The 5 Secrets to Success (They Didn't Teach You In School) EP 1200

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Almost nobody is talented. Talent is completely overrated. I would argue that you were born with certain physical talents that enabled you to excel in sports that I could never have acquired no matter how hard I tried. Even that said though, Larry Bird was not born with the kind of talent that Michael Jordan was. Larry Bird just grounded out and shot more practice shots than anybody else. That's a skill.

And hustled.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But the good kind of hustle.

Yeah, exactly.

And so it feels to me like talent is a betrayal. It is undermining all of the people who put all that work into skill. Don't call someone skillful talented because they're not. They're skillful. So we can agree that playing the piano is a skill in the sense that if you work at it, you get better at it. But I would like to believe that being enthusiastic is a skill. And then so is being creative. It's a skill. You can get better at it. You can choose to put in the work in whatever form it takes. We're not talking about graphic art here unless you want it to be graphic art to gain the skill. And if that's true, that's really good news because it means you're not stuck where you are. It means you can go to where you want to go. And it's really good news because skills can be acquired. And that fills me with optimism about so many things in our world. You know, we can point to the human condition and say, people are just doomed to hate each other and to undercut each other. But I can point to a culture where that's not happening. So how did that happen? Well, it's because it's a skill.

What are the three biggest skills you think all human beings should acquire, whether it be creativity or some type of attribute that just make them better human beings, happier, more quote unquote successful, richer lives with relationships, health, everything. What are those three skills? Whether you're 20 or 60, what three skills should we acquire to live a better life?

I love this. Okay, how about this? Number one is the skill of possibility, of seeing that things could be better. Number two, the skill of empathy, practical empathy, of understanding people don't know what you know, don't want what you want, don't see what you see, that they have a noise in their head that's different than the noise in your head, and that's okay. And then the third one is the skill of learning how to learn, of being open to saying, I see possibility. I see people who need to be served who aren't who I am. And I, if I put enough into this, can figure out how to make a contribution. Those, I think, are three skills.

Yeah, it's really just understanding emotional intelligence and people and stepping into other people's shoes and having compassion. Why did you choose those three skills over copywriting or, you know, personal finance?

There are some next level tactical ones like decision making is a skill and almost every Western human is terrible at it.

Why? Why are we terrible at it?

Because sunk costs are something that are probably hardwired into us. What a sunk cost means is the harder you worked to have something, the harder it is for you to give it up. And We see this mistake happen all the time. The example I'll give is pre-COVID, you've got two tickets to the movies and they were really hard to get and you told your girlfriend that you were going to go to the movies together. On your way, you bump into a friend who says, I got two front row seats to see Hamilton. Do you want to go? That means your tickets are worthless. A lot of people go, well, No, no, there's no well. It doesn't matter how much those tickets cost you. They're sunk. You already made that decision. You can't unmake it. And so we stick with the job longer than we should, or we stick to a way of thinking about the world longer than we should, because it costs a lot. We went to law school, so now I have to be a lawyer. No, you don't. The law school degree is a gift from your former self. You don't have to take it. You could say, no, thank you. and go do something that gives you joy instead. So SunCost is a giant skill-based area. And then what goes right next to that is the skill of saying, that was a good idea, but I have a better one now.

Ooh.

And that takes practice.

Explain that. So I launched this idea and it started going and I built momentum for a few years, but now this is actually a better idea for the time or for my life or whatever. And so I want to let go of that thing and move into this.

Well, it's not that's definitely true. That's sunk cost. But then beyond it, okay, I'm the boss and I built this organization and this is how we do our expense reports. But now we're going to do expense reports this way because it's better. But usually what happens is someone says that problem's solved. I don't have to revisit it. So if I think about the car industry, the car industry said, It took us 90 years to develop the internal combustion engine. That was a lot of cycles, a big sunk cost. And someone shows up and says, why don't we make electric cars? Because internal combustion isn't broken. Because I can show you that if we look at an early electric car compared to a state-of-the-art Lexus, the state-of-the-art Lexus is better, not a problem. Whereas what would have Transferred billions and billions of dollars of assets away from Elon Musk is if they had said, Nope, you're right. We're just gonna copy all the things you're doing that are working and make it even better. 'Cause we have an improvement ratchet in place, a dealer network in place, we're trusted, we could go to the races. But senior executives making seven figures said.

Nope, nothing could be better than this. Yeah, I tell you what, I got a Tesla a few years ago and it's hard for me to think I'd ever wanna go back for a day-to-day car that's not electric, personally.

It just-- But let's think about Tesla for a minute, because Tesla made a whole bunch of decisions a few years ago that they refused to reconsider, right? That the inside of the car should have no cup holders of a certain kind, that the inside of the car should have these things on the dashboard, but not these things that the service needs. So they're as guilty of the same thing. They took a leap. They hired a thousand people. And now they're stuck on their Sunk Costs.

Right.

That's true. And they'll be stuck until they innovate or continue to open up. Why do we need reassurance? Why does it seem like a lot of people need this reassurance just every day? We need some type of reassurance. And why should we avoid reassurance?

That's the second side. Reassurance is futile. Reassurance feels really good, right?

So we.

Get off this call, the phone's ringing, and Kai comes to you and says, Hey, Louis.

Great job.

It's Oprah. And Oprah was listening. She just wants you to know what a great job you did. So you're flying for like two hours, maybe three, and then you need to hear it from somebody else. Because what it means to get reassurance is that someone is telling you that the future is going to be okay. And it feels good because we would like the future to be okay, but deep down we know that that person doesn't know that the future is going to be okay. So as soon as reassurance shows up, it reminds us that we are confronting an uncertain world and we want more of it. We want to be held safely. and it doesn't scale, you can't get enough of it. So what's the alternative? The alternative is to refuse reassurance.

So when someone says, you did a great job Seth, it was amazing, that was the best thing I've ever seen in my entire life, how do we refuse that?

Well, that the answer is thank you, I appreciate you being present and giving me that feedback, but it's reassurance if you then say, and your book launch is going to go great. 'Cause that you can't know. That's the second half of that's what's implied is that I'm going to tell you about tomorrow. And what's the alternative? The alternative is to say, nobody knows about tomorrow. And looking for external validation that I'm gonna catch that fish, that that thing I am hoping for is going to work, that other people will get the joke. Not only doesn't it help me, it undermines my trust in myself. It undermines all of the things that I need to merely do the work. So, you know, you've been seduced by, like me and everyone else with the just do it thing from Nike. And the problem with the word just is that some people think it means what the hell? Do whatever you want. Doesn't matter. Just do it. And I think it should be changed to merely do it. Do it without commentary. Do it without drama. Simply show up and do the thing. Focus on the practice, not hoping and wishing for the outcome that you need to be reassured by. But the practice, the best you can do it. Because if you, what could be better than the best you could do it? Nothing. So do that. Learn from what works and then do it again. But seeking reassurance is distracting you from doing a better job of what you set out to do in the first place.

I saw somewhere, I don't know if it was an article or video about Oprah talking about almost 100% of her guests, not everyone, but I think a lot of them at the end of the show would all say the same thing. I think you know what I'm going to say. It's like, did I do okay? Was that good enough for you?

Yeah.

Did you like that? And it's this kind of reassurance mindset, right, of like, knowing that we got approval from the person who's interviewing us or working with us or our publisher, were the numbers okay for you? Did the sales go okay? How do we gracefully remove that from our way of being moving forward so that we don't have to ask if we did a okay job? And we learned to just say thank you so much for having me or I'm grateful and whatever else. How should we finish a project like that?

Well, I'm really afraid of the word should. I think should and shame go right next to each other. So I will just tell you that there are practices that you can engage in to help you insulate from feedback that isn't going to help. So here's an interesting story. A bunch of years ago, A famous electronics company did a focus group. The way focus groups work is you set up a trailer next to a shopping mall. You pay people some money. They come in for an hour. There's hidden glass windows and the client can watch people touch the product. And they had a clock radio and it had all these gizmos on it and everything else. And they got eight people in there and they're all looking at the clock radio and they're all talking about how much they love the clock radio. And at the end, the organizer says, Thank you so much to thank you for being here. Either you can get the $20 we promised you or the $100 clock radio, which would you prefer? And every single person took the 20 bucks.

