My Top 2 Keys To Success

Welcome to today's video. Today, I'm going to teach you my top two secrets to help you be more successful. Let's dive in. I feel lucky in the fact that I've checked off a lot of boxes in my life, and I consider myself at this point in time in my life to be qualified to give this advice of what it actually takes to change your life completely and to get to where you want to go and to become successful. And this isn't one of the keys, but the first thing that I think is very important for every single person is for you to define what success means to you. Right? Because what means success means to me is different than you then is different than every other person. And so I think the first thing is, like, decide what the target is that we're trying to shoot for. So that's the first thing I think is super important before we dive into the keys, is really just, like, figure out what success is for some people might be making $10 million for some people might be being the best mother they possibly could or being the most present father that they possibly could or to go out and do more work for their community. So it's like, what does it mean to you? Is the first thing I really want you to figure out. And then the first key that I have for you, which is something that I have found. I don't know if I did it consciously or unconsciously, if I'm being honest with you. I think I just kind of started following what felt right. Like, I really, truly trust my intuition, and I trust when I get a feeling to listen to that, to be quiet to it, and to try to follow it. And so my first key that I never hear anybody talk about, you can read all of the success books, all of the how to get rich quick books or whatever the fuck they are that are out there. I never hear anybody talk about this. And the biggest key that I think I could give you. You is alignment. Is what is alignment for you? Like, what is it that you feel is the absolute best path for you? Not the path that has been programmed into you by your parents or by society or by how much money you think you should be making or by following the. The. The best major that's going to pay the best for you. But, like, what feels like the actual thing that you want to do is in this world and you need to follow it. And so what's really interesting for me is that I ended up, you know, quitting my job in 2012. I backpacked in 2012. For six months or for three months by myself. And then I went back to Tampa, where I was from, and I was like, I feel like I'm supposed to be a musician. Like, I really, more than anything else in this world, want to be a musician. And so I moved over to Austin. Cause it was either Austin or Nashville, because both of them are big music cities. And I didn't want to go to Nashville because it was too cold. And. And so I was like, all right, I moved to Austin. I've heard some really good things. And this is before it blew up. And I moved over here and started meeting people and started getting the music scene and all of that. You know, took took music lessons, took voice lessons, bought equipment, microphones, audio interfaces, all of this stuff. And. And I was really hard cornered for years. And then I just had this feeling that I should start a podcast in 2015. So three years after being here, I was like, I feel like I need to start a podcast. And the best part about it was that everything that I needed to do inside of being a musician was almost completely transferable to being a podcaster as well. Like, this microphone that I'm using right now is the exact microphone that I had in the same microphone I've been recording on for almost a decade at this point. I had an audio interface that was already there. So I already had the microphone, I already had the audio interface, I already had the programs to make. Make it on there. I had been taking vocal lessons for years, so I was. My. My speech was. Was pretty good at that point in time. I had done public speaking for years, so it just kind of fit. And then as I was writing podcasts out, I realized that as I write, wrote podcasts out, it was the same way that I. I made music. It was the same way that I did songwriting and the way I would obsess over making sure that everything was perfect in it and the flow and all of that. And so even though I thought, like, oh, my ultimate life goal is to be a musician, which I'm still obsessed with music, it really was. Once I started podcasting, it scratched that itch that I had for creativity. And then I really started falling in love, because this is ultimately a thing I love more than anything else. And so all I did, though, and the reason I tell you that story, is all I did was because I followed what felt right, not because it was logical for me to go, hey, I'm gonna move from the city I've been in the majority of my life, halfway across the country. To a city I've never been to where I know one person. It doesn't make any sense, but I followed what felt right. And then when I decided to start a podcast, I followed what felt right. And that's what I mean by alignment is what feels right. There's so many people listening to me right now in your profession and where you live and the people you surround yourself with don't feel right. And you won't take a step back, or maybe you haven't