Lisa Nichols: From Struggle to Stardom - Her Top 10 Rules for Success

And all that thing about potential, I was tired of having potential. I wanted to have my now.

I'm an average, ordinary mom who said, I want to drastically transform my son's future.

The power of I am, the power of I am can pull you through the darkest moment.

As you're creating success, create holistic success.

Have a small change over 30 days, and then a small change over 30 days. Your breakthrough will come in needlepoint moves.

At some point, I have to stop asking, can I be great? Can I be brilliant?

You have to disrupt that. Soil in order to plant a new seed to grow a new fruit.

There's not one line of business that you can be in that a story and a great story won't elevate your outcome.

Wealth is possessions and money. Abundance is a 360 experience.

I look at my life and I wasn't supposed to be who I am today.

She's an author, life coach, and motivational speaker. She's the founder and CEO of Motivating the Masses. She's also a best-selling author of 6 books. She's Lisa Nichols, and here are her top 10 rules for success.

Success. I struggled all through school. The last time I took English class, I got a fail. And my English teacher said I was the weakest writer she ever met in her entire life. The last time I took a speech class, same year, I got a D-minus in speech. And my speech teacher said, Lisa, quote unquote, I recommend you never speak in public, that you get a desk job. So that was the beginning of my life. That was my 19-year-old experience. And then I go on and I'm trying to figure it out, trying to figure it out. I was obedient. I went and got a job in accounting. I was in the collection department for 7 years. Y'all don't know, I'm dangerous to accounting. I'm just dangerous. And I'm in collections. And you know, you should never put a broke person in collections. Never. Because everybody's reasons sound good to me. I know I sound funny, but it was real. Not only did I say, girl, Don't you worry about paying that. I'm gonna take your name off the list. Somebody went to jail because I was in col— I got fired from 5 different jobs. And then I got pregnant with my son unexpectedly. And then at 8 months, my son's father went to prison. I had to get on government assistance to have my baby. I was on WIC, Women, Infant, and Children, to feed my child. And when my son was 8 months old, I went to the— ATM to get $20 out the bank because I didn't have any Pampers for him. And in order to get $20 out, you got to add $20 in. I had $11.42. And I still can't tell the story without getting emotional because it's my story.

Mm-hmm.

For 2 days, I had to wrap my son in a towel. But something happened, Steve, in those 2 days. I was at rock bottom. I was broke. And I was broken. Inglewood, California. My son laying on his back at 8 months. I have a towel over him and I have my hand on his stomach saying, don't you worry, Jaylani. Mommy will never be this broke again. And I made a decision. I was bankrupt in every stinking thinking I had. I was bankrupt in trying to protect my pride. I was bankrupt in trying to be all that and a bag of chips and a bowl of grits. Falsified. I was bankrupt in trying to not ask anyone for help. I was bankrupt in everything that was holding me and keeping me where I was. I've always talked a good game, but I wasn't doing anything with my gift. And all that thing about potential, I was tired of having potential. I wanted to have my now. And I looked at that baby at 8 months and I said, I want to transform your life because you didn't ask to come into this chaos.

Come on.

As an African-American male child in South Central Los Angeles with a single mother whose father's in prison, he had a 66% chance of going to prison himself. Not on my watch. Mm. Not on my watch. So if I have to be willing to drastically transform myself so that I can become the woman that I know I can be—

Right.

—and that's what I began to do. I was radical.

What did you do, Lisa? What did you do to change your life?

First, I realized I couldn't grow with people who were struggling like me. That whole, I don't want to leave nobody behind. No, I don't want to stay with y'all. Right. You don't even want to be here. Like, I don't want to be the queen of this block. Yeah. And I became OK with the fact that it doesn't make me any less committed to my community. Committed to my culture, committed to my family, the best thing I can do for you is not stay here with you. That's right. When I got that, I went to places I'd never seen before. I went to conferences where people were talking about money, talking about prosperity, talking about— it was like, no habla español. What y'all talking about? ROIs and PPMs and term agreements and capital fundraising and bottom lines and what is that? I'm gonna stay until I learn what you're talking about. I went to the same conference 42 times. And there I raised $532,000 in capital for my company to start my dream. And my dream was to transform teen lives. I want to teach teens how to fall madly in love with themselves and how to make integrity-based decisions. And I got it funded, and I started working. And that was the beginning of me rescuing myself. I realized that I am my rescue. No one else is my rescue.

