Simple HABITS That Will ENSURE Your SUCCESS! | Lisa Nichols | Top 10 Rules

If you're looking for ways to disrupt your standards, master time management, and like yourself first, then this video is for you.

People say, "Oh, Lisa, how do I do this?" And I go, "Do this, this, this, and this." I give you the steps, and the next thing they say is, "Mmm, that's so hard." I heard once, if you don't have your agenda, then you're gonna work for somebody else's agenda. That your perception of me After I tell my truth is actually none of my business.

Need motivation? Watch a top 10 of Believe Nation! What's up, it's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in you. I believe in that amazing thing you have inside you that I want to see burst out into the world. So let's get your motivation to a 10 and have you believing in you. Grab a snack and chew on today's lessons from a woman who went from struggling as a single mom on public assistance to becoming a millionaire entrepreneur and best-selling author of 7 books. She's Lisa Nichols, and here's my take on her Top 10 Rules for Success Volume 2. Enjoy! Alright, let's kick things off with rule number 1: Disrupt your standard.

I run into so many people all around the world who are living this duality. One, I want more, but two, I don't want to disrupt what I have. And the challenge is, in order for you to have a breakthrough to the next level, your, your, your standard, your average, and your ordinary has to be disrupted. People say, oh Lisa, how do I do this? And I go, do this, Do this, this, and this. I give you the steps. And the next thing they say is, "Mm, that's so hard." I'm sorry. Did you think your breathtaking life would come on a merry-go-round? Did you think you're gonna do the swings and get there? You're gonna sweat. So get up ready to sweat. Get up ready to forgive the perceivably unforgivable. Get up, ready to take the higher road even when the smallness in you wants to get engaged. Avoid the fight because the fight keeps you in the little you when you're committed to being the bigger version of yourself. Yeah, you gonna have to say some things you never said and do some things you've never done so you can meet the man, the woman you've always known yourself to be.

I love this clip. What a great lead. I was smiling throughout the entire video. I think it's so important to understand that the actual steps don't matter as much as the mindset, as much as the decision that you will raise your standard. And every single big breakthrough that you will find in your life will come as a result of making the decision to change what you are no longer willing to accept in your life. When you raise your standard to that point, that's when change starts to happen. Thank you, Lisa! Way to kick us off. Let's move to rule number 2: Create micro wins.

This whole piece in my book, Abundance Now, I wrote it a while ago, and it's amazing in terms of just talking about and breaking down What's the difference between a macro win and a micro win? And a micro win is that smaller goal that you could see, it's attainable, you get that instant result. And most people are chasing the macro win all the time, and they're not looking at all the micro wins that they can feel really good about to get them to that macro result. If you create 5, 7, 8, 10 micro wins, guess what? Now you're in a rhythm. Now you're building some consistency. Now you like the way it feels. And then before you know it, you look up and go, whoa, there's that macro win, that huge goal that I thought was 100 miles away. It wasn't 100 miles away. It was 7, 8, 11 micro wins away.

I love her energy and how she bounces. I'm watching on a trampoline. I'm like, I'm bouncing alongside her as she's doing it. Huge fan of this message. I think too often we're only thinking about the big vision, the big picture, and then we don't actually do anything. Where the key is you wanna think big and act small. Think big towards your big dream, your big vision, but then do something and recognize that that little step you took today and tomorrow and the next day and the next day, you look back, those little micro wins lead to something big. Let's move to rule number 3, master time management.

[Speaker] And so when you look at prioritizing, it really lives in an, I'ma say this word and you're probably not gonna wanna hear it, but when I tell you it's a game changer. When you master and just for now begin to operate inside of time management. I used to resist time management because I'm a free spirit slash people will call me a rebel back in the day, meaning I didn't want to be controlled.

