Powerful Way to Achieve Success by Measuring Backward, Not Forward Feat. Benjamin Hardy

Dan, I think we wanted to start by you talking about this thing that Timothy gave us yesterday.

Yeah, I was just looking at the concepts that Tim used to structure the entire two days. I said, that's great. But the one thing I want to tell you is that what I've observed in myself and working with entrepreneurs is.

That.

It'S how you measure your life that really makes a difference. And the one thing that's really built into the human brain is that we're measurers. And they know that probably within.

A.

Couple of days, a newborn baby has immediately knows the distinction between this mother and. And any other shapes that there are in the vicinity. So right from the very start, we measure things because it's crucial to learning. We have to know the difference between things, and we have to know things that are good for us, things that aren't bad for us. And this comes from measuring. And so whether you feel good about your life or you don't feel good about your life, regardless of how it looks from the outside. So I, you know, Babs and I, from the very beginning, went for, by comparison, super successful entrepreneurs, okay? So, you know, I think that from an income standpoint, just to qualify for the program, you're not only in the top 1% of the world, but you'll probably be in the top 1/10 of 1%. And so the other thing is that these are outliers. These people are all outliers. There's nothing about where they were born, who they were born to, that really explains what they've done with their lives. They're kind of freaks. Kind of freaks. And actually, the biggest inequality in the US Is not between families. The biggest inequality in the US is actually within families. Families. There's one person in the family that goes through the roof, okay? And so there's a lot of inequality that's involved with superstar entrepreneurs. And I should say that about halfway through the last project, the Gap in the GAIN book, I said, you know, Ben, we need a target reader. We have to have a target reader, okay? So that we're not talking to everybody in the world. We're just talking to one reader. So we did this and we talked about it, and I said, tucker Max is our target reader. And we talk about Tucker Max came day he was born, he was setting goals. Double goal setter. You don't teach Tucker anything about goal setting. You don't teach Tucker anything about achievement. He had four New York Times bestseller books before he was 30 years old. One of them had been made into a movie, went To Duke, got his law degree in publishing law. Never went to class once while he was at Duke to get his law degree. And they passed a law in the United States after that that no law student can get their law degree without going to class. Okay. And I'd met him, and you've met him, and I said, God, talented guy. But you could never bring him home to polite company. I mean, he had one word that he used about once out of every five words that I just couldn't have that being said over and over again in polite company. So I said, tucker just has everything to be a super achiever. He just missed all the classes on being happy. So we talked about this and then we talked to Tucker. And so Ben says, do you think that's really true? I said, well, I'll just write him an email. And I just wrote the whole thing. And Tucker came back. He said, this is so bad word. True. You can't believe it. Bad word. So the whole point about it is that you can be successful by everybody else's. In other words, that you can be a super achiever and not have any of that experience yourself for your entire life. For your entire life. And it's because you're measuring wrong. So that's really what we're talking. We're just going to show you that there's only two ways of measuring what you're doing in life, and it's a switch in your brain. And for some reason, it got switched one way if you're not happy and you can switch it back. And that switch can happen in a matter of hours. Okay, so I have about 20,000 entrepreneurs who kind of got. I mean, not all of them get it. I mean, some people are really committed to their unhappiness.

And.

I mean, humans are strange. You never know what they're going to be committed to. But anyway, so Ben, your take on that? Because Ben chooses the book. So Ben not only writes the books, but he gets to, you know, he chooses because Ben has a better sense of the major market, book market than I do. And therefore, whatever idea we work on next, it's Ben's job to pick the next one.

Yeah. So just to give a little bit of context, and then in a minute, I'll have Gina or Rakima or whoever share kind of the core diagram. But when I first read the Gap, and again, it was Dan's Little Book, probably 2018, this was before Dan and I actually fully established a collaboration. It was very clear to me this single framework, if applied, can basically it essentially applies all of the best of all the research in psychology that I've studied as far as positive psychology and things like that. And so that was actually the book that I was more interested in writing even than who not how, but Strategically who Not how was the best book to write. And it really is a core strategic coach concept. And Dan and I were thinking. So the three books that immediately I wanted to write with Dan were who not how, the Gap and the gain and 10x is easier than 2x. And Dan and I. And I wasn't sure which book to do after who not how, 10x is easier than 2x or the gap in the gain. And so Dan and I had conversations and we thought there's really no use in teaching entrepreneurs how to maximize their growth and to go 10x 10x 10x if they're going to stay in the gap the whole way. And so that's why we did Gap and gain here. 10x is easier than 2x will come out next year, but just as a mindset model. And I'll let Dan explain his structure in a quick second. You're never going to feel successful if you're in the gap. It does not matter how successful you actually are. Your current situation is not what changes. What we're going to help you understand is how to relook at your current situation so that you're always in the game. You're always, as Dan just described, you're always actually the master. If you're in the gap, you're never the master because you're making your ideal in the future, the person you hope to become an unreachable target that you're always chasing. And that's. That's an endless path to nowhere. So how about we share the screen? Gina or Rakim show the diagram, and then Dan out. We really only have, like 15 more minutes, and then we'll do a QA. So how about you just basically explain. And a lot of these people have actually already read the Gap in the gain. A lot of them are core students of yours, but maybe just from your standpoint, share what you want them to know.

Yeah. So the thing is that I show this to people and I said, you know, these two sides of this diagram are going to look very similar. So I'm going to go through the.

Gap, just making it full screen.

Yeah.

So we're going to go through the gap first. And the gap works this way that we have a construct in the human brain which is called an ideal.

Okay.

And the reason we have that is because one of the fundamental things we have to come to grips with is time. Okay? And we have another model, what I call a mental construct in our brain which deals with space. And we've created a construct there called the horizon line, so that when you're outside, you have a reference point where the sky meets the ground. And that allows you to actually pick a point between where you are and the horizon so that you can actually measure a goal. And for some reason, we don't get really off track about this, that most children in a very short period of time get the horizon right, that it's not real, the horizon is not real. It's just a reference point. And they don't judge themselves by not reaching the horizon. They're quite comfortable, but with the ideal, they don't. And I would say that the majority of human beings never adjust to this because they've been told, you know, great people achieve their ideals, achieve their ideals. But the ideal is just a mental construct that allows us to chunk off a period of time in our brain and then actually create an achievement which we call a goal, and actually move towards the goal and achieve the goal. And so both sides do exactly what I've said. So you do that on the gap side and you do this on the gain side, okay? So it's exactly identical. And all 8 billion, I think that's the current population, all 8 billion human beings are dealing with this every day. And I should say here that my greatest mastery that has come in relationship to the gap is that I only do it four or five times a day.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know.

That I have a new book that's come out, and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there's a link.

Below in the description.

Or you can wait till the end of this video, or you can Simply go to joe'sfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Okay?

After 25 years of getting better at this, I only now do it four or five times a day, okay? Where I judge myself against an ideal.

Okay?

So the thing I want to say this. It's very natural to do this. And the only question is that you want to be aware that you're doing it, okay? Because you'll immediately feel it as a tightness. Your muscles will tighten up, you'll feel a sense of urgency, you'll feel a sense of scarcity in your mind. You'll immediately feel that you're in the gap. And so what the person does is that they achieve their goal and then they measure against the ideal and nothing's changed.

The ideal is they're always here wanting to be there.

They're always here wanting to be there. And so other people see their achievement, what they've actually done, but they don't see it because they bounced it against the ideal, okay? And they get unhappy, they're dissatisfied, they feel disappointed. And actually, some people can go into a permanent state of depression for this, okay? And so the whole thing is that every individual. And we're all on our own with this. There isn't anybody who can help us with this. You just got to get what the true measurement is. And so the gain looks exactly the same. You have the ideal, and the ideals are important. Ideals are very important because they throw illumination on our future. And the other thing is they motivate us. And when times are really tough, it's our ideals that actually allow us to go through very difficult times, as many people have done over the last two years, okay? And you have to go through that, but they're not for measurement. So on the gain side, you have the ideal. You see the goal, you start and you have an achievement. And then instead of measuring against the ideal, you turn around, measure where you started. And every time you measure where you started, you feel good because you've made progress. May not have been all the progress that you're ideal said you were going to make, but you always feel progress. So what I notice is that you become very, very masterful of your own progress. And so I would like to add to Tim's structure here, is that the real master that you want to follow is the master that's based on measuring your progress backwards. And every day you measure your progress backwards, you feel more masterful about your future. Okay?

