Why External Validation Will Never Make You Happy | Eckhart Tolle

Good morning, Believe Nation! My name is Evan Carmichael. My one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs will solve all of the world's major problems. So to help you on your journey, today's message is: it doesn't matter what your mom thinks. Over to you, Eckhart Tolle.

You get unhappy if you— for many years before I wrote The Power of Now and it became successful, I was basically a failure in the eyes of the world. So he's already almost 50 and what has he achieved? My mom said, you have thrown away your life, you had so many possibilities in your life, you walked out of graduate school in Cambridge, why did you walk out of there? My mom and many other people said, "This person has failed in life, he has no job, he has no insurance policies, nothing, no pension plan, just almost nothing in the bank, failure." And then a few years later people bought "The Power of Now" and became a bestseller, "Oh, a big success." Okay, if I had derived my identity at that time from what the world was telling me or my mind would have told me if I had been listening to my mind, I would have been very unhappy and I didn't so I was fine because my identity wasn't derived from that anymore. And fortunately even when in the eyes of the world I suddenly became a success I don't want to derive my identity from that; it's a cheap substitute for who I really am. So I'm not, I don't see, I don't derive, but the satisfaction that comes is the satisfaction that the work that's happening, the teaching that's happening is transforming people's lives; that's very satisfying. I don't get any personal satisfaction though because it's not, I don't feel it as this separate me produced it.

It would be great to have the support of your mom, of your parents, of your friends, of your family, of your community to do whatever it is that you want to do. But their support shouldn't be reflective of if you should grow up and do it or not. Like, if your mom says that this is a bad idea, that means you're not going to do it. You know, when you're growing up, you know, when you're 5 years old, okay, you listen to your mom. You know, you do what she says, you get in trouble, right? But how old are you now? Like, at some point you decide, this is my life. And I would love to have the support of my parents, and I had the support of my parents throughout what I was doing, it was great. But if you don't have the support, at what point do you decide that you're an adult? You're going to do the thing that you want to do. Like, are you going to be 40 years old and still listening to your parents and what they see for you? And a lot of times, especially your parents, it's out of love, right? They want you to be successful, they want you to have a great life. They just want you to do it on their terms. The way that they see success may not be lined up with how you see success. And so they may not be the ones telling you that you suck and you'll never be anything. There are some parents that are like that too, which that's a whole other story. But most of the time, it's out of love. It's out of them wanting to see you be successful. You just have different views of what that looks like. And at some point you have to decide that this is my life. I'm gonna do the thing that I wanna do. And if you judge your self-worth based only off of the results, then you're never gonna be happy. You're never gonna feel valuable, right? And so, I look at my YouTube videos, I look at this channel, I look at what I'm making for you guys. I love everything that I do. I love the process. This is why it's so important that you love the process of the work and not just the results. It's not just about hitting a million subscribers, right? That's my goal for the end of the year, have 1 million subscribers. We'll see if we hit it. It's not just about hitting a billion entrepreneurs. That's my lifetime goal, right? I wanna have a big impact. I wanna reach a billion entrepreneurs, 'cause if I can do that and have even a half a percent impact on their life, all the things that they're gonna go off and make is gonna be insane. And I'm honored to play a small, tiny piece in your success. But it's not just about hitting that number. Because you can have a goal, you can have a target and say, "I want to really reach this thing, I'll do anything to get there." But you won't do anything. And you shouldn't do anything. You can only force yourself to do something you don't like for so long. You've got to do the work that Jerry Seinfeld calls the torture you can endure, the work that you love, the torture that you love. The process is more important than hitting the goal. I was asked, am I going to do a big party for hitting a million subscribers? And I don't know, like, I do it more for you guys than for me, right? We did one, we did a livestream at half a million, and I haven't done any one since. We crossed 100 million views on the channel, which is awesome. But once we've hit the milestone, it's a great target to go and reach, but then it's in the past. Like, I don't want to live in the past. I want to keep moving forward. We got more work to do. We got more lives to change. It's the process. It's not just hitting a million subscribers. I could do that I could do that a lot faster and a lot easier doing other things. You know, if I was bashing entrepreneurs, bashing celebrities, saying all the negative things about them, that would actually draw a lot more attention. That would get a lot more subscribers. That's kind of the sad state of humans. We'd rather attack somebody than embrace them and learn from them. We'd rather escape from a life that we don't like as opposed to trying to build a life that we do like. And that's fine. But I don't want to do that. I would never be great at that. I don't like bashing people. I don't want to show the negative sides of everybody because everybody has a negative side. It's not what I want to put out to the world. And so if my only goal was I want to hit a million subscribers, I'll do anything I can to get there. Those are the kinds of things that I'd be doing, but I'd never be great at them and actually never get to that goal because it's not who I am. It's because I don't enjoy the process. And so not everything is going to be amazing. There's a lot of crap that you have to deal with as an entrepreneur. But if you just make it about the goal and just hitting that mark, then you're never going to get there. And you have to really focus on whether you're a writer, whether you're a singer, whether you're a dancer, whether you're a YouTuber, whatever it is, you're a software developer, but you have to enjoy writing code. You have to enjoy the process of figuring things out and solving the problems. And not just hitting a revenue target. I think when you can do that, when you can tie your self-worth into the work, and say, "I'm proud of this thing that I made," even if nobody else likes it. There's been a lot of videos that I've put up that you guys haven't liked, that we've killed. I'm still proud of it. I still love them. I will still, like, I am so happy that I made that video. I think it's great. It's genius. But it didn't work. So it's great. So it's good for a certain amount of people. It's good for me and a select few. I can't build a business around it, but I don't feel bad about myself for creating a series that was a stinker or was a loser. Like, that's a great piece of content. I'm insanely proud of it. And I think as long as you are insanely proud daily of the work that you are creating, and some of them are going to hit and some of them are going to miss. In fact, most of them are going to miss. You're gonna fail way more than you're gonna be a success. But if you're proud of the work and the hustle that you're putting in daily, then you'll not just get more self-worth for yourself and feel better about what you're doing every day, but eventually, if you stick with it, you're gonna create an amazing business that'll have a big impact on the rest of the world as well. So the question of the day today is, I'm curious, does or did your mom support you in what you're doing right now?

