These 5 HABITS Will Make You POWERFUL Beyond Belief | Simon Sinek & Lewis Howes
Lewis Howes talks with Brendon Burchard, Austin Kleon, James Clear, Jim Kwik, and others about how real power comes from relationships, not self-doubt. They break down habit formation into four stages: cue, craving, response, reward. Start habits small, design your environment to make them easier, and join groups where the behavior is already normal.
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When we talk about building one's self-confidence, I think the mistake that we make is that we look inside. I think the reality is when we try to build our self-confidence, we should be looking to our friends, we should be nursing our relationships.
When I'm looking to build my self-confidence.
The question is Leadership is a responsibility.
To people around us.
It's not a rank. You've heard me say this before. I know many people who sit at the highest levels of organizations who are not leaders. They have authority, and we do as they tell us because they have authority over us, but we would not follow them. And I know many people, as do you, who sit at lower levels of organizations who have no formal authority, in that they've made a choice to look after the person to the left of them and look after the person to the right of them, and we would trust them and follow them anywhere. In other words, leadership can come from anywhere within an organization. Yes, we have the right to demand, to have better leaders and better leadership in our companies. But when we don't, quitting is not the only option, nor is simply complaining, but undertaking the task of becoming the leader we wish we had. Anyone at any level can become a student of leadership, and anyone at any level can choose to look after this person and that person and work tirelessly to see that they rise, they become better versions of themselves, and that they show up to work inspired and go home feeling fulfilled and feel safe when they're out because of us. And though the organization itself may be dysfunctional, there are pockets, diamonds in the coal mine. And if you get enough of those pockets, the tail can actually wag the dog. So that's the great irony of all of this, which is the power belongs to the people. This is just an anthropological truth. The power always belongs to the people, which is why dictators bus in crowds to give the appearance that they're popular, or they actually have fake elections to give the appearance that they have A mandate. Dictators do that. If the people didn't have the power, dictators wouldn't need rallies and they wouldn't need elections. Dictators fear the people. Because people have the power in any population, in any organization. And what keeps dictators and bad leaders, authorities in power, is by keeping the people divided. Because if you can create mistrust amongst neighbors, then the people can never come together and never depose the leader. And so if you look at any dictatorship that ever existed, there are systems. Look at East Germany during the Cold War. You know, we didn't know who was telling on us. So everybody kept to themselves and nobody trusted anybody, neighbors didn't trust neighbors, and that allows authoritarian organizations to do as they please. The people, when people come together, you know, it's not, it's not, It's not Congress that just woke up one day and decided the Civil Rights Act, that's a pretty good idea. It was thousands and thousands and thousands of people marching in peaceful protest that put unbelievable pressure on a system to change. And anything that's ever happened in the world where there's been revolution or revolution happened this way. People always have the power. And this is very true in business as well. The people have the power. And so if we have mass layoffs on an annualized basis and you create internal competition, what you're doing is you're pitting people against people, especially if you create a system where we're only incentivized based on individual performance. So in a sales organization, for example, if my income literally depends on how many sales I get and you're gonna, I'm gonna keep stuff away. Why would I help you?
Yeah. Right?
You keep the people divided, you keep the system that we've got. But as soon as the people come together, Good things happen. And so I'm a great believer that those of us who believe that there's a better way to build a corporate environment, those of us who believe that we're, that being able to say I love my job is a right. It's not a privilege. It's not for a lucky few who get to go home at the end of the day and say, I love my job. It's not some lottery that you win. You go to a dinner party and you ask somebody, Do you like your job? And they go, I love my job. And we go, oh, you're so lucky.
They didn't win anything. Right?
It's not luck.
We are entitled. It is our God-given right to love going to work.
Why is that?
Because I think human beings are tribal animals and all of us want to feel inspired. We all want to feel like we're part of something bigger than ourselves. We all want to have some sort of physical and psychological safety, whether it's at home or work. We fear war, we fear crime, and we want to feel psychologically safe at home. We want safety. And at the end of the day, every human being on the planet wants the feeling that I can provide for myself and my family. There's nobility in work. Handouts don't work and they destroy the human ego. There's nobility in being able to do a hard day's worth of work and collect a paycheck. And when I do really well, somebody says, good job, here's a little extra for you. Because you're a valuable member of the tribe. And we want to make sure that we're incentivizing the behavior that you're doing and the behavior you're doing is you're taking care of something bigger than yourself.
Before there was corporate jobs, what were people doing? Did people feel entitled with, or sorry, not entitled, but they feel like they were all working on their own before then. They were doing their own craft, they were doing stuff in the family, in the tribe, what was happening before?
So scale breaks things. Human beings, Homo sapiens, been on this planet 50,000 years-ish, right? And for 40 of those 50,000 years, literally four-fifths of our time on this planet, we lived in populations that were never larger than about 150 people. And we didn't all live on top of each other. I mean, they were communities. And the way we survived in these dangerous times was we took care of each other. You know, we contributed. Some people built things, some people hunted for things, some people made food, some people we took care of the kids, we were their families. and the wealth was distributed. There's evidence they found in anthropological digs where the best cuts of meat, which you would think would go to all the alphas, because I'm the strongest, I get to choose the food first, the best cuts of meat, which they can tell by the bones, are actually distributed amongst the tribe. In other words, the alphas, the leaders, yes, they were entitled to eat first, that's just the way we are, we're hierarchical animals, nobody has a problem that somebody more senior, nobody has visceral contempt for the idea that somebody more senior in an organization makes more money than me. We're okay with our alphas getting better treatment. Nobody has a problem with celebrities making.
More money and getting famous.
Getting a table in the restaurant that we have to wait for. We're okay with it. It's one of the reasons we all try and increase our standing in society by doing good and hopefully you do it in a good way, not just getting, Internet famous, which is getting fame without any contribution to society. Different subject.
But.
It was shared hardship, shared sacrifice for the good of each other. That doesn't mean there wasn't ego and selfishness. Of course, but at the end of the day, we needed each other. And then about 10 or 12,000 years ago when we started farming, we didn't need to travel anymore. We could stay put and we could also sustain much larger populations. than about 150 because we could amass resources. This also allowed for ruling classes and intelligentsia and things like that. You can have an entire group of people who didn't hunt and didn't gather, they just governed. You know? Like it's a ruling class, that's what it is. Or they just thought about it.
They became philosophers, yeah.
We had the resources for that and we were okay with it. And it's a good thing because look at the advancements in modern society in the past 10,000 years. simply because we couldn't, you didn't have to go toil the field, you could actually go invent something.
You could innovate.
You could innovate, right? So it's a good thing, but scale breaks things for human beings.
Yeah.
You know, we were not naturally made for living in large populations. And so the way it works best is when we organize into smaller groups, which is why hierarchy matters, which is why leadership training matters. So you asked about is the top person responsible?
No.
The top person is responsible for taking care of the people in their direct responsibility and ensuring that they are charged with and incentivized to take care of the people with their direct responsibility, who are charged with and incentivized to take care of the people in their direct responsibility, and the people on the front lines who are actually doing all the work feel taken care of and are happy to contribute. There's a Marine that I know who's a Marine general who says the way he can judge the quality of a lieutenant is he listens to how the troops talk about their lieutenant.
When he's not around.
Is it the lieutenant or is it our lieutenant? They take possession of their leader. That's our lieutenant, right? Versus that, it's always the colonel. It's never our colonel, it's always the colonel because there's no relationship. It's too distant, right? So as soon as we take possession emotional possession of our leaders, there's a sign of devotion and mutual trust. But that relationship starts with how the leader leads. Yes, we have a responsibility to give back, but we call you leader not because you have the rank, we call you leader because you took the risk to trust first. We call you leader because you took the risk to build the relationship first, you took the risk to create the circle of safety first, You took the risk to go head first towards the vision first. That's why we call you leader because you undertook an element of risk. You literally lead, you went first. Nothing to do with rank.
Into the unknown.
Into the unknown, whatever it is. And then we have a responsibility to go, I'm coming.
I support.
There's good followership too. The best leaders are actually the best followers.
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The best leaders are actually the best followers.
In what ways? What do you mean?
The best leaders never think that they're the final, that the buck stops with them. They always believe that they're in service to something bigger than themselves. And even if that leader, that person in leadership position gets to the tippy top of whatever organization, they still feel that they're subordinate to something even bigger, right?
So.
The Pope still thinks that he's in service to something bigger than than him, right? A CEO of a visionary organization feels that they are still beholden to and following a vision bigger than them. So, the best leaders actually are the best followers, even if they're at the highest levels of the organization, they're still in service.
Right.
It may not be to a person, but to a cause, to a cause.
An idea, a vision, something. Whatever it is, there's still some sort of something that they're beholden to and they're devoted to and they're in service to.
To.
So followership is a thing.
And.
Not to belabor the marine point, but, you know, marines, when they evaluate their leaders, they're looking for good leadership and good followership. So for example, when you go through OCS, Officer Candidates School, selection, when somebody's for a task, you know, chosen to be the leader of that group for that task, the marines are watching the others as well. So they're looking to see that everybody's contributing ideas, they're looking to see that that leader takes in those ideas but is decisive, and they're looking to see that the members of the group, if their idea isn't picked, they still give their all to see that the leader's idea is successful, and if it fails, give it their all to pick up the pieces and see what they can do, as opposed to going, I told you, should have gone my way.
Right, right.
I was right.
Or sabotaging because their idea didn't get picked.
So they go all in.
So good followership is as important as good leadership. That we respect that when a decision is made, we will give our blood, sweat, and tears to see that the decision our leaders have made will be successful. And if it fails, we will help pick up the pieces because that's the deal.
What if you don't believe in the idea?
You may not believe in the choice, but you better believe in the idea.
Gotcha.
You know, you better believe the greater.
Idea, but the choice of getting there.
And that's just part of life. You know, heck man, I've disagreed with my own ideas. You know? I've been pig-headed and dogmatic about this is the way we gotta go, and everybody is wonderful and then 10 years.
Later you're like, it sort of like.
Falls apart and they're just like, okay.
Yeah, I kind of screwed the pooch on that one. But I take accountability. You know, or we find in the middle somebody goes, Hey, if we do this, we can probably be more successful and we pivot. There has to be, at the decision-making ranks, there has to be a humility that the ideas don't always have to come from me.
Right.
Bob Gayler, the fifth Chief Master Sergeant of the Air Force, has the best definition of humility I've ever heard. He said, Don't confuse humility with meekness. Humility is being open to the ideas of others. So, you know, it's not about like, oh shucks, that's not humility. You know, you and I know some remarkable leaders, people of great power and authority, and they have huge egos.
Yes.
You know, they know they're good and they don't mind talking about how good they are. But when somebody says, hey, I got an idea, they lean in like they're little kids. They go, let's hear it. You know, I'm looking at some of the photographs on your wall and some of the folks that I know here, they have an insatiable curiosity for ideas, and even though they're unbelievably accomplished, if you have something to share with them, they want to talk about it. They want to hear about it. That's humiliating to me. You know? So it's not this, you know, it's not me, it's, you know. Self-confidence is a good thing. Thinking you're better than everyone else, that's unhealthy. Ooh, that's good.
Yeah.
