How To Become The Person You’ve Always Wanted To Be

If there was only one thing that I could share with you that would have the most impact in your life, it would be this one thing. Live an intentional life. Every decision you've ever made, your whole life, every single one, has put you listening to these words right now in this moment of your life. Whether you're in the car, at the gym, wherever you're at, you've made an appointment to be here through your decisions. And you've never been this old before. You'll never be this young again. You can't always control what happens, but you can control what happens next.

Yeah.

Because you can make a new decision to go be the one that lives an intentional life.

What's it mean to really be the one? Because I know that's at the core of your heart, kind of your belief systems.

I think it's two parts. The first thing is success is an identity process. So you'll never outperform the way you see yourself. If you see yourself as a loser, you're not going to show up and play like a winner. If you see yourself as a winner, you're not going to roll over and quit like a loser. You know, we have the highest suicide rates we've ever had, particularly with young men. We have the highest anxiety and depression rates we've ever had in our country. And part of this is. Comes from an identity that, you know, maybe that you. Your life isn't worth it, you know, or you're not worth it. And one thing I like to remind people is that you're the one. Like, it's an identity. You start realizing who you really are. You realize that if you take your parents, your grandparents, great grandparents, the last 12 generations, it was 4,094 people from all over the world that lived and bled and. And died and cried for you to have this moment, to live and to breathe, and that your life has value and purpose and meaning and that you are the one. You're the one that they did this for. So that's the first part. I think the second part is be to me is not become. B is a present word. It's like. It's like, what are you. You know, how you show up right now in this moment, not what you become 5 years, 10 years, 100 years from now. And so be the one to me is living an intentional life. Be the one to me is creating, designing, and living an unforgettable life, a life that you look back on. Future generations look back in their lineage, and they say, you know, it was her, it was him. She's the one that broke the chains of abuse. He's the one that broke the chains of addiction. She's the one that built the financial empire. He's the one that taught us financial principles that changed these annals of history, changed this family lineage. So that, to me, is what being the one is. It's the identity that you're the one. And then it's being that best self today.

So it's almost like up in the aspirational. You on a day in and day out basis, right?

Yeah, yeah, exactly. That's exactly what it is. One of the things I talk about in the book is, is updating your identity. And one of the ways you can update your identity. I tell people, pick three aspirational words. I love the word that you use. Three aspirational words that you would describe your future best self.

Yeah.

So who. If I'm being my best self or even my future best self or my kids are talking at my funeral, they say, my mom is, you know, here's who she was, and here's why I loved her. Go be that person today.

Yeah.

Go be the best version of yourself today. Go step into this person you are. Because I tell people, you're not who you are. You are who you were born to become.

Amen.

And you're also not what you did. You are what you repeatedly do. I share the story in the book about my friend Jaime Molina. You know, Jaime lives out in Southern California. One of the neatest guys I've ever met. Just a. Just a super sweet man. He's a strong man. He's kind, he's gentle. He's very smart. And he worked. He runs a financial services business, has four beautiful daughters, married to his wife, Ramona. They're devout in their Christian faith. He works with the struggling youth in his community, and he tells him a story about a guy named E9400. E9400 was born on the. On the border town of Texas, El paso. At age 8, he was introduced to alcohol. This little boy, at age 9, he was sexually molested by someone 24 years older than him and became sexually active just as a little boy. At age 14, he was introduced to hard drugs. At 15, became a mule for the cartels. At 24, was convicted of 11 federal felonies and served time in San Quentin, one of the roughest prisons in all of America.

Yeah.

So Jaime tells the story and he tells the kids. He said, what do you think the odds are? Where. Where is E9400 today? Is he in prison? Is he dead? Is he, you know, working on the streets? Is he working for the cartels? Is he living his best life? Like, what are the odds? And I think, you know, if we look. If we look at that background, we'd say the odds are not awesome that this guy's doing great.

Yeah.

What happened was one day he says to the kids, he goes, I brought a special guest. And they go, who's the guest? And he goes, do you remember I told you the story about E9400? He goes, he's out in the hallway, and the kids are like, the guy that, at age 8, was on alcohol at 9, was sexually molested, became sexually active at 14, was on hard drugs, 15 was in the cartels, 24 was in San Quentin. Like, oh, my gosh. So he walks out to grab him in the hallway, and he walks back in a couple moments later, and it's just. Jaime walks up to the front of the class, and he says, I am E9400. And E9400 was his prison ID number. That was his identification. That's how he identified himself for many years of his life. Stephen, you gotta remember, you're not who you are. You are who you were born to become, and you're not what you did. You are what you repeatedly do. And so Jaime wasn't born to be E9400. He was born to be Jaime Molina, the man that's a devoted husband to Ramona and the devoted father, these beautiful daughters. And the. The man that runs his financial services businesses, devout in his faith, and works with the struggling youth in his community. That's who he was born to be. And so you want to constantly be updating this identity to. To be. To be that aspirational self.

You know, I've always had this. I remember at 13 years old, I left my mobile home that I was in time and, you know, kind of up in kind of a rough environment.

