REPROGRAM Your Mind To DESTROY LAZINESS & PROCRASTINATION Today! | Rory Vaden

The human brain is not designed for success. The human brain is designed for survival. Survival is about conserving energy. Success is the opposite. Success is about expending energy, doing things that are uncomfortable. If you do this, if you struggle with procrastination, if you've made bad choices, it doesn't mean you're doomed for failure. It actually means I think you gotta have a dream. The school of greatness.

Really? Yeah.

Please welcome Lewis House.

We are talking about the science of success and how to really achieve anything that you can imagine in your life. Your biggest goals, your biggest dreams. But a lot of people have dreams. They have big goals, but most people never accomplish them. Why is that so?

The number one enemy, I think, that is working against people that they don't even realize is procrastination.

Okay, why do we procrastinate?

So? There's a number of reasons. There's a number of reasons why we procrastinate. The number one reason, according to psychologists, why we procrastinate, procrastinate is because of self criticism, really. It's thinking that I won't be good enough, that I'm not, you know, I'm not smart enough, I'm not capable, so why should I even bother? Like, this isn't going to work out for me. And there's a lot of extraordinary pressure with that. But there's three types of procrastination that, and most of us are aware only of the first type. So classic procrastination is consciously delaying what we know we should be doing. Right? So I have some bills on the counter. I know I should pay them, but I'm tired and I'm exhausted, right? So rather than paying the bills, I'm going to like Netflix and chill and like not pay my bills.

So that's the first type of procrastination.

Which is classic procrastination.

Classic procrastination, yeah.

The second one is actually one I identified in my own life back when we were doing the research for, for this. Which is funny because, you know, when Take the Stairs came out, suddenly I'm supposed to be like one of the world's experts or whatever on procrastination. And here I struggle with procrastination in my own life. So rather than calling myself a procrastinator, I invented this new term, which I really love because not only does it more aptly describe what I struggle with, it also sounds very like academic and sophisticated. And so the term that we coined is quite creative avoidance.

Okay.

And creative avoidance is different. And this is Something that people do as an art form. Creative avoidance is subconsciously creating things for yourself to do so that you can do those things as a means of feeling productive. But really it's a giant scheme for avoiding doing the things you know you should be doing, even when you don't feel like doing them.

For example, for you, what is a creative avoidance?

I mean, email is probably the. Is, is, is the, the ultimate perpet of creative avoidance, right? Is this like, I know I need.

To do this other thing. I know I need to work on my book. I know I need to create this process for my business sales calls.

You've got to deal with a negative customer service issue. You have to confront an underperforming employee. I mean, there's, I know I got.

To go to the dentist and clean my teeth. The things that you know you need to do, but you want to avoid because it's painful or it's frustrating or it's going to take energy and time.

Energy. Yeah. And we blow it out and we make it way worse in our mind than it actually is. But, you know, you can. It's wild how we do this. And this is, this is where some of the neuroscience comes in. Because, you know, your, your brain is actually working against you here in that if you look at a brain like under brain scan, the brain loves to complete things. There's a hit of dopamine, which is the chemical, you know, that's released into your body which makes you feel pleasure when you complete things. So when you check things off, like you delete an email or you, by the way, you know, this is, you struggle with this. If you've ever completed something that wasn't on your to do list, and then you add it to the to do list just so you can cross it off. Why? Because the brain releases and says, oh, I'm, I feel good, I'm accomplishing things. But really what we're doing is we're allowing ourselves to engage in the, in the trivial. In the absence of clear intention. We become strangely loyal and addicted to meaningly acts of trivia because the brain is rewarding that behavior. People are literally addicted to email or cleaning out their text or their DMs or social media. They're addicted to it the way you would be addicted to a substance. You're tied to this chemical reaction. But ultra performers, the people we study, these people, we profile, these top 1 percenters, they do things differently and they have realized that success and greatness is not related to the volume of tasks that you complete. But simply the significance of them. And ultra performers are able to get themselves to do the things they know they should be doing, even when they don't feel.

How do they get themselves to do that?

So there's seven. Seven things. And we can, we can rip through them. But you know, the metaphor here is take the stairs. Okay, so, so, you know, that's the title of the book comes from take the stairs, which is a metaphor for. We just, we live in an escalator mentality world. It's easier to gravitate towards the path of least resistance, towards what is convenient, towards what is comfortable. This is an escalator. And yet the truth of success in any endeavor, any industry, like when you, all the people that you've interviewed here, it's always the same story. It's that they were able to get themselves to do things they know they should be doing, even when they don't feel like doing them. That is take the stairs. So what we're trying to do is take the stairs. It's discipline. Discipline is the antidote to procrastination. And there are, there's seven key strategies that, you know, we can talk through, but, but understanding that the enemy is procrastination and these three types, which we haven't covered the third one yet. But procrastination is always there. And in fact. So the third type of procrastination is called priority dilution. This is fascinating to study. Priority dilution is the chronic overachievers form of procrastination. What's different about it is unlike the first two, so classic procrastination and creative avoidance. Priority dilution is not about being lazy or disengaged or distracted. But it is the same net result of the first two, which is that you, you leave the office or you end your day with your most significant priorities incomplete, not because you're lazy, but because you allowed your attention to shift to less significant but perhaps more urgent tasks. Charles Hummel once wrote an essay called the Tyranny of the Urgent. I believe it was in 1969. And he's talking about how we are victims to the tyranny of. Of the urgent. And the more successful you become, the more you become a leader, the higher you accelerate in an organization, your enterprise grows. As an entrepreneur, you've got more and more people vying for your attention. The bigger your personal brand grows, you've got more and more opportunities, more distractions, more things coming at you. And your priorities, if left unchecked, naturally dilute.

Right. So you got it. Yeah. Okay, so priority dilution.

So that's the third type of procrastination. So, you know, the question is, all right, if procrastination is problem, what's the solution?

Right.

And I really believe the solution can be boiled down to one word, and it's a word that nobody likes. It's discipline. And it's not hard work.

There's.

There's a. There's a difference. There's a distinction. Discipline is doing the things you know you should be doing, even when you don't feel like doing them. If you can develop the ability to do that, then you literally have unlocked the ability to do anything in life, which unlocks the ability to achieve virtually anything.

Yeah. And I think Greg McKeown was talking about, you know, the effortless pursuit of accomplishing. Like, how can we. What's the. There's, like, the path of resistance that will get you there. But when you know you need to take the hard path, how can you make it feel effortless? How can you play games with yourself when you got to do chores? How can you sing a song when you're mopping the floor? Whatever it is, how can you make it feel effortless? So it's not like this is exhausting and draining and I got to do this in order to get somewhere in 10 years. It's, how can I reframe my mind around the activity to support me in having energy in the thing I don't want to do, not be drained by the thing that I don't want to do.

Yes. So that is the first principle, actually. It's called the paradox principle of sacrifice. So now you mentioned Greg McEwen. His essentialism was his big breakout book, and the whole message of that book is the disciplined pursuit of less.

Really? Not trying to do everything.

No. Yeah, just the pursuit of less. That's what essentialism. That's how he describes it.

The discipline being disciplined by focusing on.

Less things, on less things that are more significant. Right.

So.

But you bring up the conversation of going, okay, well, you know, people here take the stairs, and it's like, well, I don't want to take the stairs. You know, it's like, I don't want the hard work, and you have to reframe it. So here's the paradox principle. In fact, I'm going to tell you a story. So in Colorado, where I grew up, we are world famous for the Rocky Mountains.

Yes.

Okay. So to the western part of the state, we have the great Rocky Mountains. What a lot of people don't realize about Colorado is that as a state, it's divided almost exactly in half. And to the eastern part of the state are the great Kansas plains. So it's really flat. Because of that unique topographical landscape, Colorado is one of the only places in the world that has both buffalo and cows in very close proximity to each other. Have I ever told you this? I don't think I've ever shared this with you. Okay, so what happens? There's a fascinating lesson to learn about greatness and achievement and success from studying the way that these two creatures respond to storms. So when a storm comes, storms almost always start in the west, and they, like, brew in the west, and then they roll out towards the east. And what cows do is very natural. Cows can sense that a storm is coming from this direction, and so a cow will turn east to run away from the storm. Now, the only problem with that is if it's gonna catch up, catches up with them. Right. So the storm catches them, and without knowing any better, the cows continue to try to outrun the storm, and they actually run with the storm, and they.

Get trapped by the fence, and then they're stuck there.

They're making it worse because they're trying to outrun the storm, which is stupid. But here's the thing. Humans do the exact same thing all the time. We are constantly trying to avoid these inevitable challenges that come along with the difficult circumstances that our very own choices have led us to be in. I can speak from personal experience here. There was a time in my life where I was 45 pounds overweight. People who are unhealthy are always making rationalizations for why it doesn't matter. Nothing works. I've already tried it. Not that big of a deal. It's fine. I've also been. There was a time in my life where I was over $50,000 in personal debt. People who are in debt constantly trying to find ways around paying their bills and, you know, paying off the minimums.