Why?

Because that was the truth. That was the moment that they were actually telling the truth.

Oh, so they thought the clock wasn't as worth as much as the $20.

Yeah.

And so, what I have found is I got an ego as much as anybody, maybe more. I like it when the people around me say, you did a really good job. When Oprah says, that was good, for sure. But I want to see three years later, are people still talking about this idea? Or I just want to see in the afternoon after a blog post, did someone engage with it in a way that changed them? When they didn't know that I would notice, right? Because it's not a performance in that moment. It's, did you have an impact? So if you go to Dia Beacon in upstate New York and watch what happens when people walk into a Richard Serra sculpture, which weighs two million pounds, I hope Richard has seen that happen because that's genuine service. He made this. The curator doesn't matter. The dealer doesn't matter. This person had their breath taken away. That's what was supposed to happen, and it did. And so we play this game with everybody around us. Do I look fat in this dress, et cetera, et cetera. And some of that is totally legitimate. It papers over our momentary insecurities, and there's nothing wrong with that. But when it comes down to the practice and the art that we seek to make, I think it makes sense to surround ourselves with people who say, I respect you, you're on to something, you can do even better. And for us to start a cycle of what happened when this went into the world. Because when it's in the world and people had choices, what did I learn? How can I help a different group of people or this group of people make a different choice? And in the workshops that I do, I get to watch all of it because I'm like up here and you can see all the interactions. That's different than looking at the test scores because you're watching how people are going back.

Yeah, I think I heard our good friend Gary Vee talking about how when he started in his dad's wine business, he would sit there and watch people walk through the store and say, okay, what if I move this this way? And what if I put this in the front? Did people go and pick it up or did they walk right past it? Observing the results and the impact that you create on people, whether that's an experiential design or a physical design, whatever it may be. I'm curious, I'm going to try to be mindful of the word should. Is it more powerful for creatives to have goals and deadlines or is that destructive to the creative process?

Right.

So, Deadlines are a weird word because they have the word dead in them.

Finish lines are launch lines, whatever you like.

I am super disciplined about deadlines. I have never missed a deadline because I just decided that some people need that tension that comes from being five minutes late. I abhor that. I want to go nowhere near that. So for me, it's fuel. For other people, it might be turbo fuel because they need that five-minute over thing. But there are other people who it completely destroys their work. So you've got to figure out how do you engage with that. But goals is a different thing. So I was talking to somebody I wish I could give them credit who was explaining to me, that goals are externally focused. And this is one of the things that led to me writing about it in the book. Meaning, if you say my goal is to be a millionaire, that isn't up to you. It's only partly from you and the rest of it is luck. And so if you're going to say I'm a good person because I'm lucky and I'm a bad person because I'm unlucky, now you're really in trouble. Instead, what we need are practices that we call our thing, that thing we call our goal is, I'm going to be the kind of person that ships this much work each day that gets out of bed at this time, that manages their expenses so they're always one-third of, I mean, you can make a list of things that are completely under your control. Call those your goals and wipe out anything that involves fish, anything that involves something external happening that makes you feel lucky.

So I'm hearing you say focusing more on the things you can control daily, the habits, practices, the actions, your energy, way of being, your compassion daily as opposed to the end result.

Right.

And let's get back to where we started, which is the reason people don't do that because they don't want to hear from their other voice. They don't do that because they don't want to be on the hook. It is easier to catastrophize. It is easier to say I'm distracted. It is easier to say, oh, the world is way too whatever. All of those are external things that let you off the hook. What I remember is I was born a year and a half before the Cuban Missile Crisis.

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Right?

The world is really in trouble in 2020, but the world was 10 minutes away from being gone in 1962. And so the question is, how did we get from that to Neil Armstrong walking on the moon seven years later? We didn't do it by saying, well, we can't because Russia could end everything in any minute. We said, well, if Russia is going to end everything in any minute, we might as well send someone to the moon. And my friend, Raz Xander, helped me learn the difference between but and and. So here we go. If you go on a long planned vacation and it's raining, you could say, I'm on vacation, but it's raining. Doesn't that suck? or you could say, I'm on vacation and it's raining. And the and leaves room for you to say, so I can take a cooking lesson so I can have some quiet time with my spouse so I can figure out how to work for social justice. All of those things happened because it's raining. And so, yeah, it's raining right now. It's really bad. And you can do something. You can't fix everything, but you can make one person better.

What are the habits that you believe would support more creatives if they did these habits on a daily basis from your 30 plus years of experience of what's worked for you and what you've seen other people you've studied do? What are those few habits you think could really help them further their inner happiness and hopefully accelerate the luck on the outside as well?

Yeah. So we have to not fool ourselves into getting hooked on the external that we'll pretend we're not, but deep down we are. And so, you know, Chönyi and Rinpoche.

Said.

The bad news is we are falling and falling and falling. And the good news is there's nothing to hang on to. And as soon as you acknowledge that there's nothing to hang on to, it gets so much easier to fall.

You just let go and you don't have to keep trying to grab or something. Right.

And so it's the grabbing is the biggest thing. I write in the book a little bit about Julia Cameron's morning pages. Most people don't really understand how they work. You're not supposed to get up and write three pages of good prose. You're not supposed to get up and write three pages of interesting things. You're simply supposed to get up and write three pages, period. About anything. Junk, garbage, cruf, get it off your chest. Doesn't matter. Just put it down. As soon as you do, for the rest of the day, if you try to bring it up again, your subconscious says, I already wrote that down. I don't need to revisit that. It's taken care of. I wrote it down. I've discharged that. And so part of what it means to have a practice is the practice defines who you are. If you want to be a runner, the best thing to do is go run every day. If you run every day for 30 days, you're a runner. You don't have to subscribe to Runner's World, you don't have to have fancy equipment. You just have to run every day. If you want to be a writer, you have to write every day. And you don't have to show it to anybody. You simply have to do it. And not showing it to people lets you off the hook at some level, but at least you can see yourself as that kind of person. And then the step after that, which I'm a huge fan of and the internet makes this easier than ever, is publishing anonymously. I think you should have a daily blog, but don't put your name on it. And after you've written 30 or 40 entries of your daily blog or made five or six episodes of your podcast, you're going to want to put your name on it and then you can. But begin with, and if your name's not on it, it's so delicious because there's no upside and there's no downside. So you're simply doing it and that's all you're going to get out of it, is that you did it.

Yeah. I want to ask you about money for a second because I think it's a topic that a lot of creatives shy away from. And I think this will actually be, might be some of the most powerful stuff people hear is around the topic of money. You've been financially successful. You launched a business 30 years ago that you sold and exited. You've had many hits in your books and businesses. You've made money as a creative. It's fair to say that. How can, what should creators be thinking about in terms of, what if they want to create great work, but also they want to be rich? They want to make millions. They want to, for the heck of it, to support their family, their lifestyle. They want to make money. What should they be thinking about in terms of art and money and marrying the both without it feeling bad or icky or I'm selling myself in a bad way to make money? How can they approach it mentally so that it doesn't cripple them, but they achieve the results they want?

My answer may surprise some people, but here we go. The odds that you will make a lot of money doing exactly what you want are zero to a rounding error, zero. It is possible to make a lot of money. It is easier now for people of privilege to do it than most any other time in history. because of the network effect, because of the power software, because of tools that give you reach to millions of people. The way you make a lot of money is you figure out what people with money want to spend that money on to solve their problem now. And you go solve that problem. And then over time, you amplify their need and you let them do it again. That is how everybody with few exceptions who has made a lot of money has done it. Those people don't get to say, oh, but I also have this idea and I need to express it because I think it's generous. Those are different things. And only in the last hundred years has it even been conceivable that you could get paid money to do what you love. This is brand new idea. So I am in favor of doing what you love. and charging for it if you can, because it holds you responsible, puts you on the hook, creating tension, serving people you want to serve, and maybe you'll get paid a little bit. But if you want to make a lot of money, listen to the market.