For some reason, the mobile home. I walked into the trailer park. Park. For some reason, under the stars, I uttered the words, please let me be the one to the family curse.

Oh, wow.

Had no idea where it came from. It had to be led kind of. It had to be right. It just had to be something that. In that thing, from the time that I uttered those words to the time I was 22 and part of this, you know, my first successful business, there was a lot. A lot of ups and downs. And E9400 kind of reminds me of a lot of those in a different capacity. And Obviously entered prison. But I had my own circumstances that had to overcome like that. And what it's doing right now is it's bringing to mind a specific situation or specific person that I know quite well that had the heart of a liable but they haven't fully realized it yet. Meaning they're on. I kind of look at them being kind of like a few years removed from 13 year old experience. Other words they, they know there's more for them but they're surrounded, they're currently surrounded by toxicity, surrounded by garbage. And, and they're trying desperately to come out, you know with, with you know, every tool that they've got at their trade. And a lot of times I remember back when I was going through all this garbage myself and I. And that was one of the things I think I've been to at least in their life a little bit just how to keep going. Right. So we had a conversation last night a situation that was happening in their household. Super discouraged, hurtful to this person. And as, as they were kind of like relaying what went on and whatnot. It was like you just got. You just gotta focus on where you're going. It's almost like it's not quite tunnel vision. Like you need aware and self aware. Almost like who are you ultimately trying to become?

Yes, yes.

Because for me focusing there that allow to eventually break what I call the gravitational pull.

Yeah, of course, of course.

You know what would you. Maybe some insights or maybe some strategies could use for someone in the. In a negative environment who's desperately trying to get out of the negative environment. Gonna take time, it's gonna take resources, gonna take planning some strategy. Right. Like they can just cross their fingers into stuff with. What would you use for them would be the one. Maybe some principles, techniques. Yeah.

I love that story. That's such a beautiful story. So a couple things I would share. First thing is this John Maxwell is a. He's a famous author. He's written 100, you know, 100 plus. Yeah, it's a good. This is, this is one of the, one of the great in fact when it comes to leadership, he's written more leadership content than any human that's ever walked the earth. And I'm with him in Costa Rica and he's. We, we're. We met with the US embassy, we met with the US Ambassador, we went and worked with the police cadets when they were. It's just the craziest experience ever. But one of the stops was at a local university and there's about 500 students. And it's in like a theater style, like the, an auditorium, you know, theater style. So it's, it's kind of going up like this from the stage. And John's teaching. If you ever watch John teach, he'll sit on a stool. He'll have like a high table like this with an iPad, and he'll just teach. And his content so rich that he doesn't have to bounce around. He can just teach. Sitting next to him on the other side of the table is jv. His name is Juan Verakin. Juan is, is John's interpreter. But one really is like, probably the. He's like the Latin American John Maxwell. One one's off the charts. John's teaching, teaching, teaching. Now, remember, 74, 75 years old, gray hair, tons of wisdom, 35 million copies of his book sold. He's teaching a bunch of kids, 18, 19, starting their life. And he also just stops like mid sentence and kind of like sits back in his chair and puts his hand on his chin, crosses legs, like almost like a moment hit him, like an idea hit him. And he says to the kids, if there was only one thing that I could share with you that would have the most impact in your life, it would be this one thing. Well, I mean, man, everyone leans forward in their chair, grabs their notes. I mean, this is the one thing from, you know, this, this wise, silver haired, you know, genius of a man. And he just sits there and like, thinks about it for a second, doesn't say anything. Finally, he stands up off his chair, walks to the edge of the stage and holds his arm up like this. Now, he still hasn't said anything, but he has his arm straight up. And so it's kind of like, you know, pausing for effect, but also kind of like what it's happening, you know?

Yeah.

So 5 seconds pass, 10 seconds pass. Feels like longer than that. Well, JD realizes he better go stand next to him. So he stands and he puts his arm up in the air like this. And then 20 seconds of past 25, 30. And then one of the Costa Rican students, a young woman about 18 years old, she stands up and she puts her arm like this. And then someone else did something else did, someone else did. And so. And finally the whole audience to stand up. So John still has his arm up like this. And he says, if there's only one thing I could share with you that would have the most impact in your life, it would be this one thing. And then here's his advice. Live an intentional life. He said, most people have Uphill hopes and downhill habits. You can only intentionally go up hills. You can't accidentally go up hills. And he said all success is all uphill all the way. So live an intentional life. And the first thing I would share with someone listening there, man, you're in just a, you're in that grind. I know that grind where you're just not trying to make it happen. That's not fun. My first business failed. I'm living in the loft of my wife's parents garage. I have two kids sleeping in the closet. I have two part time jobs. I'm below zero financially. All the pressure, all the debt, all the stress, you know, came from a broken home at age 12. Lived 13 times in the seven years growing up in the teenage years, just the whole thing. And what I would share is this today. What can you do to live an intentional life? Most people live in the world of reaction to distractions versus a world of intentional creations. One of the identities you want to update that again.

That was, that was. Say that again. Distractions.