And spending money on other things.

Yeah, they keep spending. People who are struggling in their marriage are often avoiding the difficult but meaningful conversations that need to be had if there's any hope of reconciling that relationship. And the key insight that the ultra performers have had that most of us have not is ultra performers have realized problems that are procrastinated on are only amplified. Problems procrastinated on are amplified. So waiting always makes it worse. Now, here's what buffalo do. This is very unique for the animal kingdom. So buffalo wait for the storm to cross, like, right over the Crest of the, of the mountaintop. And as the storm rolls over the ridge, Buffalo turn and they charge directly into the storm.

Crazy.

So they run at the storm, and by running at the storm, they run straight through it, which actually minimizes the amount of pain and time and frustration they experience from that storm. It's such a great metaphor for all of us because all of us are dealing with different storms in life. You know, we have relationship struggles and health battles and we're trying to launch a business and we got young babies and, you know, all these different, you know, Covid, and we all have challenges. We don't get a choice about whether or not we have storms. The only choice that we have is how we respond to those storms.

Yes.

And more specifically, when we respond to those storms. So the natural human default is to run away from the storm. But we, what we, what we miss is that it actually makes it worse. So this brings us to the paradox principle of sacrifice, which simply stated, is this easy short term choices lead to difficult long term consequences.

Yes.

Meanwhile, difficult short term choices lead to easy long term consequences.

I've got a perfect example I'm living in right now from a long term consequence. Twenty years ago, I had surgery. I had eight teeth removed because I needed braces. So I put that off for a number of years without doing that. But then I finally got my wisdom teeth removed and then four more teeth. So it's wisdom. And then four. And I was delaying it. Delay, delay. But I was having, like, pain, right? Finally get the teeth removed, and I'm supposed to do, let it heal for a couple months and then go get braces on, okay? And I'm thinking, this is so painful. I don't want to have two, three more years of braces now and deal with more pain. And I said, you know what? I'll just live my life like this with four gaps. I can still chew everything. It doesn't look too bad. Let me just live my life like this, okay? And for 20 years, I had problems, little problems that continue to stack up. I had digestive problems because my back teeth weren't fully touching, so they weren't actually chewing the food properly. I finally started chipping my teeth in the front that I had to fix a couple times because it was only the front two teeth that were actually chomping and connecting. And I realized, wow, this is gonna impact my overall health. Not just my teeth in my mouth, but my entire lifestyle if I don't solve this pain now. So at 36, I said, okay, I'm getting braces and making retainer braces and it's more painful now. But I'm also glad that I'm taking the actions now and not waiting 5, 10, 20 years when my teeth are falling out or something. So I'm taking the disciplined pursuit of the pain now for greater health for the rest of my life.

Yeah. And that's the switch. Right. Problems procrastinated on are always amplified. Now here's the shift and this is really important. We think of it as a sacrifice. I'm enduring pain. But the truth is we always experience pain. We're all trying to go through life trying to dodge pain. It's impossible. It's inevitable. We always experience pain. The only choice we have is whether or not we pay that price now today or we pay it later with interest. Procrastination and indulgence are really nothing more than creditors that charge you interest, which means when you make the sacrifice just as the buffalo charging the storm, it's not a sacrifice. You're just. It's a short term down payment on a rich future blessing. It's just harder now, but it's easy in the long term. See, people misunderstand. Take the stairs. They think it's like, oh, just do the hard thing. Make your life as hard as possible. No, it's the freaking opposite. Take the stairs is a methodology for giving you the easiest life, the best life, the most rewarding life. Like the easiest life. But it is predicated upon an unpopular truth, which is that the shortest, most guaranteed path to the easy life is to do the hardest parts of things as soon as possible so as to avoid the interest that would come with it if you wait.

Yeah.

What is. There's like this quote about entrepreneurship or something like, you know those. I'm going to butcher this, but be willing to do the things today.

It's like a meme online. Do what others want, others can't.

Yeah, later.

Yeah, yeah. That's.

Do the things that others aren't willing to do now so you can have what others won't have later for the rest of your life.

Yeah. Dave Ramsey says live like no one else. So later you can live like no one else. Exactly. Teaching people to get out of.

It's like if you don't pay the price to today, you'll be paying the price forever later.

Right. So it's like it's not. Is life going to be hard? Life is hard either way. It's. Do you want it to be a little bit hard now or a lot of it hard? Later. So that's the reframe. And this is what was really fun about the Take the Stairs book, was realizing, oh, ultra performers don't like discipline anymore than I do.

I like to sleep in.

Yes. But they have learned to train their brain to think differently about it. And you have to train the brain to process choices differently. And once you do, discipline isn't as hard as we think once we know how to think about it the right way. And this is a great example. When you make the calculation, most people just go, oh, that's hard. I'm not going to do it. Well, an ultra performer goes, well, that's hard. But if I don't do it, it's going to be harder later, so I'll do it now. And that opens the gate. So that's the first. It's the parrot. We call it the paradox principle, sacrifice.

And that's sacrifice. What's the second?

Yeah, so the second one is the buy in principle of commitment. And this is really interesting. So whenever we're forced to make a choice, a decision about something that is hard, there's two types of energy that are expended in our decision making. We have a visual for this that's called the commitment continuum. And so basically the first type of energy is the one that we all think of. It's the physical energy required to execute the decision. For example, let's just take an easy one like New Year's resolution, I'm going to lose weight. When the time comes to go to the gym, the thought process for most of us sounds like this. We say, do I feel like working out right now? And what's the answer to that question? No, no, never. I don't feel like working out now or ever. And for many people, most people, that's the end of the conversation. The human brain is not designed for success. The human brain is designed for survival. Survival is about conserving energy. Success is the opposite. Success is about expending energy, doing things that are uncomfortable. So it doesn't mean if you do this, if you struggle with procrastination, if you've made bad choices, it doesn't mean you're doomed for failure. It actually means you have a perfectly functioning, healthy, normal human brain. But success is not normal. Success is not average. Success is not what most people experience. If you are trying to experience success, you need to rewire literally the neural pathways in your brain. It is a neurological rewiring that, that you're doing to yourself. It's like you're reprogramming Your own computer. Right, right. And part of that is knowing that we learned from the ultra performers. There's another type of energy expended in our decision making, which isn't physical energy, it's emotional energy. And what we learned is that there's emotional energy expended in simply making decisions. And in fact, very often the emotional energy of making the decision much greater than the physical energy of executing the decision. And if you think about the gym example, it's not getting ourselves onto the treadmill once we're at the gym that's the hard part. It's when we're sitting on the couch deciding whether or not to go to the gym to go to the gym. But once you get there, the physical energy is there. It's the emotional energy that is clouding the decision. It is making it feel worse than it actually is.

Is that why it's important to. When you make the commitment to schedule the commitments in.

Yeah, I mean, that helps. Every little thing helps. But. So here's the strategy to follow through on commitments that you make that become difficult, which happens.

Yes.

Okay. So in the commitment continuum, you make this decision, emotional energy is expanded, and then it becomes difficult. You've got two choices. You can move forward with what you said you wanted to do, or you can turn back towards the way you've always done things.

So I'm going to go to the gym five days a week for the year. That's my commitment.

Oh, for the whole year? Yeah.

That's what someone might say. New Year's resolution. I'm going to go to the gym five days a week for the year.

Yeah. So, yes, so it could be that. It could be, I'm going to double our growth. I'm going to triple our growth. Here's what happens in the moment when it becomes difficult. Most people, the attitude that most of us have is like, is this possible? Did I make the right decision? Can I do this? And the key is to instead ask the question, how not is it possible? Can it be possible? Do I feel like doing it? Okay, most of it, it's should. It's should versus how most people say, should I do this? Should I follow through? Should I make a different commitment? And, you know, you end up becoming what I like to call a should head.

Right.

Don't be a should head. Because should gravitates you back towards the neutral, towards the safe. The mindset of the ultra performer is one degree different. And their attitude says, well, I'm in this for good. I already committed to this. And so the question is how? How will I pull this off?

How will I execute this commitment?

