The Rule Successful People Live By

Most people think that to change their life, they need a better strategy, a bigger bank account, or a more advanced AI tool. But after years of observing high performance and from my own personal experience, I've learned something uncomfortable: that wealth, AI, real estate, money, the things we all want, these are just tools. And tools are useless if the operator is broken. If you are operating from a place of chronic stress, scarcity, or burnout, you aren't actually working. You are just vibrating in place. Today we're going to talk about the foundational shift for 2026. Not a tactic, but a state of being. I'm going to show you how to live in what I call the peak state 90% of the time, because your results don't come from your effort. They come from your state. So first, we're going to talk about the green zone versus the red zone. And when I learned this, this is what absolutely changed my life. So I became a self-made millionaire by the time I was 25 years old. And growing up, I thought that once I became a millionaire, I would be happy, I would be fulfilled, I would feel free, I would have amazing relationships, people would love me, I would love myself, and life would be good. But when I became a millionaire by 25, and I still found that I was miserable, depressed, anxious, had no self-worth, and felt completely lost in the world, that's when I started searching for answers. And so at 25 years old, I invested my first $10,000 into myself and hired my very first coach. And he was referred to me from somebody that I really looked up to in business. And of course, I hired this coach to do what? Well, make more money. Because at the time, I thought that making more money must just be the thing that I needed to feel better because a million just must have not been enough, right? We just need more. And I hired this business coach and I started training with him. And what he taught me really wasn't about business at all, but it had a greater impact on my business and on my life than any other coach or any other thing that I have ever learned. It became the framework to exactly how I live every single day of my life and how I make every single decision. Let's start with a framework that will change how you view your entire day. I call it the green zone versus the red zone. Most of the world lives in the red zone. This is the state of the sympathetic nervous system, fight or flight. In the red zone, you feel stress, fear, scarcity, maybe boredom, and a constant sense of urgency. You feel disconnected or like you're behind, even if you're ahead. Here is the performance truth that no one tells you. Chronic stress reduces your decision quality. When you're in the red zone, your prefrontal cortex, that part of your brain that's responsible for high-level strategy and judgment, literally starts to shut down. You become reactive. You make expensive mistakes. Burnout doesn't happen because you have too much work. Burnout happens because you've spent too much time in the red zone. It kills your execution long before the workload does. Now let's look at the green zone. This is the state where you feel connected, calm, you have clarity, and you take grounded action. In the green zone, you aren't hustling. You're flowing. Think of Michael Jordan just hitting every shot he takes with such ease. This isn't to say that he doesn't put in a ton of work and a ton of hours and, and miss a ton of shots, but when he's in this energetic state of the green zone, he's in the state of flow where the outcomes just seem to happen exactly as he wants them with such ease, and time absolutely flies. You see opportunities that others miss because your mind doesn't get cluttered with survival noise. And in 2026, the most valuable skill isn't coding or sales. It's the ability to move yourself from red to green at your will. Because a regulated operator, a regulated entrepreneur, a regulated mother, father, sister, brother, friend, leader, employee, executive will always outperform any stressed genius. So moving into Section 2, the goal is to live in a peak state 90% of the time, because something that my coach told me when I hired him back when I was 25 years old, he said the outcome can only be as great as the energetic state in which you initiate the action. So let me say that again, because it's so important and it's how I live my life every single day. The outcome can only be as great as the energetic state in which you initiate the action. So what does that mean? Anything that you do, any action that you take from a poor energetic state, if you're feeling stressed, anxious, bored, overwhelmed, angry, afraid, your outcomes are going to match that state. So if you go into an action with a bad state, guess what? You're going to get a really bad result. And so therefore, I became absolutely obsessed. It was like a light bulb that went off when I heard this, and I became obsessed with mastering my energetic state because I knew if I couldn't master my energetic state, it didn't matter what other skills that I learned, I was going to get bad results. So What my coach taught me is that when you're in school, a 90% is an A, you know, 90 to 100, it doesn't really matter. It's still an A, right? And so the goal of our life should really be to live in the green zone, in this state of flow, a peak energetic state, 90% of the time. Because if we live in the green zone 90% of the time, when we're on our deathbed, it doesn't really matter what we did in our life. How could we really have any regrets? How could we really question the fact that we actually and ultimately lived our life to our highest potential