Thinking is The Most Valuable & Highest Paid Work That You Do Feat. Brian Tracey

What is the most valuable and highest paid work that you do? And the answer is thinking.

But so few people actually do it.

We don't have direct routes, we don't have instructions, we don't have a manual.

What if there was a technique that could help you get there each and every day? And there is.

If you could wave a magic wand and wake up tomorrow morning, superb in this area, what skill would it be?

You want to be able to assess what it is that you think you're stressing about and then let it go.

When your mind is calm, the thinking and deciding brain functions at its highest level. Like turning up all the lights on a dimmer switch, it's functioning like a Christmas tree. And so the more time that you spend thinking and thinking well and thinking clearly, the more successful you are. Over the years I've done a good deal of reading and I came across a concept that I want to share with you. And we were talking about this a little bit earlier and the concept is the question is what is the most valuable and highest paid work that you do? It's a really interesting question because when I heard the question, I didn't know what the answer was. What do you think the highest paid and most valuable work is that you do? And the answer is thinking. Thinking is the most valuable work. Now I am the best selling author in the world in time management. Also on goals, also on some other subjects. But, but I began studying time management about 30 years ago and I came across a word in my studies and the word was consequences. And what it basically said is that something is important if it has big potential consequences. And something is unimportant if it has low or no potential consequences. Number one reason for success is people focus on things that have high potential consequences. Number one reason for failure is people focus. Focus on things that have low or no potential consequences. Exactly what Joe was saying earlier, the famous Drucker quote, very worst use of time is to work intently on something that need not be done at all. And one of the things that is holding back entrepreneurs, business owners, is killing them by the way, and it's wiping out an entire generation is this obsession with technology. I see people that are walking with their phone, it's almost like drug addicts that are mainlined. They cannot stop staring at their screen, they cannot stop pushing their buttons. I hate to say that there are people in this room that had that problem, but the fact is that this obsession with looking at the screen and staying connected is killing people because it stops them from focusing. You Cannot focus if you are distracted, like an attention deficit disordered dog. So you're constantly ringing and responding to bells almost like a crazy person in a toy factory. And so, just as a quick aside, if thinking is the most important thing you do because of the consequences of thinking, determine the entire quality of your life, then the quality of your thinking determines the quality of your life. And so the more time that you spend thinking and thinking well and thinking clearly, the more successful you are. Over the years, I've worked with some very powerful people, billionaires and multi billionaires, people who are on the Forbes 400 list repeatedly, over and over. And I've had a chance to be with them during crises and at times where something was happening that was serious, it was a major problem. And I noticed that they all had one quality in common, is they all went calm. It's just they went calm. People around them were angry and upset and worried about what happened happened and who did it and so on. And they would just go calm, almost like a pawn would go calm. And they knew. And I learned later, I didn't know why this was. I admired it, but I didn't know why it was. Is that when your mind is calm, your entire cerebellum, the thinking and deciding brain, functions at its highest level. Like turning up all the lights on a dimmer switch, it's functioning like a Christmas tree. But when you get upset and angry, what. What happens is your thinking reverts to your limbic or emotional system, and your ability to think clearly diminishes dramatically. And you make a lot of mistakes. That's why when you are facing a difficult situation, you have to use every skill, trick, game, whatever it is, stay calm. And that's why they teach you to meditate. And they find that meditators in business are far more successful because they can automatically trigger their mind into the calm of meditation when they're facing a crisis. It enables them to think with greater clarity. Now, a couple of years ago, a man named Daniel Kahneman, a very fine man from reading him, who had won a Nobel Prize in psychology and neuroscience, wrote a book called Thinking Fast and Slow. And this book was a very esoteric book. And I don't recommend that you read it. It's 500 pages of hard slogging. I will give you the essence of. I will give you the essence. I do the reading, Pass it on. I will give you the essence of the book. He said that there are two types of thinking. There's fast thinking and slow thinking. Fast thinking is intuitive it's instinctive, it's automatic, it's reactionary. I think of it very much as how you would drive through busy traffic. You're not giving a lot of thought, you're just interacting. He said the other type of thinking is slow thinking. And slow thinking is where you just slow down the thinking and take time to think through issues. Now, if an issue has little or no consequences, then you can think quickly. You know, what do you have for lunch? What do you pick up on your plate from the buffet? Where do you park your car? The consequences of these decisions are almost non existent. But if it's a major issue, then you say, wait a minute, this requires slow thinking. Here is his contention that made the book a bestseller is that the biggest problem that people have is that where they should use slow thinking, they use fast thinking. And entrepreneurs are extremely guilty of that. As we make important decisions that have long potential consequences, including affecting the lives of people and costing money and even leading to the bankruptcy of a business, we make those decisions with fast thinking, when in reality we should be making them with slow thinking. Now, I'm a great Drucker fan, as many people are, and Mike was saying something about hiring the right people. And hiring the right people to work with you is very important. And the biggest mistakes you make is hiring fast. You hire people quickly. The best decisions you make are you really take your time to hire slowly. And Peter Drucker said that fast people decisions are invariably wrong people decisions. Hiring an important person for an important job has tremendous potential consequences. So therefore you need to take a long time. One of the things I teach, which is in my book how to Hire and Keep the Best People, is a simple rule that will increase your hiring accuracy to 90%. And I've taught it to Fortune 500 companies and they make it a rule within their companies to use. Brian's rule is to this is the you cannot hire except by doing this. And I didn't. I just studied the hiring practices of the companies that hire the best people and keep them the longest. And they all, at the beginning have a certain process that they follow and they follow it religiously, no exceptions. And so their accuracy in hiring goes up to 90% or better because they think more. Interesting professor at the University of San Diego last year wrote a book on sort of not sort of thinking fast and slow, but it was on decision making. What he said is the longer that you take to make an important decision, the better the decision will be, the higher quality decision. And Lord Acton once said, when it is necessary. When it is not necessary to decide, it is necessary not to decide. In other words, the professor said, buy as much time as you can for a decision, put it off. If you can put it off for a day, a weekend, a week, a month, put it off. Some of the best decisions that you make will be decisions that you will allow to steep for a while, like water and tea. So thinking is the most important thing you do. We call it thinking fast and slow. So remember, anything that is important, that has long term consequences is a candidate for slow thinking. Discussing it with other people, sitting quietly, going for a walk, letting it ruminate in your mind, sleeping on it. You know, they say if it's a big deal, sleep on it. So there's three thinking tools I want to give you and then seven ideas. So the three ways of thinking which I start off, the first way I start off every seminar is what I call zero based thinking. And everybody who knows me for any period of time knows that I harp on this. Zero based thinking is, comes from zero based accounting where you instead of increasing an expense in the next accounting period, you ask, should we be engaging in this expense at all? Now with zero based thinking, you look at your entire world and you ask this question, knowing what I now know, is there anything that I am doing that I would not start up again today if I had to do it over? This is one of the greatest thinking tools I've ever learned. Because in a time of turbulence, you always have an answer for this question. Each person has an answer. Some people have multiple answers. There's lots of things that they're doing today that knowing what they now know, they wouldn't get into today. They wouldn't start them up, products they wouldn't offer people they wouldn't hire, investments they wouldn't make. And these are the greatest drags in life. These are sort of like a sea anchor. You know that you drop it and it drags, it slows down the boat. Well, how do