YOU Need This ONE WORD | Unlock Your True Potential

Is there a way to— is there a process or something that you do to yourself to raise your awareness, to see new things, so that you can always kind of be on track or be even ahead of where you want to go?

For me, it's developing self-awareness starts with figuring out your one word. We've talked about this, I think, before in other videos, but I believe everybody has one word that kind of defines them, and you need to understand what that is so you're constantly living your true value. So for me, it's believe. You know, you've got inspire. As you look at your work as you look at your life, it now becomes like if that's who you truly are, if you're really about inspire, and then you look at your videos, and you look at your marriage, and you look at your kids, and you look at your house, and you look at like everything it applies to. It's the most important core value for you.

It's like your essence.

Yeah, it's the lens which is the world. And like I believe you're inspire, like it's close, but we're not the same either, right? And somebody else who picks inspire, your inspire may be a little different than theirs. But at least you know. And you're always gonna be unhappy in a situation where there's no inspiration. [Speaker:MAN] Right. [Speaker] If your marriage doesn't have any more inspiration, you're gonna be upset. It's gonna lead to unhappiness. If your work is boring, you're gonna feel boxed in and there's no inspiration. You're gonna need, you're gonna be upset. You're gonna have to find a change, right? And so a lot of people don't know what their, they just feel the angst without having a solution. So understanding what your one word is is a great start. So that you can say, okay, you know what? I don't have enough inspire in my life. I don't have enough believe in my life. I gotta go find a way to inject some of that for me to start to feel good again. Through your business, through your career, through your marriage, all of that stuff. That's the starting point. I think then it's overcoming the fear to go out and do it. I think building the muscle is definitely important. And I think the best way to do it is through your environment. I think a lot of people would be in a situation where they're like, okay, great, I'm about inspire. You know, I have, I have my own business and I love it. Inspire, great, okay, I'm gonna go off and today's the day now. I'm gonna, here are all the 10 ways I'm gonna inject some Inspire in. You're on fire, like finally, yeah, I got life into me. Like, who is this new person? And then it all falls apart. Like the next day you're up and, what was that? I was smoking yesterday. It's like, it's gone. You're back to your crappy life. What happened? 'Cause your life doesn't support it. You have a big goal, and then your environment doesn't match the goal, and so you fall right back down. Like if you wanna learn French, the fastest way is to go to France, like be immersed. You're forced to learn it. If you just try to pick it up from an audiobook once a week, like you're not gonna, it's not gonna happen for you, right?

You have to live it.

You gotta live it. And your environment needs to scream it, right? So how do you do that? Well, whatever it means to you, like what does inspire? Who's the most inspiring person to you? If it's Albert Einstein, if it's Quentin Tarantino, if it's like whoever, I'm not judging.

Surround yourself with—

You love Che Guevara or whatever, right? Like yeah, put the— I mean, we just went through the story. The picture of the girl, the girl that I couldn't catch, you know, on my wall helped me— I touched it, is it okay? The picture on the wall helped me make the hardest decision in my life where normally I probably would have backed down, but because I saw that daily, I didn't want to live with regret again. I reminded myself of the pain of not asking that girl to coffee. And then that let me make the most important decision in my life. And so you need to be surrounded by inspire. You need to have it. It's your physical environment, right? What's on the wall, what's on the floor. Like you need to be in a, you can't live in a box. Like for someone who loves inspire, you can't live in a cookie cutter box. It's not inspiring, right? You need to do something funky with your space, right?

So your space has to reflect your inner thoughts or vice versa. You should create, put things in your space that affect your inner thoughts.

Think about the big goal you have when you have those moments of boldness, like the ultimate Rich or the ultimate Jane or the ultimate, you know, Johnny. What environment is he or she in? What does this space scream? Maybe the ultimate vision is, yes, I'm in Maui and I've got a balcony. Okay, great. Start with a picture of Maui on the wall. There's costs associated with some of these things you want to do. Start smaller. I want to be around Steve Jobs and his big thinking. Okay, it's not possible. He's dead. I've never met him and I never will, but I could put his picture on the wall. That might cost me $20 or whatever it is, and that injects a little bit of Steve into me every day when I go in. Physical space is important. From there, you look at your habits, your routines, the content that you read. Are you reading books that make you inspired, or are you reading, you know, People magazine or whatever, right? Not to get down on People magazine, but look at what content you're consuming, and does it help you become that person? Now, somebody who Somebody whose word might be security, maybe a box is perfect for them. They don't want the chaos of switching up light bulbs and putting new carpets in and new stuff on the wall. All that uncertainty is not great for them. They couldn't live in that crazy environment. Great, go live in the box. It's perfect. But then you need to have other things around security that make you feel like you're in charge of what you're doing. So we talk about physical environment. You look at the people in your life. Do the people in your life, are they inspiring? The people that you talk to daily, do they inspire you? Or do they just, like if you tell them this crazy idea that you have, they're like, oh yeah, yeah, okay, good. Or even worse, like, oh, you can't do that. You didn't go to school to do that, Rich. Like, what are you, nuts? How are you gonna be a photographer? You didn't go to school for that. You know, you don't have family connections there. There's 1,000 photographers, what makes you so special? Right, like there's a lot of people that that's, those are the people in their life. That's not inspire, right? And so the people in your life, the books you read, the videos you watch, and an easy way to kind of figure that out is think about, we've all had moments, like you've had moments in your life where you've been that best self. You've had moments where you've been super inspired? What was happening there? Was it watching a Tony Robbins video? Was it doing some adventurous thing with your wife? Was it, you know, reading to your kids? Whatever it is, right? Like, not judging, whatever it is that you need to do. Now, instead of having that happen randomly at 5 o'clock on a Monday afternoon because you happen to turn on, you know, a YouTube channel, build it into your routine.