You know, thinking you're good is healthy. Thinking you're better than others is unhealthy. Humility is not thinking that you're not good.
How do you have a...
It's not thinking that you're good.
How do you develop self-confidence? We're kind of going off here now, but this is a topic I'm really passionate about right now. I believe self-doubt is one of the biggest killers to anyone's dreams. So how does someone develop self-confidence and sustain it with the ever going changes and stresses and uncertainties that always come up Once you reach a certain level, there's a new uncertainty.
So, I think it's ironic that we call it self-confidence. Because I don't, for one, think it comes from the inside. I think our self-confidence comes from the outside.
Right?
You mean that's the wrong way of going about it, or you think that's where it comes from in general?
We are being misdirected by the name. When we say build your self-confidence, The instruction is saying go inside, look inside oneself.
But.
I think that's a false direction. Children aren't born self-confident. Their confidence is built from their parents and their friends and their teachers, where they're rewarded when they do well and they're pushed when they fail. when they can do better. Simply, you know, we know this, that simply telling kids that they're great all the time actually doesn't build self-confidence actually does the total opposite.
Right. Right.
And I, for one, I can tell you my, in my own experience, my own self-confidence 100 comes from the relationships that I have. It's not some deep internal fortitude, you know, a world famous trapeze artist is not going to try a brand new death-defying act for the first time without a net. So it's the people in my life. It's when I do doubt myself that somebody says, you got this. When somebody says, I believe in you. When somebody says, no matter what happens, whether it succeeds or fails, I'm going to be by your side. That's when I have the confidence to do difficult things.
Wow.
I don't have some natural battery that just.
Right.
You know, that to me is bravado. I don't know if that's self-confidence. You know, being a huge risk taker is not an indication of self-confidence to me. You know, jumping out of a plane and jumping out of a plane with a parachute are two different things.
Right? Right.
To me, self-confidence is measured and there should be a degree of doubt. But I think true self-confidence, belief in oneself and belief in one's cause, I could not do the things that I'm doing and I would not have the strength to have made the sacrifices that I've made or continue to wake up on a daily basis to drive to spread this message. if I were alone. And so when we talk about building one's self-confidence I think the mistake that we make is that we look inside. I think the reality is when we're trying to build our self-confidence we should be looking to our friends, we should be nursing our relationships. When I'm looking to build my self-confidence the question is who around me do I need to take care of? You know, the way we build our self-confidence is by helping somebody else build theirs.
Right.
It's an act of we will build our confidence with an act of service. So I'll tell you a true story. So I did an experiment. I love doing experiments in my own life.
Yeah, me too.
You know, I have mad thoughts. I'm like, well, let's try this one out. So I have a very dear friend who has stuck with me through thick and thin, who she is absolutely profoundly one of the reasons that I am who I am today.
Right?
And I have my confidence in large part because of her.
Wow.
Right?
She's one of a small group of people who I look at and say, Mm-, yep, yep, good friend, right? She was struggling, like seriously struggling. Oh, let me take a step back. So we decided that we were gonna, she was struggling. She was going through some hard things in her life. Career wasn't going the way she wanted. Her personal relationship was struggling. There was a lot of rough.
She was lacking confidence.
There was a lot of rough. She was lacking confidence. And we would get together on a regular basis and I would attempt to coach her, you know? And she'd feel great for the hour after she left me and then it would very quickly go back to normal and we'd get back together and I would coach her and she felt great for the hour after she left me and then it would go back to normal and I wouldn't, I can't say that there was some profound change being made in her life. So I had a hair brain idea. I went to her and I said, I need your help. I said, I'm struggling. I don't have a coach that I love and trust. You've known me for years. I trust you with, you know, with everything. I feel unbelievably safe around you. Can you put together a program and can you coach me? I think you're good at it. And it wasn't reciprocal. It was an, I'll coach you, you coach me. I said, I need your help because I'm struggling. It was legit. It wasn't like I was just making stuff up. You were stressed. It was legit. I could do with the help and I trusted her to help me. And something profound started to happen. Over the course of just a few weeks, it wasn't even for a few months, but over the course of a few weeks, she started to gain way more confidence. Her career started to really move in.
A more positive direction.
Her relationship firmed up. And the more that she was in service to me, the more that she grew herself. So I think self-confidence, I wish we didn't call it self-confidence. Because like I said, I think it gives a false direction. The way we build confidence is with. Con means with, doesn't it?
Interesting.
So I have no idea the That's an etymology of confidence.
That's interesting.
Just making stuff up here. But con means with. To confide, let's look this up because fidelity is something to do with truth. So confide, right? Yeah, look it up with the etymology of confide. Look up the etymology of confidence. To confide is to people like a conspiracy. Is it is a co-whisper. That's what conspiracy is, the co-whisper. So, confidence is co-fidelity.
Right.
What is so let's see let's see if the instinct is matched by the etymology of the word and which if it isn't I'm still okay with it. Yeah, you look what does it say? So it comes from late Middle English, confident translations, origins and meaning. Here we go. Unlighted animal dictionary. Got to love it. Where does the word come from? It is about trust or reliance?
Hmm.
But what is the actual etymology of the word? Yeah, I am not going to sit here and waste everybody's time. Yeah, we can look it up. But it comes from cum fidere. And fidere means to trust.
Mm.
To trust yourself or trust other people.
What does cum mean?
Uh.
It means with. It means with trust.
Wow. That could be with trust with yourself.
I think it's been missed. That's my point. I think it's been, I think it's like a conspiracy requires, a conspiracy requires two people. You cannot have a conspiracy with one person. It's a co-whispering. You know, you commit the crime of conspiracy when you tell someone something and you're both in on it. So I think confidence is the same thing. I think it's at least two people who undertake the task of trust and reliance.
So she was coaching you and you saw a change with over a few weeks of her confidence built.
Her confidence built.
And her belief in herself.
Her belief in herself grew when she was in service to helping me, to helping me. And so, that goes back to the root of the question, how do you build your self-confidence?
Or how do you overcome self-doubt?
How do you overcome self-doubt? Help someone else overcome self-doubt.
I love that.
I love that.
Overcome self-doubt by helping. And it's not a selfish thing. I'm only helping you so I can. You have to genuinely love and commit to the person, this person that you're helping. You have to genuinely care about their success and their confidence and their lot in life.
You said this, you said, you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. What are the systems you created to be successful beyond those kind of core habits right there?
Yeah, so this is a really good question. I think first I just want to talk a little bit about that point that you do not rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems. What do I mean by that? So often when we set about to change something or to achieve something, the first step is almost always setting a goal. And this is coming from someone like I was very goal oriented for a long time, right? Like an athlete. Yeah, I was like goals for the things I wanted to do in sports, the goals for the grades I wanted in class, the goals for how much money I wanted to make in my business. And sometimes I would achieve those, but then sometimes I wouldn't. And so I had this question like, well, clearly I'm setting goals for both. So like that can't be the thing that determines it. And you see this a lot that the winners and losers in a particular domain often have the same same goals. Like every Olympian wants to win a gold medal.
Sure.
Every job candidate wants to get the job. So if the winners and the losers have the same goal, then the goal cannot be the thing that distinguishes the two. And the thing that distinguishes them is the process of the system behind the goal. And this is also important because achieving a goal often only changes your life for the moment. So like, you know, say you're.
Just.
Take like a simple example. Say you have a messy room. You know, and you set, you get motivated and you set the goal to clean your room. Well, you can do that in an hour and then you have a clean room. But if you don't change the sloppy habits that led to a messy room in the first place, then you just end up with a dirty room again.
Yeah.
So it's like treating a symptom without treating the cause. And habits are a better solution in that case, because if you fix the inputs, the outputs fix themselves automatically, right? You don't have to fight to have a clean room if you have clean habits. I think that that's true in a larger sense as well. People want outcomes. They want to earn more money or lose weight or be more productive or reduce stress. But the outcome is not the thing that needs to change. It's the system that precedes it.
So give me the, let's bust the myth of how many days it takes to set a habit. Because there's 14 days, 28 days, 60 days a year. If you do something every single day, and maybe it changes for each person, but what's the science or the statistics say about how long it takes to form a positive or negative habit, I guess. So, 21 days is the thing you.
Hear all the time. 30 days, 100 days, whatever. Right now, 66 days is making the rounds. It was the latest- I saw that in another book.
What was that book?
-Well, there was one study done that found that 66 days was the average for how long it takes. And as a rule of thumb, I don't think it's terrible. Like you should remind yourself, yeah, this is going to be months of work. It's not just something quick. But even within that study, the range was quite wide. So if you did something simple, like drink a glass of water at lunch each day, it would take like three weeks. If you did something more difficult, like go for a run after work every day, that would be like seven or eight months. But I think actually that question to begin with is sort of a, there's like a broken mentality.
The wrong question.
Yeah, it is. Because if you ask that question, the implicit assumption is when do I have to stop working? Or when is this done?
And is it automatic after a certain period of time?
Well, the honest answer to how long it takes to build a new habit is forever. Because if you stop, then it's no longer a habit.
It's a constant choice and a decision, right?
I think people often look at habits as like a finish line to be crossed, but it's actually a lifestyle to be lived. And if you look at it as a lifestyle change, then you're saying, okay, what's something small and sustainable I can stick to, right? What's something that can actually last over time? So it is true that, and you can actually map this through research, that a habit will become more automatic with practice. But this reveals another important point, which is that there's nothing about the amount of time elapsed that leads to habits being built. You could practice something once in 30 days or you could practice it a thousand times. What actually leads to a habit becoming becoming automatic and becoming learned and ingrained is repetition. So, the phrase that I like to use is not 21 days or 30 days but put in your reps. I mean, that's the real thing is you need to practice and if you put in your reps then your brain.
Starts to automate how that process works. -Yeah. What makes you an expert on habits? -Oh, man. -Based on lots of other people that are talking about habits.
Why are you talking about it differently and what have you discovered that's different than everyone else? -Okay. So, two questions.
There.
So the first one is expertise. And I think that, and I've said this many times before, I'm just going through this with everybody else. I consider my readers my peers in the sense that we're all just trying things out. The only difference is I write about what I learn and share it each week, but we're all just learning along the way. Early on, I had a feeling like that. I was like, who am I to, you know, I'm just a guy. Who am I to write about this? And I had a friend tell me, the way you develop expertise is by writing about it every week. So I wrote a new article about habits every Monday and Thursday for three years. And that was how I developed the expertise on the topic by writing about it.
You did research and you said, Here's what I found. Here's what I tried.
Here's what worked, what didn't work. It's a combination of me reading the scientific literature and reading the research and then trying to distill practical insights from that and testing things out in my own life as a weightlifter, a travel photographer, a writer, an entrepreneur, and seeing what that looks like and then the two together. And I think you need both. Like, I don't wanna be some new age version of an academic who's in an ivory tower just like theorizing about ideas. It's different what it looks like to put ideas into practice, right? Like, imagine you're a peak performance coach and you show up to a coach like an NBA team.
Yes.
If you wanna be able to understand.