Yeah. Most people live their entire life in a world of reaction to distraction versus a world of intentional creation. Meaning you're intentionally creating your fitness. You're intentionally creating your marriage. You're intentionally creating your happiness and joy that you're feeling within. You're intentionally creating your, your connection to your FAI can do it with high intention. You're intentionally creating relationships and talk about amplifying your associations. Who are you hanging out with? You get to intentionally create what's coming into your mind, you know, what you're pouring into your mind. Podcast like this, for example. You also get to intentionally create what actions are you taking? Like you can cast out what's so powerful about humans. That's, that separates them from animals. For example, animals work only on instinct. So a deer hears the twig, you know, break in the, in the woods and instantly takes off. It's instinct.

Yeah.

A human can say, one year from now, three years from now, five years from now, ten years from now, I'm going to go create this life. And a human can like create vision and then go. It's almost like a, it's like a. They can create it in thought.

Yeah.

And then go, make it real. That's why humans are so powerful, you know. And so I want to encourage you to live an intentional life. Start to say, what life am I here to build? Who am I born to be? And then start building habits and patterns and routines that that person does. Yeah. Because Stephen, if we were to look at your schedule Today. When I say today, today meaning literally today, but today meaning in this section of your life, right? This is not by accident. You made an appointment to be here. The word decision.

It'S a Latin word, decision, meant to cut, and the D meant off. So you come up to a moment in your life, and you. You choose. You make a decision to go right. Well, you cut off all possibilities of going left because you. You made these decisions. The word incision was to cut in. The word decision was to cut off. Okay? So here's the point is when you make those decisions in your life to cut off all other possibilities, you. You realize that every decision you've ever made, your whole life, every single one, has put you listening to these words right now in. In this moment of your life, whether you're in the car, at the gym, wherever you're at, you've made an appointment to be here through your decisions. And you've never been this old before. You'll never be this young again. You can't always control what happens, but you can control what happens next because you can make a new decision to go be the one that lives an intentional life.

I absolutely love that. Absolutely love that. I want to pivot that a little bit. Is there a way to be intentional about how you deal with fractional?

Look, we all deal in this world where there's. It's almost like you can set intention, and then the bullets start flying, you know, just like. Like the. The day starts and it gets really crazy. So a couple things on associations. Let's start there. This is so important. Teach the rule of 33. So imagine you're going to live an intentional life, and you're going to do the rule of 33. There's an old saying that says you'll be like the five people. You'll become like the five people you start yourself with most. I think that that concept's the right concept because of the power of associations. The challenge is you can't always hang out with five awesome people all the time, because to your point, you got, you know, you got all of this chaos of your life happening all at once. And there's times, to your point, it's mandatory. You got to be a job. You got to be at your job, and at your job, you're dealing with a guy that you sit next to in the cubicle who's. You wouldn't want to, like, pick to hang out with. He's not your guy, you know, or not your girl. So what do you do? Well, you get hyper. Intentional rule of 33. 33% of your time intentionally getting around people that I'm going to call them above you. And I don't mean above you as a human. I mean above you like on the journey. Right? Yeah.

They're in that racial category. That's right.

You aspire to be like them. Exactly right. They make more money than you. They're in better shape than you, Better connection, better. Their. Their marriage is 20 years long. Yours is two years. You can learn from them. You, you say, I, I like your life, and I like me best when I'm with you and I want to see you again like I, you. They make you think bigger.

Yeah.

33 of your time with them. 33 of your time with people that are basically at your level. Now, again, your level means they got two kids, you got two kids. They're making 60 grand a year. You're making 62 grand a year. They're, they're, you know, at a body fat percentage that's kind of close to yours. And so you guys can, you can empathize with each other. You can laugh, you can challenge each other, you can work hard together, you can pull for each other. You can say, hey, I'll lift you up when I'm down. Or when you're down, you lift me up when I'm down. You can, you can, you can rally with each other and hold each other accountable. Then 33% of your time with people that are, in essence, below you, and again, not as a human, but below you, like, they're on their way up the journey. They're working hard to accomplish some of their goals. This is where you get to teach and you get to mentor and you get to support. And when you, I tell people you want to be a studier, you want to listen and learn, but you want to don't just listen to listen, listen to teach. Because when you teach, you internalize. When you internalize, you own. This is when the content gets into your soul. That's when you teach and mentor. You get to go serve that next person. You get to start saying, man, I got to, like, eat my own cook, and I got to, like, live the life that I'm telling these guys to go live. So I share that. To say that the, the rule of 33, to me is a way to start really getting hyper intentional about who you're hanging out with. Yeah. Second thing, I would say I have a bunch of stuff on the, in the book that I teach on focus, getting focused, and eliminating distractions. There is a lot of stuff we can do to eliminate distractions, just eliminate the. Just the pings and the dings and the notifications and just, just to get hyper focused on goals. I have. It's funny. People have said to me, they're like, God, the book is so good. The only problem is like, I have like, I'm doing all these workshops in the book. They're like, it's so good that I want to do all the workshops because I really want to have the breakthroughs. I don't want to just read it, just to read it. And I encourage you to like, think, to pour your ideas on the paper and to start to like, cast out a vision of who you're supposed to become and then build new habits and patterns, routines to become that person. So associations are so important. Finding ways to, you know, get hyper focused by creating a new vision for yourself and then, you know, dialing in those new habits and patterns.

