The Habits of Highly Successful Billionaires

Have you ever wondered what the world's most successful billionaires have in common besides their massive bank accounts and private jets? It's not just good genes or dumb luck. These people have developed powerful habits that have helped them achieve incredible success and become some of the most influential people on the planet. In this episode, we'll dive into the fascinating world of billionaire habits and uncover mindset hacks, specific routines, and thinking patterns that have helped people like Warren Buffett, Jeff Bezos, and Elon Musk make their fortunes and and change the world. So whether you're looking to become the next big thing in tech, media, or fashion, or just want to learn from the best, this episode is for you. So grab your favorite beverage, put on your billionaire mindset, and get ready to uncover the habits of highly successful billionaires. Enjoy. Habit number 1 is never stop learning with Warren Buffett.

I'm wondering what habit or habits have contributed most to your ability to continue learning and improving your investment decisions in a changing business and financial environment.

I would say that, at least in my case, I haven't been continually learning in terms of the basic principles. You always learn a little more about given techniques, or we learn, you know, I learn more about some industries over time, and therefore maybe I've widened the universe in which I can operate, although more funds narrows it back down, unfortunately. But I know more about businesses than I knew 20 years ago or 40 years ago. I haven't really changed the principles. The last change— the basic principles are still Ben Graham. They were affected in a significant way by Charlie Munger and Bill Fisher in terms of looking at the better businesses, but I didn't leave any of— I didn't leave Graham behind on that. And I really haven't learned any new fundamental principles, but I may have learned a little bit more about how business operates over time. And there's really nothing— I mean, you ought to get an investment framework that comes straight from, in my view, from The Intelligent Investor and from Phil Fisher, more from The Intelligent Investor actually. And then I think you ought to learn everything you can about industries and businesses that where you think you have the ability to get your mind around them if you work at them. And With that arsenal, you'll do very well. And if you've got the temperament for the business.

Habit number 2 is have a beginner's mind with Jeff Bezos.

One of the great paradoxes of inventing at a high level is that you need to be an expert in your domain area and you need to have a beginner's mind. You absolutely need both of those things. The world is too complex to actually just be a beginner. So, you know, I I can't, no matter how inventive I am, I can't go invent a new kind of brain surgery. You have to be a neurosurgeon. You have to already know all there is to know about brain surgery and then take it to the next level. The problem is for many people, by the time they become true experts, they've lost that ability to see things in a fresh way. They've lost the beginner's mind. And so that's another thing you always need to be stepping back and saying, if I'm an expert, I'm an expert in launch vehicles or whatever it is, I need to step back and say, okay, what if I were looking at this for the first time? What would I be seeing and noticing? These are just some of the things you need to do to be innovative.

Habit number 3 is look for negative feedback with Elon Musk.

It's very important to seek out, to actively seek out and listen very carefully to negative feedback. And this is something that people tend to avoid because it's painful. Yeah. But, but I think this is a very common mistake, is to, to not actively seek out and listen to negative feedback.

Where do you do that? Do you go into forums? Do you go into Twitter? Like, what are your areas where you go to look for feedback on, let's say, the Tesla?

Well, it's like everyone I talk to is, in fact, When friends get a product, I say, "Look, don't tell me what you like. Tell me what you don't like." Right. Because otherwise your friend is not going to tell you what he doesn't like.

Right.

He's going to say, "Oh, I love this and that," and leave out the "this is the stuff I don't like" list. Because he wants to be your friend. He doesn't want to offend you. So you really need to to sort of coax negative feedback. And you know that if somebody is your friend or at least not your enemy and they're giving you negative feedback, then they may be wrong, but it's coming from a good place. And sometimes even your enemies give you good negative feedback.

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 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 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.

Habit number 4 is stay ahead with Mark Cuban.

How do you identify what's next?

You know, I just read a lot, right? I'm just one of those guys that just consumes information.

The internet or where?

Everything. Yeah, everything. Anywhere I can get. I just try to learn.

You've always been this way?

Yeah, yeah.

I've always been like a knowledge geek where it mostly tech, but it could be anything. I just— anything business related, technology related, marketing related, you know, culture related. I want to try to stay on top of it. You know, Steve Jobs had this one quote that really stuck with me. He said, everything's a remix. And if you look at the early days of the Apple products, there was this company back in the day called Xerox PARC, and Xerox came out with the first mouse-driven PC, but their marketing sucked and they had no idea what they were doing. No one knew what they're about. Steve Jobs came in a little bit of this, a little bit remixed, and bam, right? All of a sudden you got Apple and then a Macintosh and then they're—

Yeah, he made it sexier.