How they work and how to make them last. And what are those four frameworks? So, the first stage of every habit is a cue. the second stage is a craving or some kind of prediction that your brain makes. I'll give you an example of these in a second. The third stage is the response and then the fourth stage is the reward. So, you walk into a... the question I had that no model I could find could solve in any good way or explain in any good way was why can the same person respond to the same cue in a different way? So, let's say you get into the habit of going to to the gym at 5 o'clock every day. But then sometimes work gets busy and you don't go to the gym at 5 o'clock. Current models don't explain that very well because it's like, well, the cue is 5, you should be going to the gym right now. It says the routine falls automatically after the cue. Or why does someone walk into the kitchen and see a plate of cookies and then they automatically want to eat it? But you could just as easily imagine that you just got done eating dinner in the other room and you're stuffed and you're full and you walk in and you see a plate of cookies and you're like, I'm stuffed. I don't want to eat anything. So what's going on there? And I think these four stages explain it, which is you see the cue or you experience a cue and then your craving or your prediction differs based on your current state. So the way that you interpret the cues in your life is contingent upon.
The current state that you're in.
The way you're feeling.
Right.
And also other things like your beliefs or your identity, the social group that you're part of, right? So like if you're in a different group, then maybe you interpret things in a different way. You know, you could imagine one group, they practice a particular religion, they walk into a butcher shop and see pork and they're like, oh, we can't eat that. Another person walks in and they're like, oh yeah, I'll have a pork sandwich because it's obvious and easy and right there.
So what you choose is contingent upon.
How you interpret the cues in your life.
How do we change what we interpret?
Yes, good question. All right, so this is a key point in the book, which is that social norms, society leans heavily on us all. So, if you, there are just broad examples of this.
Social pressure, religious pressure, media pressure, peer pressure, everything.
Let's say, so just some broad examples. You walk into an elevator and you turn around to face the front. You have a job interview and you wear a suit and tie or a dress or something nice. There's no reason it has to be that way, right? Like you could face the back of the elevator, you could wear a swimsuit to a job interview, but you don't do that because it violates the shared norms of the group, right? It violates the shared expectations of what that society has. But that's not that's true not only in a broad sense that we're part of these these tribes like big tribes, you know, what it means to be a Christian or to be American or to be Australian or whatever. But it's also true in the small tribes that we belong to. What it means to be a neighbor on this street or a member of your local CrossFit gym or to volunteer for a local organization. All of those tribes, all of those groups that you belong to have a set of shared expectations, a set of shared norms. And the key, if you want to build habits that last, if you want to change the way that you interpret cues is to join a group where the desired behavior is the normal behavior. There are plenty of people who they want to work out, but going to the gym feels like a lot to them. It feels hard, feels like sacrifice. But there are also people who go to the gym every week and it's just normal. It doesn't feel like an obligation. That's the desired behavior is the normal behavior.
It's their lifestyle.
Same thing for musicians. you know, like if you want to learn an instrument, hang out with people who play all the time. You know, like if you hang out with a bunch of musicians, it's like, well, yeah, that's what we do all the time. Yeah, we play four days a week. We play seven days a week because it just happens. That's, that's what the tribe does. The caveat to this, and the thing that I don't see people mention a lot, is that the reason social norms influence our behavior so much is because we want to belong to the tribe. We want to be friends with those people.
And so we don't want to lose the friendship or lose belonging.
Over violating the norms.
Yeah, you're not gonna hang out with a bunch of vegans and have pork.
Right.
And just like be the only one eating that. You won't hang out with them for very long because you're not gonna be.
Friends with them anymore. Exactly.
They'll kick you out. So you want to rise to the standard of that group, of that community. So the key I think is to join a group where your desired behavior is a normal behavior and you already have something else in common with that group. So Steve Kamb is a good example of this. So like Steve runs Nerd Fitness.
Right?
And all these people want to get in shape who are coming into his community, but they also love Star Wars or Batman or Spider-Man or, you know, all these other things that nerds are into. And if you show up, it can be intimidating to want to get in shape or, you know, work out the first time. But if you can connect with the group over your mutual love of Star Wars, then you're like, oh, well, I'm friends with these people. And now I also want to pick up those other habits with them because I want to belong with the group because we're already friends. and so I think you can apply that methodology to most new tribes that you join. Don't just join a new tribe because they have the desired behavior. Also try to find a way that you can overlap with them. Find some shared context. Some other stuff too.
Yeah.
That you can bond over and then.
It'S easier to adopt the habits. Musicians that like to be healthy.
Yeah.
If you want to do both, right? It's like finding that even subgroup. It's like, hey, we love, you know.
We love playing music and then also you're gonna start eating better because we.
All want to eat healthy.
-Exactly. -Interesting. Okay, so that's the second part, the.
Cue and then the desired habits, right?
The craving.
-Cue, craving, response, reward. -Okay, what's the response? -So, this is mostly about making it easy. So, this is the habit itself and the easier a habit is, the less friction there is associated with the habit, the more likely you're going to be to do it. So, the way that I like to describe this, imagine you have like a hose, right? And there's a bend in the middle. there's a little bit of water trickling out. If you want to increase the amount of water going through the hose, you have two options. You could either crank up the valve and force more water through, or you could just remove the bend and let it flow through naturally. And a lot of the time, advice is centered on cranking up the valve. It's like you need to try harder, you need grit, you need perseverance, you need motivation, you need to overcome the obstacles in your life. And all those things are fine, but I think they're all short-term solutions. you might be able to do that for a day or a week, but I've never consistently seen someone stick to positive habits in a negative environment. It's really hard to fight that day in and day out. So the solution I think is to reduce friction. There are a ton of ways you can do this. One way is just to scale the habit down, make it as easy as possible. So people have heard things like this before, start small, small steps, whatever, but even when you know you should start small, it's still really easy to start too big. So, you know, say you want to get in shape and you're like, all right, I want to run a couple days a week, but I know it should start small, so I'll only run for 15 minutes. But even that is like way bigger than what I'm talking about. I mean, it should be so small that you, in the book I call it the two-minute rule, but you should downscale any habit to fit within two minutes. So it's like, all right, I want to go for a run three days a week. My habit is, I put on my running shoes and I step out the door. Anything else that happens after that is just bonus.
It's a success.
Now, sometimes people resist that because they're like, well, this sounds kind of like a mental trick, right? Like, I know the real goal isn't just to put my shoes on. I know the real goal is to go for a run. So if you feel that way, my suggestion would be only do the first two minutes for the first few weeks. Because what you need to do is master the art of showing up. Like, I had a I had a reader who ended up losing over 100 pounds and one of the things that he did was he went to the gym but he wasn't allowed to stay for longer than five minutes. So, he would show up, be there, do like half an exercise, five minutes would go, he'd leave. He did this for like six weeks. -Wow. -Now, it sounds ridiculous.
It sounds silly because the options.
-You just work out for a half hour. -Yeah, yeah. But what he was doing was mastering the art of showing up and a habit must be established before before it can be improved. If you don't establish the habit, there's nothing to optimize. If you're not showing up at the gym every day, you don't even, who.
Cares about what workout you're doing, you're not even there.
Don't start running an hour a day if you've never run in a long time. Be the person who shows up and puts their running shoes on every day before you worry about how far you're.
Running and what kind of workout you're doing and all that type of stuff. A lot of times, establish the art.
Of showing up first before going all in on the desired goal you want. I think that's right. I mean, you can find examples of people who flip a switch and transform their lives or have an epiphany and do it overnight. But I think that it's rare. I think that the more sustainable strategy, the more reliable strategy is to scale it down to the first two minutes, focus on that, establish it, master the art of showing up, and then go from there. So really you should like, usually when people think about building better habits, they optimize for finish line, right? It's like, how much weight do I need to lose? How much money do I need to make? You know, how when can I finish this book? It's all focused on the result. But I think instead, if you optimize for the starting line, make it as easy as possible to start, scale it down, organize your environment so all that stuff is set up. This is another strategy for making it easy, which is that you can prime your environment to make the future action easier, right? Like if you chop up a bunch of vegetables and fruit on Sunday, it's now easier to have a healthy snack during the week. If you set your workout clothes out the night before, it's now easier to get into the workout the next day. But doing all that stuff to make it easy to show up, that is probably the more important piece early on. There's also like all these logistical details for building a habit that nobody thinks about in the beginning. Like what? Well, like take the example of my reader who went to the gym. It's like, okay, what gym are you.
Going to go to?
How are you gonna get there? Are you going by yourself or you're gonna go with a friend? Do you need to... What time are you gonna go? Yeah, what time are you gonna have your own water bottle or is there a water fountain at the gym? And that stuff sounds like silly and small, but when someone's starting... It's a big deal, right?
Yeah.
The fact that like, oh, the gym doesn't have a water fountain and I always forget to bring my own. That's enough friction for someone to quit. So, by focusing on just the first two minutes, you figure all that stuff out and then once you've got that piece mastered, now you can worry about how long the workout is and what program you're doing and all that stuff.
So figuring out the logistics first is an important step.
I think that's something that just comes naturally with scaling a habit down. You figure out what's required to show up because you're not worried about the results or the outcome or how long you worked out or judging yourself for running 30 minutes when you should have.
Run 45 or whatever. Got it.
Okay.
So this is the response still?
Right.
Okay. And what's the fourth The fourth one, and this is crucial for getting a habit to stick, is the reward or the outcome. So, every behavior is followed by some kind of outcome. It's just basic cause and effect. And if the immediate outcome is favorable, is enjoyable, you have a reason to repeat it in the future. It's kind of like... Donuts. Yeah, exactly. It's like that example.
If.
You feel good, if you feel satisfied right after you do something, then it's like this positive emotional signal and it's like, yeah, I should do this again. So you can see this actually business is a really interesting example with this. There are a lot of products and some of the most successful products have some type of immediate satisfaction that is layered into them. So toothpaste is a very common example. There's no reason a toothpaste needs to taste like mint, but it does because the minty flavor and the refreshingness of it makes sure it gives your mouth this clean feel and it's more satisfying so you have a reason to do it again in the future. I heard an interesting one recently about car manufacturers that some of them are adding a fake guttural roar to the car or the truck when you press the accelerator because it just adds to the actual natural sound of the engine so it makes it more satisfying to step on the gas and to drive the car. So there are a variety of examples like this, but if you can add, the key is it needs to be immediate, right? So like this is, in the book I refer to this as the cardinal rule of behavior change, which is behaviors that are immediately rewarded get repeated, behaviors that are immediately punished get avoided. And it's really about the speed of how quickly you feel successful. If it feels good, you have a reason to do it again.
Is that why video games do so well?
Video games are masters at this. They're masters at it. So, their masters actually at a variety of of aspects related to habit formation. So, one is they're really good at this immediate satisfaction. There are all kinds of things. You're actually constantly getting feedback in a video game. Even if you're just running, you hear.
The pitter patter of the steps.
That's gratifying. It's the jingles of like picking up another power up or seeing a kill or something like that. Whatever the game is, you're always getting constant feedback. Sound, things that are on screen, they're really good at dripping now, watching the score increase in the top corner, that is immediate feedback. So, they have all these different ways of making you feel satisfied and when you see that progress, you have a reason to continue in the future. This is one of the most effective forms of immediate satisfaction is progress. As soon as you feel progress, you have a reason to continue. Feels really good to see that you're making headway.
