Mindset Matters | How to Take Action and Achieve Your Goals FAST

What do you need to do on this day to achieve your goal? Do you do it or not? It really is that cut and dry. And if you're looking over your shoulder for somebody to save you, I can tell you right now, they are not coming. No one is coming to help you. People that don't give a shit about what they're doing with their life is terrifying. And when you don't care about what you're working on, there's no meaning or purpose behind the thing that you're trying to do, then of course it's gonna be harder to stay on track. Of course you're gonna be looking for that dopamine hit from your phone, from that email, because working on the thing that you're working on working on doesn't give you the dopamine hit. If you want to be successful, mindset is everything. The reason that mindset is so important is at the end of the day, only execution matters. So if you have big dreams, if you have goals, something that you're trying to accomplish in your life, you're going to have to execute against that.

The struggle is guaranteed, the success is not. And like, the thing that I beg you guys is to have the guts to fail at something that you love. And when you are in the mud, on your face, and people are laughing, the I told you so's are coming out, that You remember one simple fact. You loved what you were doing and you left it out on the field. What the fuck else is there?

Need motivation?

Watch a top 10 with Believe Nation.

Hey, it's Evan Carmichael and I make these videos because when I started my first business, I really struggled to believe in myself. I was making $300 a month and quit on my business partner. And the thing that saved me was watching the stories of successful entrepreneurs. They gave me strategies as well as hope and belief that just maybe I could do it myself as well. And I hope that this video here today helps you get a little bit more belief in yourself, because I still need the videos for myself today too. So today, let's learn from one of the best, Tom Bilyeu, and my take on his top 10 rules of success. Enjoy. Okay, let's kick it off with rule number 1: establish a routine.

Morning routines are one of the most important things that you can create in your life, and the reason is when you start the day, if you get early momentum going, the rest of the day is often going to follow in that. It's an idea called entropy. Everything moves towards chaos. And the only way to combat that is to put energy into the system. You are not going to wake up and randomly have a good day. You're going to have to structure your day in a way that sets you up to overcome all of the entropy, all of that chaos, all of the thousand things going to come at you in, uh, on a daily basis that are going to knock you off course. And the easiest way to do that is to have a routine that you follow every morning so you don't have to think about it. You don't have to reinvent the wheel. You don't have to wonder or think about what you should be doing. It's just right there. It is baked into the routine. So by doing that, now you can actually accomplish the most important things first. So the thing to do in your morning routine well is to optimize for what Tim Ferriss refers to as the lead domino. What's the thing that if I did this, it's going to make everything else easier down the road? So number 1, a morning routine actually starts the night before. You want to get plenty of sleep. Why? Because that's going to optimize your, your cognition. The next thing you want to do is either meditate or work out. Typically, I will work out first. The reason that I work out is because it optimizes your cognition so that everything else is going to get easier. It also dramatically impacts your energy levels. Talk about two things that are incredible lead dominoes. If I'm getting sleep and optimizing my cognition, if I'm working out and optimizing my cognition, and I'm making sure that I have the energy levels that I need to get things done, now I'm really making sure that Everything that I do after that is easier. The next thing that I do is meditate. Why? Because it optimizes your cognition. You want to make sure that you're getting all of your background radiation, the stress, the anxiety, you want to get that as close to zero as you can. That way you can think clearly. You get into what I call a calm and creative state so that areas of your brain that don't often communicate are able to communicate, get better ideas that way. Again, lead domino, improving your cognition, lowering your stress levels, making sure that you're centered and that you've got that energy to move forward. Then I'm going to go down my list of important things. I make that list the day before so I know exactly what I should be doing at any one time. And again, it's a lead domino strategy. What the first thing that I'm going to do is going to be the thing that makes everything else on my list easier. I'm going to do everything that I can do on the most important thing. And by the way, they should always be rank ordered. There is no such thing as a tie. There is a number 1, a number 2, a number 3, a number 4, so on and so forth. There is not two number 1s, there's not two number 2s. There is a 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, so on and so forth. I do everything that I can do on number 1. Once that's now where I'm waiting for something else, or, you know, I just have to let it bake, whatever, then I'm going to move on to number 2. I'm going to do everything I can on number 2, then I'm going to move on to number 3. You set your day up like that, and you're not checking your phone, and you're not responding to other people, because that's letting them control your schedule. And what are the odds that somebody other than you knows better what you should be doing to make your goals come true than you? The answer should be zero, because if somebody else knows better than you, we already have a problem. It means that somebody else is paying more attention to your own life than you are. That would be problematic. Get that morning routine down, get that momentum going, do the Lee Domino strategy, make sure you're optimizing for energy and cognition. Absolutely critical.

Rule number 2 is push yourself.

Once you know what your goal is, that goal then makes demands, and you either live up to those demands or you don't. And the reality is that most people don't. So even when they have the clarity and they get into it and their kids wake them up in the middle of the night, and then they're really tired the next day, they wake up late, they're rushing out of the door to get to work, they go, their boss is a dick to them, they come home, they're super stressed out. Through all of that, their goal suddenly becomes unimportant. And unfortunately, because life is hard and life is going to punch us in the face, constantly over and over, the only way that you're going to achieve your goals is if in that moment you get more aggressive, that you have those rules in your life that are like, I am doing this every day. I know that I'm trying to read X number of books, lose X number of pounds by this date, and that means by the end of this week I need to have lost a pound or 2 pounds. By the end of the month, I need to have lost 5 pounds. Whatever your goal demands, your goal ultimately will be translated into math. So it is very simple. What do you need to do on this day to achieve your goal? Do you do it or not? It really is that cut and dry. And if you're looking over your shoulder for somebody to save you, I can tell you right now they are not coming. No one is coming to help you. This is something that you have to do for yourself. And I hope in hearing all of this, you realize why 92% of people fall into the category of I gave up, I quit. I knew what my goal was, or I didn't have enough clarity, but I didn't do the things that I needed to do in order to cross the finish line. It really is that simple. Now, the great news is it really is that simple. If you just draw those bright lines in your life, if you make those demands of yourself, if you say, I simply must do this to be the person that I want to be, and therefore I am going to do it even when it's hard, even when it sucks, even when it's boring, I'm going to keep doing this. And let me tell you right now, even though what I'm talking about is achieving goals, I promise you one thing: if you set a goal and you achieve it, you will gain respect for yourself. And there is nothing that matters more— and I mean nothing— there is nothing that matters more than how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. So if you structure your life in a way where you set a goal that is two things: exciting and honorable. Exciting to you, you just want to do it. Other people don't have to tell you to do it, you just want to do it, right? Goes back to the whole thing. You've got to want it badly enough. And if you want it badly enough, then you're going to stick with it. And if you don't, then you won't.

Rule number 3 is eliminate distractions.

The way that I found to stay focused, be productive, and not get distracted is one, by auditing my time so that I know one, what I'm supposed to be working on, and then two, that at the end of any task I'm going to reflect back on how long it took me, how much time did I spend on task. And also I have rules, like if I'm working on something, I don't take out my phone, I don't look at it no matter what. I have no alerts on my computer, no alerts on my phone. If somebody's calling, I would never know. If somebody's texting me, I would never know. I don't have anything that pops up on my computer. You want to eliminate distractions. I don't even work facing a window. I will go into a room and I will intentionally face myself away from a window. There was one period of my life, and the only reason I stopped doing this is because I think it's really important to get daylight in your eyes, but I was putting myself in a dark room and literally with a stand-up desk was the only thing between me and a wall. So even though I was in a nice expansive beautiful room, I was putting myself facing the wall so that there was nothing for me to even look at, that I want to be working on the thing that I'm trying to accomplish. And the other thing is that's hugely important is to make sure that you care about what you're working on. The number of people that don't give a shit about what they're doing with their life is terrifying, and when you don't care about what you're working on, there's no meaning or purpose behind the thing that you're trying to do, then of course it's going to be harder to stay on track. Of course you're going to be looking for that dopamine hit from your phone, from that email, because working on the thing that you're working on doesn't give you the dopamine hit. Making sure that you're pursuing things that you care about, that's a huge part of it.

Rule number 4 is have a growth mindset.

If you want to be successful, mindset is Everything. The reason that mindset is so important is at the end of the day, only execution matters. So if you have big dreams, if you have goals, something that you're trying to accomplish in your life, you're going to have to execute against that. So why do I say that mindset is so important in that scenario? The reason is that ultimately to achieve the things you want to achieve, I can promise you when you start out, you're not good enough yet to achieve that and or you don't have the right plan. And so the way to refine the plan to actually do the thing that you want to accomplish, you're gonna have to run through what I call the physics of progress. The physics of progress are very simple. They require you to have a hypothesis, which is simply your best guess. This is what I think I have to do to achieve my goals. Then you're going to turn that into something you can do. You're going to do that thing. It's going to fail to some degree. That's just the way it works. But failure is the most information-rich data stream on planet Earth. But to accurately assess the data and figure out what it's telling you about why you failed to some extent, or why it was more inefficient than it needs to be, you have to be willing to stare nakedly at your own inadequacies. Take responsibility for the outcome, not make it somebody else's fault or the economy's fault or whatever, any external force. If you're making it an external problem, you're never going to be able to learn the lesson you need to learn in order to improve your behavior so that you can then execute better and make more progress. That really is it. That's the physics of progress. Hypothesis. Turn it into something actionable. Run that action. Learn from the partial failure. Get a little bit smarter. Come up with a new hypothesis that is more informed. Turn it into something actionable. Run that. It will fail again to some degree. Figure out why by lowering your defenses, having a growth mindset, making sure that you are able to take on the responsibility. Now, why is that a mindset question? Why can't you just run that equation if it really is that simple? The answer is you have in your brain something called the psychological immune system. This is something given to you by millions of years of evolution. We should all be extremely grateful for it. And the psychological immune system's job is to make sure that you don't commit suicide. It is designed to make you feel better about things. It's the reason why you can mess up, make a mistake, and you can soothe yourself. Now, the problem is that the goal of the psychological immune system is not for you to achieve your goals. It's simply to make sure that you feel good enough about yourself that you can keep moving through life. Now, the reason that that becomes wildly problematic and is one of the most important things that you have to address in your mindset if you're going to be successful is because the number one tool that your psychological immune system works to soothe your ego is to make everything somebody else's fault. It is the fault of the government. It is the fault of rich people. It is the fault of not being born the right color, not being born the right sex, so on and so forth. It is making something the external problem. Now, here's the really bad news. Your psychological immune system is going to grab for a very valid excuse. Those things that I listed may all be true. They may really all be holding you back. The problem is you want to know what the right mindset for success is. And if you want to be successful, you are going to have to overcome an endless parade of problems. And to overcome the endless parade of problems, you have to have a way to take responsibility for what you can do differently to overcome those problems. Instead of being annoyed, instead of shutting down, instead of just pointing the finger, you want to adapt your behavior.