I wanted—

I'm a butterfly. I wanted to soar. I wanted to be free. Well, the reality is that when you manage your time more effectively, you actually create more freedom. That was a huge aha for me. Somebody's going to BOL right now, like breakthrough out loud, because when you time manage, meaning I'm going to use better blocks of my time. Let me give you some examples for that. I'm going to use better blocks of my time, meaning I'm only going to go in my email 3 times a day. I go on my email about 9:30, between 9:20 and 9:40. I go on my email. I stay on my email for 30 minutes. I'll go back in my email about 3 o'clock in the afternoon. I stay in my email again for about 30 minutes. I go back on my email one more time at 6 PM. I stay in for about 30 minutes. That's it. I don't go in 19 times. I don't go in 20 times because 3 times a day gives me adequate time to see what's in there, see what's new, and act appropriately. Otherwise, it's throwing me off. I, I time block my day about 90 minutes each time block to do a task. Even if a task only takes me 30 minutes, I time block I get distracted. But when you time block your day and then you schedule each day, not every day looks the same. I have a time block for everything I need to do for 7 days out the week. Can you believe that in that time I got more things done? You have to become comfortable with your no. My grandmother says, baby, she starts every sentence with baby. Baby, if you want your yes to have more value, You need to learn how to exercise your no. See, your yes might not have its value anymore. Why? Because you give it away too much. You give it to too many people. You give it away too often. You're always overcommitting, and then you feel drained and frustrated, and you don't have gratitude in your heart because you're overcommitted. Well, that all started with a yes that should have been a no or should have been a I'd love to, but not now. And so number 2, number 1 is more effective time management that has your agenda in it, that has your priorities in it. Right now your agenda is covered with everyone else's task. I often, I heard once, if you don't have your agenda, then you're going to work for somebody else's agenda. And so number 1 is your time management with your agenda. And number 2 is operating, utilizing, and being comfortable in a no. And not an attitude, no, not like a stank no, like no, not that. Mm-mm. Just a no, not now. No, I would love to, but my plate is full. I'm free in 90 days. Just don't make— no energy, just not now. Don't be surprised when everyone comes to you. You're great. You're amazing. You're brilliant. Look at you. You're on this channel, so you know you're smart. You want a better life? You want an abundant life? Of course you're here. Of course everyone wants you. And your priorities matter.

So I think there are two very important points buried in this rule, and I think it's so important because entrepreneurs, we're working crazy hours to get our dream off the ground, and maybe we have jobs and family and all this other stuff happening at the same time. And so how do you balance everything? How do you allow that creativity to come out? It's by scheduling. It's by setting aside time every single day and by creating different tasks for different days. So for me, my Monday looks one way, my Tuesday looks one way, my Wednesday looks one way, and every week then I repeat that same thing. So Monday, my TDS, I'm working on TDS stuff. That's, that's my entire day. I'm not being distracted by a bunch of other things. And so figuring out that time management for yourself to chunk your tasks down to do one thing on certain days, I find at least really helps me focus and go far. So I'm not just constantly being bombarded and reacting to other people. The second part was saying no and focusing, right? Like understanding that your goals are your goals and you're trying to build something better for yourself. And if all you're doing is reacting to other people's goals for you, then you're living their life. You're helping them build their empire. You're helping them have a huge impact and you're playing small. And so sometimes those things are aligned. Sometimes what your friends or family or partners or colleagues want you to do is also aligned with what you want to do, and that's when magic happens. But if it's not, then be willing to say no in a respectful way so that you can focus on the things that you really need to get done. I love it, Lisa. Let's move on to rule number 4: leap afraid.

So when you talk about making your dash dance, point 1: you got to be willing to do it afraid. See, you might be waiting for the fear to stop.

Well, Lisa—

I heard this so many times— Lisa, I'm afraid. What do I do?

Do it anyway.

Lisa, I'm afraid. I don't quite know if I should move.

Move anyway.

I don't know if I should leap. Leap afraid, and then gather your courage on the way down. And if you don't get it before you hit, you was gonna hit anyway.

I'd rather die leaping than on the edge figuring out how to get the courage to leap. Yes, yes?

Yes, yes? So many times we're waiting.

We're waiting. I'm waiting. I'm waiting to get something right. I see your hands going up.

You guys know if it's your truth, you can raise your hand just like we did on Day Zero. You're just kind of waiting. You're waiting to get everything in order. You're waiting. You're waiting so that everything is in you, it's together. You're waiting to not be afraid. You're waiting to have the courage. You're waiting to have all the money. You're waiting to lose weight. See, see, if I waited to release my unwanted pounds before I got in front of you, Lisa Nichols would be the secret. Yes, yes. I thought, how about I just leap with my imperfection and then find my form of perfecting my imperfection while I'm soaring?