I think if there's one skill to master in the 21st century, it's our ability to learn faster. Like if there was a genie and a genie could grant you any one wish, but only one wish, what would you wish for? If it was only one wish, what would you wish for?
You know, most people would say money or this or that, but you think.
Learning is the-- I mean, I think a lot of people would-- I think.
Being the matrix, like downloading the matrix, it's where I could learn jujitsu. in a second.
Exactly.
If I can learn a language in a second, if I can have this skill.
So I think the hack a lot of people would do is if it was any one wish, they would wish for more wishes, right? Infinite wishes. So the equivalent, if I was your learning genie and I could grant you any one wish to learn any subject or any skill, just become a master at it, what's the equivalent of the answer of asking for infinite wishes? It would be learning how to learn. Because if you can learn how to learn, the world is yours. especially today, because nobody who's listening and watching gets paid for their brute strength. It's their brain strength. It's not your muscle power. It's completely your mind power. And the challenge is your brain doesn't come with an owner's manual. It's not user friendly. And that's the reason why I wrote this book. But the limitless model is an explanatory schema, a framework for learning anything faster. And not only that, but really for accessing our human potential, because I think if there's one infinite, limitless resource on planet Earth, it's human capability. There's no limit on our determination. There's no limit to our imagination. There's no known limit to our creativity. And yet, we're not shown how to be able to access that. And so this framework is a three-part framework. And what I would offer everyone to do is I love to turn this into like a little masterclass, make it really engaging. And so don't listen passively because we don't learn the human brain doesn't learn through consumption. It learns through creation and creativity and getting involved in things. I know a lot of us learn faster when we actually roll up our sleeves and do it. So I would encourage everybody as they're working out or cleaning the house or whatever they're doing at the same time.
To try to get involved in this. I think as an athlete, I can speak to that because for me in school, it's really hard to remember or learn things because I didn't feel like I was participating in a way that worked for me. for me, but as an athlete playing basketball, when a coach would tell me, okay, I want you to watch this video and then automatically shoot in a certain way with your hand positioned this way and follow through this way just by watching a video and not actually implementing and practicing it, he would take me out on the court and we would practice it and do it over and over again and he would correct me and I would learn through muscle memory as opposed to just watching something and then thinking I can do it without actually practices. Right. So putting it into practice quickly for me is how I learned sports, and it's how I try to apply it in other areas of my life, as opposed to just, I'm gonna learn and then, okay, I know it.
I feel like I need to work in it.
I feel.
Yeah.
Dirty. You know what I mean? I do. I do. I think a lot of people. This is the thing. It's not how smart you are. It's how. It's not literally not how, like, how smart you are. It's how are you smart? It's not how smart you are, how smart your kids are, how. smart, your business partner is, it's how are they smart, how are you smart. What's the difference? So you are smart through experiential learning. Like in the book we talk about, how are you guys smart? Exactly. It's not how smart somebody is like their IQ or their intelligence, it's how are they smart. And it's always context dependent. And so some people learn, we talk about learning styles in the book. It's like, have you ever been interested just like you were saying, you're interested in a topic but you're not getting it. Because sometimes the way you prefer to learn is different than the way the teacher refers to teach. And it's like you're two ships in the night and you pass each other and you don't even realize there's no connection. You don't even realize the other one is there and it feels uncomfortable. Like if I asked everybody as an exercise to take out a piece of paper, I encourage everyone to take notes because I'm going to drop a lot of like practical methods when you're taking, if you were to write your name first and last on a piece of paper, actually you could do it right now, first and last. And everyone encourages you to do this. Or imagine you're writing your name first and last on a piece of paper. And then when you're done, I want you to switch hands. And in your opposite hand, right below it, write your first and last name with your opposite hand.
I don't even know if it would take me 10 minutes.
And so while people are doing it, you'll notice when you're doing it with the opposite hand as we're doing it, that's actually pretty good. That if I was to ask you which one is the... which one was easier, first or second, and you would say the first was easier. Which one is more comfortable, first or last?
The first one.
The first one. So not only was it faster, it was easier. And then which one was higher quality? Let's check that out. Hopefully the first one's higher quality also as well. And so here's the thing. That means the second time it took longer. The second time it also was not as comfortable. And the second time also the quality wasn't quite as good. Correct. And here's the thing, when I'm saying it's how you learn, some people are trying to learn something with the opposite hand. So it takes longer, it feels weird and the quality is not quite as good as opposed to if you're using your dominant hand.
So how do we know how to learn with our dominant hand as opposed.
To the opposite hand? Yeah, and that's a metaphor for how we like to take in information. Some people like to learn by reading. Some people, they just cannot get through a book though. They have to listen to that audio. or that podcast, other people, or watching.
Someone lecturing it or talking about it.
Exactly. And so we haul up different styles and it's not right or wrong. Now we can actually improve our ability to read, we actually can improve our ability to listen and apply. So if there are areas where we feel weak, you know, this book is a guidebook to be able to level up those areas so you could be more of a whole brain learner also as well. But really when it comes to accelerated learning, it's not again how how smart you are, it's how are you smart. And that honors us and it takes the judgment out. Sometimes in school, it's like the top 10% get A's, another 10% get B's, and then 80% were like you and I. It's like we're failing school as opposed to the way school maybe is failing us because school teaches you what to learn, what to focus on, what to think, what to remember, but not how to learn. and how to think.
What teaches you how to think and learn in one way?
Exactly. Exactly. And when I talk about in the book, I talk about the four super villains that are holding you back in your work, in your schooling, in your life, is driven by technology. But one of them is digital deduction, where we're depending on technology to tell us what to think. We're not even using children right now. They're finding that there are reasoning abilities, their ability to analyze, critical thinking is not as sharp as where it should be because of technology, because technology is doing the thinking for us. And our mind, I'm going to say this repeatedly, is like a muscle. It's use it or lose it. And just like when you go, you have a personal trainer to make your muscles stronger, more energized, more flexible, more pliable, you know, more, you want your mental muscles to be stronger, more energized, more pliable, more more flexible. And so many people refer to me as a brain coach because what I do is I train your brain because I think we're in the millennium of the mind. It's really about mental fitness, our ability to adapt, our ability to think, our ability to solve problems. And this really is everything. When people see me wearing brain shirts all the time or pointing to my brain, the reason why I do that is because what you see, you take care of. You see your hair, you take care of your hair. You see your skin, you take care of your skin. skin, you see your clothing, take care of your clothing. You don't see your brain. Exactly. And that controls everything. And so when I point to the brain or honored with their shirts, it's just like people have their emotions on their sleeve. You know, I have my brain on my chest because I want to put.
It Forefront to remind people to love their brain, to care for their brain. Yeah, I think it's. I mean, that's why a lot of people, doctors and nutritionists are talking about gut health. It's like we can't see it, but we can start to feel rashes or we can to feel the effects of it. I think it's also heart health is a big thing right now. It's just like the emotional health, self-care, self-love, you know, mental health and emotional health kind of tie together.
And I love your work because you bring that to everybody, to the world. And it's all connected. I talk about in the book, you know, there's this heart intelligence and also your gut, as you mentioned, a lot of people call it your second brain. It's the second highest concentration of of nerve cells.
Really?
And so, and it's connected too. And sometimes, and what you eat affects how you think. We know that because of the guests we've had on our shows and everything else that when you eat junk food, which is not really a thing, there's junk and then there's food.
There's sugar and there's fat.
Exactly. And what you eat matters, especially for your gray matter. I remember in our previous episode we did years ago, I showed people how to memorize the brain foods and all of the best neuroprotectants, this area of neuro nutrition. It's really fascinating that your brain has different nutritional requirements than the rest of your body. But I'm going back to the limitless model. There are three keys to reaching your goals. And this is my distinction here because originally, I remember years ago when you prompted me to write this book, you're like, Jim, you know, it's been over two decades. You gotta do something. You put something in book. And so because fundamentally, I'm a reading teacher. And if somebody has decades, why I love reading, if somebody has decades of experience and they put it into a book like you, and all of a sudden people could read that book in a few days, they could download decades in the days. And readers are leaders. We know that. Reading is to your mind what exercise is your body. It's the best mental fitness. And so the limitless model as an exercise, what I want everyone to do So it's not hypothetical because in part of the book I demystify the seven lies of learning. There are seven lies that hold you back to learning and one of them is knowledge is power. We hear that all the time. I've even said it also as well. But when we think about it, is it really true? Is knowledge just knowing something give you power? No, not unless you act on it, not unless you apply it. So knowledge times action equals power. And so I would encourage everybody as you're listening to this to take immediate action. And there are three questions I want you to ask as you're listening to this episode to make it very valuable. And I would encourage you to write these down. Three master questions. You know, we were talking about some of the famous actors that I work on before we started filming. And we're, you know, Will Smith did the COVID endorsement of the book that says, you know, Jim Quick, you know, it gets the maximum out of me as a human being. I've learned so much from this man just being around so many around clients.
What have you learned from Will?
So, one of the things is this idea of-- we were in Toronto and I help actors speed read scripts, help them to memorize their lines faster. I mean, you imagine like 30 pages of scripts. There's a lot of information.
I can't remember a sentence.
There's a lot, right? And some of them have their strategies and no matter how great somebody is, you know this. because you make your life about studying and researching greatness. They always know there's another level. And they get really good at the fundamentals and the basics. But one of the things when we were there, we spent the day together and it was wintertime in Toronto. They were filming from 6:00 p.m. to 6:00 a.m. which can you imagine?
So hard.
Overnight time. That's very difficult. But during the day, we went through an exercise and I believe, so in there I talk about how we have 50 to 70 5,000 thoughts a day, right? And these thoughts are controlling our lives. And a lot of those thoughts are questions that we ask ourselves. You know, thinking is that process of asking and answering questions. And if people are asking, is that true? Notice you had to ask a question to define if it's true or not, right? And there's certain questions we ask more than any other question. So here's the thing. I talk about dominant questions that you have one, two, three questions that you ask a lot and I want everyone to think about what your dominant questions are, including you. And I'll give you a couple of examples to get you started. So for example, one of my friends, we went through this exercise of meditating and writing journaling down. We found out her dominant question is, how do I get people to like me? How do I get people to like me? Now, she asked that question all the time and you don't know anything about her. You don't know her age, you don't know her background, you don't know what she does for a living, you know how she looks like, you know where she lives. You don't know anything about her, but you know a lot about her. If you asked yourself, how do I get people to like me hundreds of times a day? What's her personality? What's her personality gonna be like? What's her life gonna be?
Well, I guess it could be either side of the spectrum. She could be super outgoing and super adventurous to try to get people to be more attracted to her, or she could be super shy and introverted because she's so worried about what people people think about her. So that's the first thing I thought.
Of, but I'm not sure if that's true. And it's absolutely true. She actually does both of those things. Really? I mean, if you ask yourself, how do I get people to like me, then what are you doing? You're people pleasing all the time. You're a sycophant. Just saying yes to everything. You people take advantage of you because you're martyring yourself because they're always trying to, you know, they're making themselves less than or their personality is never consistent.
Because their personality changes the chameleon, the change for people.