How will I hit that target? How will I meet this deadline? How will I get out of debt? How will I lose that weight? How will I save this marriage? How? And so you have to intentionally create the question how? Okay. So that you don't inadvertently create the question should. Because should I or can I or is it possible? Pulls it back towards the negative or towards the neutral. And here's a thing about the brain and just science in general. Neutral isn't good enough. Neutral is negative. Neutral is absent the positive charge. Neutral is negative. So it doesn't mean you have to be like over the top crazy, like, you know, banging on your chest, doing affirmations, like all the time. Like you can do those things. It just means you have to at least be on one degree to the side of. I'm not allowing myself to question. If I'm going to keep the commitment. I'm dedicating 100% of my energy into asking, how am I going to keep this commitment? It's not should I stay married? It's how can I fix this? How can I stay married? How can I resolve this? That one degree of, of separation in the brain over the course of time creates a trajectory of two completely different outcomes for the same person.

Got it. Okay. So that's about the question how. Around the commitment.

Intentionally ask the question how.

Okay, and what would be the next step then?

Yeah. So focus is one of them. You know, as we just kind of breeze through some of these. Focus is the idea that focus is power.

How does someone stay focused when life happens? When you go through, someone dies in the family, when the pandemic hits, when you go bankrupt, whatever, someone breaks up with you, you lose your job. How do you stay focused under extreme emotional breakdown?

Well, you can't allow your, you can't allow your ability to stay focused to be dependent on your circumstances, because there's always circumstances. Always, always. There's always something going on in your life that's creating challenge and difficulty and pressure.

So it's almost like certain things need to be non negotiables.

Yeah. You decide. So, so, so here's what you do is it is you decide. You have to decide each and every day consciously, intentionally, deliberately. I know we did another episode on multiplying time and the focus funnel.

Yes.

That, that is kind of a framework that's from the Procrastinating on Purpose, my second book about how to figure out what to focus on. But at the End of the day, you just have to decide what you are willing to and wanting to go after and realizing that until you accomplish those things, everything else in your life is a distraction. Everything else is a distraction. But focus is power. And when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. Most people are getting diluted results in their life not because they're not smart enough or not good enough. It's because they're distracted. They are allowing their time, attention, and resources to fragment, to dissipate, to disintegrate, to spread. And what you need is focused energy to create a breakthrough.

And this is the example of Sheehan's wall, right?

Yeah, we talk about that with personal brands.

What is. Who is Sheehan.

And what's his wall?

I always love this concept, though.

So Sheehan's wall is.

Before you go into that, because a lot of people, especially in the entrepreneurs that are following or listening and watching the people that are building personal brands, they have lots of things they want to do at once. I've got this passion and these passions, and I want to try this thing, and I want to build four different companies at once. And they say, which one do I choose? So when someone's got a lot of passions, they want to do it all at the same time. How can this example support them?

Well, is your question, how do they know which one to choose?

Or I got set up.

Why do they need to choose one? Yes, why do they need to choose one? Okay, so Sheehan's wall is an illustration. We named it after Peter Sheehan, who is a colleague of mine. He's a speaker, really brilliant guy. He's the first person that I kind of heard the concept for. We've adapted a little bit, but it really came from him. So we named it after him, which is that in personal branding, you've got two groups of people. There are those who are unknown, and there are those who are known. And there's this huge invisible wall that you have to break through. And what most of us do is we're trying to break through the wall. And so we're trying to emulate, you know, these people over here and like going, oh, I want to have. I want to talk about all these different topics and have all these different business models and be on all these different social media platforms. And I have to do all these different jobs. And they're bouncing off the wall. They complain about noise, but they actually are the noise. They are part of the noise because they're doing a lot of different things. And when you have Diluted focus, you get diluted results. The way to break through the wall, and this is, you know, kind of.

To build audience attention, credibility, results, all those things.

Yes. So, and that's, you know, personal brands, what we just happen to do. But this.

She.

Ann's wall applies beyond that. But in personal branding, we would say we. We help clients figure out what's the one thing that they could be known for. Find their uniqueness is the term that we would use. And the way you break through the wall is by becoming the world's leading authority on one thing.

Not ten things.

Not one.

Not ten things. One thing, One thing first. And then when you break through, then.

You can expand into other things.

Yes.

So, I mean, if you look at my personal brand as an example, okay, so we're talking about Take the Stairs. I broke through the wall and Take the Stairs. That book, you know, when we launched it, AJ And I created this plan, and our whole team, we worked together, we launched this book. We hit number two on the New York Times. I was 29 years old. That was part of how we broke through all. That's how I met you. That was how I got. The first time on the podcast was years ago at this point. And then now we've been able to expand into some other things. Influence really is what we study. But money is the same way. So the Sheehan's Wall applies to money. You've heard people say multiple revenue streams.

Yes.

Multiple revenue streams is horrible advice. It is horrible advice for a beginner.

For a beginner, yes.

You do not want multiple revenue streams when you're beginning. You need one revenue stream that is.

Really good, focused attention.

That is how it works. And if you look at almost every billionaire, they didn't do it by having a lot of different things.

At first.

At first, they made their first million on one thing, they dominated one thing, and they blew through the wall. And then they got a little bit of money and then they invested it.

And then they diversified into different assets.

And then it grew into other things. Yes, but you don't need multiple streams of revenue. All that's doing is diluting your focus, which is going to dilute your results. You're going to bounce off the wall financially. It's the same thing.

Something.

When we, you know, when I got into teaching LinkedIn in 2007. 8 and 9.

Yes, you're a great example of this.

I remember at that time I was researching and reading a lot of blogs and following people on social media who called themselves social media experts, teaching all Social media. And I was like, I know a lot about these things, but I'm not the expert on all social media. But I don't know. I was like. And very competitive and ego driven at the time. I was like, I will out beat anyone. I'm teaching.

I will crush you.

LinkedIn, like, no one can out teach LinkedIn like me. That was my mindset because I was just so, so much time and energy on it and I was getting results for people. And I just said, I'm going to create. I created a book that helped with credibility. I was doing workshops and events for about a year and selling the book. And then when I found kind of like my breakthrough thing, which was creating a course and using webinars as the engine to sell and build audience and then teach and then sell, I just said, I'm going to sell this one course over and over until it doesn't sell anymore. I'm tired. You want to do something else? And for the next year and a half, I sold a thousand dollar course every single week. And I said, how can I master being a better teacher of this on the webinar presentation? How can I learn webinars better to draw audience? How can I gain credibility to get leads? And I just sold that same thing over and over for about a year and a half and that.

And you did that one thing, one thing every week.

And that helped me break through the wall of being known as the LinkedIn guy that everyone came to for advice, speaking opportunities, articles, whatever it may be. Then after about a year and a half in doing that, I said, okay, people are now coming to me and asking me, can you teach me about Facebook? Can you teach me about email marketing? Can you teach me about webinars? How have you done this so much to get these big results selling this program? Then I had the credibility. I broke through the wall on LinkedIn teaching, opened up a little funnel where, okay, I can teach this if I want to and this. But you have to also be aware of not diluting your efforts once you break through, because then opportunities come in and you can say yes to everything and be back to kind of like square one at a different level.

Yeah, there's really a series of walls and they get, they're bigger and bigger ponds. It's like you're a big. You want to be a big fish in a small pond and then you go to a bigger pond and then you got to crumple.

Yeah.

And each one is a matter of focus. I mean, Bruce Lee said this. Great. He Said, I fear not the man who has a thousand kicks. I fear the man who has one kick that he's practiced a thousand times.

Yes.

Yeah. So that's what we're talking about here. And this is a massive problem. The personal brands that we work with, this is one of the number one things that we're helping them with, is going like, if you want to get to the next stage, you don't have. If you don't have a team of a thousand employees, you can't do everything that Dave Ramsey does or Gary Vaynerchuk does. Like, you got six people. Like, you need to dominate the thing and crush it, which is what you guys have done a very disciplined job of, of, of going all in on the podcast in recent years, and it's growing exponentially. And you guys, I mean, look, you're one of the top podcasters in the world because you're focusing it, but you've said no to a lot of other.

Things, a lot of money making opportunities. And that's the thing that's hard and scary for people, that it's like, well, I could make money here and I could do this cool thing here, but how much time and energy will that thing take away from the main thing, which could multiply and expand and be 10 times more revenue or opportunities if you actually just focused on it. And so for years, we did everything. We tried to build multiple different programs and courses and events and things, and we realized, okay, what are the things that are supporting us and what are the things that we could do but we shouldn't be doing because it's taking too much time and energy away from the main thing. Bingo. And the more clarity and focus you can have on that main thing and be committed to that sacrifice, the better results you'll get. So what's the next step?

All right, so the fourth of the seven here, I know we're breezing through them, but is the creation principle of integrity.

What does integrity mean in your mind?

Well, so to me, integrity is simply the congruence between your words and your actions. But people underestimate the importance and the value of the spoken word as it is connected to creating the life that they want. All of creation follows a very simple pattern. All of creation, you think it, you speak it, you act. And if you have integrity, it happens. You think it, you speak it, you act, it happens. You think it, you speak it, you act, it happens. Everything from this table to this building is somebody had an idea, they thought it, then they spoke it, they wrote it out. They told somebody they created a plan, then they acted, they. They built it and then it was real and somebody sold it. Right. Like, you think it, you speak it, you act, it happens.