How about I do that?

How about you not wait to get it right? You figure out how does it look doing it wrong? How does that look? Because your 80% of right is somebody else's 159% of what they needed.

Yes, yes? Yes, yes.

And when you wanna do it right and you wanna wait 'til you're not afraid and you wanna wait 'til you have it all together, oh, you made it about you again. See, Nelson Mandela did it. He just did it not knowing if it were right. Mahatma Gandhi just did it not knowing if it were right. Mother Teresa just did it, not looking for affirmation or confirmation. Is this right? Martin Luther King did it, not even knowing if it would happen before his life ended. I mean, what are you waiting on? Are you willing to do it afraid? Are you willing to do it knowing that you got so much work to do to get it better, to get it more perfect? But are you willing to do it inside your imperfection? Do you realize that in your imperfection, you're perfect for the job?

I really love this point. I think if you're not scared about some of the work that you're doing, then, then you're bored, then, then you're not living, then you're racing against 3-year-olds. If you know that you're gonna win, then your dreams are too small. I think it's really important that you have something that challenges you, and that concept of don't feel the fear, like just fear is not real— the fear is real. Recognize the fear and you jump through the fear, because every great thing that you will ever accomplish in your your life will be on the opposite side of a big wall of fear. So what are you waiting for? Let's jump over it. And let's also jump to rule number 5: Visualize.

Visualization is a gift to your heart and your soul. It's a gift because if the, the idea is the seed, visualization is the, is the, um, it's the fertilizer. It's the fertilizer because when your thoughts are connected with an emotion. See, you would visualize yourself winning and you would feel all the emotion that came with that. And all you're doing now is you're not chasing a foreign emotion. You know the feeling, and now you're just doing what's necessary to get back to that feeling in real time. Exactly. And so what, what a good friend of mine, Vishen, um, who, uh, the CEO of Mindvalley, who, you know, um, I would, I did a visualization with him. We were in Bali And he said to me afterwards, "I never get emotional." He doesn't. He doesn't get emotional. He's like super— Yeah. Well, he was like, "I cried. I got emotional." He goes, "I figured it out. It's visualization. A good visualization brings in emotion." He was like, "That's how you do it." And so, I love doing visualizations because— And it's real important in the visualization, you can't see it over there. You have to see it right here.

Feel it.

You got to feel it right here. Like, I am. It's all I am. I am. I am in my dream home. I am in my dream relationship. And then unpack what that looks like. But most importantly, unpack what it feels like. And when you have that emotion in this moment, all of a sudden, you stir up something that I don't think will ever go back to sleep. It'll go, OK, let's go get that. And what it really does is it sets up a state of, cognitive dissonance. And cognitive dissonance is when you see something in your mind and you see yourself in a way that your behaviors are not currently leading to. And so your mind becomes disrupted and it goes, "Okay, can we get there?" Right.

'Cause I'm not there right now.

I'm not there right now. And that's not comfortable. Your mind wants to literally be congruent. What it thinks is what you're doing. What it thinks is what you're doing. And so, when you set up a constant— and abundant thinkers like you and I, we do it unconsciously. We are constantly keeping ourself in a state of cognitive dissonance, meaning, "Okay, what else?" And I'm seeing Lisa over there and I'm going, "Okay, let me go." While, while being grateful for my now. It's not in that, "I'm gonna be whole and complete when I get over there." I'm whole and complete now. I just know I'm supposed to be over there, so let me do what's necessary to get over there. And let me evict any behaviors or characteristics that are stopping me and let me adopt any new ones that I need.

I really love this point, and I do visualization. I think it's really helpful and clear to have an understanding of what you want. And every time I've had a vision for something specific that I wanted, it just started happening and I got it. I haven't had visualization though to the point where I'm crying and overwhelmed with emotion. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna think about this one some more. I'm gonna look into it more. Maybe Lisa has some programs on how to do that effectively or something coming up. It made me think, and I'm curious to see how that turns out for me and for you guys who might have done it. I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments below, too. Let's keep the ball rolling. Rule number 6: Define prosperity for yourself.

