This Will Open Your MIND – A 31-Minute Journey

Note to the ladies: do not wear mascaras and eyeliners.

I haven't cried as much in the past 4 days as I have in maybe my life. I don't know, that was crazy. I'm here one more day, got some meetings lined up, and I'll take you guys with me. What's up, LA? Hello! Good morning, Believe Nation! What time is it? I don't know. Just before 8 o'clock?

It's 11.

Toronto time, but LA time it's 8 o'clock. I slept okay. There's Nina. She's getting ready. We gotta go in 25 minutes or so. We're excited! There's just researching things to expect. Sounds like it's gonna be a lot of crazy. And I can't bring the camera, so I'll take some pictures along the way and then report back tonight how everything went.

I'm scared.

You're scared? That's good. Why? You gotta do something that scares you. Yeah. You checking your makeup in the camera? I already did my makeup before. I woke up before Nina, did my makeup, and now I'm ready to go. Alright, exciting! Here we go, day 1. We're scared. Alright, what's up everyone? It is— it's day what? What day is it?

Day 4. Day 5.

Day 5 because we started filming. I don't remember. I filmed nothing. I filmed zero on this.

I filmed something.

You did?

Yes! Yeah, I filmed something. I filmed you guys dancing. I filmed, um, the stuff that— I filmed a little bit.

Enter Nina's footage now. Welcome back. Okay, I took no video footage. It's crazy here. We start our days at We wake up at what time? 7-something?

7.

Earlier than my normal work time.

And the conference goes until—

10:30, 11:30. The first day was midnight, right? After midnight.

Straight. Like the first day there was not a single break. Yeah.

No.

No.

No break until midnight.

Yeah.

No break. It's crazy. So I've been way behind on my emails. I didn't make a single video. Also I wanted to— enjoy the experience in documenting it. I felt like I would take it away. There's a lot of content, so I'm making a video now. It's on our last day. Well, last day for Nina. Nina goes home tomorrow. Last day for everyone except me. I'll take you guys on my rest of the journey in LA. But, uh, let's go around. Nina, what did you learn?

Um, what did I learn? Oh, it was outstanding. There's a lot of stuff.

What are you gonna take away?

Limiting belief. Don't let that inner voice overtake your— oh my God, what's that? The real you. The truth you.

Wow, Nina's excited. Look at that.

It's overwhelming, but it's good. I feel good. There are a lot of stuff that you won't expect to take from this event. I was crying so much that I my, my mascara and my eyeliner all smudged over my face. Note to the ladies: do not wear mascaras and eyeliners.

You can get waterproof ones. Note to the ladies, there's waterproof versions. Yeah, okay, I know this. I'm putting lemon on myself. We're eating. We all got salad. Part of the end is they challenge you to do a 10-day challenge of Basically healthy eating with no— what can we have? No caffeine, no coffee, no dairy, no sugars, no meat, no meats, and we're not— and we're also not doing anything with flour. So it really limits your options for 10 days, but we got salads. There's mine. There's Nina's. And there's Lily's, which is a good segue over to Lily. How was your experience, Lily?

It was outstanding. It was really good, really good. The thing that I actually really learned about myself is that I was making up all these stories in my head. I was letting it control me.

I was— Nice.

It's like nobody wanted to listen to my voice, people didn't want to hear my message, nobody cares, all that stuff. And I realized it held me back from doing a lot of things. I wanted to launch a YouTube video channel, which I didn't do because I'm like, "Nobody wants to hear what I have to say. I have nothing important to say." I don't do well on my Snapchat videos because nobody wants to say— nobody wants to know what I have to say. But more importantly, I don't help people who I think could do so much better because I assume they don't want to hear what I have to say. And as a result, I allow them to be in their state and their situation, and I just watch from the sidelines. So no more, okay? I have something to say, and what it is that I want to say is that I believe that every single person have the power within them to be extraordinary. And that's my message to everybody, and that's what I want to say.