So, yeah, one thing I will say, and this is something we discuss in the audiobook, by the way, and some of you have probably already listened to it. The audiobook has about two and a half hours of interviews between me and Dan. One crucial thing to realize, and this is something we talked about, is you're not either in the gap or the gain. It's a commitment you have to make if you want to stay in the gap and continue to measure yourself and other people against unreachable ideals which are constantly moving and changing like the horizon. You're making happiness and success impossible for you, your team, everyone around you. And just as an example, personal for me, and I go in the gap, obviously, about myself regularly, and I can Tell quickly when I go into the gap now, because I can feel the physiology and just the depression of why am I not where I could be or should be or why did I do that incorrectly? Whenever you start measuring yourself or your situation against what you thought it ideally could have been, you start to feel like a loser, no matter what what you've done. But I've caught myself, you know, especially with our older three kids shifting from gap to gain. And I think this is very important with kids. If you're always measuring them against where you think that they could be or should be, you've made success an impossible adventure for them. And with especially my oldest son, who we got him as a foster kid, we got him out of the. Out of a group home when he was seven years old. And I remember all three of those kids were so far behind in school, he was about two years behind in school. And I remember sitting with him and trying to teach him how to read for hours and hours and hours. And it's interesting because as he moves forward and as I move forward, my ideals continue to change for him. And, you know, if I were. He's now 14, very good reader, just brilliant in so many things. But if I'm constantly measuring him against my moving ideals for him, he gets no experience of his own progress. If I can help him see who he is right now against where he was a year ago or back when we were working on his reading, he can start to measure himself accurately, which is not against my ideals, but against his own progress. And so this is a fundamental mindset for yourself, for teams, for the people you're around. And this is something that Dan and I have talked about, but something he's found and you can talk to. But I think one thing that I really want to move to in a second, but one of the things he's found is that once an entrepreneur actually gets this and they start to help see their family or their team in the gain, sometimes it takes some time to overcome the psychological damage that was imposed by constantly putting the loved ones in the gap. And so that's not to put pressure, but the gain is where you can start to get healing. And it really is. It's very good. One thing I just wanted to maybe. And you can go wherever you want, Dan, but the thing that I think is helpful is kind of just helping people realize that the past is only theirs to decide, that there's no value in beating up your former self. No value in, as an example, if you didn't live the perfect day if I didn't achieve all my goals today and now I'm in the gap because I was a failure. Maybe talk about that. You are the owner of your own experience. Your experiences aren't the owner of you. I don't know if that or you can go wherever you want at this point, Dan.

Yeah, I think I'll follow your directions and go wherever I want.

Exactly. I'm going to go in the gap on that one.

Yeah.

I just want to tell you, sometimes the stories are the things. So I had this client, brilliant guy, probably 10 years in coach, and he had gone to medical school and done everything except become a doctor. And he just at a certain point didn't want to become a doctor, but he had valuable skills going through medical school. And he went into the insurance industry and created a company that was called Second Opinion. And it was having to do with the insurance underwriting for really wealthy people. Okay. And it's a real problem. As you know, we have Susan here and they deal with at the top of the world market in terms of wealthy people getting life insurance. And one of the problems with the life insurance industry is the doctors who do the rating are mediocre doctors who follow strictly. It's not based on wisdom, it's not based on knowledge, it's not based experience. They have checklists, and you go through the checklist and do it. So what this person, his name is David, what David did is that he would bring in top notch specialists, medical specialists to the insurance company. And he says, we want a second opinion on this. And we're saying the way the doctor said is that he just applied a standard rule to something, but it doesn't take into account what the person's actual situation is. And in about 80% of the cases, he would get a reversal and the person would get rated and then, you know, and so the insurance agent then would get paid and they would get paid part of it, you know. And so that was his business. And he was tremendously good at it, you know, and many of you will deal with this situation, you know, in the future. So anyway, he was telling us a story because he came into the workshop and he learned the gap just as we're doing this is 25 years ago. And he was the next quarter he came back and he was really, really kind of upset about something. And he told me, he said, you know, after I saw this, he says, I visited with my father and everybody's dead. I don't have siblings. My father is there and we were sitting there at dinner. And my father was just saying, what were you thinking? What were you thinking? And David says, what was I thinking about what, dad? He said, you went through four years of high school and you got 39 A's and one B. What were you thinking? Why couldn't you just work a little harder and get 40? This is 25 years after he graduated from high school. So for 25 years, his father is. Is that the right use anyway? Kvetching over the fact that his son could have been 40 as and he only got 39 A's, 39 ACE. And I mean, it was a. Let's say it was a strained rest of the conversation in the evening, but he's going home and he has to pull off to the side of the road. And he realized what his father had just done to him, he was doing to his daughter. And it's a killer, I'll tell you. It's an absolute killer that, you know, and I've seen it over and over again, you know, and it's funny. Richard Rossi with his thing. The reason why what Richard is talking about is really extraordinary is because we've never actually had a health care system. Only for the first time now are we having a health care system. Up until now, it's been a disease management system. Okay. And you know it because when you get your reports back, if you get a negative report back, it means they're not going to make any money. Say all the reports are negative. This is negative, this is negative.

Okay?

So what should be really positive for you is actually negative because they're not going to make any money on any of your diseases. And that's the entire healthcare system. I mean, how many of you experienced that? And the doctor says, yeah, yeah, it looks pretty good. This looks pretty good. This looks pretty good. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hell, wish I could find something to charge you for rather than getting paid for. Wow, another quarter and you're healthier than you've ever been. So the healthcare would be conversation about health, not what's wrong with you. But the big thing is that we live in a highly visual world right now and we can talk. And we're getting teenagers today, especially right during the period when they've switched off their parents. I mean, around 10 or 11 years old, you want to be a hero to your kids before 10, because at 10, they switch to a. They switch to peers as their judgment. So they start having that sideways communication. But now it's enabled with social media. Now it's, you know, and it's all the visual signs now, and they're going through their most vulnerable period. There's hormone change and now they have to develop all sorts of social skills. And they're being presented with images about what they should look like and how successful they should be at 10, 11 years old. And they've got this extreme tendency to be judging themselves by the ideal, okay? And you know, it's a real problem. And we live in a highly visual. And visual images are much faster to imprint our brains than any other image coming in from the outside. And so it's. But it's a human thing. Every human being has to deal with this, okay? And you have to come to grips with it. So if you can master this. Anytime that you feel yourself really feeling uptight about something you're doing and you're starting to judge yourself, you're in the gap and you say, okay, where did this start? And the moment you go back to where this started, you said, oh, I'm further ahead than I thought. And immediately the pressure goes away. And so when I say I do it four or five times a day, I only stay with it for about a minute and I immediately catch myself. It's like sailing, you know, I'm not on the straight line. I'm just tacking back and forth between it. I was divorced from bankrupt on the Same day in August 1978. Divorced in the morning, got to keep my credit card for lunch. People are very considerate when you've been divorced and bankrupt on the same day. They don't bother you, they just give you massive amount of privacy. Take as long as you want. Take as long as you want. And I realized that the reason for both was that I wasn't telling myself what I really wanted. I was expecting other people to kind of indicate to me what my goals should be and what my achievements should be. But one of the things I noticed is that I was asking permission of other people about whether I was doing a really good job. And as long as I did that, I was always downplaying myself, actually criticizing myself. And so that's what I've been through. I mean, I've been through. I'm not going to go through the whole history, but during that period I started coaching really, really top notch entrepreneurs. And I just noticed as a coach that individuals who should have every reason in the world to feel proud about themselves and happy about their results weren't. And I had one in particular. He was a movie maker and really superb at his skills. And one day, everybody else, I could get Them to say, yeah, that was a good quarter. I'm surprised, you know, now that I think about it, it was really not him. He would never, never say it. And that diagram that you see up on the screen immediately came to me. When I get really pissed off, I do diagrams. And that diagram popped out, the one you saw there. And I said, this is what you're doing. And everybody in the room is to going, except him.

Got it.