Yeah, dude, I love that. In fact, I was just thinking I was making my way through the book was like, really? You could, you could have a chapter where you're. I would say you read chapter in one. One sitting.

Yes.

But then you spend the next seven days implementing and doing the homework for the chapter.

Yes.

And because I think if someone will do that in the course of 40 to 45 days, maybe 60 days, they've made through the book.

Yes.

They've gone through the exercises, they've done the workshopping, if will. And by the time they're done, they're uber clear on what they could be doing, who they should be connected with, you know, what is their ass, Are they on track, achieve their aspirational identity? Are they. Are they in or impeded by some per place or thing? You know, one of the things that the first mentor told me a little time ago is like, you will never be able to outgrow your circumst and you can outgrow the identity that you put on yourself. So good, you know, so it's like a label, right? You know, you know, nowadays. And this is something I want to touch on a little bit. And all of this stuff weaves in the book, by the way, guys, that book is literally phenomenal. It is a absolute must read. Again, I just give you a strategy on how to read it. Make sure you do it. But I want to talk about some emotional turmoil that it takes to. Or that we have become to become the one that inspires the. The many to become one. Because I think, I think a life well, is you become the one to inspire the many to also become the one. And I feel like that's biblical. I feel like that's. Of course, you know, it's a universal truth. Of course. And the two. The two ones that I see on a regular basis that cause people to manipulated.

Or enthralled or peed their progress or guilt. And.

So talk to me about guilt. You know, maybe someone like. So I get from two different. Two different directions. If I'm trying to become the one, I'm gonna perceive guilt this way. If I'm not trying to become the. When I take on guilt this way, kind of. Maybe those. Those two.

Yeah. So let me share this. These emotions can serve you. It's the way that you use the emotions. So one of the things that I teach is to convert the hurt. So it hurts when someone says negative things about you. It hurts when you feel that guilt and shame. It hurts. But you can convert it from pain to fuel. So instead of it destroying your future, it drives your future, right? So you convert it like this. A solar panel will convert the energy of the sun, the rays of the sun. It will go through a conversion process and turn into electrical energy. A wind turbine or a water turbine does the same thing. It takes all this energy of the water and it churns all the energy from basically the water energy into like electrical energy. You can convert hurt. You can take these pains and these mistakes and these challenges and things and say, huh? I'm going to use that to. As I'm going to convert it from pain into fuel and use it to be the reason I succeed, the reason I make it happen. Remember this, my friends, we all have reasons. You know, we all have reasons to quit, and we all have reasons to keep going. And the reasons that you choose will define you.

Yeah.

And I teach in the book the Process. The Process is three words, super simple. It's dream, struggle, victory, Dream, struggle, victory. They're all equal. So for example, if you have a big dream, guess what you signed yourself up for? A struggle equal to the size of the dream and a victory equal to the size of the struggle. Now, what happens sometimes is we want big dreams, super small struggles, big victories. But they're.

You're all commensurate work that way.

It doesn't work that way. You got to. You got to reap what you sow a little bit, right? And I share this with you to say that if you're in the struggle section right now, right, you're hearing this and you're like, I feel the guilt and I feel the shame. And I feel the hurts. And I feel the pains. Okay, what do you do? Well, there's a conversion process that you can even with the way you identify, identify it, which is this. The bigger the struggle, the bigger the story. The bigger the struggle, the louder the applause when you cross the stage, like when you make it happen in your life, people are going to literally stand up and just give you a standing ovation because of these deep pains in these deep struggles that you've been through. I teach a formula called E plus R equals O. So this is one that I. The concept, I heard, I read the concept, and then I'll share with you my insights from it. E plus R equals O says this. It's event plus response equals outcome. So event plus response equals outcome. So three quick takeaways. Number one, E does not equal O. In other words, the event of your life does not equal the outcome of your life. Why? Because we're not victims to the events or the outcomes. We're actually victors to our response to the. To the events of our life or.

The, or the assigning a meaning.

That's. That's what I'm saying. We get it. That's exactly what it is. You assign a new meaning, you get to say, this is going to mean bigger struggle, bigger story, bigger struggle. Louder the applause versus, you know, I'm going to own this struggle section forever. Yeah. Victor Frankl wrote Man's Search for Meaning. So Victor Frankl was. His whole family was hauled away into osw. This is maybe the darkest time in human history as far as humans to humans. And what he said is the guards could do anything that they wanted to him, but what they. They could take anything from him, he said. But what they couldn't take was what he called the gap. The gap was his response. It was how he showed up the meanings he attached to it. God, takes so much unbelievable emotional fortitude to own your own gap. Right? Okay, Second thing is this. The R is not react. The R is respond. So great leaders don't react. Great leaders respond. What does that mean? Great leaders show up with a response. They, they get to intentionally say, when this happens, here's how I'm going to choose to respond. And instead of snapping at your kids and saying, what the are you, you say, listen, Mommy loves you. You know, Daddy loves you. I just need you to help me clean the garage or whatever it is, right? Like you, you, you get to choose with intention the way you're going to show up.