And if you had integrity throughout the.

Entire process, it's going to accelerate it. It's going to be more likely to come true.

And if you don't have integrity, it's.

Not going to come true. Because. Because the words are the first manifestation of our ideas into reality. You know, people have different religious beliefs, but if you look at ancient scripture, just the Bible, strictly from the purpose of. How does it say that God created the world, says he spoke the world into existence.

Wow.

And then it says that we were created in his image, which, if that's true, that means we have the same power now, whatever your religious beliefs are or what they are. But it's kind of irrefutable to say, look, as I say something, if people know that I am someone who does what I say I'm gonna do, yeah, it's easier for them to rally behind me. It's easier for them to support me. Like, if I say, let's meet up for lunch tomorrow at 11, and you trust me, you're gonna be there. But if I say, yeah, we should meet up for lunch tomorrow at 11, you're like, he's not gonna be there. Like, or he'll be there 11:30. My integrity affects my integrity and my track record of the alignment between my words and actions actually shapes the way the world externally responds to me and everything that I do. As I am known for integrity, people put a lot of stock and weight and trust into what I say, and they align around it.

Yes.

As there is a breakdown or a breach of my integrity, then people don't put much stock in weight and trust and they don't align around it. But if Oprah says she wants to do something, the whole world will jump to align around it. She has that trust that suck.

How does someone learn the art of being 100% in integrity when we are flawed, broken human beings that will probably in some way, shape or form always be a little bit out of integrity on being exactly on time or there's breakdowns or traffic. It's sure. How do we learn the art of being the best level of integrity we can be?

It's mostly just a constant pursuit of that alignment, and it is intentionally creating a future for yourself. So this is also the way that you talk about yourself. So look, let's just say if a student says, let's say a kid has a Teacher that says, you know what? Oh, you know that your, that answer was stupid. I can't believe you said that. And the kid hears it as I'm stupid. Okay? And then they start repeating to themselves, I'm stupid. So you think it and now, now you're thinking I'm stupid. And then you speak it, you start telling people, yeah, I'm stupid. I'm not good at school, I don't like school. School is dumb. School is a waste of time. So now you're speaking it. If that happens, then when it comes time to study for the test, which is the action, do you think somebody who says that all the time is going to study for the test? No, because I'm stupid.

Why should I even try?

Why? It's not relevant to me. I'm stupid. This is not for me. And so if they don't study for the test, they don't take the action. Then when the test comes, what result do you think they're going to get? A good score or a bad score? They're going to get a bad score. It happens. You think it, you speak it, you act. It happens. Now here's the part that sucks. That happens once you get that bad score. Now it reinforces your pre existing story. See, I am in effect stupid. And what we do is we organize. The brain organizes itself and life and processes the world around it to prove itself right, of course. And it orients, it's the reticular activating system. It actually notices, pays special attention to things that reinforce beliefs it already has. Which goes to say this, what you believe isn't necessarily what is truth. We believe what we hear most often. And we have a lot more control over that than people realize. Whatever you tell yourself most often is what becomes true. And you have to rewrite this your own stories about yourself, lest you are guaranteed to live in to the stories that you tell yourself about yourself. And some people, Louis, this is heartbreaking because one of the things that we have noticed is that some of you, some of you would never allow a stranger to talk about your kids or your spouse or your family or you. The way that you allow yourself to talk about you, it's crazy and it's heartbreaking. And you are creating your own future through the spoken word and then the alignment. So to your other question, our goal is just to as much as possible be aligning our words and our actions. And it's like, okay, if I'm late, fine, tell me, Louis, I'm running five minutes late. And then try to be there you know, four minutes late, not seven. Right. So it's just a constant alignment. It's a muscle that you can build. It can be as small as saying, I'm going to pick up a piece. I'm going to pick up that piece of trash. And then you pick it up. You have added weight to your integrity. You reinforced it.

It's being your word, and your brain.

Wants to reinforce it, which is what you got to be careful of. You just got to be intentional of that. Your brain is going to reinforce whatever you tell it. The brain is happy to do whatever you tell it to do. Do you have to tell it to do the right things?

And so once we are in alignment with our integrity, with our thoughts, our words, and our actions, what's the next thing?

Yeah, so the fifth one is the harvest principle of schedule. And so this is a lot.

So the harvest or hardest harvest. Harvest.

Harvest principle of schedule.

What's that mean?

Yeah, so when people think of time, the most common thing they hear of is the concept they hear the most is balance. I think balance is a horrible metaphor for how we spend our time because balance by definition means equal force in opposite directions. So for these to be balanced, they would be equal force in opposite directions. That metaphor applied to our life and specifically our time suggests pretty directly that in order to achieve happiness or whatever, that we would spend equal time on different activities. Well, it's not only a discordant metaphor, it's virtually an impossible pursuit. I mean, if you sleep eight hours a day, you work eight hours a day, then the only way you could ever achieve balance is to do one other activity, and it would have to be that one activity eight hours a day. It just doesn't make sense. It's impractical. The other thing is, the truth about achieving results is that, first of all, it doesn't take the same amount of time to achieve great results in different areas of our life. You don't have to work out good news. You don't have to work out eight hours every day to be really healthy. Now, if you want to be the rock, you probably got to work out four hours every day. But if you just want to be healthy, you might work out 30 minutes a day and be like in the top 10% of health in America. Eat well, eat well, exercise right every day. That's good news. You also don't have to spend eight hours every day with your spouse to have a deep relationship. In many cases, eight hours a day.

With your spouse over 10 years, you might ruin the relationship.

It's more about dedicated, a focused relationship. Talking about things that are really deep and personal, intimate.

Yes.

Intimacy is allowing yourself to be seen, to be known. That is powerful. You don't have to make cold calls eight hours a day to be a great salesperson. If most salespeople made one hour of legitimate outbound prospecting activity, their pipeline would be so full in six months that they would just, they would have enough warm relationships. But they don't. They do creative avoidance and they spend an entire career doing everything they can do to dodge making a sales call. And they just. Procrastination is a creditor that charges them interest and they never get ahead. It just gets worse because they're not confronting the thing. So what's the harvest principle of schedule? It's this concept that great results are not achieved through balance. Great results are achieved through short seasons of intensive imbalance. Like a harvest. You know, a farmer, when the harvest season comes, clearly I'm an indoor type, but you know, people who farm, I hear when the harvest comes, they will work 18 hours a day. They have to work 16, 18 hours during the harvest. Because the harvest is when the harvest is, it's a season. And during that season, if they want to maximize the results, they have to imbalance everything else for a short season. Now that shouldn't be their lifestyle the whole year. That would be unhealthy.

They'd be burnt out.

They'd be burnt out. But again, it's focus. The way you create breakthroughs. Like, okay, here's a great example for me when I was 45 pounds overweight, working out five minutes a day when I'm 45 pounds overweight. It's not going to do it, sweetheart. Like what I did is I said I'm never going to drink soda again, I'm never going to eat fast food again. I am never going to eat sugar again. And I'm going to work out every single day until I get to where I want to be. And it is this short term imbalance, a harvest season where I go for this moment in my life. I'm super focused on this, you know, and that's how you create a breakthrough. And then once you create that breakthrough, it's much easier to maintain that level of performance. So the way we think of it is you actually allocate the minimum amount of energy, expend the minimum amount of energy maintaining everything else, and dedicate 100% of the excess energy in one direction to create an explosion, to create the power, the focus, the breakthrough, you know, launching A book is a season. And this is true about, you know, authors. We have book launch season. Athletes have seasons, accountants have tax season, retailers have retail season. Seasons are a much more accurate reflection of our lives and how they work and how you actually create results.

Speaking my language with sports, there's a preseason, there's a season, there's the playoff season, and then there's the postseason. Postseason, you got to recover from that time. But the preseason, the training camp, you're going hard. You know, the season, you've got weeks and moments, you've got the game day, but you build up to it and you go a lot harder in the beginning and then the end. Yeah. And post season, you've got all your attention on giving your best for those last couple weeks. And then, okay, it's time to recover, regroup, revisualize what you want and move, Move from there. What are the last two steps? Because I think this is a lot for people to take on.

Yeah, this is a ton. I mean, it's a lot. We're covering a lot of ground here.

You've got this entire process with lots of examples and exercises on how people can implement this in your book, Take the Stairs, the seven steps to Achieving Success. But what would you say are the last two? And I want people to get this book and go through it as well so they can have all of it. But what are the last two?