So when you ask the question or when you look at the question, how do I create a life of prosperity when I haven't known it, when my family hasn't known it, when it's not what we're— it's not what I was born into? You know, there are many people who were born into prosperity. I wasn't I'm not one, and you may or may not be one, but how you transform a life or create a life of prosperity is number one, you identify what does prosperity look like to you. Define prosperity by your own terms and don't make it a global universal answer. You want to define prosperity in each area of your life. I know that sounds like it's really detailed, but you cannot hit a moving target. You won't ever hit a moving target, so the more detail you get, The more the target slows down and you hit it.

I think this point ties in really well to the last one. I think the more you have a clear understanding of what it is that you want, what prosperity looks like to you, not to your friends or your spouse or your significant other, your family or anybody around you, but what prosperity looks like to you, the clearer that becomes, the easier it is for you actually to go out and make it happen. I love it, it's a great point. Let's move on to rule number 7. Trust your intuition.

You know, when you want to learn how to trust your intuition more, you know, I say, and this is me and my walk and my, my belief system, that your intuition is your internal GPS system, your internal God placement system. It's that whisper, and sometimes it's that scream, that tells you to leap or to be still. Your intuition is a combination of spirit, emotion, and logic, and it's guiding you. And so often we don't hear our intuition. Why don't we hear it? Because we're having too much chatter in our head. Like the chatter in our head— doubt, worry, judgment. Oh my God, judgment. Are fear, fear of other people's perception of you. So your intuition is saying, I love to dance, I want to dance, I want to sing. Your intuition is saying we can have a great time. Your intuition is saying I want love. Your intuition is saying, gosh, let's go take that chance on that writing that book, or let's take that chance on starting that business. Then your chatter comes in, no, what if I fail? So let me explain this to you. Your mind, your brain is designed to keep you safe. It's designed, and it only has the ability to go back in time in the mental file cabinet and look at the last time you tried something like this, and it may not have been, um, good, or it may have ended in some dangerous situations, uh, where people could judge you. And your brain is designed to protect you. That's it. Your brain's designed to protect you. It's logical. Your intuition is that spark of passion. It's that spark of desire. It's that spark of love. It's that spark of pull me forward. It's that little bit of radical. It's that lot of bit of, um, of, of I want to leave my fingerprint on this planet. Your brain isn't designed to have those same ideas. Now, now your intuition can kick the brain in and the brain can start thinking of ways too, but the intuition is where it's going to start. It's in your gut. It's why when you feel something, you kind of go here. You don't go, oh, I feel so special. You don't say I feel special here. You say, I feel it here. I feel it here. And so your job is not to turn down the doubt. Your job is to turn up the passion. It's to turn up the faith. It's to turn up the possibility. Now, still make well-thought-out plans. I always say the best plan is the plan made. I don't care if you have to upgrade it, you have to modify it, but if you, if you, if you, if you fail to plan, then you plan to fail. So every dream, every passion, every desire, follow it with a plan because that's where your brain gets excited. Your brain goes, yeah, we got a plan now. Now you can believe yourself. See, you set big goals and dreams and you have desires, and then you don't achieve it, but you don't achieve it because you didn't set the plan in place. You didn't do the details, and then you stop believing you could do it. Then you do the biggest tragedy. You stop dreaming. You stop hoping. You stop stretching yourself. You stop listening to your GPS, your God Placement System, that says you've been put here on a divine assignment and your assignment assignment may change over years. Guess what? Your assignment you had 15 years ago may be very different from the assignment on your life today. Your job is to turn down the volume in your head, the volume of judgment, the volume of fear, the volume of worry, the volume of, um, perfection. Turn down the volume in your head and turn up the volume in your intuition, in your soul. Solar plexus, in that God placement system, in that heart space. Turn up the volume in that place that just says, what do I want?

What—

ask yourself this tonight, today, tomorrow: what feels good to my soul? And then be still and be quiet.

I love this clip. It reminds me of a quote in the new book from Kevin O'Leary from Shark Tank who said, I listen to my gut. It's not an emotion, it's index of risk, and you get it as you age. You become better every year. And I think it's so important that your, your gut gets better the more you listen to it and the more you trust it. If you're feeling something and you don't act on it, then it's hard to continue to develop that intuition. But you want to be making the big decisions in life with your heart and the small ones with your head. Big decisions with the heart or your gut, and the small ones with the head, because the head only understands the world that currently exists, where your heart, your gut, can create something something new. And the more you listen to this, the more you start listening to your heart and your gut instead of your head, that's when things really start to take off for you. Let's move on to rule number 8: like yourself first.