you tell if you have a zero based thinking situation? And many of you were asked to write your problems, challenges, opportunities? The answer is stress is whenever you experience chronic stress, it's something that buzzes around when Joe's talking or somebody else is talking, you're busy thinking about that. You drive around and you think about it. Keeps you awake at night. It's something that pisses you off, it's something that irritates you and angers you and frustrates you whenever you have chronic, which means ongoing, continuous. This is a candidate for zero Based thinking. So you ask yourself the question, if I was not now in this situation, knowing what I now know, would I get into it again today? If the answer is no, the next question is, how do I get out and how fast? How do I get out and how fast? If ever the answer comes back that I would not get into this again today, it's too late to resolve it. It's over. The only question now is, how long do you suffer? How much emotional suffering, how much financial suffering do you make before you walk? And so the most important requirement for practicing zero based thinking, which a lot of people don't like to practice, is courage. I call it the C word. You need the C word. You need to have the courage to look at every part of your life and say, is there anything that I'm doing that knowing what I now know, I wouldn't get into now? The starting point of zero based thinking is always with your relationships, and those are both personal and business. Whenever I've given this talk, by the way, within a short period of time, divorces take place all over that city. People go home and say, geez, if I hadn't married this person, I would never marry them again today. And that's what's making me miserable. And many people are working their heads off on the outside to achieve success, but inside they're frustrated and unhappy because they're in a situation that, knowing what they now know, they would never get into. So I call this a Kwink analysis. And I'm going to ask you to do this for the rest of your life and help other people do it. K wink. Knowing what I now know. Do a kink analysis on everything. Do a Kwink analysis. In my company, what we say is we look at every single person on a regular basis and we say, if we had not hired this person and they walked in today to apply for their current job, knowing what we now know, would we hire them? If the answer is no, they're gone that day. There's a little rule, by the way, in one of my books. It says the best time to fire a person is the first time it crosses your mind. Because after that it's only pain and suffering. And the longer you keep them in place, the more likely they are to sue you. And the longer they sue you, the more it's going to cost. So therefore, if you find that you've made a mistake, belly up to the bar, have the courage to admit I made a mistake and cut your losses. There was a great book by an author called the Zurich axioms some years ago and it was principles of success. And anybody who's in finance has probably read the book because a very successful New York financier, and he was talking about the gnomes of Zurich, whoever they are, and the rules that they go by. And he said the number one rule for success in business, personal lives, cut your losses when you realize you've made a mistake, bad investment, bad hire, bad relationship, cut your losses quickly. What do they say in Las Vegas? You know, cut your losses, let your winnings ride. So in life that's what we do. And the faster you cut your losses, fail fast, the faster you can start doing things that are much more productive. The other, the second area has to do with every part of your business. Joe and I were talking about what I think is a revolutionary new field. Though it's not revolutionary and it's not new, but it's business model innovation. And it's based on the concept that whatever business model you're using today is probably obsolete. If you're in any kind of a business that uses technology to market it, especially an information based business, knowledge based business consulting, services, training, anything else, chances are your business is obsolete. The way that you and visit and the business model is your method, your step by step process of generating profitability. Now there are some companies that struggle along, struggle along, struggle along, then find a new business model and the next year their business is up five or ten times. Profits are just overwhelming. They're living in big houses on the hill, driving Cadillacs and flying private jets. And you say, what on earth did they do? They changed their business model. And if you don't change your business model, if it's the wrong business model, two things are going to happen. Your competitors are going to come up with a new business model and eat your lunch and, or you're going to go broke. So it doesn't mean that your business model is wrong. It just means that you must be open to the possibility that your business model is obsolete. And that just means that there is a better business model, there's a superior business model, and your job is to find it. And again, there's no fixed answer to it. But I think that this is a great area of thought. I think this is a great area and it's sort of like a tool for you to have. I wonder if I need to change my business model, which is your way of generating sales, producing and delivering products and services, getting payments and achieving profitability. Well, so coming Back to the second is look @ anything in your Business, look at your products, look at your services, look at your people, look at the way that you advertise market and ask is there anything that you're doing today that knowing what you now know, you wouldn't start up again today? And the only question that you ever ask is, does it work? Does it work? Does it work? If it's not working and you can tweak it, then that's fine. If it's not working, have the courage to admit this isn't working and abandon it. Now the third area has to do with investments in zero based thinking, investments of time, which people hate to lose. Someone said earlier that people hate to lose. It's one of the greatest emotions. We hate to lose time. If we've invested a lot of time in a course of action, a project, a business, a relationship. The second is emotion. If we put a lot of emotion into a course of action, a product, course of study, a relationship or, or money. We hate to admit that we made a mistake and that what seemed like a good idea at the time has turned out not to be a good idea. And knowing what I now know, I wouldn't get into it and have the courage to cut your losses and run. Now the reason I teach this first is because you can't make any progress unless you clear the decks, unless you get this 800 pound gorilla that's holding you back out of your life. And then many companies that I've worked with, literally transformed, became multimillion dollar companies when everybody said, all right, we're going to go through and do a quick analysis on this whole company and realize that half the things we're doing and half the people working here are not the right people for us at this time. And half the products that we're offering aren't selling and never will. They've been replaced by better, cheaper, faster products in the marketplace. So cut your loss. What happens when a big, big company gets into trouble? They bring in a quick analysis man and he comes in with a chainsaw and he shuts down all the factories and all the stores that are not profitable and the company goes from profits to losses in one year anyway. The second thinking tool that I teach people is WPO thinking, which is worst possible outcome in everything that you're doing. Always ask yourself, what is the worst possible outcome of this course of action? And can I survive it if it were to occur? And if not, what could I do to make sure it doesn't happen? One of the number one reasons that we worry about anything in life is because of fear. And when you ask yourself, what is the worst thing that can happen in this particular situation? And then if you can say, all right, if that happens, I'll live with it, then your worry goes away, and your mind goes clear and calm. And now you say, now what can I do to make sure that the worst does not happen? And then you become proactive and you take charge of your life. The third thinking tool. I hope I'm not going too fast for it. The third thinking tool is called the principle of constraints, and it's one of the most important thinking tools ever discovered. It says, between you and anything that you want to accomplish, there is always a constraint, a limiting factor, or a choke point that sets the speed at which you accomplish your goal. So I was just talking, doing a teleconference a few minutes ago. So the question I said is, let's always set the goal of doubling our income. You want to double your income? Okay, want to double your income? Then why isn't your income already twice as high? Now, in business, we don't think of doubling our income. We think of doubling our profitability. What we're concerned with is net cash flow. We're concerned with the amount that we take home to our family at the end of the day. Not the gross, but the triple net. So we say, if I want to earn twice as much, and everybody in here can and can and will earn 2, 3, 4, 5 times as much sometime in the future, if I want to earn twice as much, why aren't I already earning twice as much? And the number one reason for most people is distraction. So they're so distracted, they're doing things of low or no consequences. But we found the 8020 rule applies to constraints. 80% of the constraints that are holding you back from achieving your financial goals are within yourself and within your business. They are not on the.

Outside.