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 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 5 is set specific goals.

The reason most people fail to achieve their goals is twofold. Number 1, they don't have a sufficient level of clarity. And number 2, they don't want it badly enough. The statistic is that 92% of all people that set a New Year's resolution fail to stick with it. The way that you go from being in the 92% to being in the 8% is by having a freakish level of clarity and building so much desire in your life that nothing could stop you even if it tried. This is what you need to do. The clarity piece is really the most important thing that you can have in your life, and most people have a really vague sense of clarity. But because they can say in a sentence something like, I'm gonna win a gold medal, they think they have the clarity that they need. But the question I would ask somebody that told me that they wanted to win a I want to win a gold medal. Is a gold medal in what? The Olympics? Yes, Tom, I want to win a gold medal in the Olympics. Amazing. Which event? Swimming or tennis? Swimming. Fantastic. The breaststroke? The freestyle medley? What's it going to be? You have to get so specific with your goal that you know what to do with the next 15 minutes of your life. Ultimately, success, accomplishing a goal, seeing things through all come down to what you're doing with your time and what part of your potential you're turning into actual usable skill set. The only way to know how to spend your time transferring your potential into skill set is to have a truly granular level of clarity. You cannot stop at the high level and you can't do what a lot of people do, which is they, as the Brits say, they waffle. So when they're describing their goal, they either say something like, I want to win a gold medal, which we just covered is hopelessly vague. Or they say something that's even worse, which is, you know, I really want to do something great with my life. I know that I'm capable. You know, I was really athletic when I was a kid, and I know that if I applied myself, I could probably really, you know, recapture what I was doing. That's how most people describe what they want to do in life. It is terrifying. You need to be able to state what your goal is in a single sentence with no commas, parentheticals, run-ons. It needs to be a very simple and direct goal, something like, I'm going to win a gold medal in the Summer Olympics freestyle medley swimming event by 2028, whatever. Once you have a goal that is that specific, that contains the what you're going to do, the by when, and the how much, then you know that you actually have a real goal and not a hope, not a vague idea, but you have something very concrete and specific that you can execute against. Now remember, the goal is to translate that into what you're going to do with the next 15 minutes of your life, always and forever, on and on and on. When you have something so specific that you know how to break it down into those incremental steps, you can really begin to make progress. If you've ever heard the idea of the 10,000-hour principle, it's talking about how we go about actually achieving mastery in something. And the punchline is that you spend 10,000 hours applying yourself in a disciplined fashion towards your goal. The disciplined fashion is born out of the clarity. It's born out of the clarity of knowing precisely what you're trying to achieve and by when, and knowing how to take advantage of— I've tried something, it didn't quite work, I need to get a little bit better, or this part of my game is weak, I need to focus on getting better at that thing. But again, all of that is born from clarity and being able to break down that clarity into action items, which is absolutely critical because action items are how we're going to turn our potential into skill set. And that is the critical chain that you have to walk.

Rule number 6 is have the guts to fail.

I'm afraid of getting to the end of my life and realizing that I did not become the best version of myself, knowing that I got to the very end of my life and I did not accomplish every single thing I know I believe in my heart that I deserve to have. And I know the only thing that's stopping me is myself.

I love that. I think that's the right fear, and I think all of us should have some form of that fear. Which if you didn't hear is to have a vision of the person you could become and to reach the pearly gates as it were, see who you could have been, contrast it with who you actually are, and be disappointed by the gap between them. And I love chasing that. I think it's a beautiful chase. But what I hope you guys will do if you ever find yourself at the pearly gates disappointed disappointed in how much farther you could have gone, to simply ask one question of yourself every day: Did I give it my all today? Doesn't mean you're always gonna win. Yeah.

If your life is a series of fuck yes I did, you've won.

You've won. Guys, the struggle is guaranteed. The struggle is guaranteed. The struggle is guaranteed, the success is not. And like, the thing that I beg you guys is to have the guts to fail at something that you love. And when you are on the mud, on your face, and people are laughing, the "I told you so"s are coming out, that you remember one simple fact: you loved what you were doing and you left it out on the field. What the fuck else is there? Legitimately, like, I'm getting emotional. What the fuck else is there? What more can you ask of yourself than to really try, to really say, I give a shit about this? That's the life to live. That's the life. Like, to say, I care about this, it matters, it gives me purpose, I'm gonna fight for this, this This is a group of people I want to serve, and I'm gonna go all the way out every day. And look, you're not gonna hit it every day. There's gonna be days where you're off. There's gonna be days where you're weak.

Weak.

But if that day, instead of bullshitting yourself, instead of saying, I wasn't weak today, what are you talking about? If that day you fucking own it, and you say, yeah, I was weak today, and I'm not gonna be weak tomorrow, but I'm not afraid to face that. I'm not afraid to accept that I'm not perfect. I'm not afraid to look in the mirror and say, maybe today was a bad day, that I didn't make myself proud today, but that shouldn't diminish who you are. It shouldn't diminish your view of yourself. Why? Because it wouldn't serve you. Because if you beat yourself up today, you make it harder for you to be rad tomorrow. It's a game that has to be seen in total. It's not a game where you can take a fucking snapshot. And this is like what I want you guys to understand. In any one moment, I've looked like a fool so many fucking times I can't count. But when I look at my life in 10-year chunks, I'm freaked out by what I've accomplished.

Rule number 7 is build desire.

I was diagnosed with ADHD— sorry, I was diagnosed with hyperactivity disorder when I was a kid. That would almost certainly translate today into a diagnosis of ADHD. So So I really struggle to stay on task. So this is something I've had to put a lot of rules around in my life. So because I distrust myself, when I have the impulse to do something, I ask myself, is this actually gonna move me towards my goal, yes or no? If it moves me towards my goal, then I'm gonna do it. But I also know that I'm prone to lie to myself. So, oh, would looking at TikTok right now move me towards my goal? Of course it would, I need to master the algorithm. 100%, I should look. Okay, wait, you're prone to lie to yourself. So did you make a list of the important things that you should be doing? Yes. Do you have a calendar that tells you what you should be doing right now? Yes. So like in my calendar, I have a time that says important things. It's a freeform thing. So it's the moment where I'm most likely to get myself in trouble because I'm not doing the things that I should be. So I keep a list of important things that are listed in order of what I need to execute against. So I'm goal obsessed. And to get goal obsessed, I built desire. To build desire, you do the following. You need to say internally, this is my goal and I'm obsessed. Now hopefully that hits everyone listening to this as stupid. So basic bitch that it cannot be true.

But it really is true.

You become what you repeat. So I tell myself, this is my goal and I'm obsessed. Then I tell other people, this is my goal, I'm obsessed. I'm building the next Disney. You've heard me say that a couple times. So, and I'm obsessed with Disney. Okay, that's the first part. But that's not gonna get you very far. But if I do this, yo, I'm gonna build the next Disney. And let me tell you why. I'm gonna build the next Disney because I used to Big Brother for this little kid and I watched his zip code eat him. Did you guys know, for real, this is actually true. Right now, in the entire Western world, your zip code is the number one predictor of your future success. Now, what I'm doing is embodying the way that I want to feel. At the beginning, people need to understand, in the beginning it felt fake to me, because I was walking myself through the process of building desire. I was saying it internally, I was saying it externally, and I was embodying the thing I wanted to feel when I said it. The way that the brain works, it will justify whatever you do. It's one of the worst things about the brain. It's amazing, because of the psychological immune system, but the psychological immune system's job is to keep you from committing suicide. It is not to help you get ahead in life, unfortunately. So your psychological immune system is gonna come up with a justification for why you do whatever you do. You can actually, there's a study done on this with patients that have an inability to turn short-term memory into long-term memory. So you can re-meet them every 3 minutes and they will not remember meeting you. So a doctor will walk in, they will put a pen in his hand, he shakes your hand, It pokes you, it hurts, you come back 3 minutes later, you don't remember meeting the doctor. He extends his hand to shake your hand, and the person with the selective or the memory damage won't shake his hand. So you ask, "Why won't you shake my hand?" "Oh, I don't like to shake the hand of people in white lab coats." "Oh, I don't shake the hands of doctors." "Oh, my shoulder's hurting today, I just don't feel like shaking hands." They're all lies, but the person doesn't realize that they're lying. Now once you understand, it's easy, you wanna be with that person and just be like, oh well they have brain damage, of course they do that. No, no, no, we all do that. So once you understand that you have all these weird things happening in your brain, and one of them is that it's going to make up an excuse, a justification for whatever you do, you can now leverage that. So as I tell people, yo, I'm really hyped about this thing and it's because of your zip code, and like I really think that I can help people get an empowering mindset through story at scale, they're gonna escape their zip code, it's gonna be amazing, it makes me feel the way that I wanna feel, I'm gonna be able to contribute This is amazing. Now all of a sudden, 6 months into that repetition cycle, I actually started feeling it and it wasn't fake anymore. And I actually felt that like high level of energy every time I would go to explain it to people.