Well, it's almost choose to choose that.

Yes.

You choose that. That pause in the middle. That split second is going to shoot like. And you choose the, choose the response.

So check this out. Let me share with you what happens in that split second pause that you just, you just brought up. This is so important. So your. What happens is when you have an event happen that boom. Causes that, like you, where you normally just react, right? Yeah. What's happening is it's sending electrical current all the way through all the cells of your body, goes up the back of your, your spine, all the way into the back of your brain. If you'll pause, this happens literally instantaneously. If you'll pause, it will move into the frontal lobe of your brain. The frontal lobe is your more logical part. That's why if you'll just take a deep breath and you say to yourself, how do I want to show up right now? What kind of energy do I want to show up with that allows you to do it with a more of a logical, like, measured place versus that responsive, instinctive place.

Yeah.

And that leads to number three. Which number three is your R creates an E for others. Your response creates an event for other people. So you get to say, what event am I going to. To create for someone else, by the way, that I'm going to choose to respond. And that is living with an intentional life. You show up with intention in all these different areas of your life.

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Same idea when I was changing my own life. Okay. I gave my percent. I gave myself permission to show up differently. It wasn't long. Maybe started probably 12 months in 23 months, in 30, almost 36 months. To my new version of myself, my aspirational identity at the time, I noticed something interesting. And that was when you choose to show up differently yourself.

Almost. It gives other people around the ability to show differently themselves. So it's like anyone who's tied to you, regardless of us, like, for some reason it's been pulling away. Now, I'll also say that beginning of that phase had to suck you back. They suck me back in. But because I kept going, they had no. It's almost like they had no choice to kind of follow suit. I'm a big believer. That's at least part of the reason my parents ended up healthy and healed people was because in order to maintain my relationship with me, they almost had to do some work on elves. And it pulled them. And that kind of, that kind of sticks with me a little because that, that e. That E where you're, you know, it creates an open for other people is like.

Yes.

If you show up. Well, the event experience for the other person than it was before.

Yes. And let me say this. Let's go back to what we talked about. We don't see the world as the world is. We see the world as we are. So I see the thorn, you see the rose, the, the flower didn't change. But we see the world as we are versus the way the world is. The. The. It's raining outside, you're grateful, and I'm ticked off. The weather didn't change or the father has two sons, the father's strung out on drugs, in and out of prison. The one son is strung out on drugs, in and out of prison, and he blames the father. The other son has an amazing life, never touched drugs, never touched his wife. Meaning in it, he never abused his wife, never had any issues with the, with the, with the law, and he blames the father. The father didn't change. So, my friends, you get to reassign the meaning you're attaching to this stuff to say, yeah, this is actually going to be an incredible story when I make it through this struggle section.

Yeah. No, you know, I was just thinking. Another key that I. That I absolutely love in B1 is this concept of creating a vision.

Yeah.

Because for me, it was the vision of who I wanted to become. That drug me along through the mud, through the mercury, and then. And caused that divine inspiration, if you will, that kept me moving forward when I absolutely. I wanted to give up a thousand mil times thousand mil. You know what I, you know, you know, go back to collective days of hell. Right. It may not be easy for someone, was hell for me. Right. But going through those moments, going moment after moment, moment after moment, one day win. One day win. The only difference is a lot of people say one day when one day win. But there's. They've never clearly. They're never clearly articulated what that vision is. So I read the 3D vision framework, if you will, in the book. I was like, there it is. You can create 3D vision. So break down 3D vision.

I love that. I'm so glad I hit you like that. Let me start with this. Why a vision? Let's start with there. Why have a vision? There's an old Bible verse that says where there is no vision, the people perish. And I think we want to simplify that and say what it means is, if you don't have a vision, you're screwed. No, my friends, it's way bigger than that. Yeah.

It's not.

If you don't have a vision, you're screwed. It says, where there is no vision, the people perish. So in other words, all of the people that you being the one would have affected all of the lives, that you making those decisions would have changed. It's all of those people, when it says parish, maybe they live, yeah, they have a life. But all those those dreams and goals that you would have inspired in them, those never happened because you didn't have a vision. So vision is how you pull things through. Now, next thing is this. What does vision provide? The vision answers a question that all people need when they're going through hard times. And it doesn't matter if you're going through addiction with your child right now. Maybe you're going through a hard time in your marriage. Maybe you're really beating yourself up with your physical. You know, just. You're just like, I'm. My body is just not what I want. You know, maybe you are in a really tough business season right now.

Yeah.

