YOU Are More Than Average: Think BIG with Eric Thomas

Okay, I'm gonna give you a secret. I want you to start having wild thoughts because here's the deal: if you have wild thoughts and they don't work out, you can always go back to average thoughts. There's a whole bunch of people waiting for you when you come back.

A lot of people think that it's stupid. A lot of people think it's too soft stuff.

I'm wondering if you've been defeated because you have been giving yourself wholly to something that was too small to hold you.

Rise and shine, it's inspresso time! Good morning, Believe Nation, it's Evan. My one word is believe and I believe in you. I believe you have an amazing gift inside you that I want to see explode out onto the world. So let's start your day off right together. Grab your coffee and sip on today's message, Have Wild Thoughts. Over to you, Eric Thomas. I wake up every morning, espresso keep me going.

I wake up every morning, So this is what I want y'all to do tonight. Tonight, I want to go somewhere because I told you, you know, like, I don't know if you— maybe because you're human and you've gotten so accustomed to human that maybe you don't know what you're capable of doing as a human, right? Anybody get a new phone? When you get a new phone, with the iPhone 7, 8, right, the iPhone, or you went to the Galaxy, when you get that at Christmas or you get that gadget, When you first open up that gadget, what are you happy about? What it can do, all the stuff it can do, right? If you like a geek, I'm not a geek, right? But I imagine if you a geek, you going through like, I only use the stuff I need. Like I'm not even interested in the other stuff, right? But the geeks know everything it can do. Listen to me very closely. I believe that some of us have gotten so caught up with school and work, you forgot what you could do as a human. Like for real, you just forgot. Like you so caught up on life and problems. You so caught up on paying bills, you forgot you human. You forgot you the one made up the phone. You made up the TV. You made up cars. You made up flying. Like, they're human. We flying. 100 years ago, if they would've told me I could, like, we could fly to Australia and watch TV, we watching TV, y'all. We watching TV on the way to Australia. This is what happens when you have wild thoughts. And that's what I wanna talk about tonight. Like, wild thoughts. Like wild thoughts, like I don't want you to be in school for grades 'cause I told y'all we passed that. And that's why school is so hard for some of you. That's why life is so hard for some of you 'cause that's all you doing is life. You don't have no wild thoughts no more. You don't dream crazy no more. You kind of settled into like whatever little life they gave you, whatever paycheck they gave you, whatever they told you to do for 40 hours. Like you locked in on that. And I just want you to do yourself a favor. Maybe the weekend when you're not busy, I just want you to start touching the buttons and see what you capable of. Do me a favor. I want you to get out of the average thinking And look, I— okay, I'm gonna give you a secret. I want you to start having wild thoughts because here's the deal: if you have wild thoughts and they don't work out, you can always go back to average thoughts. There's a whole bunch of people waiting for you when you come back. I promise you, they waiting. Average is gonna be there. So just do me a favor, just start thinking crazy and wild. I want to own multiple homes and multiple cars, and I want to have that nonprofit, and I want to have that profit, and I want to be able to travel the world, I want whatever. Okay, raise your hand if I'm telling the truth. You are crazy, stupid, talented, you know you are. But you get stuck on average not using your full potential. Let me see your hand. Just some stuff you know you could be doing that you ain't doing. Let me see your hand. You know you could be doing it, hands down. Listen to me real quick. Eric Thomas, I don't really know who I am, but you here tonight, right? So I'm telling you, I'm giving you full permission to start having wildest dreams and be yourself. I'm giving you permission, stop waiting on people. It's the weirdest thing. I meet some of the most talented, smartest people in the world who stuck because they waiting for permission. I give you permission. I give you permission to be yourself. Like, I'm giving you— and why do I have the authority? Because I'm myself. I'm in full Eric Thomas permission. I ain't ask no other motivational speaker, was it alright to go hip-hop? I'm just doing what I know I've been called to do unapologetically. I want to make sure I say that. I didn't even know if I could say it. I just tried to see if I could say it. It was in my head. I was like, can I say that word? I just said it. It came out. You don't have to apologize to anybody to be great. You don't owe it to anybody else to play little no more. Come on, don't play little no more. Like, you don't want your brother to feel bad, or you don't want your cousin to— look, you have full permission. You don't want your parents to think You are a know-it-all. You have full permission to be your greatness right now. You have full permission to be your greatness. Whoever you— whatever your greatness is, you have full permission to be that right this second.

