The 7 Steps To QUICKLY Get Out Of A RUT! (Never Be Lazy Again) | Lewis Howes

Is there more to this horrible feeling of feeling like a loser? Can I change this? And once you figure out I have the ability not to do that... Actually.

Ask yourself if this is what you wanted or were you just used to it? Being used to something, Louis, I think is the biggest reason why people don't...

Here's how you have to think through situations under stress and then it's gonna be about putting yourself into deliberate stress to practice that. you can't practice this type of thinking if you're not.

Getting out of a rut can be so challenging, but in this video, I bring together some of the most productive people in the world to share with you how to get unstuck in your life. If you enjoy, make sure to like this video, subscribe, and leave a comment below on your biggest takeaway. How do we train our minds and our body to be motivated towards a goal and not stay lazy.

Yeah.

Well, at first it's know thyself because we're all different. So, one of the attributes I talk about in the book is discipline. And what I had to do with discipline was actively separate discipline from self-discipline. What's the difference? Okay, well the difference is that self-discipline is internally focused. Self-discipline is about managing oneself and it has very little to do with external requirements, right? So, you or I can decide to get in shape, for example. and we can change our diet, we can work out every day. The external environment doesn't have a lot of say in that, in us achieving that accomplishment. So self-discipline is about managing the internal. Discipline, the way I talk about it in the book, is about achieving that long-term goal. These are those long-term goals that are going to take a while to achieve, and the external world has a say. So getting that promotion right in that book, becoming the famous singer, becoming a Navy SEAL, right? The external world has, starting a podcast, right? The external world has a say in whether or not you do that. And the discipline that is required to move through those wickets takes adaptability, it takes flexibility, it takes the ability to not get seduced by the highs, the successes, and not get crushed by the failures, and continue to move towards that goal. And what I found was, because I'm a very unself-disciplined person, I don't have a lot, right? And so I had to separate this because I've been able to achieve a lot of goals in my life. I say, what's the difference? Well, the difference is if you are overly, so those with very high self-discipline sometimes, this is not exclusive, but sometimes have trouble achieving long-term goals because the achievement of long-term goals often takes an ability and by necessity to march into the unknown, into uncertainty. which is going to throw you off routine and throw you out of certainty. The self-disciplined person, the very self-disciplined likes routine, likes certainty. That's how it's structure. I mean, that's what it is. And so moving towards a goal like that takes oftentimes being able to adapt out of structure and say, well, I can't do that. I'd have to just go in, I have to go in unknowing. Now, the best, the most successful people are those who have both self-discipline and discipline, right? In terms of staying motivated for a goal, the way I would do it by knowing myself is I would, understanding I'm not a very self-disciplined person, I would simply try to chunk a goal into smaller pieces, right? So if I want to lose weight, you know, then I can say, well, that's why cheat days are actually good for me, right? Because I can say, I'm going to take this piece of it and move. So I chunk my reward system in a different way, but I think I think the way one stays motivated towards a goal is highly subjective, but it would, in my kind of through my thought process and my experience, involve one to actively map out a reward system that helps someone move through that.

So, creating a reward system first.

For.

The goal in order to help you stay motivated.

Not just saying, yeah, depending on how you show up.

Not just saying like, okay, I'm going to, My goal is to achieve this thing. It's going to take me three years to accomplish it. And that's the only reward I'm going to get in the next three years. But how can I reward myself every day for an action I take every month, for a milestone every year, for getting closer? So focusing on the reward system.

And this is neurobiological because dopamine, the neurotransmitter, is you get hits of dopamine as a reward when you achieve things. There's many ways you get dopamine, but one of the ways is when you achieve things. So if you're able to effectively create a reward system that means something to you, it can't be kind of inert, right? So if I want to run, if I want to run a marathon and I can barely run to my mailbox, right, then maybe buying some running shoes and putting them on one morning is enough of a reward system to get a dopamine hit. As someone who runs somewhat frequently, and you probably identify with this, just putting on our shoes one morning is probably not going to give us that dopamine hit. We got to extend extend that, we're going to extend that task a little.

Bit so that- you-'ve already accomplished a lot of something. So that you have to push beyond it.

You have to push beyond it to get that reward system so it becomes subjective.

What would you say, 20 years as a Navy SEAL at different levels and you were deployed how many different times? Are you allowed to talk about that?

Well, I mean 13 and some change.

Deployments between what, six months and over a year?

Yeah, I never did year long, but anywhere between three months to six months usually.

This is Iraq and Afghanistan. For the most part, in other places maybe you're not allowed to talk about. What would you say of that 20-year experience was the most challenging experience for you? Was it something within a mission? Was it learning how to develop as a leader? Was it having a relationship with your wife during that time? What was the most challenging point for you?

Yeah, the most challenging thing ironically wasn't the job because we were also prepared for the job and we were around just the best people in the world. So the trust and the camaraderie was to this day, I look back on it very fondly, right?

So not the day-to-day job, you mean even just like the missions you went out on?

Yeah, that wasn't challenging. I think if I were to say, the first and foremost was probably having to leave the family. When you have to say goodbye to your family for a stint, whether it's three months or six months or some some folks are deploying for a year, right? That is a rough deal that not many people can capture. Not many people with families can capture that. When you have to say goodbye to your kids and your wife for that, you know, okay, we'll see you in however. And then to add on to that, understanding their stress, or at least my kids were a little bit smaller, but understanding my wife's stress, knowing that I was going someplace and she was staying. It was contact. Yeah, well, luckily with today's technology, contact was fairly easy. But we found, again, ironically, we found that daily contact was never a good idea because what happens is you establish a routine. You get comfortable.

You get comfortable.

So something happens, I'm working, I'm overseeing something, I have a mission that goes long or whatever, and I don't get to call her that day. Well, suddenly she's worried. And it also makes time actually seem slower. Interesting. Yeah, so we decided we were only going to talk usually once a week. My son who had real trouble, he was young. I mean he was born in '05, so he was by the time he was two, he was having trouble with me deploying. And every time I went, it was rough on him. And we actually for him, we actually almost had to, well we literally had to just decide not to, I was not going to talk to him on the phone. It was too hard for him. He had to basically kind of forget me.

Oh my gosh. Wow. So he had to compartmentalize as a.

Child in order to- We had to help him compartmentalize.

Survive. and not go depressed or be stressed, because that's one of the attributes you talk about is compartmentalization. How do you do that if you're an emotional human being that's, you have these deep connections to your family and friends, how do you just detach in a sense and become more machine-like for a period of time and then allow yourself to feel deeply in other moments?

Well, it never goes away and I think the attributes, the way I talk about compartmentalization and the attribute is more kind of surrounded by the way our brain functions and processes information versus I'm going to block something out so I don't have to think about it. However, I think most team guys, SEALs, Spec Ops guys have a very high ability to compartmentalize away from things, you know, block out things that are painful. I know that about me and I know that about my buddies because you have to because war sucks, you know, and at the end of the day, the mission has to be accomplished. So if something gnarly happens on a mission, you can't sit there, these movies that show these extended scenes of people mourning when their buddy goes down or whatever, like, oh my god, you don't have that time. You have to win the gunfight, right? Because if you don't, then all of you won't make it home, right? So you have to, and I think the training allows you to do that. The training is so intense. and so kind of so effective that it requires you to compartmentalize. Training teaches you to compartmentalize. You become very, very good at it. Now, that could be a detriment in a relationship. So I think those of us who were able to recognize that actively try not to do that with our families. And so it becomes much more of a precision tool versus a frenetic It just happens without us having control over it.

What was the moment that was the scariest for you when you were deployed? Where you thought like, I may not make it. Or our team may not make it, or this is a really bad... I guess you're training for bad situations all the time.

Yeah.

But was there ever a moment you were like, I don't know if we're gonna get out of this.

No, I was fortunate not to have that moment. I say that with immense gratitude, because I know there's a lot of friends of mine who didn't have that that can't say that. They had those moments where they said that. But no, I was fortunate enough to be always in a position, and my team was always in a position, that we had prepared, planned, and executed in a way that was highly effective so that when things went wrong, because things always go sideways, we had complete, or near complete control, or we understood the pathways we needed to go throughout it. But I say that also, you know, this comes back to compartmentalization. You know, one of the things that you have to be able to do when goes sideways is to not focus on that thought you just brought up, right? The focus is not, oh my god, I don't think I'm gonna get out of this. Focus is how do I get out of this? So the mental HUD attributes, which are situation awareness, compartmentalization, task switching, and learnability, right? So that's how information is coming in. how we're processing it and prioritizing, how we're switching between the necessary tasks and then how we're learning from our decisions, right? So I talk about the parachute malfunction in the context of that. But ultimately comes, to even be able to do that in the first place, it requires a forebrain dominance in the sense that you're not letting your autonomic system take over into a fight-flight response and you're able to think through stress, challenge and uncertainty in the sense that say, okay, what can I control right now? And this is where trust in your teammates comes in because now I have a team. I can say this with great pride and gratitude. I can remember literally walking in areas when we were overseas and thinking, man, this is a bad area.

Sketchy.

This is sketchy and having complete and utter faith. Because I was around, because I was with my teammates. I was around people who just, I trusted. I knew that if something went went wrong, we'd be able to handle it. And so I think that's a necessity when you do this type of stuff.

When you're going out on a mission, what's the process like of preparing for that mission? Are you planning more for all the things that could go wrong on how to get out of that situation, or is it planning for here's exactly how we would like it to go right, but let's also have an exit plan or a plan for when things go wrong?

It's the ladder. It's you plan the mission as you'd like it to go and then inside of that planning you put together, you build contingencies within each factor.

So when this doesn't go as planned, what are the three ways to go?

Yeah, so you know, just like any athlete would understand, so a quarterback coming out of a snap would say, well, I have two or three or four plays I can fall back on depending on how this line shapes up, right? You have the same thing, you know, this is where experience matters. You do it over and over again. It's okay, well, as we're coming in on insertion, you know, there's a few things that could go wrong. So if this, then that, if this, then that. And you kind of do that throughout a phase, throughout the phase planning. But then there's what we call the 80-20 rule, and that is you get to 80% of certainty, and then you recognize that 20% is just out of your control. And that's where confidence comes. You say, if something happens outside that 20%, we will figure it out, we will figure it out, because we're not going to figure out everything. And Murphy's Law will dictate that something happens that we haven't thought of. So you prepare yourself to deal with uncertainty.

How do you train your mind to deal with chaos in the moment so that you don't freak out and freeze up, but you actually turn on a level of focus and attention towards achieving that goal?

Yeah, so I think we're predisposed, each one of us, to what I call a Huberman and I both have called this, is the autonomic set point. You know, at what point do we start flipping into an autonomic response, into fight/flight, where our system starts, you know, taking over and our forebrain starts coming offline? If you and I use boiling point as the average, most of us might be average. There are those who start really freaking out at like 190. So 212 is the average at 190 degrees, they're starting to freak out. There are people who it takes till like 230.

To boil.

To boil, right? I think that the guys who make it through that training are predisposed to have a higher set point, first of all. In other words, we tend to, when bad things start to happen, we tend to slow down and start thinking through it. versus get all hyped up. It's funny, you know, I live in a neighborhood and in my neighborhood there's four other Navy SEALs in the neighborhood. There's one across the street, one down the road. Must be nice. Well, it is nice, you know, A, because they're great dudes and they're great neighbors, but I remember my wife once saying, she said, Hey, I'm so glad these guys are here in the neighborhood. I was like, why? She said, Because if something went wrong, I know I could go to them and they'd act like you act. And I said, well, tell me. 'Cause if something happens, they would immediately calm down and they'd start working the problem. And so I think we show up predisposed. Training to it is difficult. And I think so here we are actually working on some stuff to help teach people to do that. But it comes down to understanding your own neurology and it comes down to understanding that here's how you have to think through situations under stress. And then it's gonna be about putting yourself into deliberate stress to practice that. You can't practice this type of thinking.

If you're not in stress.

You need to put yourself in that.

You need to put yourself in that. What are some things civilians could do to practice stressful moments on a daily basis where it doesn't hurt them, but it's actually preparing them? I talk about every day I think you should be experiencing some type of pain, something that's uncomfortable. Seeking discomfort. Whether it be through a 10 minute workout, whether it be through a longer run, it doesn't matter what it is, an uncomfortable conversation. We should be doing this every day in a structured environment that allows us to grow. What do you think are some ways we could do this that's not putting us in harm's way or physically hurting ourselves?

I can't answer that because it's so subjective. I can give some ideas and you just gave some. I mean, some people are very social people. So starting a conversation with a stranger is a piece of cake, right? For me, that would be hard. Starting a conversation with a stranger would be hard. So that might be something I do. Giving a presentation, public speaking for people is tough. So volunteering to give that presentation is a great way for a lot of people because you know, you know, they, that makes them anxious, you know. So working out for some is like, for some people they've developed a system where that pain point of working out is something they highly enjoy, right? So they're not practicing it, you know?

So.