Exactly. And you know all that about her and you only know one question she asks herself and that's one of her dominant questions. I would offer everybody who's listening to this, what do you think your dominant question is? Because questions are the answer. You know this from the work that you do in high performance and greatness that the questions you ask determine what you focus on. You have part of your brain called the reticular activating system RAS for short, and it's your filtering system. So at any given time, there's a billion stimuli that we could be paying attention to. And primarily, your brain is a deletion device. It's trying to keep information out. Otherwise, you would go crazy, right? If you paid attention to everything. So what gets in? So, for example, years ago, my little sister started sending me emails and postcards and pictures, a photograph of a very specific kind of dog. It was a pug dog. You know those little black dogs?
Exactly.
Yes, exactly. Very smooshy faces, they're very compliant, you could dress them up as ballerinas and they don't care. And she starts, and I didn't know why. So my question was like, why is she sending me these pictures all the time? That became a dominant question of the day. And then I realized her birthday was coming up, so she's a smart marketer, right? Planting those seeds. And here's the magic though. I started seeing pug dogs everywhere. Everywhere. I would go to the grocery store, I'd be checking out, and I swear to you, a woman's carrying a pug dog at the register. I would be running and jogging in my neighborhood and somebody's walking six pug dogs. Now my question for everybody is where did these pug dogs magically appear all of a sudden in the world? No, they were always there, but they were not, I wasn't paying attention to them because they weren't important because I wasn't asking that question. Once you ask a question, you start to pay attention to those things. things and that focus determines how you feel, determines your behaviors. And primarily it's so interesting. It's kind of like social media. There's an algorithm to your mind, like there's an algorithm to Facebook and Instagram that what you engage with the most you like and you share, you comment, you start seeing more of those kind of things, right? And so just like your mind, what you start engaging with, if you start watching all this news about fear and all the things that are going on, you start paying attention and your mind just starts Focusing automatically becomes a reaction or a reflex.
And you start to attract more of the fear and anxiety or worry that's in the world that's being posted. Very much so. You start to subscribe to whatever that is to receive more of it.
Exactly. You're thinking about it. So just like on social media, if you start just liking all the cat stuff and everything else, they'll just start feeding you cat stuff. And same thing with negativity and same thing with opportunity also as well. So the questions make a difference.
So questions are the answer. What are the two questions you've been that are dominant in your mind over the last five years the most?
Yeah, so for learning, because I grew up with the broken brain, many people know my story from the last episode, when they see me do these demonstrations at Summit Series or, you know, Vents, you and I have-- Remembering a thousand.
People'S names in 10 minutes.
All of that kind of stuff. I say that I don't do this to impress you, I do this to express to you what's possible, because the truth is we could all do that. and a whole lot more. We just weren't taught. If anything, we were taught a lie that somehow our intelligence is fixed, like our shoe size. But I do it as a demonstration because I grew up with learning difficulties. I had my brain injury when I was five. I fell, had a very bad fall when I was in kindergarten, rushed to the hospital. Before I was curious and very energized, my parents would say, but then I became very shut down. And my superpower growing up was being invisible. It was shrinking because I didn't want the spotlight. I didn't want to be called on. So literally physiologically, I was always trying to look smaller to protect myself so teachers wouldn't call on me or I wouldn't be bullied or something like that.
I would do that as well except I was just a giant in the class. I always picked on.
So for me, I would actually be sitting behind you and I would be guaranteed no one would be able to see me. But going back to my question, and my question became all the time, first of all, when I was nine years old, I was slowing the class down and a teacher pointed to me and said, that's the boy with the broken brain. And that label became my limit. And so we have, think about when you're listening to this, what are the labels that we put on ourselves? It's like we're not born, we're born with a blank slate, right? But through experience, through expectations of other people, through our environment, we learned that we are limited. And the good news is we can unlearn it. And that's the point of the book. But because I was in the broken state, I would always ask myself, why am I broken? Why am I the stupid one? I started getting answers of why I'm so stupid. Every time I did badly on a test, I would be like, oh, because I have the broken brain. If I was in sports, I would be like, oh, because I'm the broken one. And that became my self-talk. Adults have to be very careful with their external words because they become the child's internal words. But later I started getting so frustrated, I started asking, getting curious. And when you're curious, you start to ask different questions. I was like, why is that person so, why are they so smart? And how come I'm studying three times harder and getting less grades than them? And I started getting answers. My primary question started, my dominant question ended up being like, how do I make this better? But the three questions that I focus on And let me tell you first what Will's is. Will Smith's one of his dominant questions when we went through this exercise is, How do I make this moment even more magical? How do I make this moment even more magical? It used to be, how do I.
Make every moment or like an action moment?
This moment, any moment. And it shows up in his life because later that night when we're filming, it was like 2 o'clock in the morning, and his family, we're all outside for the superhero movie that many people know of. And it was really cold because it was in Toronto and it was winter time and we're all just waiting. And just waiting and waiting and waiting. Because people think that, and you meet all these people all the time on your show and they think it's so glamorous. No.
Hurry up and wait.
Exactly. And I ask him this question because I believe genius leaves clues. I was like, you know, how do you How do you prepare? How do you get ready when the director, you're just sitting here for hours and then the director calls on you, how do you get ready? And he was like, Jim, I don't have to get ready.
I stay ready.
Let's get ready. And I'm like, wow, that's good to be Will Smith. It's hard to stay ready for six hours a day. Yeah, exactly. But that's just who he is because I believe the life you live are the lessons you teach. The life you live are the lessons you teach others. But going back to his dominant question, his family was there also at the same visiting the set and, you know, from West Philly, you know, you know the song. And we're all outside and shivering and when he wasn't shooting, he would bring us blankets. He would make hot chocolate and bring it to us. He would crack jokes. He would live that dominant question because the life he lived. He like, how do I make this moment even more magical? Now, before it was like, how do I make this moment magical? Then we played with it like even more magical, presuming it is already magical. magical and amazing. And so these questions we ask are very important. Now there are three questions when I said there's turning knowledge into power that I want everyone to obsess about. I mean this will make you a master. And if you get any, this is it. Three questions to turn knowledge into power because knowledge alone is potential power. Number one, how can I use this? When you're listening to this podcast moving forward, every time you listen to it, I want you to ask yourself, how can I use this? get obsessed about this, like even write it down. And this is where your mind can be very creative because in here I teach the power of note-taking because people don't realize this. When you listen to a podcast or you go to a summit or an event or have a great conversation with somebody within two days, 80% of it is gone. We forget it. They call it the forgetting curve. And one of the ways to retain it is by taking notes exactly what you're doing. Now, I encourage people to take notes a very specific way is to take, put a line right down the page. And on the left side of the page, I want you to take notes. And on the right side, I want you to make notes. So, on the left side of the page, you're taking notes. You're capturing information. You're like, this is how Jim remembers name. This is how Jim reads a book a day or whatever it is. So, you're on the left side, you're capturing, but on the right side, you're creating. Now, that's a subtle difference. On the left side, you're note-taking. On the right side, you're note-making. What's the difference? Again, on the left side, you're taking notes. You're writing down the quotes and the strategies, the processes. But on your right side, what you're doing, the right side creativity, instead of your mind being distracted when you're listening, have it be distracted on focused on how can I use this? On the right side is where you're writing your impressions of what you're learning. How can I use this? Another great question, second dominant question I would ask is not only how can I use it, could you come up with all these answers? Just like I see, you start seeing pug dogs everywhere. It's like, oh, this is how I could use this in my relationship. This is how I could use it, you know, in my career. Second question I would ask is, why must I use this? Why must I use this? You know, we know one of the people that endorsed my book, he's on your show, is Simon Sinek. And one of my favorite books, I'm going to mention a lot of books including your own, start with, his is start with why, right? And so why must I use this? So once you have all these ideas of how can I not use this, why must I use this? Because if you don't have the reasons, you won't get the results.
You won't care enough about it.
Exactly, reasons reap results. I'm going to give a lot of people a lot of quickisms here because it goes from your head to your heart to your hands. You could affirm things in your head all day, set goals in your head all day, .. But if you're not acting with your hands, you're procrastinating, putting things off, check in with your second age, which is your heart, which are the emotions, right? Because we are not logical, we are biological dopamine, oxytocin, serotonin, endorphins, these, this chemical soup drives us to act. Just like people don't buy logically, they don't fall in love logically. They do these things emotionally. So find your emotions. And in this book, we do, we really uncover and I decode motivation. Not motivation getting hyped up and dancing on chairs and then the next day not changing. We figured out this formula of sustainable motivation in this book. But the second question is go back to why must I use this? Because if you don't have the why, you won't do the what. And then finally the third question. First question, how can I use this? Write all the answers down. Think about that. Second question, why must I use it? Gives the energy and the fuel and the drive to do it. And finally, when will I use this? When will I use this? Because we know that one of the most important performance productivity tools that we have is our calendar. If it's not in our calendar, it just doesn't get done. How many people will go, you put doctor's appointments there, you put PTA meetings, you put meetings with your investor there, but are you scheduling your workout? Are you Scheduling your meditation time? Are you scheduling your journal or your white space just so you can be a creative thinker? And if we don't write it down, it comes at the end and then you just, you know, you never get to it. And so those are the three dominant questions that you want to ask to take knowledge and turn them into power. So as you're going through this, ask those questions, you'll get better answers and you'll learn it deeper. It'll deepen into your nervous system so much more.
High performers seek clarity more often than their peers. And what that means for them is every situation they go into, they're seeking clarity and setting intention. And it's not like once in a while they're doing way more often. It's like, you know, I've been blessed to work with Oprah Winfrey. When she has a meeting, at the start of every meeting, she asks, what's our intention here?
What's the intention of this meeting?
Not what's the agenda, what do I do, what's the intention? That's every meeting. So she's seeking clarity at the beginning of every meeting. That's why she's so amazing, right? If you think about her whole career, she was always trying to have people seek clarity on who they were so they could be themselves. That's what high performers are doing. They just do it more often. They seek clarity before they shoot that video, before they have the podcast interview, But specifically, we found three practices help you get better at seeking clarity. Number one, they are seeking clarity in what we call the future for. So you've probably heard that successful people are more future minded. It's true. And specifically what they're looking at, if you talk to a high performer, they're more clear about who do I want to be in this upcoming situation. And by the way, it's not about who I am, it's about who do I want to be. They're more future oriented. they're more intentional about who they want to be in social situations. So it's like, I want to have this type of interaction with Lewis today. That's intentional. They're more clear about what skills they need to develop to reach their next level of success. Here's how you really know an underperformer. Open up their calendar and look for any evidence they have planned their own curriculum. for greatness. If they don't have classes or courses, if they're not actively skill building, there's no chance of high performance. I mean, maybe they can dumb luck into it for initial success, but high performance is long-term success. You got to be building yourself.
I'm still growing, constantly learning, constantly growing.
Being aware of it. And the last of the future four is, I know the service I want to provide in the future. Talk to any high performers, I'm sure you've interviewed, They kind of know the service and the difference they want to make. Maybe not precisely, but they're asking the question. So that's some of what we know. They seek clarity. And that's kind of the first practice is asking questions in those areas. And the other two real fast is when you're seeking clarity, they're more clear about the feeling they want to have. Like an Olympic sprinter whose won gold is more likely to have said before he went or she went on the track, how do I want to feel out there? Not like just the result, like when the foot's in the block and I'm arms down, like what do I want to feel? Like they're very aware of the feeling they're trying to get.