Like, cause it. Schedule.

Yeah, yeah. With purpose. Yeah. Start every day with this stuff, whatever it is, right? You like, if you need to wake up, scratch your back, run in a circle for 3 minutes, I don't care. Like if that's what gets you to be that, because I reset every day. How do you? Well, I feel great now. Like you got me pumped up, right? We're spreading some love, right? This is amazing, right? I'm going into some other interviews and stuff after today. And tomorrow morning I'm gonna wake up like—

Right, back from scratch, huh?

Yeah, I gotta start over. It's start, it's square one every day, right? And so I need to, I inject belief into my life daily. You need to.

And you know what, I think this is where a lot of people fall down is because they think, because I'm inspired now, that's it, it's my new way of being. And when they wake up the next morning or next day or next week and it's not there, like, ah, that didn't work, that sucks.

It's gone. Yeah, yeah, this is likely gonna be my, it's the next book, man. That'll be the next book. The first book is on finding your one word, the self-awareness, and then the next one is probably going to be on designing that environment because that's what holds people back. The environment, your environment sucks. Maybe I'll call that, that's the name of the book, Your Environment Sucks.

Yeah, and I think also people's expectations, thinking it's done, it's fixed, and then when it's not, they don't have that persistence like as an entrepreneur, you really have to persist. Yeah, you're going to fail now, you're going to fail again and again, you got to keep persisting. A lot of people think, "I tried once, maybe I'll try twice. If it didn't work out, that's it, I'm done. I'm going back to my old way." And really they have to be present that it's an everyday moment-to-moment thing.

Yeah, I mean, I think the only way that that works is if you enjoy the work. If we're talking about entrepreneurship now, like most entrepreneurs fail, I think a big reason is people look up, they pull out a magazine of the top 100 businesses to start in 2017, like, "No, it's the number one." Yeah. Photography, great! I'm gonna be a photographer in 2017, right? And then they're gonna go up against people like you who have a passion for what you're doing, and it's an art form, and you've injected your personality and creativity, and you're gonna crush them. And they're gonna try, and it's gonna be hard, and they're gonna quit. Like, if you're only chasing the end goal, you're never gonna get there.

So you gotta check with yourself, really. For you, I know with you, we've spoken about it before, It's really, you know, you don't talk about it that much, it's really a feeling kind of thing with you. It's like if you feel good about it, if you love it, if you enjoy it, you do it. As soon as you don't want to do it, you won't force yourself. Which is counterintuitive, or not counterintuitive, but it's counter to the way everything is run in society. You have to go to work at 8 or 9, and you just have to go to school, and you just have to do this, and you have to do that, and you do it whether you like it or not. But with you it's backwards, isn't it? You only do it if you really want to do it.

You talk about that? Yeah, like the more, the more, you know, everybody has bad days and it's not all gravy and amazing. And like in my life too, I have bad days. But if I find myself doing the same thing repeatedly and I, and I like it less and less and less and less and less, I'm like, okay, I got it. Like this has to be cut somehow. Like if it's important to the business, then, then I'm gonna hire someone to do it. If it's not important to the business, then it's, it's out. I'm gonna do something else. We did a top 10 on Jerry Seinfeld recently, and one of the things he was talking about was doing the work that other people find torture. The torture that you enjoy. So people look at my schedule within a YouTube context, you know, I'm filming, we film at least 3 videos a day go up on the YouTube channel. Where a lot of people have a hard time making a video a week, we're doing 3 a day. People would look at my schedule and say, "That's insane. It's torture. Who would want to do that?" And I would look at yours and say, "Rich, you're nuts, man. I don't want to sit there and edit video when like, that's torture, man. Like you put me in your job, I would probably pick up a smoking habit or something, dude. Like I'd be like, you know, because it's torture. I would hate it." But for you, it's love. For me, I love doing it. This is not work for me. For a lot of people, they're like, oh, I gotta do another stupid interview, whatever, and they hate it, right? It won't be a great interview. I love this. I get jazzed up from this, right? I'm leaving this on a high, right? I love it. And so, too many people are just addicted to the outcome, where you have to enjoy the process. You gotta enjoy the work. So if he's like, I do and it doesn't work, and I do and it doesn't work, Okay, well, keep doing it. You do it to do it. You do it 'cause you love doing it and you'll figure out a way to make it work. Not just chasing the work and then whatever I have to do to make it work, right? You'll never get there. The people who've had success in any field, entrepreneurship or career or anything, they love the business. They love getting up and doing the work. They may not love every day or every part of it. It's not all roses, but they like the work. And when other people look at your schedule, it looks like torture.