Someone should look at their own makeup and ask themselves what fright? Well, in fear, again, it doesn't have to go all the way to fear. Fear is interesting because it's actually a combination of two things. It's a combination of uncertainty and anxiety. You can have each one of those and not have fear, right? So if you are anxious but not uncertain, that would be, I have to give this presentation on Monday. I hope it's going, I'm nervous about it, right? That's, you know, but there's nothing uncertain about it. It's Monday, it's a two o'clock. I know what I'm going to do. I'm nervous about it. Uncertainty without anxiety, well that's every kid on Christmas Eve. But it's when you combine the two that you start to generate fear. Well, the idea is if you have fear, if you have uncertainty plus anxiety and it starts to manifest in fear, the key is to understanding which of those two factors can you buy down? Anxiety buy down? Buy down, which means decrease. Anxiety can be decreased internally. It's an internal response. So things like, some of the tools Huberman talks about, visual tools, breathing tools. You can begin to shift your physiology out of your sympathetic into your parasympathetic, come off of the autonomic response system. So that's how you could start buying down anxiety. Uncertainty is largely external. That means something around you outside of you, you don't understand. There's unknown. The best way to do that and the way we do it in Spec Ops is we control what we can control. Some people refer to it as kind of control your three-foot world, right? But it doesn't have to extend, it's not a three-foot thing. It's what in this moment can I control? And then take control of that, right? Because then you are grabbing onto certainty. You're taking what is uncertain, you're grabbing onto something certain. As soon as you've controlled that, as soon as you move through that, then you have to make another decision. What's the next thing? This is basically kind of stepping through, right? Stepping through this challenge, right? So you can start to practice coming off of fear or moving through fear by kind of understanding both of those pieces.

What do you think is the greatest lesson you learned throughout the 20 years for yourself that has helped you not only during that but also after being with the SEALs?

I think it's not fearing the unknown. It's the idea that, you know, when you go through something like that, you understand that, hey, I could pretty much do whatever I'd like to do. And I know that even though I don't know how I'm gonna do it, I know I can figure it out. If there's enough interest, if there's enough passion, right? And I'm not gonna, I'm not interested in becoming a pro football player, you know?

Right.

So that's off my list, right? But I was interested in writing a book. And that was a whole new process for me, you know? When I left the Navy, I started public speaking. I did not like public speaking at all, right? I did not like it. But I knew it was an edge that I wanted to conquer, you know? And say, okay, well, Let me work through the things to conquer this edge. Kind of like your philosophy. I think it's a really, it's not only a deep one, but it's profound because if we are consistently moving, deciding what our edges are, moving towards our edge and then getting there, then we are growing. Because guess what we're doing at that point? We're looking at the next edge. And that's the growth process, is continuing to move to our edges and then.

Finding the next edge. I mean, you say you don't like public speaking, but don't you have to.

Speak to your teams and guys Yeah, but that's not public. That's like, you know, that's the guys. So it's not the same. It's different, yeah. It's different, there's a lot more. You know, when you're, you know, because you're in the military, there's no expectation of, you know, kind of great articulation or humor or, you know. What's effective? Yeah, it's a speech.

Here's the word. And that's what's appreciated too.

There's no one wants you to sit there and pontificate. It's like, hey guys, this is what's going on. So there's a directness that's appreciated and required, you know, so, but that's not, you know, folks being.

What do you think was the hardest lesson you had to learn through your 20 years? Something that you were struggling with or challenged with or you kept repeating until you finally learned the lesson?

Yeah, I think the hardest lessons, the hardest lesson, maybe not one, the hardest lessons were just around leadership. What it takes, what leadership take, what it takes to be a leader. Because again, being a leader and being in charge are often conflated. they're not the same thing, okay? What's the difference? Well, anybody could be in charge. As an officer, you know, in the military, I was pretty much in charge of something all the time. It didn't make me a leader. You don't get to call yourself a leader. It's like calling yourself funny or calling yourself handsome, okay? Someone else makes that decision. You can't designate yourself that way. Someone else decides whether or not you are a leader, okay? And that's done through the way you behave in that position. So if you are in charge and you're behaving in a way, that causes someone to make a decision, okay, this is the person I would lead. If we think about the leaders in our lives, the people who we consider leaders in our lives, it's not because they were just in charge of us. In fact, we could probably think of people who we would follow into hell and back, and they have no place in the hierarchy of our lives. They are just someone who just behaved that way in a way that's made us kind of endeared to them. So, the attributes I talk about in the book in terms of leadership attributes are all attributes that actually cause behaviors that typically cause people to look at others as leaders.

What are the behaviors that most human beings admire the most that we want to follow that person or be inspired to be led by something that they're sharing or involved in, a community, a movement, whatever it may be. What are the three or four main behaviors that they have and we should be developing if we want to be better leaders.

Yeah, well, I talk about five in the book in terms of these adverbs. The first is empathy, okay? And again, I would say this, there's not an exclusivity in terms of what someone will decide because there are people who will live. It's subjective, right? It's a subjective thing, you know. Again, it's someone's choice as to whether or not they think. So empathy is one. Selflessness is another. And this is not just, you know, so let's just back up here. Empathy. Not just I know how you feel, I feel how you feel. I can put myself into your shoes and that reflects in the way I communicate with you and I care about it shows that you care about another human being.

What is the best way to show that? I mean, give me an example. As opposed to saying I know how you feel, how do you empathize showing you feel how they feel?

Well, first deep listening. So listening to another person but but true, like deep, full-on listening. Like I am hanging on every word listening. Oftentimes we listen to people and we're two things, one of two things is happening. Either we're thinking about what we're going to say next, right? Or we're thinking about how what that person is saying relates to our lives. And it's not from a malicious standpoint. It's really because we're trying to relate. So we're trying to say, okay, you're talking about football. I'm thinking, okay, wait a second, you know, did I play football in eighth grade? Maybe I could talk about that. Yeah, we were late. But what I'm doing is I'm not listening to you anymore. I'm making what you're saying about me. So what deep empathetic listening is, I have like a whiteboard in my mind, okay? And as I'm listening to you speak, if something pops onto the whiteboard, I erase it and I move on. I just keep on listening. That is, if you do, if you empathetically listen, like look into someone's eyes, attentive behavior, facing each other, they are going to feel cared for because you're exchanging. Now there's an exchange going on. There's serotonin, being released, there's oxytocin being exchanged or at least released, and all these kind of these bonding chemicals, right? So that type of listening shows someone you care about them. Empathy is a little bit tougher for some. Some people are just wired, we know. Some people are wired to be, my wife is extraordinarily empathetic. I mean, she really feels other people. I mean, I am not. I've had to really try to develop empathy. It's something that she's taught me In terms, she hasn't taught me how to do it because you can't teach someone attributes, but she's inspired me to kind of develop it myself.

I was afraid to talk to girls when I was a teenager. I was afraid of dancing. I was afraid of like singing and playing music in front of people. I was afraid of all these different things. And so I said, I want to do this. I'm going to give myself a challenge every single day until the fear goes away.

That's right.

And I feel like that's what more of us should be doing. I'm hearing that that's how you live your life.

That's all it is, man.

And it helps me feel so much more confident. When you overcome that fear of saying, this doesn't have control over me anymore. It's like you can be at such more peace.

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

4,024 hours or was it? It's 4,020 pull ups in 24 hour period. Yep, yep.

The first thing I did versus closing my mind, you're like, oh my God, that's crazy. I went and got a pen and.

Say, how many is that every minute? Exactly. Every hour, every second.

Instead of taking life, and making it out to be this grandiose thing. Start breaking it down. Start breaking it down. And most of us, we live in a box, and we don't want to go outside that box at all, ever. Outside that box is all these possibilities of life. But we do re-shackle our mind. We are a prisoner in our own mind that this is all I can do. This is all I'm good at. And we take away the possibilities of you could be this, you could be that, you could be all these things. And I never thought at 300 pounds I could be naked and still. So if my mind was shackled, me and you would never meet. There'd be no book. There'd be no book. There'd be nothing. So what people understand is that they live for themselves, not knowing that you have the power within yourself to change millions of lives by facing life, by facing yourself. And through that, I would die never knowing that I had the power to change millions of lives. And what haunts me the most, you ask me, what haunts you the most? What haunts me the most is that if I would have died 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 could be honored here, honored there. And I'm like, God, 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 185. It says here, I got a bachelor's and a master's. It says all these things. And God goes, no, that's who you were supposed to be.

Wow.

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

Wow.

Is there a cap on the human body?

That's right.

Is there one?

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

When you were 300 pounds or whatever?

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 start climbing, I fall back down. For the first 24 years of my life. I went to my first hell week, my second hell week, and then my third hell week came in still 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 buds. 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 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 would wake up at 3:30 in the morning, 4 o'clock in the morning, go to my dive cage, go in there before anybody saw me, I get duct tape and I would tape from my forefoot all the way up to the mid of my calf and I would put two black socks on and so I ran not using the pivot.

Oh my gosh.

And I ran my hip flexors. So for the first 45 minutes to an hour, I was in absolute excruciating pain. But what motivated me through that whole.

Process.

Was the fact that This kid came from that. I'm in the hardest training in the world, in the worst shape of my entire life. What if I can graduate amongst these studs?

Wow.

All these guys around me are studs. They're stallions. They're gladiators in my class. They're all healthy. Most of them, they're not broken like this. They may have some, you know, everybody's sick going through that training. But if I could 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.

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.

Calcifying it just like.

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

Wow.

I'm 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.

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. I'm not saying do what I did. Yeah. I was in a spot that life forced me. I had a choice. I had a choice to be this guy or the guy that's in front of you. I had choices. I chose this path.

And you're still choosing it.

I'm still choosing it.

You can go back to that guy at any moment.

Because I found out, I found out something with those stress fractures. I found out something through 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 another way. A whole another 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 achieve so much, the friction is minor. 'Cause why? I'm sore, I'm gonna get a massage today. I'm hungry, I'm gonna eat today. The refrigerator is always full. So your comforts are now, so your discomfort is now very minuscule to your discomfort back here in the $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, right? You're scratching constantly. What happens now, since this was five years ago, you would just leave. You want to take the metal, 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 GuT. 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 wanna get to the point where that feeling follows you like breathing. It becomes a part of your life, part of your DNA. but it's made like these calluses on my hands right now. They're made. Yeah, they are now on my brain. This is now a part of me. It's a daily process, a part of me. And how I go back to a seven dollar a month place all the time is now I go out and I dig Fire Line. I'm a wildland firefighter. I don't need to do it. I'm a 43 year old man. I work with 27 year old kids.

Yeah.

I'm a rookie. Every day I'm a rookie, it feels like.

And why do you do it?

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

Yeah.

And we're trying to keep the fire from moving, and we're digging this fire line 14 inches. or my fault, 18 inches wide, three miles long, 12 of us digging. And it is the hardest work. You make $12 an hour, okay?

Nothing.

You set up your shop, like when you're done digging, you 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. It's hard work. But the moral story is I'm 43. Don't need to do it at all. This is why I do it. You're making money. I'm making money. I have a good life. I don't need to do it. Everybody asks 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, whatever, you know, easy for us.

Yeah.

100 bucks. 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. And that's that story that most people may not mean anything. It's that story I always want to have in my life. You cannot lose perspective of where you've come in life.

Yeah.

So true. We were in Guatemala, was it this year or last year? Last year. We were in Guatemala last year. We support a charity called Pencil of Promise that builds schools for kids. who live in poverty and all around the world. And every year I take a trip to just see where our efforts are being, you know, felt and being made. And these are the poorest places in Guatemala, Laos, and Ghana. Places they have nothing. There's no schools, they're little villages. They live on dirt huts, everything, right? And we go and we build these schools. We actually, the villages build them themselves. We just fund the experience we empower them to do it so that they take ownership of it. But I'll be there for a few days and watch these kids so happy with just like a pencil. I'm just so happy to just like have their family around and they'll go and they'll show us their huts and like they're just so happy to have community and then I'll fly back and go through Beverly Hills right over here and I'll see like these mansions, you know, I live right next to it and I'm just like, it gives me so much perspective of like, you don't need to have all these things to find peace and joy and connection and intimacy and all these other things that we want. You don't need these big mansions and to live in this nice place. You know, I like living here, but it's not like it's perspective for me is what keeps me motivated as well. That's right. To keep doing the right things, to keep showing up, keep working hard. And I think it's right. Most of us miss that perspective. Right.

We get so far away from reality.

So far.

And the reality is, man, when I was seven years old, eight years old, all I wanted was a 99 cent quarter pounder from Hardee's.

I know, right?

And that made me happy as hell.

Some curly fries, man.

That's it, man.

That's it.

Yeah.

The thing is, a lot of us have been conditioned or some of us grew up with wealth or grew up with comfort.

Right.

So we're conditioned that way. And we're grow up expecting now that Things should come a lot easier. Right.

That's a damn shame.

We get frustrated when we don't get it right.

Quickly.

Quickly.

Yes.

Yeah.

And I'm always talking about delayed gratification. The longer I can wait to receive gratification, the more fulfilled I am.

I'm a person. So when I got sick like I did, I actually had to quit this race called Badwater.

Yeah. 135 miles.

Yeah.

Through Death Valley. It was 2014 when I got real, real bad. I pulled out of the race at mile 50. I went to the emergency room and the docs were like, you know, we can't find this, we can't find that, we know what's wrong with you. When I got in that bed, so this is the crazy thing about gratification, long term. I'm able to watch grass grow by finding out this. I sat there, couldn't run a quarter mile, couldn't get out of bed. the only thought I had in my mind, I. I pulled out of that race. I told myself, I'm gonna go back to Badwater one day and rent it. I'm gonna win the race. Haven't been back since. Haven't been back since 2019. I'm not saying I'm gonna win it. I'm just now in the shape to go back.

Wow.

I haven't won 100 mile race since 2014.

Wow.

Because I've been that sick. I'm just now, imagine the gratification I'm gonna get by getting to the start line of that race. And what if I can win it?

It'd be pretty sweet.

Pretty sweet.

Four or five years, yeah.

Imagine that. I've had that kind of self-discipline that every day wake up and having these setbacks where I can't even run a mile. But I'm thinking about running 135. I can't run one mile. but I'm thinking about running 135. And with that process, guess what happens? Sooner or later, you can run 10 miles. It may take a year, but it gives you more and more hope that it's possible. And I'm at the point now where guess what? It's right around the corner.

