3 Success Habits That Will Guarantee Powerful Results EP 1472

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Get some good habit patterns and live with them all of your life. You're either going to grow or you're going to die. It's create or disintegrate. There's no such thing as leveling out and staying where we are. And so if you have good habits, you're going to keep growing.

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When you control from the inside, like we're in control of ourself, we're in control of our world. So it doesn't matter what happens. You figure out how to get to where you're going. The goals don't change. Sometimes the methods of getting there do. But I have never, I think probably I had great teachers. I had a half a dozen phenomenal mentors. And I think I was raised the right way. You stay in control regardless.

Know.

Yeah.

What would you say are some of the habits that you have that people wouldn't expect that you would have? Maybe they would expect certain things like waking up early or journaling or, you know, getting eight hours of sleep. But what are some habits that you do differently that maybe are unexpected in the personal growth space?

I study every day. Every day. I've studied every day now for 60 years. I started to study this book in 1961, and I read it every day. Same book, Think and Grow Rich. I have just here behind me, I've got the Laws of Success, the original ones that Napoleon Hill wrote in 1928, and then he came up with this in 1937. And the man that gave it to me, he said, if you'll study this every day, he said, you're going to have a wonderful life. And he pointed out Napoleon Hill spent his whole life studying the lives of 500 of the world's most successful people. He was mentored by Andrew Carnegie, who at the time was the wealthiest man in the world. And he said since he spent his whole life putting this together, he said it would be a prudent move on your part if you spent the rest of your life trying to understand and apply what he was teaching and.

Right.

You know, that just seemed to make some sense to me. And that's what I started to do, and I've never stopped.

If there was only one principle inside of Think and grow Rich that you could only live by and only talk about, and you wouldn't be able to talk about anything else inside the book, what would that one principle be?

Persistence. He said there. He said in the book, he said, there may be no heroic connotation to the word, but the quality is to the character of the human, like what carbon is to steel. See, I think the trick, Louis, is get some good habit patterns and live with them all of your life. Because you're either going to grow or you're going to die. It's create or disintegrate. There's no such thing as leveling out and staying where we are. And some people think they can just hold it where they're at and. But they can't do that. You're either going to go ahead or you're going to go backwards. It's create or disintegrate. And so if you have good habits, you're going to keep growing. Way back, I think around 1938, 39, Albert en Gray worked for the Prudential and he wrote the Common Denominator of Success. It's a great article. And he said, the common denominator of success is informing the habit of doing things that failures don't like to do. And he was speaking one time, a young guy said, why do successful people like doing these things? And he said, they don't. That's why they've turned them into habits. I thought that was beautiful. That's why they've turned them into habits. They don't like doing them, you see. And of course, a habit.

What do you think?

Well, a habit is something we do automatically, without any conscious thought. We just. It's part of our paradigm. We're programmed.

What do you think are the three most difficult habits to develop that actually will support us for the most growth long term if we can take these habits on?

One of the things the most difficult is repetition of studying the same thing. I have a book here on my desk. It's in a book holder. And when I went to visit Earl Nightingale way back 1968. No, it was earlier than that. It was around 66. And I saw he had this book stand on his desk. And I asked him what it was. He said, it was a book holder. And I said, why do you have it? He says, because I want to read those two pages every day for the next month, maybe Two months. I said, really the same thing? And he said, yeah. He said, then they'll become a part of me. And he said, that's really the secret of success, is the repetition of an idea. You see that in sports, you play ball. I mean, it's definitely part of your game. You know, how many. How many plays would you have in your head? Who?

Well, a lot of different plays. But in football, there's really only, like, nine different routes. A receiver can run.

Yeah.

As part of the tree of running a route. But there's so many different variations within plays that. That one receiver could run and. And then another person could run in tandem with that.

Yeah.

So you have to. There's a massive playbook that you go through at the beginning of the season. And you've got to remember a lot of different things. But if you typically know the route you need to run and what other people are doing around you, then you can. You can figure it out.

But it's repetition that enables you to do that, isn't it?

Over and over and over and over, the same route over and over.

That doesn't just apply to football. I think that applies to life. And if a person will really understand that it's through repetition that you program your subjective mind, and it's your subjective mind that controls your behavior. Doesn't make sense to some people, but if they would study it and start to understand it, they would start to do it.

What's the most important thing on those two pages that you have open in front of you?

Most important thing? Here, Read it to you. The lesson to be learned from the practical aviation of the present day is that of triumph of principle over precedent, of working out of an idea to its logical conclusion in spite of the accumulated testimony of all past experiences to the contrary. With such a notable example before us, can we say that it is futile to inquire whether by the same method we may not unlock still more important secrets and gain some knowledge of the unseen causes which are the back of external and visible conditions. And then by bringing these unseen causes into a better order, make practical working reality of possibilities which at present seem but fantastic dreams. They're talking about the Wright brothers. He said there was a secret they got off the ground because nobody knew how to fly. And neither did they until after they got it in the air. But he pointed out that it was principle over precedent. And we let precedent control us too often.

What's the difference between principle and precedent?