Rule number 8 is control your emotions.

Change the dynamic of the way that you're thinking so that you don't get trapped in your own neurochemistry. Because when you have an emotion, the chances are you believe that emotion, but the brain has this crazy, fucking weird mechanism where however big you react, it goes, oh, it was that big of a deal.

So if you freak the fuck out and you're yelling and screaming, then your brain's like, yeah, man, it really—

it matters that fucking much.

Like I said, no cheese on this fucking hamburger. There's fucking cheese on this burger.

That shit is crazy.

You can't You can't put— get the fuck over it, it says no cheese. And when you wind yourself up like that, then literally it just gets hardwired that, yeah, this really is that catastrophic.

But the reverse is true.

Something horrifying happens, something terrible goes wrong.

And if you can in your mind just flip it and be like, yeah, we're going to figure this out.

Rule number 9 is build good habits.

How do you stay focused in this world full of distractions? I often find myself procrastinating and watching YouTube videos forever. All right, so this really does come down to habits and routines. This is one of those things I cannot stress enough. If you haven't built in mechanisms to deal with your lesser nature, you're forever going to fall prey to them. Some of it is identity. Some of it is, I'm the kind of person who makes use of my time. Some of it is, I'm the kind of person that has goals and I do that which moves me towards my goals. But then some of it is reinforcing that belief with very strict rules, what I'll call bright lines. So some of my bright lines are I go to bed at 9 PM, period. Second bright line, I only have 10 minutes to get out of bed. So I wake up when I wake up, I don't use an alarm, but once I realize I'm awake, then I only have 10 minutes to get out of bed as long as I've had at least 5 hours. So look at the clock, see what time it is, I have 10 minutes, boom, I'm up. And I emotionally reward myself when I meet the deadline, and I emotionally emotionally punish myself if I miss it, and when I miss it, by the way, it's usually by seconds. It's not like ever I'm just like, fuck it, and I stay in bed for 20 minutes. That would not be a Bright Line. But hard and fast, 10 minutes, emotionally reward yourself or emotionally punish yourself whether you do it or not. And then just having a compelling future. It is so critical that you have a compelling future, that there's actually something that you're excited about. And this makes me think of weekend warriors. For most people, no one has to tell you what to do on the weekend. You're very excited to do it. You get out of bed with some enthusiasm. There's something that you want to do that day, even if it's play video games, read, watch a movie, hang out with your significant other, whatever it is. There is something that you're excited about, and there is a way— and I won't answer it in this question— but there is a way to put at the center of your life and all the things you're doing to work and to build something, to put that thing that you enjoy at the center of that so that you're generating income off of something that you love doing.

That is very, very possible.

And number 10, the last one before some very special bonus clips, is chase fulfillment.

Here's the thing about happiness. Happiness is by nature transient. Happiness is also a neurochemical state. And for me to get out from under my brain, I finally had to understand that neurochemistry is fickle and it changes from one minute to the next. In fact, who's ever had a day, in the same day, where you thought, I'm so fucking amazing, like this shit is crazy, for real, are other people this good at anything? Like, I'm the shit. And then, I'm not joking, 40 minutes later you're like, oh fuck, man, I am spastic, I can't believe, I'm never gonna succeed, like this is a joke, I am a total piece of shit. Who's ever been there? All right, that's essentially universal hands in the air. So just know the next time that you have one of those down moments, remember everybody else is feeling that. The joke is on all of us. We're all feeling it, but we think we're the only ones, so we hide it. So we get in these loops about happiness. Look, happiness comes and goes. It's super transient. You're gonna feel it one minute, you're not gonna feel it the next. That is the nature of of things. Burn that notion into your head. That is the nature of things.

All right, well, if I know that it's there, if I know that it's predictable, then I'm not going to let it whip me into a frenzy.

I know that, as I'm sure Mr. Jay Shetty would say, this too shall pass. Learn that phrase and learn it well. This too shall pass. The highs will pass. The lows will pass. So don't focus on happiness. It's too transient. Focus on fulfillment. Fulfillment is defined very simply. You work very hard for a set of skills that have meaning to you. You care about them in and of themselves. And those skills that you have worked so hard to obtain, they allow you to serve not only yourself but others. That's the key to making this highly social animal fulfilled and to have something that sustains over time. Fulfillment is born of suffering. It's born of doing the hard things. So even in those dark moments, you can see beauty. You can experience the joy of being alive. You can experience the joy of having loved ones because it endures. Fulfillment endures.

There is a metric shit ton of uncertainty right now. There's no two ways about that. But you get to control how you spend your time. So when you think about making the most of this time, if you allow yourself to get overwhelmed by the uncertainty, then you're going to be paralyzed and you're not going to make good use of this time. Versus if you know what you want to be accomplishing. You know exactly what your goal is. You know, hey, 6 months from now I want to be doing this, a year from now I want to be doing this, whatever. You can't control what happens to the world, so literally shut that out of your mind. Build the skill set that you want to build that allows you to do the things you want to do at the end of 6 months, a year, 18 months, 2 years, whatever that is, however far out that you're looking. Skills have utility. Decide what that skill set is, and now we're going to spend the time building that, because that is something that we can control. We can go in and we can get good at that thing. Now, when you're on in the process of getting good, hitting plateaus is absolutely unavoidable. What you want to do is figure out what is it that's beginning to break down. So if you're a violinist, what is it? Do you have a hard time reading music, cold reading? Do you have a hard time with the finger positioning? Do you have a hard time with changing tempos? Like whatever is the weakness that makes you feel like you've plateaued, you have to identify what the difference is between where you are and where you want to be. Now oftentimes that's identifying somebody who's better than you and saying, why are they better than me? And not like in a judgment about their worth or anything like that, just what is it that they do better than me? And then begin to dissect it. Look, there is quite literally, much to my dismay, nothing that as of today I'm the best in the world world at. Now, uh, drives me crazy when people do this. Sure, I could sub-segment things far down enough to say that, you know, I'm the best person recording podcast answers from the hours of 4 PM to 4:07 PM in the zip code, you know, of whatever. Sure. But as of right now, at a macro level, there is nothing that I am trying to be the best at that I'm actually the best at. But I don't let it damage myself self-esteem to stare nakedly at my inadequacies. Because my self-esteem is built around entirely being the learner, acknowledging where I'm lacking, right? Lacking in the sense of there's a gap between where I am and where I want to be. That's the lack, self-defined. And I'm willing to stare nakedly at that and say, cool, this person up here is better than me. I want to beat them. I want to get better than them. But I also need to acknowledge what they're better than me at. Now, can I just get better than them at that thing? Do I need to find a separate thing for me to get good at, right? So if I were trying to play basketball, I'm not going to try to beat LeBron James in a one-on-one. He has physical attributes that I think it would be next to impossible for me to counter directly. But there are other things that I might be able to get good at. I might be able to read the court better. I might be better at passing. Who knows? But you go and identify, given the 50% of me that's hardwired that I can't change and the 50% of me that is malleable, How do I bring the reality of those two things together in a way that allows me to perform at the level that I want? So you've identified what it is you're underperforming at, and now you're going to go into deliberate practice. So there's a book by Anders Ericsson called Peak. In that book, he breaks down the process of deliberate practice, of how you take the things that you're not good at— not the things you already are good at, which is what most people will tell you, lean into your strengths— that's bullshit. You, yes, know what your strengths are. Yes, leverage them whenever you're in a performance situation and you have to outperform. But when we're talking about practice, we don't want to lean into the things that we already do well. We want to systematically break out the things that we're not good at and find a way to do a, um, a practice cycle, a repetition cycle that allows us to actually get better this is not blind repetition. This is strategic repetition designed to give a desired outcome, whether it's being able to read music faster. You're gonna have to be able to measure this stuff. So figuring out what it is, finding a way to measure it, finding a way to break down the practice elements into steps so that you get better at one small thing, which stacks on another small thing, which stacks on another small thing, until you're actually bringing all of these small things that you have practiced religiously diligently, deliberately to get better, and now when you go back to perform again, you're able to perform at a higher level. So not accepting a plateau is a big part of it. Not thinking, well, when I've hit this plateau, that just is what it is and I've reached the limits. I can pretty much assure you nobody is ever going to reach the limits of their capabilities before they die. There just isn't enough time. So breaking it down into those smaller pieces that stack, practicing the things you're bad at, grouping it back together, and then going out to perform and not letting yourself get overwhelmed by the uncertainty. That is the answer. Fulfillment is very simple for me. So, and it has to do with the directives that are embedded in your brain from an evolutionary standpoint. So you must work hard. It's embedded in your brain to acquire skills that matter to you, that allow you to elevate yourself yourself and others in service of a goal that's both exciting and honorable. So exciting and honorable means that you're just amped about it, you dig it. So I dig storytelling, just I do. And I want to help people through storytelling. I do, my life circumstances have led me to that, the way that I'm hardwired, I just have an over, an outsized response to stories. And so I'm drawn to that. And because of life experience, I want to use stories to help I can help people, so that's very exciting for me. Now, it's also honorable because I'm not just looking to make myself rich or be admired for telling a cool story. I actually wanna help people with that story, and I hold myself accountable to that. So when you have that cocktail, you're working hard to garner a set of skills that allow you to serve not only yourself, but other people, that's fulfillment. So people can say whatever they want, and I know, like, if I'm actually out there every day doing my best to help people, I'm gonna feel good about that. Now, I'm not gonna feel good about people misunderstanding that, that's still gonna suck, but I know what's in my heart. And so if I'm like, no, for real, I'm showing up no matter what people say, I really am showing up to help people, then that will give you the emotional resilience that you need to see yourself through. So fulfillment is, it's able to withstand even moments of unhappiness. And when you have fulfillment, the thing that you believe in that you're fighting for, then it gets easier to push through, you know, whatever frustrations, difficulties, the mob coming after you, whatever. If you don't have that and it was, you were just trying to be famous or get approval and it feels like the entire world is piling on you, you just are like, yeah, I'm done with this. So there really has to be something you're fighting for. I can't rule out that you may be in a toxic environment. So let's just say if you're in a toxic environment, that's a real thing. You wanna get out of that toxic environment, you wanna move on to something else. That just trying to change a whole organization if they are toxic is not interesting to me in the slightest. Now, toxicity comes from insecurity. So if that helps— it actually does help me to know that when people are mean-spirited, when they like to see other people fail, it's all coming from their own insecurities. I find tremendous emotional relief in that. Uh, now I want to talk about being low. In a non-toxic environment, while I don't think anybody races to have others witness them at their worst, we've all been there. We are all deeply flawed emotional creatures, and showing vulnerability should never be frowned on for you. Forget how people are reacting.