Wow.

Most people in that time frame, in that. In that. In that mindset, I can't run anymore. It's over. No, it's just could take a little bit longer. you have to turn the negative into a positive. At the end of it all, if you can sit back and wait, if you can wait six, seven, eight, nine, ten, 12 years, when you get to that point, when you finish, that's the feeling for 12 years. Let's say, let's say, 12 years to get there. That's what keeps you going, is you gotta feel, I'm doing it for one second.

Years of pain.

One second. One second. Think about it. You cross the finish line, it's over. One second.

Most people do that and the one second isn't what they thought it would be and then they're pissed and upset and they keep going on to the next because they never reflect back on what they did.

It's not the one second, it's the 12 years.

Yeah.

It's the 12 years that I want. It's not the race. It's the 12 years why you did it.

It's not the winning.

It's not the winning.

It's not what place you got.

No.

But most of us focus on, oh, I gotta win this. If I don't, I'm gonna be upset. I would achieve all my athletic goals for years and then 10 minutes later be the angriest person in the world. So angry and frustrated, nasty with people. And I would delay my gratification for years to achieve what I wanted.

That's right.

And I never understood that either.

Being a perfectionist is the worst thing that can happen to a person. You never live. Like, when I lost that 106 pounds in like two and a half months, whatever it took me, that was the biggest trophy of my entire life. I didn't care if I graduated Navy SEAL training. I didn't care. What I just accomplished in that timeframe, it's massive.

Yeah.

I don't know, there was no trainer, there was no, like, And what's funny about this, we talk about mental toughness nowadays, it's like the biggest crave. When I grew up, it was just suck it up. Yeah. It was just make it happen.

Yeah.

You had to figure out. It was called figure it out, man. And all these nuggets that I gained along the way, that's what it was about. It wasn't about the Trident. It wasn't about all those dead on medals. It wasn't about any of that. And that's why I hate even talking about being a SEAL, you know? I miss the stories. Why you talk about it didn't define me. The journey getting there was harder than going through it.

Yeah.

You know? So that's the whole thing about life, man. It's that journey that makes you who you are.

Life is the seed between the B and the D. And people listening, thinking this guy speaks in tongues.

He's like, okay.

I'll give you a hint.

What's the B and D?

B is birth.

D is death.

So what's life? The C, choice.

Wow.

Like let that sink in. Life is a C between the B and the D and C is choice. Life is all about choices because we are, you are sitting here right now, the sum total of all the choices you've made to this point.

That's true. That's true.

And I'm saying like everyone, you know, who are you gonna, who are you gonna date? Where are you gonna live?

Isn't it crazy that you could be, you know, you could be making all the right choices your entire life and make one wrong choice and set you in a prison or make you go bankrupt or whatever.

Or in the opposite.

Right. You can make all the wrong choices and make one right choice to set you on a path of greatness.

Because one step, if you're going this way here to here and you take one step in another direction, It completely changes your destination and your destiny. So the good news is, yeah, you could make one choice that takes you off tangent, but one choice or the right about who you're gonna spend time with. What are you gonna eat today? You know, whether you're gonna move today, if you're gonna listen to this podcast, if you're gonna look at, if you're gonna focus on crisis and all the terrible things in life, or you're gonna focus on like, wow, how people are stepping up and how they're doing other things. But the second thing I learned besides out of my sleep doubling down on skills and capabilities. You know, I always tell people, don't downgrade your dreams to fit your current reality. Upgrade your mindset, your motivation, your methodology to really meet your, your, your destiny, the things that you want most in life.

How important are skills? So important. Acquiring new skills at any level.

Absolutely critical. Absolutely critical. Even coming back to the second gift I got from Lack of sleep. The second gift, besides doubling down on all my skills, was protecting my time. Okay, so here's something. When you have a finite amount of energy and you only slept two hours or three hours or four hours last night, you don't over commit. And I find one of the things that drains energy from people that makes them stressed out of their mind is they are saying yes to way too many things. And when you lack sleep every single day and you're exhausted, you only do the things that you're supposed to do. Meaning that you don't have the luxury of saying, like right now, there's nowhere else I'd rather be, no one else I'd rather be with than right here with you. And there's a power in that. So whether I got three hours of sleep last night or got off a plane last night, or I'm still doing this with focus, with energy, it's because I made the decision to do this and everything, as you've heard, everything is like heaven yes or heaven no, right? Like if you don't feel completely like yes, then you say no. And here's the thing, a lot of people feel they're burnt out because they're doing too much. I don't think you're burnt out because most people are burnt out because you're doing too much. I think you're doing too little of the things that make you feel alive. You're doing too little of the things.

That really matter in your life.

You're saying yes to things that don't matter. Exactly, so the second gift I got out of years of not sleeping was... You said no to everything. Exactly, and I only do the things that are important because one of the lessons I got from spending time with elderly, because I lost my grandmother I spent all the time in senior centers and nursing homes and training them and helping with them. The gift I got back, I always get a gift back from working with anybody, is I heard stories and so much wisdom of generations that have gone through, you know, like real hardship, right? I mean, our lives compared to theirs is, you know, now is, there's no comparison. But one of the things I do hear, because I do believe genius leaves clues, and when somebody asks me, what's the definition a notion of genius. I don't think it's IQ. It's not this number that you test at eight years old and that's your number when you're 88 years old. I demystify IQ and everything else in this book that everybody can learn to be better in all these areas, interpersonally, with their focus, with their memory, everything. One of the things that I've learned is that with working with these seniors is that there's a lot of regret. at that place. When you're taking your final breaths.

My.

Definition of genius is pattern recognition. That you could see patterns. Like someone who's a genius at greatness, you see patterns in what everybody who sits across from you, you see they're doing certain similar things, certain habits, certain mindsets, certain drives, or they're eating a certain way. There's a commonality with that. So I believe genius leaves clues and genius is, it could be built, not born. And that's a big part of my training. But the other thing I learned from these, these seniors is these regrets, they come out and the biggest regret always is that somehow they lessened or limited their life because of other people's expectations, because they were fearful of other people's opinions about them. They didn't date that person or marry a person because of what society would think. or they started a career because their parents wanted them and expected them to do that. And I'm here to remind everyone, it's not a pleasant conversation, but when we're thinking about our mortality and one of the things that was the impetus for this book was, I had a near-death experience, like in a car accident, and it made me think about legacy and ask a new question. I was like, wow, I'm gonna I want to get this book out because shame on me if somebody's struggling and suffering the way I was with distraction, with memory loss, with overload, overwhelm, not feeling good about themselves, and I didn't help them. So I feel like what gets me on stage, even if I am an introvert and shy, is that I'm focusing on them.

Right.

Right.

And that's my focus. But the regret people have when you're taking your final breaths at the end of our life, none of other people's opinions and expectations will matter. What will matter, none of our fears will matter. What will matter is how we lived, how we laughed, how we learned, how we loved. You know, that's really what's gonna matter. And one of my mentors, Dr. Stephen Covey, another great book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. One of the habits of the most highly effective people is begin with the end in mind. You know, and then the ultimate end is when we're passing. Because when you think about being in that box, that coffin, there's no room in there for possessions. And I'm all for people having toys and everything else like that. But you can't take that with you. And in that coffin, there's no room for regret. One of the things I learned from Jim Carrey, and I'm dropping a number of names, and the reason why is because when you see their movies, you see Sonic Hedgehog or you watch another Will Smith movie, it reminds you of the lessons. It triggers, so that's how human memory works. I was spending the day with him and he was like, you know, Jim, I want to get really smart before filming Dumb and Dumber. I'm like, that's ironic, but that's really, you know, to play dumb, you have to be really smart to do that, right?

And so I spent the day with.

Him at his home and we take a brain break. It was a long time ago. Yeah, it was. We were at his home, we were taking a brain break and we make all these brain foods during lunch and I wanted to know motivation again. I wanted to get into this model about motivation. because I'm always curious what drives people and I found out, I was like, why do you do what you do? And he's like, Jim? He was like, I act like a complete fool on camera. So extreme because I want to give people watching permission to be themselves. He's like, My religion is to free people from the concern of others because that's what limits us. And isn't that interesting how adults, what keeps us limited are sometimes the expectation. It puts us in a box. We don't want to look bad, we don't want to make a mistake, and yet children are really, they have this limitless mentality, where they could do anything. You don't look at a child for people who have children, they're learning to walk or talk, how many times do they fall? Thousands.

Yeah, exactly.

And never after the 500th time they fall, do they say, okay, it's not for me. Yeah, exactly, I'm not going to walk, that's not right. But as adults, they take a Spanish lesson. Fall once and we stop. Exactly, they take a salsa lesson, and they're like, okay, this is not for me. Too much embarrassment. to encourage people to at least, I'm telling you, we have one life to be able to figure this out, so you try new things. The brain thrives on novelty. To build your brain cells, two things just like your body, novelty and nutrition. And obviously rest and sleep. Novelty, you give it stimulus, you work it out, and then you give it nutrition to feed that muscle. Same thing with your mental muscles. To create neuroplasticity, all you need to give is novelty. You learn something new every single day, and then you feed it the right nutrition. Sure, man. So it could build. But I would recommend everybody try something at least three times. If you feel called to it, I challenge everyone watching this and even post it on social media, tag us both, 'cause I'll repost our favorite. Try things three times. Number one, to get over the fear of it. Yes.

Right?

Number two, like karaoke or doing stand-up or something just to get over the fear of it. Number two, just to get a little competent at it. Get good at it. and then try it a third time to see if you like it or not. Because we don't really find our passions. We have to put ourselves out there and give ourselves stimulus, just like with kids. We have a bonus chapter on how to be raised limitless children, but part of it is giving them enough opportunity by giving them stimulus to see what they get drawn to and what they want to be able to develop. But my other thing with sleep is I just got obsessed about how do I honor my time? And how do I say no so I can say yes to the great things? I'm gonna recommend a lot of books. Because we have a book a week club, because we teach the speed reading program. One book a week will change your life. 52 books a year, leaders are readers. But yeah, good to great, say no to good so you can say yes to great. And again, I really feel like-- you-.

Say yes to great by saying no to a lot of things.

Exactly, because here's the thing, especially for self-care, a lot of people think that self-care is limited to body work and meditation. Part of self-care and self-love is when you say no and when you say yes to somebody or something, make sure you're not saying no to yourself. I really want this to sink in for people that part of self-care is when you say yes to somebody or something that you're not saying no to yourself.

Right.

Right.

Part of self-care is putting boundaries and borders on your borders and boundaries on your heart, on your emotions and everything because it's so important. And part of self-care is also self-love. You talk about this so much, right? When you and I have had conversations about your previous books and everything, it's just, how can we fall in love with that person in the mirror who's been through so much but is still standing? Because I feel like no external source of love is going to match what your soul needs from yourself. Yeah, right.

Yeah, I mean, I've wanted to stop you non-stop for 20 minutes, but it's all so good. I wanted to go back to the choices we make. You know, we talk about choices, you talk about habits, mindset habits, physical habits in here with food, the way you think, all these different things. I really believe that habits allow us to make better choices automatically, as opposed to, should I make this choice today, yes or no? Should I make that choice? You know, every day we have the opportunity to make different decisions and habits keep us on the right path to making better decisions and choices every day. The mindset and you've got mindset, motivation and methods, which is your whole limitless mindset process. The mindset will keep you on the right path. The skills, for whatever reason, skills I think is one of the most important things more than habits in a sense because when you acquire new skills, skills, you become bulletproof, limitless to any economic downturn, to any breakup in a relationship, to any career change. You become limitless when you have a tool belt of skills at your disposal. And it takes courage to create new skills. And it takes learning how to learn to get a lot of skills because it takes time to master a skill if you don't know how to learn the right yeah. And I've learned all the wrong ways over the years and found out for me that learning the right way is throwing myself in immersion of it.

Yeah.

Within three months, going all in physically, tangibly feeling it, emotionally connected to it, getting messy. For me, that's what works for me. And when you have the skill, you have it for life.

Yeah.

You know, it's like you learn how to ride a bike. It might take you a few weeks, it might take you a month. of falling a bunch of times, but I haven't been on a bike in years, but I know I can go back on it. Maybe I'm not as fast as I used to be, or maybe I don't have as much control or maneuverability, but I'm 80-90% of the way there. Same thing with salsa dancing. I learned it, it took me three and a half months of misery, of embarrassment, of fear, anxiety, of stepping on girls' toes constantly, but now I can go anywhere in the world, not speak the language of the community, but I can speak the language of salsa and I have it. I have that skill set where I feel motivated to put myself out there. So, same thing with public speaking. When you mastered it, it's like now you can go into a room and even if you're not prepared for the speech, you know you can do a pretty good job. Someone said, Hey Jim, come up here and teach us something for 15 minutes. You've got this skill set. And I think that gives us confidence, that gives us self-belief with the more skills we have. And so, what's the process of then learning how to master a new skill? When it's challenging, when it's scary, when it's uncomfortable, when it's... I'm excited to learn Spanish right now, but I've tried to learn for 20 years. I took eight years of classes. I've traveled to different Spanish-speaking countries. It's just like, man, how do we learn how to learn something that we want, but it's really challenging.

Let's deconstruct this. Okay, so this is the key. So you mentioned two interesting words with competence and confidence. And in psychology, there is a competence-confidence loop that the more competent and skilled you get at something, the more confidence you get at it.

Of course.