and lived the best life that we possibly could? And so that is the goal, to live in the peak state 90% of the time. I'm not talking about perfection. I'm not saying that you will never feel stressed again. That's a fantasy. The goal is to be in that peak state, the green zone, 90% of the time, and you leave 10% for the time of loss, the time of exhaustion, the time of illness, the time of lawsuits, the time of bankruptcy, the time of divorce or breakups or whatever it is that life brings us, because that's part of the storm and we're always going to face the storms. But if we can aim for 90% of the time that we're living in the green zone, then we know that we are truly living our best life. And elite performers aren't people that never get triggered. They're just people who know how to reset very quickly. Fast recovery is the skill. If something goes wrong in your business and it ruins your entire week, you've lost. If it ruins your hour, but you reset and get back to green by lunch, then you've won. Or even if it only ruins your minute or your second, you keep compressing that time to recovery more and more and more so you can get back to the green zone anytime that you've been knocked out of flow. We need to stop glorifying this hustle culture, suffer more, And don't get me wrong, I absolutely love this. I would call it more of a masculine mentality, the Alex Hormozi of the world. And I love him so much. I watch him every day. And Pace Morby, I absolutely love Pace. I've had him on my podcast. They're very much a hustle, grind, put in the work, go through the pain, learn to love pain. And I completely agree. Pain is part of purpose. Pain is part of everything. And suffering is a part of life. But what I have learned is it's not about trying to avoid the storms or to avoid pain. It's about understanding that the further we go out to sea, the bigger the storms become and the more painful things will be. But the storms are going to be there. So if we can learn how to actually enjoy the storms and enjoy the process of going through those storms, then it isn't— it doesn't have to be suffering. It can just be we become a better sailor. We learn how to master the navigation so we can navigate the seas and navigate the winds, and therefore the pressure doesn't kill us, and we can take on more and more and more of pain or suffering, but we don't actually have to feel it as pain or suffering. So I just invite you to put a little shift on this hustle culture, because yes, if you want to achieve anything great, You have to hustle. I work 100 hours a week, but I love the work that I do. I love the challenges every single day. It doesn't bother me if I lose money. It doesn't bother me if someone sues me. It doesn't bother me if an employee quits and I have to work overtime or have all these issues. Sure, it's not fun, but I know that I can still keep myself in a peak energetic state as much as I possibly can so I can just hone my craft, navigate the storms, and become a better sailor as these things continue to come into my life. So instead of glorifying suffering, I invite everyone to glorify the reset that keeps us in the green zone. So my energetic intelligence coach taught me 3 tools to help me stay in the green zone 90% of the time. So the first thing he taught me is the energy audit. The first step to energetic intelligence is awareness of what makes you feel expansive and what makes you feel contracted, and then how to quickly reset your state. So when I first started this practice, I had to set alarms on my phone every single hour, and I just did a quick 30-second check-in to see how I felt right now. I asked myself 4 questions: How do I feel? What am I doing? Where am I at? And who am I with? And this quick check-in just helped me understand what things lit me up and what things drained me and what things were just noise. And so all of us in our day-to-day, there's certain things that we thrive in. I call it our zone of genius. and we want to operate as much in our zone of genius as we possibly can. And anything that we have to do that's required to move the needle and accomplish our goals, that isn't our zone of genius, that doesn't put us in a peak energetic state, we should either delegate to someone who that is their zone of genius, or we should just remove it completely because it might just be noise. And so I started to understand, okay, well, these team members really make me feel good. Like we're really aligned. I love conversations with them. I love communicating with them. I love working with them. And these team members are just complaining all the time and they're energy suckers and they're spreading this toxicity and negative energy around to the whole organization. And we're not aligned on our values. We don't value the same thing. So guess what? I decided to cut those team members. The next thing was, okay, this relationship that I'm in, in my personal life, I'm realizing when I do my energy audits that I'm continuously in a negative state when I'm around this person. And after trying everything I possibly could to try to get aligned and feel better and solve the issues, ultimately I found out that we just were not aligned. Our values were misaligned. Unfortunately, it was very hard for me to stay in a peak energetic state around that person. And so I had to make the difficult decision to leave that relationship. I also noticed in my business that certain tasks that I did, I absolutely loved. Time flew. I felt connected. I felt organized. I felt like the outcomes that I wanted were coming to me. and then other things that I do, I procrastinated on because I didn't want to do them. And