Right?

So there's wallowing, and that isn't interesting, shouldn't be interesting to you in yourself or in others. There is wanting sympathy instead of empathy. So sympathy is feel bad for me. You should never want that. Empathy is understand where I'm at. Being seen is rad. And my wife and I have an agreement. I don't want sympathy from her, no matter how hard my life gets. Empathy, desperately. And the way that we've always explained it to each other is, if I'm ever knocked to my knees, I don't want you to get on your knees with me and cry. I want you to extend a hand, tell me how much you love me, pick me back up, brush me off, and remind me of who I can become. That's rad. So I'm not worried if she sees me low. I'm not worried if my team sees me fail. I think all of us, if you're really going for something extraordinary, I think all of us are going to fail at least as much as we succeed, maybe more. And so fearing the low moments, is not the right way to think about it. Re-contextualize that failure as a learning opportunity. Earn people's respect, not command it. Earn people's respect by getting back up on your feet. Not asking people to feel bad for you. Focusing on the learning opportunity. Show that you have a growth mindset.

Get your ego out of the way.

Focus entirely on getting better. And if you rebound quickly with energy and enthusiasm, even if some people take the opportunity to kick you while you're down, in the long run, people will gravitate towards you because they see that you're real. You're not posing. They see that you bounce back, that you don't whine, wallow, complain. You get up. You're focused on improvement and moving forward. And look, the reality is getting great requires you to fail over and over and over. There's an amazing quote by Winston Churchill, and he says, "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm." And you just can't worry about what other people are thinking when you're down. You have to go, cool, this is a learning experience. I'm gonna get back up. And your response to that shouldn't be orchestrated to command respect, earn respect, to even think about people. It should be you have a goal, and you know, to build your skill set to the point where you're so good that you can't be denied, that all the boos in the world can't block your dunk, you have to fail. Because it really, it really is— it isn't a saying— failure is the most information-rich data stream you will ever encounter. In the failure, if you get your ego out of the way and you're not crying about it and you're not You know, worried about what other people are gonna think. You're just thinking, okay, cool, I failed, and if I can understand why, then I can get better. Now you do that day in and day out, all of a sudden you're gonna earn respect as a consequence of your just consistent improvement. And if I were gonna sum up everything that we've talked about today, it's that. It's not focusing on earning people's respect or worrying about what they think. It's about the physics of how the world works.

And the physics of how the world works is pretty straightforward.

You have a goal. You have an idea of how to reach that goal, right? There's an impediment between where you are and where you want to be. You've got a theory about how to overcome that impediment. You try it. Many of the things you try will fail, or they'll be insufficient. You'll assess. Why it was insufficient, and you'll begin again more intelligently. As Henry Ford said, failure is just the ability to begin again more intelligently. And you do that over and over and over and over and over, and it's what I call the physics of progress. It's just, you can't boil it down any more simple than that. All right, so don't be afraid of your low moments. If you're in a toxic environment, get out. Focus every day on getting better, and the respect will come as a result of that.

Have very clear goals. It always freaks me out. Most people stop at the first sort of vague notion.

Of what they want to do, I'm gonna punch myself in the mouth if somebody comes up to me again and says, "I want to help people." That's rad, that comes from a beautiful place, I could totally get it, but that's like coming to me and saying, "I want to win an Olympic gold medal." Awesome, winter or summer?

Summer. Fantastic, swimming or tennis? Swimming.

Excellent, backstroke?

Free like, at some point it's got to get so specific because you have to know what skills you need to acquire. You have to work backwards from the goal, and the goal has to be hyper-specific.

So if boredom is the number one killer of entrepreneurs, that they're not able to make it through, the next one is they don't have clear goals.

And the worst part is they think they do. That's the part that terrifies me. The worst part is they think they do. Until you know exactly what your mission is and exactly what your business model is and what problem you solve, what very concrete problem that people are freaking out to have solved, until you do that, you don't have the necessary ingredients to build your business.

All right, don't be romantic, be pragmatic. Look at the data. The data will tell you what to kill. The data will tell you what's working and what's not.

This was the single best piece of advice that was ever given to me, and I ignored it for 3 years.

I'm so embarrassed by that that I always make sure any talk I give, people hear this.

Know more about your product, service, industry, whatever, than anyone else. Than anyone else.

If you guys have ever seen my interview show, The reason that it's doing as well as it's doing is I know more about the guest. One guest actually said this, I know more about the guest than their mother.

I just put in more work than their mother.

That's the truth.

I go out and I research and I read everything and I watch every video that I can. And so I know so much about that person. I know I'm gonna give a different interview than anyone has ever given before because nobody's done that level of research. Not only does it blow the guests away and totally endear them to me, but it gets us to the point where we can give an interview that has unique value. So know more about what you're doing than anyone else in the world, and grind, baby, grind. For 2 years, for 2 years, that's what I look like every day. Hairnet, lab coat, gloves. Put in the fucking work.

Put in the work.

And this is where the rubber meets the road.

So this is where you're really gonna separate the people that are wantrepreneurs from the people that are real entrepreneurs. You've gotta wanna grind.

You've gotta learn to love that. You've gotta learn to love to put in the work, to be proud of yourself that you showed up and put in the work, to be proud of yourself that you taught yourself how to suffer, to be proud of yourself that you're developing a mindset where you believe I can do anything I set my mind to. And by the way, Once you believe that you can do anything you set your mind to without limitation, how you spend your time becomes a spiritual consideration. How you spend your time becomes a spiritual consideration because you could be doing something. If you want to end hunger, end hunger. What's stopping you? Bill Gates is actually going to end malaria. He's going to do it because he had the tenacity to generate the resources and because he has a mind that allows him to work on the infrastructure and figure out how to actually solve that problem. Do not under any circumstances make Bill Gates or anyone else extraordinary to let yourself off the hook.

Don't fucking do it.

Don't sell yourself short. And this is where I see people go wrong all the time.

They look at somebody who's amazing and they say, well, they're just naturally gifted.

I could never do that.

You couldn't do it because you believe you can't, and because you believe you can't, you don't start putting in the work.

Michael Jordan got cut from his high school basketball team.

He wasn't exactly showing all the promise in the world.

My own mother, when I left for college, quietly assumed I was gonna fail and didn't admit that for years.

I showed no early signs of promise.

I actually had I have a version of this talk where I show photos from my childhood, and people are like, "Yeah, motherfucker, you just look stupid." And it's true.

I used to dress like a clown, and I mean that almost literally. So my waist was size 36, and I wore size 54 pants.

I wore literal jester hats.

I had one of those big chains that connected to my belt. I had shoulder-length hair.

I did not exactly look the part, and I didn't take myself seriously.

It really is a game of transformation. It really is a game of understanding that you can become something.

So even though I didn't start with the requisite skills, even though I wasn't a born entrepreneur, which is why I start this tale with that, even though I wasn't a born entrepreneur, I could acquire and did acquire the skills that were needed to execute.