You can either live in a world that other people have created for you, or you can create a new world for other people to live in. I think that's the fundamental difference. That's what we're great at as entrepreneurs. That's what we want to do. We want to make something better, right? We see a problem. We see the way things are and we want to change it. That's what's so amazing and fantastic about entrepreneurs, because we push the world forward. And so you need to decide these wild thoughts that you're having, or these wild thoughts that you're afraid of, who are the people who are putting you down around them? That big vision that you have, this wild crazy thought that you want to introduce into the world, who's the one telling you that it's not going to happen, that it's not possible, that you should give up on it? Chances are the people who are telling you those things may not be the ones who you want to model. Like, look at what they're doing in their life, and is that something that you aspire to want to do? And it's not that they're wrong, it's not that they're terrible human beings, they are just not doing what you want to do. And so anytime you get a hater, anytime you get somebody criticizing you for the big crazy wild thoughts that you have, that's what I always default to. Is the person criticizing me, have they done what I'm trying to do? Have they accomplished what I'm trying to accomplish? And if they haven't, then their advice is meaningless. They're giving me advice on how to live like them. I don't want to live like them. And so their advice isn't helpful to me, right? And so if you can reframe it like that, then often the sting of the criticism goes away. Now you don't have to get in their face. You don't have to say, well, I don't want to live like you. Look at your life. It's terrible. It sucks. But you don't have to be negative to them towards it. But as long as you can remove the sting from yourself and realize, I want to create a better world, I want to do something different than what's currently being done. And to do that, by definition, it's a wild, crazy thought. Anytime you want to change the way something is done, you're going to have all the people who believe in the status quo, who love the way that it's happening right now, all those people are going to fight against you. And that's okay. I look at what I'm doing on YouTube. It was a wild and crazy idea at the beginning to create a channel around positivity. If you looked at all the popular channels at the time and how still most people spend their time— how do most people spend their time on the internet? Right, it's usually around news or gossip or laughing at somebody and funny jokes and putting other people down and all the terrible things that are happening in the world. I didn't like that, and I wanted to create something different. I wanted to create a channel that inspired positivity, that spread more believe out into the world. And not everybody agrees with that. That's okay. A lot of people think that it's stupid. A lot of people think it's too, you know, soft stuff. You know, this is not helpful, it's not good content. Great, those people won't stick around on my channel. And the reason why I'll actively remove people from the comments who are overly negative and critical and just spreading hate is because I don't want them as part of my community. I want to create a positive welcoming place. You can disagree with a point that I may have, that's awesome. But as soon as you're in being really judgmental, really negative, and especially hating on other people who are in the community, that's where I draw the line. I don't want that. And so my channel could probably be even bigger if I was showcasing a lot of the negativity in the world. If I made a video on 10 stupid things that Donald Trump says, I'm sure that video would explode and take off and do really well. But that's not the world that I want to build. And so I'm doing it in a different way than most people do it. And we've had some success, right? We've crossed a million subscribers, we've had hundreds of millions of people watch the videos, and I'm, I'm really proud of that. And I'm doing it in my way. It's a crazy thought, it's a crazy idea, and now it's not so crazy. Now other people are copying it. Now other people are doing the same thing that I'm trying to do, and I love it. We're spreading more positivity in the world, especially in the field of entrepreneurship. And so understand that whatever crazy idea you have at the beginning, you need it. You have to own it. Because if you fast forward to your life at the end and you're 100 years old looking back, are you going to regret that you didn't take action? That you had this crazy idea and you never did anything about it because of somebody telling you that it was too crazy and too big and too wild and too stupid, that it would never work out? You're either creating a new world for other people to live in or you're living in somebody else's world that's been created for you. You get to decide. Now I have a special bonus clip for you, but before getting to that, I would love to know the answer to the question of the day. What is your most recent wild, crazy thought? Share it down in the comments below. I'm really excited to see what you have to say. 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. I'll see you again tomorrow morning for another shot of Nespresso and enjoy the bonus. I wake up every morning. Nespresso keep me going.

Always go to something bigger than yourself. I'm wondering if you've been defeated because you have been giving yourself wholly to something that was too small to hold you. Have you thrust yourself into a glass of water?

Yes, sir.

Have you leaped off the diving board into a cereal bowl, person? Are you not guilty of immersing yourself into things that were too small to hold your vision? Oh my God, this is so good, I'm gonna get the CD myself. Jesus sent him to throw himself into something that was bigger than his condition, and he had to go to get to it. He had to get out of his comfort zone. My problem is so many times You've thrown big ideas at small people. You've given big commitment to cereal bowl people, and you're trying to get your sight back from a source that's too small to support what you're willing to put in. Is your investment bigger than the bank? You should see the way you're looking at me. Is your— is the reason you keep being disappointed by people is that you have wholly thrown yourself into something that was too small? Jesus sends him to something that is bigger than himself so he can wash his eye. Are you trying to take a bath in a bowl?

It's important to me to have the balls to look at the biggest problems we face as a society and say, that's my problem to solve, right? Obesity, metabolic disease, the slide towards ill health, however you want to categorize it, that's my problem. Like, I don't even wake up thinking that's my business partner's problem. That's my problem. Now I'm working with my business partners because they're very sharp guys. Yeah. But at the end of the day, like, I own that responsibility and That's awesome to me, right? Like having that, it isn't a weight that drags me down. It's like this goal to chase that's so big that I'm just stoked that there are people in the world that are prepared to dream that big. Like I'm inspired by that in others and hopefully can inspire other people with our dream.

Raise your standard.

Apple at the core, its core value is that we believe that people with passion can change the world for the better.

Not one drop of my self-worth depends on your acceptance of me. I don't ever give up. I'd have to be dead or completely incapacitated.

Hey, Believe Nation, if you want to see my all-time favorite top 10 rules of success, I have a very special secret video for you. These are the individual clips that I have personally learned the most from and applied to my life and my business. Check the link in the description for details.