procrastination is a great signal for the things that don't put you in an energetic state. It's not because you're lazy necessarily, it's because that's just not your zone of genius and that's not your flow state, that's not your green zone. So I started to see, okay, I can do the spreadsheets and the analytics and the numbers. I mean, I have two engineering degrees for that matter. However, this isn't my peak energetic state. I really love to do the high-level conversations. I love to strategize. I love to be the visionary. I love to think big and figure out what tools can I implement, what processes can I implement, what efficiencies can I implement to move the needle forward and build an organization and lead the team and all of that. So I learned that type of work put me in a, in the green zone, and this other type of work took me out of the green zone. I also saw that certain clients that I worked with, helped me stay in the green zone and I loved communicating with them. I love serving them. I love solving problems for them and with them. And then other clients, they just weren't worth any amount of money that was in front of them. And so when I started to make the foundation of every decision around, does this support my flow state and my green zone or does it not? And if it does not, then the answer is no. And that was another thing my coach taught me is if it's not a hell yes, then it's a hard no. And that made my decisions become so much easier to make because I didn't have this confusion and this conflict anymore of, well, this is a good business opportunity, or, well, this potential employee has a lot of experience, or, well, this, you know, potential partner seems to check all the boxes. It all came down to how I felt inside and how my energy was around those things. And then if it wasn't a hell yes, it was a hard no. And my gut and your gut is generally always right. So that was the first tool, is just those energy audits to figure out what fueled me and what made me feel contracted, and then just cutting the things out that consistently made me feel contracted and drained me and leaning more into things that fueled me. And that created a compounding effect because the better my state, the better my outcomes. And that started to attract more amazing outcomes into my life. So the second tool that he taught me was was the energy reset. Because no matter how intentional we are, life will knock us out of flow. So I used my energy audit, the things that made me feel expansive and put me in a good state. And some of these were super simple, just like getting sunlight, eating some food, drinking some water, listening to certain music, going to the gym, exercising my body, having conversations with certain people in my life that always lit me up. These little things that I knew made me feel good, I brought those into the energy reset. So anytime something brought me out of flow, and now I had the awareness because I did these constant check-ins of when I wasn't in flow anymore, before that escalated into a compounding effect of waking up on the wrong side of the bed, where of course our outcomes all day are bad because our energetic state is bad, I could quickly have the awareness that my energy had shifted into the red zone or the yellow zone and start to do the things that would bring me back to the green. And so let's say it was just a, oh, I just lost a deal and I lost a $400,000 commission, right? Okay. It's opportunity cost. It's not the end of the world. I can do something quick to reset, call my friends, talk to a team member that I really enjoy talking to, listen to some music, go for a walk in some sunshine, read a book, go to the gym. All these things that make me feel good. And that's going to look different for you and for everyone. Or let's say, you know, that— so those resets could be super quick, maybe 5 minutes, maybe 10 minutes, maybe 15 minutes. But then we also have to have a reset protocol for the things that are really devastating in our life. Maybe we go through a bad breakup, maybe we go through a divorce, maybe we get diagnosed with a disease that's going to be very hard to cure, or maybe we're just really, really sick and it's going to take us a while to recover. Or maybe someone close to us is really sick, or maybe we have a bankruptcy looming. And these can range. And throughout our life, these catastrophes and these things are going to pull us out of the green zone are going to range and fluctuate in severity. And those resets, when something really devastating happens, those resets are going to take longer. And that's okay. Maybe you have a reset protocol that is you go treat yourself at your favorite resort and spa for 2 days over a weekend and you keep your phone at home or turn your phone off and you completely unplug and you just be present with yourself. Or maybe you go in nature and you just take long walks in nature. Or maybe you fly to the beach. I did that one time. I just felt like everything was crashing down and I just, it was the middle of a work week and I just bought a first class ticket to the ocean and I just walked the beach for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours and listened to music and watched the sun and felt the air. and that helped me reset because I had to make some serious life decisions. And I walked away from my companies, I walked away from my partner, I walked away from hundreds of thousands of dollars. And that was a more extravagant reset for me. So think about these reset protocols in your life, your quick 5-minute resets or your 5-day resets, and have the awareness using your energy audit of when to put these