Yeah.

And then even he got fired, right? He got fired from that company and then they had to bring him back to make it work. And so, you know, for me, the more you learn, the more you know how to remix. And that's what this is all about. So, you know, how do you go from YouTube, which was the first platform for video that got big, to Instagram, to Snapchat, and know, okay, do I want to be on Discover? Do I want to be on Reels? Do I want to be on TikTok? You know, and if I do this, you know, how's YouTube going to treat me? And all the decisions you guys, you guys have got to make on a daily basis, you know, and the fact that like we were just talking, you created all these products and you want it to be organic. That's a business decision too. And then you have to learn by trial and error, right? You were curious about what might work. You know, obviously, you know, you're walking proof of what does work, right? And now you've got to be able to continue to make those decisions because in this business, with all the margins on these products, everybody's coming at you all the time, right?

Yeah.

And they think they can do the exact same thing, but it's not that easy. But for me, it's like, that's why I try to stay ahead, because whether it's artificial intelligence, whether it's VR, whether it's crypto, whether it's metaverse, all these things may not be prime time yet. but I want to know when they will be, and I want to be out front when they, when they are.

Habit number 5 is don't give up too early with Sam Altman.

Knowing when to quit and knowing when to give up on something is— there's no perfect answer to that, but it's really challenging to even get that approximately correct. I think most people give up on things way too early. So the mistake that most people make is they try something It does not immediately work. You see this particularly in young entrepreneurs. It does not immediately work. After 7 weeks they say, you know what, I tried this thing, it's just not meant to be, and I have too many other projects, and so they immediately give up. And you kind of, you know, the satirical version of this is people that are 23 and have started 14 startups, because they give up on every one before it could ever possibly be successful. These things are really hard. They take a very long time. There are a lot of critics. There are a lot of people who say this thing sucks. It's going to fail. It's really stupid. And then also there's like what at YC we call the trough of sorrow, where no one even bothers to say it sucks because no one cares at all. And that is at least as demotivating. Most of the founders that I have spent a lot of time with that have gone on to be super successful spent a very long time on their idea when a lot of other people would have given up. And either people said it sucks or people said nothing at all. And a framework that I have for when to give up and when to keep working is it should be an internal, not an external decision. If people aren't using it or if people are saying it's bad, that alone is not a reason to give up. You want to pay some attention to that. They might be right. But I think the best entrepreneurs I know, they make an internal decision about when to give up or when to keep working on something. It's basically when you have run out of ideas and something is not working, then it's a good time to stop.

Habit number 6 is meditate with Ray Dalio.

How long have you been meditating for, actually? 42 years.

And what got you started?

The Beatles. When the Beatles started meditating and they drew attention to it, and it was a curiosity, and I thought I would try it. And then it's changed my life. It's the biggest influence in whatever success I've had in life. So can you remember what it was like in the first few weeks or first few months? Yeah, I remember wrestling around with it. I remember that, you know, you go into the mantra. I went into the mantra, then the thoughts would come back and it would be that back and forth. And then as it got better and better and I got deeper into it, the thoughts would become more valuable, more tantalizing, and it was almost more of a temptation to think about those particular thoughts because I didn't want to lose those ideas. And then I knew that I had to push those away, and it was almost difficult. And then after a while, I remember then disappearing into it. That was something. The first benefits were that ability to have the quietness, the tranquility, the ability to get energy from it rather than sleep. It would provide me more energy than sleeping. Those kinds of benefits. But then it went on to develop an ongoing equanimity, that centeredness. That ability to go above myself and my circumstances and to look down at them from a higher level with a clarity and an objectivity. And then it started to bring out my subconscious and my creativity, because subsequently I've studied neuroscience. I've been very interested in that, and I've learned that there's a part of our brain in the neocortex, which is where imagination exists, which is where creativity exists. And it opened me to that. I experienced it. I didn't understand what was happening at the time, but it provided those things as time went on.

And habit number 7, the last one before some very special bonus clips, is keep a journal with Oprah Winfrey.

As I've grown older, I've learned to appreciate living in the moment, and I ask that you do too. I've asked I'm asking this graduating class, those of you here, I've asked all of my viewers in America and across the world to do this one thing: keep a grateful journal. Every night, list 5 things that happened this day and days to come that you are grateful for. What it will begin to do is to change your perspective of your day and your life. I believe that if you can learn to focus on what you have, you will always see that the universe is abundant and you will have more. If you concentrate and focus in your life on what you don't have, you will never have enough. Be grateful. Keep a journal.