I am my rescue. So I was hungry. Like, I was hungry. People often wanna call me the exception, like, "Oh my God, you're the exception." No, I'm not the exception. I'm an average, ordinary woman who chose every day to make one more extraordinary decision. I'm an average, ordinary mom who said, "I wanna drastically transform my son's future, that he deserves to have every option that every other child would have, irregardless of what he was born into." I just was crazy enough to believe that. That it doesn't matter the color of my skin, doesn't matter my religious background, doesn't matter my origin, it doesn't matter my mom's bank account and my dad's bank account when I was born. None of that means my future. That's just the circumstance that I came from. That's not what defines my future. I just believe that. Not a lot validated it, but faith is believing in the unseen anyway. So I had enough faith to go, I know like I know like I know like I know I don't necessarily have to see it yet.

Christie talked about affirmations. Abundant thinkers understand the power of "I am." Anything after the word "I am" is true to your unconscious mind, Michael. Anything. Anything after "I am." Anything.

Anything after "I am." Even if you just, you know it's not true, your conscious mind will believe it.

Anything after "I am." So the use of affirmations is very intentional and very consistent. Yes! I was diagnosed as clinically depressed in 2001. '94, '95, '96, '97, '98, I'm sorry. I was diagnosed as clinically depressed. Me, it didn't make sense. I had been in a relationship, I was engaged to get married, and my fiancé, who I did not know at the time, was bipolar. And he'd stopped taking his medicines, and under the belief system that love can cure anything. And so, I ended up being picked up and thrown 3 feet across the room, and I ended up being choked until I passed out. And once I got out of that relationship, I just was different. I was different. So, my mom insisted that I go to the doctor. I went to the doctor, and I sat on the table, and she checked me and— talked to me and came back in with a prescription. And she said, "Lisa, you're clinically depressed." And I felt like I heard Charlie Brown's parents talking, like, "Wah wah, wah wah wah." Clinically depressed and Lisa, that don't make sense in that same sentence. And she handed me a prescription, and I read the prescription, it had my name on it, and it said Prozac. And I thought, "That don't make sense. Lisa Nichols Prozac, that don't make sense." And I said, I said, "Do you mean I'm sad?" She said, "Very, very sad." I said, "Can I try something?" And I'm not recommending you guys, if you're on medication, you stop taking your meds. Please don't do that. I asked my doctor, she agreed. I said, "Do you mind if I try something before I take this?" She goes, "Yes, but I need to see you back in 30 days. If you're in the same condition, I need us to try this medicine." I said, "Okay, I can do that." So I went home, and every day, I got in the mirror and I drilled "I am" every day, 'cause I realized I had forgotten who I was. [Speaker:AUDIENCE] Yes, yes. [Speaker:LYNETTE] I just forgot.

And it was okay to forget.

I just forgot. So, every day, every day for 25 minutes, I just went over the "I am"s. Every day, "I am, I am, I am." And then I paralleled that with "I forgive you for." Then I paralleled that with "I commit to you, Lisa." Every single day. I went back in 30 days and I'm talking to her. And I'm on fire, she's just looking at me. And I'm just talking, talking, she twisted her head again. And I'm just talking, talking, she says, "Wait, I gotta stop you." I said, "What?" She goes, "What are you taking? And can I have some?" I was like, "I'm taking some of me." And so the power of I am, the power of I am can pull you through the darkest moment, the power of I am.

Success is personally defined by everyone. And as you're creating success, create holistic success. My biggest successes are the things that people don't even see. It's the fact that my 14-year-old son calls me his best friend to his friends. That's bigger than any book deal that you can give me. That's bigger than sitting across from Larry King or beside Oprah, that my 14-year-old son calls me his best friend. Creating holistic success is really important.

