6 Steps To Overcoming Your Past & Achieving Anything You Want EP 1233

This is episode number 1233 on overcoming your past and achieving anything you want. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. welcome back, my friends. I know a lot of us struggle with feeling stuck in our lives at different times and not being able to see forward at the future success that's coming for us. And right now we're celebrating black history month by revisiting interviews with some of the most inspiring guests we've had on the show to share their struggles, triumphs, and the unique path they chose in the pursuit of greatness. In this episode, we discuss how to battle adversity and reach your full potential with Kobe Bryant, the power of visualizing your future with Lisa Nichols, how confront and conquer past trauma with David Goggins, the importance of building trust and community with Rachel Rogers, how to see past personal insecurities with Chris Hogan, why sharing praise is such a powerful tool with Dr. Ivan Joseph, and so much more. And make sure to share this with someone that you think would be inspired by hearing this message as well. And a quick reminder, if this is your first time here, welcome. Please subscribe over on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and leave us a rating and review when you're done with this episode. We give a shout out every week to the fan of the week. And this is from their name is T Money. They left a review over on Apple Podcast and they said the School of Greatness has been a stable in my life for a few years now. I've since incorporated the show into my self-care Sunday routine in which I reset and prepare for the forthcoming work week. And I now look forward to Sundays. So T Money, love the name, love the testimonial. Thank you for leaving your review over on Apple Podcast. You are the fan of the week, my friend, and we are grateful for you. And in just a moment, let's dive in to today's episode. In this first section, basketball Legend Kobe Bryant talks about confronting adversity and how he found answers in his greatest losses. Kobe shares how his radiating energy enabled him to be an infectious leader with a laser focus on reaching his full potential.

How important is understanding human psychology and human behavior to work with a team, as opposed to just relying on your gifts talents.

It's probably the most important thing. You know, when you're in this culture in our society, you can do some phenomenal things individually, but they'll never reach their full potential unless you do them collectively. And you have to figure out how to do that. And, you know, Phil Jackson was great at that. Phil, you know, he wouldn't just coach the team or coach the game, but he'd read everything about every single player. He learned about your history, how you grew up, how you were raised, where were you raised, he'll read every interview and he'll learn about you and gives him a better understanding of what's motivating you, what your insecurities are, right? And then it just helps him communicate with you better. When you play the game, you hit a game-winning shot, you miss a shot, the reaction is there. You can see how people respond to it, right? You can feel it. the energy is there. The energy is there. What I do now, you don't. Like, I don't see how people are affected by their basketball or, you know, creating the punies and you put it out there. Like, I wish I could see a car ride of a family the first time their daughter hears Lily's Lemonade and what she's doing, you know, if she's singing along to it, that's not there.

Right.

So that's the, the challenge. That's the one thing that I miss is being able to feed off of the energy.

The instant feedback that you get from shoot missing or scoring a shot, winning or losing a game, it's like either way, you're getting a result, right?

Yes, yes. There are a lot of answers that I don't have, even questions that I don't have. But I'm just gonna keep going. I'm just gonna keep going, and I'll figure these things out as we go, right? And you just continue to build that way. So I try to live by that all the time.

The biggest challenge is for most athletes after they retire?

I think it's the fear of starting anew, and that was certainly present for me as well.

Really?

Yeah, identity you mean, or?

Well, it's starting from scratch. Right, because when you play for 20 years, I play for 20 years, you reach a certain level, you're like, okay, wait a minute, I have to start again at the base of a mountain and try to climb the top of this mountain. First of all, what mountain am I climbing? I don't even know, like, what the hell am I gonna be doing? It's very scary.

Even for you.

Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. And the thing that helped me actually was hurting my Achilles, because that forced me to sit there and say, okay, The day could be today that your career is over.

At any time, when you were playing, I mean, yeah.

Now what do you do? You have these ideas about doing something with your life after basketball, but what if today is the day that you, that's it. Now what do you do? So I had all this time sitting there with my Achilles injury and contemplating and thinking and I said, I better get to work. Wow. That was that.

What was the vision for you afterwards then? What does losing feel like to you?

It means you have different ways to get better. There's certain things that you can figure out that you can take advantage of, right? Certain weaknesses that were exposed that you need to shore up, right? So it was exciting. I mean, it sucks to lose.

Right.

But at the same time, there are answers there. You just have to look at them.

Yeah. Right.

So it's a constant process. It's exciting when you win. It's exciting when you lose, because the process should be exactly the same. Whether you win or you lose, as you go back and you look and you find things that you could have done better, you find things that you've done well that worked, figure out how did they work, why did they work, how can you make them work again?

Yeah. And.

But the hardest thing is to face that stuff.

Every game you watch.

Every game.

The whole game.

The whole game.

No way.

Yeah.

So it started with me when I was a When Phil Jackson's, his first year here with the Lakers, one of assistant coaches, his name was Tex Winter, and I call him Yoda. I mean, he was like 82 when he got here. Wow. And he was responsible for teaching me the triangle offense.

How old were you then?

I was 21.

So three years, four years in the league?

Yeah, so about my fourth year in the league. Okay. And so I go up to his room, and this is when there were no iPads or anything like that, right? So when you're on the road, You have to call down to the front desk and have to bring up the TV. But the whole, you know, the roly-poly thing and the VHS and the cassette tape you pop it in. And I thought we were gonna watch what we call touches. So watch all your touches when you have the ball, all the decisions you make, good ones and bad. No, we're watching the start of the game.

Oh my God.

To the end of the game. And not like the TV feed. Watching the in arena feed. The layup line, the timeouts.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, rewinding, stopping, fast forward, rewinding, slow motion, every little thing, every game of that season, with the 82-year-old Yoda.

Oh my gosh.

Who is as brutally honest as you can get.

What did that teach you that season?

You want things to be as perfect as they can be, understanding that nothing is ever perfect. But the challenge is try to get them as perfect as they can be. And what can you do? It's in your control. So control what you can. I can watch film all day long. It's gonna help me get better. Yes, yes.

Now did you have your teammates also follow on this obsessiveness that you had as well? Or did you just encourage them or.

What was the-- no, you can't push somebody to do that, right? But what you can do is alter behavior. and also changed the vernacular of how they speak about the game. So on team buses, team planes, in a locker room after practice, I would look at the film. I'd pull Powell, Lamar, D. Fish, pull them aside and say, let's look at this. Right? We probably should have done this, that and the other. So you'll show them the game film.

A little bit here and there.

Yeah.

And then you speak to them in executional terms. It's never, come on, guys, we can do better. Come on, guys, we can do better. That's Ra-Ra. stuff, right? Leader must give very tactical, you know, things that we can do, adjustments. Okay, the defense is doing this, that and the other. That means we should probably do this, this, this, that and the other. By midway through the season, through that behavior, you start seeing them communicating the same way back to you, right? And it's like, okay, Kobe, they're doing this, that and the other to you. Maybe we should do this and that.

And you're like, okay, yeah, awesome, great. Let's do it. Yeah, yeah.

Are you still watching every game film?

As obsessively as the first 10 years.

Not now, no. Well, when I was playing.

When you were playing.

Yeah, so when I was playing, what I would do is study the film, but study our younger players and see what areas do they need to develop in and how can I help them develop. I mean, that was the big challenge as you move from, you know.

Being.

The single dominant player to understanding, okay, I have to help these other guys.

How do I lift everyone else up?

It's tough. The challenge for me was always compassion and empathy.

'Cause you're like, Guys, let's go. Get results.