taken a step back to actually look at it from a 50,000 foot over you and be like, does this feel right? Does this relationship feel right? Does this job feel right? Does this profession? Does this major, all of this stuff where I live, does all of this feel right? And actually start to follow what feels aligned with you. When you find something that feels aligned with you, it's so easy to put in the work. Because success, whatever that means to you, requires hard work. It does. And there's no way around it. You can either decide that you're gonna work hard and change your life, or you can sit on the couch and do nothing with yourself, right? Or you can pretend like you're being proact, but really what you're doing is, you know, being busy and stuff. Like success requires work. Business success requires work. Relationship success requires work, health and fitness. Success requires work. Parenting success requires work. And the biggest thing that I see that people make the decision that they're going to do is they build a business or they follow a major or they work for a company simply because they're chasing money. My first year of college, I went and got a degree or started going towards a degree simply because I knew that that degree paid well. And then after a first year, I was like, this doesn't feel like something I want to do. And I just naturally followed my intuition. Again, it requires hard work to be successful. And you can either work hard doing something that you don't enjoy and you can eventually make a lot of money doing it, but you're still going to have. You've already gone down that path. You either got to get off of that path or continue down that path doing the thing that you don't want to do anymore. Or, or you can really start to take a really hard look at your life and say, what is it that I want? What is it that feels right? What do I want my life to be in 20 years? And then you go, okay, that's the thing that I wanna be doing. And you can work hard doing something that you love. That feels aligned with you. And the best part about that, and it's cliche, I get it, it's completely cliche. But when you really love what you're doing, it doesn't feel like work. Are there parts of it that are hard and it's challenging? Of course, a hundred percent, you're not gonna get around that in any case, in your life. But it feels fun to do, it feels exciting to do, and you don't feel like you're working. So you don't have to struggle your way to success. You naturally just want to get. You're more curious about learning about that thing and getting better at that thing. And the money almost never comes right away, but over the long term it comes. And it's usually way more than you expect. Like, I've told the story of the Chinese bamboo a ton of times. And, you know, you plant a Chinese bamboo seed and it. You give it the water and the nutrients and the. Everything it needs, the right soil, it gets the sun. Year one, it doesn't come up through the ground. Year two, it doesn't come up through THE ground. Year three, doesn't come up through THE ground. Year four, doesn't come up THROUGH ground. Year five, doesn't come up THROUGH GROUND. And then year six, it grows 80ft in six weeks. Sometimes it'll grow 2ft in a day. They say it grows so much, you can actually, like, see it growing. Now, that's kind of how success is, is it usually doesn't come right away. And it doesn't come as. It never comes as fast as you want to. I promise you that. But when it does come, it's way more than you thought it could be. And that's what's cool about it. Success is a marathon. And if you love what you do, if you're interested in what you do, you can last. If you don't love what you do and it doesn't feel aligned with you, you will burn out. The only way you burn out is not by doing too much. The way that you burn out is not doing enough of what you love. Sure, if you don't love it, you could last for five, six, seven years. But 10, 15, 20, 30 years, no, it's going to be hell if you don't love what you do. And this is why I always see people that are, like, extremely wealthy and people are like, they're so rich, why don't they just retire? Is because most of them, the end goal was never the money. It was just they were. They put so much Work into it, because the fact they actually loved it or they were interested in it, or they wanted to solve a problem for the world, it was usually never about the money. It's usually about the passion, the interest, wanting to, you know, solve a specific problem in the world. And it's fun to them, so they just keep on doing it. It's like, this is fun. It's like a game. I'd rather do this than stay at home and do nothing. And so you really got to start to think, like, what is it that feels the most aligned for you? And you've got to start to trust that. And it doesn't ever make sense. Looking forward doesn't make sense at all. Looking backwards, all of the dots connect. Moving here to Austin, Texas, because I want to be a musician made no sense. It felt right, but it made no sense. Now that, you know, it's been over a decade since I've been here, and I see how my life has changed and moved around and how everything fits perfectly into exactly the way that it should for this puzzle that the past decade, 15 years have been in my