Let me tell you, in order to have something different, you are going to have to do something different. In order to have something more, you have to do something you haven't done yet. I had to say the things I didn't wanna say, do the things I didn't feel like doing to have the life I know I wanted. Period. Period. And all I did was give instructions for here, do this bite-size, do this bite-size, do this bite-size. Bite-size, digestible, palatable pieces of what you can do. Does that sound good, you guys? And when you look up, and you don't have to have a magnificent change over 12 months, have a small change over 30 days. Small change over 30 days. Your breakthrough will come in needlepoint moves. And you'll look up in 5 years and not recognize your life. What's been your biggest accomplishment, you think?

Bouncing back, number one, is refusing to listen to the negative chatter in my own head, refusing to listen to other people's perception of me, creating something from absolutely nothing. So I got a, you know, there's the books, there's the TV, there's the, all that stuff. But my biggest accomplishment is being willing to give myself 1,000 second chances. And every time I got to 999, I press reset. Yeah. I didn't ask permission. I gave notice. At some point, I have to stop asking, can I be great? Can I be brilliant? Can I be okay and still be accepted? I just stopped asking permission and just gave notice unapologetically. Not in a braggadocious way. Not in a way that shrunk anyone else. In a way that said, I only got one life. And I'm gonna ride this one till the wheels fall off. And then all the other stuff came. Wow. As a result of a decision I made. Right. But it was a decision you— It was a decision. But it was— and it didn't come from, you know, a motivational experience. It didn't come from an inspiring teacher. It came from hitting rock bottom.

There's so much value in what you unlearn. Sometimes the best thing you can do is unlearn some things. We're all always going after learning something new. Because we're information junkies, 'cause we have all these forms of information coming at us on the internet, coming at us in books, coming at us on the radio, coming at us in television, that we wanna learn, learn, learn. But sometimes your biggest breakthrough is in what you unlearn and then you relearn. Sometimes you have to disrupt your soil, pull your soil up, take that dry dirt that's been planted for years. I know, I just been knowing this for years. This is what my mother taught me. This is what we've always known. You have to disrupt that. Soil in order to plant a new seed to grow a new fruit. Yeah, yeah. You guys got that? And so I came very comfortably to disrupt your soil. Like, that's what I came for, to disrupt your soil. Not to necessarily keep you comfortable in what you know. Stay comfortable in that. I want to disrupt you in some things that are new awareness to go, oh, wait, hold on. Or new awareness about what you've been doing based on what you've known forever that doesn't fit your future anymore. 'Cause I can guarantee you every single one of us who wants something different than what we're getting, we're doing something unconsciously from old patterns that doesn't even serve our future. That's when the tongue in your mouth and the tongue in your shoe are going in two totally different directions. And your job is to align them up so that you can move forward in a powerful way.

Every single thing you touch is impacted by your story. As an attorney, as a teacher, as an architect, there is not one line of business that you can be in that a story and a great story won't elevate your outcome. Every single line of business, every single line of service that you're connected to will be impacted and ideally elevated by the level in which you're willing to tell and share your story. So let me give you some guidelines, some parameters, what I like to call the bumper rails, as if you're going bowling. You know, when I go bowling, I ask them to put the little bumper rails down so I can stay— my ball can get down the lane. So let me set up some bumper rails for for you so that you understand what makes a great story. So one is the willingness to take risk. Most people, Vishen, when they're telling a story, they don't want to take a risk, so the story has— it has its limits on how high it'll go or how deep it'll go. And when you have that, then you're really not at that part that's going to touch my soul. So being willing to take a risk, being clear and concise with your stories. A great story is a show-me story not a tell me story. Now, this is the distinction that's the game changer for most. Most people are telling a story. They say, um, so let me just share with you a little bit of my story, and I'll tell you and then I'll show you. So as I was building my life, there was a time in my life that was very difficult. It was very challenging. True story. Very difficult, very challenging, very uncomfortable. I didn't have a lot of money, I didn't have a lot of hope, and things just looked dismal. At some point, I had to turn my life around. At some point, I made the decision that life had to get better. I'm telling you that. It's decent.

You learn about me.