Shut up. Don't complain, right? I don't wanna hear your whining. I don't wanna hear it. No excuses. Don't tell me how rough the water is. Just bring the boat in. You know, I don't wanna hear it, you know? And it's understanding like, okay, these guys have lives outside of here. They have other things happening. They have other things happening to them that may be affecting the way that they're practicing or the way that they're performing. And it was hard for me to understand that because nothing bothered me, you know, anything personally, that never phased me. You compartmentalized it. Very well. So I couldn't understand how my teammates couldn't do that either. So I had to really work on that aspect of it.

That's hard. Did you feel like you never really had the compassion you wish you had have had? like until the last maybe couple of years?

Yeah, I think about '09 things started changing for me. I started really making a conscious effort to better understand. And that doesn't mean you have compassion and empathy so you go soft on them. It's more like you put yourself to the side and you put yourself in their shoes and understand what they're feeling. And then you have to make certain decisions of okay what buttons do I need to push for to get them to the next level. So it's never, it's not sit around and all, it's all happy-go-lucky type of thing. If you're a leader, your job is to get the best out of them. Look at things at their smallest, right? Look at body language, you know? Look at the energy between players, our team and the other team.

Wow.

Right, look at the tactics, you know? Look at the overall strategy and to look at how tactically things are manifesting themselves. And because I watched so much film, then it gave me the ability to see game in real time as if I was watching film. Wow. Where I can see, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop, pop. Because a lot of times the game starts moving really fast. But if you train yourself to watch hours and hours of film, the game's not moving that fast anymore. You can really recognize who's doing what and why. Then you can position guys in the right places in real time. The question that eats me alive that I haven't answered yet. Well, that you're still looking for the answer. I'm still looking for the answer. How to tell a good story? I don't think anybody has that answer. You know, like when I sat down to write your basketball, I was like, okay, what do I want to say? And you have certain acts and how you can structure certain things, right? The ebbs and flows of story, certain formulas that have been there since the beginning of time. But it's such an exact so challenging, yeah. Right, and so that one question is really interesting.

Why do you want to tell a great story?

I think stories is what moves the world. Whether it's an inspirational story, it's an informational one, nothing in this world moves without story. You know, be it from the political world, sports world, nothing that we have moves without story. And so I think that is the root of everything. And if we're gonna try to make the world a better place, story's the right place to start.

I agree.

But most people don't understand, like my last year, people would come up to me and say, okay, what are you gonna do? I said, I'm gonna be a storyteller.

Really? And they go, they're like, what are you talking about?

All right, man. So what are you really gonna do? Yeah. Like, what's gonna happen when you retire is you're gonna go through, like, a week of depression. Yeah. Then the second week is going to be like denial and all sorts of things. I'm like, dude, seriously, I'm good.

In this section, Lisa Nichols shares the power of visualization and how we can better serve ourselves and others by looking inward. We discuss the journey of finding our real purpose and how to unlock the greatness within.

So I have five visualization exercises in that book just because it's so important. Visualization is a gift to your heart and your soul. It's a gift because if the idea is the seed, visualization is the fertilizer. It's the fertilizer because when your thoughts are connected with an emotion, see you would visualize yourself winning and you would feel all the emotion that came with that. And all you're doing now is you're not chasing foreign emotion. You know the feeling and now you're just doing what's necessary to get back to that feeling in real time.

Exactly.

And so what a good friend of mine, Vishen, the CEO of Mindvalley, who you know, I did a visualization with him. We were in Bali and he said to me afterwards, I never get emotional.

I can't get emotional. He doesn't get emotional.

Right, right, right.

Yeah.

Well, he was like, I cried. I got emotional. He goes, I figured it out. It's visualization, a good visualization brings in emotion. He was like, that's how you do it. And so, I love doing visualizations because, and it's real important in the visualization, you can't see it over there. You have to see it right here.

You gotta feel it.

You gotta feel it right here, like I am, it's all I am. I am, I am in my dream home. I am in my dream relationship. And then unpack what that looks like. But most importantly, Unpack what it feels like. I think that people put too big of a notion on purpose in that they think that it has to look like a Nelson Mandela or a Mother Teresa or Oprah or a you or I. And a lot of times what you're really good at is right in front of you. What you're really great at is right in front of you. And to recognize that your calling and your purpose can change. That it can change. You have a long lifetime. It's not going to be the same calling the whole time. And so allow yourself to evolve, allow your purpose to evolve. What's that thing you do effortlessly that you give no credit to? Because you're just looking past it, oh, it can't be that, because it's not hard. Well, how about it doesn't have to be difficult? How about the fact that you're a great listener? How can you take that and use that and expand it? And don't compare yourself to someone else. Comparison, I think Benjamin Franklin said, comparison is the thief of all joy. When you look left or right, You know, people are always comparing me to Oprah Winfrey or Iyanla Vanzant or Les Brown or Tony Robbins. I said, listen, if you want me to give you Oprah or Iyanla or Tony or Les, I'm always going to 1000% fail you. I knew very early on I was a gifted speaker. I wasn't certified as a gifted speaker. I haven't passed any courses as a speaker. Matter of fact, the last time I took a speech class, I got a D minus. And my speech teacher told me, Miss Nichols, I recommend you never speak in public that you get a desk job. That was in my freshman year of college, the last speech class I took. So a lot of times your gift and your purpose, you've discounted it, either because someone else discounted it or what's more common is you don't know how to monetize it. And sometimes the greatest gift you have to give is not for fee, it's for free. You watch people like you and I and go, well, why can't I get paid for it? Well, not every gift you're supposed to get paid for. Nelson Mandela did not get paid for leading 27 years when he got out of prison, he got paid after that. But he was a great leader while he was in prison. And Martin Luther King, he was a, he, he got paid from the church, but his right, his fight for civil rights, that was a free one. And he paid the highest cost. And you can go on and on and on to the, some of the greatest leaders, Mahatma Gandhi. Hey, what a paycheck.

Right.

And so, and I'm not, and, and I know we're scaled down to our version, but don't get attached to having to get paid for your gift.

Right.

When I sit with my team, I go, how can we serve more people? How can we serve? Last year we were able to touch 30 million people. And that's all our question. Now as we serve, our platform gets broader, but how can we serve? Tell me how we can make more money. I'm not interested in that. I'm going to say, how can we serve more? Because if I do the right thing for the right reasons, everything I need will be a byproduct of that. Exactly. So I think we get caught up in, you know, society allows us to have us looking at possessions. And so we begin to measure our joy and our abundance on possessions. Don't pursue the things Pursue the acts of service and everything you need will come. I promise you. You are only going to go as far as you think you're worthy. I can push, you can push, you can have the greatest product, but if you don't feel worthy, you will work hard to sabotage that relationship. You don't know you're doing it. You don't know you're doing it. You think these are the things I need. And you're driving that guy away. You're driving that woman away because your self-worth says they weren't going to stay forever anyway. Or, Self-worth around money. You have a cap that you feel like you're worthy of a million dollars. You will always get to 999,000 and you will stop because your self-worth says it. We are under-celebrated as a society. We look for acknowledgement. They interviewed 100 executives that all made over a quarter of a million dollars and said, Would you like a 5% raise next year? Or would you rather be told, Thank you more often? 100%. 100% said, Keep your money. I'd rather hear thank you. So we're under-celebrated. But first, celebrate you. Be the example. When I was on Oprah, when she said, what do you do? I said, I recognize that I'm the example of how the rest of the world is supposed to treat me. And it's my job to give the world the best example of how I like to be treated. So celebrate yourself, forgive yourself, cut the shackles, and then commit to yourself before you commit to anyone else. That right there, powerful. That right there will begin to fill your cup up. To me, this is the road to true freedom. I have nothing to prove. I have nothing to protect. I have nothing to hide. And I have nothing to defend. That your perception of me after I tell my truth is actually none of my business. My perception of me that I go to bed as whole and complete as I woke up before I check how many likes I have on Facebook that I like me first. and every other like is bonus. Relationships are going to define the quality of your life. When you're on your bed on your last days, you're going to want to know who's going to be around you. Bottom line, you're not going to care about another podcast. You're not going to care about another sponsor. I'm not going to care about another book or the freaking New York Times best. It matters to us now, but the relationships in your life are going to determine the quality of your life. And so mind your relationships. You're going to spend so much time in work, and we're so emotionally attached to our work. And most of the time, people are attached in such a dismal that why would you have that dismal energy around something you're going to spend so many hours in? So I teach you how to shift your energy towards your work so that you no longer look at it as your work. Now it's no longer your jlb. Like everyone in my community, all everyone in my tribe, they no longer say they have a job. They say, I have an investor. And when you look at your job as your investor and you really rename it as your investor.

