The Lie of Work Life Balance—and What You Need Instead! Ft. Tony Robbins & Brian Tracey

What are the biggest trade offs that both of you consider maybe negative in order to do what it is you do? Because you're both, I mean, incredibly driven, what I would consider insane schedules, but at the same time, you're making massive contributions to humanity. So what are the trade offs that you would consider like, you know, we work our asses off, we do a lot of stuff, but this is what we had to sacrifice in order to do it. If you think of it that way, I think if you think of it as a sacrifice, then you're going to build frustration or resentment. I really don't. If you think it's a sacrifice, you shouldn't do it. I think the challenge is that most people have this illusion about life, work, balance. And I think that's, you know, if you're going to accomplish it, people are laughing because you know it's right. What's true is life, work, integration. So I was just in 21 countries, or seven countries, 21 days. But who's with me as my family, who's with me as my friends? And I've done well enough to have a plane and bedrooms and all that kind of cool stuff makes it. But when I didn't, we still, we huffed it together and beginning days, it was coach and dragging ourselves around. But I thought it was great for my kids to have schooling, but I thought an education was more valuable and traveling the earth was a part of that. But, you know, we're in the middle of this crazy schedule. But it's not work, it's a mission. When it's work, it's that. I always ask people, I said, how would you describe what you do? And people always say, is it work, is it career or is it mission? And most people of course say it's work. And that's exactly what it is. It's heavy. If it's, you know, if it's your career, it gives you something more. But your mission, it doesn't wear you out. It brings energy to you. It's fulfilling. And if you can tie your mission in with the people that you love, it's pretty cool. You know, there's some people in this room, they're my friends. I see Dean here in the front row here, and it's like we're all on this mission and we find time to connect and be with each other and have a blast with each other, but we're sharing about things that matter. I'm not a person to go to a party and like, you know, go in the corner and chit chat it's like, you want to talk about something deep? Let's rock. You don't let me go home and be with my family. You know, let me go do something fun, some of that nature. But in the middle of all that craziness, you know, we were stuck for two days, so we went ice racing. A group of my friends and I were with me, and some of them are my security guards, some of them my co workers, some are partners I have in business. But we went 70 kilometers below the equator and just, excuse me, the arctic, and went 200 miles an hour and Lamborghinis. I was doing it like this. I love that you said, you're stuck, and you went, you did this versus, like, get it going to a spa and getting pedicures. Yeah, like that shit. I was able to squeeze in a Porsche. And if you can imagine, 200 km an hour on pure ice on a lake that's frozen as fast as you can drive. And the beautiful thing about it is, like, you know, most people have fears, and I've learned to make sure I give myself enough fear to stay intelligent. But here, you didn't have to have it, because when you wrecked, you just went straight into the snow. It was just incredible. So. But we do crazy things together. We have a blast together. We laugh, you know, we cry. We see the impact. And to me, there is no dividing line. And for my kids, you know, like, all the work we do, feeding people. My youngest son, Jarek, when he was five or maybe six, probably five, we would go and even in the early days, I was feeding families, and I'd take all my friends and we build these baskets up, make them great, and we fed all the families. We had some food left, some baskets left. So we went to this place in Oceanside, this park, and there was a man lying on the ground in the toilet area, covered with a bunch of pieces of rags. And so, you know, I gave it to my son, and I said, come on. He could barely hold the thing, it was so big. I said, you know, can I help you? Give this to this man. He goes, and he set it down next to the man. All of a sudden, the man jumped up and grabbed my son's hand, and I jumped. My son jumped. And then he just did this, and he put it down. My son is 30, what, 1 years old now? 32 years old now. He's just gotten married. He was working on kids. His entire life is about contribution. He's got a heart this big. He works his ass off, but he does it In a way that's so fulfilling. And his wife travels with them and they have this great life and he doesn't have to pick between work and mission and he's not burnt out and he's probably been to 100 countries and I'm proud as hell of him. So it's like if you can combine your mission with your family, combine your mission with some of your friends, then you're going to accomplish a million times more. But if you think it's a sacrifice, don't do it because then all you're doing is you're going to have resentment later on or frustration later on and then you really aren't contributing because it's, you're, you're trading off, you're not giving. Great, great. Yeah, ditto. I think I'm a nine year old kid. Those of you who know me know I am a 9 year old child in my body pinching myself every day. That I get to do the shit that I get to do, it is extraordinary. I could not, would not want to be doing anything else. I mean there's hard work and it's, and it's like I'm push myself for anybody else. But I love it, I love it, I love it. I cannot imagine doing anything else. And that's the challenge, right? The question is a lot of people are doing something to get to something else and that's just wrong. I agree. And it's a matter of don't do because your parents told you, because you heard on an infomercial, because whatever, do what is your highest calling in life and love it. And so I don't work at all. I really don't work. And the shit that's work, you know, Dan has told me to get rid of it and so I get rid of it. Yeah, well, you know, I mean this room is filled with some very high achievers. And obviously what I wanted to derive from you guys is just some insights, some how to, some what it is you do to just give them perspective and stuff. And I carefully chose some questions and this one is you're both masters at achieving what most people consider impossible. And I mean really like what you guys do, most people consider absolutely impossible. So when something is considered quote, unquote impossible, how do you reframe it so it becomes possible in your mind? And how much of that is mindset? Well, I think impossible is not a fact, it's an opinion. When someone tells me it's impossible, I always just look at them. Anybody around me knows that they can't do that. That's part of it. But if they didn't know me, it's your opinion. And they'll say, no, science shows. And I say, yeah, how many times does science show something's impossible? Now science shows it's possible. Things are impossible until somebody does it. And so I find that most of your business people, you look at businesses and what does it take to make a business grow? It's not impossible to make a business grow. Business has been shrinking for a long time or it's been stuck. The real problem is always the chokehold, is always the psychology and the skills of the leader. Always. And 80% of that is psychology. And 20% is the mechanics. If you don't know how to read your financials and you're trying to fly the plane of your company, I mean, come on, if all you do is go down, you look at profit loss and you see what it is and you have a beer. Either way, you either celebrate or you get the brass something, you're going to be in trouble. But if you have the skill sets, that's one thing. But you can get any skill set if you have the psychology. And anytime a business is not growing, it is not because it's impossible. It's because they aren't innovating. And they're not innovating because they're believing it's impossible. I mean, if we all know, what does it take to transform, obviously help people? It takes three things to create a breakthrough in anything. In your personal life, in, in your business, anywhere. You need a strategy. But that's not the first place you should look. And it's the first place all of us look. Me too. It's our inherent thing. You want to lose weight. Well, how do I do it? I want to grow my business. How do I do it? It's instinctive. We've been trained to think that way. But the problem is the how to is usually not that complex. I mean, come on, 70% of America is what, 75% of America now is overweight. Is that because it's so complex? How to be fit and strong? Only the 1% know the answers. They hide it from you. You have to work your ass off to not hear what it takes. Right, Right. And so, you know, I remember I went to this. I went to a Ted Med center and I watched about 12 doctors, one after another get up and do these stories about how we could just get patients to take their medications and try to figure out the whole thing. And I was just looking at him going you're all talking about strategy and you've forgotten psychology, because strategy is wonderful. I'm a strategist. Spent my whole life figuring out strategies. As we both know, a strategy could save you a decade, right? And business strategy could save you. It could make an interesting success and failure. But most people have strategies available. Or they could get them, or you could create them. But the problem is you got a story. And your story is why it isn't working. And the story is, I've tried what? What? Everything. If you tried everything, you'd be fit, right? You tried everything, you'd be profitable. If you tried everything, you'd be there. But people say it, you know, I'm big boned. That's what I used to say. I'm still big boned, but I'm 38 pounds lighter than I was 25 years ago, and I've never gained it back. Right when I was big boned, that was my story. All the good ones are gone. That's why I'm not in a relationship. Or they're gay and I'm not. Or I'm gay and they are. Whatever the story is, there's always a story. And what I tell people is, you know, if you can just divorce the story of your limitation and marry the truth of your unlimited capacity, then the whole game changes. But it's hard to do that because when you're in your story, you don't even realize it. So you need a third piece for breakthrough. And that's really what my life's about, which is changing people's states. Because in a different state, we're different people. Can mean people be nice? Yes or no? Yes or no? Of course they are. When they're in a nice state, can nice people be mean? Sure. They get a mean state. So