Yeah, I don't want to feel nervous and stressed. I want to feel calm and clear and smooth.
Yes, and they're doing that self-talk, which is seeking clarity. And then the last one, which is really important, they're clear about what's meaningful to them now. and what might be different in the future, which is something I didn't know until we did a lot of the interviews or the conversations is a lot of people kind of know what I like now. They know what their passion is, but it's like, what's going to be meaningful to you later? Like in five years? They've thought about that. I would say they've done the work. So that's just the first habit. And so the book kind of opens with that story of finding What's we all have to decide who you are and what we want and how to get it at this stage of our life. And when we don't know that, you know, reaching high performance can be really hard.
Yeah. It's all about clear vision for me. It's the first chapter of my book is the greatest leaders in the world have a clear vision.
Love that. Yeah, that's it. And they got that vision by seeking clarity.
Yes.
That was the habit that gave them the vision. They were consistently seeking, like, how do I what do I, I mean they ask themselves more questions. That's one of our findings. They literally are doing more of the self-talk asking more of the questions, which is so important.
Yeah, awesome. And I love how you talked about this. You say the world cares less about your strengths and personality than about your service and meaningful contributions. Then why do so many of us focus on our strengths and personality?
Yeah, I think. That was a huge finding. And I would, that's another one. I would have completely freaked out on anybody.
Strength finders, all these other books out there, you know, it's like, Yes. We focus on our strengths.
And unfortunately, one, that's in the history of personal development, that is the greatest false dichotomy that has ever been. Focus on your strengths, or it's like you have to do both. You have to do both. But what we found in our research, which surprised me, high performers do not report working on their strengths any more than regular people. So that's not what gives them the edge. One of the chapters opens up with this guy who wrote this email, really highly successful guy. And he wrote this email to me, he says, you know, and I'd put him through all this. I put him through StrengthsFinder, the Berkman, the Colby, the Myers-Briggs, put him through everything. This was one of my first coaching clients ever. I knew everything about him. We knew all his background, we did all the homework, had his peer review, you know, his 360 assessments from work. And then I watched him fail for two years. And he wrote me this email and he said, Brendan, stop telling me like what successful people are like. because we know my strengths and I'm not getting ahead. And start telling me what they do. And that's what this book became about. It's like, what do you need to do? Because, in this email he wrote this, which is where that finding came from, he said, this was so good. Listen to this line. He said, As a leader, I have to be honest with myself that my mission and vision should never be made to bow down to my limited human strengths. I should have to rise up to my mission or vision. The strengths aren't the relevant thing is the question is, what is necessary for me to develop into to reach that mission? It's like, your strengths are great. And it's like, yes, of course do your strengths. But that's kind of like what I tell people is like, if Let's imagine you have a bear, and that bear wants to go on top of this cliff over here, and it's never been on the cliff, and it wants to get that new honey up there, right? Telling the bear to focus on the strengths, to go somewhere it's never gone before and do something it's never done before, is stupid. It's like saying, hey, you know what? Just try being more of a bear.
Right.
If I just say, you say, Brent, I got this big new vision. I just say, just try being more of Lewis. I mean, at a spiritual level, that feels good, but you and I both know you're gonna have to develop far beyond your comfort zones. And strengths are typically comfort zones. We gotta overcome that and go to the next level.
And develop new skills and overcome certain fears and all these other things that are gonna help us get to the next level.
Yeah, yeah, the whole conversation of beyond the comfort zone really requires us to go beyond our strengths.
It really requires us to... That is our comfort zone.
That is our comfort zone. But we already know what we're good at. And the problem with the Strengths Finder and all of the strengths-based movement is the assumption, and they're all written academically this way, based on what are called innate strengths. And innate strength is the assumption that you had that from birth, and that those innate strengths are what you focus on. And I'm like, well, if you had it at birth, you probably had it when you were 15 years old too. So if it's innate, you had it at 15. Or the strengths you had at 15, sufficient to serve you at 50. Hell no. You need to develop beyond what's innate and go to a whole other level. And so I take on strengths in the book in that way. But I also say it almost doesn't matter because a lot of people have strengths and they suck at work because they're not doing these habits. I mean, how many people do you and I know who are amazingly strong and their strengths finders are amazing and they don't do anything all day.
That's it, yeah. a lot of people. I mean, in the sports world, there's a lot of great, talented people who had the greatest gifts, but they still weren't able to win. Yeah. Or they were lazy or they wouldn't, you know, hustle or sacrifice their body because they just relied on their talents, their strengths.
Yeah.
And so they were never able to get to the championship game or get on the best teams because. Yeah, said it. And they had all the talent in.
The world, and you're just like, if I was as gifted as this person, I would be incredible, you know? I mean, that's the whole thing about the talent code or a lot of new sort of newer research and performance. It just says, what's more important is what you do with what you got to develop into the vision of the mission you need to serve. And so the book kind of lays out a lot of the science behind that and then goes into, you know, obviously most of us oriented towards the six habits.
So in terms of clarity, what is that habit that you take on on a daily or monthly basis with how it or with clarity? What do you think about you're like, every morning, what am I clear about? Or how do you apply that habit to your life?
I apply it in a couple of ways. First, for me, every situation I go into, I'm consistently asking, what's the feeling I want to have here? If you ever see me teach, it's often I would say, Bring the joy. So I have joy triggers that I've set up in my mind that makes me more intentional about things. So for example, a door frame trigger. Whenever I walk through a door, I say, Bring the joy. So when I walk through that door right there, it's like bring the joy into this room. It's just a mental trigger that I've set up for myself. Every morning in the shower, I ask myself three questions. And not that I shower every morning, but the ones I do. The first question I say, what can I be excited about today? So it forces me to be clear about what's gonna draw joy and enthusiasm from me. Number two, I say, what might trip me up today? Because usually I know what's going on in the day. I'm like, what might mess me up? What might, where I might not perform well, what might bother me? And number three, I say, what can I do to surprise somebody today? To give a gift of appreciation or acknowledgement today? And so I think through that in the morning. So I think that helps me begin my day pretty clear. Then when I sit down before I do work, I literally look at my calendar of the day. I did this morning. and I look at whatever's going on in the day and I think about it for 20 minutes. It's one of my 20 minute routines in the morning. I literally think about my calendar for 20 minutes a day. People think that's crazy, but what I'm thinking through when I'm looking at the calendar, I'm like, okay, I'm gonna have that call. What do I want to happen on that call? You know, what's my intention for that call? What's my goal for that call? What's the feeling for that call? How do I want to end that call? you know, I'm gonna have that time with Lewis. Like, how do I want to be there? And how can I make sure I enjoy it? Because it's a big deal, you know? I love your show. I want to do a good job. I want to share something good for the people, even though I have no idea what you're gonna ask. I want to be present for that and make sure I'm really there, even though maybe I have a head cold today. You know, it's like just thinking through it. I think that helps me. It keeps me asking questions. Every Sunday, I do a life arenas assessment. That just means I think there's 10 areas of our life and I score myself in them. And this is about my 11th year of doing this.
Wow.
So each area of my life, you know, from emotional quality to happiness, to relationships, to time, to hobby, et cetera, I just give myself a score of one to 10. And one means I suck. And I was horrible in the previous week on that. 10 years, I did a good job. And then I asked, how can I do better? It's my Sunday routine. And it just keeps me clear. And it's not like I don't sometimes, like everyone else, you know, wonder what's going on or what I'm doing. But those habits, those were my habits. You have to establish your own for seeking clarity. But when you have them, you weaponize your life.
Absolutely, yeah. Clarity, powerful thing. Without clarity, it's hard to achieve a dream.
Yeah.
It's hard to get better, it's hard to grow and be a high performer.
Yeah, no clarity, no change.
That's it.
No goals, no growth.
That's it. The second one that I see here is energy.
Yeah.
What do you mean by energy?
So in the way we- Peak energy.
High energy all day long?
Yeah, no, it's not caffeinated energy, but the habit is generate energy. Not necessarily have energy.
Create energy.
Create energy. And what they do, the way we measure that was kind of academic, mental energy, which is tied to your focus and your stamina and your ability to manage complex tasks without too much mental stress. Number two is emotional energy, which is just the quality of your positive emotions. And number three is physical energy. High performers are 40% more likely to work out five times per week than the rest of their peers. So that means the top 15% most high performing people in the world tend to work out five days per week. And that workout could be defined as 45 minute brisk walk or hit intensity or whatever it is, but 40% more likely. That's a huge finding. And what we found is high performers just have better wellbeing and happiness and physical conditioning than everybody else. One stunning finding was CEOs, senior executives and business owners, they report expending as much energy as athletes who are competitive now.
I can imagine.
Yeah.
Yeah.
I was surprised by that. I would have thought athletes would be 10% more.
I mean, the emotional and mental energy. Yeah. The decision making, the conversations, the big deals, the stakeness.
Yeah.
It's a lot of energy.
It's a lot. That's why, I mean, if you really want to achieve your dreams, you have to care for your body, your mind. It's why all these things, you know, finally resonating in the marketplace because the science of meditation or taking a break or, you know, managing your own energy, sleep is everything.
Yeah.
And I think all of that is really important. And we say generate energy because there's this myth that, you know, some people have happiness or they have. It's like, no, you generate. You don't have happiness. You generate.
Create it.
Yeah, you create it. And so the quality of your energy you have to create. Like you and I both, I mean, if most of our audience knew our schedules, your schedule the last five days, it's like, how is Lewis even able to focus right now?
And how are you able to get here and do this as well?
Yeah, but it's because we said, well, this is our mission. Show up, man. Yeah, there's plenty of times I got to imagine you walked on the field.
And you were like, I'm spent.
Exhausted. You know, I remember when you flew.
Down to compete in... Yeah, I still play with the USA team handball. Yeah. Team and a year ago I flew down to, I remember I did an interview in Miami and then flew out from Miami and then went and just went right into training camp and then played against Brazil, which is like, you know, Olympic, Olympic qualifiers and got our asses whooped, but it was fun, you know? But I had to have clarity and show up even when I was like, oh, we're gonna lose.
Yeah.
Like there's zero chance.
Yeah.
It was like the worst team in the NBA playing like the Warriors and we were just like, We had no chance.
Yeah.
But I had to show up and give my best.
And you have to set all these routines. I mean, you know, the amount of routines that Tom Brady has in his life so that he can generate energy. It's unbelievable. Stuns most people.
It's unbelievable. And that's just, that's, that's what it.
Takes if you want to be at that level. If you don't want to be at that level, you don't have to do it. Yeah, you don't have to do it. I mean, everybody can just like, well, I'm gonna go, you know, hit the.
Cinnabon, but it's like, it's pretty good. How do you want to feel at three o'clock? If you want to feel amazing at three o'clock, don't end lunch with a Cinnabon. You know, it's crazy. Gosh, it's crazy. crazy. Like, I'm 34 now, and I could eat, like, sugar and bad food for all my 20s, right? And now when I go off of sugar for, like, a month, and then I just binge for a day, it's like, I literally can't walk. My back is, like, so sugar hang on.
Oh, my gosh.
Like, my whole body is exhausted. Inflammation.