resets into place. Because peak performers who want to accomplish whatever they want to accomplish in 2026 and for their entire life, and create their life by design, they have to create their energy by design. They have to be able to stay in that peak energetic state 90% of the time. So the last tool my coach taught me that I'm going to share with you is called the Daily Win Review. W-I-N. This is just a quick daily calibration that helps you zoom out and make sure that you are scaling the right mountain, because there's nothing worse than spending years, possibly decades of your life climbing to the top of the mountain, finally getting there and realize that you scaled the wrong one. That is a horrible feeling. And I have been there more than once. And so now I do these daily win reviews just to recalibrate and make sure, am what I'm doing every single day in alignment with my true north? Is it in alignment with the direction and my dreams of where I want to go for my business, for my health, for my wealth, for my relationships, for my spirituality, for all of the things that I have that I want to accomplish in my life. And that way I can make these quick little adjustments and reset and make sure that I never get off track. And so the win review, the W stands for what is working. This is where you really reflect like, oh, this is working really well. Like for example, I'm doing social media and I'm loving it. I'm loving helping other people and I'm loving the growth and expansion and the connections that I get to, to make and the people that I get to attract that are similar to me and have similar values to me, right? Maybe that's something that's working really well. And then the next thing is what isn't working? I'll use another example from me. I've always had a— I would call it an addiction, a dependence to food for numbing or comfort. So I want to eat sugar or eat carbs or just numb out, right? Like numb out of work at the end of the day and just kind of veg out, listen to a podcast, and eat food. So now when I realize, okay, this isn't working because I have the same pattern every single day at 7 o'clock when I stop working, I just want to order DoorDash. Now I start to sign up for classes that charge me $30 cancellation fees at 7 or 7:30 at night every single day. So that can reset my pattern, reset my habit, because insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results. And so what isn't working lets you recalibrate every day and see what are you doing that's not working, because if you keep doing it every day, it's going to continue to not work every single day. And then the N is what needs to change. And this goes right back into that— what needs to change so I can stop the thing that isn't working and start to create more of what is working. And that was just my example that I shared about starting to sign up for workout classes in the evenings when I'm tired, when I'm drained, and when I want to numb out with food that doesn't align with my true north and what I want, and then I can implement those changes quickly. So those are the 3 tools that my coach taught me about energetic intelligence. And I wanted to start this video at the start of this year in 2026, because I promise you, this changed my life more than any marketing mastermind or ClickFunnels or conference or employee or business strategy. Learning how to live my life in the green zone and learning how to control my emotional and my energetic state changed everything for me. And this is when I finally was able to start designing the life that I wanted to live and actually enjoying it every single day. People actually think I'm weird or get upset with me because I always have a smile on my face. Like, even when people could be complaining all around me or something's, you know, crashing and burning all around me, and I'm like, I'm fine, because nothing, nobody gets to control how I feel. This is going on in my life regardless, if it's something that I can't control, I'm going to focus on the thing I can control, and that is how I feel. Because if I feel okay and I feel good and I feel connected and calm and present, no matter what is going on around me, then I truly am invincible. And if you can accomplish this too and you can hone this skill and hone this craft and make this your absolute number one priority, then you truly will be able to live the very best life, and you'll be able to create whatever it is that you want in this world. And ultimately, it all comes down to feeling peace and feeling happiness and feeling freedom and truth and connected and present. And those things are created not from materialistic things. It's not from money in the bank account. It's not from a status or an ego or a house or a car. It's from how you feel inside. Side. So as we move into 2026, the world is going to just keep getting faster. AI is going to make things noisier. Real estate markets are going to continue to shift. And you can try to chase the noise. You can become the calm center of the storm. Remember, wealth, real estate, business, AI, it only works when the operator is regulated. If you want to change your life, start by changing your state. If this resonated with you, I've got 3 more videos coming in this series where we'll dive deep into the specific vehicles, real estate, AI, macro strategy, but always through the lens of the grounded operator. So stay in the green zone and I'll see you in the next one. And if you enjoyed this episode, then it helps out the channel a ton if you please like, comment, and subscribe. And let me know, I'm curious, what's one small thing you do to shift from the red zone to the green zone?