really learning to train yourself to be in an ideal state where the best of you comes out for yourself, for your family, for your mission, for your world, for your coworkers. To me, that's one of the most important decisions in life to make. You ask me out of all the people I've met, all the things I've seen, you know what creates a magnificent life? You know, everybody has goals and dreams that are different. Some people want, you know, picket fence. Some want to make a billion dollars. Some, you know, want to have this huge breakthrough in technology. Some people want to write poetry. Whatever is right for people is what I want them for themselves. I don't want them to be like me or you or anybody else. I want them to have their dream but to have it, you need two skills. You need, number one, to have the science of achievement. It's a science. You have to know how to take your vision and make it real. And most of the people in this room have already figured that out. And this guy sure as hell has. And you have, and I have. So most of us know, and we can all refine our skills in that area, but we know how to take what we dream about, make it real. And if you don't, you can learn from somebody who does. The simplest thing is get crazily hungry for something we all know when you get so hungry, so desirous, your brain starts coming up with answers. And then it's massive action but effective execution, which is all modeling, which is, I assume, what this is about. Find the best example, compress the time, Let someone else take 20 years to figure it out. You do it in two weeks or two months or whatever the period is. We should all be standing on the shoulders of the people around us instead of reinventing the wheel. And then there's this thing called grace. You work your ass off, you're totally focused. You're trying to serve something larger than yourself, and you really are executing what works. You need a little grace. Might want to call it luck if you prefer, God, the universe. But it's there and we can all achieve. But I think the more important skill, if you ask me, is to have an extraordinary life, is the art of fulfillment. And it's an art. It's not a science. Because there's a science to making money. I don't care who you are, if you do certain things, you're gonna have too much financial stress. You do other things, you're gonna have an abundance. There's a science. There's a science to your body. Everyone here is biochemically different, different genome. But there are certain fundamental patterns that if you and I follow them, you're gonna have tons of energy, gonna feel good. If you break them, you're. You're going to pay the price and have low energy or disease. But fulfillment is an art. What's going to fulfill you is different than the other person next to you. You're not going to learn that from anybody else. And you got to find it. Because success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. And I get those phone calls all the time for the multi billionaire entrepreneur or politician or business person or the person just won their Academy Award and they're depressed and they can't tell anybody because they got all their goals, but they're not fulfilled because they really don't have that sense of meaning in their life. They went for something and they got it. They achieved. And if you doubt this, what I'm saying is relevant to you or us or anyone, just think about, about a year, what, a month ago, we lost what I consider to be a national treasure, Robin Williams. How many of you loved Robin Williams? Look around the room. Keep your hands up. Look. And most of you didn't know him. Almost every and then where you go in the world, people love Robin Williams. By the way, was he great at achievement? Oh, my God, that guy. He said he wanted to become a great comedian. He did that. I want to make the world laugh. He did it. I want to make my own TV show. He did. I want to have the number one TV show. He did it. I want to make movies. He did it. I won an Academy Award for not being funny. Not his skill set, drama. And he did it. I want a beautiful family. And he did it. And then he hung himself. Make everybody happy but yourself. Not a good plan. So if I had a gift to give you, it would be maybe make a different decision. And the decision is that no matter what happens in your life, you're gonna live in a beautiful state. A beautiful state. And that could be happy, that could be grateful, that could be being generous. Those are all beautiful states, aren't they? It could be curious, it could be fun, it could be playful. You're not limited to one state, but it's different than suffering and most people suffering. And all suffering I've ever seen. I've traveled 100 countries. I've dealt with presidents of countries and presidents of businesses, CEOs. I've dealt with people in prison. I've dealt with, you name it, average people. Suffering always comes because you're obsessed about something related to you. You can only be depressed if you're focusing on yourself. You say, no, I'm depressed because it's my kids and they're not doing well. No, you're depressed because you feel you failed your kids. It's you. It's about how you think, what you should have done or shouldn't have done, or what someone did to you or didn't do to you in the past or the future, which don't even exist. So I have a simple goal. My goal is help people make a decision that says, I don't know what's going to happen. You might get a divorce, even though you don't think so. You might find a family of your family with cancer. You might have your House get burned down or have a tornado go by. And if you live in the same place, it happens every two years. And you move back, we should talk. But some people seem to do that for some reason. You can't control those things. I can't control those things. I don't want those to happen to you. Or anybody I love. Or anybody who's even a stranger to me. But they're going to happen. True. Not positive thinking, bullshit. Just the truth. So if that's gonna happen, I say make a decision now that says I'm gonna live in a beautiful state. And I'm gonna find beauty in whatever life brings me. Cause life is too short not to. I see a little buddy over here named Sean. I remember when I got a phone call from the Make a Wish Foundation. So you have a young man that's about to die, and he wants to meet you. And he came to the seminar, and then I took him out afterwards. At the time, if he coughed too much, they said, you can't grab him. I said, I want to take him across the fire. They said, take him across the fire. Said, if he coughs, he breaks a rib. I said, I'll be really gentle. We're going to do this thing. And he did it. And afterwards, I sat down with him. I said, man, I don't have the answers. But if your body is. You're just coughing and it's going to make you break a rib. Your body is so acid. I said, you should get alkaline. Let me put you together with a doctor. How many years ago is that? You were 19, you're now 36. I like seeing you here. So, brother, give him a hand. He's a beautiful man. Beautiful. But Sean. What made me think of Sean as. Sean lives in a beautiful state. He could be bitching and complaining and whining. What does he do? His whole life is not about himself. That's why he's so happy. He doesn't live in himself. He lives outside himself, serving things he loves. He still takes care of himself, and he's funny as shit. And he likes to seduce women and things. Like, I can't talk about right now, but. Oh, you're married now. Okay, well, good. I'm glad to hear it's about fricking time. All right, John, good to see you. Grew up. Now, the bottom line is this young man over here who now is different stage of life he's always been. I think he lived because he lived for more than himself. I'm sure he felt pain, but we Only suffer when we think about what's being done to us or what people are going to think or what they should have done or hadn't done. And you can't control that stuff anyway. I mean, why be pissed when people are going to do that? Are people going to be mean? Yes or no? Are people going to be unfair and unjust? Yes or no? Are people going to be beautiful and generous? Yes or no? You just never know when that shit's gonna happen, so might as well enjoy yourself along the way. And I suggest today, if you want, if there's any gift I came by to give you, it's to tell you what you know already, but get you to make a decision about it, to actually decide. I'm gonna live in a beautiful state. That doesn't mean I don't get angry or pissed or tired. You know, suffering arises and you end it the moment you go, holy shit, I'm thinking about me. If I leave this, I'll always be suffering. The human mind is always looking for what's wrong. The human brain is not designed to make you happy. It's designed to make you survive. Happiness. That's your job. And you only get it if you draw a line in the sand. That's how it's going to be. And I can tell you, the few people that do it, I know a few people that have done it, they have magnificent lives. And when you're in a beautiful state, the best ideas come in. This man lives in a beautiful state. Every time I talk to him, I love seeing Peter. Peter's just always on fire about something. But notice, you know, he's doing unbelievably well. There's nothing wrong with that. But almost everything he's doing is about more than himself. And so that's why he feels so alive. He's not suffering an ounce. He's an ecstasy. He's not lucky. He's living life a certain way. It's a beautiful way. I'm honored to have you as a friend. Thank you, brother. Wow. 