Well, precedent. You're letting something that has happened in the past control you, the principle is that there's always a better way. Doesn't matter what you're doing. Better is a beautiful word.

What's something in your life that took a long time where you were holding on to the precedent of something for a while, maybe it was months, maybe it was years, decades that eventually the principle finally started to fly and you had a breakthrough. Is there an area of your life you can think of?

Oh absolutely, absolutely. Just soon as you said it, yeah. You see when I started in this, when I first got this book.

I.

Was such a loser. And I mean in every, every way you look at it. I went to high school for two months and I didn't quit. They kicked me out. They didn't want me there and I was kind of happy because I didn't like it there anyway. I held dumb jobs. I never had a half decent job. The idea that I could even get a good job never entered my mind. I had such low self esteem. I didn't understand that at the time I didn't even know what self esteem was. And letting go of the fact that I didn't have a formal education, that I never had any business experience. The man that gave me the book, he said none of that matters, Bob. That's the past. He said let it go. Well, I had a difficult time letting that go because were programmed that if you don't go to school you can't get a good job. That if you're going to earn a lot of money you've got to be really smart. Well, you see, I didn't think I was very smart and I didn't have any formal education. That's a hard thing to let go of. But through the repetition of studying this over and over and over, as he pointed out to me, Edison had grade three and he pointed out different people that had no formal education. And I finally made a break, left it behind. I'm not quite sure exactly when, but I let it go.

What would you say are some deciding factors that can help someone with their self esteem? Because you and I are very similar. Where my childhood. I didn't, I didn't have much confidence in myself or esteem because I was in the bottom of my class in school because I was, you know, had tutors and special needs classes because I just wasn't able to understand it and comprehend that well and felt awkward and goofy in my life. What are some, some things you think? People that in their teens or even in their 40s and 50s who don't have confidence yet. What are the Things we can be doing differently to gain confidence, to build self esteem. Because I think this is one of the key factors of success, is believing in yourself. It doesn't matter if the world believes in you. If you don't believe in you. What can we start to do to change that?

Well, I think a person has to start to study themselves. Most people know very little about themselves. They think they're their body. You're not a body. You have a body and you have a marvelous mind. And when I first started to study this, I thought, you know, studying the mind, that's for psychiatrists, psychologists, behavioral scientists. And the man that told me, he said, no, it's not. He says, that's for anybody. That's for little kids. And so I think as we start to understand something about our mind and something about our higher faculties. See, we're all programmed to live through our senses. We go by what we see, hear, smell, taste, touch. Well, I've got a little dog at home that see, hear, smell, taste, touch. All the animals in the world, they're completely at home in their environment. They blend in. They operate by instinct, which is perfect. We had instinct removed and we had higher faculties put in our place. In their place. And if we would study these and gain an understanding, your self image would automatically start to improve. You have perception, the will, reason, imagination, memory and intuition. Those six faculties will give you the ability to create your own environment. See, we're totally disoriented in our environment, where all the other little creatures are completely at home in theirs. And we're disoriented in ours because we can create our own. But we don't know that. School doesn't teach us that school is more interested in the development of your intellect than in the development of awareness. Like, a person doesn't earn $100,000 a year because they want 100 a year. They earn 100 a year because they're not aware of how to earn 100amonth. Awareness is really the key. And when we become aware of who we are and what we've got working for us, you know, marvelous things start to happen to us. And that's really what happened to me. I never went back to school. I. I built a very successful company and operates all over the world. I didn't do it myself. I have a tremendous team of people. I've got just an absolute genius of a business partner. A woman who's an attorney I mentioned to you before. You should have her on sometime. You'd be fascinated with her. She's that interesting. But it was a group of people. We've attracted a phenomenal group of people in our company. And we're operating now in 91 countries teaching this information. I don't know another company that teaches what we teach. Like, I think Tony Robbins has probably done more for our industry than any individual. The Secret has probably done more for it as much as Tony has the movie. But I don't know anybody else teaching. What we're teaching and what we're really doing is teaching people how their mind functions and how to expand their understanding of how it operates.

What are the six faculties again? You shared this before, which I love. And I think if people really understood this perception, help them build their self.

There's perception, the will, imagination, memory, reason, and intuition.

Which one is the hardest for people to.

I don't think any of them are awareness.

They're.

They're all equally valuable. You take your imagination. Think of this for a minute, Louis. Nothing is created or destroyed. Look here. Here's a little cell phone. What you can do with this almost blows your mind when you think of it. Yeah, well, when I was a kid, we didn't have a phone. We didn't have a phone because we didn't have any money for the first reason. But the second, not everybody could have a phone. We were not aware that there was an infinite number of frequencies. Today, there's what, a zillion phones? Because there's an infinite number of frequencies. This phone is on its own frequency. Yours. It's on its own frequency. If I have your number in here and I hit send, you and I connect, we're on the same frequency. Won't matter where you are. We can see each other, we can communicate because we get on the same frequency. Well, the good that we desire is already here. It's on a frequency. The way to build this has always been here. We weren't aware of it, but somebody took their imagination and went off into no place. What they were really doing is going on to a higher frequency. And if you'll stay on that frequency, you'll attract everything that you require. That's why Dr. Wernher von Braun, when President Kennedy asked him what it would take to build a rocket that would carry a man to the moon and then bring him back safely to Earth, Von Braun said, the will to do it. The will is the mental faculty that gives you the ability to. To hold one idea on the screen of your mind to the exclusion of all outside distractions. See, if you take your imagination, do it. You have Goals. Take your imagination and then take yourself there, see yourself already have completed the goal, and then hold that picture with your will. When you go there with your imagination, there is a place, whatever it is you want, you went there with your imagination, there is a place. You stay there in your imagination, you will attract everything that's required for the manifestation of that picture. You saw Brady doing it last Sunday.