And because you're more confident, you're more likely to do it and you get better at it and gives you more confidence, right? Yes. And so if I could play golf like Tiger Woods, I would be playing a lot more. I would get better. I'd be more confident of it. I remember years ago I get a call on a Friday evening and I don't know the guy's voice. I didn't know to see the number and I recognize it so I pick it up and he's like you got to help me. We have this mutual friend and this my speaker tomorrow in New York City canceled because of an emergency and I need a speaker, please. And I'm like well this is not usually how...

The night before.

Exactly. It's usually like a six a month in advance process, but the mutual friend was a very close friend. And I was like, Look, maybe I could help you, but what's the topic? And he tells me what the topic is. And I'm like, I don't know anything about that topic. Why are you calling me? He was like, well, he wrote a book. I'm like, so? He was like, well, my friend says you're a speed reader. And I'm like, okay. He's like, well, can you come a little early and I'll give you his book? And then you- oh my gosh. And I was like, this is going to completely blow your mind. I have to do this, but this is going to cost you, but it's going to make a great story. And what ended up happening was I show up at 10 o'clock, I read his book, and I give the keynote that afternoon. And humbly, it was the highest rated talk of the event. And I don't take credit for that because I've never had training in public speaking, but when you understand how people learn, you could present it. And so I read the book. I remembered everything that I needed to say because I train a lot of TED speakers how to memorize their speech and I know how to be able to present in a way that that's interesting and also sticks with people. But I say that because that's what I mean about I don't have to, you know, just like Will Smith, I know I don't have to get ready, I stay ready and that's the power of skill development. And there's one skill to master, it's our ability to learn. It's called meta-learning. This book fundamentally was going to be called meta-learning but people are like, oh no, they're not going to buy it if it has and the title, right? And, but meta-learning is learning how to learn. And that's a meta-skill and it helps you to learn salsa or Spanish or anything else better. And so let's deconstruct how to do that confidently. We'll start with the limitless model. All right, so this book used to be a book completely on skill development, which was all methodology. It was everything that I teach about how to read three times faster, how to learn a language, how how to remember names, how to do the things that how to get to inbox zero, how to do the things that how to be focused, concentrate, critical think, solve problems, all the important things that really is our life, right? But then when I finished it, you know, I talked to friends like you and every and everybody else and was like, this is a really good self-help book. But if somebody found it just on the street, they still, even they know what to do, they still wouldn't do it. Like how come you want to learn Spanish or something else and you put it off? or it takes longer than you should because method is only one of the three parts. And so this is the limitless model. And I want everybody to think about a subject or some area of your life where you're feeling held back. It could be your relationship, it could be you're not making progress in your career, it could be make maybe in your physical performance or wellness. Think about one area where you're stuck in a box. All right, now a box is like a cage, 3D box and 3D is three dimensions. What keeps you in the box? Three forces. And these are the three Ms. And I want everyone to draw a circle. And in that circle, we're going to draw a Venn diagram. You know what a Venn diagram is? It's three intersecting circles. And the first circle is your mindset, three Ms. And I always alliterate everything because it helps you to be able to remember it better. First one is your mindset. Now, your mindset are your assumptions and your attitudes about something. Now let's break that down. For me, functionally, what your mindset is about this subject, I want people to make this very personal. Think about something in the area you're held back. This is what you believe is possible is your mindset. It is what you believe you are capable of. It is what you believe you deserve is part of your mindset because that's a big thing. That's your thermostat, right? If somebody has a mindset of, like I could teach someone the method of how to remember names, But their mindset is I'm stupid.

I don't deserve to remember names or.

I'm not capable of it. Exactly, or exactly, or I'm too old or whatever it is, that's their mindset. Their brain doesn't work that way. Exactly, then the method won't take hold.

It won't matter.

Exactly, so this is the formula here. So how do you learn to believe that you are capable? So we'll go into this. That's exactly what the book does. I take people through a process called unlimiting. It's a word that I coined years ago. unlimiting is different than unlimited. Unlimiting is like the process of removing limits.

Limiting beliefs.

Exactly. Or behaviors or habits, right? So unlimiting is an active word where it's you're redrawing the boundaries and borders of your life. Limitless is not about being perfect. Limitless is about advancing and progressing beyond what you believe is possible.

Why do you think that is in human beings that, you know, things are going bad, we won't change. If they're going good, we won't change. But it's almost like we need a massive breakdown, near-death experience, divorce, COVID for us to see clearly to start changing.

Well, there's a really simple answer patterns. So the thing about all human beings is that we are pattern learning machines. And if you feel stuck or broken, I guarantee you while you feel that way, you're not. You have a pattern of behavior or a pattern of thinking that is broken. And we need to be disrupted because we love our patterns. And even people that I know, like.

I've been in pain. Even when we're in pain, we love pain.

Well, pain is familiar for a lot of people.

Yeah.

So a lot of people, like you may be listening to Louis and I talking and you grew up in a super chaotic household. Maybe your parents argued all the time. Maybe your dad or mom were in and out. Maybe there was a lot of fighting. Maybe there was actual abuse. I don't know what was going on, but it was chaotic as hell. And so as an adult, you have vowed yourself you are not going to repeat that pattern. But what ends up happening is because as a little kid, you observed, witnessed, absorbed the pattern of chaos in your nervous system, unless you go about the intentional work of breaking the pattern of chaos, you will create it in your own life because it's what's familiar. You won't understand, why do I keep dating these a**holes? Why do I go to these bosses that treat me like crap? Because you don't know what it feels like To be in a relationship with either a boss or a romantic partner or a roommate that is consistent because for the first 18 years of your life, you lived in a state called When's the next shoe gonna drop?

Right.

And so wherever it is in your life that something is broken, there is a pattern that you don't see yet that is making you continue to stay in a broken situation. And so one of the things that you just asked, which is why is a perspective change or losing a job or something like that that's so disruptive? Because those sorts of things, COVID-19 breaks every pattern.

Yes. Black Lives Matter breaks your routines.

Yes.

Black Lives Matter breaks patterns of thinking that you weren't even aware that you had about privilege or being anti-racist or what your Black colleagues and friends and relatives deal with on a day-to-day basis. And so having a breakdown is one of the biggest things on the planet because what you get is you get a break from your own bullshit. And you can look objectively at where you are and for the first time look ahead and say, well, what do I want to go create? And nine times out of 10, if you're discouraged right now, if you've got financial devastation, if you've If you're facing something that is making this moment in time as hard for you as life was for Lewis and I in 2008 during the last recession, I beg you, ask yourself honestly if what you had is actually what you wanted. The thing that you just lost, that job that you bitched about all the time.

That relationship that was bad to you.

Yes, or the friends you can't hang out with because it's convenient and you can't, you're in quarantine. Actually ask yourself if this is what you what you wanted or were you just used to it? Being used to something, Louis, I think is the biggest reason why people don't change. I asked my mother, I love my mother, I love my parents. I've been married 51 years, which is a feat because they were, my mom was a teen mom.

But.

I asked her once if she'd go to a personal development seminar with me.

What'd you say?

Are you kidding me? Why would I want to change at my age? I might discover I hate my life.

Wow.

I was like, okay, I'm just gonna leave that right there. Right. I mean, I think being used to what you have, I mean, even our son is, so I'm here in Vermont at my mother-in-law's place and our son is gonna go to high school in Vermont and so we're gonna kind of split our time back and forth between my mother-in-law's place and our place in Boston, because God knows what business is going to be like and, you know, why would you need an office after COVID-19? Another amazing thing to realize. Even that change, I notice my own agitation, my own anxiety coming up. Will I make friends? Will I like a slower lifestyle? What happens if Chris likes it up here and I hate it up here? My own mind, because it's not something I'm used to yet, is making up stories to cling to the old way of life. This is a moment in time, everyone, please. This is the greatest gift. The greatest gift is this moment of pause where you get in touch with what you actually want. And if you don't have the skills, for crying out loud, look around and take an online course because if you need skills, to prepare yourself for the thing that you want, get them right now.

Yeah. What is the thing you really want then? You've gone on this grab chase of opportunities that have come your way, not in a bad sense, but it's like here are a way for you to share a message and be on thousands of stages and do a talk show. And, you know, it sounds like it was your part of your dream, but it was it your, was it a dream of like, wow, this sounds amazing or is this is exactly what I want? Cause I remember, I remember you texting me a year and a half ago, two years ago saying, I'm working on the deal with Sony. I think it's gonna happen. And then a couple weeks later, it's happening. And then I see all the announcement. It's exciting, you know, I had a talk show on Facebook for a little while.

Yeah.

It's exciting stuff. And then you put your whole life into one thing and then it's over. Now you've transcended where you were before because of the skills you acquired and the opportunities you created for yourself and you've sharpened your coaching abilities and on camera stuff, everything has gotten better, but how do you, you know, what do you think about that?

Well, so let me back up. Three years ago when I was last on the School of Greatness, I had just published the five second rule book. Your support was life changing, Louis. Like you literally were the person, if I had shimmy down into the kind of barrel of a cannon, you freaking lit the match and shot me.

I don't know about that. You did.

Oh, yeah.

You were crushing it on your own.

Well, so since then, what has happened, and this is one of the things that I have reflected upon during these last 10 weeks, that I've been off the road and I've been working from home, which I've loved every single second of. Everything that I have done since we launched the five-second rule book was in reaction to things that were coming to me. So I never sat out and said, Hey, the five second rule audiobook has been a complete record breaker. We clearly have an audio audience. Let's go pitch Audible. Audible came to me, which is fantastic. I always dreamt about having a talk show, but I wasn't out pitching one. Sony came to me. In fact, the only reason why we got into courses, online courses, and we now have more than a half a million people that have taken our courses online was because Success Magazine came to me and said, Let's do a course together.

I remember I was there interviewing you for it.

Oh, I hated it. Because what I discovered is I hate being told what to do. And so, but that gave me the idea, oh, we should do courses ourselves. And so this pause has made me stop and go, what do I really want to do? And The truth is I want to go and make the biggest possible impact that I can. And I want to collaborate with more people. And I want to do events. And I don't want to be the CEO. I'm a terrible leader, horrible leader. The worst actually. Because I'm amazing at coaching. I'm amazing at creating. I'm amazing at reacting. I'm terrible at managing people. I am terrible at managing a project. I have ADD, I have dyslexia. I'm a bulldozer when I get anxious. I know we are. We kill each other if we were roommates or business partners.

But.

But I think understanding yourself is really important. And so there's a couple things that I've decided. Number one, I'm going to consciously create the next.

And what is that?

Well, I'm still in the middle of doing it.

Yeah, but you want to advance, you want to do these things you're talking about, yeah.

Yes, and I want to collaborate more with a wider audience of people. And I want to build a brand bigger than Mel Robbins. I don't want it to just be me. I want to build a platform-based business that reaches more people. Because here's the thing that has got me through kind of the loss of the talk show and the way that I think about things that I hope helps if you're listening, you're kind of struggling with something. I believe, and I went into the talk show saying this to myself because there's a 99% chance based on the history of people that have tried to have a daytime talk show that it was going to fail. and I went in there saying, I'm not doing this because I expect to have a successful talk show. I'm going to put 1000% into it so that I have no regrets and I wouldn't change a thing. But I'm going into this because I know that there is a skill, a person, or an experience I am meant to have that will help me for the next chapter that I can't see coming. And the experience was, number one, meeting Mindy Borman, who is my executive producer, now my business partner and CEO. And it was also in working with a team of 130 people and finally being in the right seat on the bus, Louis.

And not having to manage everything but being in your lane.

Yes, and having a team and you.

Not being the one doing everything. I know that feeling.

Well, it's not even that I was doing everything. It's that I didn't have anybody managing me.

Right.

And so your mind is going to go into like opportunity, opportunity, opportunity as opposed to focus mode.

Right.

And so if you ever wonder why it feels like we're running in circles, it's because I'm the one leading us in circles. Right?

Yeah.

And so it's a very hard thing to spot when you're in the middle of it. But when I got into a machinery that operated in a way where I was in the right seat on the bus, it was absolutely liberating. And that was the biggest gift of all. And then the third thing is, I think the daytime talk show and being face to face with your audience and having such a big daily audience, it was really amazing. to be able to have an impact on a large number of people who feel forgotten because they're a little bit older if they're still watching TV. And a lot of the folks who are still watching TV at home during the daytime do not have the resources that you and I have and may not have access to therapy or live in a community where it's stigmatized. And so having a platform that was reaching people that really appreciated this kind of content and also working with a really diverse range of experts, absolutely incredible. So I felt like I was organizing a killer dinner party conversation every day with real people's problems and the world's best experts. And so you kind of do a similar thing here on your podcast. So I know I want to continue to do that. But I'm in the middle of creating it. So if I said anything other than I know it's events, I know it's more courses, I know it's collaborating with more people and getting outside my comfort zone, and I also know that as I set out to write down what I want to do, there is so much freaking fear that I have.

Why is that?

Because I think, because I still feel like I'm not worthy. I feel like I don't deserve it. Like it's old bullshit. And I think that's the other thing about patterns, everybody, is just because you identify, and for me as a kid, for whatever reason, I have my own version of feeling invisible and feeling like I'm not good enough. And so my way of coping both with my anxiety and being a survivor of sexual abuse and wanting love, which we all need, is I was like an overachiever. And so I'm the kind of person that's super So I'm super busy and a go getter because it got me attention. And if I was the one that was super busy and achieving, I not only got praise, but it also insulates you from other people not picking you. Because you're the one in a leadership role doing the picking. And so there's a part of me at the age of 51 that is realizing that, you know, this these feelings of feeling unworthy and this hyper drive to try to achieve, it's all coming from a place of feeling inadequate or like, what I'm doing is not enough.

And so that's- Still, at 50, having a talk show, having a best-selling book, having the Audible Originals, having the platform everywhere, having the impact, I still don't feel, being the most booked female speaker in the world, you still don't feel-.

