 papers by the time I graduated with my PhD, which was by, I think, by a fairly large measure the most papers that any undergraduate student at that time had ever published at McGill. I think that's right, might have been twice as many, or maybe twice as many, maybe even 3 times as many. And at the same time, I wrote Maps of Meaning, which was a terrible, terrible, terribly difficult thing to do because I was writing about 3 hours a day doing that, and I couldn't do all that and continue with my misbehavior, you know, my sort of— my, what would you say, my hedonistic— my hedonistic— my massive hedonistic consumption of alcohol and all of that. I just couldn't keep it up and also work seriously on the issues that were at hand. So, you know, I had to stop. That's a sacrifice. I had to stop. Messing about and straighten myself out.

What this really highlights to me is the importance of short-term benefits versus long-term benefits. In the short term, drinking, partying, smoking really makes you feel good, but it doesn't serve your longer-term goal, doesn't serve what you want to become. And so if you have a really clear picture of the type of person you want to become and the type of work that you want to do and the type of impact that you want to have, and if that's strong enough inside you and that you really feel viscerally, it's a part of you and that needs to happen, then it's easier to let go of these bad habits that are preventing you from accomplishing your big goal, even though they feel really good in the short term. So I'm curious what bad habits you might have to give up. And while you think of that, let's move to rule number 8: toughen up.

You're actually tougher than you think. You never knew that, and maybe you didn't want to take on the responsibility because, you know, people play a role in their own demise, so to speak. When you had opportunity to go out and explore, or withdraw because you were afraid. You chose to withdraw because you were afraid. So it's not only that you were overprotected often, it's that you were willing to take advantage of the pro— fact that you were overprotected, and run back there whenever you had the opportunity. You know, so maybe you're a kid in the playground, right, and you're having some trouble with other kids, and you know, in the back of your mind, "I should deal this with— deal with this myself." but you go and tell your mom, and get her to intervene. And you know that that's not right, you know that you're breaking the social contract, but it's easier, and so that's what you do. You run off to an authority figure, and hide behind the great father, right? Roughly speaking. Well, the problem with that is you don't learn how to do it yourself. So then you have to relearn it painfully when you're 40. So then you take people out, and you say, "Well, what are you afraid of? Rank it from 1 to 10." So 10 is— make a list of 10 things you're afraid of. The least— the thing you're least afraid of, we'll call number 10. So we'll start with that. Okay, well, I'm afraid of elevators. Okay, well, let's, let's look at a picture of an elevator. Let's have you imagine being in an elevator. Let's go out to an elevator and let you watch the terrible jaws of death open, because that's how you're responding to it symbolically, right? And you're going to do that at it, at the the closest proximity you can manage. You find out, you go do that, it works. You're nervous as hell, especially from an anticipatory perspective, shaking. You go out, you stop, you watch it happen, and you actually calm down. You do that 10 times and it no longer bothers you. Well, what you've learned, that you didn't die. But more importantly than that, you've learned that you could withstand the threat of death. That's what you've learned. And then you move a little closer, and then you move a little closer, and then you move a little closer, and finally you're back in what's no longer the elevator from a symbolic perspective. It's a tomb, right? It's, it's, it's a place of enclosure and isolation, and you learn, hmm, turns out I can withstand that. And then you're much more together, much more confident. And that's often one of the things that often happens in situations like that. I've seen this multiple seen multiple times is that if you run someone through an exposure training process like that and, and toughen them up, they'll often start standing up to people around them in a way they never did before.

I love this rule, and what I try to remind myself and the people around me of is whenever you're faced with this problem that you feel is super overwhelming and just ginormous, I remind myself that this is just a warm-up. Whatever giant problem is in front of me right now, this is just a warm-up exercise. Because if you can't handle this big thing that's in front of you, then you're not gonna be able to handle the bigger problems and the bigger problems and the bigger problems. And if you want to have that big impact, you have to be able to play out here, not get lost in these little tiny issues that consume your life. And so use that as a training tool. The next time you feel overwhelmed by something, the next time something is just so important and taking up all your hours, then remind yourself, this is just the warm-up, and you're capable handling a heck of a lot more. Let's go to rule number 9: find your winning strategy.