In this section, bestselling author Mel Robbins talks about properly manifesting success while using the law of attraction and why so many people get it wrong. What's your thoughts about the law of attraction on how to apply it the right way or?

Yeah, I think, well, I think the law of attraction and manifesting are the same thing. So law of attraction for everybody who has not read the Secret is simply your thoughts become things. And it's true. We've talked all about how when you have a negative self-talk, it tends to draw more of that to you. I think about it like lint in a dryer. Once negative stuff starts collecting, It collects a lot more. We can also talk about your brain filter, something called the reticular activity system and how it is a live network that filters the brain. We'll dig into that deeper, but let's do surface level right now manifesting law of attraction. So here's what everybody gets wrong about manifesting. Everybody, at least kind of in the mass market, what you're trained to think about when you think about manifesting is Vision boards. And when you hear the word vision boards, you think about the big stuff. Should you have big dreams? Of course you should. Should you dream of building a mansion on the ocean, if that's your thing?

Yes.

Should you dream of the log cabin?

Yes.

If you want a Lamborghini or the new Ford Bronco, should you buy? Yes, yes, yes. If you want the family, if you want the body, should you think about it? Yeah, absolutely. Here's where everybody goes wrong. You Dream about the end, you make this gorgeous collage of all this stuff that has nothing to do with your current life. That literally, as you're sitting in your studio apartment with the cat box that hasn't been changed in two weeks.

No food in the fridge.

No food in the fridge, and you're looking for a job, and you're staring at a mansion going, Someday, it's gonna make you feel like a loser. Because the gap between where you are and where you want to go seems insurmountable. And so what happens based on the research is when you only visualize the end game, Louis, it's demotivating. At first it's really fun to have a bottle of wine and make your like collage, I'm gonna visualize, I'm gonna slap this up, there's my vision board, fabulous, law of attraction baby, come on, I'm gonna think about it, it's gonna come to me. Okay, I've been doing this for two days. I'm still in this apartment with the cat box that needs to be changed. The way to visualize properly is to visualize the bridge between where you are and where you need to go.

The bridge.

Yes, and particularly the horrible stuff. So let's use your example of the marathon. The vision board would be Lewis Crossing The arms up, the metal. High fives, yes, I did it. Exactly. That will not help you. Because when you hit mile 13 on the actual race, and it is sleeting rain.

You're saying, why am I doing this?

Yes, it feels nothing like that thing on your vision board. You're going to start a negative dialogue. I can't do this, my knees hurt, this is not what I thought it was gonna be, I'm not ready for this, I didn't train for this. I'm running New York, I train in LA, are you running in New York?

LA.

Okay, good. Well then at least you trained in the right weather. So on and on and on, and you are going to tank yourself. What you do by visualizing the bridge is you train your nervous system and your mind to do the hard work. So you should visualize not crossing the finish line, but what is it like to be at mile 12 when your batteries run out on your earbuds?

Yeah.

No, I'm serious. And you keep going. What's it like when your shoelace breaks and now your heel is lifting and you're starting to get a blood blister at mile 17? What's it feel like when you wake up and it is pouring rain and you visualize yourself running anyway? That way, when you visualize the work, you are preparing your body for it. so you're not resistant to it when it comes.

Yeah.

Isn't that cool?

I think it's great. It's a story that I had George St. Pierre, who's one of the greatest UFC fighters of all time. He said that he always puts himself in the most uncomfortable situations in practice leading up to the fight. The most, you know, the hardest situations to get himself out of. When his arms are behind his back and he's faces against the mat in between the fence, and he's just getting punched in the face. He's like, how do I get out of this?

Right, right.

He's like, visualize that and seeing how can I get through this?

Yeah, yeah.

Where it seems like, I just want to tap out.

Yes.

Instead of tapping out, what's the process for figuring out how to get through it?

Yeah.

To then raise my hand at the end victorious.

Totally. And so you are literally building up almost like this resilience and this muscle inside of you to do the work to get the thing. So yeah, create the vision board, but make sure in addition to crossing the finish line, you have somebody running in the rain. You have somebody who you have an alarm clock that says 5:13. You have these images that show the stuff that you don't want to do. So for people who want to launch a business, for example, a lot of people that I'm sure follow both of us are dying to launch a business or interested in being an influencer, social social media or making money online and what you visualize are the checks or you visualize the money you're gonna make or you visualize how cool it's gonna be when you're a lifestyle entrepreneur, whatever.

The hell it is.

Don't do that. Visualize working a day job and telling your friends that you're not gonna go out tonight because you're working on something. Visualize making cold calls and being told no. Visualize not going to that party because you're staying in on a Saturday. and not going to the barbecue because you're putting in the work. Visualize sitting in a seminar and learning from other people. Visualize watching YouTube videos. Visualize your first ever course failing miserably. Like literally that's the sort of thing that you want to visualize yourself doing and pushing through because that's gonna help you do the work. Isn't that cool?

I think that's great. Visualizing, so in order to manifest what you want, Don't just visualize the good things happening, visualize the bridge, all the things that's going to take to get there.

Yes, and the hard parts of the bridge, because then you're ready for it. Then you're like, I didn't expect this.

To be this hard.

I mean, it's still going to be hard. But you're less likely to quit.

Yes. So what have you done in the last five years to help you manifest after the first book? Were you doing this as well, or kind of once you get on a rhythm and build momentum, become easier to manifest in your opinion?

Well, so I am constantly training my mind to work for me. And there's this little trick that I talk about in the book that is all sort of the beginning of having a high five attitude. A high five attitude is the ability to catch yourself when you're going mentally low and to flip yourself back up into a high five attitude.

Okay.

The thing that I know to be true is that you cannot control the things around you. You can't control what's going to happen. You can't even control how your nervous system might respond or what thoughts might pop into your head. But you can always choose what you do next and what you make it mean, right? And so that's where all the power is.

Yes.

And so I do this thing where I, this is again, it's going to sound So dumb. But it's a way for me to introduce you to the power that your mind has to change in real time. We've talked a lot about negative self-talk. And part of the reason why negative self-talk is so crippling is not only because you've repeated it for so long and now it's a pattern, but it's also because you have a filter on your brain called the reticular activity system.

Mm-.

Okay.

This puppy is the keys to everything. And it's remarkable that most of us have never heard of it. We've experienced it, but we don't know how to use it to our advantage. So first let me tell you what the RAS does. Then I'm going to give you an example of when you've experienced it in your life. And then I'm going to explain to you how to use it to get what you want in life. This is like the super attractor manifesting and it also works for interrupting negative self-talk. Like it's gonna supercharge all the work you're doing with the mirror and interrupting thoughts. So first let's talk about the RAS. So the RAS, imagine a hairnet on your brain. Only it's like electric, meaning it's alive, okay? Now the RAS has one job and the job is block out 99% of what's going on and let in 1% of what's going on. Our brains at this moment in history are having to process about 34 days worth of cell phone data in one day.

Crazy.

It's crazy. And so your RAS is a monster job. It's like a bouncer at a bar. You're not coming in, you can come in. And you've experienced this. So have you ever shopped for a car?

Yes.

Okay, so what's the last car you bought?

Tesla.

Oh, Tesla. Oh, fancy Lewis house. I like that.

Well, I never had a, I never had a nice car until three years ago. I had a four thousand dollar car for five years before that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And then I was like, you know what? I have no Bluetooth. I have no, it's like, I just needed an upgrade.

Yeah.

I love it.

It was a 1991. Dude, you deserve it. Out of 1991 Cadillac. And I was like, okay, you deserve it.

Buy a car. So I bought a Tesla. Yeah, right. And so before you thought about buying Tesla, you drive down the road, you don't really think about it. The second you're like, you know, I think I'm interested in a Tesla. What do you see everywhere? Teslas. Yes, everywhere. Everywhere. My husband just bought a pickup truck. I'd never even noticed them. Now I'm like, there are baby blue pickup trucks everywhere. What is going on? That's the bouncer in your brain. And let me tell you how this works. There are only four things that automatically get through the bouncer in your brain, the RAS. Number one, your name. So you've experienced being in a crowded place and somebody's like, you think you hear Lewis and you're like, huh, somebody call my name? That was the bouncer in your brain. The second thing that always gets let in is any threat to your safety. So there are loud noises all the time, but only ones in close proximity make you go like this. That was the bouncer in your brain letting it in.

