Turn Procrastination Into Productivity Feat. Tom Bilyeu and Dan Sullivan

Procrastination is a very, very interesting mindset. And the reason is that it's largely secret. It's a largely secret experience that most people have. So you watch Peter up here, or you watch other performers over the next 2 days, and you'll sit there and you have a tendency— we all have a tendency to compare what's going— our insides against someone's outsides. How many of you have ever noticed that you compare your inside— outside? So you would look at a guy like Peter or Joe Polish Polish, and he's up here and he's really cool. And both of them are really composed and they have their act together. And you would say, that person does not procrastinate. Absolutely does not procrastinate. Okay, and I'm not sharing any secrets here. But if you interviewed them, they would say, "There's enormous areas in my life where I'm just running ahead as fast as I can, but there are some areas that I'm actually procrastinating." And so what I'm going to show you, and this is just one of the things that we in Strategic Coach would call a mindset gateway. So I have, over the years, I've created about 100 of these, and these are general purpose thinking processes that will actually take you through a mindset ceiling. Now, what we're going to actually do is I'm going to show you how to actually use your biggest procrastinations to actually be the vehicle for telling you what the most important things are that you want to do. And you're going to take on 3 of your biggest procrastinations right now. Are today, and within about 10 minutes, 15 minutes, we're going to flip them and we're going to turn them into an area of motivation. We're going to turn them into an area of energy and an energy of focus. Okay. And by doing this today, I'm hoping that you can see that you can do this on any day, that you could actually for the rest of your life you could actually, in thinking about what's most important tomorrow, you could actually say, well, what are the 3 biggest things that I'm procrastinating on? And those 3 biggest things that you're procrastinating on are actually your best indicator on what you should work on tomorrow. And therefore, the re— for the rest of your life, you never have to worry about whether you're doing the right things, uh, because your procrastination will actually tell you that these are the most important things. Okay? And for each of you is unique, but the general principle is actually something that we can all master. And there's a great deal of loneliness with procrastination. One of the things I notice is that generally speaking, when I talk to people about their procrastination, it's like it's a secret that's buried in the basement, but it's not just in the basement, it's in a secret room in the basement. And they actually do not want— they said, I can't talk about my procrastinations. Okay, because the way it's set up is that procrastination is kind of like, it's an indication that you're a lesser human being. You don't have your act together. And there's a moral failing here. You actually, it's a moral failing. You're a sub, you know, it's not very, very good. And if you'd only get your act together, you could live up to your potential. I don't know if any of you have ever had that. Okay, so let's talk about procrastination. First of all, how do I know if I'm procrastinating? So I'm just going to give you the two guides to know what constitutes a procrastination for you. And the first one is that it uses the word should and it's something that you should do. So should is the giveaway. I think words are very, very important. And I think that the word should, the moment you hear the word should, you know that someone's talking about a procrastination. It's should do, or the second one is shouldn't do. Okay, should do or shouldn't do. And the should do is you should do, but you haven't done. Okay? So that's the first procrastination. Okay? And the second one is you shouldn't do, but you haven't stopped. Okay? So that pretty well covers the field. And I find that generally speaking, if you just hear, you know, listening, if someone in talking to you uses the word should, you know they're procrastinating. Okay? If you use the word should, and should is a guilt word. Should is a manipulation word, and it always indicates that procrastination is going on. It's just a general indicator. I think it's good for 90% of the procrastinations. Two places where you can procrastinate. The first one is work, and the other one is your personal time outside of work. And just generally speaking, so I can include the whole room, in the area of work procrastination, it would fall into these areas. First of all, planning, deciding, initiating, communicating, informing, implementing, responding, completing. Okay, so those general areas. And so when you think about your work and you think about these activities, then these activities would sort of indicate to you where you could be procrastinating. We're going to do a quick sprint, what I call sprint thinking, where I'm just going to have you brainstorm for about 3 minutes and actually write down a whole bunch of procrastinations that you're doing right now. And then in your personal life, it's sort of similar, but it's informing, helping, supporting, organizing, participating, discussing, deciding, solving, and completing. Okay? And so you can think of all the different situations. As entrepreneurs, there's a particular indicator of what constitutes your biggest, biggest procrastinations. And I've got an organization, BABS, Bab Smith is here. She's my partner. We have about 120 team members. And when I'm procrastinating, I'm being a bottleneck that's preventing teamwork. And I notice that my biggest procrastinations is where teamwork can't really be triggered using the skillful people that we have in the company. And the reason is because I'm being a bottleneck of one kind or another. And it generally falls into the category of the first line. How many of you, the rest of you, when you think of the procrastinations that really keep you awake at night or not enjoying your free time, it usually is where you're kind of a bottleneck that's preventing teamwork. Yeah, it falls into that. And at home, you know, in personal life too, there, you know, happy personal life requires enormous amounts of teamwork with other people. And so they're doing it. So I'm just trying to give you the general landscape of procrastination. And what I'm trying to do here is saying that this is an enormous source of potential energy for you. This is an enormous sense of potential motivation, but right now it's trapped. So whatever you write down where your procrastination is, it's energy, but you don't have access to the energy. It's actually trapped energy. And how many of you have procrastinated on something for quite a long time. And then when you finally acted on it and broke through, there was this huge burst of energy. There was this enormous burst of energy. And so the one thing I want to get across to you here is that the time you spend procrastinated— procrastinating is never wasted time once you get through it. And the energy that you feel that you've wasted procrastinating is never lost. It's just not available to you right now. And this is one of those areas too where, you know, you get manipulated around the issue of procrastination. You actually get manipulated. Okay.

I'm very—

being a happy person, I'm very resistant to manipulation. You know, Joe Polish Polish spoke about the theme of the conference. Freedom is actually freedom from being manipulated by external circumstances or external messages. So I'm very sensitive. I have, you know, I have Spidey sense for anything where I sense that someone is trying to manipulate me in a particular direction. And so I go after any thought form or any mindset which actually seems to be a manipulative— a manipulation. And then I come up with a counter an antidote to it. I counteract manipulation so that people really are free in their own minds and they can think very, very freeing thoughts. So I really, really love helping people get a real sense of freedom about their life and not being manipulated by thoughts that come from the past or in the present or possible future. And once they're freed up in that aspect of their life, then their time gets freed up, their money gets freed up, their relationships get freed up, and also their purpose in life, your purpose in life. You see, one of the things you discover when you come to Genius Network and also Abundance 360 is that there's a lot of very, very smart people in the world. Okay, there's a lot of very, very smart people in the world. And so you don't want to have a goal that you want to be the smartest person in the room. Okay. Say, I'm not the smartest person in the room, but for something that I've really taken a look at for 40 years, I'm probably the smartest person regarding that particular thing. And each of you has a special thing that you're working on. And in that area you're actually the smartest person. But the vision that Peter's talking about is a lot of really smartness all being available to everybody else. Okay, so my goal from a very early age is that I just want to be in a room where everybody's getting smarter. Okay, that's all I really wanted. And therefore my best usefulness in life as a strategic coach is to just show people how their performance, achievement can continually go up just by thinking about their mindset ceilings and then freeing themselves up from it. So this is my life work on the planet. I don't know what I've done in previous lifetimes or in future ones, but for this lifetime, this is it. So I'm just— What I'm doing today is, you know, what I was put here to do.

All right.