It's so f***ing stupid. It's annoying and human beings are annoying. We are stuck with this wiring. Like if you think about it, like all of the crap you believe is probably a hangover from age zero to 10. That as adults we walk around thinking the same stuff we thought as kids. And I can't stand that I feel that way, but knowing it, it allows me to catch it. Before it has me, before it stops me from having an event or writing that next book or taking a risk.

What do you think the biggest fear is? Because you say not worthy or not feeling enough, is that?

I mean, it's just people liking me. I think like being a people pleaser.

We're so similar in every way. It's crazy. that's great.

I.

Don'T like you.

It's lonely, dude.

What happens if 90% of what happens if 99 people percent of people like you and one percent doesn't like you?

Oh, I don't give about that.

Okay, but if it's like. If it's 50 50.

I think that the work that we all have to do every single one of us. whether you bulldoze, whether you people please, whether you avoid conflict, whether you're impulsive, whether you yo-yo your decisions, whatever it is that is your pattern, you know, you, the, the constant trashing yourself. I think the, the, the journey of your whole life is figuring out how to truly like and love yourself.

It's so true. I remember this was my whole life was never loving myself and needing to go prove to others originally that I'm worthy. This was happening in sports and business until I started opening up and accepting myself and taking off the mask when I turned 30 talking about sexual abuse and just kind of saying, screw it, I don't care what people think about me anymore. This pain inside is hurting so much, it's not worth living with it. So I'm going to start sharing and allow myself to heal and allow myself to find I love myself. And it's so funny that we could just write a book with two words that says love yourself. And that's all the book needs to say because a lot of us never remember to love ourselves, remember to acquire skills which are important, remember to love other people, remind ourselves to take care of our health. But if we don't love ourselves internally, we don't think we can give ourselves a hug. cause we're not deserving of it, then none of this stuff is going to matter to the point of we're always going to need to do more to feel something. Right.

It's- well, nobody teaches you how to do it and see that's the thing. And, you know, I mean, if you look at human development, we're the only species that literally can't survive without another human being taking care of you. And so we are biologically hardwired to bond with other people. And that is the- from the very beginning of when you come out bonding with somebody else and making sure they pay attention to you is your survival imperative. So you are born needing somebody else. And I think what ends up happening is there's never that kind of clean break or pass off between needing your parents to take care of you, needing your friends approval to fit in, to truly having ownership over giving yourself what you didn't get, giving yourself what you needed. And that's the piece that I've been doing a lot of during the great pause is slowing down because so much of my busyness was fueled by, you know, praise me, love me, am I doing enough? You know, please tell me I'm doing okay. Okay, I can breathe now. I'm okay now. And when I slow down, and maybe it's a function of the anxiety, that's when things get scary because that's when you've really got to be with yourself. And so it's in getting off the road, slowing down, recognizing that I'm super grateful for all the opportunity. And I know the work that I'm doing makes a tremendous impact. And I particularly love hearing from mental health practitioners that the five second rule, I've heard from so many people in inpatient psychiatric wards, Louis. that use the five second rule and the videos we put on YouTube in their group counseling sessions with people and knowing that it is helping so many people, it is like the greatest gift on the planet to know that it's making a difference. But I know that in this next chapter that I consciously create, I want to have more fun. I really want to love the process. I don't want to make it so hard on myself and be gripping everything so tight. And it's really easy for me to see it in other people because I know what it feels like in here. I'm working hard to break the patterns that still hold me back. And the big one that holds me back is bulldozing.

We stumble before before we walk and then on shaky legs, we embrace the new habit. And that's the very nature of personal transformation. I mean, every master was once a beginner. Every professional was once an amateur. And so this idea that we need to be masters right out of the gate, that we need to get up at 5:00 a.m. and instantly it should be easy. Falling like a great relationship isn't easy. Building a world-class business that stands the test of time isn't easy. Becoming a maestro or any kind of a virtuoso, it's always a process. I mean, I know you interviewed Kobe. Well, I think what made Kobe Kobe was his intense, rigorous practice over many, many years.

Yeah.

You know, he just out practiced. everyone around him. And I think, you know, we live in a world of easy. We want the easy morning routine versus the morning routine that'll give us the greatest payoff. And I just, there's a reason, Louis, that a lot of the great saints, sages, poets, military leaders, world changers got up at 5 a.m. and before the sun. I think it's the quietest time of the day. You, if you look at willpower researchers, we wake up with the most willpower when we first wake up. You have the most mental focus before the phenomena of attention residue takes over and cognitive bandwidth is high. And, you know, it's, it's, it's, it's been profound for me.

How does someone be consistent in their discipline? You know, when most people say, I'm going to do this for three months or six months, but then, ah, Interruption. Covid.

Ah.

I got sick. Someone in the family needs me and I'm up all night. What's the difference between what Kobe did for two decades in the NBA where he was disciplined? How is he able to stay motivated and how are the greatest able to stay motivated? Where others seem to lack the motivation and discipline to be consistent because anyone can do it for a few weeks, but how do you do it for years and decades? What's the difference between that?

It's an excellent question and I would say first of all in COVID right now, may we give ourselves permission to be gentle with ourselves? I think, you know, even this whole idea that we must be machines in terms of our morning routine or even our pre-sleep rituals. These messages that are out there that we must be monomaniacally consistent and flawless human beings for us to wear badges of honor in society as leading members of the cult of productivity. You know, I'll just, I'll confess right here to you right now, I sure am no guru and I slip. I slip, you know, I slip on the 5 a.m. club. I have had those evenings where I feel like a few extra chocolate quests on. And I just think we must give ourselves permission to be humans. I think, you know, I was flying on a little plane, from White River, South Africa to this game reserve. And the pilot let me fly the plane for a little while. And he kept on saying, you know, the winds are going to push you off course and just, you know, keep that, I think it was the altimeter or whatever, but just keep it in the center. And so the currents, Louis would pull me off course. And then I just, you know, look at the dial and I'd come back. And I really believe, you know, that's, that's, that's how we live our days. as human beings, I mean, I'll get up and sometimes there's a current, like you said, you know, a child who kept you up at night, or it's the pandemic, so maybe you're worried, or maybe you've lost a job. And so those currents will take us off course. And so our job is just to steer back on course each stage. We're not perfect human beings.

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. 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 metabolism. great. You will boost creativity. You will increase your willpower, you know, all those things. I mean, we want, we all have the ability as human beings to arrive at our own original form of greatness. We have not been schooled. We have not been taught. A lot of us have not been mentored on the mindsets, heart sets. Routines, rituals that will create and allow us to live our personal genius. But, you know, if you look at the greatest women and men who have ever graced the planet, these were so-called ordinary people who just set up their lives in such a way that their native gifts saw the light of day.

It's funny how no one ever teaches this stuff unless you had a parent So, 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. It might even be, that's why I love reading so much. You know, it's, it could be one idea in a 300 page book and that idea opens you up to a new galaxy of possibility and the hand that puts down the book is a fundamentally different hand. I mean, all it takes is one new insight to change the way you see the world.

That's very true.

And so, yeah, and that's why I'm such, on such a mission and 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 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 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 to 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, 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. 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, if you put out work that challenges people to leave their comfort zone, to wake up to their genius, if you, 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 a 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 a.m routine and the 20 20 20 shift if things are, there's an excuse. I'm tired. And then there's a shift in the world? Does the 5:00 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?

I think that's a profound question and I would say trust your instinct. 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 2020-20 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? Because sweat reduces, 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 2020-20 formula, and then judge by results. Having said that, if you've been up at 3:00 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. 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. 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. I mean, Nelson Mandela learned how to be Nelson Mandela in his Robin Island season.

Yeah.

And so I think we learn honesty and compassion and vulnerability and creativity when things are falling apart, not when they're in the seasons of sunshine.

Yeah. And I look at life in terms of sports analogies. and so for me, there's four seasons in, you know, I guess the seasons of the year, but then also in sports, there's, there's really kind of four seasons as well. There's the, the pre-season to prepare you for the season, and then there's the, the playoff season, which is where you're, you're hustling, you're all in, you're, you're, you're only thinking about one thing, and you're focused on that energy and your you're not burning the candle on both ends, but you're all in on that thing and less on everything else. And then there's the post season where, okay, the championship is done or that season is done and now we have the post season, the time to reflect the time to reevaluate our goals, our life, what worked this last season, what didn't work, do I need to tweak my routine, do I need to be in different relationships, who do I need to bring into my circle, what do I need to eliminate in my circle? So, I look at life in terms of, you know, sports seasons just because that's how I've lived my life. But I think if and if we can do that, then you're going to have time to rest and reflect and you're going to have a balance in that kind of seasonal progression of life where it doesn't have to be robotic every single day, you know, for 20 years or the rest of your life. So, this is the way I look at it.

You know, I think rest is a secret weapon. There's a line in the 5am Club, which is rest is not a luxury, it's a necessity. One of my favorite authors is Haruki Murakami, the great Japanese novelist. And he said, when I'm not writing the book, I'm writing the book. I mean, you're an author.

Mm-.

But it's not any creative, any productive. We beat ourselves up, or maybe it's just me, but we beat ourselves up if we're not doing. But how can you calibrate world-class doing if you don't make the time for being? And so those times where, you know, nature or our instinct or our inner artist says, these are times to pull back. back from the world and sunbathe and read the classics and write in a journal and have four-hour meals with the people we love and travel when it used to be safe to travel. Those are not times to feel guilty. John Lennon said, Time you enjoy wasting is not wasted time. And so what I've realized is the greatest productives, the greatest artists, the greatest thinkers, the greatest heroes, They were cool with rest and recovery. They understood that elite performance is not like a marathon. It's more like a sprint. And the energy project to give credit where it's due, they've evangelized this when they talk about energy. It's the greatest productive work in Sprints versus marathons. And so all I'm saying is, you know, you're right. Like life is a series of seasons and enjoy the seasons and that's what's going to actually allow you to play the game for a long time, but also do your greatest work. I mean, my instinct now is I'm about three weeks away from submitting this manuscript on the new book and my instinct is get into another book and this morning I realized I'm gonna take next year. I'm gonna have great conversations. I'm gonna travel. Hopefully it'll be safe to travel. I'm gonna enjoy the fruits of my labor and enjoy life. And that's gonna be incubation for the next book after this.

Force multiplier is like Input goes in, but you get exponential output from it. It's like optimism, being positive as a force multiplier.

Sure.

Right, you know, and Colin Powell said that. And so certain things like learning how to learn, like meta-learning or improving your memory improves everything. It improves your business. It improves, like, you know, you can remember people's names, you can remember sales presentations, you could remember things about people. Because like, for example, it's hard to show somebody, people who are watching this, they're entrepreneurs, right? And they're wearing a business development hat. You know, it's really hard to show someone you're gonna care for their business, their future, their family, their health, their fitness, whatever you're selling them, if you don't care enough just to remember things like their name.

Their name.

You know, or their kid's name or their birthday. That's so true. You know, so that's a memory is a multiplier there. A memory is a multiplier in their relationships, you know, like relationships, just remembering those moments, you know, like, you know, not even just remembering anniversaries, and take out the garbage, that kind of stuff. But remembering, you know, the first time you and your loved one, you know, took that walk on that beat, you know what I mean? Those kind of moments that make everything worthwhile.

Yeah.

But it's wonderful for every area. So, yeah, I do believe that two of the most costly words in business, for example, are, I forgot. You know, I forgot to do it. I forgot to bring it. I forgot the meeting. I forgot your name. It's the worst. Like, you could, you could, forgetting someone's name, and I've seen this time and time again, it could hurt a relationship, it could kill deals. I've had people call someone by the wrong name and they've lost multiple million dollar deals just on that.

I've had people email me and use a different name in my email. And it's frustrating. I'm just like, if you're trying to reach out to me and you use Mark because you weren't even paying attention, you weren't being present, it leaves a bad taste in people's mouths. I know I'm not perfect. I've forgotten people's names and I probably said the wrong name at times. So, you know, what are some things people can do to remember names?

Yeah, okay, so there are three keys for improving your memory. Three keys, right? So if you're ever forgetting something, you forget things, you feel absent-minded, like senior moments are coming a little bit early, you're in the shower, you can't remember if you shampooed your hair, you know, so you end up doing it twice. You misplace your wallet, your phone, your keys, or your car. You see the people like, where did I park my car? these kind of things and they waste a lot of time too and they take away all the treasures. And I don't mean just financial treasures, I mean just the important things in our life. But there's three keys and remember mom, M-O-M, always remember mom. So if you're ever forgetting something, usually one of those three things are missing. So let's take names. Because when people say I want a better memory, I hear them say like, oh I want to be better at sports. Because you're such an athlete. But it's like somebody comes to you like, well what sports specifically? do you want to be better at? Because there are different techniques and different training for different things. So remember names different than learning languages, different pin numbers and passcodes and all.

The different things you need to remember.

So everything's different. Everything's different. But there are certain principles that are the same. So the M in MOM is this. Let's say someone has horrible names, right? But let's say that there's a suitcase of $100,000 cash. If you just remember the name of the next stranger you meet, how many.

People are going to remember that person's name? I don't remember.

Everyone.

Right.

Everyone. And so that's the thing. The M stands for motivation. So it's interesting. So all of a sudden, everyone's a memory expert, but it had nothing to do with their capacity or their potential. Everyone could do it. It's just whether or not they decided.

To do or not if they wanted to. It's almost like if it's worth it enough or the consequences are, you know, that big or the stakes are that big, if you're gonna miss out on not.