Thank you. Yeah. So real quick. So the perspective principle of faith is number six, which is my favorite of the seven, because it is. The other six are all strategies to achieve. The perspective principle of faith is all about how do ultra performers respond to failure? The short of it is just this, that faith is choosing to believe that what is happening now is somehow for a greater good later on.

So hard for people to think that way.

Hard.

I believe that's the only way you can think in order to not go crazy on some level. Because there's so much pain, there's so much unfairness in the world for a lot of people. There's so many things that you wish didn't happen to you. Friends, family, loved ones that happen, and they're going to continue to happen. And we can either live in pain and suffering and frustration and resentment and anger of the world or whatever unfairness has happened, or we can choose to have faith that this is happening for a greater cause, a greater reason. And I don't know what it's going to be. Maybe I'll know in a year. Maybe it takes 20 years. Maybe I'll never Know and someone else will know. But you've got to learn that principle.

You have to make that choice. It's the hardest of the seven choices, but it is most significant in the long term. I actually once heard someone describe heaven as a bunch of people walking around going, oh, now I see why that happened. Now I see why that happened. One little shortcut on this. Because pain is real and we live in a broken world, and it's painful. When you're experiencing pain the healthiest, and I think, like, the only way to respond to it is to choose to believe that the pain you're going through is. Is preparing you to become the person you one may need to be for somebody else.

Oh, man.

Otherwise I run out of endurance. Otherwise I give up. My discipline is gone. Right.

Otherwise you'll go into addiction or drinking or binge eating or binge watching and you'll just say, what's the point?

We can do a whole other conversation on this at some point.

What's the point? Why do I even show up? This is unfair. This happened. I lost my child, I got injured.

Why is this happening in the moment? It is unfair. Yes, but through perspective. It's the perspective principle of faith. Our ability to have peace is directly proportionate to the term of our perspective. If I'm focused here and now, it's unfair. It's angering. It's enough to break you. If I zoom back and I go, oh, maybe I'm being prepared to help this person, or maybe that's going to lead to this. Maybe that flat tire that I got that really made me mad, prevented me from a fatal car accident down the road. If I don't have. In the moment, all I see is the flat tire, and I'm pissed. But if I said if I had the perspective going, oh, it saved me from a fatal car accident, I would look at the same incident in a completely different way. Now, we don't have that gift of foresight, but we do have the gift of choice.

Absolutely. Absolutely.

It's strong. It's not easy. That's a tough one.

This is hard.

That's a tough one.

That's a tough one. And the last step would be.

The last one is the pendulum principle of action.

The pendulum principle.

Okay, I'm not going to tell you the whole story, but here's what I will tell you with, and this is a good thing to leave you with, is that, you know, all of these are difficult decisions. They're difficult choices. It's a decision to take the stairs in every area of life in every way. It's the truth of greatness. It's the truth of every success story. Success is never an accident. It is, but it is deciding every day to keep going.

Yeah.

It's something that we call the rent axiom, which is that success is never owned. Success is only rented. And the rent is due every day. And the rent is paid through the small, seemingly insignificant, trivial choices that we make each and every day. And success is simply the trajectory of those choices compounded over time. Your life. But to become a multimillionaire is not some big extravagant event that happens overnight. It is small decisions made repeatedly and a decision and a commitment to make them each and every day.

What's the Muhammad Ali quote about? Service is the rent you pay for your room here on earth or something like that.

I don't know, I don't think I've heard that one. That sounds like a good one.

Something like service is the rent you pay. Pay for your room here on earth.

I like that.

Somewhere. The house here on earth.

Something like that.

And I think if you can take action and be in service with your action to whatever your gift is, whatever your truth is in that season of life, and you can be of greater good through your actions some way somehow, then that's going to even multiply what's coming for you in the future.

Absolutely. And one thing that is huge of this is we have seen and we have some data that proves that the more accountability you have in your life around these principles, the more likely you are to succeed. And it just makes sense. You are who your friends are. But we don't live in a take the stairs world. We live in an escalator world. Most of the world is looking for shortcuts and quick fixes. You have to surround yourself with take the stairs people, people doing the things that other people aren't willing to do.

Growth minded people. And you need accountability. It's hard to stay focused, to commit to being integrity, to manage your schedule, to make sacrifices and to choose faith in a time of pain. We're all going to have it and to take consistent action. This is one of the reasons why we created Greatness Coaching. Some of you guys may have heard about this. If you haven't applied for greatness coaching, go to Lewishouse.com coaching right now. Check it out. It's a year long accountability program that supports you in your goals, getting clarity, having a community of high achievers surrounding you with support and having a monthly game plan that you can focus on and take action. On to build momentum month after month, year after year. Check it out. Lewishouse.com coaching and apply if you feel like it's right for you, you can read all about it there, see testimonials and all that stuff again. Lewishouse.com Coaching for Greatness. Coaching for a year of accountability. Rory, this is amazing. Take the stairs. This is all about the science of success. We just scratched the surface on these things. They can learn more by getting your book following you on social media. Rory Vaden, everywhere online and I appreciate you, man. Thank you so much for being here.

My pleasure, brother.

Much love.

Appreciate it. Always let me know some of your biggest takeaways in the comments below and make sure to share this with someone you think needs to to hear it and stick around for more inspiring content coming up right now.

In one interview with one of the world's largest CTOs, Chief Technology Officer, he said, brendan, you know, They're a top 10 brand in the world. So we, we don't. He said, my team, he said, I'm not creative, my team's not creative. But we know how to execute and scale and execution and scale is really important to long term. High performance. Creativity might get you in the game, but a lot of people are creative but can't work their way out of a bag. And I was like, I would argue that forever because I'm a crate, I'm a writer and a coach. I would have never thought that. Age, nationality, ethnicity, and here's a big one compensation. Here's a big one personality, here's a big one strengths. They are not correlated strongly with high performance. Some of them have weak correlations and all those things, by the way, because if academics are listening to that, they're.

Like, no, he's wrong.

And this is tied towards high performance. It's not that those aren't important. Those things can shape your mood. They can shape, you know, lots of important life outcomes, well being, health, happiness. But when we're talking about high performance, those are less important than these six. And what I keep telling people is I'm not saying those aren't important. These just happen to be more important. So the six habits, you want me to do those? Sure, yeah. Yeah. So the personal habits, and these are the ones that move the needle most. Number one, high performers. You like this one. High performers seek clarity more often than their peers. And what that means for them is every situation they go into, they're seeking clarity and setting intention. And it's not like once in a while they're doing it way More often it's like, you know, I've been blessed to work with Oprah Winfrey. When she has a meeting, at the start of every meeting, she asks what's our intention here? What's the intention of this meeting? Not what's the agenda, what do I do? What's the intention? That's every meeting. So she's seeking clarity at the beginning of every meeting. That's why she's so amazing, right? If you think about her whole career, she was always trying to have people seek clarity on who they were so they could be themselves. That's what high performers are doing. They just do it more often. They seek clarity before they shoot that video, before they have the podcast interview. But specifically, we found three practices help you get better at seeking clarity. Number one, they are seeking clarity in what we call the future for. So you've probably heard that successful people are more future minded. It's true. And specifically what they're looking at. If you talk to a high performer, they're more clear about who do I want to be in this upcoming situation. And by the way, it's not about who I am, it's about who do I want to be. They're more future oriented. They're more intentional about who they want to be in social situations. So it's like I want to have this type of interaction with Lewis to that that that's intentional. They're more clear about what skills they need to develop to reach their next level of success.

Right.

Here's how you really know an underperformer. Open up their calendar and look for any evidence they have planned their own curriculum for greatness. If they don't have classes or courses, if they, if they're not actively skill building, there's no chance of high performance. I mean, maybe they can dumb luck into it for initial success, but high performance is long term success. You got to be building, constantly growing, constantly learning, constantly growing, being aware of that. And the Last of the Future 4 is I know the service I want to provide in the future. Talk to any high performers I'm sure you've interviewed. They kind of know the service and the difference they want to make. Maybe not precisely, but they're asking the question. So that's some of what we know. They seek clarity and that's kind of the first practice is asking questions in those areas. And the other two real fast is when you're seeking clarity, they're more clear about the feeling they want to have. Like an Olympic sprinter who's won gold is more likely to have said before he went or she went on the track. How do I want to feel out there? Not like, just the result. Like when I. When the foot's in the block and I'm arms down, like, what do I want to feel? Like they're very aware of the feeling they're trying to get.

Yeah. I don't feel nervous and stressed. I want to feel calm and.

Yes.

And smooth and.

Yes. And they're doing that self talk, which is seeking clarity. And then the last one, which is really important. They're. They're clear about what's meaningful to them now and what might be different in the future, which is something I didn't know until we did A lot of the interviews or the conversations is a lot of people kind of know what I like now. They know what their passion is, but it's like, what's going to be meaningful to you later? Like, in five years they've thought about that. You know, I would say that, you know, they've done the work. So that's just the first habit. And so the book kind of opens with that story of, like, finding what's. We all have to decide who you are and what we want and how to get it at this stage of our life. And when we don't know that, you know, reaching high performance can be really hard. Yeah.