Now I'm going to give you a form. We're going to go through this quite quickly. And the first thing we're going to do is I'm going to go to a first column. So if you just look at this and I've got mine filled out, so you can see what one of the forms looks like when it's all filled out. This is called The procrastination priority. Okay, it's called procrastination priority. And that is your procrastination on any day that you choose to do this will actually establish your priority for the next day. Will actually establish your priority for the next day. And it's really, really neat because how many of you have, you know, and just raise your hand, how many of you have generally looked at procrastination as a negative? In your life, generally speaking. Me too. I mean, me too. And I want to tell you, I've got a real partner on this in the room, and it's Dean Jackson. And Dean and I have been working on this nonstop for the last 2 and a half months. And both of us, you know, if there was a big room, I would introduce myself. Hi, my name's Dan, and I'm a procrastinator. And you would say, Hi, Dan. Yeah. I'm just, I mean, people look at me and they say, Dan, if there's one person in the world who doesn't procrastinate, it's the king of the mindsets. And I procrastinate just as much as anyone else does. Okay. But we all have our unique things that where we get caught up. So first of all, there's a, you know, the general transparency. The other thing is, I'll tell you this just because of the experience that I've had with Dean over the last couple months, is that the single most interesting conversation that you'd ever— that'll get— if you meet a total stranger and you want to talk about something and it immediately becomes interesting, is saying, do you procrastinate? And people would go, yeah, yeah, I do. I could write the book on it. And what I notice is that there's 7.3 billion people on the planet who could write the book on it. We're all master procrastinators. Okay.

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There's a reason for this. The only way that you could not be a procrastinator is to Simply cease having goals. That'll cut it off. And if you're going to do that anyway, death is a quick way of not thinking about goals. So don't do that. So the first thing I'd like you to do very quickly, and we're just going to take 3 minutes, and the first column, what I'm going to have you do is just write down— in no particular order, just write down every area where you're procrastinating, big or small, you know, and just get it out there because I just want you to actually write down everything that's in your mind where you know you're procrastinating, where there's a should word, you should do or you shouldn't do, personal life or business life, and just write those down. Okay? And if someone will give me the timer on, well, I've got it right in front of me, so I, I'll keep a track on you. And don't worry about the ranking. Don't worry about which comes first. All we're trying to do is get some things down on paper. Someone will give me 4 or 5 and you can work with them. How many right there? Yeah, we got enough. So what I want you to do very, very quickly, then this is all emotional because procrastination is a very emotional thing. Just pick the 3 which, if you got them out of the way, would give you the biggest burst of energy. Like if you got through it, this would actually give you a real burst of energy. And the other thing is other people are depending upon it. I find that things where other people are depending upon me and I'm procrastinating, those are really big payoffs if I actually take my action. Then as soon as you get them circled, just go to the next column where it says the top 3 priorities. And in the 3 boxes, 1, 2, 3, just put— write down again what the procrastination is. Just write it down. Just write down what the procrastination is. Yeah. Raise your hand if just writing them down and ranking them, actually, you can start feeling the energy. The energy is starting to come back.

Yeah.

And because you're telling the truth, you know, you're just telling the truth. Telling the truth always has big energy boost. About anything. And then once you get the 3 of them written down, I'd like you very quickly just to give a first statement of why you're procrastinating. So I've got these, you know, for example, I made a commitment to my team when I was 70 that over the next 25 years, I was going to write 100 books, 100 books in 100 quarters. And the first 7 quarters, I'm good so far. And, but I always notice that there's a period during the quarter when I, I get kind of frozen. Can I pull it off again? And, and that's one of the things I really noticed was I would procrastinate, even though I've done it 7 times before. There's always that thing, can I pull it off again? And anyway, that's one of the ways I keep my mind alive, by the way, is it makes me really scared about the next 25 years. And I think fear makes you young. I believe that when people start desiring a courage-free future is the moment that they send the universe out, they send a message out to the universe to Actually take the parts back. You know, moment you want a courage-free future is the moment you start dying. So I have a motto in life not to give death any assistance. And yeah, Peter and I are— I thought I was a big deal because I want— my goal is living to 156. And then the first podcast I did was with Peter. His was 700. And I immediately felt like a lesser human being. And I began procrastinating even on things that would get me to 156. Never get into that type of sword. But now he's got swords. This is even worse. Now he's got swords. And I didn't know that. I didn't know about the sword. Anyway, okay. So let's— I just want to do this. But how many so far, this is very, very useful? I mean, just doing this. Doing this. And yeah, and so this is one of those mindset gateways because one of those mindsets coming along that is stopping performance and achievement is actually procrastination and looking at procrastination in a negative way rather than as a source of enormous energy and direction. So I'm going to just show you I divide basically every person who's a performer, every person who's an achiever, there are 4 boxes that contribute to performance achievement. And a lot of people will say, for example, you'll come to a session like these 2 days and you'll say, I would take action on that if I had the "Uh, if I had the confidence." How many of you, when you feel confidence, it's no problem to actually take action? Yeah. And then I'll say to them, "But you probably need something else to have confidence, because I've noticed that people are only confident when they have capability." And they say, "Right. When I have the capability and confident, I would take action." I said, "Do you have the capability and confidence right now?" And they said, no, I don't. So what that means, you're not going to take action, right? And they said, right. When I get the capability and confidence, I'll take action. And I say, you know, it's kind of like saying, if the government would give me a loan, I would become an entrepreneur, OK, with the proviso that if it was a failure at the end of the year, the government would forgive all my debts. OK. I mean, that sounds pretty reasonable, doesn't it? Yeah. So anyway, but it's that type of demand. And what I've noticed actually, that this is not how capability and confidence actually happen. Actually, there's something that happens that has to happen first when you're up against something where you don't have the capability and confidence. And the thing is, it requires courage. It happens. It requires courage. It happens. And courage is never triggered unless you have commitment. So what a commitment actually is, is where you say, I'm going to move forward toward a breakthrough, toward something bigger and better, where I don't yet have the capability and confidence. That's actually what courage is. That's what courage is. The difference between courage and confidence is that courage doesn't feel good. How many of you have noticed the sharp difference in emotion between confidence and courage? Courage. The reason why we call it courage is because it doesn't feel good, and that's one of the main reasons why we admire it so much in other people. You know, so I was, I had a very enjoyable Army career during the 1960s, and I'm saying that truthfully. I had one of the dream army careers that you can have. But I was drafted right when Vietnam started. Vietnam, the Gulf of Tonkin was 1965 in April, and I got drafted in June, July, and ended up 2 years as the entertainment director for about half of South Korea. Very, very enjoyable. I was actually sorry to come back. I really liked the Koreans. But in basic training, basic training for the most part, if you're reasonably fit, is just boring except for one thing, practice with live grenades. The Army is very, very intelligent that you actually understand the seriousness of these are weapons that can turn you into hamburger in about 5 seconds. They would take us out the night before and they would show us what we're going to do the next morning and you get down into a pit with one of their instructors, and you, you know, take the pin out, and as long as you have the handle down, it won't release. But 5 seconds after you throw it, then it explodes, and it explodes on the other side of a big mound. And so they let you see this so that you'll sleep really well that night, which I did not do. And there was accidents. There was actually in the In the group before us, there was actually someone killed and the instructor badly injured because someone dropped the grenade in the pit. So we got out there and the first sergeant, who was a World War II, Korean War veteran, he said, "Anyone here scared?" My hand went right up.

Good.