Stop trying to do this alone. If you've got a big idea inside you, you can't do this alone. You need people around you to help you, to encourage you, to support you, to cover your weaknesses, to help you actually go off and accomplish that big dream of yours. This is one of the biggest things that I think holds people back, holds entrepreneurs back, is you're probably decently good at the thing that you want to do. You know, you've had some experience, or you've gone and learned and figured it out, and you slowly get better as you keep practicing, keep going and doing more. And maybe at some point you even did try to hire somebody. Maybe at some point you did try to bring somebody on and it didn't work out. Didn't work out. And here's where everybody makes the mistake. You retreat and go back to say, you know what, it was just a lot faster when I did it myself. Does that happen? Has that happened to you? Ever been there? You hired somebody, you thought, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna hire somebody. You do it, it doesn't work out, and then you go back to say, "I'm just gonna do this all myself." No! No, no, no, no, no! That is not the answer! That is not the answer. That's like if you go on one date and it doesn't work out, now you're never gonna go on another date again, you're never gonna be married. Right? That doesn't make sense. That doesn't make sense. You're living in fear as opposed to actually trying to build the thing that you're capable of building. Here's what happens when you first hire somebody. You don't know what you're doing, right? It's like when you first did anything, you don't know what you're doing. So why do you expect to be great at picking the right person and then treating them well and then managing them well? You don't know what you're doing. Uh, there's a guy in my Movement Makers who, who joined my Discord as well, and he was talking about how he had hired his second video editor and it didn't work out, and he had to let the person go. So he's hired 2 video editors, both of them couldn't get his style, and he had to let them go, and he's going back to editing everything himself. Now, as a short-term solution, great. Like, stuff has to get up, videos have to be edited, get them out. But don't stop searching just because you had 2 failed hires, right? Like, you If you tomorrow are editing videos, awesome. But if you next year are still editing your videos, not awesome. No, not awesome. Not anymore, right?

This is how we start to raise our standards.