To me, this is the road to true freedom. I have nothing to prove. I have nothing to protect. I have nothing to hide. And I have nothing to defend. That your perception of me after I tell my truth is actually none of my business. My perception of me, that I go to bed as whole and complete as I woke up. Before I check how many likes I have on Facebook, that I like me first, and every other like is bonus. There you go.

Like it.

That was a long road to get to. Long road. Sure, long road.

This is another fantastic clip. It reminds me of Quincy Jones, who said, not one drop of myself worth is dependent on your acceptance of me. And I love that. I, I'm getting close to that. I don't know that, uh, I don't know how you get to that 100% because somebody's opinion, even if you don't know them, even if you don't respect them, it still can hurt. It can still play a role, even though you get a thicker and thicker and thicker skin as you get bigger, as you, as you practice this more. I'm at least still on my journey. It still bothers me a little bit, and, uh, I'd like to to learn more ways to get even better at it. So thank you, Lisa, for the reminder. Let's move on to rule number 9, play big.

I get asked the question a lot, how do I jumpstart again when I've been complacent? You know, I found that I had to ask myself this question as well. For so many years, I was working hard to feed Jelani. I was working hard to give him an equal chance. I had this goal that by the time he was 18, I would have transformed our lives, and I ran hard for it, and I worked hard for it. And by the time he was 18, our lives were completely transformed and barely recognizable. And I found that I had slowed down a bit— still running, but running at about 70%. And the challenge that you have to watch out for is that your 70% could be someone else's 115% because you are such a game changer. So you you can impress a lot of people never playing full out. And you can look up and a year has passed, 3 years has passed, 5 years have passed, and you haven't played full out for a while because you've already achieved a lot by some people's standards. But there's still so much more that you can do. I want to coach you in this way: dream a dream or set a goal that's big enough to make you get nervous. Oftentimes, if you're not setting a goal that's beyond 3 years out in front you, there's not enough to run for. So I want you to look at your goals. Can you achieve them in a year, 2 years? I want you to set a goal for 3 years, set a goal for 5 years, and set a goal for 10 years. Yes, I said 10 years. When I did this phenomenal program called LifeBook, they had me set 10-year goals, and I was so uncomfortable. I sat there silent for a moment. I hadn't thought 10 years out about my life. But if you go out far enough, 10 5, 3. Then all of a sudden you're playing for something so much bigger. And then set a goal that makes your knees knock and your teeth chatter a bit. If you know how to get to your goal, you're not dreaming big enough. Now the goal also has to be realistic. So it has to be realistic, something you can do. If you're currently making $80,000, then your goal in 3 years isn't to make $500,000 unless you have a path that's viable to get you there. That's real. The thing that's really important to remember about a goal is that if you set lofty goals that you will never hit because they're not realistic in the first place, you have to set realistic goals. That doesn't mean you're not capable, doesn't mean that you don't believe in yourself, but realistic goals. If you set a bunch of unrealistic goals and you don't hit them, every time you don't hit a goal, you, you lose just a little bit of hope in yourself, a little bit of faith in yourself. And then what happens is you look up 5 years, 10 10 years from now and you're not dreaming anymore. You're not setting goals anymore. You're afraid to tell anyone. So set a goal that makes your knees knock and your teeth chatter a bit. Set a goal that's 3 years out in front of you. Set one that's 5 years and set one that's 10 years. As a matter of fact, set several in all those timelines and then hook your caboose to the train of other people who are running as fast as you are. Surround yourself in a community that inspires you to want to stand on your tippy toes. They inspire you because they're doing so much. Now they believe in values, they believe in faith, they believe in family, but they also believe in running hard, playing hard, and living big. Because if you're the biggest fish in your community, then that's okay. You just need to get a second community to play inside of as well. And so if you find yourself going, hold on, I've become complacent, walk out 15 years and go, do I want to look back in 15 years and this was the best that I did? The answer probably is no.