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's free book and you can get a copy there. Now say something better than that. I mean, like, let's. Let's really see how good you are here, man. Oh, God. You Know this guy goes my mind like there's no way to follow this. What? What the hell was the question? He ended up saying, truthfully, he didn't have to say anything. He lives this. I'm just telling you what he lives. He really does. I'm not saying that to blow smoke. This guy lives it. If you meet this man, how many met this man before? And he was in a wonderful state. Let me show hands. I don't think I've ever seen that in a wonderful state. I've seen him have some painful, challenging places, but he doesn't stay there and look at what he's able to create because of it. He is a nine year old boy who's on fire. He's on fire. To light the world on fire with what's possible, it's a beautiful thing. I honor you. So the contribution I'll make. Thank you, Tony. And I think it was about impossible in mindset and so forth is the reality is there is very little that's impossible, period. It just is. And your mindset, as soon as you say something is impossible, then you shut down every possibility for solving it. And we all know this. And the challenge is that it's really hard not to be in that state because we get thrown stuff all the time. And what I want to share with you is an experiment which is to say, okay, not only how do I make it, not how do I make it possible, but how do I actually go 10 times bigger. And you've heard me speak about this moonshot thinking, bold thinking, whatever the case, whatever terminology you want to give it, and most of us in our life are trying to make a 10% improvement. And we know this, this is. I'm trying to increase my revenues by 10%. I'm trying to reduce my sales by 10%, save 10% more of the lands out there, whatever it truly is, we all have this sort of beaten into us by life and by the rest of the universe that you can make these small incremental improvements. But the fact of the matter is that there are those in the world that go ten times bigger. And every one of us can be that. And as soon as you say I want to not only solve this thing, but go 10 times bigger in my work in the things. And can I say this in something that you're truly passionate about, not just about earning a little bit more money. I mean it really should be in something that you care truly about that is bigger than yourself, that is impacting the world. As soon as you try and go 10 times bigger. Three magical things happen. Number one, even if you have no idea how to solve it, no idea how to get there, you'll be amazed at what you come up with. And what's interesting is our legacy, our past anchors us to where we are today. And you have to let go of that. You truly have to let go of all the stuff in your past, what you thought you'd done, all of the infrastructure that you've built, to let yourself go. When Elon Musk built Tesla, the reason Tesla was such an amazingly better car is he didn't have 100 years of Detroit to hold onto. He started with a clean sheet of paper and imagine what could be. The second thing is when you try and go 10 times bigger versus 10% bigger, it's 100 times the value proposition and it's never 100 times more expensive or 100 times harder. And so you get this increased capability. And then the third thing is when you try and go 10 times bigger to solve a problem 10 times bigger, you've got to reinvent stuff. You have to actually go and figure out, okay, I have no idea how I'm going to solve that, but you're going to start to reinvent things. So when Eric and I were working on asteroid mining, we had to reinvent. We had to have so much computational power onboard the spacecraft, we had to come up with brand new sensors and hyperspectral and midwave IR that didn't exist had never been licensed because these spacecraft were going to be operating at 200 million miles away. And that forced us to come up with new kinds of capabilities that were not currently possible. And you'll be amazed what those capabilities that you create in your business, in your life, enable you to do. And so there's this massive benefit, this payoff, this dividend that comes from expanding your mind and not being anchored to the past. And so I think that there are very few things that are truly impossible. I think that impossible is a state of mind. And I'll say one other thing. The people in your life are part of that anchoring. So how do you anchor yourself with a new set of people? I'm looking at my dear friend Naveen Jain here, with whom we've opened up XPRIZE India and are really working on solving women's and girls issues in India and providing abundant drinking water in India. I mean, so how do you surround yourself with amazing people who live in the state of anything is possible? I'm blessed at Xprize, at Singularity University, at HY&PRI. I live that constantly. And so how do you do that? Where are you doing that? What is your nothing is impossible community here? Yeah, it is here. It is truly here. And so that's really critically important because once you get into that mindset, then you start freeing yourself from the bullshit that you tell yourself and people tell you because we are living in a world where constant amazing miracles happen. The other thing, because I'll put my commercial into this. Stop watching the news. Stop watching the news. You could not pay me enough to have the crisis news network or the constantly negative news network, whatever you call cnn, pollute my mind. Really. I have social networks, I have Google filters and so forth. I was just telling Arianna about this and hopefully she'll do this. I want. On the front page of Huffington Post, I said, I want a slider where I can control the percentage of positive news stories. Right? How would you like that? Instead of because right now it's. Because right now it's 10 to 1 negative to positive. And that pollutes your mind. And we heard an amazing presentation this morning. I apologize. Who was the gentleman who was talking about that? Talking about a few minutes of negative news in the morning. Thank you. Yeah, Sean, it's true. It's like, why would you possibly invest in the world and in the life and all these things if the world is falling apart? If the crisis network is like showing you airplane accident. If airplane accident, airplane accident. What problem is that? The news networks never tell you there was no school shooting today at this school or this airplane actually flew Louisiana to New York and actually made it and everybody survived. That's not news. And so we get this disproportionate view. And so our minds are constantly. The mindset you have when you watch the negative news is awful. Not that it's not going on. It's not that there's this amazing hardship and lives that are on the precipice of hunger and death around the world. But the world is getting better at an extraordinary rate. And you can make a difference in it. And there is no problem. There is no problem we cannot solve. Period. End of statement. So. Awesome. What are three or four of the biggest limitations, obstacles or blocks people come up against when trying to achieve great success? And how can they break through them? You know, it starts off with our self identity. Your income will never exceed your self identity. And there's a lot of great research of social psychologists like Heidi Grant Halverston who are saying your story about your potential determines whether you live your potential. That's a big, powerful idea. If your story is I'm a victim versus a leader without a title, then why would you read the books? Why would you do the practice? Why would you populate your life with great people? What would be the point? So the first point is your self identity, which is your core beliefs. That's where the real work begins. And I don't think we have time today in terms of the tools, but that's the first thing. Second thing related to that is your fears. You are not your fears. Your fears are just a bunch of emotions that naturally come up every time you leave the safe harbor of the known. There is such a seduction, which is, I feel scared there's something wrong. No, your fears are nothing more than your greatness and growth coming to get you. If you're going to live an epic life, you're going to be scared all the time. Fantastic. You're growing. Third thing that we bump up against, we don't have energy. Energy is more valuable than intelligence. I mean, I've met a lot of very successful people and they're not that smart, but they have massive energy, massive grit. Right. That one idea. And they're just like a pit bull and they get locked into it and it leads them to billionaire. So take care of your energy by fitness, diet, inspiration, other things really quickly. I'd say, you know, again, it's your social network because most of us have a game changing idea and then we share it with our family and they go, you know, exactly, you're not going to get all that. And they go, oh yeah, you're right. And then we go back to being, you know, average. Well, that's why I love, like the way I think about Genius Network. Genius Network is like my, you know, my, one of my company names in my group and all that. But I think of it as a wisdom network. I think of it as who are the people that just have insight that I can, you know, link into because I can solve almost any problem in my life through my Genius Network, you know, and who are those people? But that sort of thing, the, the other thing that you said too, reminds me of. I have a friend, Dave Kecich, who's paralyzed from the chest down. He's been in wheelchair for half his life, but just has developed such an incredible life. He runs a Maximum life foundation and he says that enthusiasm covers many deficiencies and so just going into something with a really good attitude. So let me see here, what else here. It's one thing to achieve and be successful and Another to be fulfilled. What do you think makes a fulfilling life? Well, I think, you know, at the end of your life, when you're on your deathbed, it's only going to come down to two ideas. And it's not going to be whether you had the right handbag title, whether your social network thought you were cool and sexy, your neighborhood, your bank account. It's going to come down to number one. As compared to the potential talent and genius you were born into, how much of it did you leverage through your days to unleash onto the world? And number two, how many people did you lift up with you? When I was growing up, my dad took out this quote from Rabindranath Tagore and he said it all the time to me and it was, son, when you were born, you cried while the world rejoiced. Live your life in such a way that when you die, the world cries while you rejoice. And you know, that might sound very idealistic, but actually it's an amazing driving force as an entrepreneur or business builder or game changer, which is ultimately our calling is to use our lives to birth genius level value into the world and lift the world with us by the time we get to the end of our lives. And I think that's really all that matters because otherwise, like, you know, think about all the people who thought they were great emperors. You don't even think about them now. I just get on. People say, what's the key to success? You just had it and there's no shortcuts. And it doesn't take any genius. Well, no offense, it just takes starting and completing your most important task. And if you'll just do that, get my book. Eat that frog. And I'm not trying to sell books because you don't get very much with a book. But the thing is, the book is now 50 languages. Can you imagine that? 50 languages, two and a half million copies. And by the way, it's probably closer to 10 million because there are several countries like Iran that don't pay royalties and other have published the book without telling anybody. So it's published all over the world. But they cheat you on the royalties. So it's probably 10 million copies of it have been sold. And so that's my