And he didn't last very long. He was with us another six months. But I began to see that for super high achievers who are outliers, you have to become master of your own measurement. You have to declare total ownership of your. Nobody gets to say how you're doing. You're the only person who gets to say how you're doing. And you got to measure backwards. You measure forward. You're going to be very, very unhappy. And it's chronic, you know, and then people develop all sorts of ways of coping with their unhappiness. Great thing that Joe said to me about two years ago, Joe Polish, he said, you know, the biggest problem with addictions is that people think it's a problem. Addictions are actually a solution. There's something more, a lot worse that you're doing the addiction. He says, until you understand that addictions are a solution, you'll never solve any. You'll never get to the real problem. The real problem is this negative lifetime constant measurement of yourself as not achieving your ideals. That's why you're drinking. That's why you're doing dangerous activity. That's why you're gambling. That's what you're doing. Because you can't win this game that goes on in your head every 24 hours.

That.

Yep. So. And then Ben, you know, Ben. What I love about Ben among anything is that if you subtract his age from me, he still hasn't been born.

Right.

You still have about another 10, 11. But I really love the partnership with him. But one of the big things is Ben's got all the psychological models that support what we're doing here. That's one thing. And that's not my game. I mean, I would never spend the time to do it. And, you know, so. But this is really. You've gone down the checklist of all the things that kind of explain this unhappiness. And this diagram really, really does.

Well, it's massive.

Not perfect. It's not perfect. There's a few things that it doesn't.

No, I think it's a great, great concept and we'll open this up to Q and A in just a quick second. But yeah, I think one thing just that I wanted to share. Last thought for me and you guys can entertain any questions you want. But one thing I will say is it is fun working with Dan simply because he does let the who do the how. I get to decide literally what the book is, how it's going to be. He gives me feedback, Babs gives me feedback. But ultimately the book is the book that I created. And I really enjoy who, not how, collaboration. And it is just a beautiful experience. I will say one of the immediate thoughts that we get regularly of, okay, if I'm going to start measuring myself backwards and being in the game and actually enjoying my life and actually enjoying my progress, isn't that going to blunt my ambition? Because being in the gap is the reason I'm so successful in the first place. I'm always trying to get to the next place and it is a false idea. Me being in the gain for myself and actually appreciating my progress hasn't slowed my ambition. It's actually blunted my worry about what an anyone else thinks about my progress. I get to take ownership over my own measurements. And that's exactly what Dan said. You have to take ownership of your measurements. None of your opinions of my progress matters to me. Literally. The only person whose opinion of my progress matters to me should be myself. And if I'm in the gap, I'm continuously devaluing my own experiences, devaluing my own progress, beating up my former self because I could have been better or should have been better. And so what it blunts is the noise outside of you and it allows you then to become a more unique individual. Because now that I'm measuring myself backwards rather than against social media ideals or against where I wish I could be, now I can actually see my own progress, enjoy it, think about it, and then start to decide the progress that matters to me, the progress that I want, not the progress that I think I should need or that anyone else thinks that I should have. So it really then allows you to play your own game, enjoy your own game, become the more unique individual that you actually are. And it doesn't stop you from having deeper connections with other people. It just simply allows you to determine for yourself what your own life means for yourself. Anything else you want to say before we open it up?

No, I think, I mean, I think. And this, you know, I would say this, is that this relates to everything that goes on in society. You Know, and, you know, think about political ideals that people born in the freest country that's ever existed thinks that the country's a disaster because it doesn't meet their ideals.

We have a very gap culture about America right now.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's very funny. The Founding Fathers, with one exception at the end of their lives, thought that what they had created failed. Washington felt that way, Jefferson felt that way. The only one who didn't is Madison, who actually created the blueprint and at the end of his life. And they all lived a long time, by the way. The average lifespan of the seven or eight people who are considered the founding fathers is roughly 81. At the time when people died, lifespan was 35 or 40. Hamilton died real early because he chose the wrong hobby, you know, dueling, you know, that's not it. Washington died the earliest. He died a year after he was president at 67. But all the others, Jefferson, Madison, Adams, Franklin is one of the things. Average age around 83, 84. You know, it was something really big. But Madison said, he said no. He says they're just unhappy because the people that they see coming to the United States don't look like them and they're snooty about people who are coming to the United States. He says, we got a great system here. It stops. You know, it makes government almost impossible, which allows other people just to get on with useful things in their life. And he said, no, no, this is a good system. You know, it'll do great. And so the whole point is that the smartest people in the world can be the people most caught up in the gap. The most highly educated people in the world. The tendency is that they'll be the big gappers, okay, because they start judging people around them and start judging what's going on around them by impossibly high ideals. And I just see it. I just see it everywhere. I mean, this is pretty, you know, I mean, it's really interesting. And it just deprives you of the, you know, the great freedoms that are really available. Greatest freedoms that humans have ever experienced. We're at the healthiest that humans have ever been. You know, poverty levels are dropping, you know, really, really rapidly around the world and everything like that. And it's a terrible world and everything like that. But it has nothing to do with actual measurements. It just has to do with measuring what they see against their ideal of what things should be.

How happy are you on a scale of 1 to 10? So 10 is a feeling of well being and 0 is the pits. What's your happiness number, and how do you get more of that? During today's talk, you're going to know what the happiness rules are and how to implement happiness rules into your life so that you can become happier. You're going to get a detailed handout of all the material in the presentation. And ideally, if this makes sense to you, you're going to come out of this happier. You've been misled. You were given a formula that told you that success, that happiness was the result of hard work. Success. Happiness came from working hard and becoming successful. Success is defined as the progressive realization of a worthy goal by Earl Nightingale. He's a motivational speaker. I followed those rules. I followed that formula. I wanted to become a doctor. I worked hard, college, med school, residency, started a private practice, became successful. And what I found at the end was burnout. And burnout is defined as exhaustion detached from work, becoming bitter, becoming cynical, and losing effectiveness at work. My burnout got really bad. It got to a point that something had to change. In September 2008, I was sitting in a darkened room. I was staring across at a picture. My sister Magdalena. We're twins. And in this picture, she's beaming. And what you can't tell is that she's wearing a wig because she's going through chemotherapy. Three years before, she'd been diagnosed with brain cancer and had a terrible prognosis. And the month before, on August 24, 2008, she had passed away. It was so striking to me. In that moment, I was healthy, I was successful, I had a thriving private practice, and I was miserable. And Magdalena, with a terrible prognosis, lived life with a smile on her face. In that moment, there was a line in the sand, a moment of truth. I committed to enjoying the ride and becoming happy no matter what. And over the years, that's what I've been able to do. And now that's what I like to teach other people. What I've come to discover is that happiness is really the engine that drives success instead of the outcome of success. Here's a definition of you from Sean Achor. He's a happiness researcher from Harvard. The feeling of joy that you get as you strive to fulfill your potential, it's a definition of happiness. What I love about that definition is it's got embedded two key parts. Number one, embrace a sock. And number two is Dan Sullivan's elegant idea. Make your future bigger than your past.

Hey, I hope you're enjoying this video. And I want to let you know.

That I have a new book that's come out and if you'd like to get it absolutely free, there is link below in the description. Or you can wait till the end of this video or you can Simply go to joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there.

Now. The happiness rules do not work. They get broken. If what you're dealing with are things like, you know, PTSD or clinical depression or anxiety, they can be helpful. But with those conditions, you need to get some professional help as well. There's a whole area of psychology that's opened up which is called the positive psychology movement. And there's many theories about how to flourish and how to have happiness. And they're all working with the same basic ingredients that we pick and choose from and we put these ingredients together and that's how we define or achieve happiness. Where happiness rules stands out. What's completely different from the happiness rules and other methods is that they were not named by a psychiatrist who's listened to 417 episodes of I Love Marketing. We've got three big rules, two parts to each rule. First, fitness rules. Part one of fitness rules are the physical fitness rules. Sleep optimized for eight or more hours a day. Move more. Eat well. Mental fitness. Cut out negativity in your life as much as you can. Limit your exposure to negativity. We've got a lot of negative thoughts frequently in our head. Don't wrestle and try to push them out of your head. Put a blinders to them. When you try to push the thoughts out, they get bigger. Develop a gratitude.

Practice.