The. They are not the competition. They are not the market. They are not the people in Washington or the taxes or regulation. 80% are within yourself. So the mark of the superior person is whenever they have a problem, they say, what is it in me that's causing this problem? Mike? And I know this very, very clearly. What is it in me that's causing this problem? In illness, by the way, 85% of illness is psychosomatic. As Dennis Waitley said, it's not what you're eating, it's what's eating you. It's causing the problem. And so the starting point and the first thing a doctor will tell you or a psychologist is what Is it that you're not dealing with and you go back to zero based thinking? What is it that you have in your life that if you had to do over, you wouldn't do it? So ask yourself what's holding you back? And usually it's the quality of self discipline or it's a skill. Now, one of the things that changed my life forever was when I learned that all business skills are learnable. You don't have to be a genius to learn any business skill. You can learn any form of technology as Mike has proven that with his products. You can take a person who's basically shoveling shoe polish in shubokin and teach them how to be technologically superior enough to earn a living from it. Every business skill is learnable. And so I say, what one skill, if you are absolutely excellent at it in your business, would help you the most to double your income? What one business skill, if you could wave a magic wand and wake up tomorrow morning, superb in this area, what skill would it be? And you know, when you ask that question, everybody knows the answer, they know what it is. But here's the challenge. You don't like the skill because it involves rejection, embarrassment, ego, potential failure, loss. You've tried it in the past, you haven't been good at it. But nobody asks you what would be an easy skill to learn. They just asked you what skill would help you the most to double your income. And here's what we have found, is that most of us are only one skill away from doubling our income. And all business skills are learnable. And if you study the people who go from the top to the bottom in the Fortune 500 or Fortune 1000, they found in 25 years of research, these people learn one skill at a time by climbing the ladder of success and the ladder of income. Like sniper, one shot, one kill. They don't try to learn 50 skills. They learn the one skill, focus, the most important skill. And they get their company focusing on the one skill that can help you the most to generate sales and.

Profitability. 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 and you.

Can get a copy.

There. I was there at the beginning of the Genius Network the very first day, the very first day where we got together and swapped Ideas at your apartment in Tempe, Arizona. And I still remember that. And I'm so happy with your success and what you've accomplished and with so many other people. It's just wonderful. You know, we talked. I believe at that time, we talked about the Mastermind concept, and that's why. And you said, well, why don't we get together and Mastermind? And so I flew over to Phoenix and taxied out to your house for the first time. And that's something that's so important in the Genius Network, is when Napoleon Hill did his work, he said that every single person, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and so on, every one of them began to be successful and they began to mastermind with other intelligent people and just share ideas. And I have had the same experience, because one idea in combination with your other ideas can change your life forever. I am, I'm happy to say, some years ago, but about a decade ago, a publisher said, have you got any books or anything that we could publish? And I said, well, I've got a book on time management. So I sent them a manuscript, and it was called Double youe Income, Double youe Time Off. And he said, great publisher, Barrett Kohler. And he said, well, it's kind of a boring title. He said, but the chapter 15 is 21 Great Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Get More Things Done Faster. That's the title of the book. And he said, well, chapter 15 is entitled Eat that Frog. And this is a story from Mark Twain. And Mark Twain was the most successful speaker, writer, author in America for three or four decades. And he wrote this. He said. He said, if the first thing you do in the morning is you eat a live frog, then you'll have the satisfaction of knowing that it's probably the worst thing that can happen to you all day long. And your live frog is your biggest, ugliest task. And so just get up in the morning and just get it done. He said, and if you have to eat two frogs, eat the ugliest one first. So if you have two big tasks to do, do the most important. And then the other corollary is that if you do have to eat a frog at all, it doesn't pay to sit and look at it for very long. In other words, get on with it. Well, so he said, let's make this the title Eat that frog and 21 great ways to Stop Procrastinating. And then run the theme through setting the table, organizing the plates, and so on. And so I did. I sent it back to him and they published it. And he just told me this week, Steve Persanti, my publisher is that we just hit 2,500,000 sales in 50 languages. Wow. Which makes me da da da da da the best selling time management author in history. And it has one basic concept for us with the Genius network is pick your most important task each morning and start on that task and discipline yourself to work on that task non stop until it's done. And don't do anything else. If you can do this, which takes tremendous character, takes tremendous discipline, takes tremendous mental strength if you can do this. The first time you do this, it will be very hard. You will be so distracted and you want to check your emails and make a call and get some coffee and so on. And what you have to do is you have to discipline yourself to stay at that, wherever you are and do that task until it's done. Then I say give yourself a reward. The time management author Julie Morgenstein says, don't check your email in the morning. And I love that as a concept. You get up in the morning, start on your most important task and discipline yourself to stay at it till it's complete. Then your reward is to check your email. But unfortunately, what do most people do is they check their email in the morning and in the afternoon, and in the evening they get up at night, they're just always checking their email. And each time you check your email, the estimate it takes 17 minutes for you to get back to work, takes 17 minutes for you to get settled down and back to work and so on. And then somebody sends you an email and it goes bing ding mcbip. And you stop and you check your email again. And the email is one of the most wonderful communications devices in the world, but it'll kill you if you just keep checking it. So what you do is you turn it off. I always say, leave it off, leave it off, start your task and discipline yourself. And your big reward when you finish your most important task is now.

You can check your.

Email. And if you can do that, what happens is you start to become so productive. So many people have told me that they became millionaires with the eat that frog concept. Just start and complete your most important task. But if you can't do that, by the way, you'll always have to work for someone else who can discipline you to do it, someone who will supervise you, someone who will check on you. What will happen is you'll always be in the bottom 80% and never be a big success. And remember this 8020 rule. It bites you in the bum all the time. 20% of people make all the money. The 80% of people. Why do you think we're having riots today? Who do you think is rioting? Certainly not the top 20%. They're busy making money. It's the people in the bottom 80% who are frustrated and angry and upset and so on because they have too many bills, as they say, too much month at the end of the money. They don't know how to get out of it. The answer is, make a list of what you have to do. Pick the most important task and work at it till it's done. Your whole life will.

Change. I've done several ayahuasca journeys, and one of the. Okay, I would encourage that for both of you at some.

Point. Have you ever done it while you're doing your frigid bath? Have you.

Ever.

No. A cold plunge. I don't think that would be a terrible.

Idea. You're very adventurous, Joe. I'm just laying out some possibility.

For you, which, by the way, Stephen, I do saunas and cold plunges and breathing almost daily. And so that's one of the newest things I've started. And it's going on now, oh, probably eight months, where I.

Almost. I always do.

Breathing. Every.

Day. No, a specific type of breathing.

Day.