So much inflammation. Once I cut it out and then I bring it back, I'm like, yeah. Oh, I feel so old.
Yeah.
Well, dude, I'm the same way in my seminars. Like, I, you know, we do four day event and it's just me. I usually have one or two big names come in, but it's me 12 hours a day, four days, and I never sit down.
High energy.
I never sit down on stage and super high energy. I mean, really going for it. Not just the clapping, the jumping, but really just expending heart. You know how hard it is.
Of course.
And I had to about the same time. I was 35. I had a. A famous strength and conditioning coach backstage. He works with me and Usher, and. And he. He's like, what do you eat back here? and another guy came in and strapped the heart rate monitor on my machine. He goes, I'm equivalently burning, equivalently working out at the marathon level every day for four days. They're like, you,'re not eating. I was losing on average 11 pounds in my seminars every time. And I do eight events a year, so I was losing 88 pounds a year. It was horrible for your health. So I had to learn how to eat. I had to learn to do ice baths every night at my events, which smart. No one loves to do that.
Here's the thing, I used to do it every day in football, like during the season. And it sucks for the first month, but then you start to love it.
Yes, I have to do it.
You know what I mean? It's like you just start to, ah.
It feels so good. Feels so good. After stage, you know, it's the best. 12 hours. No one says, I want a habit of taking an ice bath at the end of the day. But if I want to be high performing on stage, that's the choice.
Yeah.
Now obviously people listening, consult your doctor. Of course. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
And only do it for 10 minutes.
Don't stand for a half hour.
Yeah.
Right, right. So, but all those things you have to, what are your habits for energy? And the funny thing is, you sit down on high performers, they know them.
They can tell you, I do this, this, this, this.
And you're like, man, you're on your game. You got it down.
Yeah.
And they're always probably looking to improve it. Yeah, totally. Yeah, they're always, but they're very aware of it.
And they, and they, what I found was they get pissy if they're off it. Yeah, of course. I didn't meditate this morning and I was like, you know, I was kind of frustrated a little bit. Someone asked me when we were at our meeting today at the Soho House, he was like, how was your meditation? Because he knows I like to meditate. I was like, you know, I missed this morning.
I did yesterday, but I missed this morning. It's agitating when I miss my habits.
Yes.
It's like, ugh, I need to get up earlier. That is exactly what you just said. It just, it really agitates high performers when they're off, they're energetic. Absolutely. The third big personal habit, which by the way, I've been teaching high performance for a decade. We have the number one seminar on that and the number one online course, and I was wrong. I never knew this was a thing and you're gonna laugh because you're like, duh, dude, I could have sat you down. But I just didn't know. I knew, I taught it as subtext, but I didn't know it was the thing. And that is high performers raise necessity. And what that means is they raise the necessity of performance in their mind before each performance. They say, I gotta do great. And they give themselves reasons why. So they're connected to their why. But it's different than just giving, like, know your why is nice. Know your why and give yourself Edge for it.
What do you mean?
Give me an example. Two guys walking out on the track field. Who's gonna win? Well, equal quality of experience, similar times, maybe they've raced before. The guy at the blocks who I'm gonna bet on is the guy who came out and said, Gotta do this for my mom. They have a reason to perform at heightened levels, and they have connected to that over and over. Now, again, some of this Duh, Brendan. But the finding, the research is they just do that more often than under performers or even, you know, good performers.
Yeah.
They're more connected to their reasons why and they're stirring it, man. It's like, and they do it from two angles. One angle is your internal standards. Like my values or my self-expectations say, I gotta crush this because that's who I freaking am.
Yeah.
Like when you walk out, you're like, you're not gonna screw around on when you're playing handball, you're like, this is who I'm Louis, I'm an athlete. I'm gonna kick some ass here. It's that self expectation. Then though, they pair it with external obligation. Like, my team needs me to do this. The deadline says this time. There's some kind of external, they don't call it pressure.
My family, something bigger than themselves.
Something bigger than themselves. People who use pressure, they don't want it. People who use pressure, they don't want it. But high performers, I found they're connected. I'm doing this for a bigger cause, a bigger reason, a team. Or yeah, they're sometimes just like deadline. I'm an unbelievably high performing writer when there's a deadline. I'm worse than a weapon. Before that, I'm not always on my game.
Sure.
But if you have those reasons, so you gotta have your internal reasons and your external reasons, and then your job is remind yourself of that more often. That's what's called raising necessity. And we were the first ones to try to prove that with the data. And I was pretty stunned that, remember, these three aren't like my opinion. You might say, yeah, yeah, these are whatever. I'm like, but these ones are more important than everything else we measure. Really, these three. Over 100 different habits. These are the ones that move the needle. So if you want to move the needle in your personal life, number one, seek clarity more often. Number two, generate energy with more consistency and will. And number three, raise necessity.
Before we continue this video, make 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. For people that feel Stuck or that they have these ideas or dreams for years and they never take action on them. I'm hearing you say read more obituaries because it'll get you into realizing the people that did take action and what their life looked like and the people that didn't take action and what their life could have been had they taken action. Why do you think, why do you think it takes us so long? For some people, not everyone, but for so long of us to put our ideas out there. Why? How is a fear of embarrassment so strong that we're willing to take it to our grave, our ideas and our dreams and never put them out there?
I think there's also an ambition gene or there's something in people that they just want it really bad. You just have to really want it. and it's not something that can be willed. John Baldessari used to say that, you know, you have to have something and that can't be willed. And, you know, you just have to want it more than not. You have to want it more than the failure would hurt. You know what I mean? Like, the pain of failure. The pain of failure. Like, yeah. And, and you. But, I mean, there's so many people who don't get it, you know? Even if they want it really bad.
They never get recognized for their work. They don't get the audience. No one buys their stuff. But at least they put it out there.
At least they created it, right?
I'd rather create and have five people read or watch or listen.
Yeah.
And be proud of me putting something out there that I cared of, then think about something I care about and never act on it.
There. And there's two things. There's the making and there's the sharing. so the most important thing is to always be making. The most important thing, I think, is to be in love with the doing, with the verbs, the, the actual acts. The drib, if you want to talk in sports terms, you know, the dribbling, the shooting, the practice.
Yeah.
Yeah.
But the sharing is another. There's, there's always a sort of like. generosity in the making, in a sense, just because you're like, I don't know if it's generosity. Sharing is about generosity. It's about. And. And maybe that's what it is. Maybe it's. It's. It's putting yourself into your craft enough that you come up with something that you genuinely feel like needs to be in the world. I think a lot of people, you know, they're just not there yet. They know and. and I think this happened to me when I was really younger. I mean, when I first started out, I knew I wasn't any good. I knew that I didn't have work that was good enough that anyone should care, but I wanted to be part of the world, like, right then. And that's when I started my blog. And I. I was, you know, I was right out of college. It was, like, 2005. and I started going to readings. I wanted to be a fiction writer then. I have no talent for fiction. I have no talent for inventing things, which quickly became obvious. But I really wanted to be a fiction writer. And so I would go and I would, I would go to readings by fiction writers and I would take my sketchbooks and I would draw the writers as they were reading because, you know, nobody draws. I mean, people take pictures, but, like, nobody draws. And if you just. sit in a room and don't move too much when you're drawing. No one really notices unless they're right next to you. So it was like a great thing to do. But then I took the drawings and I would post them on my blog when I got home. And I met more writers that way. I can't tell you. I mean, I met some people.
From them seeing your drawings. Oh, thank you.
Because everybody has a Google alert on their name and everyone loves to be drawn. I mean, absolutely. especially if it's not a bad drawing. I mean, people don't like- It's bad drawing?
They're like, ah, this is correct.
Yeah, but if it's like a cool drawing, and if you put some words underneath the drawing that show that you were paying attention and you linked to their book, then you're really being generous, right? And yes, and they're more apt to share it. So it's like, that was like my way of starting is I'm gonna draw other people's books. and then, so I would draw them at readings. The other thing I started doing is I started making these maps of people's books. I would actually read a book and then I would draw a map of it of like the ideas in the books and I would post that online. And I met a lot of writers that way.
That's cool.
So basically what I was doing was I was studying how writers were in the world and what they were doing and drawing them. But then I was also studying their books and drawing their books. And that was all just, it turned out to be Instead of drawing other people's books, now I draw my own books.
Right. It was all the practice reps. I've interviewed Robert Greene many times and he said, I didn't start out as this writer who is writing these unique, weird, interesting type of books structured in the way that I do, the 48 Laws of Power, the Art of Seduction, mastery. He's like, I wasn't writing those books 20 years ago. I was doing copywriting for five years. Then I worked at a newspaper for a couple of years. Then I worked as a screenwriter. and I was actually never great at any of these things. I was good, but it wasn't the main, it wasn't my calling. But it led me to the next thing, which led me to the next thing, which created this web of influences and range, as you will, of creative work to then put it into my own type of work, 48 Laws of Power, Art of Seduction, Mastery, all these things that people loved. and it took, I don't know, 10, 15, 20 years for him to develop that skill, just like what sounds like you did. Okay. You were consuming these live readings. You were drawing them. Then you were mapping out their work, and then you made it your own.
But I was a fan first. Yeah, I was a good fan first. And you get that from, like, if you watch old clips of, like, Kobe Bryant, he'll talk about, like, I'm just a fan of all these people and I'm just stealing their moves and I'm just trying to do, I'm trying to do the game better. And Kobe's one of those, he was one of those guys that grew up with VHS tapes, which makes it completely, you know, the way I've had it explained to me is it's like when you can watch replays of other players and famous players and watch their moves, you can do study, you can study on the couch.
Yeah.
As a player, you know, you don't have to be, like, up against them to. And that. That idea that you're a fan first, that you ingest all this stuff first and you take it in and it mixes around, and then through your practice, all that stuff comes gushing out eventually, and it comes out in a new. It's like a gumbo in your head. You know, you're just adding stuff, and eventually you ladle it out and. something new.
Is there such a thing as an original or new thought? Or is everything an old thought that's repackaged in an innovative way?
I think there's definitely such a thing as an original thought. I don't think it's original in the way we think of it though. I think an original thought is usually the result of what we've just been talking about. It's someone who has been usually people who have really original thoughts. And let's back up for a minute. There are lots of original thoughts. I mean, four-year-olds have very original thoughts all the time. It's an original thought that changes the world or that changes the, you know, the, the field or whatever. Usually that is from someone who is deeply doing exactly what we're talking about is deeply connected to either sources that came before them or the scene around them. Very rarely is something, I'm trying to think of an example of something that is new and original, changes the world that comes from someone who wasn't doing the kind of work that we were talking about. Right.
Have you read David Epstein's Range?
I love that book. I just wrote about it on my blog. I think it's sort of an instant classic.
So good.
David did in that book. You know, I think it's. Ryan Holiday had a really good. He told me it was a parenting book in disguise, and I think Ryan's right.
Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, it's easy for me to love that book because it was sort of a. It was kind of a validation.
Me, too.