starting point and everything else. Here's another thing, by the way, and I love what the lady was saying about values. I had a good friend, maybe you know him, his name is Mark Waldman. And Mark came to my office when we were doing our coaching program some years ago. And just, he just dropped dead. He lives in Northern California, San Francisco. And he said, I said, so what's happening in your life? Is it a break? He said, well, I've come up with a new question. And he said, I'm just walking around teaching everybody. And the question is, what is my most important value in life right now? What is my most important value in life right now? And I thought, geez, that's a great question, because all of us think about values and are impressed by values. So I asked everybody in the room, what is your most important value in life right now? And he said, you have to ask this question every day, all day long, for a week, every day. Just keep asking the question. Your first answer will be love and truth and God and things like that. Just keep asking the question and keep drilling down deeper, keep drilling and drilling until you finally, the most important value pops out. And that can change your life. And so what I did is, I did the same thing. I asked the question for a week, what is my most important value? And the way you can tell your values are because of your behaviors. What you do is you look at your behaviors and especially your behaviors under stress, when your behaviors in difficulty, you always demonstrate who you really are inside by what you do on the outside when you have difficulties or challenges. So I finally concluded my most important value is what the lady said is freedom. Freedom is my most important value. And you know something? America was established by people for whom freedom was their most important value. And it changed the entire world. There is still no country in the world for which freedom is the organizing principle. Freedom is a concern for everybody, but Americans more than any other nationality. Thank you. Of freedom. And so therefore your job is to have freedom. How do you have freedom? Well, one of the things is you have to have enough money so that you can buy the things that you want, that you can take care of your family, that you can provide for your spouse and for your children. And when you, when you achieve freedom, more freedom, you feel happier, you have more energy, you have higher self esteem, you feel more in control. And everything that you do moves you toward having more or less freedom. So that was a turning point for me is that freedom is the key. And then I look at my family. Everything I've ever done with my four children and my wife has been to increase their freedom, give them more freedom, open doors for them, open up opportunities for them. So freedom is mine. So what is yours? That's a great question. And the way you tell is you simply look at what do you do under pressure? What do you care about more than anything else? What is really your value? It's great question, great organizing principle for your life. Yeah. Well, Brian, as you know, most genius network members have teams, many running multimillion dollar businesses. What is the dark side of success in the midst of building and growing? What have you noticed where things become out of control, out of hand, where people start losing it? Because as you know, a lot of entrepreneurs, because of the success they have, comes responsibility, obligations, messes, navigating things. And here we are in the, you know, the middle of a pandemic. You know, what have you found to be success traps that people have gotten themselves into that you would have any advice, suggestions or insights on either how to avoid or how to navigate if you're in the middle of it? Well, Joe, that's a really tough question, but you and I have talked about this subject, is that what is our ultimate goal in life? Remember, the whole thing is write your own obituary. You wrote your own obituary. What do you want people to say about you when you pass on? And I went for a long walk on a beach near Brisbane in Australia some years ago, and it was about an hour, two hours of walking. And I asked myself that question. And the answer that came up for me and never changed again is that after I pass on, I want. When my children meet someone who knew me, they say, oh yeah, I knew your father. He was a really good person. That to me was my ultimate goal in life. I knew your father, he was a good person. And I have never deviated from that. I never have done anything or said anything to anybody under any circumstances that would cause anybody to say other then he was a good person. And so you have to keep that in mind. See, this is the purpose in life. And one of the things that I learned is that success does not change you. It just makes you more of what you already are. It just makes you more of what you already are. If you're a good person, you become a better person. If you're a jerk, you become a worse jerk. If you're honest, you'll be more honest. If you're dishonest, you'll be. You'll be more dishonest. So you always have to think in terms of long term. One of the things that I found, and I've written about it extensively, I wrote a book, by the way, a couple of years ago called Get Smart, and it has 10 ways of thinking that have been developed over the ages. And basically it says that successful people think this way. And in the same way of thinking, unsuccessful people think that way. The most important, which I learned from Drucker, from many others, is long term versus short term thinking is really successful. People think long term. Unsuccessful people think short term. In other words, they go for advantage, opportunity, making money. They're short term thinkers. Whereas the very best people think long term. They think, where do I want to be in five years or ten years from now? What do I want people to say about me when I'm gone? And so long term thinkers, surprisingly enough, when you think and act long term, you accomplish vastly more than if you're a short term thinker. 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 joesfreebook.com and you can get a copy there. And the book get smart has basically 10 different ways of thinking. One of them comes from Daniel Kahneman, who got a Nobel Prize for it. He's an economist and a philosopher. And it was, you know, it was, what is it, two ways of thinking. Think fast, Slow, yes, thinking fast and slow. And what he says is basically successful people think slowly about important things in their life. One of the things that Kahneman sort of touches on, but which I hammer, is the word consequences. And consequences, as you always ask, what are the likely consequences if I do or don't do this? And everything in life has consequences. And the true measure of how really smart you are is your ability to predict the consequences of doing something or not doing it. Milton Friedman said this, exactly this. The Nobel Prize winning economist, he said, the quality of your thinking can be measured by how accurately you predict what will happen. As a result, one of the greatest thinkers of history, a man named Frederick Bastiat, said, he said the same thing back 200 years ago. He said that the primary consequences of everything you do are good. You eat this, drink this, do this, because the primary consequences are good, or why would you do it at all? He said, but it's the secondary consequences that are more important than anything else. And your ability to accurately predict the secondary consequences of a behavior determines your whole life. And so, for example, the people who belong to the genius network, one of the reasons that they belong, one of the things that they get is they get ideas that can affect their lives and work long term. Truly superior people are long term thinkers and they make the sacrifice and they travel and they invest the time and the money. It's all aimed at long term results, consequences, what happens as a result of what you do and then what happens and then what happens. And so that's what you and I learned right at the very beginning is we started exchanging ideas. We read Napoleon Hill's Think and Grow Rich and how the mastermind was the starting point of success for so many people. And then we started doing it, and then it was sort of like a baton in a race. We handed off the baton and you took it and ran with it, and here you are. Yeah. Do you remember how old you were when you first lied to yourself? I was in second grade. I was wearing a Bo Jackson T shirt and dark blue sweatpants. But I'm getting ahead of myself. You know, when people meet me, they conjure up a lot of ideas of who they think I am, of what challenges I must have to go through. And they're right. I certainly have challenges that I deal with. But it's not the physical challenges that weigh us down in life. We learn to cope with them or we get tossed aside. It's the emotional ones that truly take a lot of courage to deal with. The day I learned about lying to myself, we call that denial. And denial happened when I was in second grade. My mom dropped me off at school one morning, and this was before cell phones and pagers. She then had a whole day of errands planned so she wasn't going to be home. And my father was on a business trip. And as the day progressed, something happened. I experienced an incredible amount of pain in my abdomen. The kind of pain that lets you know that something bad is coming. And as I was holding my abdomen, I realized I was getting sick. And what you may never know is people that are in my condition, we can't usually use normal bathrooms. We have special equipment. And so my equipment was at home. And I was getting sick, and I knew I was going to have diarrhea. Now I'm in second grade. And that's the moment I told myself, sean, if you can just act like nothing is wrong, you can go in your pants right now. And I told myself that if I just acted natural, if I just put on that good smile, if I act like everything is great, they'll leave me alone because they'll think that everything is fine. Don't we all do that? Put on that smile, let everybody know I'm fine. And so I switched seats on the Titanic. I went from being in that abdominal cramps to then sitting in my own waist. And the people at a distance, they couldn't tell. They thought I was happy and fine and normal. But the people close, they knew something was wrong, didn't they? See, we can smell the truth, can't we? The people in your life that are close know what you're going through. And sadly, I've been a studier of human beings. And sadly, I've found that human beings, what they think is the best thing is to just keep people far enough away from you that they can't smell the truth on you. And I'm here to tell you that's not the way to live life. The way