I love this rule, and I think it ties in really well to rule number 2, which was create micro wins. So you're dreaming big, we have a big action plan, you want to go and change the world and have this huge dream for yourself that you think is realistic or knee-shattering but still something you can accomplish in 3, 5, 15 years, and you create micro wins. You start getting going on it immediately. I think the biggest threat, and Lisa talks and I talked about it here, is your potential is not being reached. You are talented, you are a genius, and it allows you to coast, and everybody thinks you're doing a great job, and you're just coasting along 'cause you're really playing at 65% or 70% of what you're capable. You're not playing full out because nobody's pushing you to play full out. And so you need to push yourself to do it by setting big goals that inspire you regularly. Let's finish this awesome video off with rule number 10: Live your quest.

When we talk about living our quest, um, I think that living my quest, really, if I look at it on a daily basis, it's finding my own voice. It's finding your voice. It's finding the song that only you can sing, off-key or not. It's finding your rhythm. It's discovering what it feels like to walk in your shoes today, it won't look like it looked 10 years ago. Living your quest is, "What can I do with my life so that my life becomes infectious to someone else?" Living my quest looks like, "How do I make my fingerprint matter so big that it lives beyond my transition day?" Living your quest is how can I forgive the perceivably unforgivable so I can love the absolute lovable? Living your quest is how do I give myself 1,000 second chances, and every time I get to 999, press reset.

Yeah?

Yeah! Living my quest is is not some ambiguous, untouchable experience. Living my quest means going back and healing the little girl in me so that the woman can be free. It's going back and embracing the little boy in you so that the man can show up and give himself permission to cry when necessary. Living your quest is not something that you can't touch. It's not something that requires a stage or lights or cameras. Living your quest is being complete and content with who you are in the dark of the night, so who you are in the middle of the day is all right. Living your quest is as simple as it is complex. Living your quest is about giving yourself permission— say permission— on a daily basis to become the next best version of yourself. Living your quest is not holding yourself hostage to old decisions, not holding yourself hostage to shame, blame, guilt, regret, and anger. Living your quest is about recognizing that every day I can be reborn to my possibility. Living your quest is as internal and personal as it is public. Living your quest is about recognizing that you have brilliance in you and and not being willing to dim your light one more day. Living your quest means not being afraid of the genius in you, even though you have doubt. Living your quest is recognizing that you get to sing your song off tune, that you can get to live in perfection while you master imperfection.

I love this clip. It's so beautiful. I'm just going to leave it as it is. Thank you, Lisa, for all the awesomeness. That you continue to share to inspire people around the world. So thank you guys so much for watching. I'd love to know what was your favorite rule, what message really resonated with you the most that you're going to apply immediately in your life or your business. My personal favorite was rule number 1, which was disrupt your standards, and I think rule number 5, the visualize one, is something that I'm going to dig into a little bit more to improve on. I'd love to know again what was your favorite and why. Why, leave it down in the comments below. Now I made this video because Charmaine Robinson asked me to. If there's a famous entrepreneur that you would like me to profile next, check out the link in the description. You can go to that video and leave your vote in the comments and have your say. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Paulie Motzko. Paulie, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and posting about it on Twitter and Instagram. I really, really appreciate the support and I hope you enjoyed the read. So thank you guys again for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love. I'll see you soon.

So often people are consumed with fear. Uh, the fear of judgment. That's a huge one. Um, the fear of failure. What happens if it doesn't work? The fear of success. What happens if it does work and people see me like they really see me for who I am? What happens if I get hurt in a relationship? Like, there's so many what-ifs. But what happens when you what-if yourself all over yourself? You never think about the what-if it works. What if? What if it has just, just as much chance at working as it does at not working? And what if you redefine what we call failure? And in my language, I love in the book Abundance Now that I wrote, and many of you have read it, I talk about you can fail all day long, just fail forward. The only distinction between a bunch of really successful individuals and a bunch of individuals really wanting success is that the successful individuals were willing to fail, and they did fail. They just failed forward. Some of my best lessons are born out of my failures, literally.

To this day.