Yeah.

And it's investing in your breathtaking future. It has the capacity to buy anything you want for your future if you mind your money, right?

Right? Right?

It can buy your freedom and all of a sudden you start treating your investor better and you're more excited about going. Matter of fact, you're great for fun. When in your lifetime you do a needle point move for your family. In my lifetime, I was able to do a needle point move for my son. Like he's a Nichols child. He's one of many Nichols men. But that's a Nichols man who now knows what it feels like to cook in Italy and in Tuscany and in Florence and in Venice and in Rome. That's a Nichols child who knows what it feels like to go surfing on the Gold Coast of Australia. That's a Nichols child who understands what it feels like to stand on the tallest mountain in Africa, like his life. I asked him this morning, I said, Jelani, can you, when you get married and have children, can you stay in California so Mommy can really see her grandchildren? He goes, well, Mom, that's kind of restrictive. It's restrictive to stay in big California. It's like, Mom, it's kind of, because he knows the world.

Yeah.

His paradigm shift has occurred. He won't ever live like another and he'll take everything he's learned and expand the Nichols male child experience. So in my generation, in my lifetime, I was able to change our family experience for him. And so I believe that we have a right to look at our legacy.

Coming up next is the inspiring David Goggins. He shares how to drudge up the past, deal with it and build confidence in the process. He also shares why he finds value in taking the path of most resistance.

We used to live in a $7 a month place when I was growing up.

And this is in Buffalo or is this?

This is in Indiana. So we had a lot of money in Buffalo. And when my mom left, my dad, we went to nothing for a period of time before she got on her feet. And that $7 a month place used to be It was my, it was who I was. I was no one. I was in the sewer. My mom went there. I had nothing. And you always feel like you have nothing. I achieved so much. I was a Navy SEAL. I've gone through Ranger School. I've gone through Delta Force selection training. I've done so much. I run 200 miles, pull-up records, everything. Learned to read and write, became pretty intelligent. And I still was like, man, what is wrong with me? It wasn't until I got real sick, and I talked about in the last chapter of that book, I got real sick, and I was about 38 years old. I'm 43 now. And my life got real quiet. I went from running 205 miles in 39 hours to I couldn't get out of bed. The doctors couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. but once again, it was the best thing that ever happened to me.

Why is that?

In that moment where my whole life changed, I went from a guy who worked out every day, trained every day to a guy who couldn't get out of bed. My life was taken from me. The one thing that kept me going was my training.

Now, you didn't have.

I didn't have anything.

Now you just had to sit alone. Alone and not train.

And that's what changed me. And that's when I realized I hadn't. thought I hadn't taken time to think about what I'd done in my life. You hadn't reflected yet?

I hadn't reflected.

I'd done all these things, but there was no finish line. I still believe that, but you must have time to reflect.

Yeah.

I was just going. I wouldn't even, I finished a race of life and I wouldn't even receive my medal. I go on. You're like, on to the next.

I get in the car and I go.

You wouldn't even take the medal?

Gone. Don't care about it.

I'm not gonna waste an hour sitting.

Around for this ceremony. Most people sit around and that's what they like.

Yeah. They.

They need the ceremony.

If I accomplish something, validation.

I haven't done anything. Let's go.

Let's go.

Let's go. I'm just getting started. I'm just getting started. It's right. When I started figuring out life, that I was leaving so much in the tank. I caught my 40 rule. Yeah, I was leaving so much in the tank. Once I realized, my God, man, I was this dumb, fat kid being bullied, and now I'm 180 pound person lost 106 pounds in less than three months. Learn to read, learn to do this, learn to do that. I was like, I need more. I was fueling my mind with everything. I never took time to say, my God, you came from this hell and you're here. So those insecurities, and this is how I explain it the best way. SEAL training became pretty hard and a lot of guys weren't getting through it. So they designed a SEAL PEP prep program.

Like a boot camp for the boot camp.

That's right.

Yeah.

And it was two months. In my last two years before I retired from the military, they sent me there to train these kids. Wow.

To get ready for 18, 19, 20 years old.

Young kids. So when they get to Navy SEAL training, man, they were physical studs. They were running, swimming. I mean, they were hybrids.

Wow.

But they get the buds, and the same amount of people would quit.

Why is that?

This is why. We were training bigger, stronger, faster quitters.

Hmm.

It's not about, not the mind.

That's right. We weren't diving into the sewer. Everybody's got a story. We don't share it on social media. We share our nice life on social media. We all have a dungeon. I'm just willing to talk about mine.

Yeah.

Most of us aren't willing to talk about it. I'm gonna talk about my dungeon. I wasn't getting into the dungeon of these guys' minds. I wasn't building that so-called mental toughness. Mental toughness isn't something that you sample. It's something that you live in every day. So when something hard would happen to these kids, like in Hell Week, it would draw on something that made them very insecure and they look for comfort. Whenever hardness comes, and you don't know what it is, it may be different for you than it is for me, but you go back to your insecurities. And then when you go back to your insecurities, you then look for comfort within those insecurities. And we all look for that cookie that your mom used to give you when you were sad, when you were sick. We look for our wife or our husband. We look for comfort. It's in those moments you must retrain your mind to think differently. in hell. I wasn't training them to do that.

Why weren't you training?

I wasn't training myself to that. Because at that time, I was doing what I was told. These guys need to meet a standard.

Physical standard.

A physical standard. The physical standard is not what they need to meet. It's a mental standard you must meet in life. So going back to when I was sick, I was hitting the physical standards. I wasn't meeting the mental standard. The mental standard is you must know how far you've come. I wasn't, I had come 8,000 miles from where I started. But if you never know that, you're still in the $7 a month place. When I was sick, I was able to slow it down and reflect back on my entire life. And in that bed, and I thought I was dying, because that story is long, that sick portion of my life is long. I didn't care if I died or lived, because I was for the first time in my life happy and at peace. Because I reflected back on where it started.

You said, well, I have come a long way.

That's right. And no one saved me. It wasn't like someone came down here and guided me through life. When you figure this out on your own, the amount of pride and dignity and self-respect you have, that's why I walk around the streets with a backpack and just like, I don't need anything else.

Yeah.

You figure it out by going inside yourself, by callousing over the victim's mentality. You're always a victim, even if you have everything in life, until you realize what you've achieved. You have to first realize what you've achieved in my mom has accomplished so much in her life since my father, but she hasn't done that one step.

Really?

She doesn't acknowledge it and reflect on it.

She continues to go back to the dungeon of her past life.

And live in that space.

And live in that space versus living the space that she's in now and reflecting back on my God, this is what I've done with my life.

So, have you talked to her about this?