So. Okay, so during one of these medicine journeys, and as I say all this. Let me preface anyone that's listening or hearing this, that going back to the famous Timothy Leary line, which is. It's set and setting, there's a lot of people running around calling themselves shaman, putting people in very dangerous situations. Then we have a whole new culture of people getting high under the guise of consciousness. I mean, it's kind of ridiculous. But all that being said, so this is neither a. An endorsement or, you know, it's just my own experience, and I've done interviews with gabor mate and Dr. Andrew Wall and where we talk about different stuff like this, but in terms of this, there was this one. I was in a jungle in Mexico, and I was with Gabor Mate, who's very smart, smart doctor, and a few people. And during this journey, during this vision, a couple of things happened. One, there was this small, like, doe, like a deer, and it was going into a pit, and I was kind of having this vision of watching this and very, very real. And this little deer was kind of scrambling around, scared and frightened, and. And it was noisy, and it was like this intense pressure. And then it just got obliterated. Every part of its Skin and flesh and bones crushed and demolished and just liquefied. And I'm just like, what the hell is going on? And what am I seeing? What am I witnessing? And there was this incredible mental anguish, and it's almost impossible to put in the words, this sort of stuff, to try to describe it. I mean, I can't put into words. All I can do is share pieces of this and. And I felt this enormous, like, feeling of the pain and the suffering and the terror that humans in life, in nature, brings upon the beings that inhabit this planet and how to make sense of it. On one hand, to have compassion and know that, you know, factory farming and the animals and not, you know, I'm a carnivore, I eat meat and all of the things that go into life. And where do you draw the line of what is right and what is wrong and where you have to go out, bring home the bacon. You have to kill in order to eat. You have to protect yourself and your family. And along the way, every life, something's going to die in order for something else to live. From plants to animals to whatever, and just trying to make sense of it all and to develop a value system and to, you know, be a compassionate human. And so these are the things where I often think about, like, what does all of this mean and what is the answer? And how do you make sense of some of the pain and suffering that people do to each other when you're talking about war, that. I mean, God, Stephen, you've written some of the most incredible, descriptive, powerful. I mean, I think you channel from God knows where. But you, you. You definitely. I don't know how a human could contain the level of wisdom that you have written in so many of your books, from Gates of Fire to Everything. I mean, but so much of it has to do with war. And war is organized murder. That's what a war.

Is. Yes, exactly. I wrestle with that same thing, Joe. It's like, what kind of a world did God design where in order to live from one day to the next, each creature has to kill another creature and eat it? I mean, what. What the hell is that all about? You know, couldn't we just have a solar panel on our head and get energy from that? You know, and just. And it does make you wonder, you know, as beautiful as this world is, are we in some kind of purgatory? You know, I mean, did we commit some horrible crime and that's why we're here? But then, on the other hand, it's. It's Such a beautiful world that if you ever think of leaving it, you know, you hang on with everything you've got. So it's. It's a. It's a hell of a mystery. And, you know, I sure don't have any. Any wisdom. Dan, tell us.

What. Here's, you know, it's very, very interesting. You're reading the book. My. One of my small books, and your attention, your.

Property.

Yeah. And, you know, we live in a very interesting business age, and it has to do with the technology companies. Okay. And they had antecedents, they had the broadcast, you know, the broad. You had the newspaper business, you had the. But it's really gotten to the point where a lot of people. And what. The antitrust rules in the United States are very, very interesting. And they've gotten very narrowly defined. And this. These came in that the cross corporations had monopoly power. And the sign was that as soon as the large corporations get monopoly power, you can tell, because they raised the prices for the consumers. And Google and Facebook and Twitter have really pulled off a trick. They have monopoly power. They're huge corporations. But they say, yeah, but we not only don't raise the prices, we give it away for free. And this has thrown everybody because they're exhibiting power in the political spectrum. They're exhibiting power, and there's a pushback, but nobody knows how to get a handle on it. Nobody knows how to get a handle it. And the essence of my book is if they tell you it's free, that means you're the.

Product. Yes. Which you are.

Yeah. You're being bought and sold, and you think you're getting a free experience, but every day you're getting bought and sold because you're giving your attention. And I say it's your property, and you're giving your property away. It's you who's giving your property away from free, and you're getting no return on.

It. Yeah. And that's your attention.

Right? Yes. Your attention, your property. And I stopped four years ago just to. For a lot of reasons, but it was part of the point. I just stopped watching television one day. I said, you know, this really. I don't think this does me any good. Now. I will say this. I'm an Internet junkie, okay? But television is different because, you know, they package it differently. And broadcast television, of course, it's their time. They're telling you the time when you have to show up. You know, streaming is different. You can. You can do it. But I just stopped. And right now it's four years. I've gone four years. I've watched a minute of television for four years, and I got 800 hours back a year by now watching television. And I use half of it for to.

Read.

And. And I'm a history buff, so I did a lot of reading of history. And, you know, I like knowing where things come from. I know I like, you know, things we think are new actually started somebody said it 2,500 years ago. And I think it's useful to know that. But the big thing about it is, I think that the 21st century, as we go it, is that you are going to be successful to the degree that you understand that your attention is your property. And think about the property that you love. Stuff that's property, like land or, you know, it's a dwelling or it's your furniture and everything else. And I say, can you tell me what your favorite property is? And they'll go right down the list. I love this. I love this, I love this. But the big thing is, I think that this, we're in a sort of a no man's land right now where what being conscious means as a human being is that what you put your attention on is your property. And people will tell you that you shouldn't bother with that. And I say, I think you should bother with that. And as a matter of fact, I should train you to give your attention only to the things that you think are.

Important. So by you stopping, watching television, like you say, you gained 880 hours of 800 a.

Year. So 800 a.

Year. And that's your attention, Right. Well, you took your attention away from television and put it someplace else.

Right? Yeah. And I noticed that the world improved because I wasn't watching.

Television. So what should you, what should we put our attention.

On? Well, reading, I mean, I think reading, I mean, I was, you know, I. When I was. I was first grade in 1950, so I went to first grade in 1950. And I hated school. I grew up on a farm, and I was free as a bird on the farm. And then they put me, you know, where you have to sit in a desk. And it was Roman Catholic, So I had 12 years, and this was Roman Catholic when it was a tough church. You didn't understand. You didn't understand the language. They could still hit you. Everything. I mean, this, this wasn't, you know, this, this.

Wasn'T. So they had your attention.

Captured. Yeah, And I couldn't.

Move.

And my mother knew that I hated it. And she said in the first Grade, you're going to learn how to read. And if you learn how to read, you can go anywhere with your brain. And that's why you're going to school, you know. And she said it's much more important learning how to read than going to school. And guess what? You have to go to school. And so anyway, the reading. I've just been a passionate reader ever since I was a kid, and I got 400 hours back and it's either history. I'm reading murder mystery thrillers, you know, a lot of the ones that you like. And, you know, I've read all of Lee Child. I've, you know, Michael Connelly. I love Michael Connelly. You know, right in LA there. Creepiest city in the world. Los Angeles. And, you know, a couple of British. One Mark Dawson. I don't know if you've read Mark Dawson. No, I haven't. The John Milton stories, he's got about 18 of them. And then. Yeah, just some great, great writers. And they get you in the first paragraph. But I give my attention to that because they tell a great story. And I think we like storytellers. I think storytellers are good because there's all. They. They're depicting life in a full sense. I think your stuff does. Let me get my power cord or I'm out of luck.

Here. Yeah. And you know, let me ask you, Stephen, about what do you. What you're such an incredible writer. I mean, have you ever read. Are you familiar with the book, Write Useful.

Books? No.

No. A guy named Rob Fitzpatrick. I wish. I. I don't have a copy right near where I would go grab one. But he. He basically write. Wrote a book about how to write useful books so that the marketing is built in. And he. He mentioned two of his favorite books. One is a book by Ernest Hemingway. I can't even remember the name. Go.