What is vision? What does vision answer? It answers this question, will it always be this way? When you create vision, you can help to answer the question that it's not always going to be this way. We're going to make it through this. The sun's coming up in the east tomorrow. We're going to get through this. Yeah, that's right. You understand that there's seasons to life, right? Okay, so 3D vision. So that I wanted to start with, why is it so important to create a 3D? Right. Well, 3D vision to me is three things. Number one is you want to define it. You then want to declare it, and then you want to dedicate your life to it. So define it means take time to actually define what is my vision. You know, if someone were to say to you, Brendan Burchard did a study on high performers in a book called High Performance Habits. It's the biggest study of high performers in human history. And they said one of the things that they found is if you go to a high performer and I tap you, Stephen, if I tap you on the shoulder, by the way, if I literally did this to you, this is what would happen, right? You tap a high performer in the shoulder and you say, what's your latest goal? What's your latest dream? What are you working on right now? When you and I spoke on the phone, we were just like.

What we're doing. Because high performers can answer the questions 7 to 10 seconds faster than the rest of the population. Why? It's because they've clearly defined the vision. It's on the tip of your tongue. Dreams in the back of your mind won't motivate you. This stuff needs to be literally on the tip of your tongue. Yeah. Second thing is, is you want to declare it. You don't want to keep dreams and goals a secret. You want to declare them. All the great dreamers have. Have spoken this stuff out. They almost speak it into existence in a way. They say, I'm gonna go do this.

Yeah.

The reason why is because it starts to hold you accountable to someone besides yourself. And you guys know how we Are as humans. Bless our hearts. But we're like, I'm gonna do it in our mind that we're like, no, I'm gonna sleep in today. I don't want to go to the gym. So we want to start saying to a workout partner, hey, I'll see you at, you know, this time at the gym. All of a sudden, when you wake up in the morning, you've declared it to them. You feel like you're committed to them. You have your personal and private integrity is, you know, now tied to someone besides yourself. And you're like, I got to go make this thing happen. So you define your dream, then you declare your dream. This is one of the ways you make your vision happen, is by declaring it to people. Then number three is you dedicate your life to it. And if you look at all of the great dreamers in history, man, they weren't. There's no lukewarm winners.

Yeah.

You know, you're either in or out. You're either on or off. You're either going to. You're either going to, like, go for it with your life or not. And you say to yourself, it's funny. It's like, I'm 43, just had a birthday last month and.

Birthday.

Yeah. You start to say to yourself, you only get so many of these years. You only get. And by the way, knock on wood. That you get more, right? That you get more.

Sure.

But you only get so many. So you say, what am I going to dedicate my life to? What vision am I going to dedicate my life to? So you don't just aimlessly go through life or drift. I don't know if you guys ever been in the ocean where, like, you're just kind of goofing around and playing or whatever. You look back and you're like, what the heck? We're clear out here. You can drift. Most people drift through life. They just slowly drift versus saying. They define their vision, they declare their vision, and they dedicate their life to that vision.

Yeah. Oh, dude, that's. In fact, it had me thinking too. I. I just recently started seeing an amazing woman so very early stage, which is amazing. And one of the hindsight on 2020, we were able to. All the experiences you've learned and all that kind of stuff, bring it forward. Almost one of the first things that we did, and I felt compelled to do it, like, what is the. For this relationship?

What. What do we want this to be? Yeah, right. So in one sentence, it was like, you know, safe, secure, like port of kind of mentality, we then like a little mini mission statement. Right. And then it was. It was interesting to know that the moment we did both those two things, just the defining category, right. This particular case.

Started our making decisions for us ahead of decisions that have to be made. Because if we're going to do this, by definition, we make this choice. We have to. This choice.

Yeah.

Repeatedly. So I think super powerful. The other thing that I loved in the book too, is your. Your three years of success. I love that because each one of them individual, they're super duper powerful in their own.

Right. Yeah, yeah.

And what developed and honed his skill. I mean, you. You get my word. Which is unstoppable, right. They become unstoppable. So I'll take. Maybe now we got a idea of the 3D. Yeah. I want to maybe start on the. How the. The three Cs of succeeding support that makes the dream reality.

Yeah, I love that. So, all right, you're hearing this, you're like, hey, you know, I got some dreams, got some goals, want to make some stuff happen. How do I do it? So what I. What I've observed over, you know, doing a couple billion dollars in revenue in my businesses, in, you know, traveling around the world speaking, I've observed that there's a loop, there's a success loop. And what's so interesting, you just talked about this, Each one in by itself is so powerful, but if you, if you feed the one, it feeds the next, which feeds the next, which feeds the original one, and all of a sudden it starts to spin. This is why you can watch people literally change their whole life in six months, one year, three years, five years, 10 years. They just start to spit the loop start spinning faster and faster and faster and faster. So the 3C success loop, C number one, is confidence. The foundation of your success is believing in yourself. If you won't believe in you, it's hard to get everyone else to believe in you. And your confidence feeds your commitment. Commitment is. There's no lukewarm winners. You're either in or out. You get in, stay in. I tell people, most of us as entrepreneurs, just in life and whatever it is, we're like, we're super in, we're super out. We're super back in or super back out.

We listen to the world. Yeah.

