TJ WALKER - THE HABIT INFLUENCER - Personal Development | LIVE STREAM

Sam. And I gotta have the mic near me. So everything is. We got to configure everything. Now. I basically wanted myself framed from here up. I didn't really want to be, I don't mind casual shirt, but I don't really want to do the jeans thing. And again I want my head, top of my head to touch the top of the screen. So we're going to need to lower the camera a little. It should be like an inch or two above. That's, that's about six inches above me at my eye level, I think. Yeah. And then just lowering the tripod a little. I think that's about right. Yeah. Hey Joanne, the. Can you get the kettle? It's heating up if you want a tea grab because we're just about to start. But it is making noise. Huh? The water, your water is boiling. It's making noise. We haven't started. The problem with personal development gurus. You've heard of these people, the all knowing people who have all the answers. They're up on the stage, they're charismatic and yet do they really make a difference in people's lives or are they just modern day snake oil salesman? There is a lot of controversy around the country and around the world about the effectiveness, the ethics, the tactics of a lot of experts in the personal development world. Whether you call them personal development gurus, self help gurus, lifestyle design experts, peak performance. There's a lot of different names. I'm going to use sort of the umbrella term, the most generic term of personal development. I do think they're like with any profession, some people are more ethical than others, some people are more honest than others. And full disclosure, I am someone in the personal development space. I sell personal development courses. I do personal development workshops and seminars. But I too have some criticism of the personal development world. Now this isn't what you think it might be. This isn't me using an excuse to just attack competitors and criticize people who are perhaps more successful than I am. That's not what I'm going to do today. I do want to talk about what makes personal development effective for some and not the others. When I look at the whole field of personal development, the big superstars out there, Wayne Dyer, who's no longer with us, Napoleon Hill, Dale Carnegie, they're no longer with us. Anthony Robbins is with us, Brendan Burchard is with us. When I look at them as a whole, I see so many things that they actually did well and do well. They have good ideas, good insights, and yet so often it doesn't immediately translate into effective change with people. And here's what I see is the big problem. People sign up for a workshop seminar, buy a book, we get all excited and it's just a one time pop. It doesn't go anywhere and something is getting lost in translation. So instead of criticizing the gurus out there, and they deserve some criticism, and certainly I can get some criticism, I do think some of the criticism belongs to people like you and me and others, individuals who go out and go to these workshops, seminars, read these books because we can be quite selective in our hearing. Let's look at one of the most popular, certainly in social media. He doesn't use the term personal development, but he is someone who's highly motivational. Gary Vaynerchuk. He is extraordinarily popular with young men 18 to 25. They love him. They absolutely love him. He has tens of millions of followers on social media platforms all over the world. And when he gives a speech, he has thousands of people coming and they're cheering and they're high fiving and they're excited and they're pumped and then they go home and they, for the most part, go about their lives the same way they always did. Here's the problem, here's the disconnect. And it's not Gary. People hear Gary say, you can be whatever you want to be today. It's the greatest time in the world to be an entrepreneur. It's the greatest time ever to create something, communicate your message. All of that is true. I believe all of that. But there's a part of Gary's message that everybody always forgets. And the part they forget is he says, and by the way, the way I made this happen, the way I became successful, is I worked 15 hours a day, seven days a week from the time that I was basically 15 years old to about 30, is what he says. No vacations, no sports cars, no fancy gadgets, no parties from what it sounds like, not even a single date or not much of one. It was work, work, work, work. And that worked for Gary Vaynerchuk. But so many young kids go to one of his seminars. They listen to a podcast, they watch a YouTube video, and they're pumped up. But then it doesn't translate into the daily habits. And unfortunately, that is the big disconnect with so much of the personal development world. You look at almost any personal development author, seminar leader, expert, the vast majority of them give good advice. The problem, the challenge is how do you then narrow it down into a discrete Specific action that you can take on a daily basis and not just have it as a one off. Now I like an awful lot about Tony Robbins. And one of the things I remember when I bought his CD collection or maybe even been a cassette collection 20 years ago is when you pop that first CD or cassette in, the first thing he says is congratulations. Our own records show, our own research show that 97% of people who buy this course, and at the time it was 4 or $500, never take it out of the box and never listen to it. And this is his own research, he's saying only 3% actually use it. What happens? And he's very transparent on it. I give him credit. People go to a workshop, they go to a seminar, they see a charismatic leader on stage, they're rah, rah, rah, pumped up. Pull that credit card out, buy that program, and then you get home and there's competition. There's no fantastic Wayne Dyer or Dale Carnegie in front of you, riveting you. Instead there's a television, there's an iPhone there. Your friend saying, let's go to Dairy Queen. There's all these distractions out there and you have to force yourself, you have to initiate pulling that at the time. Cassette, cd, now you can do audio download. You have to force yourself to hit that thing to start learning, to start learning the new habit. And that is the disconnect. People don't like to hear the part about hard work. So for example, Jack Canfield, very famous personal development guru, co creator of the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, most successful book series ever. Many people are most familiar with him from his appearance on the Secret, the movie where he and all the other luminaries talk about. You just visualize that mansion and it will come. You'll send out thought waves to the universe. And you think about that mansion long enough, your thoughts send out energy and you'll have that mansion. Sounds nice, doesn't it? Here's the problem. If people actually listen to Jack Canfield, read all of his books, they'll also see that he says, oh yeah. And my