Woo! Yay! I love it! Deep in the dark there, we got Alex playing the piano. Alex! Yeah, I'm zooming in on you. Oh, he's coming out.

What's up?

This is Alex. You guys know Alex. What did you take away? What did you learn? What do you want to tell?

Let me pour myself a drink as I tell you the story. Alright, so what did I learn? Oh, there's a lot. There's a ton of notes. Um, ooh, you know what, some wine.

She's getting excited about the wine too.

So what did I learn? I lost my voice multiple times, but it doesn't stop me from yelling. I'm going full out. And jeez, I became aware of how many limiting beliefs I have and how I've never really been aware of myself. It's a weird thing to say, but especially on the last day, right at the end, we're supposed to have this conversation with our future self or ourselves and just recognize ourselves. And I've never really done that. And it made me super emotional. I started crying. Like, I've never talked to myself and been proud of myself. I'm finding that as I'm continuously growing as a leader, as I'm trying to be a great role model, as I'm trying to build something amazing and have a place, safe place for people, I'm really hard on myself. And I think that there should be a fine balance between not being satisfied and wanting to grow, but not feeling like a failure. And so for me, one of the things that was an issue a lot was I've always had trouble receiving compliments from people. Every time I would get a compliment, in my mind I would be like, "Well, I'm still procrastinating, I'm still doing all these bad things, and I don't feel deserved." Like, I would feel ashamed even, you know, that they're— even though they're sharing their love. And so one of the things that came out for me was I deserve to be proud. There's a lot of things that I've accomplished, there's a lot of difficulties that I went through. It's hard to realize that, that I thought So little of myself. And so that was one of the things that I realized. I, um, there's a bunch of other things like I'm quitting smoking, that's another thing. One of the biggest focuses I, for me, on these 4 days was you need to put emotion into whatever you want to accomplish. Accept that motivation is not going to carry you through. Motivation, you know, will start you up, you're like, "Alright, I want to go to the gym, I'm going to wake up," and boom, 2, 3 days you start to do it, which has been a problem of mine. But then you drop out. So there's a part of like putting emotion to everything that you do. It's not just like, "Oh, I gotta go to the gym. Oh, I gotta do this. Oh, I gotta do this." And it's like this anger and angst and discomfort. My whole body right now is just like crumbling inside. So being aware of that and catching yourself and catching the language that you use, and then from there seeing the vision of you already accomplishing those things, which I've never really done. Like, so I want to get fit and whatever that means to me. So I have to make a clear thing. This is what fit means for me. On a side note, actually, I've realized that I want to think about fitness. I want to have more energy. I want to have more energy myself. I don't want to be tired during the day. I don't want to take naps. For me to want to do something to make a big life change like the smoking or whatever, I need to have enough emotion. I need to hate it enough. I need to have enough angst in it to be like, that's it, I'm quitting this for myself, I'm making this change for myself, that. So it's funny that realizing that there's that level of pain that you need to experience and there's a level of discomfort you need to feel in order to make a change. The thing I realized in this event is you can induce that just as much as I can make myself happy, I can go yeah, woo, I can go energetic, right? But I can also bring it down, so I'm in control of my body. And so you can create these emotions if you wanna make change. So if you feel like, you know what, I'm not happy with my body, I'm not happy with this, you start to go to the gym, you know, January New Year's resolution, whatever, blah blah blah, you start going and you drop out and you hate yourself and you hate yourself and you start to eat more and whatever. This is whatever cycle, everybody has their own cycles, I have my cycles. It's being like, you know what, this is not enough, now let me picture what the worst case scenarios are in 5 or 10 years if I continue doing this, what's my life gonna be like? What are, how's it gonna look? Am I gonna be happy? And you start to feel the pain for that and you're like, Jesus, you know, excuse me, but you know, you know, like in 5, 10 years, right, maybe, you know, maybe your loved one left you. Maybe the thing that you're battling with is not weight. Maybe the thing you're battling with is you're not having your career. You're coming home and then all your family who love you very much, your friends, your whatever, your next-door neighbor, whoever cares about you in your life, and they're seeing you unhappy, and then you start to suck them in, and they start to pull back. In 5 or 10 years, you imagine yourself, you're being left alone. Is that enough to make a change in your life? And so for me, there's a bunch of moments where I've experienced deep emotion, you know, just crying from my soul and just being in discomfort and pain, but it was a good thing because I saw then the light at the end. Tony Robbins pointed this out. He mentioned that he hates being called a motivational speaker. Motivation is not enough. You need to create plans, you need to create strategies, you need to break bad behaviors. You need to break those things that you fall into patterns of. So it's like you coming home, you grabbing a beer, and every time you think of coming home, it's like you opening that fridge and you grab that beer. So you got to cut those bad behaviors, you got to cut those patterns in half, whatever it is, hitting the snooze button, you're sleeping in late, whatever. So emotion is important to give you enough pain to make the change. And then you got to create a plan, you got to create a strategy. I hate this thing. Why do I want to change? Why is it important? Okay, how do I make it? And accept that you're not gonna necessarily always wake up every morning and be like, "Alright, I gotta go to the gym, blah blah blah." But if you focus, if you focus on the emotion of why am I doing this, where am I headed to, and you see yourself down there, you see yourself in that success in 5 or 10 years, you're celebrating with your friends and you're happy and you have that house or whatever it is that you want, then that can be enough. It's an incredible adventure. It's funny, I think even if you're not open-minded and you go to it, you get sucked into the energy, you get sucked into the raw power of the event. Just be open-minded and go with a sense of wonder and curiosity. And whatever happens at the end, you know, I'm sure that the team, when they were talking about the things that they learned, it's all a little bit different, it's all interpretations. And so whatever you learn, It'll be completely different from what I'm saying right now. But yeah, it's something you don't really want to miss out on. It's something that's gonna, you know, I don't want to say change your life. That's one of the things that they were talking about. It's like you grow, you can't, you don't change. You just bring out the beauty inside you, bring out the happiness inside you, and you believe that you deserve it, right? So I'm not going to say that you're going to go there and you're going to get, you're going to change. But you're gonna grow. And I think if you ever want to improve your life, the most important thing is you gotta invest in yourself. And so this event blew me away. Blew me away. And I'm really grateful for that. I would come back to this event next year and I'll bring my family, my brother, I'd bring my fiancée Rosanna, just for them to go. Not because they're not perfect, it's not about that, but it's just so— it's so overwhelming and beautiful that just being around that is just worth it in itself.