Yeah, understanding that I'm a happy person, so of course I'm gonna put my hand up. And he said, "Well, Sullivan's the only one I trust here 'cause he's the only one telling the truth." And he said, I want to tell you the difference between fear and courage. He says, fear is wetting your pants. Courage is doing what you're supposed to do with wet pants. And that's what I really, really noticed, that entrepreneurialism is really, you know, it really is marked by a lot of wetting your pants over, you know, at least, you know, physiologically over time and requires courage. So you cannot wait until you have capability and confidence to start upward movement. You have to start with commitment. And commitment requires that you establish a deadline when something's going to be true and you put a measurable result to it. The bigger you have a measurement to it, the, the better you have a measurement to it. Now this is what happens when you— so this is really what you want to do if you're leading a really great upwardly progressing life as an entrepreneur. You want a four-way system where you're continually committing to a bigger and better. You have courage. The combination of commitment and courage actually creates the new capability, which gives you a higher confidence, and then you do it again. Okay, and that's how you constantly grow. But when you are procrastinating, what happens is that all 4 of these disappear. It's like sensory deprivation. Okay, you're not in contact with capability, you're not in contact with confidence, you're not making any commitment and you have no courage. And so you are in the no zone, and the no zone is no zone is no capability, no confidence, no commitment, and no courage. And you're paralyzed. You're procrastinating and it feels like you're paralyzed and you can't move forward. How many of you have experienced that? And in some part of your life right now, you're paralyzed from moving forward right now. And what I want to say is this is completely normal. Every human being on the planet does it. There's nothing wrong with procrastinating except not telling the truth that you're procrastinating. That's the only thing that's wrong with procrastinating is not telling the truth. The moment you tell the truth, you can start the process. So what we have to do is we have to go from the no zone to the grow zone. And the way you grow is by going right back to commitment and courage And then you're back into the cycle and you'll be creating new capability and confidence. And going back to our sheet now, what I'm gonna have you do, and this will take about 4 or 5 minutes, I'm gonna have you take each one of your procrastinations and I'm gonna have you write down what the commitment is. Remember, you have to have a deadline and you have to have a measurable result. Okay. And so I'll just take you through this. So these are, this is real stuff for me. This is my actual, and I do this all the time. So I'm naming names here and I'm naming projects. And what I want you to do is just take each of the commitments and say what your commitment is. This next Thursday, so I was totally ready for something next Thursday. It was a measurable result. I was totally, I was totally ready and it was next Thursday and that was it. The courage is that I had to do about 4 days of nose-to-grindstone work, you know, for about 30 hours to get ready for that interview. And, you know, I'm clinically diagnosed as ADD. I want you to know I'm fully medicated as I'm talking to you for this. And doing something continuous for 4 days requires a lot of courage on my part. How many of you in this room doing one activity continuous? Yeah, it requires a great deal of courage, but the payoff was huge. If I do that, the team gets triggered. So I'm always thinking teamwork. I'm always thinking teamwork. And so Carrie, Shannon, and I are able to do our best ever first interview 3 weeks earlier than normal. Big gain, big breakthrough. Everyone on the team is far, far more clear, focused, and energized from start to finish with no slowdown. And what I do day by day, the night before I said, what am I procrastinating on? And I go through this process the next morning and I always have my 3. I'm always motivated. I'm always focused. And these procrastinations are just enabling me to make very, very rapid progress. My performance increases and my achievement. And, you know, at age 72, none of this matters. There's nothing slowing me down except, I'm not telling the truth about my procrastination.

