Unlock Your Inspiration | 5 Ways to Keep Going Every Day

Good morning, Believe Nation.

Today we're going to talk about how you can stay inspired and keep going. As you watch the video, if there's something that someone says that really deeply resonates with you, make sure as always to leave it in the comments below and put quotes around it so other people can be inspired as well.

You know, you're a craftsperson, you want to produce exponential results, you want to wow all witnesses, you want to really be the leader in your field, and it all starts with being inspired. I mean, I used to be a litigation lawyer. I used to think the idea of inspiration was very soft. It was all about hard tactics, strategy, execution. And yet if you look at Elon Musk and you look at Nelson Mandela, you look at Jeff Bezos, you look at Pablo Picasso, you look at any game-changer, Legendary performer. What they did was because they were inspired. I mean, if you look at Elon Musk right now with SpaceX, that's coming from inspiration. If you look at the work of da Vinci, he was inspired. You look at Thomas Edison, inspiration. If you look at a lot of these startups, these are women and men doing what they want to do because they are fueled by this intense Purpose. But at the foundation, the purpose is inspiration. And so inspiration is not sort of important. Inspiration is fundamentally important.

You will not quit in the universe. You will keep going in your business. You may lose, but you will not stop. You will not quit. You will keep going. I also told my wife, you will— this, this This disease will not defeat us. This disease will not break us. It will make us better. And everybody that knows my family knows that we took a chronic illness and we took our family to a whole other level. We took a chronic illness and we took our marriage to another level. We took a chronic illness and we beat it. And we will continue to beat it until we destroy it, until we annihilate it, until she no longer has it. Are you hearing what I'm saying? You cannot stop. You cannot quit. I remember we came home from the hospital. The doctor gave her a long needle like that. I said, how long does she have to do it? She said she has to do it every day. I said, okay, every day for how long? She said every day for the rest of her life. I said, I will not accept that. There are things in your life that you are accepting because somebody told you you have to accept it. I don't care if you're a doctor or not. I will not accept that. We will not, we will not shoot her with, we will not give her a shot with that needle every single day for the rest of her life. 3 months later, I got a call that says that now it's a little shorter and you only have to do it 3 times a week as opposed to every day. Guess what I told them? I said, I'm grateful, but I still won't accept that. You would think that because it's only 3, I would be excited. I will not accept it. Stop accepting everything. Stop letting people tell you what you can and cannot do. I will not accept it. I don't care if you're a doctor. I will not accept it. So we kept doing our homework and we found out about a pill that you can take. I was like, that's what we need. We need the pill. And I found out the pill shrinks the lesions on your brain. I went to the doctor, she said, I would have told you about it, but, um, I don't think your insurance company is going to be willing to pay for it. $10,000 a month, $120,000 a year. Insurance company denied. My wife went back the second time, they denied. I told my wife, stop begging. I'm 120. Do I give you $10,000 a month or do I give you $120,000 now to get it for the year? I will not, I will not let my wife, whatever it takes, I will not let her take the— I will give 120. I will speak more. I will get better. I will get degrees. I will get training. I'll do whatever it takes. I will put your health first and you will not be defeated. You will not be destroyed. You will not use a cane. You will not be in a wheelchair. We will beat this. Some of you in this room, you are not able to activate your greatness because every time a trial or tribulation comes, you fold. You give up. Everybody, every time somebody calls you and tell you you can't do it, you take it personal. Every time somebody tells you you don't have what it takes, you embrace it. And now you gotta stand up to it. I never bent one time with my wife. I never felt discouraged. I never felt that it wasn't possible. My wife told me just a couple days ago, she says, today I feel like I felt before I got MS. She had a weekend where she felt great. And I told her, it's for a weekend today, but soon it will be for the rest of your life. We will not break. We will not retreat. We will not give up. We will activate our greatness, and we will know what it's like to live the 120. Say, I will live the 120. Come on. I will live the 120. Come on. I will live the 120.

Come on.

I will live the 120. And if you make up in your mind you're going to live the 120, I went from being homeless, eating out of trash cans, to traveling first class. $100,000 in engagement. Back at home, every star, NBA, NFL, whatever, I consult them. I went from being a high school dropout, why? Because I said I'm gonna get my dream.