You come back next year, it'll be with Rosanna, your wife.

Yeah, it will be.

Nothing to fiancé anymore.

Oh, thank you. I'm getting— we're getting married on, um, in September. Getting married in September. Gotta plan our honeymoon. Maybe Evan's gonna pay for the honeymoon, I don't know. We'll discuss it later.

Edwin is out as well. What did you think, Edwin? What did you learn? What are you taking away? Um, I think the energy level that is expected of us is the biggest thing I'm taking away. Um, emotionally I've gone up and down a lot. Physically, I can't believe I have that much energy. Um, I think most of it Knowing what the standard is now and how low we were before. Uh, but yeah, that's the biggest thing I've taken. So what did I learn? What did I learn from this? So I came to this because we've done a lot of content on a lot of different successful people, and I was never really interested in going to see anybody, any of them live. But I felt with Tony, there would be a different experience, and I told these guys that earlier. But you know, as much as I love Gary Vee or any of these speakers, I've seen their full events and I don't feel like the vibe is that amazing that you need to be there versus be able to just watch video. And I wanted to see if Tony would be different because I've consumed a lot of Tony content. A lot of the stuff that he talked about, um, the content I already heard before. And so I wasn't taking, I wasn't filling up the notebook, but I wanted to experience it and There's also a lot that you are not ready for.

Ah, gosh.

When you first go.

It's so unexpected.