Okay.

The third thing that gets let in is when you sense that your partner is interested in sex with you or somebody else. You're like, Chris, who are you looking at? Stop looking at her. You know what I'm saying? You kind of pick up on the signals. That's the bouncer in your brain. And the fourth one, and this is where, this is the billion dollar thing that everybody needs to know. The bouncer in your brain lets in whatever you think is important to you. So when you get intentional about telling your brain what's important to you, like, I'm interested in a Tesla. Your brain's literally like, oh, let's let all the Teslas in. Come on in. Here's the downside to this. If you have told yourself that you are a bad person for the last 10 years, guess what your brain thinks is important. Examples that mean you're a bad person.

Right.

So I'm going to give you a very specific example. So I personally don't think I'm a bad person. I don't think I'm perfect, but I know I do my best. I mean well. I don't have that story about myself at all. I used to, but I don't.

And.

Let'S say I oversleep and I miss the dentist. I miss the dentist appointment. I'm like, oh, I gotta pay the 25 bucks. I gotta reschedule that thing. That kind of blows. That's all I think. And then I go on. My daughter who constantly beats herself up and says she's a bad person. This is a real example, by the way. She oversleeps, misses a dentist appointment, and it becomes, see, I always screw everything up. I'm a terror. I'm always messing things up. Like everything that gets let in confirms that you're a bad person.

She finds proof and evidence.

Yes, that's the bouncer in your mind. I'm here to tell you that when you get intentional about what you want to think about yourself. It changes in real time what your brain lets in and what it doesn't. That helps you with the other things that you're doing. The high five in the mirror, the I'm not thinking about that, the pathetic mantra, hey, you know, just because I missed the dentist appointment doesn't mean I'm a bad person. I'm doing the best I can here. Give myself a break. High five, you know what I'm saying? Shake it off, get back in there. It's true, right?

Right.

Because it's these little things. Somebody cuts you off, somebody reaches for the last thing of cereal that you wanted to buy at the grocery store. You think it's like a sign that the world's out to get you. This is all your story and your mind skewing the world to prove all of the stuff you keep repeating. And the only way to get a handle on it is to start acting the opposite, like high-five yourself. Even though you don't feel like it, interrupt the crap that you keep saying. Put your hands on your heart and settle your body down. All of these things are things that somebody does when they care about themselves, when they think they deserve to be treated with kindness, when they think they deserve support, and when they realize they need it. And when you start to build yourself back up, you'll show up very differently. and other relationships.

Absolutely.

You know, if you tolerate this kind of treatment from yourself, you'll tolerate it from other people. It does begin with you.

And when you create boundaries and you don't abandon yourself, then you won't abandon yourself with other people either.

You won't let them cross the boundaries. Correct. Like, if you stand in front of the mirror every single morning and you're.

Like, I look like crap. You've probably heard me say this before, but taking care of your health should be your number one priority. What you put in your body directly impacts how you think, how you feel, and how you show up in and whether you're training for a marathon, you're running a business, or just trying to get through a busy day with energy and clarity, nutrition is fundamental. And when I feel my body right, I perform better, period. And that's why I'm a big fan of RXBAR. RXBAR is all about simple ingredients and honest nutrition. They lead with transparency. Just look at their packaging. It says, no BS, just real ingredients like egg whites for protein, dates to bind, and nuts for texture. Whether you're on the go or in between meetings, they've got something that fits. The original 12 gram protein bar, the nut butter and oat bar, soft, crispy and packed with 10 grams of protein or the mini just 100 calories with six grams of protein. RXBAR is the proud sponsor of no BS and they want you to say no to what's holding you back and yes to what fuels your greatness. Use code GREATNESS on RXBAR.com for 25% off. RXBAR, proud sponsor of no BS subject to full terms and conditions and to change valid until September 30, 2025, and may not be combined with other offers. See rxbar.com for full details and limitations. What's up, podcast listeners? It's tanks host of the it's me, tanks podcast. Join me weekly on it's me, tanks as I dive into topics like relationships, why it's okay to feel lonely, fighting.

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And don't forget to follow the show so you don't miss an episode. I am not good enough. I'm unhappy with my life. And then you step into a relationship. and somebody leaves you on read and they ghost you for three days, like you come to expect that because that's how you believe you think you deserve to be treated. When you stand in front of a mirror and you're like, Hey, you're awesome. We got this. I got you. I know it's hard. You know, we're gonna go do this. Or, Hey, this is a big day today. I've got this huge presentation. I am going to destroy this. You know, like you get into it, you're excited. Like then you're creating momentum for yourself.

Otherwise what?

You're gonna stand there and be like, oh my God, I'm gonna screw this up. I'm not prepared. It's like the negative morning routine. It leads to negative actions.

Absolutely.

So this training thing, training your RAS. So here's what I want you to do. Starting tomorrow, after you wake up and make your bed and kind of settle your nervous system and high five yourself after setting your intentions, So now you're like sending yourself into your morning routine in a totally different way with a calm down nervous system and intention and this boost of feeling supported and loved and celebrated. I want you to find one naturally occurring heart shape as you go through your day.

I saw this in your book.

Yeah.

Yeah, it could be a stone, it could be a leaf on the ground, it could be a cloud shape, It could be a coffee stain. It could be an oil stain on the floor of a garage. It could be a spot on a dog walking by. I want you to tell your mind, let's find a heart. Let's see if we can find a heart. And something weird is going to happen. You're going to see something. And then I want you to literally supersize what's going on in your brain. And what you do is when you see the heart, I want you to then take a moment and literally congratulate yourself. Feel like, oh my God, I found it. Whatever you believe in, God, the universe, greater connection, you put that there for me and I found it. And I want you to feel this kind of wave of, that's kind of cool. I just saw a heart. And then that positive thing, remember how I told you the bouncer in your brain pays attention to what's important to you. When you get your nervous system celebratory involved, that makes your brain really pay attention. Just like trauma makes your brain pay attention.

It does.

So you supercharge the experience by celebrating it and then look for another one. I see hearts all day long. And what happens when you start to play this game is you will start to realize you are walking by an entirely different world every single day because you're not looking for it. There are opportunities, there are signs, there are mile markers on your path that you are literally tuning out. Yes. And we can all sit in this moment, Louis, and look back and see how the dots of our life connect us here. The coolest thing about practicing the high five habit, this training of Finding Hearts and the high five attitude is that you start to ground yourself in the idea that this too is a dot on the map of your life. And it is leading you somewhere incredible.

In this part, entrepreneur and bestselling author Tony Robbins shares the importance of loving yourself by your own standards that you have the ability to set. Was there ever a moment where you didn't unconditionally love yourself? And if so, when did that shift where you stopped that and you started saying, okay, I appreciate myself because of my contribution and my service and who I am? What was that shift? I don't think it was ever I just didn't love myself.

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

You'Ll feel great about yourself. I already know all the comments that are coming through. Thousands of comments tell me, but what about my family that's toxic? What about my partner who's toxic? And how do I love someone unconditionally when they don't respect me? I can't trust them.