I'm like, I'm back. I love this. And then one of our clients quit or a customer quits or life happens, and also we're like, I'm out. And then we're Back in and back out. Listen, you just want to get in state. It's what I call straight line commitment. So in math, the fastest way from A to B is, is a straight line. Same thing in your success. Just, you just get committed, stay committed. Lower, you kind of shorten the ups and the downs, the ups and the downs. You just say, I'm just in, Right?

Yeah.

The commitment, where there is no confidence, there is no commitment. Because think of it this way. How committed would you be to an exercise plan that you have no confidence in? Well, not very. How committed would you be to a business plan that you had zero confidence in? Well, not very. Why? Because where there is no confidence, there is no commitment. So the confidence feeds the commitment and then the commitment feeds the competence. What is competence? It's your skill set. So you build skill above the talent. Talents, the floor skills are the ceiling. You want to build skill above the talent. And here's what's so cool about competency, is you can learn competency. In each one of our businesses, there's some, some skill sets that you need. You can learn, right? Whether it's your some, some people skills, inviting skills, follow up skills, presentation skills, sales skills, interpersonal, what they call soft skills, you know, like listening and asking questions. Like, there's these skill sets that you can learn that man. When you learn the skill sets, what happens is you become more confident. Why? Because you're more competent at what you're doing. Because automatics creates more commitment. You're even more like, I got this. The commitment creates more skill sets, which is your competency, more confidence. Okay, now let me ask this question. What do you do today if we're being 100% honest and you say, I'm not that confident, I don't have that much confidence in myself. I don't know if I think I can do it. I don't know if I have what it takes. And we start with another C word which will get you into the loop, the success loop, which is courage, my friends. Courage. You take courage when you don't have the confidence. Courage is you do the video when you don't think you're good on video. Courage. As you start the podcast, when you're not sure you got a lot to say. Courage is you make that phone call today to give, you know, to invite the prospect to hear what you have to say when you're not even completely sure, you know, you're feeling like your palms are sweaty, they're on your chicken list. That's courage. Yeah, you start with Courage. Courage leads you into confidence because at some point, you're not doing it because you're so courageous. You're just doing it because you're confident. You got, you know, you got the skills, you know what you're doing. But today, you start with courage. I tell the story in the book of a guy named Ben Anaiha. It's an old Bible character. It comes from a book called Chase the Lion by Mark Batterson. He's a Christian pastor. And Mark says that Ben and Iha, what it says about him is he chased a lion into a pit on a snowy day. Okay, question number one. How many people do you know in your life that chase lions into pits on snowy days?

Or chase in general?

Yeah, chase lions.

The answer is not very many. So what does that make Ben and iha? It makes him rare. And my friends, anything that's rare is more valuable. So a friendship that's rare is more valuable. A diamond that's rare is more valuable. A painting that's rare is more valuable. A person with courage, a father with courage, a mother with courage, a business leader with courage. They are rare. And anything that's rare is more valuable. So what most people do, the lion in the book is the dream. The lion's the vision. The lion is the person you were born to be. The lion is that call in your heart to be the one. That's the lion, right? That's the roar. We feel it in our hearts. Guess what most of us do when we feel the roar? We ignore the roar or run from the roar. People with courage run to the roar. When you run to the roar, that gets you into your confidence, gets you into your commitment, gets you in your confidence. You start to spin the loop. So today, have courage, take action. Get into just making the steps happen. Even though you don't. You feel like you're imperfect and you don't know exactly how to do it. Take the first step even though you can't see the whole staircase.

Love that. Because, you know, interesting to me that that actually has started the momentum. Right. So what I mean by that is so. So through a hard time, you have the courage. You. You go and run up people and take the flight or, you know, whatever your. Whatever the analogy is, you do the work. You do the work on you. You do the work on your outcome, you do the work on your vision, you do the work in your infinity, your aspirational identity. You do the work and you focus on the work. Nebly what happens? This is what was happening for me, was I was able to get to a place where I so many times that even having the courage to do something again was less scary than the first time I ever because I was like I have all of these past successes showing that when I got developed my confidence gotten When I developed that confidence I was able to re. Refine, define or even intensify the commodity. You know. So I like that because a lot of folks have a hard time answering that first call. And that first call is I think it's the root, the acorn of becoming the one. It's kind of like we opened up the show with you know, my brief testimony to the trailer park going to the going out to the stars like.

And then the next decade really fun. You know. And I But then you know right now as I'm. As I'm traveling and speaking and doing events and working with amazing people like you and as I'm doing this stuff it's like look what God did by answering. Answering one call. I also telling some recently too I interesting like the Bible just I'm a big business guy dog hanging up behind me and one of the things. One of the stories I love are stories one of the characters people they're not even characters or people people that I like a lot. Bible is King David and a lot he gets a lot of credit for doing a lot of amazing things. He also obviously had several hiccups and mess along the way. Most people forget is that he actually became a king in the cave, not in the palace. You know his character was refined. What good for what he stood against what what his belief was being to wait for his like you know having an opportunity to kill Saul deciding not to because of in his relationship to God. I thought this core attribute of creating the momentum theorem. You know David had to go back warrior. He had to be. Yes. I'm sure the I'm when he stepped up to you know kill lions and stuff from it wasn't fun. It wasn't like. Like you know let's go do this. Yeah. You know or stand in front of a nine foot giant you know with a small shot. You know. But I because he took chances on a regular horses like really powerful things happening. You see. I like your. I like your concept of being the one as it is in the present and being one. But I also a concept of becoming or constantly become the best version of yourself. And if you enter if you're open to continually becoming the Neville that happens is you never stop becoming which allows you to. Allows you to be often in operational identity kind of future forward. It kind of now things that I think can derail you. And you talk about the book quite a. Just the importance of the attitude that you're using to go after these lions and tigers. And tigers. Oh, my. So how do we get to a place where we control our attitude or we influence our attitude in a way that serves us rather than against us?