Figure. And it's probably Old man in the.

Sea. Is that. Is that what he writes.

About? I mean, it's. It's one. I think it's the Nobel Prize winner. The Old man in the Sea.

Is. No, but I don't think it's that one. In the book, Write Useful Books, he mentions two books that are his favorite. Rob Fitzpatrick, the author. And the other one is the War of Art by Prescott. Yeah.

And. And.

He. He based. And I have a friend named Anna David who. I told her to read the book and I. Because it's a really good book and it shows you how to structure a book so the book would be really useful. And he goes through and describes why the War of Art is a really useful book in the way that it's written. And the interesting thing is he makes the comparison about, look at how many reviews for the Hemingway book are on Amazon versus the War of Art, which is infinitely greater. And he said, because people share it, it's referring. When I read that, I never really understood, why do I tell so many damn people to read the War of Art? And so my friend Clay Hebert, you know, he talks about what he calls portable stories where there's, you know, there's so many little quotes and so many things in the War of Art about resistance that makes it easy to tell other people why to share it. And that's why without. I don't think you ever did a marketing campaign for the War of Art. I think you just wrote a really good book and it's a really useful book. And throughout, people just keep sharing that book. I mean, how many, you know, how many people have that are famous, impactful, influential people have referred to the War of Art as being such a great book. And you wrote it for a purpose to have all of your writer friends that are asking you, how did you do all the things that you've done? And you got sick of trying to give them pep talks and just wrote a damn book to share with them. But the point is, it's about being useful and. And, you know, and so to go back to what gets the time and attention. Like, I don't use this terminology in my book, my newest book, you know, what's in it for them. But I write about Tammy. The. The things that you can spend, I refer to as, you know, time, attention, money, effort, and energy. And so wherever we, you know, that could spell. It's a weird way of spelling Tammy. But wherever we put our Tammy has everything to do with what do we want to. What do we want to have happen. And a lot of times, I think this whole process of pursuing whatever you want to call it, success, growth, living, is you find yourself putting a lot of time, attention, money, effort and energy into things that produce incredibly poor results. And that's, you know, the Johann Hari line. The opposite of addiction is connection. And so in the pursuit of trying to fill that void, you know, one of my favorite quotes from Bill W. One of the founders of aa, he said, as alcoholics, we're trying to drink God out of a bottle. And whenever people are trying to connect or fill that void, I often think, what in there doing it? You know, addiction is looking for love in all the wrong places. It's trying to fill something. It's either trying to the pain away, eat the pain away, work the pain away, gamble the pain away. I mean, all these different things that we have as humans that are pain and we're finding the cotton candy non nourishing way to try to fill that hunger, that emptiness. But when you can tap into it, when you can get to that other side, when you can go to your higher self, you can find the work that you're doing so much so meaningful and so connected. And that's what I believe the flow state is. And I think in a lot of ways so much of what you write about, even using, you know, war and using all the analogies is to tap into that as Dan uses unique ability. It's, it's finding that place. You know, Dan's whole process of, you know, the gap, how you actually look at progress, how you look at where you put your time, attention, money, effort and energy so that you can create, you know, the best life that whatever God given capabilities and talents, resourcefulness that you have, if you can tap into that, what are you capable of doing with not only your own life, but for the lives of everyone that you have the ability to.

Influence? You know, I'm just, I'm just thinking now, Dan, thinking of what you said about attention. And I'm just kind of asking myself, where do I put my attention? And I'm just thinking this right now. And being a writer, where I put my intention is into that place where the next book is, where if I have an idea for a story, a piece of fiction that might have just a little kernel at the start, it's like, I don't know, entering a cavern somewhere, you know, a big, huge, you know, with a little flashlight on the top of your head, right? And I'm just, I'm enter. That's where my attention goes. I'm entering that space and I don't know what the hell is in there, but I'm very curious about it. And I know there's something in there and, and it's, it's some. Someplace I've never been. And that's kind of where my attention goes. And I take it to a spiritual level. And then I kind of, I really feel like that cavern, that that space where a story exists is coming from the muse, coming from the gods. You know, they know the story, but I don't, you know, the story exists. And so, you know, in a way, Joe, it may be a little bit like an ayahuasca Experience where you're. You're. You say to yourself, okay, I'm.

Going to give you the.

Keys. You, the. The, you know, the gods, right? You take me on this trip, you know, I'm going to sit, buckle my seatbelt, take me where you want to go, right? And you're there with your eyes that big, right? And your ears that big, wondering what the hell is happening here and what does it all mean? And so it's really kind of a very brave thing to do. I.

Take. You know, Steve, I was reading one of the murder mysteries, but one of the characters was talking. You know, you don't know the difference between an amateur and a professional. And the person says, what do you mean, what's the difference? He says, an amateur is someone who practices until they can get it right. He says, a professional is somebody who practices until they can't get it.

Wrong. That's pretty.

Good. Yeah. And I get the sense that that's happened to.

You. Well, I, I. In a way, I sort of feel like. I certainly don't feel like I can't get anything wrong. I feel like everything is new to.

Me. But that's how it looks to you. That's not how it looks to other.

People. But in any event, I think.

You know, that's kind of where I. I put my attention. Joe, I would ask you, where do you put your attention? It's. It seems to me like you're exploring a lot of aspects of your. Of yourself, you know, including deep, deep layers, unconscious layers, the past, the future.

Whatever.

Where. Where do you put your.

Attention? Well, towards consciousness and curiosity. And Dan has this thing where he talks about entrepreneurship is where you make it up and make it real, and. And I am really curious about a lot of stuff to the point where I will put myself in situations, even if I feel incredibly uncomfortable. Like, I went back and listened to the interview that me and you did in 2003, and it's on YouTube. Actually. It's not a video. It's just the audio recording, because I was doing that for my tape of the Month club back then when we had these things on cassette tapes and there was no podcasting at that time. And so, you know, podcasting was not yet invented. And I listened to the. The way that I introduced you and the way some of the things that I said, and it's a bit embarrassing. When I look back, I was like, oh, my God, I was. But I was, you know, nearly 20 years younger and. But what I also have to do is quit shaming myself. And saying, you know what, you're just a young guy that was just trying to figure out by asking people questions, you're always pursuing, trying to figure stuff out. So for me, I think as much as one could get into a flow and into a creative state, that tends to be where I find my happiness. Meaning I usually will feel better in the middle of a really hard yoga class than if I put together some million dollar business deal. I mean, that's cool too. And it makes money and it allows me to have my entrepreneurial endeavors. However, it's the feeling of feeling really connected. And when I come up with ideas and I'm able to make them up and then let my mind make them real. In the same way that when you talk about the kernel of an idea when you're writing a book, you literally make it up and you make it real. I mean, your books so speak to entrepreneurship. It's not even funny. Like for instance, I bought a ghost town. I bought a 40 acre ghost town called Arizona, right? And then that led to buying 260 acres of silver and gold mine claims. And then we bought a four, a 400 acre ranch that we're turning into a private ranch. And like, I know nothing about real estate, I know nothing about revitalizing the whole town. But I went into this thing with, with this town cleaner that has supposedly eight living residents. But when we went there for the first town meeting with me and my two partners, Jason Campbell and Mike Leone, we have another one named Ben Hoodie, but it was me, Jason and Mike. We go up there and all these people, 60 people show up and I'm like, I think more than eight people reside in this town. They're squatters or whatever. And we had to win them over. And part of the thing I said is like, I'm not going to kick anyone out unless you're an or you're doing criminal behavior or you're being violent, as long as you're collaborative. We're here to make this place better. We want to turn this into cool, into the coolest little ghost town in maybe the country, right? And so Dan came up with this great idea that we're going to really do our best to create, you know, a sheriff's association, the largest sheriff department in the.