We talk about it all the time. And you have to be willing to go there. You have to be willing to really go to not surface. I don't live on the surface of anything. Surface is what got me where I was at. It got me from 175 pounds to 300 pounds. Telling everybody I'm good. I don't give a damn. I'm good. No, they're hollow words. A lot of us speak in hollow words. I used to speak in hollow words. I don't do anymore. Everything that comes out of my mouth has substance. It's real. And we all have these feelings in our bodies, in our minds, in our souls. I act on mine. A lot of us who are afraid of something, we allow our minds to choose the path of least resistance so we go a different route. I'm afraid of something is telling me you must Do this thing. You must do that.

Yeah.

You have to go that way. And most of us don't understand that mentality. We go left and we wonder why we haven't fulfilled something in our lives. It's because we continue to take the journey that is mapped out. And how I look at it is I talk in life like a lot of us in life want to take the four-lane highway. that has road maps and all this other stuff on it, man. Tells you where to go, gas stations. The next 10 miles up, you're gonna see a McDonald's, a Cracker Barrel.

Yeah.

It's the easy route.

Very few of us want to go to the right side.

That Cracker Barrel's that Midwest life. That's right. That's right.

That's right.

That's from Ohio. It's all about it, man. Indiana. Cracker Barrel everywhere. Dude, that's amazing. Bringing back memories. This is powerful, 'cause I've been telling people this. I've been living that way unknowingly my whole life of, like, whatever the thing is I'm afraid of. When I was in high school, I started doing those things, right? And it was just like, I'm sick and tired of feeling afraid, right? So I need to do the things that scare me the most. That's right. You know, I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. Tiffany's heard me share these stories, but I was afraid to talk to girls when I was a teenager. I was afraid of dancing. I was afraid of, like, singing and playing music in front of people. I was afraid of all these different things. And so I said, I want to do this. I'm going to give myself a challenge every single day until the fear goes away. -That's right. -And I feel like that's what more of us should be doing. I'm hearing that that's what you, how.

You live your life.

-That'S all it is, man. -And it helps me feel so much more confident. When you overcome that fear of saying.

This doesn't have control over me anymore. It's like you can be at such more peace. -It's 100% in your life. -Most of like, for instance, I never thought in my wildest dreams I could be a Navy SEAL. It's until you opened your mind, open-mindedness creates that. We all shut down our mind. Like for instance, when I broke the pull-up record, everybody around me who heard the pull-up record was 4,020 pull-ups. That's the first thing they did. Oh my God.

4,024 hours or was it?

Yeah, it's 4,020 pull-ups in 24 hour period. The first thing I did versus closing my mind to like, oh my God, that's crazy. I went and got a pinning.

How many is that every minute?

Exactly.

Every hour, every second.

Instead of taking life and making it out to be this grandiose thing, start breaking it down. Start breaking it down. And most of us, we live in a box and we don't want to go outside that box at all, ever. Outside that box is all these possibilities of life. But we do is we shackle our mind. We are a prisoner in our own mind that this is all I can do. This is all I'm good at. And we take away the possibilities of you could be this, you could be that, you could be all these things. And I never thought at 300 pounds I could be naked and still. So if my mind was shackled, me and you would never meet. There'd be no book. There'd be no book. There'd be nothing. So what people understand is that they live for themselves, not knowing that you have the power within yourself to change millions of lives by facing life, by facing yourself. And through that, I would die never knowing that I had the power to change millions of lives. It will haunt me the most. People ask me, what haunts you the most? What haunts me most is that if I were to die at 300 pounds, let's say I was 75 years old, I got to heaven and God has a chart like that on everybody's life. God knows all.

Let's say that.

I don't care what you believe in. Doesn't matter. I'm not judging anybody. Let's say my thing is God. You get to heaven, I'm 300 pounds, I sit down, I was a cockroach terminator my whole life, and we're sitting down just like this. You're God and I'm David. and he gives me that chart and he says, look at this. Now, look at this chart. And on the chart, it has all these different things, but my names on it. But these things aren't me. I was gonna change the world. I was gonna. I was gonna set records. I was gonna be a Navy Seal. I was gonna be all these things in the military that I accomplished. You're gonna get the VFW award. You could be honored here, honored there. I'm like, God, I was. This isn't me. Like it says, David Goggins, I was an Ecolab guy, I sprayed for cockroaches and I'm 300 pounds. It says here, I'm 185. It says here, I got a bachelor's and a master's. It says all these things. And God goes, no, that's who you were supposed to be.

Wow.

My biggest fear in life is if there is a final resting place in this world. and there's a final judgment, and you talk to something much bigger than you. I don't want to sit down and have a conversation with someone with something that says, you,'re in heaven. This is what you should have been on earth. And are you really in heaven now? Are you in hell? Thinking about how much I left on the table for fear, for not willing to go over the wall and over the next wall and over the next wall. So in my mind, I believe that and God knows all. At least I believe that. I want God to be up there right now as we're speaking, writing stuff down, saying, My God, he exceeded even my expectations. That's how I live my life. I now know that there is no cap on the human mind. There's no cap. We cap it ourselves.

Wow.

Is there a cap on the human body?

That's right.

Is there one?

I don't believe so. Because one thing I found out was, for several years I gave myself a way out.

When you were 300 pounds?

When I was 300 pounds, when I was all the way up till I was 24 years old, I would climb a mountain, I'd fall back down. I start climbing, I fall back down for the first 24 years of my life. I went to my first hell week, my second hell week, and then my third hell week came in SEAL training. And the CEO, Captain Bowen, looked at me, I'm on crutches, I'm all jacked up. He says, Hey, this is your last time you're going to go through BUD/S. This is it. I had several stress fractures. I had double pneumonia. I was jacked up and he gave me a few months to heal. They said, this is your last time going through. I shouldn't even let you go back through. Wow. I started Navy SEAL training with stress fractures. Stress fractures. Not shin splints.

That's hard to fit.

Stress fractures. Starting the hardest training, arguably the hardest training in the world, with stress fractures. And this is when I started to not put a cap on the body. If the mind is there, every morning I wake up at 3:30 in the morning, 4 o'clock in the morning, go to my dive cage, go in there before anybody saw me, I get duct tape, and I would tape from my forefoot all the way up to the mid of my calf, and I would put two black socks on. And so I ran not using the pivot.

Oh, my gosh.

And I ran my hip flexors. So for the first 45 minutes to an hour, I was in absolute excruciating pain. But what motivated me Through that whole process was the fact that this kid came from that. I'm in the hardest training in the world, in the worst shape of my entire life. What if I can graduate amongst these studs?

Wow.

All these guys around me are studs. They're stallions. They're gladiators in my class. They're all healthy. Most of them, they're not broken like this. They may have some, you know, everybody's sick going through that training. But if I can graduate, it would change everything for me. If I can start the hardest train in the world, broken, and graduate. So my mind fed off of that. You are now, from the weakest man, you are now the hardest man to ever live. If you can do this. If you can do this. Life is one big mind game. And you're playing it with yourself. Is it true? I don't care. It got me through the hardest training, starting out broken. Where most people quit, I just started. And when you take that mindset and you learn to flip that around, that's what made me powerful. And my body followed. and three months later, my stress fractures were healed by running on them.

It's calcifying it, just like.

I never had them since. I'm 43 years old.

Wow.

I ran 7, 000 miles in 2007. Haven't had a stress fracture since. And I'm not saying to do that. I'm just saying that when the mind and the body connect and you didn't. And you don't give yourself a way out. the only way out for me at that time was death. Wow. I'm going to be a Navy SEAL.

Or I'm gonna die.

Or I'm gonna die trying.