Yeah. So the University of Pennsylvania did a study, it was a 22 year study. They had 350,000 participants. And they said that over time there was a thinking pattern that began to emerge that became what they called predictive of success.

Okay.

And what the thinking pattern was was optimism. They were like these optimistic people. And there was two takeaways that the researcher said. Takeaway number one is that these people had what the researchers deemed as unrealistic expectations that they would be successful. So again, if we look back at your journey and I'm using you specifically, but I think all of us generally could, can. Maybe we could. We could make this statement, we look back at your journey. It was probably unreal. If someone was studying, they'd be like, oh, it's probably unreal.

There's no way this guy's doing.

Yeah, this kid thinks he's going to pull this off. Yeah, well, it's because we're just wired a little different. We're just. We're wired with this level of optimism that like, somehow we got, you know, we got this, you know. Second characteristic was that they tried new things until they succeeded. And the word until can guarantee your success. Augmentina wrote the great scroll in the Greatest Salesman in the World. I will persist until I succe. Most people persist until it gets hard. They persist until someone quits. They persist until it's hot. You want to persist until you succeed. Now, I'm not saying that you just pound your head against the wall, but what an optimist does is they try new things until they succeed. Maybe they try and go over the wall, under the wall, around the wall, the left side, the right side. Maybe they get a new team of people to help them figure it out. Maybe they get new tools. Maybe they find weak spots in the wall and that's the spot that they're going to penetrate. So they try new things until they succeed. They adapt until they succeed, adjust until they succeed, work until they succeed. They adjust. They persist until they succeed. And that's what you have to do as a, as a leader and as a person, making things happen. And so.

That is the attitude. The attitude is I'm going to persist. And you say, how long are you going to persist, my friend? Until you succeed. And Les Brown has the great quote. He says, it's not over until I win. I win. You know, it's just like you say, when do I stop playing? When I win. You know, I'm. I'm going to persist until I win.

I have a great. I'm glad you mentioned that. I had a. A friend of mine who we hosted a live event. We're here in Raleigh. You know, the event center is currently here that we hope to move all one day. So we do this event. And she had a. A lot of personal stuff sent on the way literally on the airplane here. So she was overwhelmed with stuff that was unexpected, right. She lands. We. We get into the building.

She ended up having to replace her assistant, making some errors and other things. Long story. She had an uphill for this indebted. And I remember sitting. I was actually sitting in my office here at the table. She's like, I just don't know what to do. I said, we're going to pivot what becomes possible. Which right in the same vein, because you're gonna. When you're, when you pivot continually, you've got to kind of doing. Doing the kind of the. Do you basically go to the next level by pivoting to what comes Foster, of course. I know we're out of time, but somebody find out more about book and you and all kinds of good stuff because I love everything you're actually working on.

Brother. It's such an honor to be on with you. When we met, I was just. It was like one of those instant brother from another mother. Just the instant vibe and instant connection and you know, excited to be able to serve your audience. Excited to deepen my relationship with you and see what we can do to do some cool things together. But the book is be the one you can get it at where every. Whenever you get your favorite books. And it's a book that is going to change your life. I love what you said earlier. Each chapter will change your life. And so as you stack the chapters one after another after another, the book will literally change your life. And it's a book that is not only an important book for you to read, it's an important book for your kids to read. And it's an important book to your teen to read. And it's an important book for people that you care about to read so that they can. They can start to realize who they really are. They're the one and know how. Have the practical, tactical steps to be that one today.

Yeah, I'll just. For personal experience. Absolutely love it. Like I said, it's. It's one of the tops for me for 2023, and everybody should grab it for sure. Where about. Where am I finding more about?

Yeah, you can go to iamjustinprince.com you can follow me across all social media, which is either Justin Prince or I am Justin Prince. You know, I put out a ton of free content to see if I can help to inspire you to. To literally be the one that live, that creates and designs and lives an unforgettable life.

Oh, thank you so much for coming on the show. Can't wait to get with you, man.

Brother. Honored to be with you, man. I appreciate you making the effort.

All right, take care. See you. I hope you liked that video. And if you did, make sure you check out this next video right here. As human beings, it's easy to not go to the gym.

It's easy to eat pizza instead of celery.

There are a bunch of things we.

Know we're supposed to do, and we don't do them. And guess what? All of those things, things get magnified as an entrepreneur.