Guy's a machine.

Yeah, absolutely phenomenal.

So holding the imagination, the picture that you want in your mind, and then attracting it on the steps to get.

Yeah, you see, we don't work toward the goal, we work from the goal. You get the goal in your mind. Our problem is we measure everything on the physical. And yeah, you look at the physical and you say, well, I haven't got it yet. If you think your conscious mind, if you get an image there of your goal, you've already got it intellectually. If you didn't have it, you couldn't share it with me. But if you have it, you can share it with me. You can share with me the idea that you've got in your mind. So you've already got it there, haven't you?

Right.

As you get emotionally involved with that idea, you've got it also on an emotional level. You've got it there. You've got it intellectually, you've got it emotionally. The only place you haven't got it is physically. Now there's a period of time must elapse for that idea that you have intellectually and emotionally for that idea to move into physical form.

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Pardon?

How much time does it usually take?

We don't know. We don't know. That's the only thing we don't know is the gestation period. For an idea, we know what the gestation Period is for wheat. We know what it is for a carrot. We know what it is for a baby. Moment of conception is about 280 days. We didn't always know these things, but we do now. We don't know what the gestation period is for a spiritual seed, and that's what an idea is, but it grows by exactly the same law. And so if we hold that idea in our mind, it must, by law, manifest in form. It moves into form. Now, that is called the perpetual transmutation of energy. It's one of the laws of the universe.

There is something that you shared.

Just.

A moment ago that reminded me of an interview I did with Joe Dispenza recently where he said, we're really good at remembering the past and actually building a story in our mind about something traumatic that was actually way worse in our mind than it actually probably was in person. We're really good at remembering, remembering these stories, but what we need to do, he said, is to remember the future. And when he said that, it kind of triggered something different. It's like what you just shared. It's like have an idea of the future, of what we want to manifest and hold on to that idea and remember the memories of the future, as opposed to holding on to the memories of the past so we can move into that as opposed to be stuck in the past.

That's holding. That is.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's.

That's hard. Why is it so hard? Why is it hard for us to hold onto, or maybe not hold onto, but keep in our minds and imagine the idea of a greater future for us as opposed to constantly being stuck in the past. Why is that hard for so many of us?

Because we're programmed to go the other way. You know? What language do you speak?

I barely speak English.

How about Russian?

That's all I know.

Well, the point is. You were raised with the English language.

Yes.

You don't know another language? I was raised with the English language. I don't know another language. I was working with people over in Kuala Lumpur a number of years ago, and they had a little boy, four years old. That little boy could speak four languages. They thought nothing of that. There's people speak many more than four languages because that's the way they're raised. We're the product of our environment from the time we're born. But prior to that, genetically, we're programmed. You're genetically programmed. At the moment of conception, you get all mom's DNA and all dad's DNA and God knows how Far it goes back on either side. Well, that is programming. That's in our subconscious mind, and that's called a paradigm. That's what it is. It's a program in our subconscious mind. Now here's the crazy part. You have programs in your phone or in your computer. The people that write the code for these programs are really smart when it comes to writing code. They really know what the hell they're doing. The people that wrote the code for our biocomputer had no idea what the hell they were doing. They don't. They did not. They were writing a code for my subconscious mind and for yours. That's our paradigm, and that probably controls our life to an enormous degree. It did with me until I was 26. Now, I was fortunate when I met Ray Stanford and he got me into the Think and Grow Rich book and that led me into God knows what else. I have been working at changing that program since I was 26. I'm 86 right now, so I've been at it for a long time and I work at it every day. Most people don't even know that they have the problem, so they stay stuck their whole life. Listen, you interview some pretty interesting people. I watched you interview here a billionaire a while ago.

Which one?

I forgot. I forgot who it was anyway.

Ray Dalio, Charles Koch.

It was a pretty interesting interview anyway. But the point is, anybody can become a billionaire. If that's what you want to do, you say, well, wouldn't everybody? No, everybody wouldn't. I wouldn't want to put all my energy into that. Now, does that mean I don't want money? No. Hell, I earn all kinds of money. And I probably want to earn more, but that's not my focus. We are programmed to live a certain way, and rarely do we change that. There's now I change it and I teach people to change it. But most people don't stop and think of how few people are really well off. 3, 4, 5%, maximum, if that. And 95% are struggling. And some of these are really bright people. You've got people that have a. A doctorate degree in commerce and finance and they're broke. How the hell could that happen? Well, they never learned how to earn money. They learned how to count it, invest it, and what to do with it. They never learned how to earn it. School doesn't teach us how to earn money. It's absurd when you stop and think about it.