Yeah.

Period. And my body said, Roger that. We're gonna get you through this.

So when the mind gives it no way out, no way out, your body says, okay, okay. I believe you now.

I have to heal.

I'm gonna figure this out with you. We're gonna do this. It's gonna the worst part of your life, but you're gonna survive.

We're gonna survive.

Wow.

And as you hear in that 100 mile race I did, I started figuring out more and more and more and more about at the other end of suffering is a life that no one, and I'm not talking about go out there and kill yourself. Don't take these words and flip them and say, oh my God, no. It just be uncomfortable. I call it suffering.

Don't physically injure yourself.

Yes. Not saying that.

And then be out for six months. That's right.

That's no good. That's no good. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying do what I did.

Yeah.

I was in a spot that life forced me. I had a choice. I had a choice to be this guy or the guy that's in front of you. I had choices.

I chose this path. And you're still choosing it. I'm still choosing it.

You can go back to that guy any moment. Because I found out, I found out something with those stress fractures. I found out something. do facing all these things. I found out a whole other world, which is why I walk around with all my stuff in a black backpack.

Wow.

I found it a whole other way. A whole other way of no matter how far you get in life, you have to be able to go back to scratch in your mind at a moment's notice. You can never get so far beyond scratch. what that means is when you accomplish something in life, if you want to go back to scratch and go back to that seven dollar a month place where I once lived and visit that place for a long period of time, if you were here when you went back to scratch, you would now be here. Scratch is what makes you better. Scratch friction, obstacles create growth. There's no friction when you're this far up in the game anymore. you think there is.

That's right.

When you cheat so much, the friction is. It's minor. Because why? I'm sore. I'm gonna get a massage today. I'm hungry. I'm gonna eat today. The refrigerator is always full. So your Comforts are now. So your discomfort is now very minuscule to your discomfort back here in the seven dollar a month place. So you have to go back to the total discomfort. to then raise your level of where you're at now. I'm not saying stay there and stay there. Visit.

Visit it.

And then you raise your level.

Take a day trip.

That's right.

Yeah.

Always take day trips.

Yeah.

Don't stay there.

That's right.

But take a day trip.

Take a day trip.

So when you complete some massive obstacle and challenge, whatever the adversity that you force upon yourself, because these are all curated experiences for yourself, right? You're scratching constantly. What happens now? Since this was five years ago, you would just leave. You want to take the medal, you would just go on to the next.

What happens now?

Do you take, you know, a day to reflect, a moment, 10 minutes? Like, how does the process work? And then how do you get back to visiting the seven dollar, you know, place you lived in?

Now, I don't have to go back and visit it. I don't have to think about it. It lives. me now. Every day of my damn life, that feeling that I had to go back and think about, I found a way to just have it.

How did you?

It's constantly there. I have a self-talk. I have a self-talk. It's called my cookie jar. It's a constant reminder of David Guzik. Every day of my life, I believe in quiet. There's no growth outside of quiet. The world is too noisy. Your mind needs quiet for you to find who you are. People ask, what's my purpose? Why am I here? You're not gonna find it nowadays unless you lock yourself in a quiet room in your mind and find it. It's too noisy. For me, I could be in a busy street in New York City, horns honking, and I'm walking around with like nothing. It's me and myself in a quiet spot. and when you are constantly reflecting on who you are, where you've been, the journey you've gone through, the journey you can continue going through, the feeling is always there. You don't allow the world to pull you so fast that you forget. You don't allow yourself to pull you so fast that you forget. It's not about staying in that moment. It's about you want to get to the point where that feeling follows you like breathing. It becomes a part of your life, part of your DNA. But it's made like these calluses on my hands right now. They're made. Yeah, they are now on my brain. This is now a part of me. It's a daily process, a part of me. And how I go back to a seven dollar a month place all the time is now I go out and I dig fire line. I'm a wildland firefighter. I don't need to do it. I'm a 43 year old man. I work with 27 year old kids.

Yeah.

I'm a rookie. Every day I'm a rookie. It feels like.

And why do you do it?

That's why I do it, man. There's a story I'm gonna tell you about why I do it. So I make, I have a good living now for me, where I'm at in my life. I was out on a fire in Colorado, and we were digging fire line on this Like 50% like it was like on the side of a dad gone mountain.

Yeah.

And we're trying to keep the fire from moving and we're digging this fire line 14 inches or my fault 18 inches wide, three miles long, 12 of us digging. And it is the hardest work. You make $12 an hour. Okay? Nothing. You set up your shop. Like when you're done digging, you just pretty much lay down, you go to sleep and you get up and you dick some more.

Really?

This happens for two weeks long.

What are you digging?

It's like a hole, you're digging a line. So you're trying to get down to a mineral source. So you're trying to get down to the earth. So that if that fire is moving, it can't burn dirt. Really? So you're moving fuels. Yes, got it. You know, so not only are you digging, you're cutting down trees. It's hard work.

But the moral story is, I'm 43.

Don't need to do it at all. This is why I do it. You're making money.

I'm making money.

I have a good life. I don't need to do it. Everybody asked me why I do it. This is why. This 21 year old kid was out there and he wanted a pair of running shoes. That's all he wanted, a pair of running shoes. 60, 70, 100 bucks to whatever, you know, easy for us.

Yeah.

He looked up at the mountain that we had been on for days digging this fire line. and he said, that'll take me five or six hours of work to buy those shoes. So I'm not gonna buy them. It's the perspective of life, that perspective of life right there, of that is the value that we lose when things start to come so easy in life. It's the perspective that 21 year old have. He looked about that mountain and thought he looked at his hands, he looked at the, at the amount of hours of pulling that Pulaski, that tool, and raking that ground and then cutting those trees and moving them. And that hours of work, he looked at his feet and said, these old shoes would do. It's that perspective in life that we lose. And that's that story that most people may not mean anything. It's that story I always want to have in my life. You cannot lose perspective. of where you've come in life.

In this next session, Rachel Rogers discusses the importance of trust and why it is the building blocks of a thriving and collaborative community. And we also dive into the importance of sharing and how it can be done effectively and thoughtfully.

For women, we have shame if we don't have enough money, but we also have shame if we have, quote unquote, too much.

Really?

Yes.

Why?

Because it's like, you know, oh, I have more than them and let me hide it because people are gonna think I'm showing off. Or they have imposter syndrome, right? Am I worthy of having this much money? I've experienced that myself at different times, right? Like, you've worked hard for it, but you think that you don't deserve it for some reason. And I think that we just have, I think society was sort of designed so that we wouldn't talk about money.

Why?