R and R Play time off. But this is also where resiliency lives. So techniques like Jason teaches us breathing, meditation, taking a walk. Adding five minutes four to six times a day of active recovery is incredibly helpful. Resets your nervous system. Develop a sense of awe. Cultivate a sense of wonder. Second set of rules Growth rules. First part of Growth Rules Learning and growing Work with a growth mindset. We are never finished products. We can always get better. We talked about this last month's meeting. Jim Rohn Work on yourself as hard as you work on your business. The past is for learning. This comes from the promises of Alcoholics Anonymous. We will not regret the past nor wish to shut the door on it. Second part of Growth Rules Connection. We've been talking about that all day long, today and yesterday. There's an incredibly tight correlation as we age with our health and happiness and the quality of the connections that we have. Focus on your relationships. Find your tribe. One of the big findings of all of the positive psychology research that's been done is that other people matter. Purpose rules first. Blaze your own trail. This is where courage lives. But Wiesen was talking about that. What are you interested in? What's your vision? Not that vision, this vision. What's the impact that you want to have in your life? What are you curious about? What are you good at? David Evans and Bill Burnett are teachers at Stanford. They've got a course. In the book Designing your life, David Evans was asked to summarize how to design your life. He came up with a 10 word answer. Get curious. Talk to people. Try stuff. Tell your story. In the last section, committing to enjoying the ride, I have two quotes for you. The first from Viktor Frankl, Man's search for meaning. Everything can be taken from a man but one thing. The last of the human freedoms. To choose one's attitude in any given circumstances, to choose one's own way. And the second is more recent from Jason Tzedukas. I saw this quote recently. Jason Sudoukis is the actor on Ted Lasso. He said, if you have the opportunity to hit a rock bottom, however you define that, you can become 412 bones or you can land like an avenger. All these concepts are familiar to Yuan. The happiness rules gives you a handle and a way to think about them so that you can remember them. Things that are easy to do are also easy not to do, according to Jim Rohn. For the next week, commit to living life intentionally by design, putting the happiness rules at the center. And if it makes sense, share the happiness rules with the people around you. Family, friends, loved ones. And imagine in a year we get back together and everybody has moved up their level of happiness and the people around them have moved the level of happiness up. What the world starts to look like. Living the happiness rules can change your life. I know it's changed mine and it can change yours. So go out there and be happy.

When it comes to finding a who, what is the next step now? Dan or Ben? What's the first thing? If you ran everyone's life and would wait a magic wand, what's the next action you recommend people take? You've already talked about some by finding, you know, some goals, some things that you want. Anything else you want to speak to on that?

Well, I just do a quick thing.

Because Ben built this into the book and that is that in Coach we have a main tool which is called an impact filter, where you identify what you want in such a way that other people can really get it, and that's actually included in the book. But what it does, it simply says that you have a project in mind and you say what you want to achieve, the importance of it to you, and then the ideal result you're looking for. And then there's a section where you say this is the best possible result. So you, you say it's done and it's fantastic. And you say on the day this is done, what does this look like? And you identify up to 8 measurable results when the project is done. And once you're finished with that, you go and say, what's the worst result if I don't move forward on this? Because when you get engaged with a goal and you're emotionally committed with it and you don't act on it, you've set yourself backwards. It'll be harder for you in the future to actually have a bigger and better goal that you act on. So when you commit to visualizing the goal and writing it down, it's serious business because your brain takes it seriously and it wants, wants you, wants to know why you're not moving forward on it. And then I take, I type this up, it's a writable PDF or you can write it in purpose. And I run my life with impact builders. And so the, and then what I do, I said, now who can I send this impact builder out to and talk to them about my project? And invariably within a matter, you know, if I send it out to 10 people within about two or three days, I've got the entire team put together and my job is just to maintain the focus on the goal and other people are actually doing the, doing the goal. So I write a book every quarter, But I have 10 people on my team and it takes me roughly 25 to 30 hours to write a brand new book every quarter because everything else is handled by a 10 person team. And so people, how can you write a book every quarter? And I said, don't do much of the work. Don't do much of the work. Don't do much of the work. You know, and so. Well, I would say that Ben and I creating the who not how book over the past year has cost me 50 hours.

And think about what that return. Well, here's the thing. Okay, I want to say something too.

Though, that if we really go back to the things, I think I've pulled off the ultimate who, not how here I got a concept out into the.

World, I do any of the work.

Yeah, and you're the first one mentioned in the book.

That's right.

You're the first one. And I always say, this is not my idea. This is Dean Jackson's idea. You know, and so, you know, but to me, that's collaboration. Dean. I look to you, I look to you for simplification of ideas.

You know, and an idea, this is part of my thing, is an idea like that is not diminished by someone taking and expanding on it. It's multiplied.

Yeah.

And it's not take anything. People are so guarded and precious around their ideas.

Well.

And people don't mention where they get their ideas from. That's part of my collaboration, you know, where I get my ideas from. And I get my ideas from a lot of different places. But you're. You tend to be a very, very good place.

I'm a gusher.

You're a gusher. You are a gusher, Dean. Yes.

Well, you know, I've always liked the most expensive information in the world is bad information. Right. And so the most valuable information is things that. That's an investment. Everyone here is going to invest their time, their money, their energy. And so I hope that this concept helps make you a lot of money. I hope it makes your life incredibly more valuable.

And.

And what is the value of an elegant idea that changes the trajectory of your life? And so I'm going to demonstrate a way that, like right now, so some people needed to run, but we still got a lot of people on. I'd like you to write in the chat the aha that you got or the insight. And so I'd like you to start with either aha aha or insight dash. And I'd like you to put in the chat because I want Dan and I want Ben to be able to read what this concept means to you. What have you gotten out of this? What does who, not how mean to you? What have you learned? What have you discovered? How has this changed your perspective? Let's take a minute and write that into the chat right now. What's your aha or your insight? Start with aha. Dash or insight Dash and go ahead. Let's take a minute to have everyone write it down.

It's a good example of who, not how.

Joe.

Yeah, this is good.

That's my point. You're all the who's right now helping us see what you got out of this.

Yeah.

That's great.

Yeah. Look at all this.

It's great. Perhaps it's going to have to do a head check on me after this.

Whenever comments that it takes courage to express one's ideal.

Yeah.

There's so many good ones here. Who is not delegation?

Yeah.

Value before opportunity. I need to trust others. How to integrate who not how into our Marketplace software. The context changes relationships. Business is creative. And, Monica, you sent it personally to me. If you want to post it to.

The whole.

Whole group, just take your awesome comment and repost it.

Yeah.

See what I'm demonstrating here? This is who, not how. And for the last several months, I've been asking my genius network members what needs solved? What are your biggest challenges? What are your biggest opportunities? What do you want to learn? What do you want to discover? Who, not how, is an ELF way to actually do business? Right. To not do that is hard, annoying, sometimes lucrative, and frustrating because not all money is created equal. Some money is painful, and you can make a lot of money, but if you have to do it in a hard, annoying, frustrating way, it's not as good as the easy, lucrative, and fun way. And ELF doesn't just apply to business. It could be easy, liberating, and fun. And so in your own life, I mean, crowdsource genius. Crowdsource concepts, crowdsource feedback. I mean, look at how many hundreds of comments we just got in the last three minutes. So there you go. That's a who, not how demonstration. What did I not say about you.

That people should know?

I got the most fantastic wife in the world. Yes. Honey, stand up, please. Just say hi.

Yeah, that's. That's Rita.

Go ahead, Rita, Stand up.

She's got me on trial still, by the way.

Yeah.

So I hope I do good.

Yeah.

And by the way, I wouldn't even know you if it wasn't me talking with Rita. And for Jennifer, who invited me to an event while I was on my sabbatical, and it was like a party in North Scottsdale at a private Air Skyshare. So I just decided to go to this thing because I wasn't.

Am I on?

Yeah.

And I started talking to Rita about depression and about addiction, and.

And then she introduced me to you.

And then you're like, hey, I love what you're doing. Can I support in any way? I remember saying, well, I'm on a sabbatical, so I'm not doing any business stuff. And we just became friends.

That's right.

And that's kind of where it started. We've been hiking and all kinds of stuff. Yeah. We've done quite a few things together. So you do have an amazing wife.