And so the first 2 people that you hired weren't good fits. Great. Keep searching. Keep looking. Your perfect fit is out there. And as you go through some people and go through the process, you'll get better at actually finding the right person. You know, you'll get better at it. Don't judge yourself to say, well, I suck at this, I can't hire, I'm never gonna find the person, it's just faster to do it myself. Right, there's that old expression, you can go fast by yourself, but you go far with a team. You have to build a team. So let's talk about how to do it, okay? Let's talk, let's talk about steps, practical steps, building the team, creating the culture. Someone who now has 37 people on the team. I'm not, I'm not Jeff Bezos with, I don't know how many thousands of people on his team, but 37 on our team right now. How do you, how do you go from starting up to that? Step number 1 is figure out what is the most important skill that you need that has to get done in the business that you suck at, okay, and you don't want to get better at? What do you suck at that has to get done in the business? Not something that, you know, maybe it's a nice to have, but like it has to get done in the business. You suck at it. And not just you suck at it right now, you just, you never want to get better at it. You're just not interested in it. Some people love this thing and you hate it and you never want to get better at it. What is that thing? That's the first person you need to bring on the your business. It could be part-time. It, it, I, it definitely should not be a full-time person. Here's why. One, you don't know how to hire yet. Two, it's gonna take you too long to be able to save up the money to hire somebody full-time. And three, you're not used to managing people. So you want a part-time person. When I first started, I had interns. I had interns from from high school who are helping me do a lot of the things that I need to get done, and it was part of their school credit. Nina is back! Um, I did foreign language interns, so people came to Toronto as part of their education, being from a different country, learning English and getting job experience. You find people. I've had people volunteer to join. I've had people work 1 hour a day to join. Just like you need to start getting some people involved because it makes you feel like you're not alone doing this, which is a big deal. And it also starts building some traction, starts finally getting some of the things off your plate that you wish didn't exist anymore. And suddenly now they don't because someone else is taking care of it. Step number 2 is you have to start asking for help. This is a big problem for a lot of entrepreneurs. You're afraid to ask for help at the startup phase especially. Well, so what if they steal my idea? It's one of the most common questions. Have you ever felt that? What if, what if I tell somebody my idea and they steal it, they go with it? Well, it's possible. It's possible. Very low possibility. Most people are running their own business. The amount of people have come to me and say, Evan, I'd love your help on this, but, but I need you to sign this NDA, non-disclosure agreement. It's like, I don't care about your idea. I have my own business to run. I've got my own channels, my own team, my own things to worry about. I'm not gonna think the top priority is you have some great idea that I'm gonna then take and run with, that that's now my new business plan. No, and now you missed the chance to actually get some feedback and help. So you have to share your idea. The idea alone is not enough. It's the execution that really matters. So it's not just the idea that you've got, it's can you be the one to go off and create it, to make it, to birth it, to turn it into reality. And speed matters. Have you ever seen anybody with your idea, right, air quotes, quote, your idea go off and win while you were still sitting on the sidelines? Right? I've seen it happen so many times. I have so many people message me about it. It's like, "I had this idea 3 years ago and I didn't do it, and now here's this person off making millions off of it." Well, what's the difference? Chances are they had less heart than you, less of a drive to do good, less caring than you. Why are they winning? Well, because they started and they asked for help, and you were trying to do it all by yourself. So you have to share your idea. You have to recruit people on board. You have to ask for help because those people can make the difference between you actually following through on your goals. And then step 3 is you have to mentor the people on your team. You have to care about them as humans. The next big mistake a lot of entrepreneurs make when they're hiring is, "Okay, this person's going to come on, they're going to take all the stuff off my plate so I can focus on being the CEO, and then everything's going to be great." And that's a nice theory, you know, that kind of happens. But what you want to think about is this is a human working with you. This is a human who's got goals and their own ambitions and their own dreams. And your job should be to help them grow as a human, that they should be better as a person by spending time with you, by being around you, and by being in your company. Most people treat people like robots. They treat them like monkeys. Okay, get this done, get that done, perfect, gone. You know, you made, you made my life easier, awesome, that's what you're hired to do, go do your job. Where, where people make the mistake of is one, not giving enough training at the beginning. Like, did you actually set somebody up for success? And the two, just not caring about them enough as a human. I'm actually starting to find it harder as I grow. It was a lot easier when I had 1 to 5 people on the team, but at 37, I don't know what everybody's up to. I don't remember everybody's projects. I'm not in as much of the day-to-day of what they're doing. I find it hard balance everybody's goals and just stay on top of their life. And I don't know what it's gonna look like when we're at 50 people or 75 people or 100 people. I don't know what that process looks like. I'm figuring out, you know what, I gotta ask for help as I grow. But two of the things that I've done that have worked out pretty well, the first is I dedicate Mondays to team days. So I have an entire day of the week that's dedicated to team. And so I'm spending that day on Zoom calls or in person meeting with team, asking them what's going on, helping them with their projects, and just spending time with them. And so people know that on Mondays when they save all their stuff and talk to me about it, scheduling in time for team matters. So I have different things for different days of the week. Today's a Tuesday because I'm recording, so recording is Tuesday, but yesterday was Monday and, and I was spending the whole time basically on Zoom calls with team. The second thing that I'll do is a quarterly check-in with people, and we don't even talk about the business. Usually do it on a Sunday, So it's not a workday, it's a Sunday morning coffee. Every Sunday I'm spending with someone on my team. So Sunday morning I grab my coffee, they grab whatever drink they want, and we do a session together. And we will touch on business, we'll touch on what they're doing, but not operationally focused. Not, hey, you didn't get this thing done, or hey, how are we doing on this project? It's more like, where do you want to go with 'What are you curious about? What are you loving about the work that you're doing here? How can I help you get to the next step? What else are you curious about? What are your other goals?' Just, just a life conversation. And you'd be surprised at what comes out. And most people, all they, all they really need is just somebody to listen to them and care. And sometimes action happens immediately after, sometimes it happens, you know, the next month or the next quarter. But when you know the hopes, the goals, the dreams, the ambitions of the people on your team, the people around you, it allows you to be a much better and much more effective leader. So we took you through this, the process of startup, zero, you know, team, all the way to now, how do you manage you know, your first 37 at least people in your company. But underpinning all of this is the understanding that you can't do this alone.