Because I think it's designed so that we have a few people at the top and a lot of people at the bottom. And so now, you know, then of course the middle class emerged. and we've gone through different things as a middle class, as a collective, right? But I think that's part of the reason why it's like, don't tell, you know, employers saying, don't tell your coworkers how much you're making because I'm paying you more than I'm paying this one and I don't want y'all to know, right? So it's like, it comes from those places, but it's reinforced everywhere, you know? We don't know and we're scared to make assumptions and we're sort of guessing and we're like, well, if I put mine out there, I might be embarrassed, because I discovered that I'm actually either making too much related to my peers or too little. And I think it goes back to belonging. We just want to belong to a community, to a group. You know what I mean? And so because of that, it's like we don't want to do anything that's going to make us not belong. It's such an inherent human need to belong. And so I think that we don't talk about money because we think it's going to affect our ability to belong, whether it means we're too broke or we have too much. you know, or somewhere in the middle. In terms of the conversations I'm having, I'm telling people like, if I get a speaking gig, here's how much they paid me, right? And I asked some more and they gave it to me. So make sure you do that too, right? Or I negotiated for higher pay, or I negotiated for profit sharing, or I asked for more vacation days, right? We need to share our money earning strategies with each other, especially with, you know, women and people of color, right? putting more money, like that's what allyship is in my opinion, is putting money in the pockets of the groups who need them, right? And who, you know, we have this huge wealth chasm in this country. So like how can we start to change that? And so that's why I share how much I got paid for a book deal, like all these things you're not supposed to share. I'm like, I'm gonna tell y'all. This is how much I got, this is how I got it, you know? And I think it's important. So I think sharing money making strategies is very important. I also think one of the things that has been so valuable to me with some of my peers, especially, I will say my white guy peers in particular have showed me, like they have taught me things about like, you know, investing strategies or, you know, like, oh, here's a strategy that I'm doing with my money, or I'm investing in real estate, or I'm doing these different things. Like, what are people doing with money once you have some, right? Like once you have a little bit more than you need to live off of, what do you do with the excess? and sharing those things, right? Sharing that information, because it's usually hidden. And it's like, there's a small group of people that know, and you don't know until you have peers who have done it, and then you find out. We have to be, I think if we're willing to be transparent, people will be transparent with us. That's what I found in the conversations that I've had. And that's how I've learned a lot about money, is by having conversations. You know, like the friend that I was spending time with last night, she's an investor and a financial advisor. And so I was asking her, like, okay, well what are you investing in and how are you thinking about it and what is an investment thesis? Like, I don't even know what that means, right? Like, you know, we were having conversations and she was teaching me all of this stuff because I was willing to tell her like, okay, here's how much money I wanna invest, but I don't know where best to put it, you know, that kind of thing. So I think you just gotta be willing to put yourself out there first. And I find that people want to talk about it. So when I bring it up and I start sharing, they immediately start sharing because it's like they were like waiting for an opportunity to talk about this.

Yes.

Is what I find. So I think we just got to start doing it and create more transparency around it. There's more than enough money to go around. I think there's more than enough opportunity to go around.

Yes.

And I choose to like be friendly with and and support my my competitors, quote unquote, and vice versa. And that just means that we all get better at what we're doing. We all can serve our clients better.

Right.

We all can make more money. There are times where I'm too trusting and someone, you know, I don't know. I guess you could, for lack of a better phrase, steals from me, right? Or takes an opportunity or says one thing but does another behind my back or whatever. And that's going to happen, too. But I'm like, but I don't want to be a person who's closed. So I'm just going to I just got to be me and it is what it is, right? Like there's going to be some occupational hazards when you're being transparent. Absolutely. And you just got to navigate that as best you can. But I just choose to be who I want to be in the world instead of who I feel like I need to protect myself, you know? To me, it lets me know that I'm not, it's like I'm not made money my master, right? Like it's very important, but it is a tool.

That's good.

You know what I mean? And I'm not beholden to it and I won't trade anything for it. There is plenty of things that I will not do and I don't care how much you pay me, you know? So I think that it's good to remember that and so when you're turning down opportunities, it's just an example of like, okay, I'm doing things right. It can be challenging. I think that's why a lot of times we're like, well, I'm just gonna to doing it myself. And it's like, you can, but it's gonna keep you small.

Yeah.

You have to say yes to those challenges and learn that new skill.

Right.

And I think leadership skills are so valuable and for everybody. So, yeah, I had to learn that. And it took me a couple of years to, like, figure out how to have stronger boundaries, figure out how to stop letting people waste my time, figure out how to charge for what I, what my All of those things, those were lessons that I was learning in that time. My desk was like right in the front door. So like, it's like the door is here, my desk is right here. My husband would like be coming in and out. He's a stay at home dad at the time, taking care of the kids. Um, and he just ran a tight ship with our household. It was amazing. Like I had so much support in that way. Um, but he would like, every time he came through the door, wanted to talk to me. I got a focus. Yes, exactly. Was like, I didn't know how to create boundaries around my work um, and I did eventually learn it. I started getting up at 4 a.m. because I was like, I'd get up at six and these kids would, it's like they could tell, like they had a radar the moment I woke up. So then I would get up at six, like I would be like, okay, I'm going to beat them. I'm going to get up at 5:30. Nope, still get up with me. Five, nope. 4:30, nope. 4 a.m. and they stayed in their beds. So I was like, fine, I'm getting.

Up at 4 a.m. every day then. Here we have Chris Hogan, who talks about chapters of his life when he felt most isolated and how dangerous it was. He discusses how he found support systems and leveraged them to confront his biggest fears. I've been there.

I don't know about you, but I made some mistakes.

Yeah.

Okay.

And, you know, a mistake that you make one or two times, you can call it a mistake. But when you keep doing it over and over, it's not a mistake anymore. It's called a choice.

Yeah.

So for me, I'm very, I'm a man of faith, so obviously I'm rooted there, but I got good people around me. I got good friends, people that have known me since my childhood, people that know me for who I am. So I'm not an author and speaker with these people. I'm just Chris. And so those people keep me rooted, right? Mama Hogan is no joke either, okay? She'll keep me rooted. And so I think it's really important to understand what am I trying to accomplish? Like, I don't want notoriety, and I don't want to be famous. I want to be known that I help people think bigger, right? And so, staying rooted in that, it helps me to be very, very clear on what I'm doing. People will come up and tell me, oh, Chris, you changed my life financially. And I go, oh, whoa, pump the brakes. I didn't change anything. I gave you some information. You did the changing. And so I think it's really important as, as, as we help people that we stay aware of who's doing what and our role. How rooted does that keep you? You know, so, you know, John Wooden's got a quote, and he's it says, you know, be careful of Fame, because Fame is man-made and if man giveth, man can take it away. Absolutely. You know, and so being aware of that, I think, is really, really important. What's the heart behind what I'm trying to do? And so, you know, if I travel and I go speak to 10,000 people, if I get one person whose eyes light up and they start thinking differently, then I've done my mission.

Yeah.

Biggest challenge was definitely the diagnosis of my youngest son, case. At age two, they diagnosed him with this rare genetic disorder that could kill him. It could take away his speech, take away the ability to walk, ability to eat, and eventually end up on a feeding tube. It was the scariest moment of my life, sitting in that doctor's office holding that two-year-old boy listening to that. And went to some dark places over a few years. Well, you know what us men do when we have challenges. We don't We're not smart as smart as women. Women go share.

Yeah, we don't share.

Men don't share. We isolate. And then we internalize. And then we stuff.

Right?

And so you can imagine working through something like that. Isolate.

Carry.

It messes with you.

It does.

It messes with you.

It does.

And.

That was the biggest challenge I've walked through in the last 15 years. I didn't do what I should have done. Isn't it amazing how hindsight's 2020? I wish I would have sought out those close friends and they would check on me. And what would I say? I'm good, I'm fine, I'm all right, and I wouldn't. And so that was a learning lesson for me that isolating is dangerous. That it's good to reach out and get help. It's good to have people you can be real with. And I came to this realization, we need four people in our lives. You need a mentor, that's somebody that's having some success and can guide you. You need a coach who will push you, right? You and I know word coach means something to us, right? Because they will get on you, they will drive you because what's the goal to try to help you to get better? But you need two more. You need a cheerleader. You need somebody that believes in you. They're not worried about what you achieve. They believe in you and that's important to have. And then you need a friend. You need somebody you can be real with that you can just say what's on your head. They're not holding it against you. You can be honest. So if you get a mentor, a coach, cheerleader and a friend in your side, that's awesome. But I want to encourage people to do this. Not only find those four, you need to be one of those four for someone else. And when you do that, now what it does is it takes the focus off of you. You know, one of the things you and I have in common is I firmly believe that if you've ever walked through a mess in your life, that it qualifies you to be a messenger. It does. You know, when you've gone through some stuff, you learn. That's right. And if you're willing enough to be transparent to share it, and you're not worried about people's opinions, the impact you can have on someone else to give them the courage to try or to reach out and talk, that's a big deal, man. This life is hard. It's not meant to be done alone. My coaches, man, I've got a lot. I've got some people with walking with me spiritually. I've got people that are walking me from a business perspective. I'm constantly reaching out to learn. I'm like a sponge all the time. big cheerleader. Mama Hogan.