Second insight, if you want to be more inspired, nature. One of my favorite protocols is the daily nature walk. I love walking in the woods. I often listen to audiobooks in the woods. The woods. I call it walk— reading while walking. Reading while walking. So I go to this place, it's sort of my creative forest. There's not a lot of people in there, and I walk for 1 hour. I breathe in the air, I look at the lush scenery, I listen to a different audiobook. It's almost like walking meditation as well. Sometimes I don't listen to an audiobook and I just walk. And I touch the earth. It's almost like I'm thanking the earth, connecting with the soil. Yes, I'm wearing shoes. I don't want to get too esoteric here, but there's a lot of really good research saying if you want to boost your immune system, you want to boost your happiness, you want to release serotonin and dopamine, you want to release the fear hormone called cortisol, walk in nature. And so when I walk, I connect with nature. And like I say, I know I'm not being very elegant in this Mastery session, I'm just being real, but I listen to audiobooks. And then other times I do a walking meditation where I feel my feet on the soil. You know what I do other times? If there's something I'm confused about, I sort of just talk it out. It's like I'm talking out loud, trying to work it out. If I'm in pain, I get the negative energy out of my system by just releasing it by talking about it. I also, and I know this sounds a little unorthodox, but I do like a walking blessing meditation. So while I'm walking, I sort of challenge myself to come up with 50 things I'm grateful for. And again, I verbalize those because it's only me and the squirrels in the woods. And so I say, I'm grateful for my family, I'm grateful I'm grateful for my health. I'm grateful for work that feeds my soul. I'm grateful for the sunset I watched last night. I'm grateful for my team. I'm grateful for my business. I'm grateful for the travels that I get to take. I'm grateful for the people that I've served. And literally while I'm walking, I say out loud, "I am grateful for." I hope it doesn't sound strange for you because it's an incredible protocol to install.

Setbacks allow us to sit our ass down and scratch our head to say, what am I doing? We don't want to do that. We spend most of our time getting away from ourselves. So what's helped me along my journey is to actually see setbacks as a way the universe is telling me I better sit my ass down. Because what we often think as an unfortunate event, as an unfortunate event, could be a blessing in disguise. Slow motion that way. I had two laptops blow up in front of me. Not nice. I had to buy new ones, but actually the newer ones I got were a lot better, faster. 7-day vegan challenge alert. I had a lot of setbacks growing up. Sometimes I would say, gosh, why aren't I in that place? Why aren't I where I want to be in the perfect career? And you see, how the law of attraction works is that we attract what we are energetically to us. So look at it like this. If you have a setback or a massive disappointment, what is going to happen? You are now going to start mirroring back that same energetic vibration. So if you're feeling really grumpy because of a setback, creates a snowball effect. You're going to be more grumpy, more grumpy, more grumpy, and it's even going to be a greater setback to you. So you've got to become an alchemist, which the secret of alchemy is making the best out of the worst when you fall down and not allowing external events to govern your internal condition.

And I know you've heard this, but my question is, how much do you do it? And that is visually— visualization. And we call it highly engaged visualization. Visualization where you're seeing yourself doing something and you're emotively there. You're literally closing your eyes and meditating on the experience. You're seeing it, feeling it, sensing it, and it's not the kind of visualization you've probably been taught to do, which is just all the buoyant, victory, everything's great, victory, hey, hey, hey, everything's awesome, perfect. It's the visualization where you also imagine, see, and feel the struggle on purpose. Let me give you an example. Lots of people, when they're new to performance training and haven't had a lot of experience, they would say, oh, you know, if you're going to run a marathon, imagine yourself crossing that finish line. You know, your arms up in victory, everything is great. You cross that finish line, there's your family, and they give you big hugs, and you feel great, still vital, energized, ready to kick some butt. You know, you could run another 20 miles. You're the strongest, most powerful you ever. Now I'm like, ooh, wow, you know, that's just a person who hasn't done a lot of training or actual high-performance coaching in their life because the better thing to imagine is what happens at mile 13. To imagine yourself running, starting, running, running strong, but also seeing and sensing and feeling yourself at mile 13 when that decision point comes to want to quit. That's where I want you to also enter the scene and visualize seeing yourself struggle, like seeing the perspiration, seeing the heartache, seeing the hurt, the pain, that like, I can't run anymore, dude. Seeing yourself make a decision at that point to be resilient, to keep at it, to see the charge come back on your face, to see yourself working through the struggle is the most important visualization you can do. What would you say to yourself when it sucks? Not just see yourself validated. It's about, look, the real truth of achieving any dream is that struggle, that effort, that push. And I know you know this. So my question is, when is the last time you just gave yourself a few moments free away from, you know, playing on the phone, free away from the internet, to just sit down by yourself to visualize and daydream about your dreams? About the activities involved in that, about how you would struggle through, about what it would feel like to be victorious. All of it, the whole thing, the messy part, the ugly part. What would you say to yourself when it gets hard? That's what you need to do to truly actualize a dream. We got to begin with seeing it and sensing it, the good, the bad, the easy, the difficult, and the victory.