Right. It's the motivation. Exactly. Because one of the things to learning we know with human motivation, because I did this presentation and Bill Gates was there. We're talking about wealthy individuals, right? And so, you know, he afterwards I talked to him and we were talking about the bridge between education and technology and I was like, what's missing with the future of learning? And he was like, Jim, you know, the key is human motivation, really understanding what drives people. I was like, wow, you know, that's really right because you know this, people could go out there and they could buy courses. you know, but a lot of people never open it. Exactly, because it has everything to do with drive and reasons. Because motivation is like, you know, like, what is your motive for acting? Sure. Right? What's the fuel? And I believe there's a success formula I call H cubed that it goes from your head to your heart to your hands, that people could visualize and affirm and see things here all the time and think about it. But if they're not acting with their hands, you know, actually doing something about it, then usually what's missing is the second age, which is the heart, the emotion, the energy of motion. I had a martial arts instructor tell me years ago, you can't steer a parked car. You need fuel. Where's the energy that's going to do that? And so, what's people's motor fraction? So simple. When people are remembering people's names, ask yourself, why do you want to remember this person's name? Because reasons reap results. I've always found that in life. Reasons reap results because you need a big enough why. Like Simon Sinek's Start with why. And so you want to get that drive first. So motivation. The O is something interesting. I have people do this. I have them just kind of shake out their hand like this. I say, make a fist, and I say, put it to their chin. And then I go like this. And everyone puts it here. I said chin, and this is the difference. The O stands for observation. And I find that a lot of people blame their memory issues, and they think it's like a retention issue. but I find it's really a attention issue. It's an attention issue.

It could be a present, you mean?

It is. That's a big part of it. It's like, let's say everyone uses a search engine like Google every single day, but a lot of people, they use it 10 times a day. If I ask them, are you willing to bet your life you know what colors the letters are? Wow. Because that's an observation. There's a difference between looking at something and seeing it, really seeing it. There's a difference between hearing something and really listening. Like for example, I had this whole escapade with the X-Men, which was insane, but I had to leave the set because there I had to go to a charity event. And one of the people that I think leaders, the independent of your political bent, who has an incredible memory, is President Clinton. Every single time I've met President Clinton, he's remembered my name.

No way.

He does. And how many people does he say.

Hey, Jim, good to see you?

How many people does Clinton meet? read on a regular basis.

Right.

And so that's a leadership skill though, right? And so FDR was incredible with names. Also, he would walk around the White House and point people out and say hi to them, saying hi to their spouse and using by name. I mean, that's because think about the sweetest sound to a person's ears, right? It's their name, right? And so anyway, I asked him what's memory trick he uses? He uses no memory tricks at all. And he tells me this, you know, this amazing story. To Bill.

Yes.

And so he tells me this incredible story about how, you know, his grandfather, you know, in Arkansas, would get all the kids around and tell stories to them, but then he would quiz them. They really need to listen and be present. And it's funny because I noticed that, like, he's Bill Clinton is an, regardless of how you feel politically, incredible Communicator.

Yeah.

Incredible Charisma, incredible connector.

Right.

And he also, this memory, I find, he has this incredible presence, this powerful presence, but I find that his powerful presence and his memory comes from being powerfully present. His powerful presence comes from being powerfully present. And here's the thing, when people are networking, because I know a lot of people, they're entrepreneurs, they're social entrepreneurs and millennials, they're going out there meeting people, because really it's what you know and it's who you know. But that's all memory, what you know. A lot of people go to a seminar two days later, they'll forget everything. 80% This big forgetting curve, but also who you know and who knows you, right? But what the challenges is they'll be networking and how many times do you find yourself talking to somebody and then.

Looking over their shoulder?

I hate that. I hate when people do that to me. Exactly. It's like annoying. Because you're distracting yourself all the time. Or if you're not distracting yourself externally, you're like talking to yourself. What am I gonna say next? Exactly. So the people aren't even listening. Now this is so key. When people are communicating, most of the times you find that they're not even really listening. listening. What they are is they're thinking about how they're gonna respond. And if you look at the word listen and you scramble the letters, it becomes the word silent.

-No.

-Yeah.

Isn't that crazy? If people would just do that. And we're talking about really fundamental things. That's one of the reasons I love your podcast is because some of these basics, those are the biggest things that move the needle. I mean, just understanding why you want to remember something and being present and paying attention and being silent and really listening. I mean, that's not magic, but that's just like going to the gym. Right. We think about the fundamentals. We're talking about exercise, we're talking about sleep, we're talking about, you know, a good diet. Yeah. That's like, that's crazy.

Yeah.

The mindset, that's 95% of it right there.

Yeah.

That's incredible. And then finally, the third M is mechanics. Okay. You know, for mom. So M is motivation, the O is observation, and then the final M is mechanics. And these are not the person that's going fix your car. But this is the tips, the techniques, the hacks, if you will, the strategies on how to learn a language, how to speed read, how to remember that person's name, how to give a speech without notes. Right. But the M and the O, motivation, observation.

So what's the mechanics then for, say I'm going to an event and there's 10 people that someone's introducing me to and I'm shaking their hand, we've all done this before. It's like hi, hi, hi, hi.

What's the mechanism? Mechanics to remember. I mean, we've all had the experience. So relationships, it's all proximity and it's all who you know, right? And who knows you back, right? And one of the most standout skills that I know of is walk into a room meeting 20 strangers and leaving saying goodbye to every single one of them with their name.

Can you do that?

Because who are they all gonna remember when you walk out of the room? That's a standout skill. That's the thing that, because when you remember people's name, they feel like that you care. Because what's the opposite? If you forget someone's name, how do they feel?

You don't care. That you don't care that they're not important. And, you know, this is what I've been, you know, thinking my whole life because I've never felt like I've had the book smarts. Yeah. But I felt like I've cared more than, you know, 99 of people. Yeah. And I feel like that's what's been able to get me to where I want to be by showing people how big my heart is. Yeah. As opposed to how much I know. Yes. And I think that could be the most powerful thing is remembering and just being connected to people as opposed to telling them what you know.

And that's huge too because a lot of people, a lot of traditional networking or business advice will be like, oh, you have to, you know, when you're going to people, tell them all these amazing stories and really be interesting to them. I think there's a difference between interesting and interested. You know what I mean? When you meet somebody, being interesting and talk about, oh, I did this. and then also being interested, sincerely interested, the other person.

People love when they get to share and you listen. When you just allow people to share their story and what they're excited about, and you remember their name, you don't even have to say anything and they feel like you're the best person in the world. Completely, right?

Yeah, the late Stephen Covey, who had an opportunity to spend a good amount of time with and share stage with, he has that seek first to understand. then to be understood. I mean, that's huge. That's huge. This is what you want to do. Every time you want to go, you go to a wedding, you go to a conference, you go to a networking event, seven tips. You don't even have to use all seven. Just any part of this would be better than nothing. Okay? All right.

I want you to remember, be suave.

Be suave. Like you are. That's how I live my life.

I know.

So when your people are going out and they're checking the mirror on their makeup and their clothing, when they say, to be suave. So the B stands for believe, because you know this better than anyone. Believe you can or believe you can't.

Right?

You're right.

Right?

And so here's the thing with beliefs. What I mean by that is you want to kill the ants. Our friend Dr. Daniel Amen, the big brain doctor, talks about killing ants, automatic negative thoughts. Because here's the thing, with a name like Quick, I had to be a runner growing up. I always tell people, Jim Quick, Quick Learning, how people learn quickly, and their and they're like, Quick really is my last name. Yeah, it's really my last name. Because with a name like Quick, your life and destiny is pretty much planned out. I had to be a runner back in school. I have to be careful when I'm driving, because the worst name that you pulled over when you're speeding. Yeah, a little quick and we're good. It's like, you want to have that on your license, you're not going to talk your way out of that ticket. And I get to teach speed learning, speed reading, speed memory and stuff. Were you a distance runner or a sprinter? Sprinter. So I was preparing for a marathon, and I was really excited I of course read books on it and stuff like that because I read a book a day. I just have to learn it. I was like, oh, it's like Matrix, Scott style and everything. I go to Barnes & Noble, I pick up a book and then just read it, put it back on the shelf and save a lot of money that way. But I was reading this book on running a marathon and there's one chapter on the psychology of running a marathon. That's what was really interesting, the mindset. And it opened up with this paragraph, verbatim, because I'm a memory expert. It said this, your mind is like a supercomputer and you're self-talk is the program it will run. So if you tell yourself you are not good with names, you will not remember the name of the next person you meet because you programmed your computer not to. I was like, wow. Powerful. So B for be suave, the B stands for believe. Believe you can, believe you can either way. You're right. Because here's the thing that I've learned, and here's the tweetable, if you will, is your mind is always eavesdropping on your self-talk your mind is always eavesdropping on your self-talk, all right? So you want to monitor that. So I encourage everyone to spend a week, do a 30-day fast, no negative thoughts, or you have to regroup, right? So that's the B. The E in B-SWAB stands for exercise. And I don't mean physical exercise, although people who are more physically active will always do better on mental acuity memory exams, because anything that's good for your heart is really good for your head, right? But I mean practice, because practice makes progress. Practice makes progress. It always does. And so the bad news to remember names, it takes effort. The good news, not as much as people think. So bad news takes effort, but what's not valuable in your life that doesn't take effort?

Sure.

Right? And so there's no magic pill, there's no magic memory pill, but there is a magic memory process. And that's what we're talking about. There's no magic memory pill, there is a memory process. And so the E is exercise. And so it it takes about 21 to 30 days. You know, we learned in psychology the law of 21 practicing something for 21-30 days, whether it's learning how to type or learning how to drive a car or what have you, until you get to be second nature with it. So you practice and where can you practice? Everywhere, right? Just anytime you're flipping through the channels and people get introduced, you're meeting people all the time. You can practice all the time. Sure. And so it doesn't take that much. Exactly. You could go to the grocery store and see three strangers and just make up your name. That's Bob, that's Sue, that's Mary. And then when you leave, like you check out and you're at the whole thing. Exactly.

Yeah.

And then, so that's the thing. That's the difference, right? Tony Robbins talks about what you practice in private, you're rewarded for in public. You know, so that's what you do. You practice. So that's the E in B. So B-E. So B is believe, E is exercise. Now the suave is the actual mechanics, right? So the S and suave, when you're meeting this person for the first Time. Yes is you say the name. You say the name. So hi, my name is Jim. Hey, Louis. Louis, it's nice to meet you. Good to meet you. Good to meet you too. Man, if I was any better, my name would be Louis Howe. That's, yeah, that's my name. So here, so I'll say the name right away and just by hearing the name again helps me. So now I heard it twice. One from you, one from me, all of a sudden I'm gonna remember it better. My retention is gonna go up. I also want to say it because I want to make sure going back to Mom, the O, I want to make sure observed it correctly. Sometimes you're networking, a lot of things going on. You meet someone named Ted, you say goodbye, Ed. Better get corrected up front than later on. So you say the name. The U in swabs means use it. You want to use the name. Very simple, right? You want to use it, not abuse it. But this, you know, because Lewis, thanks for coming. Lewis, we don't want to talk about Lewis. Then it gets creepy. That's like a sales pitch, right? It's like a sales pitch.

Exactly.

It's try hard and it's like a like a Seinfeld episode where, like, the close talker, you know, or there was actually a Seinfeld episode, I haven't thought about this in years, wasn't there a Seinfeld episode, like a rerun, you might have seen that he was dating somebody and was intimate with her, but he actually forgot her name. And every single time she would leave, he'd try to go into her purse and get her driver's license and meet Kramer and try to get the name to come out. But here's the thing, it rhymed with a part of the female anatomy, and that was the famous, that was the famous episode. if you remember, if people are watching this, remember what that is. So you want to make sure that you use it three or four times in the conversation. The A stands for ask, and this is a really big one. Ask, because what's everyone's favorite subject? It's not travel, it's not entrepreneurship, it's not even, you know, it's not shopping, it's themselves, right? And you ever meet somebody and their name is a little different than you're used to, like you've never heard that name before, you know, probably 80% of the people you meet, you know, Lewis and Jim, they're pretty common names. Sometimes you meet someone named Afzal or Riddiger or Isis or what have you, then you ask about a person's name. And what can you ask about a person's name? You can ask like, how do you spell it? What does it mean? What does it mean? What does it stand for? Who you're named after? Are you related to this person? All these questions. And for the most part, everyone gets very complimented because a name, again, is the sweetest sound to a person's ears. And think about why though. like the psychology of it. You know, a child, what's one of the first words they learn how to write? Exactly. How much love were they given when they did it right? You know, all that emotion tied into, because I think, you know, one of the challenges people have, like one of the biggest fears people have is not being good enough. You know, that we're not good enough, and if we're not good enough, we're not gonna be loved. And if we're not gonna be loved, you know, we're not gonna be, we're gonna die or something, you know? And so, but that name is like, our identity, right? So you always want to be able to refer that. So you ask about a person's name and they're complimented. So like for example, I was speaking at the country's largest life insurance company, about 100 people in the room, training director was there and her name was Nankita. And I was like, wow, that's a really beautiful name, sincerely, right? And so I was like, you know, you know, how is this spelled? Where is it from? I said, what does it mean? She paused and she looked at every, all our co-workers and she says it means graceful falling waters. And I was like, Whoa. And I got like chilled. And then, you know, like half the audience was like making these sounds. And it made me just spontaneously ask, you know, how long have you worked here? You know, she was like, About four years. I was like, With all these people? She was like, yeah, you know, like a lot of people are my good friends or at my wedding. It's like, that's nice. How many people in this room knew that's what her name meant? And out of a hundred people, how many people raised their hand? Zero.

None.