What about situations like that? All those reactions are natural human reactions. from ego. Because it's all about you, me, me, me, what I'm not getting, what I'm not doing, and that's why you're in pain. And so I'm not telling you like I haven't done this. I've done it too in the past, but it's an old pattern I don't really do anymore. And it used to affect me. Now, not a dominant one. I wouldn't have become who I become. Early in my life, I developed this belief that life is calling not to give me something, life is calling for me to deliver number of things for me to bring something to life. And I felt the joy that came from not getting but giving and I got hooked on that core pattern and then the pattern of learning so I'd have something to give which I know one thing I respect about you, Louis, is that you have that same pattern in you. You're always trying to learn more because underneath it all you also want to give it. You want it for you but you want to share it, right? And so those patterns help me not be in what they're not giving me and and all this language. Language, today people don't understand the power of their language, like toxic. What the hell are you talking about? You've been reading too much social media and thinking about yourself or somebody raised you to constantly judge everybody else. We live in a culture now where people, you're evil or you're like me. That's basically how it is, right? The whole world, everybody else is immoral unless they do what you do. think what you think, experience what you think. I mean, being a liberal, I was a liberal, right? Being a liberal growing up meant, I would fight for your ability to say and believe whatever you want different than me. Today, now everybody wants everybody to think the same thing, otherwise they're evil or otherwise they could hurt me. Whatever happened to sticks and stones will break your bones and words will never hurt me? We have this whole thing that words are evil, words are action, it's bull, and all it does is make you incredibly weak as a human being, and you're more than that. We all are more than that. But you know what? Like a kid that's never broken their bones, deathly afraid of breaking the bone. But if you're a kid and you're rough and tumble, you broke multiple bones and they heal, you don't have any fear of it. There's so many kids that have been raised to be safe and secure every moment. Anything that's insecure or unsafe, they don't want to be a part of, including language. And what it does is make you incredibly weak and fearful. And that's why there's so many people that are abundant, that are angry all the time. 'Cause their anger is they're not growing. So don't get me wrong, I know some people are not a good influence. I'm not denying that. I'm just saying you're more than somebody's influence unless you obsess about it every moment and make them wrong so you can make yourself feel superior morally, psychologically or spiritually. That's bullshit. Stop the pattern. We've all done it. Catch yourself. 'Cause if you want joy, happiness and freedom in an extraordinary life, you will not come from blame. Never. There's no pride that comes from blame. I don't mean fake pride where you make up to feel good. I'm talking about real pride. Pride is something you earn. Like people tell me, oh, I have no self-esteem because my parents used to say this or they'd say that. I'd say, that's such bullshit. I'm not saying it's bullshit. They didn't say that. I said, it's bullshit. That's why you don't have self-esteem. Self-esteem does not come from what people say about you. Self-esteem comes from what you experience about yourself. See, someone can tell your whole life you're a piece of crap and a part of you can go, you,'re full of it. I'm going to show you.

Lots of people have done that.

They never bought it. Or someone tell you, you're beautiful your whole life. You go, I'm not really beautiful. So what people tell you doesn't matter at all. It's what you stack. It's what you assemble. It's what you create. It's the habit of what you put in your head. And today, I don't blame you because we got a whole culture that's always blaming somebody else for something in their life. But blame is not a strategy for pride. That's why you listen to these blaming people. They're all angry all the time. Listen, if I wanted to blame, I grew up in an environment, I didn't even share it to my mom past.

And even then I didn't share.

I grew up in a pretty rough environment. My mom was a beautiful soul, but when she drank alcohol and she mixed it with prescription drugs, it was a different creature, and it was a violent creature. And I have a younger brother five years younger and a younger sister seven years younger. and my mom would get nuts and I didn't want them to get hurt. So I was 5'1 in high school. She grabbed me by the hair and smashed me against the wall till I bled. Now I never shared this and I'm not denigrating her in any way. I only shared it like four or five years after she died because I was talking to a group of kids in New York City all without fathers, 80% African-American about 20% Hispanic out of their group roughly. no white kids, and I'm talking about your biography is not your destiny. And it doesn't matter what you've been through, what you decide now is what's going to control your life, what you decide each day going forward is going to decide your life. And I look at them seeing me, I can read their minds. This big, tall, white, rich guy is going to tell me biography doesn't matter. So I said, you, let me tell you my story. And I told them the whole story way more than I'm telling you. And every one of them was crying their eyes out when they're done. I said, look where I am right now. because I wouldn't assemble the story that my past equals my future. The past only equals your future if you live there. If you're using a rear view mirror to guide yourself, you're gonna crash. So what you've been through is horrific. What you've been through is unjust. I'm on your side. But if you hang on to it, you have no future and you have no one to blame but yourself. And these kids, to their credit, man, they just responded to the challenge 'cause they first cried their eyes out hearing all the stories. My mom would think I was lying and I wasn't lying. liquid soap down my throat till I threw up. And I wasn't lying. So it's not the physical abuse, it's the fact that this is the person you love most that's trying to hurt you that messes with your head. So I could have been messed up for life, but I didn't. Because something inside me says, I'm responsible for this life. And part of that is because I started reading when I was 13, 14, biographies of people, the greatest people in history, and reading their lives and finding out. Guess what? guess what? Their lives were far from perfect. Some of them had worse lives than I had. But when you have no reference and all you do is go online, you talk to other people, making everybody else toxic and I'm like this and they didn't do that, then you get to have the sh*t life just like those other people. Why are they online so much? Because they don't have a life, right? Don't be one of those. Free yourself from the chains of your past. I'm not saying your past doesn't matter, but listen. My mother, I tell people this all the time, and it's the truth. If my mother had been the mother I wanted to be, the mother she should have been, I would not be the man I'm proud to be today. Because I had to become a practical psychologist way before any schooling, figure out when's she gonna go in the mood, how do I change her state, how do I protect her from the kids, what are we, I mean, it was felt life and death, and it was to some extent. So I developed skills at such a young age that when I learned things, I just added to my skills. But I had a core sense of certainty that I could turn anybody around because it started with my mother. And thank God for her. And she encouraged me in so many ways. She did so many great things. And she loved me, even though it didn't look like it at times. So, but if your parents, if the people around you said all the things you thought they should have, if they had just not been talking if they'd encouraged you, you wouldn't have any muscle. And right now you don't have any muscle 'cause you're using that as an excuse if you're thinking that. And I'm not attacking you brothers and sisters, I'm calling to you 'cause I know you're more. Otherwise I'd just keep my mouth shut. You've been hypnotized by a culture of weakness. Now having said that, I'll say one last thing. I know you've got other questions, but it's so important what you've asked. Yes, there are people that you don't want to hang out with that will not serve you. But then move on. Don't sit there and talk about it constantly. Don't waste your time. And you say, but what if it's family, Tony? Mine was family too. And you learn to grow. You go, there in my life, if someone can get your goat, if someone can piss you off, if someone can make you feel less than, that's God coming to you saying, grow. You need some spiritual growth. There's got to be some change in your perception, your belief, your emotions. your spiritual look of life. So that can't happen anymore. And when it happens, like at 61, I've been through so many of those things and I like to do things in mass. I took on big challenges so I'd have to grow more. But then life throws them at you too. When they come, you just go, okay, it's going to have me until I grow. What needs a shift in me so that no longer has an impact? But you know, Jim Rohn used to say, my original teacher, he used to say, Tony, what happens if I've got A cup of coffee here and he'd say, what if your worst enemy drops sugar in your coffee? What's gonna happen? And I go, well, you'd have sweet coffee. And he goes, what if your best friend, your mother, your father, your brother, your sister, your loved one drops one drop of strychnine? I said, you,'d be dead. He goes, that's right. Life is both sugar and strychnine, so watch your coffee. His whole thing was stand guard at the door of your brain. But some people take it and go, oh my God, you can kill me. It was a metaphor. These people are not so toxic. They're toxic because you give them energy. so if your mom's crazy and constantly criticizing you and it drives you nuts, just go, that's my mom. That's her way of showing love. And I find a new perspective and no matter what she does, just stay in a beautiful state and love on her and think, boy, think of all that she cares and feels for, all that she's frustrated in life, or all that she's going through that's made her this way. Thank God I don't have to go through this.

I can love her.

It's like your growth is the only limit to your happiness. If you're not happy, you're not growing in some area. And usually it's a place where you're blaming, you're pointing the finger. I don't care if it's government, don't get me wrong, people can be unfair, unjust, that's for sure happens. But you can't control that. You can't make it not happen. What you have to do is become stronger than any of it so you're free. Freedom comes from growth. Freedom does not come from control. Because control is an illusion. You can't control everybody. No matter how hard you try, you can't control what they think or feel. and not everybody's gonna be fair and just. And you, my dear friends, and I have not always been fair and just. Whether we admit it or not, it's just the nature of being a being, a human being. But we can make the largest pattern fair and just and loving and powerful and serving and growing until it becomes the dominant thing inside you. And then you experience life as being great, not your great. Life's great because you're living a great path.