World. It's 20,000 deputy at 20,000. And I'm, I'm number one. I'm number one deputy. Number one deputy. And I say new charge, it's like an NFT, you know, the new thing, $2,000 to become a deputy and you have to go to the town at least once every two years to get your deputy renewed, you know. And then you start raising money for all the sheriff's departments in Arizona and you invite them to come in. And if you, every day you have 20 or 30 sheriffs there, you've just handled your security problems, you.

Know. Yeah, okay, so let's take that. So there's all these different ideas including I'm a co founder of a VR company and so we just filmed putting cleator in VR. We've sold cleader NFTs. There's this is stuff that I never would have done had I not started this idea. It's what Dan refers to as a strategic byproduct. So to go back to attention, I put my attention on things that seem like I'm always trying to put myself in a position of trying something that there's a part of me that says don't do that, that's crazy, that's rational. You know, So I, I heard early on in my life, do something every day that scares you. And that's different than like running out in the middle of traffic. That's a stupid. So like doing something that scares you that there is resistance to. So to take your whole concept of, you know, resistance with a capital R, I had to really ponder this idea. But then I'm like, okay, like I'm capable of doing this and if I'm not capable, I can get the capabilities elsewhere. You know, I don't have to know how to do everything. It's the who, not how. Right. And so I partnered with a couple of who's and they love my vision. They're really good. I mean this town that was established in 1869 as of last week, for the first time in its history, has fresh water to it because we went and got a well built that we put a lot of money into it. We built. I own the Cleaner Bar and Yacht Club. Even though it's. Which is hysterical and they've got 6,600 members and people go there and is up to 200 people on a weekend show up to this place, they hang out in their ATVs and it's, it's this wild stuff. But, but the whole. So the whole thing is I love things like that. To me it's, it's like an interesting playground. And this came after taking last year as a one year sabbatical. I mean if I would have not taken the one year sabbatical, I had to really look at my ego. I had to really look at who I give my time and attention to. I realized that not being on social media was way more inspiring to my brain than reading inspirational quotes on social media. Dan has this saying, which we did a whole podcast on, is, entrepreneurs that are too tightly scheduled cannot transform themselves. And I wanted to have a transformation. So I kind of unbundled myself because I didn't realize how burdened I was with decision making and I needed to free some of that space up. And when I freed up my mind. It's unbelievable what happens when you give your brain the ability to ponder. And I think you as a writer, you've just really developed yourself. You're a great ponder. You think about things, you connect with things, and then you, you let it out through your hands and into the keyboard and it produces words that will live long after you are living in the current state that you're.

Living. You actually became quite successful financially in spite of a crazy ass lifestyle. I mean, you were doing drugs. I mean, sex, drugs, rock and roll, women, I mean, the whole works. You were, but you still were able. I mean, you sold your first company for 100 million. You sold another company for 140 million. I mean, you've had a lot of quote unquote financial success. How were you able to accomplish that in the midst of the craziness? I mean, was it that drive inside of.

You? Yeah, you know, you don't need to follow a path to live it. There are seconds of stillness where creativity comes in. When you're making a record, between one snare drum and another could be a lifetime because the melody has sucked you in. And then there is meditation in that. In making music, you know, you're digging inside and doing creative work. You're digging inside, and that is a form of meditation. Of course, there are moments you're focused and you do your best and you excel. What we want to do is expound on them, you know, we want to expand them. So I was lucky. I. I had a focus for what I loved. But then I couldn't turn my attention to my accountant. Listen to him talk. Sometimes you have to practice broadening your focus so you can do more than what sucks you in. You can learn to be sucked in by things you need to listen to because they may be part of helping others or building your company.

Or. Yeah, well, so what I think, I mean, I'm obviously a big believer in sharing, you know, wisdom and knowledge. The reason I have Genius Network is I try to share what I consider to be wisdom through to a Lot of people. And it could be one person that someone really, you know, admires and respects that says something that changes the course of their life. And so you've probably, you know, I imagine Rick Rubin was incredibly influential, maybe to you. But I don't know where this first started. But in the midst of the.

Craziness, was there a.

Person. Was there someone that said, you know, hey, Russell, I mean, really, you should take a look at this. Or did you just need to get into a lot of.

Pain? I went to yoga. Not much pain I didn't feel. I never went to a rehab. I just quit. I was 30. I just quit all the.

Time. You never hit a bottom or.

Anything? I was always at the bottom. I just quit. And Rick Rubin was a great influence on me anyway. He was just naturally. Still. He'd been meditating for 35 years. Rick has. So he's a great example of a person who was sober, who I spoke to. And he spoke to me from a still place that inspired me. But I don't have any moments I can think of that really shifted me so much as I have an evolution, you know, My first yoga class was a great experience. I went there with so many chicks there. The hot girl, the hot girls and me, you know, 60 girls, one gay guy, me and my friend Bobby Sriva. That was.

It. I was like, oh.

Shit. That's like heaven for.

You. It was like heaven. And then. But then. But then when class was over, like, I was in. I was really like, I can't believe this. How good I felt awakened for a short time. And I was addicted after.

That. And so that became the stepping stone that eventually led the.

Meditation. Yeah, yoga helped a.

Lot. You know what's actually funny about what you said, too, because I always say that you sell people what they want, you give them what they need. I mean, because a lot of times what people really need is not. They don't really pursue what they want, but the whole thing. And you even say this in the book that, you know, you went to yoga because you thought it was a great place to meet women, but you got something there that was incredibly valuable. And I. I think that's really cool. What will someone get when they read this book? I mean, we can talk about it, but this is really a setup for people. I really want you to pick up a copy of Russell's book Success Through Stillness. Go order it now. Buy it now. What will they get out of.

It? Well, if they don't know how to meditate, they'll learn to Meditate. And that's the greatest gift I can give anyone, to look inside and find all of the happiness that's inside them. That's the work that each of us has to do. We're all doing it through different vehicles. We don't have direct routes. We don't have instructions. We don't have a manual. I gave him a manual on how to look inside, how to start a process, how to start, you know, say, well, I'm overweight. Well, okay, you start mindful eating. I'm always getting sick. Well, your nervous system and your immune system gets better. I can't remember anything. Well, your memory, it gets better. I'm not happy. Well, you increase in happiness, you know. Well, you know, it takes 20 minutes. Sit your ass still for 20 minutes and begin a process. People always say, like, your mind's like a monkey bouncing around in your head, going crazy. And when you sit down, it bounces around even more. Then you sit and you repeat your mantra. And I gave away a mass mantra rum. They repeat this mantra, and then your mind's going crazy, and then your mind settles. Your mind settles, or you have lots of thoughts, and then they come. You know, you go back to your mantra and the mind settles. It's really the mind that the monkey mind settles as the nervous system settles. It can't help it. So five minutes into your meditation, you're like, oh, shit, I'm meditating. And then once you say that, your mind will bounce around a little more. Then it'll transcend the thoughts even more. That's kind of the story. That's the way it is. It's not something I'm making up. It's, everybody can meditate. It's very simple. Let me say, little patience is all you.