But don't say that lightly, because essentially, this part of your life, I say, from the 50s 60s, 70s, a lot of you are younger, but this is now when you're choosing your spouse. But it's the critically most important thing in your life for me, 100%, you know, so. Yeah. Thank you. Because it's, you know, you share everything, and when you, you know, you get your. You go through your whole life, you do your work, you get your kids, you raise your family, but in the end, there's you too, you know, And I. It's been a blessing for, you know, We've been together 37 years now, and every day is just a new day. So I want to just get that clear first.

Every day, when you say a new day means some of those days must have sucked.

Oh, yeah, A lot of them. A lot of them. I thought I'd go through some of that, you know, the starting up, the difficulties and things like that, you know, and getting started. I. I remember once when I was kind of just really getting going, get my steam under me, and I was out of the army. And one of the most important lessons, I never realized how powerful it was for everything is I started as a salesman selling mutual funds when I got out of the army, and I had a sales manager who just got lucky again. One big part about my success has been luck. I just seem to get the right people at the right time. Somebody once said, the harder you work, the luckier you get. Maybe that's what it is because I'm a hard worker. But I have had, I feel like my staff, my team, Joe, Eunice, people are angels, literally. And they carry me. You know, I sort of blunder my way through, make mistakes, lose things, all this type of stuff. And I guess I learned very early in my own career, and I was going to say, when you talk and Joe, you remind me, when we're born, just imagine in our heads is like a deck of cards. Every one of us here are just a deck of cards. And some of us have got aces. Some of them, you get your hand that you get played. When you're born, you have nothing to do with it. You got a hand. And I think the most important thing that you find out is what you're good at, what is your natural ability. And when you get your natural. When I learned in the army, it kind of was communication. It was being with people, visualizing and being. And so as I moved along, I learned that keep out of the. Get people around you that can do the stuff you're bad at, and then you do the stuff that you can do. And always in every thing that I've had just you mentioned the Four Seasons Hotel. That was the vision. I was the vision guy. I came out of Canada and I had a bunch of real estate. I sold some stuff. I come down here, what to do and I looked around. Well, I know real estate, I know franchise. So I looked at this land. Somebody said, well, there's, there's land, you know, go at the other end of the desert. And it was on the end of a real. In those days, 25 years ago, it was like nowhere. And I looked at this piece of dirt and I don't know, I just looked at it and I said, wow. You know, golf course and the city and the energy and all that thought, you know, this is a, this is going to be amazing, you know. And I didn't know Izzy Sharp, the chairman of. I didn't know them at all. I just saw Four Seasons. I just saw in my head there would be a four season hotel there. So I got back and, and I learned that I was going to go back to my first lesson in selling. When I first started selling, my manager, I said, well, how do you sell? How do you make presentations? How do you all that? He said, here's the secret. 18, 3 and 1. What does that mean? 18 calls, 3 presentations and you'll get a sale. What about this one? About that? No, that's the most important thing you do. Don't. Don't take any failure from somebody saying no to you until you make 18 calls, get three present days, get one sale. And I carry that through me to today all my time. In fact, I used to take 18 paperclips, put them in my pocket here. And at night I didn't go to sleep. I had the 18 paperclips over here. Just that simple.

That's smart.

Just that simple. And so I did that. Well, you know, you do 18 calls, three presents a day. Probably most guys would do they trot well. They try and do three present, no calls, one presentation and one sale. That's what you kind of try to do. But if you're the 18. I didn't know I got out of the army. I didn't know anything about selling or anything. And you kind of learn as you go along and then you learn how to handle people. You learn how to take control of meetings when you need to take control. And you learn all the nuances of getting to the close and you just learn those naturally. And anybody here can sell if you do 18, three and one. You don't have to be that good. You'll get one sale. But if you've got a propensity to be a salesperson, you get better and you'll find out you don't need to make 18 calls. You can make 15 calls. I was at the next thing you know, I remember in the office, I used to have all these calls. And then you learn to ask for referrals, you know, and then you learn as you're going through, you make all these presentations and at the end they tell you they got no money. So then you realize, oh, I should maybe ask that up front, find out who I'm talking to, you know. But you learn all. You don't have to be smart. I've often really said, and I want to say some of the genius network. I want to share something. Joe, you triggered another thought. I am a pure example. You don't have to be smart to be successful. But what you have to be is kind of intuitive and you have to be open minded to say I to come back to the deck of cards again. So I think I got maybe dealt one ace. That was the vision. I. I'm pretty good at. I'm going to talk about the visualization vision, but I'm not good at a whole bunch of things. But like Rita is fantastically good at organization. Just so many things. So I don't need to be because she is. I've got a CFO. He's phenomenal. I got a guy, Mr. Fitzgerald, fix it that works with me. Matt. He's been with me 28 years and something like something in my world breaks no matter where it is if I own a piece of it up here he goes, fixes it for the partners. We got a, for example, a deal right now in Seattle. A problem because Seattle was just killed with the, with the COVID and all that, you know, and homelessness and it's just horrible. The city of downtown Seattle right now. If anybody's from Seattle, they know that but. And we have a doggy daycare there. It's like a disaster. It's just a disaster. Disaster. Well, I send Mr. Fixit in. You know, next thing you know, daily numbers and things are happening. You go, so you take other people. You need four aces to get by. To have a 1000% life, you do need four aces. But you don't have to be that four aces like and, and that with the Genius network, what you guys do in this room here, you know, you might have an ace. You got another ace you had. There's two aces over here. There's. There's all these different levels of amazing experiences in the room with, you know, Joe, you have another thing. Like one thing I like to call what you get when you come here is sharing, caring and trust. You feel safe in the environment that Joe creates. And in that safe environment, your genius can come out in that safe environment. And that's what you, that's what you as individuals in your organization need to create up front, Create a safe environment for the people. How do you get that? Have you seen a guy more transparent than Joe? I mean, you get like somebody say that about me, you know, what you see is what you get. That's with Joe, there's no surprises. You see what you get, that transparency. Well, that isn't that common sense, you know, common sense. It's not that common, actually. And so when you have that type of environment, that's why Genius network is successful. Because you all here get to share your brains and elevate each other. When you do that meeting of four, you get three more brains in your head figuring out, looking at it from a different perspective. I'm sure each one of you got so much out of that meeting over each other's goals and plans. So using the deck of cards, Joe.

I mean, what are your thoughts on find your passion and pursue it? Because a lot of people, they're not anywhere near finding where they fit or where. Or they're in a flow state. And so how do you look at that?

Well, you know, I agree with you. Both are important. So I think acumen and talent without passion is a hall of victory. You've got to have passion. Let's go to the science emotional contagion. Social scientists are realizing that we feel like the people who populate our life most often, you know, husbands and wives were studies if the wife or husband was depressed. Over time, the husband or wife, the other partner became depressed. So if you're around energy vampires and people who are depressed and miserable, you will pick up their emotions and that will be your emotional default over time. That's pretty powerful. So passion is incredibly important because underneath it is actually love. And people don't talk about love. But if you don't love what you do, if you don't love your vision, if you don't love your craft, you're not going to run through walls to be biw, Michelangelo, da Vinci, Beckham, Buffett, Jobs, Mother Teresa, the baker or the barista with the sparkle in their eyes at your favorite coffee shop, when everyone else is complaining, who still, even though their heart might be breaking, looks at you and smiles and thanks you and brings their A game is showing love. Having said that, a loving person who's like a D level player is never gonna reach iconic.

Right?

Right.

And that's what I mentioned, the opportunity of mastery. I mean, how many people do you know? Well, you know, a lot of A players, but just walk out in the world, across the world, and very few people are on a path to mastery. You don't have to be there, but the that just goes to belief. Because fundamentally, your daily behavior reveals your deepest beliefs. And the sad thing is, most people on the planet today have been sold a series of lies that the icons are cut from a different cloth. And because of that self identity, their daily behavior matches their self identity. And they're not doing the work required to be masterful in their professional lives and their personal lives. Because they say, what would be the point? Which is really sad because, you know, could you imagine if we got this interview out to kids and the world, people would start to go, oh, genius is less about genetics. It's more about the things I do. What do I do? Let me start doing them.

That's great.

That's great.

Well, how do you think about goal setting and what's the best way for someone to not only set goals, maybe the right way, but achieve them in the most fulfilling way possible?

Sure.