Yeah.

I mean, that's my number one fan right there. She's behind me. I've got all kinds of family, uncles and everybody. They're just for me. Friends, I got amazing friends. Childhood friends, people at the office, people that care about me as an individual, not just what I do. They know me. Not the book. No, no, no. They'll call me out. Yeah, yeah. You know, they'll call me out. I got a call from a buddy the other day. He goes, dude, how's the road? He goes, you,'re keeping your head clear, you stay in focus. And he said, Don't believe the hype.

That's right.

And so what he's telling me is, is, hey, keep helping people, keep your heart in the right place, you know? And so it's good to have those accountability people to check in with you.

Absolutely.

And it just keeps your heart in the right place. My biggest fear is, Am I doing everything that I could be doing?

Right?

I've got three boys. They're hilarious. 14, 13, and 11. And these boys, birthdays are my legacy. I grew up with a single mom, so my dad wasn't around. He came around with birthdays and holidays or whatever, but he wasn't there. So when I had started getting ready to have kids, my goal was to try to be the dad that I wish I would have had. And so that puts some weight on you, right? But I was hanging out with my boys, and we were somewhere, and I saw a poster of a little boy at a bus stop with a duffel bag, right? and he was just sitting at a bus stop, and I can't even remember what was under it. But I saw that little boy, and I thought of me, right? Like, waiting. And then I realized, man, oh, man, in my own life, like, you know, somebody somewhere is waiting on me to become what I was destined to be. And so if they're waiting on me to become who I was supposed to be to impact their life, how long am I gonna make them wait, you know? And so what that means is, is that I need to do everything I'm capable of doing and some things some people say I can't do, just to be able to help that person somewhere that's waiting to hear an encouraging word or something to impact their life. So that's something that drives me every day. I've had people tell me I couldn't write a book. You know, my first book came out 2016, Retire Inspired. I told a good buddy of mine, I told him I was working on a book. He goes, Man, you can't write a book. Really?

Yeah.

Church, right? I wanted to punch him in the eye. You can't hit people in church. I got a feeling that's a sin, right? Somewhere. But then later on, when I finished the book and at the book signing in town, he was one of the people there. And I realized something. What initially he said was that I can't write a book. What he was saying was, it's not something he's ever thought about doing, and it's not something that he could do. It's his belief. That was him.

Right?

And so for me, that was a grow up moment. He wasn't putting a limitation on me, he was speaking his own limitation. Wow.

Right?

And so I just remember that and I go, oh no, limitations. And so that's where I said, I'll accept compliments from anyone, but I ain't accepting limitations from nobody.

Right?

And that's anywhere in my life. You don't get to put a limit on me. That's what I love about, you know, Dr. Martin Luther King. The fact that he had the courage to have a dream, But the courage to share it, you know, that's something I want us all to have that mindset of. Stop thinking about what people say you can't do. You know, I mean, opinions are like yesterday's, everybody's got them. What are you deciding in your heart to go do? Now start to go do that. The phase I'm at right now is obviously continued growth, right? Because with inflation, costs are going to go up. So you can't hide money in a cookie jar and just put it in the ground. It's got to grow. So with me, I'm always looking, but I'm understanding ending risk more. So for me, what I'm doing is I'm trying to be smart with what I do, but I need to be crystal clear on what not to do, meaning I don't want to take unnecessary risks, and I'm crystal clear on what it is I'm doing, meaning the longer range view. Louis, what I started doing years ago was I started making two-year decisions. I wanted to make a decision today that I look back on in two years, and I'm glad that I made it. Now imagine some of those decisions. Oh, gosh. Well, I mean, staying allergic to I mean, I have people come to me all the time with business opportunities. They're like, Hogan, listen, if you put in this amount, we're going to do boom, boom, boom, boom, you know, and in looking at that, I have to be smart enough to say, no, most people believe they inherited it all, right? You see somebody with money, you think, oh, mom or dad handed it to them. The truth is 79% of the millionaires that I talk to, first generation wealth builders, they didn't come from anything. These are people that focused and built money over time. Next myth, well, if you're a millionaire, you make a high paying job, right? You got big income. Yeah, yeah.

Nope.

A third of the millionaires that we talked to never made six figures in a single working year.

Really?

Think about that for a second. Dual income never made six figures. So that blows that myth out of the water. A third of the millionaires that we talked to. Wow.

Right?

Now you think about six figures nowadays, it's more prevalent than it's ever been. So what happens is people tend to think that income is so important. And I'll tell you, no, it's not. Because I was one of those people. I remember I was making about 30 grand, and I thought, all right, when I get serious, one year out of grad school, making 30, 40 grand, I said, all right, when I make this amount, I'll start to get serious about my money. Well, you know that path, right? Well, when I make this amount, the next thing you know, lifestyle grows, and you never end up taking control. But these are regular, everyday people that took control and were focused. It was amazing. So let me tell you this. Top three positions of the 10,000 millionaires we studied. Number one was engineer, which doesn't surprise you, right? They're good at planning.

Yeah.

Accountants. Organized. Yeah, accountants, same thing. They were number two.

They're good at counting stuff.

Number three was teachers. Teachers. They're not making that much. Exactly. And you think they're undervalued, underpaid. How are teachers doing this? Well, if you think about what it is, wealth building is a long term view, right? Not a quick hit. And so these get rich quick schemes that we see on TV at late night, they get me riled up because they're preying on people. But these people were people that built wealth over time, investing in their 401k, their 403Bs. So anyway, the goal of this book is to let people know their American dream's not dead. It's alive and it's well and it's available to people. We just have to take action. Absolutely. 97% of the millionaires that we studied feel that they control their own destiny. Now think about that for a minute, because we have a victim mentality issue in America today, where we want to blame somebody for us not achieving something or getting in our way. So these millionaires think differently. 94% of them live on less than they make. So that means if they're making 100,000, they're living on 70 or 80, right?

You can't build wealth if you live on more than you make.

That's exactly right. And that's where the credit cards people start extending themselves and using credit cards. But 73% of these millionaires never carried a dime of credit card debt.

They never carry debt.

Debt.

Yeah.

Right.

I use a card.

Pay it off every month. Pay it off. And so the mindset, and I love to give people an economics and a PhD in economics. Interest that you pay is a penalty, right? If I use someone else's money, they charge me. Yes.

Right.

That's a penalty. Interest that I earn on my investments is a reward. Yes.

Right.

So why choose to penalize don't use debt, get yourself out of debt and invest and grow your money to reward yourself.

And in this final section, Dr. Ivan Joseph reminds us of how great we really are and why you should have a personal brag sheet. I thought this was cool. He shares how to develop a personal action plan and all the necessary steps needed to take it to the finish line.

First thing I always say is you got to take yourself back to any time in your past career or even current career. and remind yourself of all the things that you're good at.

All the economics.

Celebrate your wins. Amen.

Right.