It seems like what I'm seeing and hearing from a lot of people that this past year everything has fallen apart for them. Their health, their relationships, their finances, their mission or purpose, and their spiritual awareness. Every area of life has been in breakdown mode for some people. Not everyone, some people have had incredible lives and have stepped up to the occasion and broken through on all these things. But I'm seeing a pattern of a lot of people breaking down in many areas. Hypothetical scenario, let's say you could only focus on one thing to get you started. You only had the time and energy focus on one of these areas, your health, your relationships are all breaking down, your finances are failing everywhere, where should people lean into first to kind of create that foundation so that everything else can start to rise as well?

I think before you answer what to do, you're gonna answer why you're there. It is not because of the pandemic. I remember when 9/11 happened and people tell, oh my God, my life was destroyed because of 9/11. and there were people in the same building who turned their life around, became, grew spiritually, got closer to their family, made their businesses larger, and the same building burned down, right? I know in my case, you know, 9/11 comes, if you can imagine, you know, I'm fortunate to have now more than 80 companies and all these different industries and obviously, you know, I've done pretty darn well by most people's standards of business and life. But my core mission is what I do for a living. It's why I'm here talking to you right now, is getting people to be free and alive and have the level of fulfillment that they deserve to have. I know they desire, but I also believe they deserve to have, but to deserve to have it, you got to do certain things, right? And so you're not in the place of being overweight because you lost your job. So stop the bullsh*t blame. Blame is not a strategy for a meaningful life. Blame is not a strategy for greatness. So you've got to resolve that number one. And then your question was, what's the one thing to focus on if you.

Can only focus on what? you've probably heard me say this before, but taking care of your health should be your number one priority. What you put in your body directly impacts how you think, how you feel, and how you show up in the world. And whether you're training for a marathon, you're running a business, or just trying to get through a busy day with energy and Clarity, nutrition is fundamental. And when I feel my body right, I perform better, period. And that's why I'm a big fan of RX bar. RX bar is all about simple ingredients and honest nutrition. They lead with transparency. Just look at their packaging. It says no BS, just real ingredients like egg whites for protein, dates to bind, and nuts for texture. Whether you're on the go or in between meetings, they've got something that fits. The original 12 gram protein bar, the nut butter and oat bar, soft, crispy, and packed with 10 grams of protein, or the mini, just 100 calories with 6 grams of protein. RXBAR is the proud sponsor of no BS. and they want you to say no to what's holding you back. And yes to what fuels your greatness. Use code GREATNESS on RXBAR.com for 25% off. RXBAR, proud sponsor of no BS, subject to full terms and conditions and to change. Valid until September 30, 2025 and may not be combined with other offers. See RXBAR.com for full details and limitations.

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I think it's smart to focus on one thing primarily. Focus on too many can be overwhelming. Other people, It's good to focus on multiple things. It depends on your personality. So I wouldn't presuppose. But then the answer would be whichever thing you're most desirous of changing. Whatever thing is giving you the most pain. So if it's your relationship, I go full force on that. Now, in the world we're in today, you don't usually have the privilege of going, okay, I want to work on just being happy. Well, I can train you to be happy while hell's breaking loose. You can sit in this chair and be totally euphoric. But if you do that in a Western culture, people come and take your furniture, right? So you probably have to work on both your business or financial side and some personal side. I would be working on both. And to me, the way to attack that, if you're not sure which areas to start with the body, and I know you can relate to this, Louis, because you and I both share this in common. It's like I always teach physiology first, as you well know. If you change the body, you'll change the emotions. If you change the emotions, You'll change your decisions, you'll change the quality of your life. Because the quality of your life is your emotions. It's not what you get. You have a billion dollars and commit suicide. People have done it, right? You can have beautiful relationships and commit suicide.

You can have people loving you and.

Be sad all the time. Our pattern of emotion is our home. And you have to upgrade your home. You have to train it. And one way to train it is the emotion comes from the way you move, the way you breathe, the way you speak. So if I said to your listeners, there's a depressed person behind the curtain over here and I'll give $100,000 to their favorite charity if they had to describe their body, their posture, and they're depressed, you tell me. I'll just use you as the example.

What does that person look like? They're slouched down. They're looking down at their feet. They're not looking upward. Their shoulders are over.

Are they breathing full or shallow, do you think? They're shallow. Are they talking fast or slow?

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

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

They're slow. They're probably talking low volume, slower than.

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

In this section, former Navy SEAL David Goggins shares why it's so important to reflect on our lives and how you can only reach a certain level of success if you don't. What's your biggest insecurity today?

Not to be arrogant, I don't have one.

What was the last one you had? And when was that?

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

Why is that?

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

Now you didn't have that.

I didn't have anything.

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

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

You hadn't reflected yet.

I hadn't reflected. I've done all these things, but there was no finish line. I still believe that, but you must have time to reflect.

Yeah.

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

I get in the car and I go. You wouldn't even take the medal? Gone. Don't care about it. I'm not gonna waste an hour sitting.

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

Yeah.

They need the ceremony if I accomplish something. Validation.

I haven't done anything.

Let's go. Let's go. Let's go. I'm just kidding.

Started.

I'm just getting started. It was right. When I started figuring out life, that I was leaving so much in the tank, I caught my 40% rule.

Yeah.

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

Program, like a boot camp for the boot camp.

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

Get ready for 18, 19, 20 years old.

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

Wow.

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

Why is that?

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

Hmm. It's not about, Not the mind.

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

Why weren't you training?

I wasn't training myself yet. Because at that time, I was doing what I was told. These guys needed me. A standard.

Physical standard.

A physical standard. The physical standard is not what they need to meet. It's a mental standard you must meet in life. So going back to when I was sick, I was hitting the physical standards. I wasn't meeting. the mental standard. The mental standard is you must know how far you've come.

Wow.

I wasn't, I had come 8,000 miles from where I started. But if you never know that, you're still in the $7 a month place. When I was sick, I was able to slow it down and reflect back on my entire life. And in that bed, and I thought I was dying because that story is long. That sick portion of my life is long. I didn't care if I died or lived. Because I was for the first time in my life happy and at peace. Because I reflected back on where it started.

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

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

Yeah.

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

Really? She doesn't acknowledge it and reflect.

She continues to go back to the dungeon of her past life and live in that space. Live in that space versus living the space that she's in now and reflecting back on, my God, this is what I've done with my life.

So Have you talked to her about this?

We talk about it all the time. And you have to be willing to go there. You have to be willing to really go to not surface. I don't live on the surface of anything. Surface is what got me where I was at. It got me from 175 pounds to 300 pounds. Telling everybody, I'm good. I don't give a damn.

I'm good.

No, they're hollow words. A lot of us speak in hollow words. I used to speak in hollow words. I don't do anymore. Everything that comes out of my mouth has substance. It's real. And we all have these feelings in our bodies, in our minds, in our souls. I act on mine. A lot of us who are afraid of something, we allow our minds to choose the path of least resistance so we go a different route. I'm afraid of something is telling me you must do this. You must do that. Yeah, you have to go that way and most of us don't understand that mentality We go left and we wonder why we haven't fulfilled something in our lives It's because we continue to take the journey that is mapped out and How I look at is I talk in life like a lot of us in life want to take the four-lane highway that has roadmaps and all this other stuff on it man tells you where to go gas station The next 10 miles up, you're gonna see a McDonald's or Cracker Barrel. It's the easy route. Very few of us wanna go to the right side.

That Cracker Barrel's that Midwest life.

That's right, that's right. I'm from Ohio, so...

It's all about it, man. Indiana. Cracker Barrel everywhere. Dude, that's amazing. Bringing back memories. This is powerful, 'cause I've been telling people this. I've been living that way, unknowingly my whole life, of like whatever the thing is I'm afraid of, When I was in high school, I started doing those things. It was just like, I'm sick and tired of feeling afraid. So I need to do the things that scare me the most.