None. And that was one of my biggest clients because this was the first time I was a training director. Sure. And so it brought me into all that. But that name was a bond, right? So that was sincere interest. So you ask about a person's name. Okay. And then finally the V and the E in Suave. The V is visualize. Visualize. And this is a really simple memory tip where we tend to remember more what we see than what we hear.

Right?

You go to somebody, it's like their face. You know, I remember your face, but I forgot your name. You never go to someone and say, Hey, I remember your name, but I I forgot your face. That wouldn't make any sense.

That's weird.

So you remember what you see. In fact, there's a Chinese proverb that goes, what I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. And what I do, I understand. What I hear, I forget. I heard the name, I forgot the name. What I see, I remember. I saw the face, I remember the face. What I do, going back to exercise and practice, I understand. And so if you tend to remember what you see, then try seeing what you want to remember. So this is the trick. that you meet somebody, you take their name and you turn it into a picture. So let's say you meet someone named Mike and then for a split second, you imagine them taking a microphone and singing karaoke on the tabletop. You meet someone named Carol and you imagine she's singing Christmas carols. You meet someone named Mary and imagine she's carrying these little lambs around. And you do this in the privacy of your own mind. And people say, well, that's so childish. Who are the fastest learners on the planet. Children. Children. How fast can they learn a musical instrument? How fast can they learn languages like that?

Right?

So children, they do that. They're playful. They make fun of people's names.

Right?

You know, they could, you know, kids could be in therapy for 10 years because their name was being fun of them. They don't even know. Right. So that's what you want to do. You want to take someone's name, turn into a picture. So person's name is David. I use a slingshot for David and Goliath. You know, someone named Bob, I imagine them bobbing for apples.

Something very.

See, because here's the thing. There's something called, I call it the six second syndrome. The six second syndrome is someone tells you their name, you have six seconds to do something with that. Otherwise, it's gone. It's gone.

It's gone.

That's it.

If you don't practice it daily, you're gonna lose it. Exactly. And so here, at least you're focusing on the person and you're focusing on the name.

So a person's name is John. You could picture whatever.

Do you remember what you used for me when we met?

When we first.

So here's it, yes. So everybody has their own thing. Like, it's so funny, is like I use, okay, so you come up with a picture that works for yourself. So when we met, I actually use, it's a slinky, and don't ask why, because it doesn't sound like it or anything like that, but one of my best friends growing up as a kid was Louis. And all he would do is play with this slinky, like this little toy, this iron all the time. So I just think about him every single time I think about that. So I saw that, I just picture it and I just remember. Now, after you remember the person, then the pictures just disappear. But you need something just to hold it for six seconds and then you have it. And it's using the other part of reason why it works is that left part of your brain does logic and words and sounds. We'll talk about this with speed reading. That's only using part of your brain, but your right brain is like pictures and imagination and visualization and emotion. That's activating more of your brain. People say we use like 10% of our brain's potential. We use all our brain, but in terms of its potential, you know, like, you know, but no one shows us how to activate the rest of it. But part of it is just using your imagination. Because imagination is more powerful than knowledge. Wow.

Yeah.

Einstein said that. And so you want to turn into a picture. And finally, E and Suave stands for end. And that's going back to saying, saying goodbye, using their name, going to a room, meeting 10 strangers, leaving, saying goodbye.

To every single one so that they all Wow.

You.

Okay, let me see if I can remember this because I was trying to be present but also remember. So, be suave. The B stands for belief. E, exercise.

Exercise.

Practice.

S is say it.

Say it.

What side suave? U is use it.

Use the name.

A is ask about the name. V is visualize.

And E is And nice.

Yeah, man.

I'm picking it up as we go. Very cool.

And so what I'm saying is when people, they experience this and they practice this, you'll see a big lift. And that's what I love about it. And then all of a sudden, once you have that competence, it increases your confidence. You show up differently when you're out there with other people.

Yeah.

You probably don't have to use every one of them. No, you just say it. Say it.

Maybe just say it and visualize it and then you're done.

Yeah.

So any part of it is better than most people, which is nothing. Because if I say, you tell me.

Your name is Jim, I'm not gonna say, that's an interesting name.

Right.

You know, exactly.

Tell me more about who called you. If you just imagine, like, me doing something funny with my, you know, like barbells or whatever, like it's a magic gym or whatever. Yeah, and if people are motivated, they're asking, like, why do you want to remember a person's name? Like, I would ask myself for motivation, why do I remember the person's name? Maybe it's because I want to get.

Some business or I want to show this person respect, or maybe I just want to these tips that I learned on the podcast. What are some daily habits or rituals that you have to just sharpen your mind every single day that others can apply?

Okay, so I think here's the thing when it comes to your memory. Two-thirds of it is, so people are concerned that they're growing older, but I can say you can improve your memory regardless of your age, your background, your career, your diet, your level of education, your financial situation, your gender, your health situation, your IQ, anything, it can be improved. Here's the thing, one-third of your memory is predetermined by biology and genetics, but that's so exciting because that means two-thirds, the majority, but twice as much is completely in your control. That's cool. And so the things that move the needle, for example, are like 10 things that I'm thinking about that's going to move the needle completely of that two-thirds. So it's a good diet, right? a good diet because you are what you eat. And so there's certain brain foods that we know is good for your mind.

Dr. Amen talked about that as well.

A lot, a lot of that. Everything from blueberries to walnuts and everything. So there's good diet. And number two, killing ants. Killing you the automatic negative thoughts, which is a big for a lot of people. Remember, your mind is always eavesdropping on your self-talk and it's a practice. So you want to be able to eliminate the negative talk. And you can't just eliminate something, you just you have to replace it with something else. We probably do. Right, exactly. You can't just stop smoking. You have to start doing something else. So my memory, because here's the thing that you want to avoid. A lot of people start taking pride in how bad certain things are in their life. It gives them significance. Very much so. You nailed it. People start getting pride because they're, my memory is so bad if I don't write my grocery list and triplicates, I won't remember it. And like, oh, you think you're forgetful? This is how forgetful I am. this is how bad. And people also have this with busyness. It is so bad nowadays. Everybody has to be busy because that makes them say, oh, that person must be so important. Right? And so that we got to get off that cult of being busy.

Congratulations for being the most busy person.

You're right, exactly. Like that everybody has to do. Exactly. But people starting in pride, they start designing their life around being busy and they wonder why they're all stressed out all the time. So automatic negative thoughts kill those ants. Number three, that's that's good that you have to do daily is exercise. Because your body and your brain, that's connected. There's actually certain exercises you could do to build your brain power. For example, juggling, extremely good for your brain. It's been shown on Oxford last year, there was a study saying that jugglers actually have bigger brains. You could actually build more white matter. It's also a great tip for speed reading because as you're juggling three balls, your eyes only have two of them. You can't focus on all three, so you have to soften your gaze, I take in more, like peripheral vision, and trains you that way, so you actually take in more words as you're reading. But it actually builds more white matter as you're doing it. There's certain exercises also we teach people, this is a field called educational kinesiology, where certain body movements actually helps build your brain power, which is these cross-laterals and these kind of fun things. Even something simple like, you know, like we're always on a computer all the time, so it's really important to kind of keep your hands and your fingers kind of stretched. But you know, can you do one twice as fast like like literally like this? Oh, that's something like that, you know, or something or something. Yeah, or like you're pulling in energy like this, but what if you had to do one forward and one back? But there's been so many exercises for people like eating with the opposite hand is actually good for your brain or brushing your teeth with the opposite hand. Very very good exercise actually build your brain power. So exercise is really good, but I mean just being physically fit is good for your brain, right? It's good for staving off a lot of brain challenges. Okay, fourth thing that people need to incorporate is brain nutrients because a lot of people, they're not getting it from their soil or maybe their food, so maybe a supplement in certain things.

Right?

Number five, this is a big one and I know you're big on this, a positive peer group. Because you are what you eat, you know, and you are, but you are also who you spend time with. Of course.

Right?

So if you want a bigger brain, you want your mind to be active and everything, be around people that challenge you, that support you, that teach you things that encourage you that are positive because we are the average of the five people, as you know, that we spend the most time with. It's a positive peer group. It's good for your brain. Number six that's good for your brain is clean environment. They find that, and you know this, when people start cleaning their desk, that their external world starts reflecting their internal world and vice versa. So clean environment helps you be more organized inside also as well. Number seven that's good for your brain in terms of lifestyle. What I do every single day is things like sleep. Sleep is so important. People, that's where you're rebuilding, you're rejuvenating, you're restoring. But we live, there's this whole epidemic of sleeplessness and people aren't getting enough sleep. And Rach, I'm going through this list, people should go through it. And this is common sense, but not common practice. That's the difference, right? People's like, there's some zones here that people like, you know, I'm not spending time with the right people or maybe, you know, I'm really not getting that much sleep or maybe my diet negative self-talk. There's one or two things that if you fix it and you put energy there, it'll just, your business could double. Because you're doubling. That's number seven. Number eight is brain protection. So important to protect your brain because people who are accident prone or they're doing a lot of extreme sports, they're active, you want to make sure you wear helmets and just make, because your brain is resilient but it's, this controls.

Smash it and you're done. My father 10 years ago got in a car accident and he's still recovering. He's not the same person.

He can't work anymore.

He forgets a lot.

It's a challenge. And see, that's why I do what I do. Because I never want people to suffer the way that I was struggling every single day for like 15 years straight. And just because it reflects on, when I was in that hospital bed, going through all that. And then it was so funny, like not funny as in haha funny, but when this young lady who read the 30 books in 30 days and saved her mother's life, she gave me one of those books. Inside the book was this photograph and it was she was using it as a bookmark and it was her mother in the hospital. And it reminded me when I was in the hospital. And so yeah, take care of your brain. Number nine is new learnings. Learn something new every single day. Never let your head hit that pillow being the same as it was when I woke up ever. So, listen to podcasts. Listen to podcasts. Exactly. Watch your TED Talks, you know, read.

My course or anything new learnings.

Because here's the thing, we've learned more about your brain in the past 20 years than the previous 2,000 years. And according to science neurogenesis, that your brain can create new brain cells even as it grows older. And neuroplasticity is saying you can make new, your brain's like plastic. It's so malleable. But just having a new thought creates more connections. And so Einstein's brain wasn't any bigger than anybody else's, but he had more connections than people, than most people in certain areas. And those connections come from new learnings. And that's all learning is, is connecting something you don't know to something you know and making new connections like that. So always new learnings and always challenge yourself. And that's probably the most out of it. And then finally, number 10, what I try to practice every single day. is stress management. You know, if you want to know what the biggest obstacle is for people's brains is stress. Stress creates cortisol, adrenaline in your body. It's really good for fight or flight. It's not really good if you need to take a test. It's not really good if you need to study. It's not really have to read reports and journals and learn something brand new or learn a language.

Sure.

Because that'll shut down parts of your brain. Wow. So those are the 10 things that I focus on every single day. Before we continue this video, be sure to subscribe below and turn on the notification bell right now so you don't miss out on these great videos every single day. How do you think we heal trauma if we don't have the resources to go to therapy or do workshops or whatever it may be? Even if we do have resources, we don't have the courage to put ourselves out there. How do we start to heal trauma within our body?

Excellent question. So we did a whole project for Audible Original called Take Control. That was all about the thesis was this. Any area of your life that you're stuck, I am willing to bet everything I have that you have a trauma pattern from your past that you've never healed. You've got a boss that is abusive, guarantee you this has to do with a trauma pattern from your past. You can't succeed in the areas you want. You can't lose the weight. There's some pattern from your past. So the first thing is recognizing that you actually experience trauma. And I am a huge proponent, as so many people are, of widening the definition because I think up until about five years ago, most of us thought that trauma just meant, okay, you were in active duty or you were in a huge accident or incident that was highly traumatic or you survived some sort of physical, sexual, whatever abuse. Trauma is just about any kind of experience that you witness or you absorb that has your nervous system light up on edge. and start warning you. So if you've ever had, like you could have a critical parent and you just brace for them. You could have a parent that drinks like crazy and you brace at five o'clock because you know they're coming home. You could have been abandoned by a parent or have a parent that was mentally ill or have a parent that was so on your ass because they wanted you to be a pro football player. And so you were constantly on edge. It's when your nervous system fires up to state of alert that now gets programmed into your body as a response. There's a reason why so many couples at five o'clock at night start bickering. And it has to do with the fact that at five o'clock is typically when a lot of parents 20 years ago were coming home from work. And that's when the arguing would start. And so what happens when you witness that or you feel it is as a kid, you're now in a state where you're on edge.

Wow.

I see you rocking in your chair.

Wow.

That's crazy. Well, I mean, I just remember, you know, it's funny, there's a lot of good things that usually happen to our childhood, but we just seem to remember a lot of the bad stuff.

And it's because it's, you know why, right?

Because it's trauma just like, and your nervous system, I guess.

And also your mind is wired. in a way to prioritize the negative as a means to keep your ass safe from not experiencing. Correct. Which is why you got to work on your positive mindset, because your mind defaults to negative. So you got to build up the programming to positive. This isn't just woo-woo. This is actually science.

I know. So I remember, you know, my. The memories of the past, I always have to remind myself of all the positive stuff that, you know, my parents did all the time and what they were going through and giving them Grace and all these. things. But I remember, you know, when my dad would get home, it would be...

It was...

He didn't know what type of day it was going to be for him. You know, it was like either a thunder coming through the wooden floors with his wooden shoes and like being angry and upset or it was like the loving father that would take me out and play catch in the backyard. So, I have to constantly remind myself of like the positive... which I'm certain it was 90% of the time was good. But those 10% of the time, you know, creates that clinching mode, like you said.