And one of the things that will help you to do the work to create the things that you want in your life is it will help you if you train your mind to start spotting evidence as you're doing the work, as you're going through your day. It will help you If you train your mind to start scanning the world and spotting evidence that yes, indeed, the world is sending you positive signals that things are going to work out. Now, why is it important to train your mind to help you get what you want? Well, the reason why is because if you get into a negative mindset, if you start thinking this business is never going to work, why even bother, or I'm never going to meet anybody, it's nothing but losers out there, look at all these idiots on Hinge. Why the hell should I keep doing this? If you allow your mind to start to rest in a pessimistic, negative, protective, scared, and doubtful stance, your mind will continue to show you reasons why there's nobody on Hinge worth talking to. Your mind will continue to show you all the reasons why you will never make it in business. Your mind will continue to show you all the reasons why you're never going to lose that weight and be able to tuck in your shirt, as my friend Corinne Crabtree always talks about, that transformational moment. And when your mind goes negative, your mind starts to scan the world and will show you more reasons to stop. And the power of training your mind to spot positive signs is very simple. The power is that your mind will start to show you reasons to keep going. Your mind will help you take the step. Your mind will encourage you to feel optimistic, to feel empowered. Just like you woke up today on a Tuesday and it was February 22nd, 2022, and those numbers are lining up, and that makes you in your heart and soul go, whoa, something cool could happen today. Like, that It only happens like once in my lifetime those numbers are going to line up like that. Today is a really cool day, let's go do something with this. You could create that kind of attitude every single freaking day of your life. You could if you train your mind and if you start taking action. And training your mind is the key piece that we're going to talk about. So for those of you that have read The High Five Habit, one of the things that I talk about a lot is every single day, find a naturally occurring heart-shaped object in the world. It could be a stone, it could be a leaf, it could be a cloud, it could be a shape in your coffee. Hey, Chris, if we've got anything around here that looks like a heart, hand it to me. And the reason why I love telling you to start playing a game with yourself where you start your day going, mind, brain, show me some heart— oh, what is this?

Come here, dog treat.

Oh my God, it's a dog treat. Look at this, guys. What shape is that? That right there is a heart. There we go. Check that out. If you say, brain, mind, show me a fucking heart today, guess what's gonna happen? That damn dog biscuit, it's gonna show— it's gonna— you're gonna be like, there's a heart. You're gonna look out at the sky and you're gonna see a heart shape. Oh, right there in the mountains, there's a heart shape in the mountains. In southern Vermont. You're going to see it in the clouds. What you're doing when you tell your mind what's important to you is you're telling your mind and the filter in your brain to change in real time and allow into your consciousness what's important to you. And if you want to see hearts, by God, those damn dog treats are going to start looking like hearts, everybody. That's how you train your mind. It's freaking incredible. And if you want to see evidence of this, follow me on social media. If you follow me, Mel Robbins, on social media, you will see every day I am reposting your stories of finding heart shapes around the world. Now, why is this important? Well, it's important because it's a simple way to prove to you that your mind changes in real time, that if you get serious about becoming more positive and optimistic and encouraging of yourself, if you get serious about saying this. I don't want to see all the reasons why I'm unhappy. I don't want to see, uh, everybody else in the world that's launched a business or that's lost weight and is healthy or that has a really good, uh, marriage or relationship. And I don't want to see that and, and, and have my mind process it as evidence that it's never going to happen for me. I want my mind to reprogram itself and see other people's businesses and see other people getting healthy and see other people in relationships and I want my mind to say, yeah, if they can do it, I can do it. That's evidence. If that person can get healthy, so can I. If that person can find somebody on Hinge, so can I. If that person can reconcile with their child, so can I. Other people can become evidence that you can have it too. Right now, your mind is so fucked up from your past that when you see what other people have and you don't have it, you can't actually translate it through a negative mind and, and see that that's evidence that you're going to win. You see it like, oh, somebody already stole what I wanted, that sucks. And so what I want to start to open your mind to is that you have the power to train your mind to filter the world differently. Just like you woke up and you saw the date today, 2/22/22, and your brain saw that was like, whoa, this is a once-in-a-lifetime day, everybody. You are never going to have another day that lines up like this, ever. What are you going to do with this day? Your mind already interpreted this as, wow, something cool could happen. And if you tell yourself something amazing is going to happen today, something will, because you're going to be looking for it. I swear to God, something will. Something will. If you want to see the good all around you. You got to tell your mind you want to see the good. And this just isn't a bunch of horseshit, everybody. This isn't toxic positivity. There is a filter in your brain called the reticular activating system. The reticular activating system, I call it the RAS. I like to think about it like a giant hairnet on your head, and this RAS sits over your brain. I'm probably getting this wrong, I'm not a neuroscientist. I could give a about getting it right. I just need you to know the basics here so that you can apply it to your life, okay? You don't need a PhD to use the science that super smart people have been working really hard on in order to apply it to your life. That's what I'm here for in your life. I'm here to translate this stuff into simple, believable, and actionable things that you can do to take all this super cool stuff that people are researching and apply it to your normal person's everyday life to help you change from the inside out. And one of the coolest things that you have at your disposal is you have a whole system in your body that you can train and change. And one of those things that you can train and change that is impacted by that real— that word you're hearing a lot of, neuroplasticity. That just means that things are able to twist bend and change, and you're able to learn new things for as long as you're alive. As long as you're breathing, everybody, you got a chance to change the way that you think. As long as you are breathing, you got a chance to change from the inside out how you experience your life. As long as you are still here watching me, people, you got a chance to create a new experience in your life. And one of the things that helps a lot is understanding that right now All of the bullshit from your past has jammed the filter in your mind, body, and spirit, the reticular activating system, and it is clouding your ability to look at the world around you and see hearts. Remember this dog treat? Hearts. Look at that. There's a heart right there.