No matter what you think is gonna happen, it's gonna get crazier. I haven't cried as much in the past 4 days as I have in maybe my life. I don't know. That was crazy. Both happy crying and sad crying. And you can't really explain it. You gotta show up and do it. One thing that I learned that was really interesting for me was the impact of my parents. And they're on my wall at my office, and belief came from them. They always told me I was a "gastrelic Carmichael" and I could do anything I wanted, and that's why they're up there, and the source of belief is them too. But one interesting thing came out where I realized that the need to do something important and the drive to make a difference also comes from my mom. One of my earlier memories, I was like 8 years old and I created this little family newspaper and I said I was going to make a newspaper for the family because we always got the Toronto Star delivered. Like, I want our own family newspaper. And I interviewed my mom and I asked her why she wanted to do what she wanted to do. So, um, she was a lawyer and I asked her, why did you want to be a lawyer? And she corrected me, you know, 8-year-old Evan, and said, "I don't want to be just a lawyer. I want to be a constitutional lawyer." And she said that she wanted to be a constitutional lawyer because those are the people who changed the laws. They were the ones who went and wrote the new laws, not just living within the law system, but creating new, better, more fair, more just laws. And that's what she wanted to do. And I remember thinking, "Yeah, I like that. I want to do something important too. I want to have an impact." I want to do something big. And I just realized this weekend that that's kind of the source of me wanting to do a lot of big things and not just believe in people but do it in a big way. So I'm going to try to see if I can find one of those— if I can find that old copy of that newspaper, that would be pretty cool. I'm not really memento— I threw away most of my stuff. I didn't really have deep attachment to it, and I hope I didn't throw that away. So we'll see. These guys are leaving tomorrow.

Do you know what I just noticed?

What did you notice?

Everyone is still wearing their tag.

We are noticing the tag.

Oh yeah, nice.

Alex and Lily leave when?

Tomorrow at 4 AM.

I thought you—

because the flight is at 7, right?

Yeah. And then Nina and Edwin are leaving— when are you leaving?

Um, 9 o'clock.

Yeah, the city, 11:45.

Yeah, but we have to leave here around 9 o'clock. Yeah.

Done.

Deal. I'm here one more day. Got some meetings lined up. And I'll take you guys with me. It's past midnight, which is actually 3 AM Toronto time. We had some awesome conversations. Alex and Lily went to bed already. Yeah. They have to wake up really early. They're gonna get up in a couple hours actually and have their flight. So, Lena and I are gonna head to bed. And start our next day. Good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning, good morning! We had our morning routine, which we shook it up today. We woke up to birds, right?

Loons.

Loons. A minute of loons. Then we did a party song. Party song and dance for 3 minutes. And then we did— yeah.

The Lion King.

Oh right, no, then we woke up to the— and brushed our teeth, and then we danced, and then we did a gratitude song. So that was good. It was our test. Our new morning routine experiment started today. Edwin, how we doing today? Uh, trying to figure out Uber. But doing great nonetheless. Oh, Edwin and Lily— uh, Lily, wow. Edwin and Nina— wow, oh my god. I'm so used to Edwin and Lily being together and everything. Edwin and Nina are going home together. I'm staying one more day. They're going to Uber to the airport, I'm going to Uber to Beverly Hills, and we're all going to have an amazing day!

Woo!