If you concentrate solely on your career, you can get a long way in your career. And I would say that that's a strategy that a minority of men preferentially do, that that's all they do. They work like 70, 80 hours a week, they go flat out on their career, they're staking everything on the small probability of exceptional status in a narrow domain. But it's hard on them. They don't have a life. It's very difficult for them to have a family. They don't know how to take any leisure activity. Like, they get very one-dimensional. Now, it may be that that unidimensionality is the price you have to pay to be exceptional at one thing, right? Because if you're gonna be something like a genius-level mathematician, and you wanna do that for— or a scientist, say— it's like, you're in your lab, you're in your lab all the time, You're working 70 hours a week, or 80 hours a week. You're smart, you're dedicated, you're unidimensional, and that's how you get to beat all the other people who are doing that. It's the only way. But the problem is you don't get a life. Now, if you love being a scientist and you have that kind of focus of mind, well, first of all, you're a rare person, and second, you're gonna pay for it. But fine, more power to you. But— but— It's a risky business to do that. You sacrifice a lot for it. You know, and I would say most often, if you're speaking about having a healthy life, that isn't what you do. You spread yourself out more. So, you know, you have a family, you have some things that you do outside of work that are meaningful to you and useful. You have a network of friends. Um, well, that— those 3 things alone are— 4 things alone are plenty to keep you well-oriented. And then if one of those things collapses, you know, everything doesn't go. Now, the price you pay for that is the more you strive to optimize that balance, the less likely you are to be fantastically successful at any single one of them. But you might have a very— you know, if you consider your life as a whole, that might be a winning strategy.

The most important part here for me is that you just find the right balance for you. And how everybody defines balance is gonna be different. The number of hours worked, the number of times spent with family, the number of days on vacation per year— there's no right or wrong. You can model somebody and try out what they're doing, but the only version of right for you is gonna be what you wanna do. And through that experimentation, you find the right winning strategy for yourself instead of just trying to live up to somebody else's expectation of what you should and should not be doing. Let's wrap it up before moving to rule number 10. Make yourself into something.

I had a plumber once, you know. It was the night— it was the night before we were putting drywall in our house. We were redoing a house, and he had put in all the plastic piping, you know, and I was going to test the joints. They're supposed to be glued together with this pipe glue, right? And I said— I told him I had to test the joints, and he said, "Well, you don't have to test my joints. They never leak." And I thought, "Yeah, that's okay. How about if I test them?" So I went up on the 3rd floor and filled the pipes with water, capping them in the basement like you're supposed to. Like half an hour later, I had 2 inches of water in the basement. There were 30 leaking joints. That was the night before the drywallers were supposed to show up. So, well, so he wasn't particularly competent. That's the point of that story. But even more so, he had put a bunch of the plastic pipe outside where the drywall would be, so it would have been sticking through the wall. So I spent a frenetic night Sawing through plastic pipe and re-gluing joints so that my— well, so that the dry rollers could come in. What's the point? If you're going to be a plumber, man, be a good plumber, because otherwise all you do is go out there and cause trouble. We don't need people to cause more trouble. We need people to solve problems, you know. And so you can be a tradesman, and you can be— you can make a lot of money as a tradesperson. It's a bloody reliable, honorable, forthright productive way of making a living. And there is a hell of a lot of difference between a working man who knows what he's doing and one who doesn't, both in terms of skill and ethics, right? And you work with someone who knows what they're doing, it's a bloody pleasure. They tell you what they're going to do, they tell you how much it will cost, they go and do it, it works, and you pay them. Perfect. Everyone's happy. And that's what happens when you have genuine hierarchies of competence. And so you listen to these panderers of egalitarianism and equity, and they fail to recognize completely that there are differences in rank between people. It's not such a terrible thing, man. Maybe you wouldn't be a great lawyer, like, it's certainly possible. Most people aren't. But that doesn't mean there isn't something you could be great at. There's lots of hierarchies to attempt to climb, and if you fail in one, go try in another. But the point is, you're still trying to aim for the top. And what the hell are you gonna do if you don't try to aim for the top? You know? Flap about uselessly and whine about your life? It's not helpful! It'll just make you miserable, you're not reliable to anyone, you can't help out in a crisis. It's like— so you tell young people, and this is another message for conservatives, like, "I don't care what you're gonna do, but go out there and make something of yourself, for God's sake! Be an honest person, and work, and get to the top of whatever it is that you wanna get to the top of!" You know, and stand up for yourself like a respectable human being, and be a bit of a light on the world instead of a blight. You know, and you can tell young people that, and they haven't been told that by anyone now. And so the young men are so hungry for that, that it's painful to watch. They're so relieved when someone finally comes up and says, "Hey, you know, you get your act together a bit, discipline yourself, see if you can learn to tell the truth." Concentrate on something for a year or two, you could be a bloody world beater. They think, "Really? That's possible? Wow, that would be— that would be interesting. That might make life worth living." It's like, "Yeah, it might, so why don't you go do it?" That's what the damn universities were supposed to be teaching people, and they've forgotten that. I went to Harvard a month ago, month and a half. I used to teach there. And I talked to a bunch of students, you know, and I told them, it's not easy to get into Harvard, you know. Like, you're a valedictorian if you're at Harvard. And not only are you a valedictorian, you're way better than most people at at least 2 other things, or you don't get in. And so, like, it's— I don't know what the acceptance rate is, like 5%, and believe me, not everybody applies, so it's a very selective school. And so why am I saying that? It's like, these are high-quality kids. So I told them what I just told you. It's like, here you are at Harvard, It's like, get yourself educated, man! Read some books, learn to talk, learn to think! Make yourself into something! Get the hell out there and make the world that put you here happy that you were put there, in that great institution! You know, and they came up to me afterwards and said, "God, I wish someone would have told us that when we were in our first year!" It's like, Jesus! Why didn't someone tell them that? For God's sake, it's supposed to be the greatest university in the world. Is it so difficult to figure that out?