That's right.

You know, I've talked about this a lot on the podcast. Tiffany's heard me share these stories, but I was afraid to talk to girls when I was a teenager. I was afraid of dancing. I was afraid of singing and playing music in front of people. I was afraid of all these different things. And so I said, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna give myself a challenge every single day until the fear goes away. That's right. And I feel like that's what more of us should be doing. I'm hearing that that's what you, how.

You live your life.

That's all it is, man. And it helps me feel so much more confident when you overcome that fear.

Yeah.

Of saying this doesn't have control over me anymore.

That's right. It's like you can be at such more peace. It's 100% in your life. Most of, like, for instance, I never thought in my wildest dreams I could be a Navy SEAL. It's until you opened your mind, open mindedness creates that. we all shut down our mind. Like, for instance, when I broke the pull-up record, everybody around me who heard the pull-up record was 4, 020 pull-ups that's the first thing they did. Oh, my God.

4, 024 hours or was this?

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

I went and got a pen and say, how many is that every minute? Exactly.

Every hour.

Second.

Instead of taking life and making out to be this grandiose thing, start breaking it down. Start breaking it down. And most of us, we live in a box and we don't want to go outside that box at all, ever. Outside that box is all these possibilities of life. But we do is we shackle our mind. We are a prisoner in our own mind that this is all I can do. this is all I'm good at. And we take away the possibilities of you could be this, you could be that, you could be all these things. And I never thought at 300 pounds I could be naked seal. So if my mind was shackled, me and you would never meet. There'd be no book. There'd be no book. There'd be nothing. So what people understand is that they live for themselves. not knowing that you have the power within yourself to change millions of lives.

Yeah.

By facing life, by facing yourself. And through that, I. I would die never knowing that I had the power to change millions of lives. It will haunt me the most. You ask me, what haunts you the most? What haunts me the most is that if I were to die at 300 pounds, let's say I was 75 years old, I got to heaven. and God has a chart like that on everybody's life. God knows all. Let's say that. I don't care what you believe in. Doesn't matter. I'm not judging anybody. Let's say my thing is God. You get to heaven. I'm 300 pounds. I sit down. I was a cockroach Terminator my whole life. And we're sitting down just like this. You're God and I'm David. And he gives me that chart and he says, look at this. Now, look at this chart. And on the chart it has. all these different things, but my name's on it. But these things aren't me. I was gonna change the world. I was gonna set records. I was gonna be a Navy SEAL. I was gonna be all these things in the military that I accomplished. You're gonna get the VFW award. You're gonna be honored here, honored there. I'm like, God, I was, this isn't me. Like it says, David Goggins. I was an Ecolab guy. I sprayed for cockroaches, and I'm 300 pounds. I said, here, I'm 180. It says here, I got a bachelor's and a master's. It says all these things. And God goes, no, that's who you were supposed to be.

Wow.

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

Wow. Is our cap on the human body.

That's right.

Is there one?

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

When you were 300 pounds?

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

Wow.

I started Navy SEAL training with stress fractures.

Stress fractures.

Not shin splints.

That's hard to finish.

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

Oh, my gosh.

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

Wow.

All these guys around me are studs. They're stallions. They're gladiators in my class. They're all healthy. Most of them, they're not broken like this. Let me have some, you know, everybody's sick going through that training. But if I can graduate, it would change everything for me. If I can start the hardest train in the world, broken, and graduate. So my mind fed off of that. You are now, from the weakest man, you are now the hardest man to ever live. If you can do this. If you can do this. Life is one big mind game. game. Yeah. And you're playing it with yourself. Is it true? I don't care. It got me through the hardest training, starting out broken, where most people quit. I had just started.

Wow.

And when you take that mindset and you learn to flip that around, that's what made me powerful. And my body followed. And three months later, My stress fractures were healed by running on them.

It's calcifying it just like.

I never had them since. I'm 43 years old. I ran 7,000 miles in 2007. Haven't had a stress fracture since. And I'm not saying to do that. I'm just saying that when the mind and the body connect and you don't give yourself a way out, the only way out for me at that time was I'm gonna die. Wow. I'm gonna be a Navy SEAL.

Or I'm gonna die.

Or I'm gonna die trying.

Yeah.

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

So when the mind gives it no way out.

No way out.

Your body says, okay.

Okay.

I believe you now.

I have to heal.

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

We're gonna survive.

Wow.

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

Don't physically injure yourself.

Yes. Not saying that.

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

That's no good. That's no good. I'm not saying that. I'm not saying do what I did. I was in a spot that life forced me. I had a choice. I had a choice to be this guy or the guy that's in front of you. I had choices.

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

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

Wow.

I found it a whole nother way. A whole nother way of no matter how far you get in life, you have to be able to go back to scratch in your mind at a moment's notice. You can never get so far beyond scratch. What that means is when you accomplish something in life, if you want to go back to scratch and go back to that $7 a month place where I once lived and visit that place for a long period of time, if you were here when you went back to scratch, you would now be here. Scratch is what makes you better. Scratch, friction, obstacles create growth. There's no friction when you're this far up in the game anymore. You think there is?

That's right.

When you cheat so much, the friction is minor. Because why? I'm sore, I'm going to get a massage today. I'm hungry, I'm going to eat today. The refrigerator is always full. So, your comforts are now, so your discomfort is now very minuscule to your discomfort back here in the $7 a month place. So, you have to go back to the total discomfort to then raise your level of where you're at now. I'm not saying stay there and stay there. Visit.

Visit it.

And then you raise your level.

Take a day trip.

That's right.

Yeah.

Always take day trips. Yeah.

Don't stay there.

That's right.

But take a day trip.

Take a day trip.

So when you complete some massive obstacle and challenge, whatever the adversity that you force upon yourself, because these are all curated experiences for yourself. You're scratching constantly. What happens now since this was five years ago, you would just leave, you want to take the medal, you would just go on to the next. What happens now? Do you take a day to reflect, a moment, 10 minutes? How does the process work? And then how do you get back to visiting the $7 place you lived in?

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

How did you...

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

And why do you do it?

That's why I do it, man. There's a story I'm going to tell you about why I do it. So I make. I have a good living now for me. where I'm at in my life. I was out on a fire in Colorado and we were digging fire line on this, like 50%. Like it was like on the side of a dad going up mountain. Yeah. And we're trying to keep the fire from moving and we're digging this fire line 14 inches or my fault, 18 inches wide, three miles long, 12 of us digging. And it is the hardest work. You make $12 an hour.

Wow.

Okay.

Nothing. You set up your shop. Like, when you're done digging, you pretty much lay down, you go to sleep, and you get up, you dig some more. Really?

This happens for two weeks long. What are you digging?

It's like a hole, you're digging a line. So you're trying to get down to a mineral source. So you're trying to get down to the earth. So that if that fire is moving.

It can't burn dirt.

Really? So you're moving fuels. Yes. Got it. So not only are you digging, you're cutting down trees. that's hard work. But the moral story is I'm 43. Don't need to do it at all. This is why I do. You're making money. I'm making money. I have a good life. I don't need to do it. And everybody asked me why I do it. This is why. This 21 year old kid was out there, and he wanted a pair of running shoes.

That's all he wanted.

A pair of running shoes. 60, 70, 100 bucks to whatever. Easy for us.

Yeah.

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

And in this final section, best-selling author Robin Sharma shares how developing a morning routine is extremely important and what you should do in the morning to set yourself up for success.