These is what, man, I'm a tall, handsome, brown man. You know, I'm really good in math. I look good in white dress shirts. Whatever those things are, remember, Ivan, you were the first person to get your PhD before the age of 30. Whatever those things are, and it's not enough just to tell yourself, you got to write it down. When I took that job as an AD, even when as a job as a vice he's president. I, you know, self-doubt comes in.

There's enough people tell, I've never done this before.

Why should I be in this position? He only got the job because he's black. You only got the job because you're a woman. Whatever it is, there's all people that are going to be coming at you. And if you're not careful, you'll start to take on those thoughts, and then those thoughts will influence your belief system, and that belief system will then influence your actions, and you'll start messing up. And it's this self-fulfilling prophecy, so. stop that thought, put something down on paper. You'll hear me speak about a self-confidence letter, a letter you write to yourself. There, Louis, congratulations on building your business. You set a goal and you accomplished it. I was in a lit, whatever it is, right? And it's your personal brag sheet to yourself. When I became an AD, I had to read that probably, I kid you not, two weeks straight. There's a researcher by the name of Lubormoski, Sonia Lubormoski. and she speaks about taking a gratitude, taking a letter and writing it to one of your friends, a gratitude letter to your friends, telling them of all the things you appreciate in them and how that builds your happiness and your optimism and your confidence, not just in the moment, but even when they come back 30 days later, it's even higher than in the moment. And so those are the things you need to think about is, okay, You know, sometimes we think about just a letter to ourselves, but if you can share that happiness and genuine praise with others, it also boosts your own happiness and optimism.

Why is that?

What they say, the science of it says it releases dopamine, right? And when dopamine comes in your, it's the, I'll say the endorphin, the happiness chemical. And the more dopamine in there, the better you feel. Unfortunately, as you get older, dopamine receptors, dopamine, gets down in your body.

Really?

Yes.

Just naturally or artificially?

Naturally.

Should you actively build it?

Yeah.

You always wonder why grumpy old man. What is this? I'm getting to be the grumpy old man. I got to get my dopamine up. The science of, and not only just from feeling good and happiness, but the science also then links that to performance. And don't quote me on the numbers, but it's related to your creativity output, right? I think the same Luber-Moskowitz, the same study she did, I think you're 19% more productive. Analytic problem solving, you're 29% quicker to solve complex problems. And here's the big one.

When you're what?

When you're happier, when you express gratitude, when you use positive statements of affirmation to yourself. The big one, you increase your revenue by 36% if you use three statements of happiness personal affirmations.

No way.

Sonia Lubomirski, 2006, Harvard study. What might be a lie to me may not be a lie to you. I'll tell you a story. I had a guy, his name was Kyle, who made my soccer team, and he believed that he was the greatest guy. I'm like, I'm gonna make this team. That guy showed up and he had like a foot like a donkey, right? And I remember seeing him come onto my team. I had just taken over this team at Ryerson. I was like, oh, he's a black guy from Jamaica. He's gonna so fast and so happy, I was never so disappointed.

Wow. Right?

And that guy was going to be an equipment manager at best. Yeah, at best. Fast forward four or five years, this guy became the captain of my team, an all Canadian, and the starter on my first ever team that went to the national championships. He had no business believing that he was good enough to make this team. I mean, I coached at this championship, that world championship, Olympic World Cup qualified. Like, So maybe I'm not the one to judge what is a lie. But I will tell you, if you think you're gonna fly, I'm gonna be a bajillion dollars, I'm gonna be a million dollars, I will tell you it's not the statement that really sets you up. It's the fact that people then start putting into their psychological mindset steps to move them in that direction. Whatever those little steps are, they stop feeling helpless. and unable to affect their own destiny and start moving in the right direction. And that's where the impact happens. There's two factors I've always seen that derail a young athlete or a young professional's career. Number one is their self-doubt, right? Their inability to believe in themselves. And interestingly enough, number two is the people that they have surrounded themselves with that become distractions that take them away. from their goals over and over and over again. They fall into the wrong crowd, they get with the wrong partner, they-- the wrong advice.

Yes.

Here's where I always believe. And every time I have not done this, I have faltered. We all have that little tiny voice in our head. Whenever I don't listen to that little tiny voice in my head, I falter. And to me, that tiny little voice is, you know, I don't know. I'm gonna now use some voodoo language. You know, you got your head voice and you got your heart voice. And it's hard to, whenever I make a decision purely logically, I always am bitter. If I buy the cheap car instead of the one I want, if I do the practical decision instead of the emotional one, I'm always bitter. And then you got this little heart that's sitting there, that little self-conscious piece that's telling you when you know when you're going south. I don't know if it's your crap detector or your holy smoke detector. There's no science behind this, but anytime I don't listen to that voice, I, I, when I fall off my values and my principles, I go south. And, and, and it's cost me money, it's cost me friendships, it's cost me opportunities. When you start asking yourself these questions, what's the most important decision you made in work? What's the most important decision you've made in your family? What's the most important decision you did for yourself?

Right?

What's the most important decision you make when taking on a conflict? Those That's the exercise I do. It could help your values. To help me find my North Stars.

Interesting.

And whenever those things are in alignment, you'll hear Daniel Pink talks about this, transcendent purpose. Whenever those things are in alignment, happiness, confidence, success, performance goes up. When they're not, sick days go up, disease goes up, conflict arises.

Poor choices, yeah.

Right, and so those are the things you need to think about. Now that's the exercise I use. but I find it very, very helpful. Everybody's dreams are lies because they don't exist, right? Everybody's dreams are, they're just making that up. That's why they're dreams. And so the difference, though, between people who are successful or not is how they choose to pursue those dreams. So let's just say I had a dream to become an Olympian. I always, in my mind, picture that dream on the top of a staircase. And I have these series of steps that go down. And every step represents a quantifiable smart goal that I'm gonna put on there. Right, so let's say I've got a dream.

Speaking my language, 'cause I would frame my dreams and goals.

100%. So I'm gonna get out of bed every day and exercise for 30 minutes. I'm gonna get out of bed.

Step one.

Step one.

Exactly. What's step two? I'm going to get out of bed every day, right? And I'm going to find myself a coach that is from the very... I am going to... I love what you did when you went to New York City. Same thing Bruce Jenner did. When he decided he wanted to go to the Olympics, he found out where the best people were that were training for the decathlon. He went to San Diego and he started training with them. Step number three, I'm going to find the best person in my field and I'm going to be relentless and pursue them. and train with them. To say, Stop. Don't let that come in. That's where you use the power of affirmations. Stop. We talk in psychology about this thing called centering. Physical actions that you'll see athletes do.

Like a trigger, like some like a snap of a rubber band.

Stop the negative stop. Slap in the face, whatever it is, right?

Yeah.

Replace deep breath in. You got this.

Yeah. Right?

Whatever that is. Whatever it is, when, because you're gonna be on your step, your first step. I didn't get up today. You start again.

Tomorrow.

Make it automatic and recognize that it's a skill. Get your three. You got this. I work harder than anybody. Nobody outworks me. I can learn everything. Whatever it is, get it ready and then figure out what your trigger is gonna be. Don't mix it all up. Get your trigger. A friend of mine was when he was trying to quit smoking. He put it all, his hands was always in there because he always jingled coins. Another person, always their keychain. Shake, shake. And then it becomes automatic. It becomes automatic and that's where you want it to be. I got this. I got, you can't beat me cigarettes. No, no, no, not today, whatever that might be. But recognize how important it is to ladder up that step because if you put that big dream out there, it becomes so overwhelming. Where am I gonna start? Oh my gosh, the tiniest step is the one that moves us towards our goal. The tiniest step. Thank you so much for listening.

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 show with all the important links. And also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on.

Apple Podcasts as well.

I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.