to live life is to get help, no matter what size problem you're dealing with. It wasn't until I was willing to come out of that denial, willing to shake myself from that delusion that I was fine, that I went to the nurse's station. I called my neighbor and asked her if she would come and clean me up. And as I was laying on that nurse's stage cot and she was cleaning me up, I was just filled with shame and embarrassment. How did I get myself into this? What kind of idiot am I? Why did I think this was a good idea? She looked deep into my eyes. She said, oh, sweetie, you did your best. Every single person in here, I'm here to tell you you're doing your best. No matter what mess you're in, no matter what mess you've been in or what mess you're headed into, you're going to do your best. But it's not until you get out of denial. It's not until you're willing to say, I could use some help right now. I'm ready to take off this fake smile that everything is perfect. And I'm willing to reach out and say, hey, I'm stuck here. I'm going through this challenge in my marriage. My kids don't talk to me. My business is not as great as the numbers. I say it's not until we reach out for help can we get out of our messes. And one of the best ways that I've got myself out of my messes is through a simple line that I would like you to write down in your notebook. It will pull you out of tons of problems. It's a question that you can ask yourself no matter what circumstance you're in, no matter how difficult. And the question is, what's funny about this? I learned the power of laughter years ago when I worked For Congress. That's some funny stuff right there. Right? I worked on Capitol Hill for my congressman, and one morning, I got to work early. Have you ever got to a meeting early or an event early? You have your hot tea and your newspaper, and you're just ready for your me time. Well, that's what happened. I got to work early. I thought I was the only one there until I heard a voice off in the distance. Sean, get in here. Yes, Mr. Congressman. Sean, I need you to run a message on the other side of the Capitol. Can you do that? No one else is here. Yes, sir. So I take this message. I head out to a part of the Capitol that I had never been to. I get to the elevator bank. Now, for those of you that are a little perceptually slow, I'm not very tall, so when I get to the button, I have to take with me an elevator stick, also known as a bat scratcher. I press the button. Except doors open. I go inside, I turn around, I find my floor, hit the button. The doors are now closed, and the light is not coming on. And I realize, oh, no. On the outside, the buttons are pressure sensitive. On the inside, they're heat sensitive. And my elevator stick wasn't hot enough. So I thought, what would MacGyver do? If I had a pack of chewing gum and a tampon, I could make a bomb. So I start heating this sucker up. Nothing happened. So I did what any other man would do. I just started stabbing violently the button. Nothing happens. So then I decided to sit on my elevator stick. And now I am grinding my elevator stick. I am like, who's your daddy? Right? I press the button. What do you think happened? Nothing. I asked myself one question. What question did I ask myself? The answer to that was nothing. So that's why you have to ask it a couple times. What could be funny about this? Well, then I looked up, and I saw a little camera in the elevator. Finally, the elevator doors open because somebody called it from the outside. I get down to the maintenance department and I say, excuse me. You have elevators trapping people with disabilities whose elevator sticks aren't hot enough. And the man said in the most condescending voice, boy, they're not heat sensitive. They conduct an electrical current. If you would have had just a little bit of tin foil on the end of your elevator stick, you would have been fine. I looked at the man. Who comes to work with tinfoil. Am I just gonna be in an elevator like, hey, guys, wanna make a batch of brownies? What are you talking about? And it was that moment that we started to laugh together. And you guys all run successful, amazing lives. But I see you in my office. As a therapist, I have a unique way of dealing with my clients. I see them for 12 hours in a row and then never again. And I see people holding on to stress, and they're in messes and they're not getting help until finally they reach out and you gotta laugh. You gotta take yourself. Well, not so seriously. You know, I love to laugh. That's why I'm friends with Joe Polish, right? If you want a good laugh, be friends with Joe Polish. I mean, his dating life alone is hilarious. I mean, but honestly, raise your hand if you've been greatly impacted by Joe Polish. Right? I mean, Dan Sullivan. I mean, if it wasn't for Joe, I mean, you'd have to quote yourself, right? I mean, Dean Graziosi, if it wasn't for Joe Polish, you'd still be slumming it at 15 million a year. I mean, think about all the good. But you've all taught me so much. Where's Brendon Burchard? Brendon has taught me so much. One of the things he always ends with is, did I live? Did I love? Did I get more likes on Facebook than Tony Robbins? Just saying. Just saying. You gotta laugh. You gotta have fun here. Thank you so very much. Have you ever listened to a bunch of fantastic speakers over the course of a day knowing that you were speaking later that day? Okay, so the laughs tell me that you know exactly what I'm talking about. You've rewritten your speech 14 times. So, Joel, I'm taking from you right now by saying the aha moment. I might have left a door open. Yes, I have a PhD in pastoral counseling. No, I do not look like a doctor. And yes, everybody looked at me when Joe said, Dr. Brian Grasso. Because you all thought. Really? So, yes. There. Door closed. Next. How do you make 250k? That's what Joe asked us to talk about. How can we, for 10 minutes, talk to you about a concept or concepts that help you make a quarter million dollars? My first question is, in what currency? In what currency? Are we talking about American dollars? Canadian dollars? Euro? Or are we talking about the currency of eliminating the limits that are stopping you from making a quarter million dollars? Because you know what I saw? I saw something so interesting. I saw my dear friend Sean give an amazing speech up here earlier today talking about vulnerability. And it was beautiful, and it was epic. And the audience was silent. Then I watched Dean give A talk about making money. Now everybody's got fucking something to say. Everybody's got something to say about adding on. How do you make. Nobody's got anything to say about where are my limits and how do I get them away. So Joe and team can give you the best seed in the entire world. The perfect marketing seed, the perfect idea, the perfect. This is how you ask for permission to sell. But where are you planting the seed? What is your soil? If it's concrete or mud, it doesn't grow. I don't care how much money these guys can take you to make. So what we do is we help you engineer and nurse the soil. The soil matters most. Your mindset matters most. It always has, it always will. And the thing that attracts us so much about Genius Network Joe, this is directly to you. The number of times we have heard him say, it's not just about business and money. It's about the whole person. It's about the spirituality, the philosophy, the emotional, the mental health. We couldn't agree more. So we can talk about quantum physics, we can talk about spirituality, we can talk about discovering self, we can talk about philosophy. Or we can do what we do, which is dwindle mindset away from a theory and a really cool, fun conversation into four very basic, very easy exercises that you can do every single day that help you eliminate your limits and boomerang you into making $250,000 easy. Now the smart one in our relationship talks. It's a really good thing we do this together often. Because nothing of what Brian just said is what he said he was going to say yesterday. So I always have to be prepared to kind of roll with it. Which means I'm going to put my card down. Because, like Brian, I came here today knowing exactly what I wanted to say to you. But then after listening to Sean and Joe and everybody else talk, it changed. Because it turned from what I wanted to say that was on a piece of paper to what I wanted to say that was in my heart. And that's always where I deliver from. And if I get emotional, I apologize. But I take what we do very seriously. And so for me, how does this relate to you? And Brian already talked about it. We get really excited about the business. And everybody in here nods their head when we talk about the personal development and the personal growth. But what we've watched is people go home and don't often do anything about that. And then the next conference we attend, people nod and they agree. I have to better my relationship. I've got to do better in fitness, but they go home and they don't do anything with it. So for me, I wanted to share with you guys today some of our secret conversations that we have at events like this. They're conversations that happen after the presentation, over in a corner, hushed, so no one can hear, because there's still shame and embarrassment around the topic of personal development at this level. For whatever the reason, I want to tell you about the CEO who confided in me last year that she almost committed to suicide three times. Actually, she attempted suicide three times. I want to tell you about the doctor who expressed to me that he had such deep anger issues, he lashed out at his daughter on a daily basis and then was riddled with guilt and shame and could not function. Or the business owner who literally hides in a closet and cries when the world gets too much. That's all very heavy stuff. But we can also talk about the people who stand in front of us and are wowed by the fact that we somehow manage to exercise consistently and maintain our relationship and have two beautiful kids, all at the same time as we run a business, in awe of the fact that they want to do that, too. And as entrepreneurs at this level, what I found is that we're all really good at wearing the mask and doing the job. And we go home. And why is it really easy to nod our heads here about personal development and go home, do what we're good at, which is business, is because we don't know the simple and practical tools to do the rest of it on a daily basis. So that's what we're going to talk about. No one has to take notes. We have taken the liberty of giving you each a copy of this, which we'll give out at the end of this particular talk. This is our own personal journal. On the back of this journal is our personal cell phone number. We have a lot of tools within the mindset model, including a