What are the 5 obstacles, pitfalls that I want to caution you against? The first is the devil of negativity. And all people who are as bright and creative as you are, you see, you pay a price. And you pay a price in that you have a rich imagination. And that imagination can not only envision Beauty, greatness, achievement. It can envision the opposite. You can envision failure. You can envision people against you. You can envision impossibility. That's the devil, negativity. I don't know if any of you felt a little hint of it when Peter was talking. When Peter was talking, we were all feeling excited, but I'll bet you some of you, I know I was, were thinking, "God, I'm not as smart as he is." I can't keep up with all this stuff. There's no hope for me. I'm just a loser, you know. I might as well pack my bag and leave right now. The world is going to pass me by. I'm too old anyway. Send me out to pasture. I've done all I can do. And you know, how can I? This guy's got it. I don't have it. And you know, that's the voice of negativity. And I have to see my advice in dealing with that, don't ignore it. 'Cause if you do, it'll keep knocking on your door. Recognize it, and then subject it to rational observation. So what I said to myself as I was looking to Peter, listening to Peter, I said, Peter doesn't want you to feel that way. He wants you to feel inspired. He's here to share a gift with you. Take advantage of it. And sure, it's a lot, and sure, he's way smart, but he's here to help you, share with you. So connect with him, work with him, grow with him. And I told the devil to, you know, piss off, you know. But you gotta stare it down, you gotta squash it. It's there in almost everyone who is very imaginative. The imagination, one of my great heroes, Samuel Johnson, had a wonderful phrase, "The hunger of the imagination," and he called worry a disease of the imagination. And when you start worrying and getting into these negative places, it's that disease of the— it's the imagination turning against itself and starting to poison and soil the best parts of you and your life. And the remedy when you fall into those states, if you can't talk yourself out of it and stare the devil down, never worry alone. Profound advice. Never worry. Now you want to pick your worry partner wisely. You don't want to pick some sadist who says, "Ah, yeah, you are a loser." You know, but you, you, because the minute you connect with someone else, the minute you partner up, the two key variables in worry go away. The two key variables in toxic worry, number one, heightened feeling of vulnerability. It has nothing to do with the reality, feeling of vulnerability. And diminished feeling of power and control. The minute you talk to someone, the minute you connect with someone, you feel more powerful and less vulnerable. The situation hasn't changed one bit. The reality hasn't changed one bit. You're just suddenly, instantly better able to deal with it. A good analogy is if you're in a big dark room alone in a warehouse, you feel afraid, paranoid, scared. If you're in a big dark warehouse with someone, you laugh and giggle. You know, you're not afraid. And this is one of the fundamental facts of life. One of the fundamental facts of life is that we, in danger and distress, need each other. We need to connect. And one of my fears about modern life is what I call the modern paradox. We have superconnected electronically in ways that have changed the world for the better magnificently, but we've been disconnecting interpersonally. And that's why your coming together here is so important. That's why you really couldn't do this conference virtually, or you could do it, but it wouldn't have nearly the impact. We really need each other. We need the human moment, not just the electronic moment. The electronic moment is great, Change the world, but don't think we can dispense with the human moment. We need that, particularly in dealing with negativity, in dealing with toxic worry, in dealing with these states that are very common amongst highly talented people that can absolutely sabotage you if you're not careful, because in those states you make bad decisions. You back away from opportunities, You use drugs, you get into trouble. Okay, the next pitfall I'd like to point out is again, all these are two-edged swords, they're paradoxes, but it is the flip side of one of your greatest strengths. One of your greatest strengths is your enthusiasm and curiosity. You are naturally enthusiastic, you are naturally curious. But guess what? You can become the victim of your own enthusiasm. You can overcommit. You can lose focus. You can have so many good ideas that you're not able to nourish and develop any one of them to its fullest. And you can have this chronic frustration of saying, "Gosh, I've got all these great ideas, I've got all these great contacts, I've got all these great resources, but my garden ain't growin'." You know, I'm not getting the kind of full maturity of growth that I want to get. In other words, you have ADD, see? And I want to plant the seed in your mind to take this notion of ADD seriously. While it's not a disorder, it is a trait, and take seriously considering if you might have it. Because I can tell you there's no condition in all of medicine that can change a person's life more dramatically for the better than the diagnosis and treatment of adult ADD. It's remarkable how you can go a quantum level up, not only in your professional life, by the way, in your personal life as well. So consider that you might have this if, if you are a visionary, a pioneer, full of ideas, have trouble with follow-through, impatient, low tolerance of frustration, tendency to procrastinate, tendency to go down blind alleys. If any of that sounds familiar, consider that you might have this. And remember, the treatment in no way takes away your special sauce. Quite the opposite. It allows you to make maximum use of it. I often make the analogy having ADD is like Niagara Falls. Niagara Falls is just a lot of noise and mist until you build a hydroelectric plant. Then you light up the state of New York. That's what the treatment of this condition in adults can do. So consider that. I can't talk to an audience like this and not have you— it's like Dean was saying, "What am I obligated to say?" I am obligated to tell you that there is a possibility to dramatically change your life for the better. By considering this. And I won't go into the whole, because we don't have time, but if you grab one of my books, it's— my books are very straightforward and clear. Okay, the third one is more delicate. You all have achieved great success. You have achieved, most of you, quite a lot of wealth. This allows you to become a jerk. See? Because people will tend not to tell you. They will tend not to tell you that you're becoming a jerk. The most obvious example are professional athletes. These people walk around with these sycophants who just, you know, tell them what they want to hear, and they behave like horrible jerks. You know, 10 children with 10 different women, none of whom they care about, treating people like scum, offering nickel tips, you know, and they're— flaming jerks. We all have it in us to become a jerk, particularly when we become rich, famous, and powerful. Give people permission, those who are closest to you, to tell you, "You know, Dad, you're changing." "You know, Joe, you're changing." You're not— not, by the way, I didn't mean you, Joe Polish, I meant Joe Blow, you know, you're not the humble, friendly, what-you-see-is-what-you-get kind of guy anymore. Your success is going to your head and it's not attractive. Now you may continue to be highly effective. You may continue to be master of the universe. You may continue to change the world for the better, but on your deathbed, there's not going to be many people standing around feeling very sad. You may get lionized in your obituary, but you're not going to like yourself much. You're not going to leave the kind of legacy of love that is by far the most important legacy. So give others permission to give you that kind of feedback. I love the simple intervention which Dan taught me. If someone is exhibiting difficult behavior, you don't have to have a year of psychotherapy. Just tell them to cut it out. And if they'll listen, that can save them a lot of time and money. Okay. The fourth pitfall that I want to point out to you is what I call the itch at the core of the entrepreneurial mind. Most entrepreneurs have an itch. Most of us with this trait feel a need to change our inner state. We need to do something to pump up the volume. We need to do something to make life seem more vivid and alive. We, when we wake up in the morning, life just isn't as gripping as we want it to be. We have this appetite for more. We have this desire to make life more vivid, to make life more intense, to somehow or other make it gripping enough that we can really engage. And that really is at the core of this trait. Now, you can't make the itch go away. Nor should you want to. It's your greatest asset, but it can also be your worst enemy. So what you have to do is be careful how you scratch the itch. Be careful how you scratch the itch. The maladaptive ways of scratching the itch cause enormous trouble. Drug abuse, alcohol abuse, extreme danger-seeking. You know, I had one patient who said, "I only feel focused and alive when I'm at the racetrack, the horses are coming down the home stretch, and I have a bet down that I can't lose." I can't afford to lose. I had another patient who said, I only feel really focused and alive when I'm making love to a woman and her husband is on the way home. You know, these are dangerous. These are not adapt— but another one who said, I only feel focused and alive when I'm skiing down a sheer face, knowing that I really don't have the skill to do it, hoping that I'll survive. And by the way, Peter's— Peter's partner in writing, writes about these extreme sports, Kotler, what's his first name? Steven Kotler, a wonderful man, and he talks about the states of flow that you can get into by courting danger, but it's not something I think we wouldn't want to risk our lives to scratch the itch. And yet, that's what these folks tend to do in scratching the itch, they resort to danger, to addiction, to all manner of self-destructive activities. What they're really seeking is adrenaline. What they're really seeking is nature's own stimulant medication, epinephrine, adrenaline. So what are adaptive ways of scratching the itch? Well, right at the top of the list is my favorite intervention, my favorite drug, connection. I call it the other vitamin C, vitamin connect. And the beauty of vitamin connect is that it's infinite in supply and it's free. The sad part of vitamin connect is people don't take it seriously. They'd rather get a prescription for Prozac than spend time with a friend, than get a pet, than love somebody. And it's killing people. We live in a big epidemic of vitamin connect deficiency. And the symptoms are lethargy, loss of ambition, loss of hope, low-grade depression. And these people are being medicated. And what they need to do is turn off their electronics and sit down and talk to somebody. You know, I have nothing against electronics, I love them, they've changed the world for the better, but we're seeing this growing addiction, this growing epidemic of what I call screen sucking, at the expense of getting the kind of connection with other people you need. Number 2, in terms of adaptive ways of scratching the itch: physical exercise. My friend John Ratey wrote a great book called "Spark: The Revolutionary New Science of Exercise and the Brain," in which he lays out in absolute hard scientific detail The myriad ways in which physical exercise builds your brain. John calls it the Miracle-Gro of the brain. It's not just good for your body and heart and bones, it's really good for your brain. And you don't have to just wait to go to the gym. When you're working on a project and you get stuck, stand up and do 25 jumping jacks, do 10 push-ups, do a few burpees, whatever. Run up and down stairs a few times. You will push the reset button on your brain. It changes your brain chemistry dramatically within 3 minutes. So have that as a ready-at-hand remedy instead of the jar of M&M's or the Starbucks and the doughnut. A quick burst of exercise. And then the third particular way of scratching the itch that I recommend is a creative outlet. You all have come to this instinctively. You know that when you have a creative outlet, when you have a business that you're growing, you feel better. The reason I write so many books— I'm on my 20th book now— the reason I write so many books is not that I'm driven to write books. It's because if I don't have a book going, I get depressed. It's just that simple. If I don't have a book in process, I get depressed. I don't have to be working on it, but the fact that I have it in process gives me a creative outlet. I know it's there, and my unconscious is percolating away on it. The same with you guys with your businesses. The fact that you're growing them, the fact that you're here, the fact that you have it in mind, it gives you that creative outlet, which scratches the itch. The final, in my last 20 seconds, pitfall may be the most dangerous of all. The failure to take seriously and develop your loving connections. All the studies on health, longevity, success, and happiness in life come back to the importance of one word: love. Take it seriously. Honor it. Nourish it. It will pay you back over and over again.

I had 100,000 talks in my head, And when she asked me, the guy with ADD at that moment, what do you want to talk about? I did the smartest thing in the world. I asked my wife, what should I talk about? And literally she said, let me think about it for a second. And she comes back, she goes, here's what entrepreneurs deal with. I know you always talk about influence. You always talk about sales, you know, getting people to get their point across, stuff like that. Why not help people with the biggest thing that they deal with, the shit that shows up in our lives? And the majority of you, you're master marketers. You're really great at getting your point across. But how much time are you spending marketing to you to get yourself to be less bothered? Because isn't that what we do in business? Like, literally, you got a person with a problem, you hit them over the head a little harder, you sell them a Tylenol, and then you get them on auto-ship. How many of you know what I'm talking about? That's our job. That's what it is we're here to do. But the question is, when something shows up in our life, how much time and energy are you literally taking? I'm going to question you. Here's question number 2 that she gave you, the ultimate question. I'm giving you question 2, and really ask yourself this very simplistic question is, How often are you spending time rewording and recalibrating things in your life that may be slowing you down and possibly bothering you? So I'm gonna give you 6 steps here that are very simple. I use this for high-level intervention work. Eunice has been to our event before and she's seen me do this where someone that's been raped or abused has a problem, 30 years of issues, and I get 'em to see it differently in 10 or 15 minutes to change their emotions. But there's little things that happen in our day that wind up being big challenges for ourselves. So I'm gonna give you a little synopsis real quick. I want you to imagine you're 4 years old again, okay? You're 4 years old, 3 years old, 2 years old.