It is a very long road that leads you here. Right now, most entrepreneurs in the world are thinking about one thing: winning a championship ring. That's an incredible question. This is something that I have lived through. So When Quest was small, it was very easy for me to do what I was saying at the top— lead by example. I was there on the production line. I would take the hardest job, and we would literally agree what is the hardest job. This is the hardest job, cool. If this is the hardest job, I'm going to be the one that, that's going to do it. And I would get in there and I would do it with all my might. And not only would I do it, but I would uplift other people. I would bring energy and enthusiasm. And I'm an introvert by nature, let me tell you. Right now. Now, in fairness, I have a pretty easy time going to extroverted. So my default though is introverted. Now, by going on the line, by encouraging other people, by taking the hard job, all of a sudden it was very easy for me to get people to rally behind me. But as we scaled the company, now all of a sudden there were a ton of people that had never seen me working like that. So, to them, I was almost a mythological figure. By that point, I was creating YouTube content. So, you know, we had 3,000 employees. Many of them had never met me. And so, to them, you know, it was like, "Oh my God, that's the guy that runs a company or the guy that's on YouTube, whatever." And it had a really problematic effect on the way that they approached me. And so, what I began to realize is you have to have a culture. You have to show people up close what gets results, intoxicate them with certainty, okay, that's a huge part. If you really wanna take your leadership game to the next level, you wanna make sure you know exactly what needs to be done. So within the world of influence you're trying to have, you know where you're trying to go, so you have a goal, very clear goal. You can articulate that goal, this is where we're going, and then you never, And I mean never let somebody outwork you. And when you have certainty on where you're going, you tell other people what that is. We're going to go after this. Most people live their entire lives doubting themselves, doubting the path that they're going on. And even when you know some element of what I'm saying isn't going to work out, but you believe to the core of your being, I'll adjust, I'll figure it out. Now you can intoxicate people with certainty and just go like a bat out of hell towards that thing, working in a way that nobody else is going to match. And if when you do that, you elevate those around you— rather than say, hey, why are you losers not working as hard as me?— you say, hey, we're a team. I want to lift you up. I want to help you. I want to help you get there. Okay, so now you establish that with those around you. In that near group, you make that the culture. This is how we move here. This is what we're about. So you're as good as what you can write down. So you write down what that culture is. You let people know what it means to be a part of this team. Then when they get in, you're encouraging them, you're elevating them. You start with the people closest to you because you've been able to write the culture down. You know which way they have to act. You hold them accountable. You ask them to hold you accountable, right? You're not trying to be above this. You're trying to be in it, trying to show people what it means. So now you've got your core group, then they're going to have their core group, and then that core group is going to have their core group, and now that influence goes down. So you definitely have to set the example, but when you scale, you have got— you have got to get people to understand what the culture is get them to lead by example, get them to intoxicate people with certainty, get them to show people what it means to have a goal and to go after it and to live up to the standards of that culture. And now when you elevate people and you're lifting them up and you're not trying to beat them down, then you get something really, really incredible. Then people will follow because it's a game of elevation. It's a game of skill acquisition. It's a game of goal accomplishment. It's not bullshit. You're not wasting people's time. You're really making progress. And progress is one of the most foundational pillars of human happiness. The thing that I love is that you're using the word build because that's exactly what we're going to be doing here. You're going to construct what you want your life to be. You're going to break it up into different hours and segments so you know when it's go time. And then you're going to build rules into your life that mandate that you show up during those times. So I have a whole host of rules in my life. They can be small, simple rules, like I get out of bed in 10 minutes or less. They can be more profound and impactful goals— or excuse me, rules. And I have a rule in my life where Monday through Friday, if I'm awake, I'm either working or working out. So if I were doing something like you in this situation, I would say, okay, these two days, 2 hours or 5 hours, however much time it is that you want to allocate to the business. You're gonna say, I am working on the business during these times. I'm going to tell myself, I'm going to tell other people. That way there's accountability. Then I'm going to score myself at the end of that session. Did I show up? Did I start when I said I was going to start? Did I go hard the whole time? And I'm just going to give myself a rating every day depending on where I'm going, how I did that day. Was I Did I have flow? Was it a great day, a bad day? And by doing that, I'm going to hold myself accountable so I can see over time that I show up when I said I was going to show up. What was the score that I gave myself for staying focused, staying on task and getting things done? And then the third thing to really make this stick, you've got to find a way to be excited about what you're doing. And oftentimes, when people come and they say that they're having trouble making a new habit stick. The reality is they just don't want it badly enough. And when you realize that that's not an indictment on you as a person, that's a simple statement about the fact that desire is a process. So you don't— there's very few things in your life that you just sort of automatically are excited about. Most of the things, if you really want to kick ass at something, you've got to build a ton of energy into getting excited about that thing. Now that comes in a couple different different forms. Number 1 is your why. Why are you doing this? So it might be, hey, my husband and I were really excited about this. This is going to be our path to freedom and building something with him. Like, this means everything to me, and I couldn't be more excited, more honored to be working side by side with my husband to build something, to show each other what we're capable of, to take care of each other, to, you know, give ourselves what we need to build a family. Whatever you're gonna make that why, you're gonna say it, you're gonna say it with enthusiasm. Mechanism. It's what I call embodying what you want to feel. So if you want to be excited, when you're telling other people, when you're even talking to yourself, when you're talking to your husband, you're actually going to let yourself get hyped up. There's a mechanism in the brain that says, whoa, hey, we're all hyped up about this, it must actually be worth being hyped up about. And it becomes a self-reinforcing loop. So we've got our why. And then we want to make sure that we're putting the identity into it that we want to get out. So if we want to be the kind of person that shows up and works hard, then we say, I'm the type of person that shows up and works hard. And you're going to lean into that and the why that you have with your husband. You guys are building something, you're excited about it, you're telling other people, you're embodying it. And now you've got the identity statement of, I'm the type of person that does this, I see this through. And you repeat that cocktail over and over, over and over, and following it up with that score. And all of a sudden, over time— and it will take time because it is a process— but over time, you're gonna stick to it because it means something to you and your husband. You've got the rule about showing up. You're rating yourself on how you did that day. You're feeling good on the days that you killed it, and you're reminding yourself to dig a little deeper on the days where you don't. And I promise, if you just work that process over and over and over, 2 weeks, a month into this, this, it's just gonna be second nature. You're gonna be showing up, you're gonna be excited, you're gonna see it through.

Because most people hit a gazillion emotional snags as they go through this, they derail themselves. They don't listen to the truth of their failure. They don't wanna own it 'cause it sucks. Every time, Omar, that I realize that I have screwed up, that I am wrong, it sucks. I don't enjoy it. But the thing that keeps me going is recognizing that that is the nature of progress itself. And that if I fail to look at what I can control that I could do differently next time, I'm either gonna repeat the mistake or I'm gonna quit.

Now, the bad news about success is it's a game of attrition.

And the really bad news is that to move forward, you must be willing to fail a lot. Because failure is the most information-rich data stream that exists because it hurts and you actually tried something. So, you tried something, there's real-world results, those results hurt. That pain triggers the areas of the brain that have to do with memory and focus. So, you really look at that thing, right?

This is, again, this is nature saying, hey, because there's so much information in this failure, I want to make sure that we do the things that get you to learn from that so that the next time time, it isn't a close call with the tiger, right? That either you can really keep distance, you're not putting yourself in that kind of dangerous situation again. And then obviously the people that really got themselves in trouble just got eaten, and so they're all wiped out.

And so that becomes this loop. But every time you fail, you get this aversion response where you don't want to do this again, you don't want to look at it, you don't want to face your inadequacies, right? And it's really rough. And then it's magnified a thousandfold by social media because now 1,000 people are telling you that you're a fucking moron. So, it is this really—

And you have a team and money and time and energy and yeah.

You magnify that a millionfold because now there's a lot at stake for a lot of different people. And so, most people, they just can't keep iterating.

And so, it is the game.

And there's, as far as I can tell, and look, I'm constantly updating my mental models.

But as far as I can tell, that's the ground floor.

That really is the physics of progress. And if you can't figure out that when I just failed and I failed publicly and people are making fun of me, in that moment, can I just stay centered or get centered again?

Because of course you're going to get knocked off.

Can I recenter myself very quickly and focus on what I need to do? And once the do is back to Hypothesis, back to execution.

And if you can stay in that loop, what do I need to do?

What's the next thing to try? Then on a long enough timeline, you can win. But most people, they just stop, man.

It's just too much.

It's not fun. And by the way, there is a ready-made off-ramp because I don't know how many people should listen to me. I don't know how many people should live the kind of life that I'm trying to live where I'm trying to have outsized I'm trying to build something massive.

For the right person, I think that I actually have the right tools. Like, these have served me incredibly well in my life.

I have the receipts to show that it works, but I also have the receipts to show emotionally it's brutal. And if you don't know how to rebalance yourself, ooh, it's not a winning proposition. So focusing on that, the mental game, of like fulfillment matters, fulfillment's important, joy is a metric, optimize your life for joy, and then you've got to play the game on a really long timeline. So, you have to discount anybody that says, "You're a moron for this failure." It's like, "That doesn't ring true to me for the following reason." Making a mistake and even doing something that is objectively stupid, let's say that the vast majority of humanity would have seen clearly that which I missed, okay? So let's say that that was true, and I'll qualify that and say that's what we're defining as stupid.

So let's say that I actually do make a stupid mistake that most people would not have made.

If in that moment I give up, I'm out of the game. If in that moment I can recenter, learn my lesson, and keep going, then I put myself in an elite class, not because I can prognosticate everything accurately, but because I don't quit. And that's really been my secret, is I just don't give up.

One of the things I think people don't understand about being a CEO is that ultimately being a CEO, running a company, is almost— I mean, it's 70% people. I mean, the strategy is definitely important, but man, momentum isn't about moving fast, or I should say It isn't just about moving fast. It's about getting a group of people pointed in the same direction and moving fast. And so understanding how to galvanize a team and get them pointed in the same direction is really, really critical. So in this specific time, number one is leading by example, always and forever. If you want to do anything when people are involved, whether it's kids, whether it's somebody you love that is— there's a piece of advice you definitely desperately want them to take and they're not taking it, whether it's your company, the answer is always first and foremost, lead by example. That is critically important. So you want to be hopeful, you want to be optimistic, you want to show them through your behaviors and your actions time and time again with an inhuman level of consistency exactly how to face adversity. You don't want to bullshit, you don't want to lie, so you want to make sure that you're doing the work to make sure that you're keeping yourself hopeful and optimistic. Now, how do we stay hopeful and optimistic? We have to have certain beliefs in place and we have to have certain rules in place. So first of all, as it comes to rules, I know that I always need to be moving forward. I can't ever be afraid to make a decision, that I would rather be running 1,000 miles an hour in the wrong direction than standing still.