facilitation program where we help entrepreneurs discover where their mindset actually is right now, and therefore what they need most from an exercise and tool standpoint. This is yours, and everything we're about to teach you is in there and you can use it for a full year. Call us if you have any questions. Okay, four exercises you all need to do every single day. Number one. Can you all do this for me, please, so we all count at the same time? Number one. Hands up. Number one. Thank you. Count your wins. Count your wins. Positive thinking is great. We've heard it for a long time. Count your Wins. Be positive, think positive. Here's what no one is telling you, which is the rest of the story. The human brain has evolved to be very negative. We retain, react, and remember negativity with a lot more intensity than we do positivity. You want proof? You get 100 emails today saying you are the greatest business owner on the planet. Thank you so much. You get one that says you suck. Which one are you thinking about? The human brain is wired that way. Now you do that day after day after day. Guess what you're playing for in life? The highlight. Now you need the wind. You need the addiction of that wind to make you happy. The whole purpose of happiness is to be happy for no reason. Thus, we count the small wins every single day to reprogram the synapses in our brain. Hands up, everybody. Everybody, hands up. I'm taking from Joe. Now, if at the end of a day you count your business wins, you can enumerate the things that you did good in business. I want you to keep your hand up. So if you don't do that, hands down, how many of you, if you do this, keep your hands up, count your wins in your personal life, your relationships, and your health and fitness. At the end of the day, I did this. And I. And I'm awesome. All the wins counting are getting small. There you go. Put your hands down. So when we're talking about counting wins, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, we're really good at counting the money. We're really good about counting the impact that we have on other people. But we're not really good at counting the nuance of things that happen in our days. We never talk about the big aha moments. We talk about the little aha moments, the little tiny ones that if you don't look and you blink too fast, you miss them. Like, my daughter was standing at the side of my leg nagging me while I was trying to get business done. And instead of telling her, go away, I actually stopped what I was doing and I went and played with her. Okay, small win. You wouldn't notice if you didn't pay attention. But those are the little wins that add up to what we refer to as the aha. Life progress, not perfection. Exercise number two. Can I get number two up, please? Everybody in their hands, in the air, too. Direction review. You must review your direction every single, single day. Who here has entrepreneurial add? You're lying. You all do. We all do. It goes with the territory, right? But there is cause and effect problem with that. And it's not Just at the bottom line. It's also mental health, it's also emotional health, it's relational health, it's parental health. When we review our direction every single day, we put top of the mind into our conscious thoughts and therefore rework the synapses where we're going. That's like a compass. It drives us forward on the small journey every single day of getting to where we're going in the distance. Who here can relate to that? You have, Joe's talked about it today. You have things you want to accomplish. You know they're not going to be done today or even though you want them to be done today. You know that it's a journey reviewing where you're going every single day. Re regulates the brain and the brain stem completely. And to bring that full circle back to personal development, we're really good at building business plans and we're really good about knowing where we're going in business. But the number of couples that I work with on an individual basis who have either they don't know where they're going as a couple or they're both on completely different pages, that's going to create friction at some point in your life. I'm going fast because that 10 minute counter, I tell you. Alright, exercise number three. Hands up for number three, please. So you guys are with us. Learn your language. This is the foundation. This is the one no one likes. That's why we put it second last. Are you ready? You talk to yourself with more vitriolic intention, more anger, more nastiness, more hate than you would ever allow anybody else to talk to you. Am I wrong? Thank you. You're fat, you're gross, you're disgusting. Why would anyone ever love you? Why would anyone ever buy from you? That's how you talk to yourself. And I want to say this so well, with so much empathy. The unbelievable way you're all looking at me right now with the eyes wide open and the head nodding, it means the world to me. It means that you're listening and we appreciate that. You need to learn that language. That language is not unconscious, unconditional. You can change it, you can learn to flip it. But how do you change something if you don't know it exists? And we know that language leads your actions right now, I'm not going to ask any of you in here right now to put your hands up for this one because I think it might be too vulnerable. But there's somebody in this room who looked in the mirror this morning and said that they don't like the way they look. There's someone who zipped up a pair of pants and called themselves fat. Or there's someone who still healing from a fight that they had three days ago with their spouse. That language leads to our actions. And we're all here for the purpose of making impact in this world. We're absolutely fooling ourselves if we don't think that that disconnect doesn't have an outcome. On the other side, folks, we have so much more to say. But we'll end right here with our fourth and final exercise. I won't even ask you to put your hand up. Imagine your outcome in the unconscious mind. You have a bias filter. We all do that. Bias filter simply means this. All data that comes into us filters through a lens which is our perspective. Are we successful or not? Are we attractive or not? A lot of that's got to do with the bias filter in your unconscious. These are age old, self aware, self love, self worth stories that have been embedded through experience that we really struggle with as entrepreneurs, as humans. You know what? The bias filter is changeable. It's completely plastic. Where's my big guy? He's gone. It is a plastic mechanism. The image you keep inside the imagination you go to every single day on a regular basis becomes the language of your unconscious. That's why it's one of the most transformative exercises we know. And this last thing I'm going to say is imagine if you were functioning at a capacity that was greater than you are now, on all the cylinders of your life, the impact you could be creating in the world. What highly successful people do when bad things happen. Woody Allen said sex without love is a shallow experience. But as shallow experiences go, it's one of the best. Being an entrepreneur without a plan for what you're actually going to do when bad things happen is not only shallow, it's a recipe really for a life threatening experience. It was. Well, let me just say something. Thanks to Joel Weldon for this. I was telling him as I was working with him about this talk. I said, you know, nobody gets in the room in a Joe Polish room like this without being a tip of the arrow person. Every one of you have taken a lot of risks. You've made decisions, you've put yourself in, situations you've tried some things on, some things worked, some things didn't. You've had some highs, you've had some lows. And whether or not you, you have a method you use that you apply when bad things happen. What highly successful People do. I want to suggest to you, whether you're aware of it or not are three simple steps that are deceptively simple. It is what it is. Harvest the good, leave the rest. It is what it is. It was 1971. I was in a lecture I didn't want to be in, listening to a man I didn't want to hear, but I went because I wanted to please the person I was sitting next to. And the lecturer said, nothing is bad unless you think it's bad. I was 22 years old. I remember crossing my arms and thinking, well, that's just not true. There's bad stuff in this world. Car wrecks are bad. Murder's bad. War is bad. I mean, there's bad stuff in this world. And then he said, I know what you might be thinking. You might be thinking, hey, there's really a lot of bad stuff in this world. And at the level of fact, you would be right. But I want to suggest to you at the level of truth that there's not one thing that can happen that you can't find some good in if you're willing. So the next time something bad happens, instead of immediately reacting, hit your internal pause button and then wait three days. And during that three days, don't just wait, but you're going to wait three days before you react. During that three days, turn the volume up on your curiosity and really consider and write down every possible good you might derive, pull from, or create out of this situation. Two days later, my children's father came home and he had been part of a massive layoff at work. 100 people were laid off, and he was part of that. And immediately I was like, oh, my gosh, this is really bad. And I started to react to. To it. And I said, oh, my gosh, I heard that guy speak, and he said, nothing is bad unless we think it's bad. This just seems so bad now. I don't know how you would feel or what you would think if you were in a situation. I was getting my undergraduate degree, we had two sons. And if something happened in your life where it literally to you looked like the source of your supply, your children's meals, the place you lived, were threatened, you might have some emotion. What that lecturer had given me was a methodology for approaching something that I thought was so bad that I could have this situation without the situation having me. I just didn't know it yet. I said, oh, gosh, that Guy said, Wait three days. It's Tuesday. This will be Friday, it's 5 o', clock, Friday at 5 o', clock, let's do what he said. Like, think about what may be possible good. I don't know what good is going to be in this, but what possible good could happen? And then if we can't find any good on it, Friday at 3 o', clock, then we'll panic. And it sounds funny, but it was the first time in my life that I ever touched the part of myself that could literally schedule my own panic. You don't be a really successful entrepreneur without not only touching that place, but learning to live from that place. Whenever a situation happens, it just is what it is. We