Then if I were to show you that story, I would say 6 days a week I had to eat beanies and weenies. I had to find money in the crevices and the corners of my couch so that I can get my son milk. There were times when my heart would beat fast just at what am I going to have tomorrow? At some point, I got sick and tired of my own story. Is this going to be my future? No, I can't handle it. Notice the difference in that second story. Wow, I completely see that. I just painted a picture, same story. Now the second one, when you show a story, it's going to require more of you. It's going to require you to find the colors. What were you thinking? What were you experiencing? What was going on in your head? Instead of telling me you look for money, turn and point. Now this is anywhere, this is anywhere you are doing anything. I promise you, you become a great storyteller and you will captivate your audience no matter what you're doing. I've captivated investors, I've captivated students, I've captivated educators because I was willing to show the story. I call it unpacking the story vision, being willing to tell me, what were you thinking? What were you feeling? What were you seeing? Think about a story as an an oral movie.

And so in an oral movie, think when you're looking at a movie, the first thing they do is they identify what state of time it is. Is it futuristic?

Is it in the now? Was it back in the day? You notice that based on what people are wearing, how they're talking. So paint that picture for me. Take me to that environment. Set the backdrop up for me. Show me what you're going through. Instead of saying, I was angry, you can tell me you were angry. But when you say the hair on the back of my neck I was standing up. I felt the fumes exiting my nose. I thought that my chest was going to pop and I was going to say something that I'd regret forever. Ooh, you just showed me you were angry. Take that extra time to unpack it. Why will most people not do that? Because it requires a level of vulnerability that we're not willing to share.

Myth number 2 is that abundance is singularly focused on possessions and money. Right? That's what it's all about. What you drive, what you live in, how much money you make. When in fact, it couldn't be further from the truth. Wealth is possessions and money. Abundance is a 360 experience. Abundance is a 360 experience. True abundance. True abundance is your health, 'Cause if you don't have great health, life does not feel good. Abundance is relationship. And at the end of your life, literally you will measure the quality of your life by the quality of the relationships you had. All the other stuff will fall away. That promotion you're thinking about, you're wondering about that raise, it will fall away in the area of importance when you get to the end of your life. You will begin to look at the quality of your relationships. How are your children relating to you? How are your siblings relating to you? Do you have love in your life? You literally will start looking at relationships at a higher level as you get older. So when you mind them now, you take care of them. And I know that for a fact. I have a friend who's worth $14 billion, billion with a B. He was just partying at my house all night long, wouldn't leave, 4 in the morning, go home. And he flew in from Canada to go to my New Year's party because he loves my family connection and he doesn't have one. He is financially wealthy. He's relationship broke. Does that make sense? Abundance is a 360 experience. It's about relationships. It's about health. It's about your spiritual groundedness. That doesn't mean you have a religious origin. It's about can you release? Can you forgive? Can you let go? Can you be still? Do you meditate? Do you have time with yourself? That has a lot to do with the quality of your life, that ability.

[FOREIGN LANGUAGE] You know, I have a message for you. A very important message. We live in a world where, you know, limiting beliefs and limited thinking is accepted. And in some environments, it's actually encouraged. Not to put anyone down or any institution down, but look at our educational system. It's bound by who you can be, who you can't be. We're taught that, you know, as an academic excellence student, you are expected to achieve more. Pressures. But yet even inside that more, that higher achievement, there's still a limiting belief there. You know, I look at my life today and it's barely recognizable. I'm grateful to say I have 6 bestsellers. I've sat with Oprah, with Larry King on CNN, Good Day LA. I've traveled all over the world, did work in Taipei and Africa and Kazakhstan. But that wasn't where I started. I started struggling for 12 years in the educational system, not thinking I was good enough. The word fail or not pass was threaded through every year in school in some area or another. And so I graduated or got out. I mean, I graduated, but what did I graduate to? I graduated more of who— to more of who I think I might be able to be or who I couldn't be, but not my possibilities. I look up and for the first 10, 15 years of my adulthood, I struggled. I struggled because I didn't dream big enough at that time. I didn't know. I felt like my dreams were covered and smothered with the cultural limitations. We're defined by who our parents were, what our culture can do, what our community can do. So you look at all the areas of our lives, financially, mentally, physically, emotionally, family, geographically, and all of those things kind of put us in a box. And some of our boxes are this big, so we think they're amazing. Some of them are this big, and we know they're choking the life out of us. The reality is we're trained to be realistic, to be logical, to stay practical, and there's nothing realistic and logical about Steve Jobs and his journey. There's nothing realistic nothing realistic and logical about Dr. Martin Luther King and his willingness to be radical for a change that none of us saw coming. There's nothing realistic about Nelson Mandela leaving prison after 27 years and leading the largest forgiveness movement ever. There's nothing realistic and logical about even my journey. Born and raised in South Central Los Angeles, having 3 fights a week just to get home from school. You know, being told that I was the weakest writer my teacher had ever met and that I should never speak in public by my speech teacher, to looking at my life today and going on and having a child before I got married and getting on government assistance just to feed my baby, not having money to buy him Pampers and wrapping my son in a towel for 3 days until I can afford to get money money to buying Pampers. I look at my life and I wasn't supposed to be who I am today. Something turned, but it didn't come from outside. It didn't come from my culture or my, my community. It came from within. Who I was committed to transforming my life into just didn't fit. It didn't fit realistic. It didn't fit practical, and it didn't fit logical. I didn't know how I was I was going to get there. There were no examples of how I would get there. There was no instructions, there was no GPS, and there wasn't even anyone around me that had an idea of how to help me. All there was was my intuition, my internal GPS, my internal God Placement System, and the will and the desire and the big dream inside my belly. And I was willing to keep at it until I burst something greater than myself. In order to live the life you love and love the life you live, you have to be willing to step on the other side of normal, on, on the other side of where people give you permission to step.