Need.

Yeah. Because it wasn't simple for me when I first kind of read about it. And I didn't really embrace it. It was really. When I went through the TM training, training where I really, like, wow. And I had someone sit with me. I mean, just the mere act of an instructor sitting with me and taking me through it was so beneficial in my brain.

Before. Just resisted it and resisted.

It. And I think, you know, I think you really took to it because you immediately, you know, saw so much value in it. And of course, it's one of the reasons you wrote the book. I mean, you talk about, I don't have time. I mean, there's going to be someone that's watching this or listening. They're going to be like, okay, well, that sounds great. But you know, Russell's really successful. He has all the time in the world. He doesn't have to work, you know, two jobs. Take care, you know.

That. So I want.

You. I want more jobs than anybody listening to this. I have a lot of jobs. I'm responsible to a lot of people. I have five charities. Yeah, I work my ass off. But I know that I'm more effective when I meditate. In other words, I mean, I like my morning meditation better than my late night drinking. That's for sure. Discovered that. But I also discovered. But through meditation, I become more effective in everything I do in life. Clarity is. And the decisions that I make. And we first sit to meditate, noise comes, right? There's lots of thoughts. So you kind of take inventory, you decide, I like this, I don't like that. I don't want to do whatever it is. I don't eat animals. I don't want to be, you know, I don't want to join into the homophobic rant or the Islamophobic rant or the anti Semitic rant or I don't want to join what society is doing. I don't want to abuse animals. I don't want to do it. You just make these decisions on your own through.

Meditation. So let's talk about how you actually do it. You meditate 20 minutes twice a.

Day.

Yeah.

Okay. Is that the way Sometimes I'm.

Stuck three times because I get up in the morning and I meditate and then I go to my kids house, I meditate with them, take them to school. So that's twice already. So a lot of afternoons I meditate.

Again.

Okay. And you find, of course this creates not only serenity and peace, but it creates time for you because you don't find.

Yourself. It creates.

Time.

Yeah. See, that's the point I really.

Want to do in meditation. The time you give to meditation makes the day. Yep. If you've been in a moment that I told you where everything moves slow in that car accident is an awakened state in seeing beauty or hearing a joke to the spark of presence makes everything disappear. But the joke, you laugh. These happy moments, these creative moments, these kind of moments come from presence. So the more you can expand on your presence, expound on your presence, the greater your relationship with the world is and the more effective you are as a doer. Because it should be moving meditation. If everything moved.

Like, you'd see.

All the flowers when you drive in there car, see all God's miracles, shit's unfolding in front of you. Wow, it's beautiful. Or you can have noise and fluctuations in the mind which are the cause of sickness and sadness. You can choose one. If you choose this blissful state of this awakened state, then you have to work towards it as well as receive it. Some people are naturally happier than others, but all of us could work towards a state of pure happiness. You don't have to believe in the mysticism of being fully awake and having 360, but you do know that you've had these experiences where the world moved slow. And you do know if you could live there, you'd be more insightful, more creative, and more comfortable and more happy. You know that that's true. So you're seeking that. And as you see unfolding, forget what people tell you, forget what you heard, you experience it. And that experience is one you can't front. It's.

There. It's.

Real. That's the experience. You're happier. You're smarter in terms of your ability to memorize things or your ability to relate to people, to deal with what could cause emotional trauma. You don't want every time something goes wrong, your brain is sending toxins through your whole body. That lasts for days at a time. You want to be able to assess what it is that you think you're stressing about and then let it go. Or you want to be able to take that as inspiration to work and then forget it and don't have sickness and sadness associated with something that really doesn't affect.

You. What you just described, for someone that doesn't experience that, that's not how their life unfolds. How long does it take to get to that state through meditation does this. I know it'd be.

Difficult. Every day you find yourself improving in your relationship with the world. You miss a day, okay? But in general, you find yourself moving forward. All of us are evolving. You know, I don't like to use the word God. I won't scare you fuckers. But goodness and what your mother told you and what the preacher and the rabbi and the imam told you and what the Buddha told you is right. They didn't make that shit up separately from different parts of the world, different colors, different languages, for it to not be true. So you walk in order, right? If you walk in order, there's like walls on either side. You get out of order, you scrape your arm up so you can keep fucking up and scraping your arm. Or you can learn to operate in order. And when you operate in order, say, wow, this is smooth.

Sailing. This is.

Easy. This Makes me happy. That's what they promised you. Everybody promises it to you, but you don't do it. So as you meditate, you look inside, you say, I guess that's true. You have faith in what's true. Because if you gain faith in what's true, then you kind of live more and more in the light. The light is.

Valuable. It's.

Real. Shit, it's real. The light. It's why they call it that. It's why every prophet promoted it. And everyone said, be still and know, or something of that ilk. Every one of us shared with us the idea of stillness being a critical component in our spiritual evolution, if not the most critical component. Again, the Yogic philosophy, the second Sutra, you know, yoga happens with the cessation and the fluctuation of the mind. God. Consciousness comes when the mind is still. Heaven on earth comes when the mind is still. They keep saying it over and over again. So do it. Just do it. Do the things that really promote that kind of lasting stuff, stable happiness. Forget the things. If you can. And you know, and you can transform yourself from a person who keeps hurting themselves to a person who's helping themselves by meditating because you can watch your thoughts more carefully without, you know, without being afraid of.

Them. Do.

You. I mean, do you ever lose it? I mean, are there.

Times? Yeah, I lose it 4, 5, 12 times a.

Day. No, I don't. I.

Don'T. I mean. What do you mean by lose? I don't.

Know. What I mean is like, you were, you know, in your younger days. You're, like, completely out of control, but you were still. I mean. Yeah, I lose it less. I mean, I think you meditate in order to just, you know, be.

Normal, not to break up. No, I did that. Now I meditate to be.

Happy.

I. You know, we all make mistakes every day, but losing it, like wanting to beat up the cab driver and all that. I don't have a lot of.

That. It's been a long.

Time. Not a.

