In this motivational video, host Evan Carmichael explores the concept of personal balance through a series of interviews and anecdotes from high‑profile guests. Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson describes his extreme early‑rising routine, reliance on a supportive team, and the distinction between macro‑level life priorities (family, health, business) and micro‑level, short‑term bursts of focused work. Carmichael expands on this by outlining his own macro‑micro scheduling system, emphasizing the need to adjust the calendar when balance feels off and to capitalize on moments of “zone” productivity while protecting long‑term health and relationships. The host cautions viewers against judging others’ definitions of balance, urging each person to design a schedule that reflects their own goals. Katie Couric shares Bob Iger’s 80/20 rule—spending 80% of time on high‑impact work and 20% on activities that bring joy—to illustrate how leaders blend effectiveness with personal fulfillment. A creative duo discusses wearing multiple hats in music and business, highlighting the sacrifices required to maintain balance. Javier Bardem reflects on the actor’s dilemma of working versus waiting for the right project, advocating a flexible approach that balances workload with rest. Throughout, the recurring theme is the power of a personal “one‑word” mantra to focus and motivate. The video concludes with a call for viewers to share their ideal balanced schedule in the comments.
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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 great thing that you have inside you explode out into the world and have a big impact. So to help you on your journey, today's message is find the right balance. Over to you, Dwayne 'The Rock' Johnson.
I wake up every morning, that's bread, so keep me going.
I wake up every morning, So yes, I get up super early. Uh, generally I have this thing where I like beating the sun up, not just in terms of what— sun comes up, I have to get up. Um, and, uh, how do I do it? It's just important to find balance, and I try and do things really that I really enjoy doing. And a lot of times, you know, it's like in life, right? Life brings like drama, and you got to deal with this person and a funky relationship here and all these things. You try and just kind of balance them out as best I can. I got a great team around Omni, by the way, who really, really helps me well and helps me, allows for me to come in and work 12 hours a day, 14 hours a day, get up at 3 o'clock in the morning, uh, send out an Instagram video where I'm talking to my cardio machine like a crazy maniac. So yeah, it requires a lot of people around.
So you guys might be watching this clip and thinking, waking up at 3 in the morning is not a really balanced life. And I want you to really take a pause there if that's what you're thinking. Because you should not be judging what somebody else's version of a balanced life looks like. You're seeing their life through your lens and saying, "That's not right. That's not balanced. That's wrong." Stop it. It doesn't matter what Dwayne Johnson does. Like, if you can use that to inspire you, great. What's more important is what does balance look like for you? For him, maybe it is. Maybe that's a balanced life. "I wanna wake up 3 AM every day. I wanna beat the sun up. I wanna get all this stuff done. That's what a balanced life looks like to me." Great. More importantly is what does a balanced life look like for you? You might want to work 8 hours a day and then do other things with family and friends and travel and all this other stuff. You might want to work 16 hours a day and the other things you don't prioritize as much. Like, what does that balanced life look like for you? And then design a schedule around it. And for me, I always have my macro balance and then my micro balance, right? And so in the macro, I want to spend time on my business. I love my business. I love making videos. I love writing my book, I love doing the things that I'm doing. I love it. Like, every day I'm challenged, I'm excited. It's not always perfect every day, but like, I love the work that I do. And I want to be a good husband, and I want to be a good father, you know, and I want to spend time with Timo, right? Like, the things that are important to my life, I try to fit into a macro calendar, and I generally schedule things out. And if I ever feel like something is out of whack or out of balance, it goes right to my schedule. I gotta— there's something wrong in my schedule. If I feel like I'm not spending enough time with Nina. It's not quality enough time. I need to fix that. I go right to my calendar and say, okay, Nina time. We need to do it here, we need to do it here, we need to do it here. That's what I do in the macro. On the micro, you can have a lot of little changes, a lot of little tweaks, a lot of little passion projects that come and go. As an example, with my book, I'm on my cruise and I just decided I want to have my book out. I need to finish my book. It's all-consuming, it's obsessive. I need to get this book out. I have a date, I want to get it out. And a lot of the nights on my cruise, I would be working on the book. Nina would be sleeping, I'd be working on the book. Nina would go work out at the gym, I'd be working on my book. I would neglect other things in my life so that I could finish the book and hit my target and get it out, because it was something I needed to get done. If I didn't get it done, I would regret it. I'd be thinking about the book while working out, or thinking about the book while doing something else. I wouldn't be sleeping because I'd be thinking about the book. And I got it done! And it's great, and luckily I have supportive people around me who can understand those micro-moments. That's not a long-term sustainable thing. You know, if I constantly worked and neglected my wife, my relationship would fall apart. If I constantly worked and neglected my sleep, or neglected my working out, and neglected eating well, my health would fall apart. I can do it for a week, I could do it for 2 weeks, I could do it for 3 days, or whatever I need to stay in that zone. But I can't do it on the macro. And so it's being flexible enough in the micro but still maintaining what your macro schedule looks like. I believe that most people don't wake up in the zone every day. You can get yourself to a certain energy level, you can get yourself to the point where like, "Today I'm doing work, I want it to be meaningful, I want it to be impactful, I'm gonna go make a positive impact somehow." But you're not always in the zone, not every day you're in the zone. And for me, when I feel like I'm in the zone, I have to go out and do amazing work. And I throw everything else aside to make that thing happen, because what I'm gonna make happen in the zone is gonna be amazing. It's gonna be life-changing, right? That's the real goal. And luckily again, the people around me understand that and