It's all about clear vision for me.

It's.

The first chapter in my book is the greatest leaders in the world have a clear vision.

Love that. Yeah, that's it. And they got that vision by seeking clarity.

Yes.

That was the habit that gave them the vision they were consistently seeking. Like, how do I. What do I. I mean, they ask themselves more questions. That's one of our findings. They literally are doing more of the self talk, asking more of the questions, which is so important.

Yeah.

Awesome.

Yeah.

And I love how you talked about this. You say the world cares less about your strengths and personality than about your service and meaningful contributions. Then why do so many of us focus on our strengths and personality?

Yeah, that was a huge finding. And I would. That's another one. I would have completely freaked out on anybody.

Strength finders, all these other books out there, you know, it's like, yes, focus on our strengths.

And unfortunately, one that's in the history of personal development, that is the greatest false dichotomy that's ever been. Focus on your strengths or it's like, you have to do both. You have to do both. But what we found in our research, which surprised me. High performers do not report Working on their strengths any more than regular people. So that's not what gives them the edge. One of the chapters opens up with this guy. He wrote this email, really highly successful guy. And he wrote this email to me, says, you know, and I'd put him through all this. I put him through Strengthsfinder. The Berkman, the Colby, the Myers, Briggs. Put me at everything. This is one of my first coaching clients ever. I knew everything about him. We knew all his background. He did all the homework, had his peer review, you know, his 360 assessments from work. And then I watched him fail for two years. And he wrote me this email and he said, brendan, stop telling me, like, what successful people are like, because we know my strengths. I'm not getting ahead and start telling me what they do. And that's what this book became about. It's like, what do you need to do? Because in this email, he wrote this, which is where that finding came from. He said, this was so good. Listen to this line. He said, as a leader, I have to be honest with myself that my mission and vision should never be made to bow down to my limited human strengths. I should have to rise up to my mission or vision. The strengths aren't. The relevant thing is the question is, what is necessary for me to develop into to reach that mission. It's like, your strengths are great. And it's like, yes, of course, do your strengths. But that's kind of like what I tell people is like, if. Imagine you have a bear, and that bear wants to go on top of this cliff over here, and it's never been on the cliff, and he wants to get that new honey up there, right? Telling the bear to focus on the strengths, to go somewhere it's never gone before and do something it's never done before is stupid. It's like saying, hey, you know what? Just try being more of a bear.

Right?

If I just. You say, brendan, I got this big new vision. I just say, just try being more of Lewis. I mean, it's a spiritual level that feels good, but you and I both know you're gonna have to develop far beyond your comfort zones. And strengths are typically comfort zones.

Yeah.

We got to overcome that and go.

Next level and develop new skills and overcome certain fears and all these other things that are going to help us get to the next level.

Yes. Yeah.

Yeah.

The whole conversation of beyond the comfort zone really requires us to go beyond our strengths. It really requires.

That is our comfort zone.

That is our comfort zone.

We already know what we're good at.

And the problem with the strengths finder and all of the strengths based movement is the assumption and they're all written academically this way based on what are called innate strengths. And innate strength is the assumption that you had that from birth and that those innate strengths are what you focus on. And I'm like, well, if you had at birth, you probably had it when you were 15 years old too. So if it's innate, you had it at 15. Are the strengths you had at 15 sufficient to serve you at 50? Hell no. You need to develop beyond what's innate and go to a whole other level. And so I take on strengths in the book in that way because. But I also say it almost doesn't matter because a lot of people have strengths and they suck at work because they're not doing these habits. I mean, how many people do you. I know who are amazingly strong and their strengths finders are amazing and they don't do anything all day.

That's it. Yeah. A lot of people, I mean, in the sports world, there's a lot of great talented people who had the greatest gifts, but they still weren't able to win.

Yeah.

Or they were lazy or they wouldn't, you know, hustle or sacrifice their body because they just relied on their talents, their strengths. Yeah. And so they were never able to get to the championship game or get on the best teams because. And they had all the talent in the world. And you're like, if I was as gifted as this person, I would be incredible.

You know, and that's the whole thing about the talent code or a lot of new sort of newer research and performance. It just says what's more important is what you do with what you got to develop into the vision of the mission you need to serve. And so the book kind of lays out a lot of the science behind that and then goes into, you know, obviously most of us oriented towards the six habits.

So in terms of clarity, what is that habit that you take on on a daily or monthly basis? With habit, with clarity, what do you think about? You're like every morning, what am I clear about? Or yeah, you know, how do you apply that habit to your life?

I apply it a couple ways. First for me, every situation I go into, I'm consistently asking like, what? What's the feeling I want to have here? If you ever see me teach, it's often I would say bring the joy. So I have joy triggers that I've set up in my mind that makes me more intentional about things. So for example, A door frame trigger. Whenever I walk through a door, I say, bring the joy. So when I walk through that door right there, it's like, bring the joy into this room. It's just. It's just a mental trigger that I've set up for myself. Every morning in the shower, I ask myself three questions. And not that I shower every morning, but the first question I say, what can I be excited about today? So it forces me to be clear about what's going to draw joy, enthusiasm from me. Number two, I say, what might trip me up today? Because usually I know what's going on the dam, like what. What might mess me up? What might. Where am I not perform well? What might bother me? And number three, I say, what can I do to surprise somebody today? To give a gift of appreciation or acknowledgement today? And so I think through that in the morning. So I think that helps me begin my day pretty clear. Then when I sit down before I do work, I literally look at my calendar of the day I did this morning and I look at whatever's going on the day and I think about it for 20 minutes. It's one of my 20 minute routines in the morning. I literally think about my calendar for 20 minutes a day. People think that's crazy. But what I'm thinking through when I'm looking at the counter, I'm like, okay, I'm going to have that call. What do I want to happen on that call? You know, what's my intention for that call? What's my goal for that call? What's the feeling for that call? How do I want to end that call? You know, I'm gonna have that time with Lewis. Like, how do I want to be there and how can I make sure I enjoy it? Because it's a big deal, you know, I love your show. I want to do a good job. I want to share something good for the people. Even though I have no idea what you're going to ask, I want to be present for that and, and make sure I'm. I'm really there. Even though maybe I have a head cold today. You know, it's like. It's like just thinking through it. I think that helps me. It keeps me asking questions. Every Sunday, I do a Life Arenas assessment. That just means I think there's 10 areas of our life and I score myself in them. And this is about my 11th year of doing this.

Wow.

So each area of my life, you know, from, from emotional quality to happiness to relationships to time to hobby, etc. I just give myself a score of 1 to 10. And 1 means I suck. And I was horrible in the previous week on that. Ten means I did a good job. And I asked, how can I do better? It's my Sunday routine.

Yeah.

And it just keeps me clear. And it's not like I don't sometimes like everyone else, you know, wonder what's going on or what I'm doing. But those habits, those were my habits. You have to establish your own for seeking clarity. But when you have them, you weaponize your life.

If we get the fear thing right, we have a relationship with fear, and we look for moments to challenge our relationship with fear. I can talk a lot. I'd love to talk about that with you. And the other is getting the fatigue thing, right? And we. We've come in modern times to believe that we need to do more, to be more. And it's broken, Right. It's fundamentally broken. The idea is that we need to be more and let the doing flow from there. Be yourself, be your authentic self. Be here now, you know, be grateful, be present, and let the doing flow from those. That orientation is a completely different model that, you know, it's like I. I'm spending my life. Efforts, I think, working to share that and to help the. Some of the best doers and thinkers in the world to reorientate. What got them good but is slowing them down from being their absolute personal best.

What's slowing them down? Fear and fatigue still.

Yeah. Well, the idea, the. The framework, the psychological framework, that I need to do more to be more. And that's born out of anxiety. Right?

Not doing enough.

Yeah.

Could be doing more.

And the trick.

Stressing about.

Yeah, flat out. And the trick, though, there is that. That that'll get people good. I need to do more. Damn, I missed that jumper. How am I going to miss that jumper?

Let's keep it, like, drive them to be. Practice more to.

Yeah, yeah. So that's this, you know, it's like just enough anxiety will get you good, but it will slow you down for being your absolute best at some point.

Why do we fear so much about what could go wrong? What other people think about us, who we're gonna let down, that we're not worthy enough. Good enough. Why do we fear that?

It's a great question.

So much.

Yeah, it's a really great question.

Whole life.

