Stop Settling: DREAM Big to Unleash Success in 9 Minutes

Good morning, Believe Nation. It's Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in you. I believe in your potential, and I want to see that thing that you've got inside you come out so you can have a positive impact on yourself, on your family, your community, and the world. So to help you on your journey, today's message is Dream Big. Over to you, Steve Jobs. I wake up every morning, and espresso keeps me going.

I wake up every morning, I think that, as you know right now, the computer industry is in the tank. Personal computers, big computers, everything. And it's difficult. It's a difficult time. But I'm sure that Henry Ford had a few bad quarters back in the 1920s. And the automobile had a sort of historical imperative. It had, the minute it was invented, a sequence of events had to happen. The same is true with the personal computer. There is a tremendous momentum behind this. And I think that this year may be a delay. This year we may look back and say, well, 1985 was a slow year. But there is such momentum behind this that it will happen. It will permeate and change forever our educational processes. And my hope again is that not too many generations of students will pass through before this happens. It will happen within 20 years. It probably will happen within 10 years, but it could happen within 5 years. I am going back to the United States this weekend, and then about 2 weeks from today I'll be in the Soviet Union for the first time, in Moscow, because one of my dreams has been to sell Macintoshes in the Soviet Union. And one of the highest agendas on my priority is to is to get them starting to think about exactly the same thing. So maybe 6 months or a year, year and a half from now, we can have some Soviet schools here at our Europe consortium meeting.

It can be hard to keep perspective when you hit a rough patch. It can be hard to stay sane and stay motivated and stay optimistic when you fall on tough times, when something doesn't go right, when the market slows down, when you lose a big customer. And that's part of the game of being an entrepreneur. We're going to have these highs and lows, but hopefully we're moving forward in a positive direction. And part of winning as an entrepreneur is just sticking with it. It's just staying on the path. It's just every day getting up and being consistent and moving forward. You only really lose if you give up, right? And so you can lose little battles. But if you keep going, you're going to win the war. And I think what really helps you keep consistent and keep motivated and keep on every day getting up and fighting is remembering the why, is remembering your big dream, the big goal, what you're trying to accomplish. And so for me, I think about untapped potential. You know, I think the biggest problem in the world is untapped human potential. I think if we can solve that, we solve all the major problems of the world. And I think the way to help untap people, help to unlock them, help bring out that potential is through the environment. Right? You may not have that with your friends and your family, your parents, the people around you, but you can get that from the books and videos and the resources that you watch and consume. And so it's why I created this YouTube channel. It's like what keeps me motivated on a daily basis is thinking about that big problem. The biggest problem the world is facing is untapped human potential. and if I can create content that slowly moves people forward, slowly helps unlock a little bit of potential. If you keep hearing the same message multiple times from different people, slowly it starts to seep in, right? The more time you spend around successful people, the more you want to become successful, the more you adopt their mindset and positivity. And the more you hang around people who are not accomplishing things, who are complaining and who are negative, the more you're going to be like those people. And so my solution is to create that for you, for myself. I want to be around uber successful people and have their mindset seep into me. And so whenever things don't go my way, whenever a series doesn't work out, whenever something happens, you know, life is going to happen, problems are going to happen in business. It's never just a straight line up. Whenever those things happen in my business, people often ask, well, how do you stay optimistic? How do you, how do you stay going? How are you so positive all the time? Was because I believe in where we're going, right? Like, I have a big dream. I want to help a billion entrepreneurs. I want to help unlock potential. And I believe that the way to do it is through the environment. And so even though this one thing didn't work out, it's not everything, right? It's being able to step out from the trees to see the forest, to see the big picture. So we may have lost one battle, but I'm still fighting the war, and I'm going to have an impact, and I'm going to make a difference. And so just reminding myself of the why, what I'm trying to accomplish, why I'm doing it, that gets me fired up again to overcome whatever short-term hassles or problems that I'm facing. And so the question of the day I have for you is, what is your big dream? What's the thing that gets you excited, that keeps you motivated, that keeps you working hard every day, even when you might lose a battle? Share it down in the comments below. I'm excited to see it. I think writing it down can help you, you know, remember why you're doing this and could also potentially inspire the other people watching to help them chase their dreams as well. Share it down in the comments below. I also want to give a quick shout out to Henry Kaminski Jr. Henry, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. I really, really appreciate the support and I hope you enjoyed the read. So thank you guys so much for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.

It's so easy to solve a local problem. You need to dream bigger. Over and over again, we hear ideas that are interesting in a local context, but they're not big enough. So dream bigger, right? As a general statement about society, we need to ask the harder questions, and we need to ask for stronger solutions. There is a global emerging consensus around issues and so forth. Together, we're very strong.

It's important to me to have the balls to look at the biggest problems we face as a society and say, that's my problem to solve, right? Obesity, metabolic disease, the slide towards ill health, however you want to categorize it, that's my problem. Like, I don't even wake up thinking that's my business partner's problem. That's my problem. Now I'm working with my business partners because they're very sharp guys, but at the end of the day, like, I own that responsibility, and that's awesome to me, right? Like, having that, It isn't a weight that drags me down. It's like this goal to chase that's so big that I'm just stoked that there are people in the world that are prepared to dream that big. Like, I'm inspired by that in others and hopefully can inspire other people with our dream.

And the first and foremost important thing about running your own race is dreaming big. And here I'm called back to my childhood when I was just starting elementary school. At that point in time, the Supreme Court had just ruled that public school districts could pursue desegregation by using forced busing to achieve racial balance in their schools. In fact, I started my own education as a first grader being bused to a school across town, even though my father was a principal at a school 5 blocks away. Although I was a live subject in one of the nation's most controversial legal debates, I frankly didn't know what the big deal was all about because These kids who didn't look like me sure acted just like me. But desegregation was a big deal to my parents, and leaders of their generations knew a great— knew that great change was in store, and it was the right thing to do. And they often met with resistance, and often violent resistance. But because of their struggle, their sacrifice, I received a great gift. and that's the gift to dream big. I knew my history. I remembered the pride of my mother telling about when she took me and my brother, brought us back to Washington, D.C., and held me as a 9-month-old during the March on Washington when Martin Luther King laid out his dream for equal and harmonious, meritocratic America. And dreaming big to me meant knowing my history, but not being bound by it. It meant harnessing the past to drive me into the future. It meant grounding myself in who I was and where I came from so I could soar to become who I wanted to become. Let me give you the one word secret to happiness.

One word.

This is all you need to be happy.

The most important word ever.

If you had to think of one word that's most important to you or that sums you up or that would be kind of like a little beacon. Hey, Believe Nation! If you want to know what the most important one word is for Tony Robbins, Gary Vaynerchuk, Oprah Winfrey, will.i.am, and Howard Schultz, I have a very special secret video for you. Check the description for details.