Right now?

Leave it down in the comments below. I'm really curious to find out. I also want to give a quick shout out to Shahrook Hassan. Shahrook, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, and taking that awesome, exciting picture and posting it to your Twitter. I love the joy on your face. Thank you so much for the support and for enjoying my book. So thank you guys so much for watching. I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love and I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of espresso.

Every pursuit, no matter how glamorous it may seem, no matter how exciting you are— it feels to you, no matter how much you feel like you were born to do it, comes with a shit sandwich. And so the question is not, "What do I love?" The question is what do I love so much that I don't mind eating the shit sandwich that comes along with that thing? So for me in my life, writing is the thing that I love and the shit sandwich was the 7 years that I was not getting published and that I was coming home from my job as a diner waitress, as a bartender, as an au pair, as somebody who worked in flea markets, as a cook, and I was coming home tired and smelling like other people's French fries and sitting down and doing my real job, which was to write. And then to go to the mailbox the next day and get another rejection letter and then say, "Do I still wanna do this? 'Cause this shit sandwich sucks." Am I ready to take another bite? Right. You know? And I did still wanna do it. And now even as somebody who makes their living as a writer, there's no end to the shit sandwiches. It's like, "Oh, hello, horrible review in prominent newspaper. That's your shit sandwich today, Liz. You still wanna do this work?" Yep. Yeah, I still do. Still worth it. Like, hello, awful comment on social media from somebody who thinks you're a pile of dog shit, you know, and just has, like, chosen every possible way that they can— just cannot get it out of their system fast enough how much disregard they have for your entire life. Still want to do this thing? Yeah, I still want to do it. You know, so that's the question because if the first time you encounter the shit sandwich you're like, "Well, this isn't worth it." then that's not the thing you're supposed to be doing. And there are plenty of things in life that I have run into the shit sandwich and I've been like, "So not worth it. So not worth it. Like, this is not— I don't wanna do this. Like, whatever the alleged benefits of this thing might be, no." I'm not down for this. SoulCycle, no.