When it comes to an affirmation, affirmations can be powerful. And for some people they're not. And a lot of people say, well, you know, if the affirmation is so powerful, how come I'm not experiencing the effect? What scientists tell us is the average human speaks to themselves consciously or unconsciously. We have thoughts spinning around in our brain, about 60,000 to 80,000 thoughts per day. Some of those thoughts are the words to the songs, and they are the affirmations. Neuroscientist Andrew Nürberg tells us— Nürberg is his name, I'm sorry— in his work that a single word, a single word has the power to change the genes that create stress or relieve stress in our lives. He's telling us that something within us has the ability to shift the very core of our expression. So we know that words are powerful. The key to a successful affirmation is that we must communicate with the subconscious part of our mind, number one. Number two, we must communicate in the language that the subconscious recognizes. And this is where, you know, you can say— I had a friend of mine friend of mine when I was working in the corporations that had affirmations all over his office, all over his computer screen. They were on little Post-it notes in the car we would carpool in. You know, my perfect mate is manifesting for me now. My perfect mate is manifesting for me now. That was his affirmation. And I said, do you say these things? He goes, oh man, I say them about a million times a day. I said, do they work for you? He says, nah, you know, these, these things don't work. And I said, why do you think they don't work? And he said, look at me. He says, I'm an engineer, I'm a slob. He said, I wear the same clothes to work 3 out of 5 days during the week, you know. And the bottom line, by the time he finished describing himself to me, even he didn't believe that he was worthy of his perfect mate manifesting for him now. So he was saying the words, but he was not— there was the underlying emotion and what he was actually feeding into his system was counter to what those words were saying. So it's not enough to say the words. When we go into our most ancient and cherished spiritual traditions, those words are what become the prayers. And for many people, I have, and I know you've heard this as well, a lot of people feel that prayer is broken, that the world doesn't work today the way it worked worked in biblical times, that we have lost our power and that we have no ability to communicate with a greater power, with God, with the forces around us. And it's largely because the secrets, the deep truth of our relationship, the fundamental physics of our relationship to our world, uh, have been minced and parceled and in many cases deleted from the texts, leaving us with a sense that we are essentially powerless beings. And if you are powerless, then you are a victim. And if you're a victim, you need a savior. And that savior is coming to us on a silver plate in terms of technology, in terms of political leaders. I will save you if you just do these things. And this is why I say I think one of the most powerful acts and the most radical act we can do is to think for ourselves, original thinking based upon the deep truth of our relationship to our bodies and the earth, not based upon the false assumptions of obsolete science that permeate our academic world right now. It's one of the reasons I left academia. It's one of the reasons many of my colleagues who are in this genre, who are very well-respected scientists, have left academia because they were not allowed to share with students and in their writings and their papers what they had found in their research that reflects a very different reality. For me, it's, it's a, it's good news. It's a beautiful message of hope and possibility as a sovereign a sovereign biological being. For a system that's based on centralized power and control, it's probably the worst news they could imagine because it means we don't need the centralized power and control. I think ultimately we're all better off by embracing our own power because it frees us from the fear of a changing world. And we all know our world, my world is changing, your world is changing. Nor is it ever faster than we can document it in our classrooms and textbooks. But the change isn't necessarily bad, uh, until we compare it to what we've known in the past. And this is where the fear comes in. So the, the new discoveries helping us to understand we are part of rather than separate from our world, and this is This is where the affirmations come in. So in, um, I was at the CERN Superconducting Super Collider in Geneva, Switzerland, where the physics experiments that are revealing what happened moments after our universe began, they recreate the beginning of our universe, and then they're able to document what happened then to create the laws of physics that we are experiencing, that we're living under right now. And what they announced in 2012 is that there is in fact a field, an intelligent field of energy. It's a subtle energy that underlies all of creation. Um, before then it was a metaphor, or a lot of people felt like it was a New Age concept. You know, we are all one, everything is connected. Or an indigenous, you know, a lot of indigenous elders talk about this. Here's, here's where they got stuck. And I've gone to scientific conferences where they'll take their hands and they'll say, oh yeah, there's— that's, that's no longer controversial. There is a field. There's a field out there that connects all things. And their hands go like this. There's a field out there that connects all things because subconsciously they're still saying we're separate from that field, right? But here's what the science is is showing us— and this, this was a game changer for me, uh, just a mind blower— that every atom in every molecule and every cell of our bodies in this very instant— so it's not like it's about to happen, it's happening right now— every atom is constantly emerging and collapsing into that field. And what that says to us is that we are the field. It's not the fields out there.