How I've, you know, kind of lived my life. yeah. And the fact that range can speak to, like, I always think a book is really good when I'm still. First of all, if you're still thinking about a book two weeks after you read it, that's pretty good. If you're thinking about a year after you read it, that's very good. And if you think about things in the news and how they could be chapters in the book, then it's very, very good. David's book You know, I was reading about the Williams sisters, and I thought, well, this could have been in David's book, you know, because the Williams sisters were talking about how they were hanging out with the Mannings. They were, like, doing some sort of charity thing, and the Mannings suck at tennis. I mean, they were trying out tennis, and they really were bad. But Venus was saying they had this skill from practice. You could tell that every shot they hit They were getting like a little bit better. They were taking the feedback. And she said by the end of like how many ever hours or minutes they were together, they were okay.
Right.
You know, and I just think like that is you can see that in the creative field, too. There's something to or in the creative fields, there's something about learning what it's like to start with a certain kind of time, space and materials. and getting something out of it. There's something about that that translates to other mediums that you can kind of. So I, I actually think, and this is very, I think this is unpopular, this, the, this way of thinking. But I think that, like, if you're, like, a really good writer, for example, you know, you might be an okay film editor because you know what it's like to shape things, or if you're a film editor, you might be a really good writer because you know what it's like to take material and just shape, you know what I mean? So I think there's a kind cross-disciplinary, cross-medium. I think creativity, it's like a thing that you do and you can do it in different realms.
Yeah, I think you're right. And maybe I'm just validating myself in my childhood because my parents put me in every type of sport. It was seven different sports a year. And so you're always going to a different thing for that season, sometimes two things for that season. I don't know if kids are doing that today or if that's what parents are doing now, but For us back in Ohio, it was like, okay, you're doing soccer and football, and you're doing baseball and basketball, and you're doing this camp and swimming and tap dancing. It was like, I was doing every type of athletic sport there was available for me. Maybe because my parents were just like, get out of the house and, you know, get our hair.
But it was probably, but they didn't.
Specialize me, which I'm really grateful for, because I think it's a gift. Maybe I could have been unbelievably specialized and talented in one thing, and I never was. I was always really good at all these different sports, but I was never the best on any team. Maybe when I got in high school, I was like, you know, whatever the starter and the best and stuff, but growing up, I was never the best. And it was the range of things that I was able to cross pollinate to different sports and apply where people that I would see who are only playing basketball, they didn't have certain skills Yeah. That I was able to develop. And I'm not saying I was better than them, but I was, I was able to see things differently based on catching a football for three months and running routes and then applying that to basketball as opposed to them just only playing basketball and shooting shots and being on that field. And maybe they were better for a little bit as specialized, but over the season, I could apply these other range of skills to just be an overall better player, teammate, you know, those things. So, I think it's important in every discipline that you're in to develop a range of skills. And, you're going to suck at some of these things at points. But, I think it's important because it will make you a more interesting human in the long run.
Absolutely. And, there's a dark side to what you were talking about with specialization, especially in sports. I mean, you see a lot of 20-year-olds break their femur.
And, you're done.
And you're just over because your identity.
Is crippled because you have no other thing that you're good at.
That, but also the reason your femur is broken is because you only play one sport and these repetitive-- Like a.
Tiger Woods just constantly hitting the ball over and over his back is broken.
Yeah.
Yeah.
So it's like, what you're talking about doing multiple sports, you're actually like building your body in different ways. And an off season and rest is like really, really important. This is something as a culture, I feel like, We've like completely lost track of what rest is and what it means to rest and to have time off and how important rest and sleep is to complete a lot of the activities that we do.
The postseason is huge.
Yeah.
I mean, there's the postseason, the preseason.
It's part of the work.
Exactly.
All these things are part of the work. It's not just that the work happens in the season, like the postseason and the preseason. I mean, and I think, I think the closest thing that I do to sports, I mean, other than like doing push-ups or something is, I play the piano and I'm always, there comes a point practicing the piano where you're just done for the day. You're like, okay, this is, you know, you get, blah, blah, blah, blah. You get to a point where it's good and then it gets worse and you say, okay, this is, But then you sleep on it and this magical thing happens when you go back to the keyboard the next day you could do it and you can do it.
Perfectly and you're like Bach you're just.
Like yeah, yeah and it really feels like I mean your brain worked it out, you know, and I just I believe deeply in the power of a good night's sleep on on pretty much.
Anything yeah, I'm doing that I'm learning that right now in I'm taking Spanish classes It's been something I've been wanting to do for 20 years and I always say I'm gonna do it and then I never do and so I try and I get tired tired and I'm exhausted. And, my brain hurts so much right now, Austin, when I'm taking these classes. And, I feel like I'm not improving at all most of the time. But, then sometimes I take a couple days off and I come back and I'm getting a little bit. I'm like, oh yeah, I remember this. And, I'm connecting the dots. And, you need, you can't just force it all the time in your brain. You need that rest time as well.
Yeah.
What would you say to, what would you say to people that are.
Are.
Always in idea phase, always in thinking about phase, and they're not finishing work. Maybe they're doing starting the work, but they're never finishing, let alone posting or publishing or shipping. They're not even completing and they just keep talking about, I'm writing, I'm in the process, I'm in the process. what do you say for people like that on how they can actually complete something and ship it?
Deadlines. I mean, for me, I've told people, so it's death and deadlines. So we talked earlier about death and obituaries. That's the gun to your back or the nudge, you know. But the deadline is the real Having a deadline, even if it's artificial, is the only way to work, in my opinion, to have to show something at some point to somebody is the only thing that keeps me, you know, I've got deadlines right now that I don't even, I don't even have a boss or anything, but I've got deadlines to myself.
But if you're not, if you don't get in advance and some publisher down your throat for a deadline, How do you create that deadline?
Well, I, you know, I just want.
To put out this blog post. It's not perfect yet.
Well, I have, so I have internal deadlines. So, for example, I try to blog every day, which is overkill. But I've noticed that when I blog every day, good things happen. That ideas come quicker to me. I'm thinking a lot more. I might not be writing a book as well, but like I'm learning a lot more and then people are hitting the website more and that means more traffic. You know, it's just like a nice stew of things. But I would say the reason I blog every day is more for my benefit personally, just that I learn things and I have to make things and then when I blog them, after I've hit publish is when I realized what the piece was actually about. and then I'm like, okay, I need to scribble more notes or have a follow-up post or this needs to be a book chapter, you know? And then the other deadline I have is every week I have to put out this newsletter. So there's. I'm always in the back of my mind. It's kind of like, well, what's the big piece for the newsletter this week? Like, what's that going to be? What have you done, you know? So I sort of have this internal deadline editorial calendar. in my head, if not on paper, that just sort of nudges me along. And I told people that a long time ago. I said, you know, I didn't start a blog because I had something to say. I started a blog to figure out what I had to say. Because when you're looking at that blank WordPress box or whatever it is, you're inspired to, like, what do I fill this with? And that is the question, you know, and if you do that every day, and it's the same thing with a blank page. It's like you look at a blank page and you're like, what could this, what could be in this, you know, that's pretty much all I need. But the other thing is, and I say this a lot, is like discipline with desire is easy. If you want, discipline isn't that hard. If you have real desire. I mean, if you want something bad enough, the discipline is not too difficult. I think discipline without desire is very difficult. But when you have the desire, I mean, you know, I I'm always pretty self-deprecating I don't know if it's from being from Ohio or being Midwestern or whatever it is, but at the end of the day, you know, I wanted this. You know, I wanted this really bad. you know, you had the desire.
You wanted to make something.
I had the desire.
You wanted to put it out in the world. You wanted people to recognize it, all that stuff.
I wanted to be my heroes. I wanted to be. I wanted to write books. You know, I just. I. That's what I wanted to be. I want, you know, and. And. And I'm not trying to diminish people who really want it, who it's not happened for them, because that's not what I'm talking about, and that's not what we're talking about. I mean, it's one thing to go after things hard and not get them. But it's a different thing to not go after them in the first place.
That's true.
Which I think is usually people's.
Yeah.
And I've put out work that I had high hopes for. I was like, man, I put a lot of time and energy into this thing. I wrote a book called the Mask of Masculinity that came out in 2017. And I remember, or no, 2018, 2017, I think. And I remember being like, man, I spent a year and a half researching this. This is, for me, this is the most meaningful, important piece of work I've ever done in my life, piece of content. It's about masculine vulnerability, how men can like tear down the walls that hold them back from feeling deeper, from connecting to their partners more, from having more peace and love in their heart for the world, all these things. I interviewed all the top researchers, you know, all this, and it was the most vulnerable thing opening up about all these different traumas, everything. and it was a, it was like a call to men to kind of like open up and a call for women to learn more about the men in their lives who might be guarded. And I remember I was like, even if a lot of people don't read this, it's going to be my most important piece of work probably that I'll ever do because of the healing that could take place for people that do read it. And I mean, it's done well, but it didn't hit the New York Times bestseller list like my first book. And so there's some let down of like, oh, I had high hopes and this and that. and it continues to sell and do well, but it didn't do as well as my first book. And in a little bit, I also knew that. I was like, it's more of a niche idea. It's not as broad for the world. It's more for people that really want to dive into this. But you still have this sense of, okay, well, there's some letdown or there's some, you put all this energy into something that doesn't do the way you want it. and so, and you got to let go of that expectation, right?
Absolutely. You do. I mean, that happens to me with every book. I mean, the funny thing is about books is if you're lucky enough to keep them in print, you just don't know when a book is gonna come back around. I mean, it was funny because when keep going came out, which is the third in the trilogy I just wrapped up, I just thought, oh, man, I. Nailed this. This is, this is like, this is so tight. It's like the last crusade. It's like, okay, everyone really likes Raiders of the Lost Ark. And then there's Temple of Doom, which is really tricky and whatever. But this is like the last crusade. It's like a return to form. It's like, whatever. And I was like, this is just gonna end game.
This is end game.
You know, like, bam. You know, and it did fine and did well. And I had a wonderful book tour. But just didn't like blow up. I was like, this is the Oprah book. Like Oprah's going to get this. She's going to be like, oh, you know, you have these delusions of grandeur in your mind as a writer. And then this really funny thing happened is like the pandemic hit. And then people started to say, I realized like, oh, this is like a pandemic guide. This is going to be like, people are going to pick this up because like the first it's Groundhog Day. We're talking on Groundhog Day. This won't play on Groundhog Day. But like the first chapter in that book is every day is Groundhog Day. It's like everyone in the pandemic has been like, oh man, this feels like Groundhog Day. I was like, well, this is the book to get through the pandemic. But then this really funny thing happened. Show youw Work took off my second book because people in the pandemic are like, How do I show... this is a great time for me to maybe like get my side hustle going or like start a new blog or website. How do I do that? So people are like picking up Show youw Work now. now, and it's having, like, a moment, and it's like, you just don't know with these things. And it is a great lesson in ego reduction, and it's a great lesson just about art in general. And it's been true of every artist who's ever put work out in the world. The stuff that is the closest to you is not the stuff that will take off.
Interesting.
And the stuff that you feel like is you. Just piddling around playing is going to be the stuff that everybody loves. Everybody's going to love that stuff. And you just have to balance out. It's just about making a lot of work and putting it out there.
What should I do with my life?
That's a real complicated question.
Oh, here's an inadequacy. Excellent. You have a goal now.
Rectify it.
Now you still have to think strategically.
And figure out how to rectify it and do it step by step.
But.
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