Woo! Yes! Alright, so I'm here in Beverly Hills. I'm outside the offices of Imagine Entertainment behind me, and I'm meeting at 11:15 the co-founder Brian Grazer. He reached out to me a while ago and said, "Hey, if you're in LA, I'd like to meet you." I don't really know what the context is. Uh, just he likes meeting interesting people and so I was picked. Hahaha. But, uh, I'm excited to meet him. So he co-founded Imagine Entertainment. They've won all sorts of awards. Uh, he was named Time Magazine's one of the most influential people. And, uh, yeah, super pumped to see him. But I've got 2 hours to burn until then. So I'm going to go get some breakfast. Which is going to be hard because I can't really have most of the foods I usually eat on this 10-day thing that I'm on. So, uh, we'll see. Maybe a banana? Banana for breakfast? Here we go! So I'm walking on the street in Beverly Hills. I need sunglasses. It's bright for the first time. First day, really crazy hot and bright in LA this trip. I love it. Walking down the street, come across this Pavilions grocery store. Gotta get some breakfast and maybe load up for the day. Here we go. Alright, I'm done. You guys wanna see what I bought? I've got a veggie tray, I've got roasted and salted mixed nuts, and I have a thing of bananas. That's what I'm gonna eat. I'm sure Nina's really laughing at this point at my product selection, but it's healthy, it sticks to the diet, and I'm gonna enjoy it. So I decided to stop off at a Peet's Coffee. I told Nina, she freaked out. It's not coffee, it's herbal tea. Africa rooibos something. It's actually pretty good. Got some work done, ate my veggies, and now it's time to go meet Mr. Brian Grazer and see what he wants to talk about. I'm excited. Alright, well that was fun. We chatted for an hour, which seemed to go really quickly. He's a pretty cool guy, pretty chill. I didn't even know why we were meeting. And he has an interesting story where he likes to find people that he finds interesting and have conversations with them. And so he just wanted to meet with me, and what he said was he loved the Top 10 Rules videos that we put together. He had a request for one to add to the list. So we're going to be making one for him. Maybe one for his son too, which will be interesting. He just wanted to know the story, why I started it. His favorite one was Bruce Lee, which is interesting. It's been a while since we did anything on Bruce. And it was super cool. It's good to know that the videos are being watched. It's always great to see people loving the videos and having an impact by watching them and looking forward to new ones coming out. So stay tuned for his request of a top 10. And now it's, what, I got 45 minutes to meet with Louis Howes. He's another fellow YouTuber and he's a podcaster. I had him on my channel a while ago. And that's it. I'm still feeling full from those vegetables, so pretty good. Sticking to the diet so far. Day 2. Yeah. Alright, I'm at Lewis's place. Let's do it. What is up everyone? Lewis Howes here. Very excited about this interview. We've got Evan Carmichael in the house. What's up, my brother? I'm good, man. Is that right hand to left? Right to left. Make it awkward. Alright, just got out. That was a fun session. Lewis's second hangout ever. The last one we did was 3 or 4 years ago. It was good. I showed him how to do it. We had some live questions. Great audience. Great guy. Apparently he's coming to Toronto at some point soon. September, something like that. We'll maybe plan something else when he comes up. I'm going to head back to Beverly Hills, get to the coffee shop, get a little bit of work done, and then prepare to meet some fans. I love meeting fans when I travel. We'll see who shows up. Make a video. I'm pumped. Let's do it. What's up, LA?

Hello!

So we met some fans, and before people start taking off, I wanted to pass around the camera. They're going to introduce themselves, what they do, and what their one word is. He's going first because his parking is running out. I'm Brian. I'm an investor, and my one word is invest. Hi, I'm Lalaine Lau, and my company is AccessaTea, eco-friendly t-shirts. And my word is believe. Hi, I'm Armen. I'm the founder of Swaploop. My one word is persistence. Hi, my name is Ed Reyes.

I'm 2017 nominee for Man of the Year for Leukemia Lymphoma Society. My one word is hero. #ImAHeroBeAHero.

Hello, my name is Kenesha.

Chosen Culture.

I'm a life coach, also with K-Bird Group.

And my one word is love. What's up, Believe Nation? It's Devon Trish.

I'm a Virgo. I'm an actor.

My one word, I'm still working on it. Hi, I'm Scarlet Ojeda. I'm a writer, and I would say my one word is also love. Hi, my name is Jonathan Chu, and I work at Disney Imagineering, and I also started a company called Chu's Joy based off of our last name. So my one word is hope.

Hello, I'm Mandy Chu, also founder of Chu's Joy, and my one word is expression. Hi, I'm Thelma Saunders.