You know, I actually recently, I went to a coffee shop and I was having a particularly bad day. I don't even I don't know why, maybe I slept bad, maybe things weren't going right, maybe I was losing faith that I would reach my health and my life goals. And I talked to the girl behind the counter and she said to me, you know, I said to her, how do you have so much energy? And she said, you know what, what's weird, I actually only slept 3.5 hours last night. She had to open up the shop at 5 AM, she had to run it till 5 PM on a few hours of sleep. And I said, why didn't you just sleep more? What do you What are you thinking getting up at 4, 3:30 in the morning? She said, honestly, I got pregnant at 16, I have 3 kids, they have to go to school, they have to be watched, and after I get off here at 5 PM, I have to go to another job at Dunkin' Donuts after. And you know what was funny? I never heard her once complain. She had up days and down days, but she never once complained to me. Almost never did she complain about being tired. 3.5 hours of sleep some nights because she had to go from one job to the next because she had 2 young kids and she was maybe 21 or 22. And, you know, you better believe that that shut myself up pretty quickly after she had been doing this for so many years, sleeping half, maybe a third the hours I sleep. I sleep 7 hours, she slept half of that. And mouth was zipped, just doing whatever it took. And this is just to remind you that if you're having a bad day, a bad week, a bad month, a bad year, guess what? Your problems are probably this big compared to most of humanity's. If you're sleeping 4 hours a night, you've got multiple kids, your health is crap, your parents are dead or dying, you're everything is going wrong, then maybe you have a real reason to complain. But don't forget, there are billions of people in the other parts of the world who don't complain one ounce, and all they have to do is walk— all they have to do— walk 5 miles to get a freaking cup of water that's muddy and has poo in it. Most of your big problems are nothing. They're first world problems, they're champagne problems compared to almost everyone else. And I'm talking specifically, I'm referring to Americans in our country, but even the poor in this country. She was an example. She didn't say a damn word, not one complaint out of her mouth. And it's still natural if things aren't going well to complain. If you're having an off day, listen, it's totally natural.

So my take on staying inspired and keep going is that you have to, one, be on a mission, and two, love the work. And it's something that we've talked about over and over and over again on the channel, but for me, the thing that gets me up and going to work and helping entrepreneurs every day is because it fuels me. It's like oxygen for me. It's food for me.

I love it.

I need to do it. It's an obsession. It's a drug. And you need to find that thing for you, and you need to find the thing that you would do even if you weren't getting paid for it. The thing that you would go find part-time jobs to make money just so you can focus on doing this thing. Singing because you love it so much. That's the thing that you need to devote as much time as possible to because that's where you're going to have impact, that's where you're going to have magic, that's where you're going to come alive, that's where you're ultimately going to make a lot of money as well as make a big impact. And it's not just about— you can force yourself to do something for so long before it just falls off because you're not deeply passionate about it. You can listen to, you know, a motivational speaker yelling at you to do something and give it your all and go for Go for it, and this is your day, you know? You can do that, and that may help you for a short amount of time, but if at the core you don't enjoy what you're doing, you're not feeling like you're contributing to the world somehow, you're not excited to wake up and go do the work that you need to go and do. I hate long weekends because it takes me away from my work, 'cause that's a Monday that is off, or a Friday that is off that could be used to further the mission that I'm on. And so all of this other stuff definitely helps you, having the environment, having the habits, having the routine, you know, how you set yourself up, what you listen to, and what you read, and what you look at. But at the core has to be that you're doing something that you feel is meaningful to you and will have an impact and has value to you. Because if you only have a goal and you don't enjoy the process, if you're telling yourself, I'll do anything I need to do just to hit that goal, and you don't enjoy the work, then you're never gonna hit that goal. And it'll be a really shallow and hollow experience for you. Where the people who achieve at the highest levels, they have big goals. It's great to have goals, it helps you to have goals, but you have to enjoy the work to get to that goal as well. And in my view, that's how you stay inspired and keep going. So thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because Kevin SJJ Personal Transformation requested it. So there's a topic you'd like me to cover in the next next edition of Believe Life, leave it down in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love to know what did you think of the video? What point resonated the most with you? What change are you going to make now in your life or in your business after watching some of these clips? Leave it down below. Writing it down helps cement it for you. When you have an idea of a change and you write it down, you're much more likely to follow through. So hopefully we can help do that for you as well by you commenting below. I'm also going to join in the discussion. Thank you guys so much for watching. Have an an amazing day. Continue to believe, or whatever your one word is, and I'll see you soon.