Was there ever a moment where you didn't unconditionally love yourself? And if so, and if so, when did that shift where you stopped that and you started saying, okay, I appreciate myself because of my contribution and my service and who I am. When was that shift?

I don't think it was ever. I just didn't love myself. There were times obviously being angry with yourself or frustrated with yourself or thinking I'm not doing enough. I mean, I can remember my birthdays, to be honest with you. Probably up till my 40th birthday, including my 40th birthday. You know, you have a birthday with a zero on it once you're over at past 30, you know, 35, sometimes five years on it as well. People look at their life differently culturally. And I used to think it was bull, but sure enough, I would do it. I remember turning 40 and I was really, really unhappy. I was like, jesus, I've not done enough, I've not helped enough people. I know tens of millions of people at that point, already done all over the Earth in 100 plus countries at that point. But it was still kind of stuck in my head. So I would earn the love by over delivering change. Somebody's life. Like, I don't get it, because somebody says, oh, I love you, Tony. I mean, I appreciate that, or oh, you're the greatest. It's gotta be my standard. My standard's higher than their standard for me, right? So when I get up and someone's gonna kill themselves and they're suicidal and boom, turn around, they're no longer not gonna kill themselves, but they're transformed. Their life is there. You know, that's when I go, okay, you know, now we've hit the center of what I'm made for now, you know, I deserve to feel this euphoric feeling within myself and appreciation. And even then, I still know it's God coming through me. I don't have the delusion, it's just me. But I think sometime after 40, I finally saw the stupidity of it. I accumulated enough that I looked at life with fresh eyes. And I can say by the time I turned 60 a year ago, I noticed it was interesting because my birthday, I didn't have an ounce of it. I was just like, you know, how could I at this stage of my life when I've had the privilege of serving so many humans in so many contexts? You know, from turning around, you know, guys gonna kill themselves with ptsd, to helping kids turn around, to getting kids off cocaine or adults, to, you know, helping people build multi billion dollar businesses from nothing. And when I live this long, I can't go by without hearing Half a dozen stories a day, or a dozen stories a day from people telling me how something I did changed their life. So it's not that I'm so smart now, it's just I've stacked it. By the way, though, stacking is the way you can do things. Most of us stack the negative. If you are really angry, it's not usually because of just the moment. It's that it happened again. You know, it's like if you've ever lost it or overreacted to your kid or to a friend or a business or even within yourself, it's because it happened again. We hit this 1, 2, 3, many point, and then our nervous system overreacts. But what I've learned is you can stack the good. And for example, if you go into a state of really strong anger for more than five minutes, your immune system is suppressed between. Between an hour and a half to two hours. That's a physiological fact. But no one had done any study. I started stacking good, like, okay, let me stack a dozen great memories, feel them, see them, experience them. And I felt this biochemical change that didn't just last a half hour, an hour or 10 minutes. It went on for a day or two. And so I think I've learned to stack the good. So just having the experience is not enough. You gotta stack the good to be able to appreciate it. But I think just come back to the main point here, from my perspective, which could be completely full, just my perspective. So I want to point that out. I think the more you find unconditional love for others, the easier it is to find in yourself. And I think the focus is serving and loving, and that's what will get you the point where you start doing it. But if you want to speed it up, stack all the good you've done, you'll feel great about yourself.

I already know all the comments that are coming through, thousands of comments. Tell me, but what about my family? That's toxic? What about my partner who's toxic? And how do I love someone unconditionally when they don't respect me, I can't trust them. What about situations like that?