tend to put an emotional charge on it. This is good, this is not good. And the emotional charge itself dictates the opportunity. The emotional charge itself dictates the opportunity. We can't even begin to see some possible good because we lose our creativity. We heard Peter Diamandis this morning and all day long we've been hearing amazing speakers who have not only shown us a level of success, but framework in which they have developed that success. He said that our mindset is our most important asset. And I would say, especially when we know how to create a really healthy mindset, that when we can set our mind on success even in the presence of what looks like a big problem, when a situation happens, it just is what it is. We begin to write four or five things that we could possibly, maybe there's some good. It could have shorter hours, work closer to home, make more money, and within 48 hours. Because in that mindset, ideas started coming that we're not on the frequency of cnn constantly negative news or the problem cnn. Once you're on a different frequency of thinking, you have different ideas than when you're on the frequency of the problem. All of you in this room know this. You do it all the time. So it is what it is. It just is a situation. How do I harvest the good? Napoleon Hill said, every adversity, every adversity has within it the seed of an equal or greater benefit. But like any seed, it must be found, planted, nurtured and harvested. Every adversity. He didn't say some adversities. So think about an adversity that you might be afraid of right now or one you might be facing right now, an adversity that you might be afraid of. And when we think about might be, you face all kinds of things. You know, somebody is suing you for $10 million, the spouse leaves, you come home, the doctor calls, the phone rings. Every one of us Faces, Tough things. It could simply be that when you went off to college, your mother sold your Joe Montana rookie card and you're still pissed about it. It's still there. It is what it is. Harvest the good. Bob Proctor and I, in fact, we gave you a gift. Bob and I have been friends for 20 years, and we created a program on the invisible laws that govern the visible results of our lives and something that we had both studied for a long time. So we gave you each one of those. It's the entire program, so I'm happy to be giving you that. So he and I did something about 15 years ago, and we've done a lot of work together, but he got involved in a project, and very quickly he lost $2 million on that project. And a couple of months later, I saw him and I said, oh, Bob, I'm so sorry about that. And he looked at me and he said, don't do that to me. I said, what do you mean? He says, don't put me in that mindset. Don't you. You hold me in that mindset. By golly, if I invested $2 million in that learning, I'm going to multiply that 10 times within two years. And you watch me. He not only multiplied it 10 times, he multiplied it 20 times. And I really think that's only because he hadn't heard Dan Sullivan's talk about having a 10 times goal rather than a four times goal. It is what it is. Now, I'm not going to pretend with you that this is easy. It's very easy for me to say these things three things to you. It is what it is. Harvest the good. Leave the rest. So two parents get an email from their daughter. Hey, mom and dad, I'm sorry I haven't written lately, but you see, all my things were destroyed in the dorm fire. My eyes are almost completely healed now, and I will have no permanent damage from the smoke. While the dorm is being rebuilt, I've been living with my boyfriend, Roy. I know how much you have always wanted grandchildren. You'll be happy to know you're going to have a grandbaby next time. Summer A few spaces down. Please excuse this exercise in English composition. There was no dorm fire, there was no smoke damage. My eyes were not hurt, and I'm not living with my boyfriend and I'm not pregnant. However, I did receive a D in English and an F in French, and I wanted to be sure you got this information in proper perspective. That's the power of having a framework. Pre. Decided, Advanced decided. That the next time something happens that I think is bad, rather than knee jerk, this is bad, I'm going to feel that feeling. I'm going to notice that opportunity to react. I'm going to hit my internal pause button, wait three days, and during that time, I will dynamically exercise my capacity to pause. Look for the good, cause myself to think from what. What possible good could I derive from this? Make a decision for it. And when I notice the temptation, it's in our human nature, the temptation to rehearse and nurse and curse that situation, to talk about it, to tell other people about it. What it does for us and what it does to us is dial down our creativity. It actually takes longer to harvest the good when we're pouring toxic energy on the very soil of the opportunity that's been given to us. When we think about it, all the energy that it took to bring it right to that moment of the big problem. We don't want to have to go around the cycle again and get right back to that moment. We want to grab it, get a hold of it, get the good out of it right then and go forward. So like any arrow. And again, thank you, Joe Weldon. There's three parts to keeping it stable so you can hit your own bullseye. You're going to have problems. It's in life. It is what it is. Harvest the good and leave the rest. How many of you watched Shark Tank? All right, how many of you? Yeah, yeah. How long has this been going on now? This is my. This is the Shark Tank. It's been eight years now. Eight years. This is the eighth season. Yeah. Awesome. How long have you, Jay, known Damon? I don't know, Jay. Has it been 8 years or 10 years or. It's been like the start. Yeah. Yeah. I really wish you would have dressed up today, you know, I mean, the problem is. A problem is nobody invites me anymore to cocktail parties or social functions and I got to get use out of my clothes. Right, right. That's true. That's true. He was supposed to dress better than me. What's this? You built a multi billion dollar fashion thing and you're wearing. What's it say I'm wearing? Just casual, you know, a little tie. I like the multi. Yeah, multis. Something. Yeah. So that is the biggest freaking diamond I've ever seen in someone's ear. That is huge. Yeah. I'll tell you. I'll tell you the story of that one day. Okay, so first off, thank you both for being here. This is awesome. And how many of you heard the interview that I did with Damon and John. Okay. Wasn't that fantastic? Okay, awesome. So let's start with Jay. Since I didn't give you a bio, what do people need to know about you and who you are? You say whatever you want in under one minute. Okay. Yeah. I've grown businesses for a living for 40 years. How's that? Yeah. Okay. That is quick. That's quick. So I've got a few questions for both of you. So you're both well known and well respected for your entrepreneurial accomplishments. You both have rather outrageous background stories. What one factor do each of you think, more than anything else, determine or define what you each became and why? And how can that same factor benefit everyone in this room? We'll start with you. I think there was a couple of factors. There was two factors, I remember, but the main one, I think, was that when my parents got divorced and I was 10 years old, I was actually in Catholic school. And I remember acting up as a kid going, you know what? If I act up, my father will come back, because this is the sensibility of a child, right? My father will come back. My parents will get back together because my grades are bad. So I remember, you know, like, the last test in school, the nuns said to my mother, listen, you know, what if Damon. We understand Damon's acting up. And we would normally have to leave him back, but we're gonna give him one last chance. So that night before the test, I went out and played basketball. My friends, I did everything I could to not complete the test. I go in the next day, I do the test, and the test comes back, and I get like a 30 on the test. And I was very pleased with that. My mother comes into school, and the nun says, you know what? We're not going to leave him back because we understand he's acting out because of what's going on in his life. And my mother said, no, you're gonna leave him back. So, number one, I got left back. Second of all, you know, there was public school up the block where I felt like, you know, they just ate their young and crawled on all fours up there. They were just nasty people, right? And my mother said, and I'm taking you out of this Catholic cushy school where you have all your buddies you've been in since the first grade, and you're going to go to public school. And I said, no way in the world is that going to happen. Then she said, and you're also not going to go out the entire Summer, I said, she works three jobs. How the hell can she watch over me? No way. My mother goes and gets a fourth job, hires a babysitter who watches me, takes me out of that school, and I end up back in the seventh grade in the public school with the kids stealing my sneakers every day. I realized at that point that I was responsible for my own actions. And many of our kids don't realize that. And even my daughters have a challenge with that up until 20 years old. And I try not to baby them, but at that point I realized that nobody's going to save me. And I think that was very instrumental at a very early age of my life. Yeah, that's good, that's good. What about you, sir? Probably the most, I guess, defining is that I had always a hopeless curiosity and an outrageous fascination for what, why, how people were doing things. And I was a business transient. I have no education. I got started at 18 and two kids at 20. And I jumped around, but not from job to job, industry to industry. And I would realize how totally different each industry was and the way they thought and their actions. And I have always had an obsessive desire to learn how many different ways different businesses, but more importantly different industries, think act, strategy, access vehicle, business model. And I think that's probably made a bigger difference in defining mice. If you want to talk about not just success, but the ability to add a lot of dimension to people. How are you, Joe? It's great to be with you. So good to be here with you. So we're here in New York. We're going to talk about your new book, which is Thrive. Look at this. You need to get this immediately. The third metric to redefining success and creating a life of well being, wisdom. So this is your 14th book? Yes. Why did you write it? Well, it was like the surprise baby. I had promised myself, my children, everybody who cared for me, that I would never write