So vague goals lead to vague results. Ask most people. Right. You know, no judgment, but, you know, what's your quarterly goal or your annual goal? I don't know. So you want to bring great precision to your goals. I call it the Big Five. Ask yourself at the beginning of every year, what are the five things that need to happen for this to be the greatest year in the history of my life? And then look at that every single day, you know, and then move it forward every single. Every single week. You know, I also have something called the Daily Five, which is, you know, a great life is less about doing one brave act on a beautiful Sunday afternoon. It's more about what you do every single day.

Right.

Your days are your life in miniature. Take care of each day, and a great life will take care of itself. So if you were to achieve five little wins every single day, at the end of 30 days, that's 150 little wins. At the end of one year, it's a 1850 little wins. So the daily five is another tool to help you do that.

Do you have bad days? I mean, do you? Do you?

I don't know.

I mean, it may sound like a silly question, but I'M genuine. I mean, do you have days where you're just like, God, this day just sucked?

Or.

I cannot. Even though I know all this intellectually, I just don't feel good? Or have you so developed mastery of your rituals and your routine. Routines and how you energize yourself that you're just pretty much in an up state all the time?

I. I don't have bad days.

No, of course.

You know, that's fantastic.

I'm perfect, man.

What are you talking about?

I'm enlightened. I'm so full of light.

I.

You know, I. I think that. I mean, like, I. I hear people who say that, but here's. Here's my take on it.

Yeah.

There have been a few people who. Who grace the planet who probably don't have bad days, and those are the great teachers of love and wisdom and bravery. But for me, I have days where, you know, I think life is a series of seasons. And I think there are some times where you go, I can't believe I've had decades like that, which is amazing. You know, like seven years in a row where just I'm in the pocket and everything is working. So I've been very blessed. And then I have these recalibration periods where life falls apart and I'm on my knees and I. I'm just being very honest with you. I hope you don't mind, but I.

Oh, yeah, no, I'm in the same way. I mean, look, I was crying my ass off last week over some traumatic thing I had going on.

Right. Well, I think, you know, that's. That's just being human. And, you know, Camus. Albert Camus said it so well. He said, in the midst of winter, I found there was within me an invincible summer.

Wow.

You know, which is, you know, Nietzsche. Chaos gives birth to dancing stars. And I think those seasons in the wilderness where you're like an animal licking your wounds, right? What does your mind say? You're wasting your time, Joe, reading all these philosophical books, journaling, praying, you know, going really deep and asking yourself the big questions. But those times when we're in the wilderness crying, licking our wounds, and our ego is going, you're not being productive. You know, you should be making money or, you know, growing your Facebook base. All those nonsense things.

Exactly.

Those are the moments where you grow. And see, society says, those times in the. In the wilderness where your life is falling apart and you're so full of fear, oh, run from those, Joe. Run from those. And what if those are the times where you actually get to look at fear in the face and you actually say, I'm not going to be co dependent on the world for my happiness. I'm going to get to know my fear. I'm actually going to realize fear is nothing more than an emotion. And I'm actually not going to be afraid of my fear anymore. Could you imagine if you use those times? And so it would be quite a shift. It would be quite a shift. So all that to say, you know, of course I have hard times and I've had, you know, I've been in the valley of darkness and those and I've been on the mountaintop of success. And I've just trained myself to. Though I feel the pain and the fear, I don't want to run from it as much anymore because that's my gold. And why would I run from gold?

Well, okay, this is an important point because that's my gold. And I actually believe, you know, very much. I have conversations with Dan Sullivan all the time that, you know, he talks about. He was on vacation in Cape Cod years ago and he was just, he was journaling and he said it occurred to him that life consists of two things. Things that work and things that don't work. And he thought about his own life and he said the biggest breakthroughs that he had in his own life mostly came out of areas that didn't work. And if you have something that doesn't, you know, you get in a giant fight, you have an illness, I mean, something horrible happens. You can either be defined what he calls bangs, the bangs of life where you're filled with intense negative emotions. And he's like, it's in that period where you can either you live in your past and define yourself by it, or that becomes the raw material for an incredible catalyst. And it is true. And, and the reason I ask questions like that is I don't want anyone sitting here watching this thinking, oh, this is some person that is just surpassed everyone because that's not who you are. I mean, I know that. And part of it is just so people can see. Yeah, how do you deal with it? How do you think about that stuff? So they, the listeners, the watchers can take the quotes and the philosophies and all this wisdom that you have spent so many years just developing yourself and use it to build a better life. I mean, you know, my work, I just want to. For entrepreneurs, I want to build a better entrepreneur. And in the area of addiction, I want to help reduce human suffering. And so however people need to hear those.

That's.

That's how I want to present it.

And just on that point, you know, I wrote a book a number of years ago called the Greatness Guide. And the first chapter, I believe was, I don't go back and read my books, but I believe it was. I'm no guru, and I think, you know, all these gurus, no judgment, but I think it does a disservice to the world to pretend that we're perfect, that people are perfect.

Oh, yeah, it's ridiculous.

And so I think we're all works in progress. And a lot of what I've done and what I write about in my books and podcasts or whatever, those technologies, methodologies for leadership, high performance, happiness, creativity, they really work. And they've worked unbelievably for me. But, you know, I don't want to put myself up on some kind of pedestal. And I think it just. It's more valuable to people to know, you know, I come from immigrant parents, very humble beginnings, no silver spoon. The Monk who Sold His Ferrari has sold millions of copies. I have millions of Facebook followers. You know, I tour the world. Why do I say that? Because only to say, you know, the Monk who Sold his Ferrari was self published in a Kinko's copy shop. Yeah, okay. My mom edited that first book and I was a litigation lawyer. People laughed at me. I've actually framed the first. The letter from my first editor who basically said, you know, writing is a craft. No one will read your characters. You know, your writing is poor. And it ended. You know, writing looks easy, but it's really difficult. And, you know, it sort of broke. Broke my heart for about an hour sitting in my car, and I started to get filled with self doubt like I was. So I'm gonna take this book out to the world. And then I just said, that's just his opinion. You know, I got to that place and, you know, Ed Carson, the president of HarperCollins, saw me in a. In a bookstore. He bought the book for $7,500 and they released it. And I'm only saying that to share, which is every single person out there watching this or listening has a dream, you know, and we all have these values and we all have unbelievable talent, and we all have incredible power within us, even if the world or the people around us don't think we have that. And I think, you know, every single one of us. I've met super famous people just like you have. And you know what I found? Mostly they're frightened little Boys and girls, to be very honest, completely. I just watched their behavior and you know, it's careful about the heroes because I've seen met so many of my heroes and they were just frightened little, little kids.

Yeah.

So you know, we got to be careful not to buy into the illusions that the world and good marketing sells people.

Right, right.

It's so true. And there are so many people that are well known, that are famous, that are admired, that are so broken. I saw it by being an addict, which I'm very open about. I talk about that a lot. I remember joining a high profile group when I was in early 2000 for addiction. People that couldn't go to 12 step meetings. They couldn't be, they are anonymous, famous Academy Award winning actors and actresses, billionaires, politicians, famous athletes, people that everyone would know and, and you see them in a broken state. And that really in a lot of ways it was beneficial because it made how real pain and suffering is at all levels. And so don't ever think that someone is like a God because they're just humans.

Well, that gets to leadership, which is why is the world in a broken state? Because nations, companies, economies are just run by a bunch of, of people. And if we don't have our quote unquote leaders, coming from a place of true power, coming from a place of true strength, coming from owning their internal genius, coming from living their values, coming from saying I'm going to use my life in this position I've been given to serve the world and doing what's right versus what's easy. We're going to have broken economies, broken countries and a broken, broken world. I mean, who is more healthy, who is more of a leader? The Johannesburg janitor who is working with love in his heart, who is greeting every single human being who walks in there with grace and honor, who's doing his work like it's the most important job in the world, who is more healthy and a truer leader, him or the person leading a company or a $50 billion company who is actually leading from a place of ego and brokenness and it's all about filling their bank account and it's all about ego and appearing on magazines and whatever, whatever versus you know, creating a culture where people are uplifted, birthing beautiful products out into the world, etc. Etc.

Yeah.