Okay?

Served me very well. Now, why is it better? Tom, you're running in the wrong direction. That's way worse than standing still. Not true. The reason that you never want to stand still is there's zero progress made when you stand still. When you move, you're at least learning, even if you're moving in the wrong direction. Failure is the most information-rich data stream you will ever encounter. Let me say that again. Failure, moving in the wrong direction, is the most information-rich data stream you will ever encounter, meaning you're going to learn a lot. So now when you turn around and you start moving in the right direction, you're making a huge amount of progress. So even though, yes, you have to backtrack, it's still far better than standing still and not learning those lessons. So that is huge. So you have that rule. Now beliefs, you need to believe that if it doesn't violate the laws of physics, then you can solve the problem. What happens is most people stay in this frame of mind where all they can see are the problems. And right now there is an avalanche of problems. It is so easy to get mired in the problems. But if you have a belief that as long as it doesn't violate the laws of physics, this is possible, that any obstacle can be overcome, that you just have to figure out what it is that's going to allow you to go over this obstacle, under this obstacle, through this obstacle, around this obstacle basketball, whatever, but you know that giving up is not an option. Now it's like, cool, hey, even if I fail, even if I mess up, I'm gonna learn. So there's some hope, there's some optimism, right? You can meet your team with a truism, something that you actually believe. You can use Jocko Willink's language, which he says anytime something goes wrong, his only response is good. The enemy is bearing down on us, good. We don't have enough equipment, good. And because he meets it with that, he stays he was in a solution-oriented mindset. Now, you always wanna be in a solution-oriented mindset. When all you're doing is focusing on the problems, and the most sinister thing about excuses is how valid they are. So I get it, you have every excuse in the book for things to fail, to not be optimistic, to not be hopeful, I get it, and it's all real. We are going through the most devastating time for a business ever. And how do I respond to that? Good, because I know in this there's going to be a solution and I'm gonna figure it out where a lot of people are gonna break because they're not gonna be able to get their head in the right place. So my team can see that I'm hopeful, I'm optimistic because I have that belief, because I have the rule to be moving forward, to figure this out, to not be afraid to fail. And they see me with that like almost naive optimism, always moving forward, but they also see me learning from my mistakes, reorienting and moving forward. Forward again. If you can do that, you're actually going to get results, and nothing is more hopeful than results. Step number 1: have a goal. Make it specific.

Make sure you know the rules of the game you're playing. Make sure you know what a win looks like. In fact, that may be the most important question that you could ask yourself. The most pointed thing that you could determine in your life is to know what does it look like to win. Once you know what it looks like to win, then you can work backwards. Then you can figure out what you need to do to score. Then you can figure out the skills that you're going to need in order to get great, in order to go out and dominate, in order to be better than anyone that has ever come before you. But to do that, you've got to know what your goal is. And once you have that, as Dale Carnegie said, if you want to conquer fear, don't sit home and think about it, go out and get busy.

So now you have your goal.

Now you're telling people what you're going to do. Now you're telling yourself who you're going to become.

And it is terrifying to me how people can pacify themselves with a sense of accomplishment simply by having a goal.

So let me tell you right now, the thing that separates the people who dream from the people who execute is a willingness to act. And at the end of the day, nothing is going to stop you. Not fear, not inability, not inadequacy.

The only thing that will stop you is failing to start. You've got to find a way to get yourself going.

You've got to find a way to take that desire, that interest in you and turn it into a raging inferno, something that's gonna get you moving and going ahead, that will trample everything in its path.

Once you're able to do that, nothing, and I mean nothing, will be able to stop you.

Here is the reality.

No matter how successful the person is that you're looking at and wishing you could be like them and thinking that they have everything all figured out, the one thing that I can promise you is that all of us struggle on the inside. That is just a reality of the human condition. Once you understand that that is a reality, that that's just a part of the human condition, then you can begin to ideally let yourself off the hook and that you're not spending a lot of time stuck there. But to give you a specific example from my life, the biggest one, the most harrowing one that I went through was in film school. So to cut a very long story short, I went to film school, believed that I had innate talent. I went into film school with a fixed mindset. I did very well at the beginning of film school, and that all to me felt like it was proof that I was right, that I was naturally gifted, that I was a born storyteller, and that I was going to go and have an illustrious career. And I actually went through a fascinating period in film school where I was both terrified that secretly I wasn't good enough, and but at the same time actually believed that I was naturally gifted and this is what I was meant to do. And every bit of feedback that I got in either direction was It made me believe to the core of my being that it was true. So when I would do something poorly, I would think, see, that part of me that was convinced that I actually don't have talent, you were right. And then I would do something well, and the part of me that believed that was like, see, I knew it, you were born for this. And it all came crashing down as I worked my way up the ranks at USC film school. Um, only 4 people are chosen to direct what's known as a senior thesis film or a 480. And I was one of the 4 people picked, and I was like, see, I knew it, man. I'm born for this. Of course I got picked to do one of the senior thesis films. That just makes sense. I'm, I'm that good. And I thought, okay, cool. The thing that makes the thesis film so important is the film school pays your budget to make this film. So at a time where there's no YouTube, there's no iPhones, like filming is an expensive endeavor. Here you've got somebody that's paying for it, and that becomes your calling card to the industry. So George Lucas famously made one of these films, and obviously we know how his career ended up working out. And they showed us his 480, by the way, and it was amazing. It was amazing. And so you could see that here was this gifted filmmaker. And so I have that in my head, like, look at George Lucas's films. Absolutely brilliant. He's gone on to have this brilliant career. I'm going to make an equally brilliant film or maybe a little more brilliant. And then I'm going to go become the next Lucas or the next Spielberg, and I'm going to take that film and get my 3-picture deal. And I proceeded to run smack bang into one immutable truth, and that was that I wasn't a talented filmmaker. And I don't say that to be humble. I say that out of truth because I didn't have the skill set to make a good film. Once the level of complexity had gone beyond a certain level. So I'd thrived in these really short, really simple films. And then once you're talking actors and dialogue and, you know, the things that would come close to what we would recognize as a normal film, I had no idea what I was doing. And try and try as I might, I couldn't figure out how to make the film come out well. And it didn't come out well. And I was mortified and I was embarrassed. And I never wanted anybody to see that film. And I was really and truly devastated. So I want you to imagine your whole life. So what, I graduated at like 22. So from 12 to 22, all I knew was I wanted to be a filmmaker, and my whole life was moving towards that. And it looked like I had the natural gift. And of course, if you're going to be an artist, you're either born with it or you're not, right? That's all anybody said. I can't express enough. In the '80s and '90s when I grew up, when people talked about art, you either had it or you didn't, and that was that. There was no sense of growth mindset. Carol Dweck had not written the book yet, and so it wasn't even like I knew there was a growth mindset and a fixed mindset. I just knew you're either born with it or you're not. The great news was I was born with it. Here we go. It's gonna be amazing. And then boom, I can't do it. And I realize, oh my God, I wasn't born with anything. I don't know how to do this. There is a tremendous amount of process to this art. And I don't know that at all. But of course, as I'm in the middle of it, I just think my world has come crashing down. I'm not gifted. I will never be gifted, and therefore I will never be a filmmaker. I will never make anything of myself. And just— it was a downward spiral of epic proportions. And at the height of that, I would go home from my dead-end job and I would lay face down on the carpet because I couldn't afford furniture and literally just sit there. I can still feel that cheap nylon carpet and the way that it felt on my face as I laid there thinking, well, my life is effectively over. Certainly the— my life that was working towards a dream is over. And now it's just about finding a way to be the smartest person in the room. And if that means that I have to go and work a dead-end job to be the smartest person in the room, then that's what I'll do. And so I used to go and interview for jobs having nothing to do with film because I felt totally broken. And my goal was to, at some point in the interview, have the interviewer say, you're so smart, why are you interviewing for this role? And because I had a fixed mindset and I so needed that praise from the outside, I was putting myself in these super weird and useless positions just to get that little nugget of, oh my God, like, you're so smart. And I had to put myself in sort of worse and worse company to get to that point. And finally, and I don't remember what it was that led me to this idea of brain plasticity. But somewhere in the depths of my despair, I realized, can we get better? Maybe we can. And so I started reading about the brain, and that started to plant seeds in my mind that maybe brain plasticity was real and maybe I could get better. And just because I wasn't good at film today, maybe I could get better at film down the road. And I ended up getting a job teaching film because, remember, those that can do, those that can't teach. So I felt like, okay, well, I can teach this even if I can't do it. And then so between reading about the brain and realizing, wait a second, if I work at this thing, I actually get better, my brain actually changes, and I become better at something. And given, you know, having gone through however many years of schooling I'd been through, I started thinking about it like, wait a second, you would come into any class. And the funny thing is, as a kid, I remember every grade just being absolutely terrified that, well, I did okay at being a 4th grader, but Mom, I'm going to get devastated as a 5th grader. I don't know what I'm doing. And no matter how many times my mom would console me and say, remember, they're going to teach you how to learn the things that a 5th grader needs to know, they don't expect you to already know it, it just wouldn't sink in. And so I was sort of back in that moment of You know, I don't know how to do this, but maybe my mom is right, maybe the neuroscientists are right, and maybe I can learn to become that thing I want to become. I start teaching film, and as I'm teaching it, I realize, wait, I'm helping my students become better filmmakers. So if I can help them become better filmmakers and brain plasticity is really true, then I could get better as a filmmaker myself. And that That realization changed the rest of my life. And this is why I am so obsessed with the idea of a growth mindset and brain plasticity, because the biology backs it up. And once you understand, it's what I call the only belief that matters. The only belief that matters is that if you put time and energy into getting better at something, you'll actually get better.