I think one of the most important things a human being can do is press the pause button each morning while the rest of the world is asleep and ask yourself, how can I fortify my mindset? How can I insulate my heart set? How can I optimize my health set? How can I escalate my soul set, the four interior empires that I've introduced in the 5am Club, so that when I walk out in the world, I'm creative, I'm productive, I'm compassionate, I radiate positivity, and I have resilience in case I get knocked down. And so I think one of the best ways you can do that is this 2020-20 formula that I've been teaching to the billionaires, the NBA stars, the film icons, and many of the most successful people on the planet for, as I say, 24 years. And very high level, Louis, the 2020-20 formula is simply this. You get up at 5:00 a.m. and anyone can get up at 5:00 a.m. One of the gifts of a human being is neuroplasticity. We are built to change. So please, I would encourage, you know, if we recite our excuses long enough, we actually believe they're true. We are built to change. We are built to grow. We are built to own our heroic nature. And so according to University College London, if we do any practice or habit for 66 days, we reach a point of automaticity where it becomes easier to do that new habit than not do the new habit. Once you wire in the new habit for the first 20 minutes, 5 to 5:20, you move because you can release BDNF, brain-derived neurotrophic factor, which promotes neurogenesis and optimizes your brain. If you move first thing in the morning, you release serotonin, which makes you feel good. You release dopamine, which sets you up for inspiration. Second, we can get into it more deeply, but second pocket from 5:20 to 5:40 is reflect. While the rest of the world is asleep, there's such quiet tuned in the air. This is where you can pray, you can meditate, write in a journal, sit in quietude so that you're focused and living your life and your priorities through the day. And then the final pocket of the 2020-20 formula that I talked about in the 5 a.m. Club is grow. You'll never get old if you grow. You'll never become obsolete in your business, even in a time of great volatility if you're growing. You'll always stay happy if you grow. So 20 minutes at the end of this victory hour, that's what what I call it. You spend some time listening to a podcast like Lewis Howes on the School of Greatness, a man adored by the majority of humanity. You listen to an audiobook, you read a book, you study your battle charts. Anyway, that's a really rough general way to explain the 2020 formula that is currently helping millions people navigate this hard part.

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

The process has been proven in the trenches of elite performance for a long time with my clients. And having said that, you know, I would say the 20-20-20 formula is minimum viable morning routine. And you're a biohacker, I'm a biohacker, I'm a productivity hacker, I'm a life hacker. And so I would say, do what's right for you. You know, it's like this whole field of personal mastery and leadership that we inhabit. I'm not one to say you must do this because we all have different learning types. We're all on different journeys. Someone might be right now upgrading their spirituality so they connect with their crusade and their higher power in this time of house arrest. Other people are creating their masterwork right now. So I think we have to find the routine, the morning routine that works best for us.

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

I've had a lot of night owls.

Who have, that's a great excuse, isn't it, to be a night owl?

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

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

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

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

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

That's very true.

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

Wow, that's true. That's, I mean, I could, that's, that resonates with me because growing up a kid that was, you know, dyslexic and still struggles with reading and writing today and was in the special needs classes, I never thought I was going to amount to much and I didn't have belief in myself until I found a spark and belief in myself. And then I started leaning into that gift, which was sports and started to realize, oh, I have some vision and I have some coordination and I have some speed, even though I was never the fastest or strongest, I had some height. And so I'm going to lean into this gift that was here and see if I enjoy this gift and see if I like this gift and see if this brings me joy. And it did. And I continued. And then I built routines and habits around that gift and kept pursuing it until as far as I could pursue it, until it was no longer a dream or until the gift was no longer there. and so I wanted to pursue other things. And I think, you know, even if whoever's listening or watching, even if you didn't think you were talented or smart enough at some point, there's something inside of you that is talent. You've just got to keep trying things and see what brings you that joy and that uniqueness. At least that's what I would say.

Well, you know, just a hitchhike off of that, Louis, I think no one will believe in you until you believe in you. and, you know, as I'm writing this new book I'm writing, I've been looking at people like JK Rowling, for example. I mean, everyone laughed at Harry Potter, you know, oh no one will ever read this. And she believed in this character about a child wizard who had all of these adventures. And she was a single mother and she was suffering and she had no money and she wrote the whole idea for the Harry Potter concept came to her on a delayed train ride. And then I believe in Edinburgh, she wrote the first Harry Potter and it was rejected. And we all know this, but it like, you know, just a gentle, respectful, loving reminder for everyone who's tuning in here, which is every visionary is initially ridiculed before they're revered. And look at Jonas Salk, look at Elon Musk right now. I mean, look at Shakespeare, look at Oprah, look at Martin Luther King Jr. Look at Nelson Mandela, look at Mary Curie, look at Edison and Einstein, look at Galileo. These were all ordinary people who followed their joy, who came up with a vision, and the very nature of a great vision means you're going to disrupt the status quo. So you're going to scare people. I mean, if your idea is really good for that new business or that new relationship or that new fitness routine or morning routine, it's going to scare people who are card carrying members of the status quo. And so it's much easier to shoot the messenger than to embrace the message. And so it's much easier It's much easier, I mean, I'll tell you completely candidly, I spent four years writing the 5 a.m. Club. I put my heart and my soul in the book, the models and the art that was done by this amazing artist, and every line I wanted calibrated. And, you know, people didn't understand what I was trying to do. And when the book first came out, I looked at the Amazon reviews and they were Terrible.

Really?

Why?

Well.

And I just want to say now it's one of the best selling books in the world and it's almost as if the tide shifted once enough people read it and the narrative changed. It was the most interesting thing but I've actually that really hurt when the book came out It's like holding your baby out into the world and everyone's looking at it going, I just want to tell you your baby is really ugly. Not so pleasant to look at. And what I would say is, JK Rowling again, she said, For some to love you, some must loathe you. I would say also, Bob Dylan, don't criticize what you don't understand. and so if you do anything that's disruptive and also if you put out work that challenges people to leave their comfort zone, to wake up to their genius, if you challenge people to be more loving, to stand for love on a planet that has too much hate, if you challenge people to get up at 5am to spend one hour Working on your mentality, purifying any toxicity within your heart set, upgrading your health and longevity, mining your spirituality in a world of selfies and dancing cat videos and a lot of superficiality and a culture of comparison. you're gonna, you know, I mean, it's easier for people to shoot you down versus to embrace the message.

Does when we're on unusual times right now, does the 5:00 a.m routine and the 2020-20 shift if things are, there's an excuse, I'm tired, and then there's a shift in the world? Does the 5 a.m. Club shift at this time? Do people say, you know what? Let me really take it easy for a few months, or is that an excuse for too long to get back into your vision?

There are times, for example, as an artist when I'm writing and it's flowing and I just know this, trust your natural cycles because your higher power, call it your instinct, call it your intuition, call it your artistry, knows what it's doing. So there are times to be productive and there are times to rest. Now, I very much believe in the 5IM Club in the 2020 formula. I very much believe that it will create a pharmacy of mastery within your brain. It's been proven by science. You know, even just the simple idea of starting your day with some sweaty exercise, why sweaty exercise is because sweat reduce, when you sweat it'll release the BDNF. which John Ratey at Harvard calls miracle grow for the brain. But just that idea of exercising first thing in the morning will help you become more resilient, peaceful, strong during the day. So yes, do your morning routine. Yes, run the 20-20-20 formula and then judge by results. Having said that, if you've been up at three in the morning, because you've lost your job, because you're just picking up on the energy of the world right now where there's so much fear. You're dealing with COVID or you have a family member you've lost as a result of the pandemic. Self-love, personal care requires that you rest, recover and do what you need to do. And I think, you know, that's one of the things, I say this with great respect, but when I read the books or see people saying, you must be like a robot and follow a morning routine or nightly ritual or whatever your best habits are, I believe there must be room for the hard seasons of life.

Mm-.

And, you know, when my heart has been broken, when I've gone through my periods of suffering, I haven't been as disciplined. I haven't been as rigorous. I've had the inopportune pizza nights, you know? And here's what I would also say is my ego, because a bad day for the ego is a great day for the soul. my ego says, Robin, you're not being productive. You're not on your A game. You're not a warrior. But you know what I've realized? I might not be creatively productive according to the definition of society during those cycles or seasons of suffering. But am I not spiritually productive? Am I not emotionally productive? I mean, when does a human being crack the shell of the ego that covers their hearts and learns the human virtues?

Thank you so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's show with all the important links and also make sure to share this with a friend and subscribe over on Apple podcast as well. I really love hearing feedback from you guys, so share a review over on Apple and let me know what part of this episode resonated with you the most. And if no one's told you lately, I want to remind you that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.

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