life. I'm like, oh, my God, I can't believe how perfect all of this worked out for me. And so you've really got to take a step back and be like, what feels most aligned for me. That's the first thing you need to be aligned. Truly need to be aligned. My number two key to success is not sexy at all. I rarely hear it as well, and it might surprise you a little bit. Here it is. My number one key to success, as hard as it is, or my number two key to success, as hard as it is, is patience. And I'll explain why in this episode as we continue to keep going through it. But it's not that sexy, right? You guys are like, ugh, patience. You know, there's a few other key mindset shifts to make to be a little bit more patient. You know, we live in the world where everything is immediate. You can get whatever it is that you want right now. You know, if you want something, you know, luxury bracelet, you could probably get it overnighted to you if you wired the money to them today. And it's going to be at your house tomorrow morning. If you want food to be delivered to you, if you want to be driven somewhere, someone will come pick you up within the next five minutes. You know, if you want your food delivered to you, you can get in the next 15 to 30 minutes. Everything is just immediate. Knowledge is immediate at this point, right? You can just Google something immediately. No, success, though, is not immediate. And a lot of times we think that just because somebody pops out of nowhere, they build a massive company, they're massively successful, or they're a massive musician out of nowhere. You think that it just happened overnight. And it didn't. It was. You don't see the 10 to 15 years of hard work, sometimes even more than that, accumulating skills and accumulating talent, accumulating knowledge to get them to where they need to be. So it looks like this immediate meteoric rise, but in reality, it was a really slow burn for a long time. It was that, that. Not even that bamboo just not even popping out of the surface for the longest time. And as I get older, I can see all of these micro decisions that I made that paid off. And I was just persistent and I was patient. And it's really kind of wild because I can look back to when I was, you know, half my life ago, when I was 19 years old, and be like, wow, I can't believe the choices that I made. And I just trusted in them. And then I just continue to be persistent and patient. And eventually it's all been paying off. But, you know, that's like 20 years that it's been going. So most of us want, like, success now. But, you know, before you can be patient, you have to decide what is it you want, which is why the alignment thing is so important. Like, before I start driving my car, I have to decide where I want to go. Otherwise I'm just driving around and wandering around. Too many people are just wandering around in their lives and they're. They're pissed off that they haven't gotten what they want yet. And then you ask them what they want, and they can't even tell you in a full sentence, right? So once you've decided what it is that you want, you have to get rid of all other options. You have to make up your mind. You have to burn the ships. You have to focus on plan A. There should be no plan B because it takes away from plan A, and then it's either I get it or I die trying. And you make the decision. I just will not stop at this. This is where a lot of people stop. They go, oh, yeah, I'm just gonna. I'll give it a few months. No, you're not gonna get what you want in a few months. It doesn't work like that. People work for three months and then they give up. You want to succeed, Just stop stopping. Going back to me, starting this Podcast again. I remember reading an article before I started the podcast and it said the average podcast has seven episodes and then the person gives up. And so for me, like when I decide to do something, it is, I'm gonna do this forever. So I was like, I'm gonna do this podcasting thing and if I just don't stop, I'm sure I'll figure it out. I'm sure I'll figure out my flow, I'm sure I'll figure out what, what type of stuff that I can create, that, that I like to make. But also people enjoy. And so you've just gotta decide what it is and then decide to yourself, I'm just gonna, I'm going all in on this thing and I'm either gonna succeed or I'm gonna die trying. And then the next step is to get moving. It doesn't matter how fast you go, as long as you're heading in the right direction. You know, I always say that, that success takes a certain amount of time. It takes a certain amount of effort, and you don't know how much time and how much effort it takes. You've just gotta let the time pass and you've gotta make sure that you're putting in the effort. Like I always say, like if, if success was a mile long mile from you right now, you could either crawl that entire mile, you could procrastinate as you're going through the mile, you could walk the mile, or you could run the mile. It's going to take you a mile. You know, success is one mile away. You know, this is obviously an analogy, but if the faster you put in success, the more, the faster you put in effort, the more effort you put in, the faster that you're going to see success. And so as long as you're heading in the right direction, that's