All those reactions are natural human reactions from ego, because it's all about you, me, me, me. What I'm not getting what I'm not doing. And that's why you're in pain. And so I'm not telling you, like, I haven't done this. I've done it too in the past, but it's an old pattern. I don't really do anymore. And it used to affect me now, not a dominant one. I wouldn't have become who I become. Early in my life, I developed this belief that life is calling, not to give me something. Life is calling for me to deliver things, for me to bring something to life. And I felt the joy that came from not getting, but giving. And I got hooked on that core pattern and then the pattern of learning so I'd have something to give, which I know. One thing I respect about you, Louis, is that you have that same pattern in you. You're always trying to learn more because underneath it all, you also want to give it. You want it, you want it for you, but you want to share it, right? And so those patterns help me not be in what they're not giving me. And all this language, language. Today, people don't understand the power of their language. Like toxic. What the hell are you talking about? You've been reading too much social media and thinking about yourself. Or somebody raised you to constantly judge everybody else. We live in a culture now where people, you know, you're evil or you're like me. That's basically how it is, right? The whole world, everybody else is immoral unless they do what you do, think what you think, experience you think. I mean, being a liberal, I was a liberal, right? Being a liberal growing up meant I would fight for your ability to say and believe whatever you want different than me today. Now everybody wants everybody to think the same thing. Otherwise they're evil. Or otherwise they could hurt me. Whatever happened to sticks and stones will break your bones, and words will never hurt me. We have this whole thing that words are evil, words are action, it's bull. And all it does is make you incredibly weak as a human being. And you're more than that. We all are more than that. But you know what? Like a kid that's never broken their bones, deathly afraid of breaking the bone. But if you're a kid and you're rough and tumble, you broke multiple bones and they healed, you don't have any fear of it. There's so many kids that have been raised to be safe and secure every moment. Anything that's insecure, unsafe, they don't want to be a part of, including language. And what it does is make you incredibly weak and fearful. And that's why there's so many people that are abundant, that are angry all the time because they're angry, because they're not growing. So don't get me wrong. I know some people are not a good influence. I'm not denying that. I'm just saying you're more than somebody's influence. Unless you obsess about it every moment and make them wrong so you can make yourself feel superior morally, psychologically or spiritually. That's bull. Stop the pattern. We've all done it. Catch yourself. Because if you want joy, happiness and freedom and extraordinary life, it will not come from blame. Never. There's no pride that comes from blame. I don't mean fake pride where you make up to feel good. I'm talking about real pride. Pride is something you earn. Like people tell me, oh, I have no self esteem because my parents used to say this or they'd say that. I'd say, that's such bull. I'm not saying it's bull. They didn't say that. I said it's bullshit. That's why you know your self esteem. Self esteem does not come from what people say about you. Self esteem comes from what you experience about yourself. See someone tell you your whole life you're a piece of crap and part of you go, you're full of it. I'm going to show you. Lots of people have done that. They never bought it. Or someone tells you you're beautiful your whole life, you go, I'm not really beautiful. So what people tell you doesn't matter at all. It's what you stack, it's what you assemble, it's what you create. It's the habit of what you put in your head. And today I don't blame you because we got a whole culture that's always blaming somebody else for something in their life. But blame is not a strategy for pride. That's why listening is blaming people. They're all angry all the time. Listen, if I wanted to blame, I grew up in an environment. I didn't even share it till my mom passed. And even then I didn't share. I grew up in a pretty rough environment. My mom was a beautiful soul, but when she drank alcohol and she mixed it with prescription drugs, it was a different creature and it was a violent creature. And I have a younger brother five years younger and a younger sister seven years younger. And my mom would get nuts and I didn't want them to get hurt. So I was 51 in high school. She grabbed me by the hair and smashed me against the wall till I bled. Now I never shared this and I'm not denigrating her in any way. I only shared it like four or five years after she died because I was talking to a group of kids in New York City, all without fathers. 80% African American, about 20% Hispanic. Out of the group, roughly no white kids. And I'm talking about. Your biography is not your destiny. And it doesn't matter what you've been through. What you decide now is what's going to control your life. What you decide each day going forward is going to decide your life. And I can look at them seeing me. I can read their minds. This big, tall, white rich guy is going to tell me, biography doesn't matter. So I said, let me tell you my story. And I told them the whole story, way more than I'm telling you. And every one of them was crying their eyes up. When they're done, I said, look where I am right now. Because I wouldn't assemble the story that my past equals my future. The past only equals your future if you live there. If you're using a rear view mirror to guide yourself, you're going to crash. So what you've been through is horrific. What you've been through is unjust. I'm on your side. But if you hang on to it, you have no future and you have no one to blame but yourself. And these kids, to their credit, man, they just responded to the challenge because they first cried their eyes out. Hearing all the stories, my mom would think I was lying. And I wasn't lying. She poured liquid soap down my throat till I threw up. And I wasn't lying. So it's not the physical abuse. It's the fact that this is the person you love most that's trying to hurt you that messes with your head. So I could have been messed up for life, but I didn't. Because something inside me says I'm responsible for this life. And part of that is because I started reading When I was 13, 14 biographies I of people, the greatest people in history, and reading their lives and finding out, guess what? Their lives were far from perfect. Some of them had worse lives than I had. But when you have no reference and all you do is go online, you talk to other people, making everybody else toxic. And I'm like this. And they didn't do that. Then you get to have this life just like those other people. Why are they online so much? Because they don't have a life. Don't be one of those. Free yourself from the chains of your past. I'm not saying your past doesn't matter. But listen, my mother, I tell people this all the time and it's the truth. If my mother had been the mother I wanted to be the mother she should have been. I would not be the man I'm proud to be today because I had to become a practical psychologist way before any schooling figure out when's she going to go in the mood, how do I change her state? How do I protect her from the kids? What are we? I mean, it's. It was felt life and death, and it was to some extent. So I developed skills at such a young age that when I learned things, I just added to my skills. But I had a core sense of certainty that I could turn anybody around because it started with my mother. And thank God for her. And she encouraged me in so many ways. She did so many great things, and she loved me, even though it didn't look like it at times. But if your parents. If the people around you said all the things you thought they should have, if they had just not been toxic, if they'd encouraged you, you wouldn't have any muscle. And right now you don't have any muscle because you're using that as an excuse. If you're thinking that. And I'm not attacking you, brothers and sisters, I'm calling to you because I know you're more. Otherwise, I just keep my mouth shut. We're just. You've been hypnotized by a culture of weakness. Now, having said that, I'll say one last thing. I know you haven't got other questions, but so important what you asked, yes, there are people that you don't want to hang out with that will not serve you. But then move on. Don't sit there and talk about it constantly. Don't waste your time. And you say, but what if it's family, Tony? Mine was family, too. You learn to grow. You go there in my life, someone can get your goat. If someone can piss you off, if someone can make you feel less than. That's God coming to you saying, grow. You need some spiritual growth. There's got to be some change in your perception, your belief, your emotions, your spiritual look of life. So that can't happen anymore. And when it happens, like at 61, I've been through so many of those things, and I like to do things in mass. I took on big challenges so I'd have to grow more. But then life throws them at you, too. When they come, you just go, okay, it's going to have me until I grow. What needs to shift in me so that no longer has an impact. But you know, Jim Rohn used to say, my original teacher used to say, tony, what happens if I've got a Cup of coffee here. And he'd say, what if your worst enemy drops sugar in your coffee? What's going to happen? And I go, well, you have sweet coffee. And he goes, what if your best friend, your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, your loved one drops one drop of strychnine? I said, you'd be dead. He goes, that's right. Life is both sugar and strychnine. So watch your coffee. His whole thing was stand guard at the door of your brain. But some people take that and go, oh, my God, you can kill me. It was a metaphor. These people are not so toxic. They're toxic because you give them energy. So if your mom's crazy and constantly criticizing you and it drives you nuts, just go, that's my mom. That's her way of showing love. And I find a new perspective. And no matter what she does, just stay in a beautiful state and love on her and think, boy, think of all that she cares and feels for all that she's frustrated in her life or all that she's going through that's made her this way. And thank God I don't have to go through this. I can love her. It's like your growth is the only limit to your happiness. If you're not happy, you're not growing in some area. And usually it's a place where you're blaming, you're pointing the finger. I don't care if it's government. Don't get me wrong. People can be unfair, unjust, that's for sure happens. But you can't control that. You can't make it not happen. What you have to do is become stronger than any of it, so you're free. Freedom comes from growth. Freedom does not come from control, because control is an illusion. You can't control everybody. No matter how hard you try, you can't control what they think or feel. And. And not everybody's going to be fair and just. And you, my dear friends, and I, have not always been fair and just, whether we admit it or not. It's just the nature of being a being, a human being. But we can make the largest pattern fair and just and loving and powerful and serving and growing until it becomes the dominant thing inside you. And then you experience life as being great. Not your great. Life's great because you're living a great path.