There.

We literally are wrinkles. We are disturbances in this field. This, this body that is held in place by a conscious awareness— as long as I'm breathing on this earth, I am a disturbance. I'm a localized wrinkle in that field. And what that means is that if I want to bring about change in my world, I don't have to force a change out there. I become that change. And as I have become that change, the field is now reflecting what it is because I'm part of the field. So it's a subtle but it's a very powerful way, very different way of thinking. You're not, you're not imposing change on the world around you. You are becoming the change. So you're becoming the abundance, you're becoming the love, the gratitude, the care, the healing. You're becoming those things, and that is very different. We're conditioned to ask for them, to plead for them, because we're led to feel powerless in our lives, when in fact there are modalities of ancient prayer that were edited from the, the religious texts in the 4th century by the church. They took, they took out the information helping us to understand that this, this deep relationship leaving us powerless. And affirmations are essentially a form of prayer, or prayer is a form of affirmation, however you want to look at it, where we are communicating. And I want to be really clear, it's not about control, it's not about manipulation, it's not about imposing our will. It's about participating in the way that this field unfolds and and expresses in, in our lives. And when you really begin to get that shift, it's, it's subtle and it's powerful. It's not making something happen out there, and that means you can't blame what's out there for your experiences. I, I come from a very dysfunctional, broken family, and I had to make a choice early in life as to whether or not I would— and community— as to whether or not I would allow that to define define my, my experience, to define my existence. Other people around me had the same experience, and they made very different choices. They today continue to blame their environment, their parents, their family, their upbringing for the sad and unfortunate things in their lives. And, and that's a path. It's not right, wrong, good, or bad, but we have a choice to make another path. And when we began as a scientist, beginning to understand these relationships gave me the reason to think differently, uh, and it also gave me the reason to test in my life if those thoughts are really true or not, what works and what doesn't.

You wanted to be a professional baseball player, right?

Yeah.

But then you got an injury. I did. Similar to me. So you never made it to the big leagues, or did you play minor league for a little bit? I did, yeah. And I played Division I college baseball too. Yeah, like every guy— like you and I talked about this last time— it's always our injuries that ended our careers. I probably— it probably put me into a premature place where I was going anyways.

I don't know.

You weren't going to be in the bigs for—

I wasn't. I played enough baseball with guys who ended up in the big leagues to know my limitations. And so like anything in life, things happen for you, not to you. That injury happened for me. It certainly didn't seem like it at the time, but it got me out of that and into something like what we're talking about now that kind completely changed my life. So yeah, but yeah, I wanted to be an athlete for sure, all my life. All your life. That was my mask.

And then when it—

exactly.

And then when it ended, your identity was like, who am I, right?