What are the five obstacles, pitfalls that I want to caution you against? The first is the devil of negativity. And all people who are as bright and creative as you are. You see, you pay a price and you pay a price in that you have a rich imagination. And that imagination can not only envision beauty, greatness, achievement, it can envision the opposite. You can envision failure. You can envision people against you. You can envision impossibility. That's the devil. Negativity. I don't know if any of you felt a little hint of it when Peter was talking. When Peter was talking, we were all feeling excited. But I'll bet you some of you I know. I was thinking, God, I'm not as smart as he is. I can't keep up with all this stuff. There's no hope for me. I'm just a loser. You know, I might as well pack my bag and leave right now. The world is going to pass me by. I'm too old anyway. Send me out to pasture. I've done all I can do. And you know, how can I? This guy's got it. I don't have it. And you know, that's the voice of negativity. And I have to see my advice in dealing with that. Don't ignore it. Because if you do, it'll keep knocking on your door. Recognize it, and then subject it to rational observation. So what I said to myself as I was looking to Peter, listening to Peter, I said, peter doesn't want you to feel that way. He wants you to feel inspired. He's here to share a gift with you, take advantage of it. And sure, it's a lot, and sure he's way smart, but he's here to help you, share with you. So connect with him, work with him, grow with him. And I told the devil to piss off. But you got to stare it down. You got to squash it. It's there in almost everyone who is very imaginative. The imagination. One of my great heroes, Samuel Johnson, had a wonderful phrase, the hunger of the imagination. And he called worry a disease of the imagination. And when you start worrying and getting into these negative places, it's that disease of the. It's the imagination turning against itself and starting to poison and soil the best parts of you and your life. And the remedy when you fall into those states, if you can't talk yourself out of it and stare the devil down, never worry alone. Profound advice. Never worry. Now, you want to pick your worry partner wisely. You don't want to pick some sadist who says, yeah, you are a loser, you know, but. Because the minute you connect with someone else, the minute you partner up, the two key variables in worry go away. The two key variables in toxic worry, number one, heightened Feeling of vulnerability. It has nothing to do with the reality. Feeling of vulnerability and diminished feeling of power and control. The minute you talk to someone, the minute you connect with someone, you feel more powerful and less vulnerable. The situation hasn't changed one bit. The reality hasn't changed one bit. You're just suddenly, instantly better able to deal with it. A good analogy is if you're in a big dark room alone in a warehouse, you feel afraid, paranoid, scared. If you're in a big dark warehouse with someone, you laugh and giggle, you're not afraid. This is one of the fundamental facts of life. One of the fundamental facts of life is that we in danger and distress need each other. We need to connect. And one of my fears about modern life is what I call the modern paradox. We have super connected electronically in ways that have changed the world for the better, magnificently. But we've been disconnecting interpersonally. And that's why your coming together here is so important. That's why you really couldn't do this conference virtually. Or you could do it, but it wouldn't have nearly the impact. We really need each other. We need the human moment, not just the electronic moment. The electronic moment is great. Change the world. But don't think we can dispense with the human moment. We need that, particularly in dealing with negativity, in dealing with toxic worry, in dealing with these states that are very common amongst highly talented people that can absolutely sabotage you if you're not careful. Because in those states you make bad decisions, you back away from opportunities, you use drugs, you get into trouble. The next pitfall, I'd like to point out is again, all these are two edged swords. They're paradox. But it is the flip side of one of your greatest strengths. One of your greatest strengths is your enthusiasm and curiosity. You are naturally enthusiastic, you are naturally curious. But guess what? You can become the victim of your own enthusiasm. You can over commit, you can lose focus, you can have so many good ideas that you're not able to nourish and develop any one of them to its fullest. And you can have this chronic frustration of saying, gosh, I've got all these great ideas, I've got all these great contexts, I've got all these great resources, but my garden ain't growing. You know, I'm not getting the kind of full maturity of growth that I want to get. In other words, you have add, and I want to plant the seed in your mind to take this notion of ADD seriously. While it's not a disorder, it is a trait. And take seriously considering if you might have it. Because I can tell you there's no condition in all of medicine that can change a person's life more dramatically for the better than the diagnosis and treatment of adult add. It's remarkable how you can go a quantum level up. Not only in your professional life, by the way, in your personal life as well. So consider that you might have this. If you are a visionary, a pioneer, full of ideas, have trouble with follow through, impatient, low tolerance of frustration, tendency to procrastinate, tendency to go down blind alleys. If any of that sounds familiar, consider that you might have this. And remember, the treatment in no way takes away your special sauce. Quite the opposite. It allows you to make maximum use of it. I often I make the analogy. Having ADD is like Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls is just a lot of noise and mist until you build a hydroelectric plant. Then you light up the state of New York. That's what the treatment of this condition in adults can do. So consider that. I can't talk to an audience like this and not have you. It's like Dean was saying. What am I obligated to say? I am obligated to tell you that there is a possibility to dramatically change your life, life for the better by considering this. And I won't go into the hole because we don't have time. But if you grab one of my books, My books are very straightforward and clear. Okay? The third one is more delicate. You all have achieved great success. You have achieved in most of you, quite a lot of wealth. This allows you to become a jerk. See, because people will tend not to tell you. They will tend not to tell you that you're becoming a jerk. The most obvious example are professional athletes. These people walk around with these sycophants who just, you know, tell them what they want to hear and they behave like horrible jerks. You know, 10 children with 10 different women, none of whom they care about treating people like scum, offering nickel tips, and they're flaming jerks. We all have it in us to become a jerk. Particularly when we become rich, famous and powerful. Give people permission, those who are closest to you, to tell you, you know, dad, you're changing. You know, Joe, you're changing. You're not. By the way, I didn't mean you, Joe Polish. I meant Joe Blow. You know, you're not the humble, friendly, what you see is what you get kind of guy anymore. Your success is going to your head and it's not attractive. Now, you may continue to be highly Effective. You may continue to be master of the universe. You may continue to. To change the world for the better. But on your deathbed, there's not going to be many people standing around feeling very sad. You may get lionized in your obituary, but you're not going to like yourself much. You're not going to leave the kind of legacy of love that is by far the most important legacy. So give others permission to give you that kind of feedback. I love the simple intervention which Dan taught me. If someone is exhibiting a difficult behavior, you don't have to have a year of psychotherapy. Just tell them to cut it out. And if they'll listen, that can save them a lot of time and money. Okay? The fourth pitfall that I want to point out to you is what I call the itch at the core of the entrepreneurial mind. Most entrepreneurs have an itch. Most of us with this trait feel a need to change our inner state. We need to do something to pump up the vibe. We need to do something to make life seem more vivid and alive. When we wake up in the morning, life just isn't as gripping as we want it to be. We have this appetite for more. We have this desire to make life more vivid, to make life more intense, to somehow or other make it gripping enough that we can really engage. And that really is at the core of this trait. Now, you can't make the itch go away, nor should you want to. It's your greatest asset, but it can also be your worst enemy. So what you have to do is be careful how you scratch the itch. Be careful how you scratch the itch. The maladaptive ways of scratching the itch cause enormous trouble. Drug abuse, alcohol abuse, extreme danger seeking. You know, I had one patient who said, I only feel focused and alive when I'm at the racetrack. The horses are coming down the home stretch, and I have a bet down that I can't afford to lose. I had another patient who said, I only feel really focused and alive when I'm making love to a woman and her husband is on the way home. You know, these are dangerous. These are not adept, but they another one who said, I only feel focused and alive when I'm skiing down a sheer face, knowing that I really don't have the skill to do it, hoping that I'll survive. And by the way, Peter's partner in writing writes about these extreme sports. What's his first name again? Steven Kotler. A wonderful man. And he talks about the states of flow that you can get into by courting danger. But it's not something I think we wouldn't want to risk our lives to scratch the itch. And yet that's what these folks tend to do. In scratching the itch, they resort to danger, to addiction, to all manner of self destructive activities. What they're really seeking is adrenaline. What they're really seeking is nature's own stimulant medication, epinephrine, adrenaline. So what are adaptive ways of scratching the itch? Well, right at the top of the list is my favorite intervention, my favorite drug connection. I call it the other Vitamin C, Vitamin Connect. And the beauty of Vitamin Connect is that it's infinite in supply and it's free. The sad part of Vitamin Connect is people don't take the it seriously. They'd rather get a prescription for Prozac than spend time with a friend, than get a pet, than love somebody. And it's killing people. We live in a big epidemic of Vitamin Connect deficiency. And the symptoms are lethargy, loss of ambition, loss of hope, low grade depression. And these people are being medicated. And what they need to do is turn off their electronics and sit down and talk to somebody. I have nothing against electronics, I love them. They've changed the world for the better. But we're seeing this growing addiction, this growing epidemic of what I call screen sucking at the expense of getting the kind of connection with other people you need. Number two in terms of adaptive ways of scratching the itch, physical exercise. My friend John Ratey wrote a great book called Spark, the Revolutionary New Science of Exercise in the Brain in which he lays out in absolute hard scientific detail the myriad ways in which physical exercise builds your brain. John calls it the miracle grow of the brain. It's not just good for your body and heart and bones, it's really good for your brain. And you don't have to just wait to go to the gym. When you're working on a project and you get stuck, stand up and do 25 jumping jacks, do 10 push ups, do a few burpees, whatever, run up and down stairs a few times, you will push the reset button on your brain. It changes your brain chemistry dramatically within three minutes. So have that as a ready at hand remedy. Instead of the joint of MMS or the Starbucks and the donut, a quick burst of exercise. And then the third particular way of scratching the itch that I recommend is a creative outlet. You all have come to this instinctively. You know that when you have a creative outlet, when you have a business that you're Growing you feel better. The reason I write so many books, I'm on my 20th book now. The reason I write so many books is not that I'm driven to write books. It's because if I don't have a book going, I get depressed. It's just that simple. If I don't have a book in process, I get depressed. I don't have to be working on it, but the fact that I have it in process gives me a creative outlet. I know it's there and my unconscious is percolating away on it. The same with you guys with your business. The fact that you're growing them, the fact that you're here, the fact that you have it in mind, it gives you that creative outlet which scratches the itch. The final, in my last 20 seconds, pitfall may be the most dangerous of all. The failure to take seriously and develop your loving connections. All the studies on health, longevity, success and happiness in life come back to the importance of one word, love. Take it seriously. Honor it. Nourish will pay you back over and over again. Okay?