I am an owner of Thousand Oaks Fit Body Boot Camp, and my one word is Flourish.

My name's Marilyn and my word is perseverance.

Yeah! All right, LA in the house! We're gonna get back to talking. All right, that was a lot of fun. It's always so humbling to meet the fans. This is a really good group, man. I love the LA fans. That was a really good group. People showed up, we had a great time, answered a lot of questions. Got to know some new entrepreneurs. People drove from quite a distance, some of them, to get there, and it's humbling. I started at 4. I started at 4. First person came at 4. What time is it now?

It's 8.

4 hours! One of the things that I find is I get more energy with time. I was saying how, like, at the beginning I still have energy, it's good to meet people, and then it picks up. I get my energy, and now I'm on fire. And then I'm gonna go home and crash at some point. But no, just an amazing experience. These guys were awesome, and looking forward to maybe coming back again one day. We'll see how it goes. I'm gonna head to the grocery store again. That last place that I was at apparently has a lot of good feedback and good reviews, so I'm gonna see what else I can find. Head home, see what Nina's up to, catch up on work, and then get ready to fly back To Toronto! Whaaat? Alright, I am finally back. Had a bit of a chaotic episode there. My Visa got cut off. I didn't call Visa to let them know I was coming to the US and they cut me off. So I had to figure out a way to call in and get it fixed. But look at this. Here is what I bought. I bought a green drink. Keep on my diet. I bought some more nuts for tomorrow. I bought one giant avocado. I bought another veggie tray that I can eat right now. And Nina's gonna love this, I bought green beans and onions. I thought they were mushrooms. Onions and mushrooms that I'm gonna cook. We did zero cooking this entire time. Every meal was eating out, zero cooking, so I'm gonna make the first cooked meal of this trip. Here I go. Okay, so I burned the thing that I was supposed to cook pretty badly. I added some water to it and, uh, we'll see. I miss Nina for many reasons. I'm gonna relax. Eat the rest of my food, watch an episode of Billions because Nina doesn't like it, so I have a chance to watch something here. That's it, get ready for bed, wake up tomorrow morning and head back home! Woo! I mixed some avocado in with it and it's actually not that bad. Good night. Good morning, good morning, good morning. It's the last day. I am excited. I get to go home. To see Nina. Last night was interesting. It's, uh, I'm a bit lonely, which is interesting. It's an interesting, different feeling, I think, from having all of the intense experiences over the past number of days, especially with Nina. Have a night just be by myself and a morning by myself. I really, really miss Nina. I want to get back. I mean, I always miss Nina when I go away, but I actually feel loneliness I was like, "What am I gonna do? What am I gonna do?" Last night I fell asleep. I stayed up late watching episodes of Billions, um, where I was supposed to work. I wanted to work, but I ended up staying up watching episodes of Billions. So when I'm lonely, I veg on TV, apparently. Interesting. Anyway, I'm gonna get my Uber, head to the airport, and go home and see Nina!

Woo!

Alright, I'm done. Woo! Got nauseous on the plane, fighting a headache from all the turbulence and up and down. Down, but it's good to be back. I'm excited. Let's go see Nina.

Hi!

Long time no see.

Long time no see.

I'm happy to see the wife. Okay, well, thank you guys for joining us on another trip. No more trips for a while. No more trips for a while. Really?

Yeah.

Nina's going on a trip by herself now. We'll document everything. Evan is done traveling for a while. Very sorry.

No, what's a while?

Like 2 years. Yeah, right.

You're going soon?

No.

You're going a couple times?

No. Okay. It was fun though. It was a good trip. It was a good trip. We learned a lot. Met some great people. I'm very thankful for the trip. And it's great to see the wife. She's back. But I'm back. We're back together. I was very lonely.

I came back yesterday. I came back yesterday.

Alright, I'm gonna eat some food too. Thank you guys for joining us.

Continue to believe. Much love and whatever your one word is.

I will see you soon.