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Before you answer what to do, you got to answer while you're there. It is not because of the pandemic. I remember when 911 happened and people tell, oh my God, my life was destroyed because of 9 11. And there were people in the same building who turned their life around, became, grew spiritually, grew closer to their family, made their businesses larger, and the same building burned down. Right. I know in my case, you know, 911 comes, if you can imagine. You know, I'm fortunate enough to have now more than 80 companies in all these different industries. And obviously, you know, I've done pretty darn well by most people's standards of business and life. But my core mission is what I do for a living. It's why I'm here talking to you right now. It's getting people to be free and alive and have the level of fulfillment that they deserve to have. I know they desire, but I also believe they deserve to have. But to deserve to have it, you got to do certain things right, and so you're not in the place of being overweight because you lost your job. So stop the bull. Blame. Blame is not a strategy for a meaningful life. Blame is not a strategy for greatness. So you got to resolve that, number one. And then your question was, what's the one thing to focus on if you only focus on one? I think it's smart to focus on one thing. Primarily focus on too many can be overwhelming other people. It's good to focus on multiple things. It depends on your personality. So I wouldn't presuppose, but then the answer would be whichever thing you're most desirous of changing, whatever thing is giving you the most pain. So if it's a relationship, I go full force on that. Now in the world we're in today, you know, you don't usually have the privilege of going, okay, I want to work on just being happy. Well, I can train you to be happy while hell's breaking loose. You can sit in this chair and be totally euphoric. But if you do that, in Western culture, people come and take your furniture Right. So you probably have to work on both your business or financial side and some personal side. I would be working on both. And to me, the way to attack that, if you're not sure which area is to start with the body. And I know you can relate to this, Louis, because you and I both share this in common. It's like I always teach physiology first, as you well know. If you change the body, you'll change the emotions. If you change the emotions, you'll change your decisions. You'll change the quality of your life. Because the quality of your life is your emotions. It's not what you get. You have a billion dollars and commit suicide. People have done it. Right? You can have beautiful relationships and commit suicide. You can have people loving you and be sad all the time. Our pattern of emotion is our home. And you have to upgrade your home. You have to train it. And one way to train it is the emotion comes from the way you move, the way you breathe, the way you speak. So if I said to your listeners, there's a depressed person behind the curtain over here, and I'll give $100,000 to their favorite charity if they had to describe their body, their posture, and they're depressed, you tell me. I'll just use you as the example. What does that person look like?