If—

and don't be that person that, "4 years old was a bad year for my life." Pick a year, it doesn't matter. You're a little kid and you're walking down the street and there's a little hole in the ground and you step in it. And immediately your parent says to you or someone next to you goes, "You tripped! Are you okay?" Now before that, nothing had occurred. Your foot went in a hole. Immediately You were told that you tripped. Your brain says, tripped? When I trip, people get worried. Something must go wrong. Now, when Tucker was talking about earlier about jamming stuff down in our body that lives there for a while, you're starting to develop a little something called a pattern. Tripping is bad, and I get people's attention. Well, you're about 8 years old, and you're with your buddies, and you trip, and you fall, and they laugh at you. Now tripping is bad. You fell, people laugh at you, it's the wrong thing to do. Then you're 15 years old, you're playing ice hockey, and the coach says, we need to, you know, you need to do a drill you're not comfortable with. Or you're doing gymnastics, something you're uncomfortable with. Or you're in business at 35 years old and you're wondering why you're the person that won't do something that's outside of your comfort zone. And what the most stimulating thing for this, for me to think about, is all of us have the ability to do this with others, but how much time are you spending working on yourself? So my challenge is, I'll do my little 7 minutes left this this talk, I'm going to challenge all of you, even over the next month, spend 7 to 10 minutes thinking about the word choices that you use in your life. And Tony brought up something a little bit ago, and I started reframing immediately because my brain is always in reframe. Meaning when you said your challenge, like, my person, my partner died, and I finally made as much money as I want to make in my life, and I'm more miserable than I've ever been in my life. I heard that and immediately started to reframe. So I'm going to use slides and I'll see how this works. Here's a big sign we have in our office, and it very simply says Your future hinges on your ability to effectively communicate.

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.

Now, after reading the book about why, I thought about this for a second, and why we do what we do is that I truly believe that communication is the most underdeveloped and underutilized asset we have as human beings. Most people are miserable at communicating with other people and themselves, and when you communicate with yourself in a weak way, you typically get a weak life. So when I explain this to you all real quickly, I'm gonna ask all of you to realize this. How many of you have had some shit happen to you in the last week that's not what you expected? How many of you? Raise your hands. Okay, how many of you in the last year have had shit happen? Okay, how many of you recognize that immediately when that shit occurred It happened and your brain was searching for, what do I actually call this thing? Because you've never actually had that moment before. So Doc, you're going to get this immediately. I'm taking like Sigmund Freud, forgive me, and I'm taking all of the work. I get that backwards sometimes. And maybe all of you will learn that if you actually put things backwards in people's brains, they'll learn to start seeing things differently. And you'll realize very quickly that one of the smartest things you can do is screw up during your presentation, say something backwards or use somebody's name backwards and they start questioning everything else and they start questioning themselves. Pay attention to this because it'll make sense. So the first thing that happens is an event occurs. Little boy trips in hole, or just little boy foot in hole. Go on date, somebody does something you didn't ask them to do. What happens is an event occurs. Immediately in our brain, anytime we have an event occur in our lives that we've not experienced before, the brain almost immediately starts looking for answers. Oh my God, What is this called? What does it look like? What does it do? And all that happened was an event. If you look, the 21st of whatever the hell month this is got circled. There was an event that occurred. Tony made more money than he ever made in his life. His brain said, what do we label that? It's supposed to be a great day. See, my question for Tony is, what Tony did was he set a plan for himself that said, he set an event that one day I'm going to make more money than I've ever made in my life. And what that's going to be called is the happiest day of my life. It's going to be called the reckoning. It's going to be called the breakthrough. It's going to be called everything I invested, every dollar, every event ever in his life. And he told himself a story. Am I correct? We do this all the time. We put a label on something, no different than I tripped. As soon as you get a label, the brain immediately gives it meaning. Now what you said is, Tony said, "I'm unhappy." What does that mean when I'm unhappy? Wow, things in my life are not working out the way I want them to. Now what's fascinating is, let me give you another example here because I have 6 minutes. I'm going to walk a few people through this right now. Who here has had some challenge, something show up recently that's not like super complicated like a divorce with a narcissist, but has anybody had something happen recently that's a challenge that wants to jump in? Go quick. What's that? You got to go quick.

I have a narcissist stepson.

Oh geez, narcissist again. Okay, very good.

Who told us that he wasn't going to come for Christmas Eve dinner.

So let's go back again. So what happened is we had an event that happened. Somebody made a promise, correct?

Correct.

Very good.

And immediately somebody made a promise. So immediately you labeled it and you labeled it and said somebody didn't follow through, correct? And immediately after that, is what does that mean? That means that that person is a liar, that person lied to me, that person let me down, correct? Now, anytime you label something and you give it a meaning, which we all do immediately, all human beings do this in a matter of seconds. You can slow this shit down. I've learned how to slow this down. I'm out with my wife one day and we ran into, um, we ran into a jumping cholla. How many of you ever done that before? A jumping cholla. Let me explain real quickly. If your wife's screaming And she goes, "Ow, there's something on my leg." Don't always grab it. Because I grabbed the jumping cholla off her leg, now my hand was stuck to her leg. Okay? And immediately I'm looking at this thing, I said, "Wow, maybe this is telling us that we need to be closer or spend more time together or communicate better." And she's like, "No, no, it's just a jumping cholla." Our brains—

What?

Okay, it is a poison-laden cactus. They call it jumping because they go in the wind. It's like a baseball. They're like, "Oh, look how cute that is." And I'll tell the story another time how I try to get it off my hand like this. And then we were out for a run and I tied my key to my shorts. You know how boys do that? And I put it down my pants. So I have like— so I had to like— whole nother conversation, a whole nother day. But I created meaning out of it. So the whole thing with Tony, for an example, and I'll explain this in a minute, is what that means is— so what Tony created for himself is I set a goal for myself, just like you. You thought things would be different this time with this guy, so you lied to yourself. And then you start questioning, how often do I lie to myself? I got 2 minutes and I gotta get it to the point. So what happened with Tony is Tony goes like this: I'm going to— I'm just going to backtrack—

and we can—

he had an event occur. I'm going to make this ultimate amount of money. He lies to himself, tells himself that this is going to occur. Then what happens? He labeled it, said to be the best day of my life. He added meaning to it, said, um, Things are gonna work out great. But what then really happened is Tony basically said, but the meaning, what does it really mean, is that what else in my life is not working out the way I want it to? Or what else am I lying to myself about? So my question for you is a little different because I want to switch this back and I want to help you out. A question, second, is basically who told you that making more money would make you happier?

You did. Me.

You came up with that. So basically you were wrong.

Yes.

And you don't like being wrong because accountants don't like being wrong. So really you're not bothered that making more money, you're unhappy. You're really bothered that you're wrong. Let's step ahead another thing. And what happens when you actually become wrong? We're just playing with this and none of this is true. You feel something. You're wrong, you feel insecure. So then Tony's like, wait a second, is my whole life bullshit? I told myself if I finally get to this place in my life, I would be happy. How many of you are resonating with Tony's story of your own life? If you are, say I am. Anybody catching this? So what happened with Tony, and I'll be done in like a minute, okay? So what happened— or 3. So what happens is— give me a second, it'll be worth it.

I just told her not to be because I know you're just being— you're being Michael.