I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here.

Go ahead. You're over here. Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.

The treatment in no way takes away your special sauce. Quite the opposite. It allows you to make maximum use of it. I often. I make the analogy. Having ADD is like Niagara Fall. Niagara Falls is just a lot of noise and mist until you build a hydroelectric plant. Then you light up the state of New York. That's what the treatment of this condition in adults can do. So consider that I can't talk to an audience like this and not have you. It's like Dean was saying. What am I obligated to say? I am obligated to tell you that there is a possible to dramatically change your life for the better by considering this. And I won't go into the whole because we don't have time, but if you grab one of my books. My books are very straightforward and clear. Okay? The third one is more delicate. You all have achieved great success. You have achieved in most of you, quite, quite a lot of wealth. This allows you to become a jerk. See, because people will tend not to tell you. They will tend not to tell you that you're becoming a jerk. The most obvious example are professional athletes. These people walk around with these sycophants who just Tell them what they want to hear, and they behave like horrible jerks. 10 children with 10 different women, none of whom they care about, treating people like scum, offering nickel tips, and they're flaming jerks. We all have it in us to become a jerk, particularly when we become rich, famous and powerful. Give people permission, those who are closest to you, to tell you, you know, dad, you're changing. You know, Joe, you're changing. You're not, by the way, I didn't mean you Joe Polish. I meant Joe Blow. You know, you're not the humble, friendly, what you see is what you get kind of guy anymore. Your success is going to your head and it's not attractive. Now, you may continue to be highly effective. You may continue to be master of the universe. You may continue to. To change the world for the better. But on your deathbed, there's not going to be many people standing around feeling very sad. You may get lionized in your obituary, but you're not going to like yourself much. You're not going to leave the kind of legacy of love that is by far the most important legacy. So give others permission to give you that kind of feedback. I love the simple intervention, which Dan taught me. If someone is exhibiting difficult behavior, you don't have to have a year of psychotherapy. Just tell them to cut it out. And if they'll listen, that can save them a lot of time and money. Okay. The fourth pitfall that I want to point out to you is what I call the itch at the core of the entrepreneurial mind. Most entrepreneurs have an itch. Most of us with this trait feel a need to change our inner state. We need to do something to pump up the vibe. We need to do something to make life seem more vivid and alive. When we wake up in the morning, life just isn't as gripping as we want it to be. We have this appetite for more. We have this desire to make life more vivid, to make life more intense, to somehow or other make it gripping enough that we can really engage. And that really is at the core of this trait. Now, you can't make the itch go away, nor should you want to. It's your greatest asset, but it can also be your worst enemy. So what you have to do is be careful how you scratch the itch. Be careful how you scratch the itch. The maladaptive ways of scratching the itch cause enormous trouble. Drug abuse, alcohol abuse, Extreme danger seeking. You know, I had one patient who said, I only feel focused and alive when I'm at The racetrack, the horses are coming down the home stretch and I have a bet down that I can't afford to lose. I had another patient who said I only feel really focused and alive when I'm making love to a woman and her husband is on the way home. You know, these are dangerous. These are not adept, but they. Another one who said I only feel focused and alive when I'm skiing down a sheer face, knowing that I really don't have the skill to do it, hoping that I'll survive. And by the way, Peter's partner in writing writes about these extreme sports. What's his first name again? Steven Kotler. A wonderful man. And he talks about the states of flow that you can get into by courting danger. But it's not something I think we wouldn't want to risk our lives to scratch the itch. And yet that's what these folks tend to do. In scratching the itch, they resort to danger, to addiction, to all manner of self destructive activities. What they're really seeking is adrenaline. What they're really seeking is nature's own stimulant medication, epinephrine, adrenaline. So what are adaptive ways of scratching the itch? Well, right at the top of the list is my favorite intervention, my favorite drug connection. I call it the other Vitamin C, Vitamin Connect. And the beauty of Vitamin Connect is that it's infinite in supply and it's free. The sad part of Vitamin Connect is people don't take the it seriously. They'd rather get a prescription for Prozac than spend time with a friend, than get a pet, than love somebody. And it's killing people. We live in a big epidemic of Vitamin Connect deficiency. And the symptoms are lethargy, loss of ambition, loss of hope, low grade depression. And these people are being medicated and what they need to do is turn off their electronics and sit down and talk to somebody. I have nothing against electronics. I love them. They've changed the world for the better. But we're seeing this growing addiction, this growing epidemic of what I call screen sucking at the expense of getting the kind of connection with other people you need. Number two in terms of adaptive ways of scratching the itch, physical exercise. My friend John Ratey wrote a great book called Spark, the Revolutionary New Science of Exercise in the Brain in which he lays out in absolute hard scientific detail the myriad ways in which physical exercise builds your brain. John calls it the miracle grow of the brain. It's not just good for your body and heart and bones, it's really good for your brain. And you don't have to just wait to go to the gym. When you're working on a project and you get stuck, stand up and do 25 jumping jacks, do 10 push ups, do a few burpees, whatever, run up and down stairs a few times, you will push the reset button on your brain. It changes your brain chemistry dramatically within three minutes. So have that as a ready at hand remedy instead of the jar of M or the Starbucks and the donut. A quick burst of exercise. And then the third particular way of scratching the itch that I recommend is a creative outlet. You all have come to this instinctively. You know that when you have a creative outlet, when you have a business that you're growing, you feel better. The reason I write so many books, I'm on my 20th book now. The reason I write so many books is not that I'm driven to write books. It's because if I don't have a book going, I get depressed. It's just that simple. If I don't have a book in process, I get depressed. I don't have to be working on it. But the fact that I have it in process gives me a creative outlet. I know it's there and my unconscious is percolating away on it. The same with you guys with your businesses. The fact that you're growing them, the fact that you're here, the fact that you have it in mind, it gives you that creative outlet which scratches the itch. The final in my last 20 seconds pitfall may be the most dangerous of all. The failure to take seriously and develop your loving connections. All the studies on health, longevity, success and happiness in life come back to the importance of one word, love. Take it seriously, honor it, Nourish will pay you back over and over again. Okay?

I hope you found that video awesome and useful. So if you want to get a free copy of my book, I want you to click here. And if you want to watch some more videos that will be useful and awesome, click here.

Go ahead. They're over here. Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.