the most important thing. The only thing that you can really fully control when you're trying to work towards. What it is that you want to go is the direction that you're heading and the effort that you put in. The more effort that you put in, the more likely you are to succeed and the faster you are likely to succeed as well. But all you need to focus on is the daily effort. Not that you're not there yet, not that I don't know if this is going to work, but you just put the effort in and eventually the effort's gonna build upon itself, you're gonna get to where you wanna go. Everything has a certain amount of time in this universe. In order for it to be here in order for it to manifest. Right? Like a baby takes nine months to be born. Sure, there's premature, there's some that go a little bit further, but most babies take nine months. The universe has decided that. And so the universe has decided it takes nine months for a human child to be born. Well, the universe has decided the effort and the time that it will take for you to succeed. You don't know how much effort it's going to take. You don't know how much time it's going to take, but you can't control how much time it's going to going to take. The only thing that you control that situation is, number one, heading in the right direction. And number two is the effort. And the effort is where I usually see most people fail is they don't put in enough effort. They don't put in. They haven't made the decision that this is what I'm going to do. They haven't made the decision that I'm going to wake up every single single day and just do this thing. And eventually it will pay off. If you just don't stop at whatever it is that you want, you will absolutely 100% become world class at that thing, no matter what that thing is. And if you're interested in it, I guarantee there's other people who are interested in it and they might want to learn from you, they might want to come and see you, or they might want to, you know, you might be able to come up with an idea as you start becoming world class at something as an idea to make it, you know, something you can, you can invent or create to make it more efficient or to make it better, whatever that thing might be. But you can't see that viewpoint until you put in the effort to be able to see that viewpoint. The only thing that you could control in that situation that you should be focusing on most is the effort. Putting in the effort, not scrolling on Instagram instead of putting in the effort, not I don't know if I'm good enough versus instead of putting the effort, not procrastinating and self sabotaging, instead of putting the effort. It's the effort. Put in the effort and then just be patient. And I know it's not that fun. It's not that fun. You always want it to happen faster than it will. But I promise you this, and I can tell you from my personal experience and many, many, many, many, many people that I've seen that have, that have become world class at something or Successful at something or great at something is that you control the effort. And all you have to do is just take a step back and say, I just trust that eventually I'm going to get there. And we always want it to happen faster then it will. It will always, almost always take longer than you want it to. But when it does happen, it will be 10 times better than you thought it was going to be. So all you have to do is, number one, make sure you're aligned. Number two, make sure that you're patient. And then obviously part of the patience is you gotta put the work in. That's the key between the two of them as well. So that's what I got for you for today's episode. If you love this episode, if you love this podcast, I'm about to launch something called Mindset Mentor Plus. Uh, so you can stop just listening to this podcast, but you can also fully integrate it into your life. And we're gonna be giving out with everybody in Mindset Mentor plus. Every single episode is gonna come with detailed worksheets that has, you know, full descriptions a lot more than this just in this podcast to make it even more, you know, interesting to you, to put more into your head so you can learn more. There's gonna be journal questions to help you actually figure out how it fits into your life. There's gonna be assignments that you can take from every single episode that you can make sure that you're fully integrating and, and actively using every single episode. There's also gonna be exclusive question answer sessions with me. There's gonna be an access of thousands of people that are all Mindset Mentor listeners and many, many other bonuses. And it's probably gonna be for, depending on how much you spend on coffee, probably less than you spend on coffee every single month. And the founding members, the people who sign up first, will get a discount. So to sign up for the wait list, to be the first to learn about it, go to mindsetwaightlist.com and we will actually let you know and email you everybody know on the podcast so that you can become a founding member. So once again, to learn more about it, go to mindsetwaightlist.com and with that, I'm gonna leave you the same way, leave you every single episode. Make it your mission to make somebody else's day better. I appreciate you and I hope that you have an amazing day.