They're slouched down. They're looking down at their feet. They're not looking upward. Their shoulders are over.

Are they breathing full or shallow?

Do you think they're shallow?

Are they talking fast or slow?

They're talking. If they're depressed, they're probably talking fast because they're not calm.

Well, no, that's usually stressed. Depressed is different than stressed.

They're probably talking low volume, slower than.

And all those physical characteristics change your biochemistry towards this feeling of being depressed. And in a depressed state, you won't do anything. When I used to be depressed, I don't get it anymore. I just took it out of my life. I even took the language of it out of my life because the words you create create a biochemical response. But when I did that decades ago, because I was, like, having those thoughts, like, is there a reason to still be here? That kind of crazy shit in your head. I got out of it by using anger originally. I'd much like. Sometimes if somebody's really sad or depressed, I'll make them angry and be like, what's he doing? He's making him angry. Because anger is much more resourceful than depressed. From anger original get you to laughter, I can get you taking Action. And then gradually, I got what I didn't need. Anger. It was about growth. It was about contribution. It was about meaning. So there's, like, stages to go through. But to answer your question, they should work on both their business side of their life and personal one of each. And in order for either one of those to work, you need to be in a strong emotional state. And if you start with your body, like, you know, I start every morning in my cold water, start every morning with my workout. I started every morning, like, feeding my mind, right? So there's certain things you got to do physically so you're strong enough to remember the truth. Because, remember, fear is physical. You feel your throat or your gut. So is courage. Courage doesn't mean you're not afraid. It just means you're strong enough. You push through in spite of the fear, right? And courage feels different in the body. So when you go lift or you go for a sprint or a strong run or you jump in that freezing water, when you push your mind to go beyond what's comfortable, you feel a strength inside you. And that strength will help you to change your body, your emotions, your relationships, whatever. But then the other thing I say is model someone who's successful. Don't just do this shit by trial and error. Like, find somebody who has what you want, ideally maybe more than one person, two or three, and see what are they doing different than you in their relationship. What do they believe different than you about relationship. If it's their body, what are they doing different? They're not lucky. They're doing things differently. You might be slightly biochemically different, but there's patterns there that you can see. And so instead of learning by trial and error, which can take decades, you may never learn. Jim Rohn taught me, success leaves clues, man. Find someone's got what you want, study what they do, every aspect of it, and then add yourself to it. And that's the pathway to speed of transformation. So now, like, you know, I've done it. I'm not the only person. There's so many companies that went from worse off than they'd ever been in their history to the best off because they found a way to pivot.

One of the most important things a human being can do is press the pause button each morning while the rest of the world is asleep and ask yourself, how can I fortify my mindset? How can I insulate my heart set? How can I optimize my health set? How can I escalate my soul set? The four interior empires that I've introduced in the 5am club so that when I walk out in the world, I'm creative, I'm productive, I'm compassionate, I radiate positivity, and I have resilience in case I get knocked down. And so I think one of the best ways you can do that is this 202020 formula that I've been teaching to the billionaires, the NBA stars, the film icons, and many of the most successful people on the planet for, as I say, 24 years and very high level. Louis the 2020-20 formula is simply this. You get up at 5am and anyone can get up at 5am One of the gifts of a human being is neuroplasticity. We are built to change. So please, I would encourage, you know, if we recite our excuses long enough, we actually believe they're true. We are built to change. We are built to grow. We are built to own our heroic nature. And so according to University College London, if we do any practice or habit for 66 days, we reach a point of automaticity where it becomes easier to do that new habit than not do the new habit. Once you wire in the new habit for the first 20 minutes, 5 to 5:20, you move because you can release BDNF, brain derived neurotrophic factor, which promotes neurogenesis. It optimizes your brain. If you move first thing in the morning, you release serotonin, which makes you feel good. You release dopamine, which sets you up for inspiration. Second, we can get into it more deeply. But second pocket from 5:20 to 5:40 is reflect. While the rest of the world is asleep, there's such quietude in the air. This is where you can pray, you can meditate, write in a journal, sit in quietude so that you're focused, living your life and your priorities through the day. And then the final pocket of the 202020 formula that I talk about in the 5am Club is grow. You'll never get old if you grow. You'll never become obsolete in your business. Even in a time of great volatility, if you're growing, you'll always stay happy if you grow. So 20 minutes at the end of this victory hour, that's what I call it. You spend some time listening to a podcast like Lewis Howes on the school of Greatness, a man adored by the majority of humanity. You listen to an audiobook, you read a book, you study your battle charts. Anyway, that's a really rough general way to explain the 2020 formula that is currently helping Millions of people navigate this hard time.

Does it matter the sequencing of 20, 2020? Do you need to move first? Can you meditate first? Do you grow? Or is that a process that is proven scientifically?

The process has been proven in the trenches of elite performance for a long time with my clients. And having said that, I would say the 202020 formula is minimum viable morning routine. And you're a biohacker. I'm a biohacker. I'm a productivity hacker. I'm a life hacker. And so I would say do what's right for you. You know, it's like this whole field of personal mastery and leadership that we inhabit. I'm not one to say you must do this because we all have different learning types. We're all on different journeys. Someone might be right now upgrading their spirituality so they connect with their crusade and their higher power. In this time of house arrest.