Yes, lost. Well, like a lot— you and I were just talking this before we went on. Yeah, we know our professional athlete friends, where their career changes. I went into a— like anybody, like whatever your dream is, when the first one ends and doesn't happen, whether that be a relationship, it could be your marriage, it ends, it was a dream, right? Or a business venture or a sport. I went into a pretty good depression. And, uh, and how old were you at the time? 21, 22. And I ended up, you know, it's because people always see the after, like the house or whatever, houses or whatever the material things are. But I ended up bad, man. I ended up depressed. I ended up moving back at home with my parents. I was living in the city. I remember I was living in this, sleeping in the same bed I grew up in with the same teddy bear, the same posters on the walls, like going back in time, like 6 years. I'm back where I was. Totally unemployed and couldn't find work, didn't have the motivation to get up and find a job, just sort of eating out of their fridge and laying around all day. So that's where I was many, many years ago after baseball. And when you realize things in your life happen for you, truly, especially in hindsight— everybody knows it in hindsight, right? If you look back at any disaster, tragedy, most people look back 5, 10 years later, they go, that happened for me, that was actually a good thing. And so I was unemployed, I couldn't find a job, And my old man, my dad, was the best dad role model you could ever have in your life. Hardworking man, good man. It's better man than me, has more integrity than me. He's the best man I've ever known. But when I was growing up, my dad had a drinking problem. And so my dad had gotten sober recently, and he was going to these meetings. And he comes home from one of his meetings and says, there's a guy at my meeting who can get you a job. It's right down the street in San Dimas. You're going to be working with kids. Doesn't pay anything, it's $6 an hour, but you're going to get this damn job. So show up there tomorrow morning, 8 AM, ask for Tim. So I walked— it's— I drive down there, it's a place called McKinley Home for Boys. Little did I know that would alter my entire life. That was the most significant thing that happened to me. And so I walk in there, I said, I'm Ed Mylett, I'm here for the job. They're like, what job? I'm like, I don't know, just my dad told me to show up here.

Yeah.

I need to ask for Tim. They're like, we have no idea who the hell Tim is. What's his last name? I said, I, I don't, I don't know his last name. And they're like, so you showed up for a job that you don't know what it is and you don't know who it is that's hiring you? I'm like, here's what I know, he's an alcoholic.

I'm like, oh Tim, yeah, we know that Tim.

And so they bring me to the guy and he says, uh, you're hired, let's go. Like literally shakes my hand and you're hired. And he introduces me to these 8 boys that were my boys. They were 7, 8, and 9 years old. And basically I lived with these boys, these precious boys, and we ended up adding a few more. My boys were all wards of the court. They were all molested by family or parents were in prison, and so they had no family. And so my whole life changed. All of a sudden these became— I'm this 22-year-old guy, these guys become my sons. Wow. And I did holidays with them, I did birthdays with them, I lived with them literally in a home or like a boarding dorm. McKinley is a massive campus full of children that have been displaced from their homes that live in individual, like, cottages.

Like a foster care facility?

Massive though. Really? Yep. All boys. It's in San Dimas here. And, um, wow, it just altered my life, man, because I, I'd been an athlete, had a huge ego, had that mask. I wanted to compete, I wanted to win, I wanted attention, I wanted recognition. First time literally in my life I went, wow, I, I love helping people, I love making a difference. And my boys were just come from horrendous situations. And so just— I always say this all the time, and I have those eyes too. You have them. I think sometimes kids who grow up with some dysfunction, they just have different eyes. Yeah, they just have these eyes that are— these boys all were different, but they had that same eyes. They're just like, man, love me, believe in me, you know, care about me. And I had those eyes because I grew up in an alcoholic family, and my whole life changed. I just went, wow, I love I actually love helping people and being involved in people's lives. I didn't know that because everything was, you're great, you're great. You know what it is when you're an athlete, right?

Sure.

Everything's about you. You're amazing. Free dinners, free this. You're a stud. All of a sudden I wasn't a stud, and all of a sudden it wasn't about me. It was about these 10 boys that ended up being 10 of them. And it just altered my life, man. And so after that, I ran into the financial business that I ended up in. But I would have completely flunked out of that financial business had I not been with my boys for those years. And I was there for 2 years.

2 years.

Yeah, man, like 8 hours a day type of thing, or sometimes more, sometimes 16, 18. I, I think about— I'm not kidding you, I think about my boys and my experience there. Two of them are still very close with me. Uh, every day there's a moment where I reflect on that. It altered me completely, like what I wanted to do. I always wanted to be famous and rich and successful, and now I just wanted to serve. Yeah, I wanted to help. Little did I find out I could get rich and famous and all that other stuff I thought I wanted through serving people.

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 the 7 books that can make you rich, check the video right there next to me.

I think you'll love it.

Continue to believe and I'll see you there. These are 7 books that have had a tremendous impact on my life, how I think about business, and I hope they have the same impact on you. Now, I used to have a ton of books.

I used to have walls and walls of books.