we adjust. And then after that thing is done, I have to go and spend more time, right? I gotta spend more time with Nina, more time with Hayden, and more time on my health, because I've neglected that and things slowly start to erode. So I gotta build up that strength again. So I would encourage you not to really care so much about what somebody else's version of balance looks like. Figure it out for yourself. Figure out on a macro scale, what does a balanced life look like for you? How much time do you want to work? How much time do you want to spend doing other things? Your big goals, what you want to accomplish as a human being, career, personal, everything, making sure that the daily activities that you have map towards achieving your goals. The things that you're doing on a daily basis help you accomplish the big goals that you set for yourself. Do that in the macro, and then in the micro You'll have moments, you'll have days, you'll have hours where like you really need to go off and do this thing. And I would encourage you to go off and do that thing and let the other things slide a little bit. As long as one, you're not fooling yourself and say like, "Oh, this email, like I'm so within the zone on making this email," right? Like you're fooling yourself. And two, as long as you don't stay there so long that the other things start to crumble. If you're staying there too long, you have to adjust the macro. If you really want to work, like if I really want to work on my book and I can't get it done in that like narrow window that I want to get done, and I'm pulling things, making sacrifices short-term to make this thing happen, but I need to keep going, and this is going to be like weeks and months, then I have to pull it out of the micro and move it to the macro. Make time in my schedule to make that big goal happen. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, what does a balanced schedule look like for you? How do you balance your life? What's an ideal version that you want to work towards? I'd love to hear from you. Please share it down in the comments below. I also want to give a quick shout out to Dante Cores. Dante, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word. I really appreciate the support, man, and I hope you enjoyed the book. 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, and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of inspresso.
I wake up every morning.
Espresso, keep me going.
Both Ryan and I are at times, I don't want to say envious, but we look at other people. Like, you take Kendrick. Kendrick is a rapper. Kendrick is in the studio right now. I guarantee it. He's not thinking about that the merch design that we have right now isn't fitting on a tank top the way that it should. It's true. And that's a— it's a blessing and a curse, you know. We both are— have— we are the output in terms of anything creative. It's a music video, if it's directing, if it's writing a treatment, if it's, you know, being a character in the music video. We are everything. Same thing with their merch, same thing with just the ideas that we have. Full circle in terms of running a business. So that's taking away time that we could be working on our specific crafts, producing and rapping. So I think that it's a balance. We both enjoy business. We both enjoy being holistically creative. That's a fulfilling thing. I don't want to be in the studio every single day all the time. I want to be picking fonts. I want to be, you know, with Ryan color editing a music video. That's something that we both enjoy. So it's a balance, and I think that we wear enough hats that we can kind of bounce around and be inspired. But it comes at a sacrifice.
I got great advice from, you know, one of the people that totally fascinates me is Bob Iger. He's the CEO of the Walt Disney ABC world. And so his job is so weird to me, because he is in charge of everything from like a Disney cruise to George Stephanopoulos ABC News, to like a theme park, to— Scandal, like every, all of that falls into the ABC Disney family. And I asked him, and it was very helpful to me, I asked him a few months ago, like, how do you decide what you're gonna work on in a day? And he said something so valuable to me, so I wanna share it with you guys. He said, 80% of his time he tries to think about where can I have impact? Where am I going to make a difference in the day today? So it may not usually be Disney Cruises, but sometimes it is. Sometimes it needs to be because the cruise business has been doing what the cruise business is doing. That's not quoting him, by the way. But there, you know, sometimes it's a Broadway show that's about to open. Sometimes it's the ESPYs because ESPN, that's where his focus needs to be. So it's really about like where can I have impact today? And the other, where am I needed? The other 20% is what brings me joy. You know, so there are certain movie projects that fall under the ABC Disney world that bring him joy, or certain shows, or certain, you know, an opening of a park, or there are certain things that bring him, that just fill him up, that fall in his work responsibilities. And I just really have tried to bring that with me because, you know, it's important for us to remember the joy in what we do. It's important to be effective in our workplace, but it's important to cultivate the moments that just bring us joy because that's how we'll shine in our lives as professionals, you know.
So you an actor whose philosophy is to work or to wait? Are you more of a like, I'm not going to do anything until I find the right thing, or you're just like, I should be working? I'm a little bit of a workaholic, but I can't— but I need to— I feel like I like to take my time on I want to be able to select what I should do. I like to explore, try to explore different things, different types of experiences. But movies select you, and by that I mean a director and a script they are the ones that are gonna throw the party. And you want to be— you want to go to the best party. You know, we used a metaphor of a party for a movie. So a good director and an interesting story will always, you know, dominate the choices that I make, or control the choices that I make. Because if right now is a a great director with an interesting script comes to me and wants me to do a character that might not be a huge stretch, but to be involved with a team— movies are not made alone, team is teamwork— that always will be like exciting and might take first place. A good team might take first place, but I like to take my time, but I like to work too. So, you know, just a good balance, you know, just keep a good balance. I don't think waiting too— sometimes it's good to wait because you get exhausted after doing movies, you know, you kind of like, you know, I give it a lot of energy, so I'm kind of like exhausted. But, you know, a balance, you know, might wait for a little bit and then do one, two 2 movies almost back to back.
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.