I'm being Michael. And if not, I'm gonna be a narcissist for a second. Fuck off. No, I'm just kidding. But so what happens is Tony feels something and he says to himself— Tony says to himself, wow, this is uncomfortable, I don't like this. And then what happens is he reacts and he goes, I don't know what to do. I go in my shell, this is what I typically do. And after we react for a while, what happens is you get a result. You get an unhappy person. I've watched that most of us look to change people's lives. We like to get them to pretend that the event didn't occur. And no, no, that didn't happen. It's one of the worst things you can say to somebody. And then we try to change the reaction of what they're doing, like, stop doing that. I'm gonna tell you all of the gem, all therapy, I have read every, I have a library you couldn't even imagine on everything from psychotherapy to hypnosis and you name it. And everything that works out good, from Virginia Satir, one of my heroes, and all this great work, basically comes down to a very simple thing. You can't change the event. And you really can't change the reaction of what's happening. But if you could change the label, the meaning, and the emotion behind what happens, you have the ability to change almost anything in your life. See, when we were going over this list of what pisses you off, I use gradient language all the time. It's a term that I use. I don't really have things that piss me off. I have things that bother me. I have things that annoy me. I have things that frustrate the shit out of me, and I avoid the majority of those things. But why I'm bringing this up to all of you to really think about right now is most of you are looking to change your results this year and demand from yourself that you do things differently, or you're looking to pretend those things didn't occur. If you could change the label slightly on what occurred, even the label on being here, ingenious, even shifting the label that I'm here to understand myself better instead of like I have to get it. How many of you recognize you are torturing yourself in Genius Network with the attitude of I came here because I spent $25,000 and I have to get it? If you're here to, I'm here to improve myself and find a few things that can make my life better, the emotion in your body starts looking for things differently. Your biochemistry changes, your emotions change in a major way. So why I'm bringing this up is if I were to recalibrate Tony here real quickly and less than 30 seconds, I would say, Tony, basically what happened is you told yourself something was going to happen that didn't happen the way you wanted it to, correct? And because of that, it made you a little bit upset. So it wasn't that you made more money that was your problem, is that you actually did something you didn't expect. You actually achieved something you've always wanted and you thought you'd have a different result, correct? So you were wrong temporarily. And being wrong temporarily is not wrong permanently. So all I'm going to challenge you to think about is from that context, by changing that one word, it changes everything after associated with it. So I'm going to ask all of you to play with your brains for the next couple of days to think about this in any major way. I deal with this all the time. I had a woman that was held hostage for 5 days and literally she was on a bus and basically she said, "4 hostages, I'm in Israel, there's 4 hostages on a bus." And all of you hold yourself hostage from time to time. And she was on a bus in Israel and there's 4 hostages got her on the bus, kept her there for 4 or 5 days. I said, okay, so 4 hostages on the bus. I said, 4 got on, 5 got off. She goes, what the hell are you talking about? I said, what do you mean? She goes, you're not listening, Michael. You're being an asshole. I said, no, no, you don't get it. I'm confused. 4 hostages got on the bus and 4, 5 got off. She goes, is your math bad? Are you stupid? What's wrong with you? I said, I think I'm hearing you clearly. 4 hostages got on the bus, kept you captive for 5 days, and 5 hostages got off. She goes, "No, there was 4 hostages." I said, "No, 4 got on the bus, you were there, and you decided to join them for the rest of your life. You're holding yourself hostage. You became a terrorist and you joined them. You've been terrorizing yourself for years." When she realized that she wasn't held hostage, that she was terrorizing herself, her emotions changed immediately. She got back to me. I'd worked with her 10 years ago, changed her life, changed her relationship by one shift in one word. It's like marketing. One shift. Joe could change one word in your context of your copy, or Tucker, one word, or yesterday when he was talking about you and your, changes everything. So my question is, were you terrorized or are you terrorizing yourself?

Becoming antifragile, that is really something that's defined my life, but before I can get to that, I have to tell you, I am not a born entrepreneur. And I know that there are many born entrepreneurs here, and I'm sure I look somewhat like an alien species cheese to you. I did not have a lemon stand growing up. I did not arbitrage baseball cards or candy. I was forced to get a paper route, but I was so lazy that I didn't collect the money. So I actually did the paper route. You get paid half of it just for doing it, but the other half you have to go door to door. So I did it for half. That is the profound way to which I was lazy as a kid and not I was not at all thinking like a problem-solving entrepreneur. But somehow, someway, even with that going against me, I was able to do something to my mind that allowed me to go from, as Joe Polish was saying, scrounging in my couch cushions to find enough change to put gas in my car, that's a real story, I wish it weren't, but that's a real story, to co-founding and building a billion-dollar business. Now the question is, what did I do to my mind in order to get to that place. And to tell you that story, I'm gonna walk you through exactly what my entrepreneurial journey looked like. So I met two guys who ended up becoming my business partners, and they made a pitch to me. "Hey, we're starting this technology company. You seem like a really bright kid. We've got a role as a copywriter. Why don't you come on and be the copywriter? And then don't think of yourself though as a copywriter. This is a startup. You can have any role in the company that you want. You just have to become the right person for that role." Now I was just young enough and just dumb enough to believe them.

I thought that sounded awesome. Yay!

So I joined the startup and then began the long and arduous process of getting my ass kicked. And what was happening was I didn't have the skill set to keep up with these guys. My business partners are incredibly bright. Their IQs far outshine my own. And I'm just talking from a pure ability to process raw data. I don't overvalue IQ, but I understand that it has certainly its applications. And they're just two incredibly bright guys. So here I was, I had this goal in my life, and that goal at the time— it's since changed, but that's a whole other 10-minute talk— my goal at that time was to get rich. I wanted to get rich more than just about anything. So I had the ambition to do what I needed to do, but I didn't know what that was. And so I would find myself in discussions with with these guys where I would present my case, something that I believed in, something that I thought was right for the business, and they would just out-argue me. And they would out-argue me all the time. Now, if you're somebody who is foolish enough to pride yourself on being right, and this is such an important thing to understand, because what you build your self-esteem around matters. And the whole punchline of this talk is going to be that. How did I go from being broke and having the traditional employee's mentality of keeping my head down, doing as little work as possible, and avoiding punishment at all costs? The way that I escaped that was by finally realizing the thing that was holding me back. And what was holding me back was I had a fixed mindset. If you know Carol Dweck, I had a fixed mindset. I believed that my talents and intelligence were fixed. That was it. They were as good as they were ever going to be. There was nothing that I could do about it. It was kind of like height. Now, I've done nothing to earn my height. And yet, I can say, "Hey, I'm 6 feet tall." And I try to stand around people that are shorter than me. I try to avoid NBA players. I try to avoid NFL stars. I try to avoid Tony Robbins. If you've ever stood next to Tony Robbins, that guy is nuts. He's so big. One of the most heart-wrenching photos of my life is Tony holding me in a warm embrace, making me look like a child. So— but the intellect to me was the same way. There was nothing that I could do about it. So it was what it was. And my job was to put myself in situations where I could shine. Now the problem was now I was working with these two guys that I couldn't shine anymore. They were way smarter than me. And it wasn't exactly hard to see that. Not only were they able to process data more rapidly than I could process data, but they'd been in business for like 15 years before I met them. So now I'm in a position where everything I do makes me feel bad about myself. And so I hatch a plan. I'm going to get really good at arguing. And I'm going to debate— because I have two choices. I can either remove myself from this situation, or I can find a way to feel good. Because people are going to feel good about themselves. And when you think about what You know what suicide really is? Suicide is the moment when somebody believes they can no longer feel good about themselves. Now, it's false, but that's what they believe. And because of that belief, they check out. And why wouldn't you? If it were true, if you could never feel good about yourself again, what would be the point? So I was going to get good at debating, and I was going to win some of these arguments, and I was going to find that chink in their armor, and I was going to explode it, so that I could, even if I didn't feel smart about myself, that I could get that reflected back from them that they thought I was smart. And so I remember the day that it finally happened. We were debating something and I knew their idea was right, which really sucked, but I had gotten so good at arguing that I convinced them to do my idea. And then I thought, "Oh, shit. What have I done?" Because if my goal is to get rich, I'm now acting in complete opposition to that goal because I know that their idea is right and I've simply used I used a trick to get them to go my way. And so I had a values crisis. Values and identity drive behavior. And in that moment, I wasn't sure who I was. Did I want to get rich? Was I willing to do what it took to make money? And if I really did want to get rich— and again, it's changed since then, but that was my focus then— if I really did want to get rich, Why on earth did I fight so hard to be right? Because I never said I want to be right. I never said I want to be smart. None of that was happening in my mind. I said I want to get rich. So here I was moving myself away from that and I realized I've got to make a decision. If I really am here to achieve my goal, then I need to decide what my goal is and I can't have both. I can't feel good about myself the way that I defined it about being smart, about being right. And achieve my goals. So I realized I was either going to have to totally abandon self-esteem— I actually considered that— I'm going to have to totally abandon self-esteem, put my head down, and just grind it out for a few years with these guys until we can have an exit and I'll be rich, and then I can worry about loving myself again.