Your diet is one of the most important things that you can do to boost your energy, your focus, and your productivity. What you should be eating varies wildly, and I will just tell you right now that while I'm going to give you a very simple thing that you can follow and it's going to take care of 80% of all of your desires and problems, know that there is massive variability at the individual level and that you should be testing a lot of different things to find out what is right for you. So what I'm about to lay out is the sort of generic strategy that I think everybody should try, but getting into the nitty-gritty is going to require you to do a lot of testing. There is no way around this. I wish that dieting was more simplistic, but based on your lifestyle, based on your heredity, based on your microbiome, all of this stuff is going to dramatic— to dramatically vary. So be very thoughtful, make sure you run experimentation. Having said that, what are the things that I think are universal? Number 1, you want to be eating whole food whenever humanly possible. So you want to eat food that is recognizable from what it was in nature. So a piece of meat should look like a piece of meat. It shouldn't be highly processed. Your vegetables should look like vegetables. I mean, you should be brushing dirt off of them, that kind of recognizable from nature. Nuts should be— I mean, ideally raw. I'll be really honest, I do sometimes eat roasted nuts, but if I'm honest, that's worse than if you're just eating them raw. So you want things that are as close to their natural state as humanly possible. The less that they have been messed with, manufactured, altered in any way, the better off you're going to be. I will say that heat is something that I apply to virtually all of my food. There are some really interesting interesting theories about, from an evolutionary standpoint, that cooking is one of the things that allowed us to grow the big brain, because by cooking it you not only soften the food and make it easier to chew, but you also release some of the nutrients. It's beyond the scope of this to get into that, but when I say raw, I don't mean that everything needs to be uncooked. I just mean the less processed, the better. Things that I eat every day: I eat a lot of eggs, red meat, I eat some chicken, a bit of pork, but I'm eating a amount of meat, so I get a good portion of my calories from that. Again, individual variability. If you're doing a vegan thing, word, I'm totally about it. Test for the individual response that you get. I find that the more plant-forward I go, there's like a breaking point where I start feeling worse. Could be me, it could be me doing it poorly, but as long as you're doing whole food, I think you're on the money. So eating whole food and making sure that you're avoiding sugar, that is is like the big thing. So I don't think you can eat fruit with impunity. I think you have to be very thoughtful about that. If you're unsure of what fruit is going to impact you and how, I highly recommend getting a continuous glucose monitor. That will allow you to eat fruit if you want and see what kind of glycemic response you have. For instance, I find that I can make certain fruit smoothies, and if I eat it slowly enough, my glycemic response will go up to about 120. I prefer I prefer to keep it in the 80s, but hey, if it goes up to 120 and it's sort of even and it comes back down, I don't consider that too problematic. But if I eat it really quickly and it spikes up to say 140, 150, that to me is problematic and I don't want to be that high. So you can play with things, also what you put in the smoothie, etc. If you're going to eat fruit and vegetables, make sure that you separate fruit and vegetables. Keep those two things distinct. I I think you will find by wearing a continuous glucose monitor that you're going to have a dramatically different response to most fruit than you will to vegetables. Again, there's a lot of variability here, so the more that you test on yourself, the better. But that's really the, the sort of generic response, if you're— or generic setup that I think everybody should try. Whole food whenever humanly possible. Avoid sugar. Keeping your blood glucose below 100, I highly recommend it. For me, I try to keep my glucose glucose in this, the 80-ish range. That's sort of my default. I also do intermittent fasting. I think that that is very effective. Getting into things like autophagy is beyond the scope of what we're talking about right now, but even that I think is going to be huge. Body composition is greatly affected by intermittent fasting. Again, individual variability. Make sure that you experiment with this stuff for yourself. I do— when you average it out, I think I went about 18 months where I was tracking every day My average over that extended period of time was 17.5 hours. So on the weekends it's, it's shorter, but on the weekdays sometimes it's longer. Sometimes it's 19, 20, 21, 22 hours that I'll go between meals. But again, over a very extended period of time, it averages out to 17.5 hours of not eating. Now the way that I do that, I have my last meal around 1:15, definitely done chewing by 2 PM. And then I don't eat again until the next day at around 9:00, 9:30, somewhere around in there. Shorter on the weekends, longer during the week, and it, it balances out. I'm having everything from green leafy vegetables like bok choy, collard greens, kale, broccoli, to carrot, jicama. I do occasionally have some sweet potato. It'll be a little be a little thoughtful about that one. Watch your glycemic load. That definitely spikes me more than green leafy vegetables. But those are the mix that I use. Again, I'm eating whole foods. Virtually all of my calories come from whole food, uh, during the week. In fact, I'd say 95% of my calories come from whole food. It's very rare that I deviate from that. But doing that allows me to have tremendous focus, a lot of energy, get the most out of my workouts, maintain my body composition, keep my fat low, keep my glycemic spikes low so I'm not getting, you know, blood sugar spikes, which helps me maintain my energy through the day. And also, just from a longevity standpoint, I think that's a great idea. I will say, go look at David Sinclair. He's got some pretty compelling information around the fact that meat may not be great for longevity. So while it makes me feel awesome, it's something called mTOR. So be thoughtful as you get into the complex wheat of this stuff. Nutrition is a very big, complex topic. Again, the only things that I consider universals are whole food and reducing sugar. Universals— close to a universal would be intermittent fasting, though some people can have differing responses to that. So be thoughtful as you experiment with this stuff. But if you do that, like I said, 80+ percent of your problems are going to go away. That's a nice low inflammation diet, and keeping your inflammation low is incredibly important.

What I learned long before I actually became successful was that success wasn't going to change my insecurities. And I think most people go into it thinking that success is going to eradicate their insecurities. They look at somebody that's successful with this admiration, and they think, when I'm that successful, I will look at myself with that admiration.

And it doesn't work like that. So, and what's super interesting. It's not surprising at this point.

This would have surprised me in my 20s.

But like I said, thankfully I learned these lessons when I was still struggling, is that, you know, your insecurities are going to go with you wherever you go. And the name of the game is really about skill set.

And skill set in a few different ways. Skill set in there are things that I want to accomplish in this world and I must get good at them.

But then there's also skill set in managing my own mind. And that is the real juice. So you gave me that poster, Outwork Everyone.

And when I was writing a message on it, it's like, to outwork everyone, there is a certain thing that must be true in your mind, which is you have to know that all you have is this moment. And so success is not some thing in the future where you will cross a finish line and feel forever the way you've always wanted to feel, which is what people think.

Success will feel exactly like this moment. Whatever your life is right now, if you—

and if it's a mess, I could give you a billion dollars and it would still be a mess. And so understanding the name of the game is really to optimize the way that you respond to your environment, the way you respond to your challenges, the way you respond to difficulties, That's it. There really are only two macro-level motivators that we have in life, and that's pleasure and pain. And so what I want people to understand is, okay, so if nature only gave you two things to motivate you, pleasure and pain, why would you eliminate half of them? And so most people think that life is about avoiding the pain. I'm here to tell you right now, in a very controlled fashion, it is about really experiencing the pain, learning from from it. So Ray Dalio, the most successful hedge fund manager of all time, has a perfect math equation: pain plus reflection equals progress. If you don't feel the pain, you never reflect on it. So my thing is I spend 80% of my time focused on the beautiful things in my life, the things I'm grateful for, the beautiful things that I want to bring into existence, all of it. 20% of the time though, I'm in the darkness, man. I'm in that Tim Grover relentless, I'm going to make this happen if I have to break myself and I'm not afraid to lean into that because I know how powerful it is. Now, if you really want to put numbers how powerful this is, they did a study and they wanted to find out what happens, how can we get people to endure more pain? And the punchline is hilarious. So they would take people and they would submerge their arm in a bucket of ice and they would just hold it there as long as you can.

Now, at first it's just cold, but after a while it really starts to hurt.

And so people would end up yanking their arms out. They found that people could hold their arm in the bucket 35% longer if you let them display anger. So put it in, they get to that point where they're about to pull it out, and you tell them, yell, cuss, do whatever you need to, and they'd be able to do it. They're—

the expression of intensity, even what I'm doing right now, I can feel myself ready, right?

I'm ready to strike, my muscles are tense, I've got a different posture, I bring my chin down, there's intensity in tears in my eyes, like, dude, I'm now feeling that because I'm embodying it, right? So it makes me really feel that. And so I actually started to tell the story earlier. I hate the gym, but what I would do to make myself work out is I would— my wife would be on the opposite side of the gym and I would stare at her and I would imagine her being attacked. And I would imagine her being attacked by people bigger than me and that the only way that I could fight them off is to get stronger. There was nothing beautiful in it. I was not worried about aesthetics.

I was worried about saving I'm leaving my wife. And by stepping into that dark place, and 'cause people are like, what are you doing?

But dude, that was, I needed that motivation to push past what I want, to push past pain, boredom, all of it, and just to really get into it and get a result. But I find that people shy away from that. Look, to me it's an 80/20 split. If you're spending more than 20% of your time there, it will be corrosive, it will start to erode your sense of self, because you're gonna feel badly, right?

I would be saying to myself, you're weak, come on, like you've gotta get stronger.

If you spend 80% of your time doing that, that sucks.

I don't wanna live like that.