Well, let me explain what happens. So this really interesting concept called ghosts in the nursery. And so trauma patterns get automated because they're not experienced in your brain, they're felt in your nervous system. And so it's why you can have a pattern from your past, but be completely unaware that it's running your life right now because it's stored not in your conscious thought but in your nervous system. And you feel it in your body before it even gets into your head. And so there's this concept called ghosts in the nursery, which basically means there's all kinds of that goes on when you're little that you may or may not remember in your mind, but your body remembers it. So for example, if you had parents that were just stressed out and they come home and they've been busy and you're sitting there playing on the floor and There's toys everywhere and mom or dad's reaction to a mess is to scream. That creates this kind of thing in your nervous system. Now you may not remember that episode that happened on May 17th, 1972, but your nervous system remembers what it's like. So fast forward, you're now 51 years old and you walk in the house and there's a mess everywhere. and even though you have said, I'm not going to bulldoze and yell at anybody, my body recognizes the situation. So what do you do? You repeat the pattern you saw. And so what I'm working on right now is a pattern that is encoded in my nervous system. I was trying to create a video yesterday or two days ago for Share the Mic. For Share the Mic now. Trying to create a video and I'm like doing take after take because I want to get it right. And my daughter comes waltzing into the room and was like, how long are you gonna be doing this? And I was like, you can't do.

That and I'm working.

I literally like screamed at her. And she looked at me, Louis, and she goes, you have a real problem. Wow.

How old is your daughter?

20.

I said, I calmly said, you,'re right, I do. When I get interrupted, I lose control of the response and I'm working so hard and the way that you, and I'm clearly not mastering this yet, but the way that you do it is as you feel it rise up, you have to, you know, you can use the five second rule, 5-4-3-2-1, you can use, just take a quick breath, you can notice the pattern, and you've got to create a pause between the emotion rising up and the reaction that gets automated. And for many people, the reaction, Louis, is to run away. It's to leave the room. It's to avoid the confrontation. It was just easy, you know, hold on, let me let the clock go.

Even though you hate being interrupted by anything. This is a great interruption. See, I did like I didn't do.

It, I didn't do the bulldoze. I was calm because it wasn't a human being. I'm only mean to human beings. A lot of people run away. They avoid conflict. They say it's just easier. But if running away and avoiding conflict continues to create a pattern where you feel invisible and your boundaries are tromped on, that's a pattern. And here's the other thing about patterns. Running away and being quiet might have saved you. When you were little, because if you were quiet and out of the room, you didn't get hit, you didn't get yelled at, you were out of harm's way. So when you were little, it was a genius pattern because it protected you. But the issue for adults is that again, we walk around with the patterns that we created when we were eight years old in different situations than we are now. And now we are completely a robot to these patterns.

I love that you had a great tweet the other day about boundaries because as individuals, both of us who try to help people break boundaries, try to break their mindset that's holding them back, try to get them to become greater than their past, all these different things. You wrote a post that said, you, boundaries are there to serve you as you grow, so are your boundaries. What boundaries do you need to set up in order to help yourself?

Grow.

Why are boundaries important when we also have the mindset of like you should be breaking your boundaries all the time?

Well, I wouldn't say that break that breaking your like I don't call the obstacles or I call them excuses. And so I think the hardest boundaries honestly are the ones that set with yourself to not drink during the week to not tolerate the bulldozing and immediately apologize and try to do better, to not waste hours on social media, like all the things that the small promises you need to make in order to create boundaries with your old patterns and your excuses. To me, the hardest boundaries to set are those with myself. I, what was the question again?

You know, breaking, we encourage people to break boundaries. You know, they feel like they're limited, but you talk about your boundaries are there to serve you. So obviously it's a different type of boundary, but, you know, you said, yeah.

So here's the thing.

What boundaries do you need to help yourself to protect yourself and which ones do you need to grow past that are holding you back?

I think that the definition with boundaries that has helped me the most is understanding that boundaries are for me. assistant< end_header_id >assistant< end_header_id >. They're not for you. And the single biggest mistake that we make in any relationship, particularly romantic ones, but also work related ones, is we.

Do not express what we need. That's so true. My girlfriend was telling me this the other day. She's like, I really want you to tell me what you need and when you want it and feel comfortable and confident saying it. And for me, I go back into trauma of past, like when I used to say what I want need, and it didn't get met, I'd get let down, my expectations, I'd get hurt. So I was like, screw it, I'll just do everything on my own, which leads to resentment or whatever else.

Yeah, how's that working out for you? So, Louis, that's an example of eight-year-old Louis created a pattern that worked when you were eight. But now that you're in your 30s and in a relationship that you really care about, you've got to identify the pattern and break it. and replace it. And the good news is any pattern can be replaced. Change isn't personal, it just feels personal. Change is just about identifying patterns and replacing them with new ones.

That's it.

And it'll take a little while because they're encoded in your nervous system and your default is to just do it yourself. But you have to, you cannot as a rule punish other people for you didn't communicate. So I'll give you the perfect example. So Chris and I have been married for 24 years. And when I was before the talk show and I made my living mostly by, you know, doing 100 speeches a year, I would be on the road 150 days a year. And when I would come home, there was always something that pissed me off.

Like what? Like, oh, the trash is taken out, the clothes are here, or is it something else?

Oh, no. I'm way worse than that. Are you kidding? I would walk in after being gone for five or six days, and there on the island in the kitchen was a vase that had dead flowers, the ones that I had bought for myself a week before. And it was as if everybody in my family had been walking around the island for six days as if there was some dead. Flower Sculpture in the middle of the island. And so I would come home and first of all, the only person that's really excited to see me is a dog. And my family did sit me down at one point, they said, you know, you realize when you're not here, we have our own lives. So you don't put your lives on hold while, you know, for us, and we're not putting our lives on hold. So it's not that we're not excited to see you, but we're not organizing our whole lives around when mom comes home.

To be like the dog. To be like the dog excited and running up and jumping in your arms and kissing you. Yeah.

Yeah, no, no, they don't, but I think that's cool because that means that they're independent and doing their own thing.

They've set boundaries.

They've set boundaries with me. Perfect. So for probably six months, I would get pissy and I would walk in and put my bags down and I'd grab the flowers and I demonstratively, how many times has everyone done this? throw them out loudly, like, are you hearing me? Yeah, I'm getting my communication. Just throwing these dead flowers out, communicate to you that you should buy me flowers. Like, I'm not saying that, but that's what the body language is, right? How dare I have been off. I've been in four cities and then you become a mark, like, oh, I'm just disgusting when I tell this story. But this is it.

This is like, so.

Well, I see you've got some lovely flowers behind you that look alive, so that's good to see.

I want their flights.

So.

So I do love flowers. So finally, I just said to Chris, you know what would make me feel amazing is if when I came home, you had just bought some flowers. Just go to the grocery, just when you're at the grocery store, it doesn't, you don't have to order, like I'm saying, buy the five dollar pack of half dead tools. Just something. Okay. And then he said, why? And this is the most important part of expressing and look, you don't have to give an explanation if you're trying to cut off a toxic person, but if you want to express boundaries with somebody because you want them to understand you more deeply, give them the why. I said, because it makes me think that you are excited for me to come home. and that you knew I was coming because I'm starting to feel forgotten. So underneath the anger, Louis.

Wow.

Was hurt and feeling like it didn't matter. And so I'll be darned. I walk in and there they are. And I literally feel so seen. And, you know, the other thing to do is, and, like, another thing for us, too, is, like, Chris and I, I learned on my talk show. Cause Chris was on it and we did a show all about men and what men think and the secrets they keep.

Oh, wow.

I learned for the first time that my husband prefers to have sex in the morning.

I get a lot of men do.

I didn't know that. Well, see, I didn't like it because I don't like bad breath in the morning.

My girlfriend says the same thing. My girlfriend says the same thing.

But I'm like, why didn't you tell me? And the reason why is because we're so funky about asking for what we need. We're so afraid of getting rejected or denied or whatever or being vulnerable in that moment. But the greatest thing that you can do is ask for what you need. Your friends need to know what you need. Your lover needs to know what you need. Your kids need to know what you need. Because then they can show up in a way where you feel seen and then you're gonna and they're gonna feel incredible.

Yeah, and you can't expect people to know what you need or then to know what you need by communicating it through anger and this frustration of, you know, whatever, like he's throwing away the flowers. That way of communicating also can be unhealthy. I'm the blame there as well. And I think it's, that's not a healthy way of creating love within a relationship, whether it's a friend, a family member, or a loved one.

But here's the thing. You want to know why? Let me let everybody off the hook. Yeah, because here's the reason why this happens and this is what I want everyone to know what we're up against so Louis as you and I sit here talking about the flower thing, right? And you got to communicate your boundaries as we're having this conversation We are present and we're using the thinking part of our brain When I walk into the kitchen, I am not thinking I am in the emotional and traumatic nervous system robot part of my body. And that's where your feelings and your triggers take over.

Yeah.

And if you can start to identify the bulldozing, the anger, all that stuff, you will literally change your whole life by just changing one or two patterns. The other thing, and you know, you asked me about the talk show, the single greatest gift of the talk show content wise is something called the word wheel. so I don't have it right here. But if you Google word wheel or wheel of emotions, you will find that if you ask somebody, name as many emotions as you can. Most people can name three. Happy, sad, angry. There's literally like 113 of them from disgusted to hopeless to. And if you, if you start with a core, this thing allows you to start with a core emotion and go out. out because back to the flower example, I was expressing anger. That's not what I was feeling. I was feeling invisible and forgotten. And so the word wheel is something that we used several times a week to help people go from the thing that they are expressing to communicating what you're feeling, which is a lot like the work that you wrote about in your book.

Yeah.

Wearing masks.

Yeah.

Getting to the root of the core emotion you're feeling but not expressing. And that gets back to the. The pause thing. What have I seen that I am busy, that I'm. That I'm. I. I am so. Have you ever wanted something so bad that you become paralyzed?

Yeah.

I so want to end the mental pain and suffering that people feel. I so want to help people heal their minds and to have the power to create a better future. And I get so overwhelmed by how much I want to see that happen in the world that sometimes I become paralyzed. And what happens for me a lot of the time is I feel insignificant. significant and my ability to move the needle on that.

Yeah, because there's billions of people who are struggling.

Yeah.

And it's like, what do you do to make the max maximum use of your time to make the maximum impact and also create resources to create more impact?

I get to yell at my husband to buy me flowers. That's what I do.

I get to feel like, is this wheel of emotions? Is this something you created or is this something else?

No, it's in the public domain.

Wow, that's cool.

That's really cool.

Now, I think I mentioned this to you, I've had some, I guess I've had some paralysis or just a lack of focus around completion of my book proposal I've been working on for about a year as well, about... Exactly about eliminating self-doubt. I think self-doubt and mental challenges kind of are cousins maybe of each other, family members in some way. And I think self-doubt is the killer of dreams. I believe when we don't believe in ourselves and our abilities, eventually we're going to sabotage something. And I hear you talk about confidence a lot. A lot of your social media posts are about this. You say it a lot better than I do. But what do you think are the reasons we doubt ourselves? Or what do you think is the steps to gaining more confidence in ourselves? when we doubt.

So I always thought that confidence.

Was.

A thing that you feel. And I have come to prefer that confidence is something that you do. Meaning that, you know, a lot of people thought a lot of people like to think, okay, well you're going to feel confident first and then once you feel confident, then you'll take the action. And that's wrong. It's not a chicken or an egg in my mind. I think what happens is you have to force yourself in a moment of self-doubt to do something. And when you see yourself taking action, the confidence follows. So I have created my own definition of confidence, which is confidence is the willingness to try. And you display the willingness to try when you take action. It's a lot like the relationship between courage and fear. You can't have courage without fear. Courage isn't the absence of fear. It's acting in the face of it. And confidence isn't the absence of self-doubt. It's being willing to try even though you doubt yourself.

That's beautiful. That's going in the book. I'm quoting you in the book.

Make it baby, make it your own.

I love that. That's powerful.

Yeah.

And I think, you know, I'm sure you probably, we're very similar in the sense that we So we do a lot and we build confidence because we would take action. You in law school and public defending and all these different things you've done, which like, okay, I'm afraid, but let me go do it and do it. And now, okay, I'm getting better. Now I feel more confident. It's not just, it's not just let me learn something or let me read a book. And now I'm confident in a skill that I haven't applied. I must apply it and fail a bunch and realize, oh, okay, I've gotten better. I have fallen over and over. And now I'm standing and I'm actually doing okay and I'm doing even better now. Let me build my confidence there.

Yes, and look, you know, here's the thing. I think that preparation and studying something so that you feel like you have an understanding of something can be an important first thing that you try. But don't let the studying of something become the reason why you don't actually take the next action.

Well, I need to get my math I need to go to a business school. I need to go to whatever and then never actually do it when you can start doing something much sooner before needing to have all the credentials necessarily.

Yes, there's very few things.

Except for like being a doctor. Okay, maybe don't do surgery.

Correct. Yeah, a chemist, a doctor, something that requires you to actually have accreditation and specialized knowledge and engineer, whatever. But most things things that you will master in life will not be mastered by reading a book. You cannot learn how to ride a bike by reading about it. You have to get your ass on that seat and find your balance. That's how you find balance is by falling. Because balance is somewhere in between not being on the bike and falling or being on the bike and falling rather.

If you're looking for more greatness in your life, make sure to check out this video right here. And also check out our free PDF, the Three Secrets to Unlock the Power of youf Mind to Help youp Change youe Life.

Download it right here.

We have these strong theories. It's just the science suggests they're wrong.

Like, it's not like you're not putting the work in. We're putting the work in in the wrong stuff.