I really like the line of be a light unto the world instead of a blight. I love that one. And I think, listen, this is what entrepreneurs do. It's what we try to do every day, right? We try to make the world a better place. We try to turn ourselves into something. We try to— we have this idea of how things could be better, and then we want to go out and create it. And so just hold on to it because it's hard, because you're going to get failures, you're going to get pushback, you're going to have people tell telling you that it's never gonna work out. Just hold on to that dream, and every single day, whatever helps you believe in yourself more, get up, do that, and make yourself into something. That's my take on Jordan Peterson's Top 10 Rules of Success Volume 2. I would say number 6, don't complain, is my personal favorite. I'd love to hear from you. Is number 6, don't complain, your favorite, or is there a better one that has a more immediate impact on you and why? Leave it in the comments below. I really want to hear from you. Now, I made this video because DudeWhat212 asked me to. If there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, check the link in description and go and cast your vote on the request line. I also want to give a quick shout out to Daniel. Daniel, thank you so much, man, for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and posting the review on your website and tweeting about it as well. I really, really appreciate the support, man, and I'm so glad you enjoyed the book. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.

You're lost, and the problem with being lost is when you're lost, you don't know where to go. And the problem with not knowing where to go is there's a million places that you could go, and a million places is too many places for you to go without dying. So being lost is not good. So you need to know where you are. And you can kind of tell if you don't know where you are. It's quite straightforward. If you are haunted by reveries of the past for events that are older than approximately 18 months, if they continue to come up in your mind over and over, in your dreams over and over, you haven't extracted the world out from your past experiences. The potential is still trapped in the past. And to confront the potential means to confront the dragon of the past. And of course, that's terrifying. And it can seriously be terrifying. So you're navigating. You're a navigator. You're a sailor on an ocean, man. That's what you are. You're a mobile creature. You're going from point A to point B all the time. You're not sitting there glued to a rock like some brainless sea creature. There's a funny little creature called a hydra. Very simple little creature. In its juvenile stage, it has a brain. 'cause it swims around, but then when it turns into an adult, it latches itself to a rock and promptly digests its brain. 'Cause if you're just sitting on a rock and you're not moving, you don't need a brain. But that's not our issue, right? We're zipping around in the world, and so we're navigating agents. And so to navigate, there's two things you need to know. The first is, where the hell are you? Exactly, precisely, right? Razor sharp. What's good about that? About you and what's bad about you by your own, by your own reckoning. You don't have to— you can ask other people, but this is a game you play yourself. It's like, as far as I'm concerned, I'm taking stock. What is it that's okay about me and what needs some work? And you got to watch to not be too self-critical when you're doing that too, because that can just be another kind of flaw. 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 acceptance of 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.