another book because it's always been so stressful and filled with deadlines and sleep deprivation, all the things I was trying to avoid. And then I gave a commencement speech at Smith where I talked about the need to redefine success. Success and move beyond the first two metrics of money and power. Because so many people, including very successful people, were just completely burned out. And instead of finding happiness in success, they're undermining their health, their relationships, et cetera. The same happened to me, incidentally. So I was suddenly inundated with all these offers to write a book and my agent had to sell it to Me first. And finally he did. And I promised myself I would write it in a different way, and I did. It was a book which I wrote without the same kind of sense of stress and pressure that book writing has had for me before. So at least I proved to myself that it can be done in another way. Right, okay, so you're literally wanting to read the. The definition of success because you basically say in the book, and you talk about this in your third metric conferences that people can find online if they just look for it, that the definition that we currently have, that people look at money and power, is what success is. And you're saying this is wrong and it's destroying people. It is, and we have the evidence to prove it. We have 75% of health care costs in America are because of preventable, chronic stress related diseases. And I'm talking about heart disease, diabetes, high blood pressure, et cetera, et cetera. And women are particularly susceptible to it because we internalize stress differently. You know, you guys are better at handling it than we are. So women in stressful jobs have a 40% greater risk of heart disease and a 60% greater risk of diabetes. So I call this the third women's movement. You know, the first was to give us the vote. The second was to give us equal access to every job at every level, equal pay, et cetera. And it's still an ongoing process. We're not done yet. And the third one though, which is absolutely urgent, is to make sure that we change the world in which we are competing, because it's not working for women, it's not working for men, it's not working for polar bears. It's not sustainable. And we're all, in some way or another, paying a price. You know, I start the book with my own wake up call. Yeah, talk about that when you literally collapsed in 2007. I literally collapsed in 2007 and hit my head on the way down on my desk, broke my cheekbone, got four stitches on my right eye. And then nobody knew exactly what was wrong with me medically. So, you know, I found myself going from MRI to echocardiogram to test after test. And doctors waiting rooms, it turns out, are good places to ask yourself the big questions. What am I doing? What is a good life? Is this really success? You know, by conventional definitions of success, I was successful. You know, I was on the Time 100 list and I was on the COVID of magazines. But by any sane definition of success, I was clearly not successful. So that's what started me on this journey that was April 6, 2007. Do you think someone needs to have literally hit bottom or one of these? Do you see people typically change without having a heart attack or having some sort of major breakdown? I think yes, when the culture changes. So that's why I'm an evangelist for this now. I want people to change and I believe there is a collective longing to change without having painful wake up calls, often much worse than mine, often life threatening wake up calls. And that's why I believe that by putting together three things, my own personal journey, the information about how the world is changing. I mean, 2013 was the year when we had the coming out of CEOs, not as gay, but as being meditators. Literally had Marc Benioff of Salesforce and Mark Bertolini, the CEO of Aetna, the third largest health insurance company in America, who came out and said that after he broke his neck during a skiing accident and after being hooked on narcotics, he discovered meditation, yoga and acupuncture. And it transformed his life, immediately made them available to his 49,000 employees and then brought Duke University into stage and they found a 7% reduction in healthcare costs and a 69 minute improvement in productivity a day. Wow. So that was my second, the second sort of thread in the book. What are people doing that is advancing our lives in terms of thriving and not just succeeding? And the third one is all the scientific studies. There have been amazing scientific studies about the importance of sleep on our health, our productivity, our creativity. Practically every university now is having a sleep division of meditation on our creativity. So this is not like a trade off. It's not like we're saying, you know, be serene and peaceful and check out of life. On the contrary, what science proves is that the more we actually connect with our own center and our own essence, the more effective we're going to be in the world. Right? How much of this is. It's interesting. I've been reading some of the comments. One of them was unique ability is a myth. And of course that's not at all a accurate statement. Because unique ability. If I had not learned about the concept of unique ability, God knows how much time I've built literally a multimillion dollar business around interviewing people, bringing people together and connecting people. Something I do even when I don't get paid for it, I just figured out a way to do it. Secondly, how much of this is chance? How much of this is luck? How much of this is being in the right place, the right time? People will say things like, it's not what you know, it's who you know. Which is a sort of interesting statement when we talk about who, not how. And it's not even about knowing them. It's about how you utilize it. I believe this conversation will fall on. And it has. I mean, there's many people here that have talked about how many copies of the book they've read, they've bought, how it, how it's changed. There was one comment about, you know, I've read 15 page the first 15 pages, and it completely changed my life. Joe, can I make a statement about luck? I believe 50% of all success is lucky. Okay. Yeah. You're born at the right time. You're born healthy, you got a good enough brain. I think that's luck. I mean, you didn't have anything. The other 50% is knowing how to take advantage of your good luck. And so I believe people can fashion their own futures and design their futures. And certainly I deal with some people in very broken states with the work I do in addiction recovery. And I've seen people crawl out of the worst places in life ever. I mean, heck, people that know my story, When I was 18 years old, in my worst state, I weighed 105 pounds from, you know, free basing cocaine. I nearly killed myself when I was a drug addict. So people can certainly, you know, change their lot in life. And there's certain obstacles that people, you know, overcome. So what I want to be able to do is have people that are thinking like, okay, I get the concept, I understand it, but, you know, how can I actually do it? And by the way, Ben Hardy wrote, willpower doesn't work, Personality isn't permanent. I mean, we got some serious brain power here from you guys being able to direct and guide people. Because between all of you, I mean, think about this. Dean Jackson in 1997, invented the squeeze page, where you enter your name, an email to go to the next page. I mean, think about how many hundreds of millions of people that one idea has influenced how it, you know, so, you know, you guys have done a lot of stuff. There's a lot of people saying, well, I've not. I didn't invent the squeeze page. I didn't create Strategic Coach. I'm not the number one writer in the world on medium.com. these guys have some great talent that I don't have. You know, there's that sort of thing. But the truth is, I know the stories between all three of you. You've had to overcome some incredible adversities. Dad, you were bankrupt and divorced on the same day when you were 34 years old. Is that what, 34? Yeah. I did the divorce in the morning so I could keep my credit card for lunch before I had to give it. Because when you go bankrupt, you have to give in your credit card. So two things. One is that. That we've. We established a no receivables business in 1984, and I based it on the movie industry. I said, when I go to a movie, when do I pay for the movie? And I said, you don't pay for a movie on the way out. You pay for the movie on the way in. And it increases your dedication to the movie that you've already paid for it. So since 84, we go, everything's up front. Never. We never do anything. And the other thing is, I needed a great partner in both sides of my life. I needed a partner in my personal life. And on the day I was divorced, I wrote down the eight characteristics of the relationship. Not who the person had to be, but what the characteristics would be. And one year later to the date, I was at a weekend conference and there was one seat left. I sat down and Babs was sitting next to me, and I started talking to her. And everything resonated with the sheet that I had put together about what the relationship had to be. And it's really been very magical for me to be in collaboration with Babs and Dean. You and I are great collaborators. Joe's a great collaborator. Ben's a great collaborator. And I don't ask anybody to do except the thing that they're uniquely good at and what they love at what they love doing. Well, you said also when you met Babs, you said this one thing. You said you had made a decision that I didn't want to work on a relationship. I just wanted a relationship that worked. And that doesn't mean you were not going to put. I want to give the proper context because you are constantly working on your life, but you don't do it by bleeding to death. You don't do it by swimming against the grain, per se. I mean, you've learned and created a lot of thinking tools and a lot of methodologies to take adversity and turn it into usefulness. I mean, you're one of the best. I mean, I always say this all the time. Dan's the smartest entrepreneur thinker that I've ever met. I've been Richard Branson's largest fundraiser. I've interviewed Richard probably more than anyone. I've spent six weeks on Necker island and 30 minutes with Dan Sullivan is more useful than a week with Richard Branson in terms of business advice. Not that he hasn't built successful businesses, but the ability to teach and translate that to other people, and that's what these guys do so well. Dean is a great simplifier. Ben's an incredible writer. Dan, with coaching all the entrepreneurs he has. So that's why I wanted to do this conversation today with everyone. 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.