Yeah. Is that. So there's some biological things we can take a look at, and then there's also psychological. Right. And then. So it's the interaction of those two Biologically, our brain, as best as we think. And it's three pounds of silly putty that sits in our skull. That's more complicated than, you know, like the brightest minds in neuroscience are still amazed by how our brain works. And so. But we think that our brain is designed to scan the world and find what's dangerous. Right. And so our ancestors pass that gift on to us, your lineage passed that gift on to you that they were able to survive. And so how survive way back in ancient times that they could scan the world and easily discern how to be ready between. Now, let me say it more, more eloquently. They could scan the world and find what was dangerous or what was threatening so that they wouldn't be eaten. Eaten by the saber toothed tiger, as the story goes. Right.

Or they want to eat something bad or they want whatever, protect themselves.

That's right. So, and then, so then not only was nature dangerous and all the elements in nature, but other humans became dangerous to each other. So now what we've created is the ability, the heightened ability to read micro expressions. And micro expressions are the small squinting of the eyes, the frontalis muscles between the eyes, and when those squint or don't move, it's a sense of threat. Right. Because we don't know what's happening to that from that person. And so if you got this ancient brain that's programmed beautifully to find what's dangerous, and we scanned in an undisciplined way, our environment around us, we're going to find dangerous things. Yeah. And in modern times, we're not chased by sabertooths anymore. The new modern saber tooth are other people's opinions. And so we're well conditioned from an early age. And this next generation is going to be even more well conditioned with insta highlight reels for everything. My life is better than yours, I'm going to show you via a snap picture, is that, you know, so we've got this real challenge that to pursue a path of our personal best, we have to override our DNA. That's, that's hard to do. That's really hard to do. It requires deep commitment to training.

Yeah.

And that's a psych. That's what psychology, the optimal opportunities that psychology offers us is just that, how to train our minds to override our DNA and to use the smaller parts of our brain to scan the world and find opportunity.

How can we train our minds every single day, throughout the day to do that?

Yeah.

Overcome this fear. What are the things that we could be doing.

I will not. I could, I will rattle off as many as you want to hear, like tactics. And then I also want to put a small little asterisk next to this. Is that the tactic alone is not enough. Right. It's the stitching of the tactics. It's the stitching of the mental skills training to each other and to one's personal philosophy. So without a personal philosophy, it's like you. We end up just trying all these different things to get better. But what are we getting better at? What other people want us to be. So there's a fundamental piece of work first. Got it.

What would be your personal philosophy?

I'll share mine. Cool it. I've spent a lot of time with it and I'll tell. If I could tell a story of how it worked, I think it will harden a little bit. Is that so? I needed a mentor when I was growing up and I'm thankful. What's up, Gary? Like, I'm thankful for Gary. He helped me out in so many different ways, even currently today. And so one day he says, hey, Mike, I want to introduce you to my mentor. Wow, great. I didn't know there was such a thing as like a grand mentor. Like, am I ready? And so it was this moment I said, okay, here we go. And it was this. But to my surprise, it was this small, you know, three bedroom, two bath home. And it was well manicured and it was this pleasant, like 78, 82 year old woman comes out and I was just so pleasantly surprised, like, okay, this is going to get good. Because she just had that sense of wise woman. And it's the setting that you would imagine. The shag carpet was a little bit long, the drapes were just a little bit, you know, outdated. And so we sat at the table and she's pouring me tea and she says, you know, welcome and so interested to meet you. Then we sat down and she said, so tell me what you're about. I said, okay, well. What? Well, the things that I'm most interested. Well, okay, let me start this way. And she looked at me and she looked at my mentor and she said, I thought you said he was ready. I am. I. I am ready. Wait, wait, no, no, no. I want to answer that. And she grabbed my tea and she said, you know, when you're ready, sweetie, I'd like to share this tea with you. Yeah. So I was like super embarrassed in that moment. Like I thought I let my, my mentor down. And you know, it was like this really intense experience.

Wow, how old Were you?

I was at that point, right after. It was like, 26, 27, somewhere in that range. And so I didn't know what to do. And so it was this awkward moment, but I knew that I had. I was not prepared to even answer the most basic question, who are you? And so that's where. That's where I just want to anchor that, because I think that that captures what most of us feel like a lot.

Most people don't feel like they know who they are.

Yeah. And so I had this dramatic moment for me, but, you know, I think it's a really important process to go through. So let's call it a personal philosophy, but then let's extract one. One level out from that. The greatest and the most influential people across the globe are very clear about their philosophy. The greatest movers and shakers and change makers are spiritual leaders and political leaders, for the most part. And now we're starting to see business leaders, you know, to do that. What was Confucius philosophy? What was Buddha's philosophy? What was Jesus philosophy? They're really clear. Jesus was, and I want to oversimplify a beautiful set of traditions, but Jesus was more about love and service. Buddha was more about, you know, that all people are suffering. And then. So let's work through compassion to live with loving kindness. What was Martin Luther King Jr. S? Dr. King Jr. S was about equality, you know, Malcolm X, equality. Totally different tone, totally different approach. Mother Teresa, Helen Keller. What was Helen Keller's like, okay, I'm gonna go for it, and, like, I deserve to be educated as well. She changed the educational system. So the most influential people were very clear. Why? Because they lined up their thoughts, their words and actions to the thing that matters most to them. And that's what a philosophy is about. Everybody already has one. You have one, I have one. Whether we could articulate it at knifepoint in a dark alley to totally different element, Right? And so I think that that's a nice, nice litmus test. Like, could you get it out in front of a deranged person who's got a knife to your throat? Like, could you. Do you. Are you that clear what you stand for? And do you have your personal philosophy? So that's the litmus test for folks I work with, and I'll share mine. It's. Every day is an opportunity to create a living masterpiece. And so there's. There's optimism embedded in there. There's creative juices embedded in there. And then there's, you know, this idea of a living masterpiece. And so when I met Coach Carroll, head coach of the Seattle Seahawks, about six years ago, six, seven years ago, one of our first conversations, it was. It was over dinner. A mutual friend put us together, and we had this really wonderful conversation. And it was born out of like, what is your philosophy? So he had been on the same similar journey, I should say, where he was fired from two head coach jobs in the NFL.

Yeah.

And on the second time, he was fired. So from. Pain creates change. Uncomfortableness is how we grow, but change is how we. I'm sorry, uncomfortable. And this is how we grow, but pain is why we change. So he experienced pain and said, if I get another chance, I'm going to do it exactly the way that is authentic to me. But I got to figure out what that is. So he just went and scratched down on, you know, multiple pads, spiral, you know, old school spiral notebooks, just wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote. Took a second pass at it and said, what are the words that keep showing up? Circled those words, wrote more about those words, and that's how it eventually spilled out of him. His philosophy is always compete. Always compete for what you say? Always compete to be a great dad, to be a great coach, to be a great friend, to be a great partner. Like, always compete. And so he says, at his core, he's a competitor, and he's always trying to become better. Wow. And so. So he's built his whole life around, you know, that, including the Seattle Seahawks and USC before that. So, yeah. So philosophy is really important to us. And so that would be the most significant investment.

First, the capacity to strengthen and increase your hunger is the one common denominator amongst the most successful people. You know, Richard Branson's good friend of mine, and Peter Guber, Steve Wynn, all these guys, they've never lost their hunger. Most people are hungry to achieve a certain amount, make a certain amount of money, and then they get comfortable, relax, or to get a certain level of fitness, and then they relax. But, you know, Richard is as driven today as when he was 16 years old starting, I mean, he's like, on fire. And he's 65 years old. Warren Buffett is 85 years old. He's as driven today as when, you know, he began the journey right. And so people that have that hunger, I believe intelligence. I love people that are wickedly smart. And I work to be wickedly smart by educating and training myself and so forth and training my brain. But intelligent. There's a lot of intelligent people, can't fight their way out of a Paper bag, right? Hunger is the ultimate driver. Because if you're hungry, you can get the strategy, you can get the answer. If you can't model it, you can find it. So hunger modeling would be maybe the next best skill. Knowing that success leaves clues like why reinvent the wheel? If someone took this plane, was Mickey's plane. Who owns the Miami Heat and owns Carnival, right? I mean, you can learn so much from the man like Mickey. Blow your mind what this man has been able to do in his life. And so why would I go learn by trial and error and maybe take 10 or 20 years when I could learn from somebody in a few weeks or a few months or a few hours, something that could save me a decade? That's what it is. That's why, that's why I read 700 books in the first seven years. Because I was like, it's somebody takes 10 years of life, they pour into a book and I can read that in an hour, two or three or four. Why wouldn't I?

So how does someone continue to stay hungry or reef, you know, rediscover what they're hungry about?

The best way is get around where it's better and things will hit you.

Say it again.