But not being able to dip into both, you'll just never hit the level of extraordinary. You may be fine, you may even be good, but you're never gonna be great. Being an artist right now, this is like the best possible time to have something that you can do by yourself that you can improve on on by yourself that's ultimately going to have real-world consequences for you when we get to the other side of this. So here is— and, and something tells me that if you're playing professionally, you already know this— but here's the, the reality about greatness. Greatness is about doing the things that are tragically boring and that you have to repeat over and over and over to get better at them in a deliberate way. You don't just You don't want to repeat them blindly, but in a deliberate way, buckling down and doing the things like for a musician, playing your scales, practicing your improvisation, practicing your cold reading, all of the things that are very easy to put off when you have a job and you're busy and you're making a living. It's kind of like typing. What they find is most people sort of, their typing rate, if I remember right, it's like 65 to 70 words per minute. Is where most people tap out. But I think the record is somewhere around 250 correct words per minute. So if the average person is tapping out around 65, but the delta is all the way between 65 and 250, you begin to see like how far you can really push yourself. But people get to a level that they deem acceptable, and they just sort of stop there. But because everybody is being forced to shut down right now, if you're a musician and you're saying, look, I'm not worried about streaming and going live and all of that, which I think there's a whole question to be answered about doing that and about how you could generate even more revenue by going online. But you asked me to set that aside, so I'm gonna set that aside. But right now is that chance to embrace a level of boredom that most people are not willing to push through in order to get to greatness. So in a business context, I always tell people boredom Boredom kills more entrepreneurs than anything. It kills more entrepreneurs than fear. Most people, they just can't slog through sucking at something and sitting in the discomfort that you get from doing the things that you're not good at long enough to get good at even those things so that you can truly go out and create art. Because I don't think you can create real art until you've mastered the basics to the point where, as Bruce Lee said, you don't think kick, you just kick. And I love that quote, and there's another Bruce Lee idea which is, I don't fear the man who knows 10,000 kicks, I fear, or I don't fear the man that does 10,000 kicks one time, I fear the man that does one kick 10,000 times. And that is this moment. And if you can take this downtime and let go of how good it feels to perform. I have to imagine a big part of the reason you got into this and that you did all of the work when you were younger to get good is because you love performing so much. But right now, that's basically off the table. So if in this moment you can buckle down, be disciplined, set your sights on something very specific that you want to get good at, disciplined practice at that thing to get good at this, on the other side of this you're gonna be far more extraordinary than you were when you went in because you no longer have the distractions of the actual performance. You can just get down to practicing. So flip that switch in your mind and think all about coming out the other side of this a beast, an absolute monster, better than you went in. And if you can tell yourself that story, I'm committed to this, I'm willing to do these things other people aren't willing to do, and put in the practice and understand as you're going through that unimaginable boredom that on the other side of this is a skill set that has utility, then this becomes an extraordinary time. But if you keep telling yourself the story that so many others are telling, which is this is a time of deprivation, it's just lamenting that you're not able to perform in all the things that made you love music in the first place, then just because you're repeating that, it becomes a dark time. Focus on the other side and you will get through this amazingly. Once you accept that the thing that separates you from the rest of the animal kingdom is an unimaginable ability to become. You have an unimaginable ability to become something. In 2014, private companies averaged 8% annual growth. After I went into my partner partners, and I said I quit, and I'm going to go do something that makes me feel alive, they were totally shocked. And I got all the way to my house, and I was on the phone with my wife.

I did it. I had been unhappy for so long.

And I said I did it.

I told them I quit. I gave back the equity. Here I am, and I'm pulling into the driveway at my house, and my phone rings. And it's my partners. They say, "Come out to dinner with us." Out of respect and love, I went out to dinner with them, and they said the now-famous words, "We could do this without you, but we don't want to." And that gave me what I needed to connect to something other than money.

It reminded me of the brotherhood.

It reminded me that I had fallen fallen in love with these guys as human beings, that there was something more than money, there was something more than being a clever marketer, that I remembered for a second who I am, the things that make me unique, that I have a desire to connect, that I actually enjoy communities, that I'm not a guy with a killer instinct. I'm not interested in stepping on my, my competitors' necks. That's just not how I'm wired. I'm wired to build something. I'm wired to see people shine.

I love seeing other people win.

I think it's incredible. Now that doesn't mean that I don't want to win.

I want to win at the absolute highest level.

I want to be the greatest of all time.

I want more people to write about me going to Mars because they're terrified to try to match my intros. I want that, right? And I hope each and every one of you wants to play at that level. I hope each and every one of you looks at the greatest of all time and says, if I'm willing to break myself in half to get there, I could do it. But being honest with who you are, being honest that if there's something else that you want to bring to the table, that you find a way to do that.

And so I said, guys, I will come back and work with you on one condition. I will never prioritize money again.

My highest value value in business is camaraderie.

And at the time, that was sacrilege. We had made a pact with each—

there was 3 of us.

The 3 of us had made an actual pact that we would do whatever it took to make our technology company more profitable. And if that meant skipping a family vacation, if that meant waking up at 2 AM on a Saturday to meet and brainstorm, we did it.

Both of those stories are real. We did things like that. I would go away with my wife for Christmas to see her family in London, and I would literally take a camera with me so I could watch the company back in LA.

I never switched off.

I didn't take days off.

I was working no matter where I was.

I was working 7 days a week.

I didn't take a real vacation, meaning that I wasn't actually working while we were on it for 6 and a half years. One, I believe doubt is a gift. Let me say that again. I agree. Doubt is a gift, man. If you know you're going to do something, that you will stick with it, you're not afraid to pivot or change direction. Whatever, but that you know you're gonna go after the things you care about, you're gonna go after them hard, and you're not gonna stop when you get tired, you're not gonna stop when you get bored, you're going to stop when you, when you're done. Like, when you know that about yourself, then doubt is a gift. And so, man, I actually wish more people in my family would doubt me. At this point, my family, they don't doubt me externally, like they don't vocalize it. They may all doubt me like crazy, but they don't do me the kind kindness of—

letting you know.

Exactly.

So the reason that that is a gift is because I believe that human beings are wired to leverage two different things. One, the beauty of what you're trying to create, the people that support you and love you and want to see you succeed. Like, that's amazing. That feels good. It's going to give you energy, and I think you should spend 80% of your time there. There are times, however, especially when something gets really hard, really painful, that— and, and I've talked about this before, but but if you're doing research on pain tolerance, the one thing that they know universally will allow somebody to tolerate more pain is anger. Actually expressing anger. So if you put somebody's arm in an ice bucket and make them hold it there, like at first it's not so bad, but then it really gets to the point where like, this hurts. And when it gets to the point where it hurts, if you want, it's something like 30% longer if you let people go, motherfucker, and like really express like anger and rage, they'll be able to deal with that 30% longer. So there is something you're able to marshal the body's resources when it gets really hard. So in those moments, that's when I turn to the people that hate on me, that want to see me fail, that doubt that I can do it, like, and use that in that aggressive dominant way to really push through. And like, under no circumstances will I let that person be right. So that's incredibly powerful. Now the second part is they're doubting you so much that it's beginning to hurt your own mind. So now here's the thing. One, if somebody is chipping away at your ability to believe in yourself, you need to distance yourself from them. Now this gets really hard when it's family, but it's absolutely critical. To me, like if my family were bringing me down, with all the love and compassion in the world, I would let them know, hey, I can't be around this level of negativity, so we have to come to an agreement. Either you're just gonna stop, like keep it to yourself, or I'm going to have to spend less and less time with you. So let me be very clear what the rules of engagement are.

I love you.

Like, let's really make it hard. Mom, I love you, Mom. I love you more than you can imagine. I love being around you. I want to spend time with you, but the things you're trying to do to protect me— because her intentions almost certainly are good— the things you're trying to do to protect me are actually eroding my confidence. I would— not words like this, these exact words, okay? This is the exact conversation that I would have with my mom. So it's beginning to erode my confidence. Confidence is one of the most important things anybody needs to cultivate if they're going to go on to be successful. So I fully understand that you only have my best interests at heart, that you really want to help me and you want to make sure that I don't make a mistake that could be very detrimental to my life. Of my career and where I'm headed. So I understand that those are all really, really beautiful intentions, but they're having this unintended side effect. So because of that, I either need you to stop, or I'm gonna have to spend less and less time with you, which would be utterly heartbreaking for me. So let's agree to disagree. Let's agree that when we come together, that we're going to talk about positive things, beautiful things, wonderful things. And then if she can't help herself, stop spending as much time with her. It's that simple. It's not easy. I get how painful that would but you have to. And when she then calls and is like, "You don't come around as much anymore," you say, "We had the conversation. I was brutally honest with you what I need to protect my self-confidence. I know that you don't mean to do it, but you're still doing it. I can't be around it. So until you can figure that out, and let me tell you all the times where you were saying this, that, or the other, and again, I'm not questioning your intentions. I know your intentions are good," because that's immediately where she's gonna go.

'But I'm just trying to protect you. Like I say, those things, they're not really negative. Why are you taking them negatively?

This is your fault.' You can hear words like that. And so you just need to be abundantly clear. 'I have a line in the sand.

I love you.

I have all the empathy and compassion, but I'm not gonna be around that shit.' So, and then as you distance yourself, she will change her behavior or she'll entrench. If she entrenches, you know everything you need to know about her mindset that's toxic, whether it's your mother or not. And then if she does entrench and realizes, whoa, like, even if I believe to the core of my being that I'm not being negative, those things are perceived as negative. And that's one thing that you can say that'll lighten the load. Hey, maybe those things really are positive, but just so you know, I'm interpreting them as negative. They're affecting me at a visceral level as negative. So for me to keep coming around, they have to be excised from our relationship. Period. Simple.

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. For 10 more amazing rules from Alex Hormozi, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe and I'll see you there.

I still make more money than them. There has to be something else. One of the things that grinds my gears about a lot of the people that I see on Instagram that you probably see too is this whole like, no one can outwork me mantra. First off, it's objectively false because many people