And my failures these days cost 6 figures or more, but I'm willing to do that because I want the lesson or the outcome. And if you allow a failure to feed your future, it's what I call feeding your future, meaning what are the 2 things that I did really well and what's the 1 area that I can improve upon? Or what's the 3 things I did really well and what are the 2 areas that I can improve upon? And then take those 2 things and pull those, that lesson forward, or take the 3 things that you did well and make sure you don't lose those. To me, the tragedy, the tragedy of when something doesn't go the way you thought is when you only beat yourself up from it. You never ever look at what did I do well and where can I improve? I learned from a brilliant, brilliant friend of mine, Ivan Misner, that balance is a myth, but harmony is a must. See, I write about it in Abundance Now, and I really took a lot of time to open this up, to unpack this, and I really want to recommend that you read that part so that you can understand it intellectually, which will cause you to make different decisions. So when you seek balance, you're seeking to equalize your entire life. You want the same portions. You want to have as much time with family as you have at work. You want to have as much time at play as you have with family. You want to have as much personal time as you have family time. And if you think about it, when you look at all the quadrants of your life, which I think they're about 12 when you really break them down— some people say 4, I like to break them down into 12— when you look at all those areas and their subcategories under relationship, like romantic, family, friends, and under work, and then there's under health and wellness, personal development, self-esteem, spirituality. If you try to give equal amount to everyone, that's like 12 point something percent time. It's just unrealistic, especially if you're in a career that's demanding, or God knows if you're an entrepreneur, then it just doesn't happen. So what occurs is we begin to spend our energy and time pursuing an unrealistic expectation in the first place, setting ourselves up for constant failure. Have you ever thought of pursuing a goal that you know you'd probably never reach? Who wants to do that? We do it all the time when we pursue balance. On the other hand, what if you pursued harmony? See, balance says I need to equalize everything. Harmony says I need to make sure they learn how to play together and dance together so that my life overall, 360, feels good to live within. Let me give an example how I used to do that. So I would work all day when Jelani was about 6 or 7 years old. Well, I did. I worked all day when he was 9, 10, 12, and 14 too. But when he was 6 and 7, I was just establishing my company. We had just packed our bags and moved from Los Angeles. I moved away from my nest of my mom and my dad and my family and my, my cousins and my siblings. And now we're by ourselves in San Diego, California. And so I'd spend all day working really, really hard so that I can ideally make this dream work. But every day, seeking harmony, not balance, every day at 6:29, I'd stop. And from 6:30 until 8:30, that was Jelani and mommy time. And during that Jelani and mommy time, I would do everything. Jelani, what do you want to do? Every day I'd ask him a question, what do you want to do? And he had the same answer every day. He wanted to play Monopoly. And I got to tell you, you know, my son loves Monopoly, and I think I used to like it, but I've played more games of Monopoly. We've had Monopoly, we've had Triopoly, we've had Monopoly with the credit cards, we've had Monopoly with dinosaurs, we had Monopoly with Pokémon, we had Chefopoly because he wanted to be a chef. We've had every form of Monopoly possible. But during that time, we had our connection time. And then we cooked together. And he would be Mustard Man, and I would be Garlic Girl. And literally on my bed today are two pillows. One pillow says Mustard Man, and another pillow says Garlic Girl. And we made those two hours matter. Then I'd bathe him, or I'd supervise him bathing himself. And then I'd put him to bed, and we'd make up stories together. And we had this thing where he'd start a story, then I'd add to it. Then he'd add to it. Then I'd add to it. And every time he added to the story, someone got hurt. And every time I added to the story, everything worked out fine. And he always tried to kill or sabotage or hurt the main character. And I'd always try to make a happy ending. And we would have this hilarious experience for about 25 minutes. And at 8:30, I'd kiss him on his forehead. And I'd go back. And I'd work some more until midnight. I truly believe that the relationship I have with my son, which is not perfect— perfect, but it's absolutely breathtakingly beautiful for me. It's as a direct result of me seeking harmony, not balance. And so harmony is about the quality of the time that you spend when you're doing something. Are you fully present? Are you— when you're with someone, are you off of your phone? When you're watching a movie, are you connected? When you're having dinner, are you discussing life? So harmony is being fully present and deepening the experience versus trying to get more time. Time is something that's finite. You only have 24 hours in a day, but boy, you can make those 24 mean a whole lot more depending on how you spend the time.

Raise your standard.

Apple, at the core, its core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better. Not one drop of My self-worth depends on your acceptance of me. I don't ever give up. I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated.

Hey, Believe Nation! If you want to see my all-time favorite top 10 rules of success, I have a very special secret video for you. These are the individual clips that I have personally learned the most from and applied to my life and my business. Check the link in the description for details.