Other.

People are creating their masterwork right now. So I think we have to find the routine, the morning routine, that works best for us.

What about people that say, you know what? I'm just a night person, you know, I like, I think at night, I work out at night. That's when I meditate, you know, I strategize the next day at night. And I just, I've tried the morning. It just doesn't work for me. What would you say to that?

I've had a lot of night owls.

That's a great excuse, isn't it, to be a night owl?

I've had a lot of great, a lot of night owls who have said, you know, I could never be a morning person. I've had a lot of people who said, you know, grandma couldn't get up early, Grandpa couldn't get up early, my parents couldn't get up early. I don't have early rising genes, you know. And what I would say is, if you don't read that book you've been resisting because you don't think it's for you, you might just miss your new favorite book. If you fall in love with your most closely cherished beliefs and you're not open to trying new things, you might miss trying your new favorite food. If you say, well, here's the kind of friends that I hang out with, and I'm not open to anyone else, you might miss that new friend or that new mentor who will transform the way you run your craft and live your life. And it's the same for the morning routine, the 5:00am Club. I mean, I've had so many people read the book, run the models in the book, live the message and achieve what they never thought they'd achieve. And so what I would say to a night owl or a lot of people say shift workers or whatever, I would say give it a try. Don't just give it a try for a week, you know, give it a try for three weeks, four weeks, the 66 day minimum. And then judge by your results.

Yeah, so it's okay to sleep in once a week or to miss, miss the routine once in a while. It's not going to affect your overall, you know, results or process. Is that what I'm hearing?

Yeah, I think, you know, if you want to commit to the 5am club, you want to commit to a world class morning routine. Because the way you begin the day profoundly sets up the way your day unfolds. And this again, this is not anecdotal. You get up in the morning and you run the 20, 2020 formula that I explain in the book. You will create the flow state. You will release serotonin, you will release dopamine, you will release bdnf, you will increase your metabolic rate, you will boost creativity, you will increase your willpower. You know, all those things. I mean, we want, we all have the ability as human beings to arrive at our own original form of greatness. We have not been schooled, we have not been taught. A lot of us have not been mentored on the mindsets, heart sets, routines, rituals that will create and allow us to live our personal genius. But you know, if you look at the greatest women and men who have ever graced the planet, these were so called ordinary people who just set up their lives in such a way that their native gifts saw the light of day.

It's funny how no one ever teaches this stuff unless you had a parent or an older sibling. That's that you were able to model and mimic like oh my, my dad gets up pretty early or my brother gets up and does his violin or practices sport, whatever it may be. And I want to be like that and I want to try that. It's, you know, we're not taught this in school.

You know, Louis, when I was a kid, I wasn't believed in by a lot of people. I marched to my own drumbeat. I had a different way of seeing the world. I was very sensitive, I was very creative, very much a dreamer in many ways. And I didn't fit in with the cool crowd. And in grade five, I had a history teacher and her name was Cora Greenaway and she was one of the first people in my life who believed in me. And we all meet a Cora Greenaway. And may you and I and everyone listening from around the world or watching from around the world, may we be a Cora Greenaway to someone else. What I'm suggesting is all it takes is that one person who coincidentally shows up in our life and maybe it's a book, maybe it's a podcast episode to introduce us to a new frame of reference and a new way of living. That's why I love reading so much. You know, it's. It could be one idea in a 300 page book and that idea opens you up to a new galaxy of possibility. And the hand that puts down the book is a fundamentally different hand. I mean, all it takes is one new insight to change the way you see the world.

That's very true.

Yeah. And that's why I'm on such a mission. I've been on such a mission for 24 years to remind people of who they're meant to be. Martin Luther King Jr. Said, if you have not discovered something you're willing to die for, you're not fit to live. And I believe we all need to find our mighty mission and our crusade. It doesn't have to be lofty. It could be delivering pizza by ubereats. It could be a, you know, a teacher. It could be a lawnmower, it could be a coder, it could be a grave digger or street sweeper. All labor has dignity, but, you know, there are no extra people on the planet. I think, you know, that's why I appreciate the work you do so much. I mean, we do have greatness within us and society has brainwashed us and heart washed us into thinking that the great ones are cut from a different cloth. And it's not, it's not true. As a matter of fact, in the 5am Club, I say, you know, genius is less about genetics and much more about your daily habits.

Wow, that's true. That's. I mean, that resonates with me because growing up a kid that was, you know, dyslexic and still struggles with reading and writing today and was in the special needs classes, I never thought I was going to amount to much. And I didn't have belief in myself until I found a spark and belief in myself. And then I started leaning into that gift, which was sports, and started to realize, oh, I have some vision and I have some coordination and I have some speed. Even though I was never the fastest or strongest, I had some height and so let me lean into this gift that was here and see if I enjoy this gift. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links and if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally as well as ad free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our greatness+channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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