Or—

and this was what changed my life— I could change what I built my self-esteem around. Now, unfortunately, I did not have access to Carol Dweck's book, but I realized that instead of fighting to be right, I could put all of my time and attention to identifying the right answer. And once you identify the right answer, you can earn tremendous credibility with your team for saying, "Hey, I was wrong. That's right. Now I'm going to put all my energy behind that." And so that's what I began to do. And as I began to do that, I found that the only thing that was standing between me and where I wanted to get was a skills gap. Now, that skills gap is what I call "mind the gap." And for you Brits, you know exactly what I'm talking about. Mind the gap. That skills gap is everything. Now, the way that you close that skill gap is painful because it starts with the following mantra: I am not yet good enough. It's one of the most controversial things I ever say. Whenever I tweet that out, people freak out. But what I'm saying is, if you're trying to achieve this objective and you do not have the skills to actually accomplish that, you simply are not good enough yet. That's just the truth of the situation. It's the math. As Elon Musk says, boil it down to its physics. That's the physics of the situation. But if you have If you have a growth mindset, you know that you can acquire those skills. And once you set about living your life by the following phrase, everything will change. Do and believe, do and believe only that which moves you towards your goals. And that brings us to becoming antifragile. As Joe Polish said, when people hear antifragile, they think resilient, they think tough, but both of those things and every other synonym around there is defined by that thing's ultimate breaking point. It is resilient simply because its breaking point is distant. It is strong simply because it can move a lot of weight before it breaks, but they both have breaking points. If you want to be to be truly antifragile, the game is the more you realize you're wrong, the more somebody attacks you and tells you you're stupid, the more mistakes you make, you see in that one thing and one thing only: the ability to get better. And when you see in your failures an absolutely fundamental bedrock foundation piece of your belief system, which is that, "Oh, dear God, thank you for pointing out how wrong I've been. Thank you for showing me that this mistake was just that, that it's a mistake. Thank you for making it clear I am not actually moving towards my goals right now. I'm not making progress." Because when you can do that, the more people assail you, the more mistakes you make, the more times you fall on your face, the stronger you get because you respond to that with the acquisition of skills. It's the acquisition of skills that matter. Another talk that I would love to give at some point is the fact that we are all in the Matrix. But the Matrix is just a metaphor for your mind. And if you have the mind of an entrepreneur and you really can see that acquiring skills will lead you wherever you want it to, you'll truly become capable of the impossible.

For people that are conditioned with self-talk that is extraordinarily negative or destructive— and I of course say this from experience being an addict— you usually don't wake up in the morning feeling very serene and very peaceful and very harmonious. You're seeking chaos. And so addicts have, as the Guns N' Roses first album, Appetite for Destruction, there are some entrepreneurs that are just very destructive. And so there's a lot of unwinding and unlearning, because I think unlearning is more important than learning. And so recommendations for reconditioning yourself to not be a blamer, a criticizer.

Yeah, stop doing it.

We should maybe just—

what's that Bob Newhart, stop it?

Yeah. Stop it.

You ever seen that video?

Stop it.

Yeah, stop it. It's quite funny.

Yeah.

Well, no, I mean, I don't have an office. So at our two headquarters, we have a Toronto headquarters and a Chicago headquarters. And I just have a table. We have a cafe. And the one in Toronto, we have about 50 seats in the cafe, and I just sit I'm there all day and people are coming in and out and I'm talking to them, but I have lunch sometimes with clients who are in for specials. So we have special one-day programs that are quite a deep dive, and one of them is unique ability. And there was a woman there from Georgia and she said, you know, I'm just so hard on myself. And I said, well, stop doing that. And then she'd go on and then she'd say, yeah, I just can't find really good people. I, you know, I'm always dissatisfied with the people around me. I said, well, stop doing that. And she brought up about 5 things in a row, and I said, well, stop doing that. I said, the reason why you have these thoughts and your behavior is because you continue doing it. And after today, just stop doing it. Just don't do it anymore. And, you know, it seems, it seems really funny, but it strikes me from the The movie, your documentary, by the way, I can picture a situation in the future where we're all gathered here and everybody in the room has a documentary video of themselves by Nick Nanton, you know, we, it's actually a goal of mine to get even 10 more people after you and David Berg and Nick actually threw in, and Divayan, by the way, who, First of all, I'd like to give another hand to Devang because I thought that— where is he? Yeah. But Devang, since he's come into 10 Times program, has gone at least 25 times. He's gone, you know, in about 6 or 7 years. So Devang is real— he's a real player. But what I got, and Nick really caught it last night, was that you were deep into your drug throws and you know you had your all-time, that was like a 6-star day of the things that you did on that one day, and then you stopped it. You just stopped, you just stopped, and then you haven't done it again for 30 years. So stopping things is an incredible ability, you know.

Well, and the thing with recovery, I do it, with a lot of support and a lot of rituals and a lot of practices, and I believe that, you know, when just, and I'll say this in a way so it is applicable to everyone's life here, is in recovery, anything you put ahead of your recovery, you're gonna lose. So if someone is an addict and you put your business ahead of your recovery, you're gonna lose your sobriety, you're gonna lose your recovery. If you put your relationship If you put your kids ahead of it, you will lose your kids. You will, at the worst stages. And that's a really hard concept to take something like that that's so important and make it your number one thing. And so I see people that are very functional addicts. Like there are several people in this room that are incredibly functional addicts that don't see it easily. I mean, they may know it, but there's a real, really hardcore, like, industrial band. Anyone ever remember the band Big Black? Anyone in the room ever heard of Big Black? Couple people. Yeah, like hardcore band. And there's a song called "Bad Houses," and there's a lyric in the song that says, "I tell myself I will not go even as I drive there." And so if you have that compulsion, I'm not going to— I'm not going to be online past 10 at night, and you're online past 10 at night. Or I'm not going to, you know, I'm not going to do this thing. I'm not going to have that second drink, but you have the third drink and the fourth drink. You know, if you have any of that, I tell myself I will not go, even as I drive there, and that compulsion, and you can't seem to stop it. Well, create the environment, you know. So let's take your office concept, because this applies. So you have a no-office concept.

For me. For you.

Yeah.

And you've— and not saying that everyone should do this, however, I've heard dozens of people throughout the years, they're like, you know, I gave up my office and man, I'm just way more functional. Because as you talk about, offices can often be places where entrepreneurs go to escape real work.