There is great value in just getting out there. My friend Tom Peters talked about it years ago. He called it managing by walking around, and he spoke of it in the context of within an organization. Leave your office office and just walk around. But I see it as even larger, with all due respect to Tom Peters, who is a wonderful, wonderful guru. And I just want to sort of— maybe the best way to say it is just take it into a different context, which is circulate around the world. I don't always love traveling. I travel a lot. Sometimes before a speaking tour, I ask myself, do I really want to get on this I'm on a speaking tour. And then I remind myself the power of circulation. By getting on an airplane, I meet new people. By getting into a new city, I get provoked by new insights. By hearing new conversations, I get new levels of energy. And so there is great power in circulating. I guess to be really tactical, what I'm encouraging you, if you want to be inspired, get out there. I had a conversation just the other day with an Uber driver. He was telling me how he lived in Kiev, And he became, he studied engineering. We talked about the culture in the Ukraine. But he explained why he's now in this country. He explained his adversity story, how difficult it is. He said, you know what, I want to be an engineer, but I've got a family to feed. So I'm doing this as an Uber driver. I don't really love it, but you know, it's how I make my living. And we had this conversation where I got all of these different ideas that really were valuable to me. So conversations are very educating, but the point really is, number one, insight number one, there's great power in circulating because that's when you have new conversations, that's when you detect new insights. I mean, I see, get some of my best ideas just reading magazines in hotel rooms. They have nothing to do with leadership, they have nothing to do with productivity, they have nothing to do with high performance. But I love reading fashion magazines. You know, one of my favorite magazines is Porter. It's a new fashion, relatively new fashion magazine. I was in Los Angeles the other day. I was reading the Robb Report. I was reading, like, it was sort of like a style guide to Los Angeles. And just learning the languaging of those creative people, the chefs and the fashion models and the fashion designers and the people who are creating these cool scenes. Creates great ideas for me to bring to you. So there's great power in circulation.

You don't believe the message unless you believe the messenger. So as leaders, we have to stand for and demonstrate and show and portray what we are really believing in. I mean, are we really— is our team and the people around us seeing us work for it, sweat for it, sacrifice for it? Champion it over and over and over again, even when it's hard, even when there's conflict, even when people are pissed, even when people want to quit? Are you still there? Do you still stand for it? If you do, you become a legend.

And I found two things out about smart people. I think it's almost impossible for a smart person to win in business in America today because I find smart people spend their whole lifetime figuring things out. They always trying to figure out an easier way and a quicker way. And another thing I found out about smart people is they just don't get around to doing nothing. And see, somebody like Art Williams, everybody said, "Well, he can't do it. Hey, somebody like that can't do it." But he does it. See, folks, I want you to know almost everybody in America almost does enough to win. They almost get there. They almost are over the hump. They almost have it going. They almost in everything they do. Almost is a way of life to almost everybody in America, but the winners do it. What do they do? They do whatever it takes to get the job done. They do it and do it and do it and do it and do it until the job gets done, and then they talk about how great it is to be somebody they're proud of. We need leaders in America who can do it. If you want to become somebody, do it. If you want to go in business for yourself, do it. If you want to become financially independent, do it. I hear too much talk in these United States. Everybody can talk a good game. We need people in America who can do it. I go all over this country with A.O. Williams and I have people say, "Art, you can count on me." Wonderful. Just do it. "Art, I guarantee you this is my last stop. I'm going to win now." Super duper, just do it. "Art, if I could just have one good month and get the ball going, I know I could make it big." Super, just do it. "Art, if I could just pay off this debt, I could really go." Great, just do it. "Art, if I could just sell my house." Do it. "But houses ain't selling." Do it anyway. "Art, I'm not making any money, what can I do?" You just do it. Do what, Art? You do it and do it and do it. Art, I guarantee I'm going to win this contest. Super duper. Just do it. Art, I'm over the hump now. Watch my smoke. Great. Just do it. Art, I want to make it so bad I can taste it. What do I do? You just do it. Art, I'm a vice president now. Can I quit doing it? No. Art, I don't know if I keep on keeping on, I'm really hurting what I do. You just do it. Do what, Art? You do it and do it and do it. Art, all my life I wanted to be somebody important. Well, do it then. Art, I'm going to save money so I don't ever have to go through this again. Great! Just do it. Art, I don't feel like I've had enough training what I do. You just do it. Art, my My manager don't give me no help. What do I do? You just do it. Art, you don't understand. I was Mr. Everything in my former company. You don't mean I have to start off down at the bottom and do it, do you? Yep, you really got to do it. Art, Art, what's the primary difference between winners and losers? The winners do it. They do it and do it and do it and do it until the job gets done. And then they talk about how great it is to finally have achieved something unique, and how glad they are that they didn't quit like everybody else, and how wonderful it is to finally be somebody they're proud of and make a difference with their life.