Lot. Okay. It is wonderful to be here at Genius Network and see all of your shining faces. So everyone in the room here is an optimizer. So let's take a moment and imagine your perfect way of being in the world. Maybe for you, your perfect way of being is calm and in control. You're planning your order, organizing. You're in control of your day in your mind. Or maybe your perfect way of being is compassionate. You're caring, you're empathetic, you're listening. When you have a conversation with somebody, you Want them to feel like the only person in the room. Or maybe your perfect way of being is maximally productive. You are laser focused on what needs to get done. You do what's important, and you do it in less time every day. So all these ways of being are amazing, but we're not all these ways every day. What if there was a technique that could help you get there each and every day? And there is. It's called meditation. So most people think that meditation is just kind of letting your mind go blank. It's not. Meditation is a practice or a training that leads to healthy and positive mind states. Sounds pretty good, right? Practice that leads to a healthy mind. There are lots of different forms of meditation. The most basic one is a focused attention on the breath. In focused attention on the breath, you focus your attention on your breath. Your mind wanders, which all our minds do. You notice it and you bring it back to your breath. So you focus on your breath, Your mind wanders again, you notice it wanders and you return it to a neutral object. This very simple, simple thing has profound impact. So the first thing you notice when you start to do this exercise is that you can take your mind off of your thoughts, which are often negative, repetitive, and stressful, and put them on a neutral object. This is huge. You can actually have control over your mind. Most people just sort of feel like every day your mind has stuff going through it and it's kind of thinking you. But with meditation, you learn that you can. You can have control over the contents of your mind. You can get off the thought train. And once that happens, something really amazing happens. If you recognize that you have control over your mind and the contents of it, you can also make decisions about what's in it. And you don't need to be defined by it. You realize that you are not your thoughts. And so all those stories that you may have about yourself and what you're capable of and. And what your limitations are on the world around you, this can go out the window. You can make the choice about what's inside your head. And then you realize the same thing can happen with your emotions. If you feel an emotion, it would in the past trigger an uncomfortable thought, which triggers more uncomfortable feelings. With a meditation practice, you realize that you can get off the emotional roller coaster, that rather than having a feeling and having it rule you, you can simply experience it as a sensation, let it rise and let it fall, and not give it the attention to control your life. So as an example, you are an employee, and maybe you Just made a big mistake at work. Your boss starts walking up to you and you feel your heart rate starting to raise and your breath is getting kind of shallow and you don't realize it and you're realizing you have all sorts of sensations of fear and shame and guilt and this really sucks, these feelings. And so maybe you'll just blame your colleagues so you don't have to feel this stuff. Well, if you have a longer term meditation practice, you can begin to start to work with those feelings and as they start to rise, not be ruled by them, not be triggered by them, and then make a more appropriate choice in that scenario. Another place where meditation has fantastic impact is in your productivity. So you may not realize it, but every time your mind wanders off task, you're actually micro procrastinating. Each and every one of those little mind wanders is actually something that's sucking up time from your precious day. So one of the things that I noticed when I started meditation practice is I got incredibly efficient. Early on I had a long format essay to do and I was the boss of a company. We sat in an open office. Every everything was distracting me because everybody's problem was my problem too. So I was writing this long format essay which normally took me a few hours, and everything was distracting me. But once I started a meditation practice, those long format essays just became really efficient because each of those distractions I could say, nope, don't care. Back to the task at hand. You're a distraction. Don't care about you. Back to the task at hand. And I finished one of those things and 45 minutes. So all of these great benefits that we've discussed, improved productivity, better emotional responsiveness, they actually have corollary changes in your brain. Meditation makes real change in your brain. So let's dive into our brains to find out how. So let's start at the top. One of the first ways that meditation can change your brain is it affects your prefrontal cortex. Fantastic news. We have this area at the front of your head called your prefrontal cortex. It's your attentional control center. It helps us plan, it helps us process and organize. It's amazing. Bad news, as you age, your prefrontal cortex thins. Good news, if you are able to maintain a long term meditation practice, you may maintain the thickness of your prefrontal cortex as you age. In one study, a 50 year old long term meditator had the prefrontal cortex thickness of a 23 year old. Meditation can also help you down regulate your amygdala so if you remember in that example with the employee when his physiology was flying all over the place, well, that was his amygdala in hyperdrive. Meditation helps you actually calm and deep down regulate your amygdala so you can calm and manage your body's emotional responses. Meditation also can increase the volume of your hippocampus. The side of your brain, right there, right in the middle. Your hippocampus is the area responsible for learning and memory. And who couldn't learn, use more learning and memory in their life. Meditation also impacts your temporal parietal junction. Why does that matter? Well, your TPJ is an area responsible for compassion, empathy, and perspective taking. And meditation practice actually impacts that area of your brain. Meditation can also, and this is the coolest one to me, eight weeks of meditation can increase the density of your gray matter. Why is that meaningful? Well, Einstein had more gray matter than. Than the average individual. Just saying. So if all of these things are so amazing, why don't more people meditate? We saw that only a portion of you do it. And the ones that do them, fantastic. But the ones that don't, why not? Or why do you start meditating and then you stop? Well, it turns out that meditation is actually hard to do. There's. There's no one sitting inside the black box of your mind to tell you what you should be doing in there or to guide you and coach you. And we wanted to change that. So we set about a few years ago to create a tool called Muse that would actually give you real time feedback on your mind during meditation so you could know what was going on in there when you were focused and when your mind was wandering. As you heard, it's been used by over millions of sessions, hundreds of companies and institutions. And then we stood back and we said, we want to really ramp this up. We want to build something new. And today, for the very first time on stage, I'm going to present to you. Muse 2. It's a beautiful, slim little device, slips on just like a pair of glasses. It is sensors that track your mind and your body during meditation to give you real time feedback to start, deepen, and enhance your practice. So those of you who know Muse one will know that Muse one had EEG sensors to track your brain during meditation. Muse two add sensors that track your body, your breathing, and your heart to give you real time feedback on your brain and body to guide you into a deeper practice. So muse's body sensors track your body's movements to guide you into stillness and to help you find a pain free posture for meditating. For a lot of people, this is the first place to start. Muse2's breath sensing technology tracks each and every one of your breaths and guides you in breathing exercises to calm yourself or to energize yourself. Within this very same device, there's also a heart sensor that tracks the beating of your heart and gives you real time feedback on it. It's a beautiful experience. It's not simply a number on your wrist. You actually hear the sound of your heart translated every beat into the beat of a drum so that you can tap into your heart's rhythm and learn what helps you calm it. Our classic brain feedback, still in this device, actually lets you know what your brain is doing during meditation, gives you real time feedback so you hear when your mind is wandering and when you're focused. The metaphor we use is your mind is like the weather. So when you're thinking distracted, you hear it as stormy and it guides your brain into calm. So not only is there real time feedback that actually guides you into an ability to harness and hone and calm your brain and your body body. But there's also data, all this rich, beautiful data that's actually showing you what your brain and body is doing so that you can understand it, track it, and improve it. It's like having a little coach right inside this device. So meditation is amazing, but you need to actually build a daily practice. So we have a motivational architecture in there that helps you build a practice and even lets you schedule your meditation meditations. Because meditation really is amazing. It's one of the best things you can do in your life. But so few people actually do it. And in order to get this benefit, you need to actually do it each and every single day. It's like going to the gym. You go to the gym for your body, you go to the gym for your mind. And why? Ask Joe. Why does he meditate every day? What are the benefits that he experiences? He said that meditation helps me respond versus react. So you owe it to your mind and your body to teach it how to shift its responses so that you can live more productively, more compassionately, more happily, and so that you can make the choice of how you want to show up in the.

World. 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, done. 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 of 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 to going, 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 genus network is 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. 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 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, 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 and 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 to 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 win 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'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 insane. 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 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 forward 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. All right, 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 unconditional. You can change.

It.

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.