Well, they go to hide from opportunity. Most people's offices, you walk in, they go in there, they're hiding from opportunity. Opportunity. Nothing useful can come when they go into their office. They don't make their money in their office. Yeah. They make their money through creativity and relationship and, uh, uh, network. But they go to their office and I think it's a carryover. They wanna see themselves as CEOs because CEOs have offices. But that's not the world that we live in. We live in the world of taking resources from a lower level of productivity to a higher level productivity. Do you need an office for that? I don't think so. Right. Yeah. So I, I just haven't had an office for 25 years, you know. First of all, it's a messy office if I have an office. And, uh, you know, I've seen some people who are actually really good at office, but I haven't found many of them in the entrepreneurial world.

Yeah.

Yeah.

That's great. What are 3 or 4 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 Halvorson who are saying, "Your story about your potential determines whether you live your potential." That's a powerful idea.

Right.

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?

Right.

So the first point is your self-identity, which is your core beliefs. You got to— that's where the real work begins. And I don't think we have time today with, 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 gonna live an epic life, be— you're gonna 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, 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 a lot of—

And they go, oh yeah, you're right, and then we go back back to being average.

[Speaker:JOE_POLISH] That's why I love the way I think about Genius Network. Genius Network is like 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 link into, because I can solve almost any problem in my life through my Genius Network, and who are those people, but that sort of thing. The other thing that you said too reminds me of, I have a friend Dave Kekic who's paralyzed from the chest down. He's been in a wheelchair for half his life, but just has developed such an incredible life. He runs Maximum Life Foundation, and he says that enthusiasm covers many deficiencies. And so just going into something with a, with a really good attitude.

The notion of mindset, you know, is extremely well documented. Carol Dweck spent her career proving that what she calls a growth mindset becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. The growth mindset says, "No matter what skills I need, I can get to achieve my dreams." And the fixed mindset says, "I'm limited by my IQ, income, station in life, what have you." And it's like, you know, that old line, "Whether you think you can or you think you can't, you're right." You know, so just start thinking you can, and very hard evidence proves you'll do it. And the question is, how do you do that? How do you do that? Well, let me give you my answer before I get into talking about attention. You do it through connection. And that's why coming together here is so wonderful. Tell you a quick story, because, you know, it's okay to hope for the best when things are going well, but when they're not going well— That's when you need a method, when you need a recipe. And my nephew, one of the bravest people I know, is 37 years old. He went to medical school, fulfilled his dream of becoming an orthopedic surgeon, married the most beautiful woman, also a doctor, had the most adorable child, and got a dream job in— Santa Barbara and was windsurfing every day and doing total hips and just on top of the world when he got diagnosed with ALS. And I just visited him a couple of weeks ago. He's now in a wheelchair. He will die before Christmas. He'll go to a hospice and they'll give him some extra extra morphine and he'll go to heaven unless we come up with a miracle before then. But what's amazing about him is how positive he feels. He says, and he can't talk much because of the ALS, "Uncle Ned, don't worry about me. I've achieved all my dreams. How could I complain?" And he means it. He means it. And I think, you know, you keep that in mind, you keep in mind someone like that, who's dying a terrible, slow death, and every day he's talking about how great life is. And it's because of the force of connection. Because he had all his friends, like 30 friends from Yale, come visit him a few weeks ago. Ago, and they're all talking him up, and, you know, his beautiful baby, and every day, you know, he's celebrating being alive. And I think you want to keep that in mind, that it is the power of touching each other that brings out our best. You know, it is in connection that we find pretty much everything that we need, and in isolation that we wither. And the beauty of technology today, as Peter so brilliantly pointed out, is that it allows us to connect so much more powerfully than ever before in history. This really is the greatest time ever to be alive. It is not to say that bad things can happen, my nephew Jake being just one example, but that as we work together, we will be able to solve problem after problem after problem, achieve victory after victory after victory, and we're only limited by our capacity to dream big. And, you know, I just couldn't agree with what Peter said more, and you all You all are specialists in doing that. You all, the entrepreneurs, the dreamers, you know, I know some of you so well, and others I wish I knew better. You know, someone like Dan Sullivan is just a dream maker. You know, and all of you sort of have embodied the power to take whatever notion you have and turn it into something real that changes the world. How cool is that? And you keep doing that over and over again until you can't anymore. And what does it all mean? I don't know. But I know it's positive. And I know what drives the good is really, at its most distilled, the power of love. That's what we all need and rely on. Well, with that as sort of an introduction and a frame, let me now talk about attention, because it fits so well into what Peter was saying. The resource that is diminishing in this world, the most precious resource in many ways that any of us has, is attention. Every day you have to decide where to focus your mind. And when you have minds like you guys do— by the way, I gave you a handout, "The Mind of the Entrepreneur," and it's short because you like short. It's just bullet points, and you can see— don't read it now, please, but— I know, I know you guys. But exactly. You, when you have the idea-aphoric minds that you all do, the big decision you have to make every minute, every day, is where to focus your mind. And if you're not careful, what I think of is a tin can surrounded by 1,000 magnets. And your brain is like the tin can. And you wake up in the morning and 1,000 magnets come on. And what does the tin can do? It just spins. 1,000 magnets, it's attracted to every single one of them simultaneously. And you can spend a day, a week, a career spinning if you're not careful. So the skill now that we need to learn, that really technology has brought us this opportunity, The great thing about modern life is you can do so much. The curse of modern life is you can do so much. So, so what you have to do is get really tough with yourself and prioritize. Decide, where do I want to focus? What do I want to put my precious mental energy into? And I'm not here to tell you where you should focus, but I am here to tell you it's one of the most important decisions you can ever make. And, you know, you say, "Okay, I'll focus on my business." Well, what part of your business? And where do you want to put your energy and what do you need to delegate? The magical letters CDE: curtail, delegate, eliminate. What can I curtail? What can I delegate? What can I eliminate so that I will have sufficient focus to achieve my goals? You see, It's not infinite. Every day it gets depleted, really in cycles throughout the day. You cannot maintain a single level of focus throughout the day. And so one of the great skills for all of you to learn, for all of us to learn, is how to, first of all, choose what to focus on, and next, maintain focus, regulate focus, manage focus. And I'm basically a focus doctor. I've sort of invented a specialty. When I got out of medical school in 1978, I'd never heard anything about focus in medical school. And then I learned about this condition so misleadingly named attention deficit disorder. It's a terrible term. It's not a deficit, it's not a disorder, it's a trait that many of you have. And it's associated with having lots of ideas, lots of energy, thinking Thinking outside the box, being an inventor, a pioneer, it's really ADD people who colonized this country. If you think of it, who in the world would come over here in 1600 in a boat? You had to be some wacko kind of risk-taking visionary dreamer pioneer, and that's our gene pool. And that's a lot of you. And the doctors, the medical establishment that likes order, decided to call it a disease, so it gets called attention deficit disorder. No, quite the contrary. It's a tremendous asset if you manage it right. If you don't manage it right, it's the prison population. But if you do manage it right, and the way I explain it, it's like having a Ferrari engine for a brain. You've got this incredibly powerful engine. You're a champion in the making. Ferrari engine for a brain, but with bicycle brakes. So you've got to learn how to control the power of your mind. It sounds simple. It's not simple. You need to learn to control the power of your mind. And that Ferrari engine, in order for you to win races, you need to learn how to strengthen your controls. Not to make you a normal corporate citizen. I quite agree with Joe Polish Polish. The life is sucked out of them. But to make you like Shakespeare. Shakespeare and Mozart. Shakespeare and Mozart wrote within extremely confining structures. Extremely. Iambic pentameter Shakespeare. Mozart, very tight musical forms. And because of that structure, because of those breaks, those boundaries, they were able to create infinite variety. So make friends with the structure. Make friends with the controls. It will potentiate your creativity. It will take your business 10 times higher as Dan is helping people do every day.

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

Do it now.

Come on.

Thank you.

Watch them.