You know?

Like, I know it's probably really good for me, but I feel like throwing up right now because this is too hard.

I'm out.

You'll not be seeing me here again. You know? I love my sisters at SoulCycle, I just don't like feeling like I'm gonna throw up when I exercise. So it's not for me, you know? And so that's the question. So if you go into this thing thinking, "If I follow my bliss and I live my dream and I stand in my truth, then everything will be great," it doesn't mean everything will be great. It just means at the end of the day when you check in with yourself and you go, "In the end, on the balance..." is this still better than not doing it? And the answer is still, yeah, this thing is still better than not doing it, then you're on the right path.

I knew I wanted to be in the skate industry. I love skating too much. I wanted to be in it. I didn't know if I would make a living as a professional, but I was gonna be— I was devoted to skateboarding. So I refinanced my house and took all the money and started a skateboard company, which seems like the stupidest thing in the world to do when skating's I was dying, but it was exactly what I wanted to do. I wanted to be a company owner and be behind the scenes. I quit my sponsor and started. And for about 3 years struggled very hard with my partner and I. We had pooled our money together. He was an ex-pro skater as well. And we just did Birdhouse and did whatever we could to get by. And all the team was staying on my couch. I'm literally like, while I'm changing diapers, I'm like driving guys to these spots that they're going to get arrested at because there's no skate parks, so they're going to go ride schoolyards. And it was such a strange existence. But I loved it because it was skateboarding and it was exactly what I wanted to do. And so we really hunkered down. You know, like I was living on Taco Bell and peanut butter and jelly and Top Ramen.

Mm.

Probably 3 years for sure. But I didn't care because it was like I still got to do what I love. That's the thing is that people think, was it a struggle? It's like, well, no, because, you know, I loved it too much. I still got to go skate and I had time to skate. I didn't have to go sit behind a computer for 8 hours and then hope I get time to skate.

I've never really been interested in living a balanced life. You know, I don't— I think balanced people don't change the world, first of all. I think balanced people don't really follow a dream. This doesn't mean that you don't have responsibilities. Like, just go to the other part of his question, how can you have a family? Well, sure, you can have a family. But balance is kind of like— I feel like balance is like a made-up word. It's like invented by corporations to make their employees think that they're happy. It's like you've got this balance. Like, you could work at Microsoft or something here in Seattle. There's like 10 Microsoft people in the audience. That's right. No disrespect to Microsoft. Microsoft's a great company. One out of every 5 people in Seattle works at Microsoft. That's right. And it's like, you got this thing. And maybe you love your job. And if you love your job, that's great. But I hear from a lot of dissatisfied people at some of these big companies. And they write in. They're like, I'm reading your blog from my cubicle. And I have this good job. And I've got my health insurance. I've got free yoga every Thursday. But I'm not really— Fulfilled. Right. I'm not really fulfilled. So for me, I guess I'm much more interested in that word fulfilled. How can you live a fulfilled life? And you can live a fulfilled life and still pay your bills. Lots of creative people do it. Lots of unconventional people do it. And I would say, if anything, it's actually much more common now than it used to be. When I first started working online 15 years ago, I didn't know a lot of other people who were doing that. My friends thought I was selling drugs or something. [Speaker:MALE SPEAKER] Well, you were. [Speaker:CHRIS WILSON] Well, I was. Or like online gambling or whatever. Parents have no idea how the internet works. And stuff, but now it's, it's much more common. So I don't really like the word balance myself. So what we'd like to do is we want to replace the word— like, living a balanced life is not the goal.

The goal is living a fulfilled life.