You have to be willing to step on the other side of realistic.

You have to be willing to dream big and give yourself a radical chance for a radical future and a breathtaking possibility. It starts with you, I promise.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Charmaine Robinson asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, leave in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know which of Lisa's top 10 rules hit you the hardest, had the biggest impact on you. Leave it in the comments and I'll join the discussion. Thank you so much for watching. Continue to believe. And I'll see you soon.

You won't ever attract more money to you until you become an even greater steward of the money that you have. That when you mind your pennies, dollars will flow. But if you are currently not the best steward of the money that you have, meaning you spend it fast, you give it away, you don't know how much you have, then it's difficult for the universe to to give you more of what you're not taking total and the highest level of responsibility around. That's an ouch, but it's the truth. Like I kept wanting to make more money, but I wasn't minding the money I was making right. And when I began to mind, 'cause my money, my mother used to say money burns her pockets. So I thought money was hot and I had to spend it fast. And once I learned how to mind my existing money, all of a sudden I began to have space to attract more money in my space. So being a good steward of your existing dollars are very, very important. Important because that will bring about more, more, more prosperity.

You have to recognize, and this is the part where people resist. They come to me for help all the time. Okay, great. Let's find out what's in breakdown. I'm cool. I just need to get back. No, something's in breakdown. A breakdown doesn't mean you need a white jacket and you on the floor. It means something in my life isn't the exact way I want it. We always have breakdown. It's just how we manage our breakdown. Right. So the number one thing is to be authentic and transparent about what's not working. Even in your grandeur, something ain't working. Right. You know, I mean, the reality is somebody lost 40 pounds and I found it. And I'm trying to return it to its rightful owner. I'm just saying. So that's what I'm working on right now. The best thing I can do is be honest out loud about it. Right. We try to protect and hide too much. We try to defend and protect too much. We live in proving. So first thing I get them to do is, what are you hiding, protecting, proving, or defending? Let's identify that. Now, what's the distance between that and where you wanna be? And then the rest is, are you willing to do something you've never done before? Most people don't. They wanna have a grander life, a more exciting life, doing exactly what they were doing. See, my grandmother said that conviction and comfort don't live in the same block. Mm. If you gonna be convicted about something, you might have to go through some discomfort. But if you wanna stay comfortable, why don't you just relax where you are? 'Cause that's where you gonna stay. And so are you willing to reinvent who you are? Are you willing to kill away the procrastination? Are you willing to kill away the excuses, the blame game? I never let people call me a single mom by my title. I'm Lisa Nichols, who happens to be a single mother. Don't define me by my circumstances. Define me by my intention. So it's just really being willing. Most change will happen here first. And if you don't change there, you can win the lotto and still end up broke because I'm gonna slingshot— you gonna slingshot back to your mental comfort zone. Most people do.