Get around where it's better and things will hit you. Who you spend time with is who you become. So, you know, when I started coaching all these billionaires, you know, there's a part of me that said, you know, I'm as smart in certain areas as they are. I gotta step my game up. It's not about the money. It's about how can I take the invisible and make it visible. How can I find a way to add more value to other people to such an extent where economics are not a question whatsoever? And then I can take those economics and do even more where I'm not.

There.

I look as money as portable power. I can leverage my money to do things for people even when I sleep. I love doing these for people. And I. I work 18, 20 hour days though. But it's really nice to have the leverage of that as well. The most important decision of your life is deciding whether you're truly committed to being happy no matter what. Because life is going to throw all kinds of curve balls at all of us. There's the one thing that's in common in this lifetime is extreme stress. You're going to experience it if you haven't already. And even if you have, you will in the future. How you like this positive thinking, but it's just true. Someone you're going to care about is going to die. Someone's going to take advantage financially. If you're not careful, you're going to find yourself in a position, the government might change the rules and you can't do what you're doing. Before some may call, like I've gotten a call saying you got a tumor in your brain. Those days alter you. And if you decide that you're going to live in a beautiful state of mind, that doesn't just mean happy. It means people say, oh, yeah, I'm committed to be happy, but my wife left me. Well, then you're not committed to being happy. You're committed to be happy. Unless your wife leaves you and you can't control that. You can certainly influence it, but you can't control it. Or I'm going to be happy. Except my friend died. Your friends are going to die, your family going to die. So the greatest gift you could give yourself besides making this life about love and making this life about giving, because to give, you have to keep growing, is, I believe, to make that decision and say, life is too short to suffer. And most achievers like you and I, we never use the word suffering, but we get stressed, we get pissed, we get overwhelmed. Some people get sad or depressed, and those are all forms of suffering. And all your entire life, you live in one of two states, states of suffering or beautiful states of being. And in a beautiful state of being. Hey, guys. In a beautiful state of being.

We're still filming a couple minutes.

Sorry.

That's good for your film. Thanks, Kirby. Yeah, I know we're late. We're finishing right now.

Yeah, last couple minutes.

Sorry.

There you go. You can leave that in. It's the real thing. In beautiful states of being, it doesn't matter what happens. You're gonna find something to enjoy and appreciate. And you know, you and I both have interviewed people I'm sure, I'm sure you have, that are born with no arms or legs or they've been. They've lost their sight and they're happy. And then you meet billionaires or people, families that got beautiful kids, beautiful husband, beautiful wife, and they get miserable over anything. I really believe you have to make that. That's the most important decision of your life, is that no matter what happens, I'm going to live in that state. And then you have to do the work, which is, I got a 90 second rule. I get pissed off or frustrated. Suffering comes up, it always shows up. But what I decided is within 90 seconds, I kill it. Because in that suffering State. I'm not going to be there for my wife or my kids in that suffering state. If I solve it, I'm going to be miserable even though I solve it, right? I realized I would give away my happiness so easily because Look, I got 1200 employees plus in 18 companies on multiple continents and multiple industries. What are the chances that today somebody's going to screw up something? It's 100%. And so I would be like, oh, I was so happy. And then John did this or this person, what were they thinking? Or he opened the door in the middle of the interview or whatever. There's always something, right? And so I decided that's the shift that's gonna happen. That's part of, you know, having multi billion dollar companies and lots of industries. So I'm gonna enjoy it. And when something doesn't work out, we'll learn from it, we'll grow. It's all small stuff, right? You don't sweat the small stuff. It's all small stuff. So I, I've, I've really experienced in the last year that's probably the greatest growth for me is not letting that suffering last and calling it suffering because it's inconsistent with my identity and probably yours as well, right? So I'd never do that stuff. So I don't. And I call a spade a spade. Pissed off of suffering, Worried is suffering, stressed out is suffering. And so if there, if I know it sounds esoteric because we're doing this in two minutes. I usually take people now to like a day of experiences where they uncover this. I ask people if I asked you what are two of the most magnificent experiences of your life so far?

The first two things that came on top of my head was visiting a third world country and building a school for kids and seeing their joy and being in that experience and then two others was achieving a dream of being an all American athlete when I wanted to, early on when I worked for it for so long and then also not to pitch myself but writing a New York Times best selling book and having a dream and creating that dream.

So and then let's. Now there's a pattern to those examples. I'm not just listening to the content, I'm listening to. Tell me what you felt. What did you feel when you helped build that school?

Incredible joy. It was like, it was like I was able to give, I was able to use what God had created for me to give back and support other people. That contribution, that service for me was a major thing to see what I was capable of. Doing for so many other people beyond myself.

And when you became an all American, what did you feel?

I felt a sense of. Well, actually, the first time I was an all American, I was really happy. And then I was really sad. I was really upset because I was driven by anger to prove people wrong, that I would become it. So I made it happen by this willing it and this commitment to like proving everyone wrong. And all the people that screwed me over, like, here's why you're gonna accept me and why you're gonna love me.

And it didn't work completely.

It wasn't fulfilling. It was for a moment and then I was like, this sucks. What's the point of this?

So.

So you, you just so beautifully demonstrated what I want to get across us. Whatever we have our highest experiences of life. Two things are involved. Some form of growth within ourself and some form of contribution beyond ourself. I don't. I could ask a hundred people, as I've done this with thousands, and they always tell me something, that where they face the fear, overcame something. But also in doing it, it benefited their family or benefited somebody else or like what you did with the building. Whenever I ask people the worst experiences of their life, they will tell me something. And it was all about them.

You, what happened to them.

Yeah. So one of the reasons you valued that experience is there was growth in that experience. Become the all American. But because you did it all just about you, it wasn't fulfilling.

Exactly.

That's when I say, life's not about me, it's about we. And that's also why when people are suffering, it's always because you're obsessing about yourself. You're obsessing that something happened and now you have less. You think you have less or something happened and you've lost something. Lost love, lost money, lost significance, lost attention, lost something. Or because you did this or said that, or because I did something myself, I'm never going to have something. Loss less, never are the sources of suffering. And when you say, no, I'm suffering because my children aren't doing well. No, you're suffering because you failed your children. In your mind, it's about you. Still. When you get that all suffering is obsession with self, you can snap out of it. And all you have to do is stop expecting and start appreciating. You look around and appreciate things outside yourself, the people around you, friends sitting across here, anything of that nature and then starting to enjoy something. If you start to learn or grow from that, if you love which to me is an action. If you love, if you give, if you're grateful, suffering disappears instantly. But you have to tell yourself the truth. The only suffering is in your mind. It's because this brain is not designed to make you happy. It's 2 million years old. It's designed to make you survive. Happiness is your job. And happiness is a decision. And it's a daily set of practices. And the difference for me from before, if you said, do you have a beautiful, magnificent life? I said, are you kidding me? I mean, it's like I have this incredible mission. I work with millions of people. I have this beautiful family. I love my wife. I'm physically strong and healthy. But it's like a business. If you measure the business annually, you feel good about the business, but you're going to have some bad years. If you measure it monthly, the worst you're going to have is bad months daily. When I take over a company, turn around, I find usually a dozen elements of that business. And I'll measure five times a day in the beginning, because the more you measure, the better you can adapt and change. And I make everybody have to focus on it. Well, what I've done with this area of my life is, instead of saying, is my life beautiful? Of course it is. Or magnificent? Of course it is. I now measure it moment to moment. So if I feel that, that suffering, that frustration, that whatever's coming up, I go, this is the mind I breathe in my heart. I find something I can appreciate. I become entertained by the experience and go, you know what? I'm gonna live in a beautiful state no matter what, because not everything can I control. And the things I'm most upset about, they're fleeting anyway.

Everybody that you admire is doing the exact same thing. They actually listen to their inner wisdom. They have figured out how to tune out the critic up here and trust the instincts. And, you know, I have the saying about confidence that I've only recently kind of stumbled into as I've been digging into more research around the science of confidence and the skill of confidence. Because a lot of people think that confidence is a personality trait. It's not. It's actually a skill that you build through action. And a lot of people think confidence is a state of belief. It can be, but that's not where it begins. And so I say that confidence is the willingness to try. That's all that it is. Knowing that you may succeed or survive, but you'll still try. And to me, all those people that we admire most, that's what they're doing, they have the ability to tune into those instincts that are true for them. Because the fact is, there's only one you. That's it. And you matter. Because there's only one you, and there's only ever gonna be one you. And your instincts and your experiences and your inner wisdom is a gift to the world. And every time that you tune it out because of the habit of hesitating, or the habit of self doubt, or the habit of worrying, or the habit of overthinking, you are robbing the world of that gift that you have to give to everybody.

Efficiency is good. All things being equal, doing things faster is great. The problem is that there is a point of diminishing returns to using efficiency as your only strategy for productivity, which is that no matter how fast we move, the amount of busy work always expands to fill the amount of time available.