partner and I did five talk radio interviews every single day for years. Even if we had to get up at 5am to promote our books, it wasn't just visualizing our name on the New York Times bestseller list. Although he did talk about that. It is 18 hour days, it is flying all over the world, speaking for very little fees in his early years. Working, working, working. And that's what helped him have his mansion in California and all of his other fabulous toys. So we as human beings, unfortunately like to listen to the good parts. We like to listen to the benefits. People who go to church like to listen to Heaven and Land of Milk and Honey. They don't necessarily like the part about never lying, never cheating, and not disliking your neighbor. They don't like that part. So that's the problem we as human beings have is we tend to be very selective. So certainly if you scan the Internet and look for what's wrong with personal development, there are entire books that like to pick apart the fraudulent activities and the questionable activities of personal development experts. And I read them. But you always have to ask yourself, compared to what? You can look at any hundred people who go to a big personal development workshop and grade them on a year later, how many of them are dramatically better and say, well, that's not very impressive, only three people are better. But what about if you held that same standard to people who go to see psychotherapists or psychiatrists or people who go see a minister or go to church or a synagogue every week? There's so many ways people use to try to improve their lives, to improve themselves, to. To have stronger habits. There's no one simple way. There's no one person I've ever seen that just instantly had dramatic results with everyone. And it's not because the gurus have a flawed system, although there are plenty of flawed systems out there. The flaw is us. Unfortunately, a lot of times we have very selective eyes and ears. We like listening to the stuff we care about. Hi, I'm TJ Walker. Thanks so much for joining me today. This is a preview of an upcoming show that I'll be doing every day right here on this platform. Now, you may be watching me on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Periscope. This show is agnostic to any one platform. I'm trying to reach as many people as possible to really have a conversation and a discussion about personal development issues. My colleague Marceau is here. Can we see if we can access people on Facebook? Can I see the Facebook page? Can you go ahead and put it on my. And folks, this is kind of a rehearsal, but we're putting it out there. So I appreciate you if you've stumbled across this and if you could just take control of the computer here. We're doing this show live in part because I didn't want to have just another canned video collection where it's a bunch of music and sound effects and me saying stuff. Now I'm going to have those too, okay? But it's not just that. I figured if the world can have so many millions of hours of live video streaming for people to watch live sports everywhere, why not one venue where we can have a live conversation with people who care about improving themselves, care about personal development, care about how to motivate themselves, inspire themselves on a daily basis to have meaningful habits that can change their lives in a positive way. So that's why I'm here. If you have any comment, first of all, if you can hear me and see this, whatever platform you want, just say, yes, I can hear you or see you and let me know if it's coming across. We're testing out new equipment, new mic, new lights, new camera. Everything is new. So if you can see that, please let us know. In this show, there's going to be a lot of different segments that I think you're going to enjoy. We'll talk about the latest in personal development, top stories in the news that relate to personal development. Plus, I'll be taking your specific questions, too. And Marcel, do we have a way of grabbing Facebook so that I can actually see it? By the way, when you are giving a speech or presentation or talk or you're boardroom and you're thirsty, don't be afraid to do what I did. There's no shame in it. Just don't act embarrassed, don't act bothered. I recommend use a glass of water. Don't have a bottle where you're screwing and unscrewing the top all the time. Make it easy and simply use a cup of water. Oh, so we're getting some live chat and let's see who's writing in here. Assad says all you need is experience, which includes suffering and other unpleasant things. There is no other way. Certainly that's a part of life. And I don't know of any successful person who hasn't had a lot of setbacks. I know I've had a lot of setbacks. I'll be talking about them right here on this show. But I do believe, as Warren Buffett once said, he said, smart people don't learn from their mistakes. They learn from other people's mistakes. I do think that if you see someone else burn their hand on a stove and you hear that stoves will burn, lit stoves will burn your hand. It's better to learn from someone else's experience than learn from your own. But experience is the best teacher. But it's not necessarily always the fastest way. So thanks for watching and joining us today on YouTube, which is a platform near and dear to my heart. I wish I could say I had 10 billion viewers on YouTube, but I have been on the platform since, I think about six months after it launched. So some of you have been with me for quite a while on YouTube, and I appreciate you joining me here today, whether you're watching live on YouTube or on demand. So in every show, I want to look at some topics right from the news. Now, we're not going to talk about politics, impeachment, Brexit, any of that, but we will talk about what I think are the most important news stories that are relevant to you when it comes to personal development. And what caught my eye this was on one of my favorite websites, Vox v as in Victor O x.com Vox.com they had a fascinating portrait of a woman I think many of you could possibly relate to. Her name is Natalie Grams. She's German, and she went through a traditional Western medical school training. By the way, the link is included in the show notes. So if you want to go back and look at this New York Times story, you're more than welcome to take a look at it. So, and Marceau, just let me know if there are any comments and we'll do that. And those of you who are joining us, you can just sit back and listen. And certainly if you're watching On Demand, if you post questions or comments, I will personally respond to you regardless of what platform you're on. So don't be afraid to ask a question even if you're not watching this live. So the story of Natalie Graham's really caught my eye. She was a medical student, graduated from medical school in Germany, became disenchanted with Western medicine, was convinced it was about just more pills, dope them up, make money even in Germany. So she immersed herself in homeopathy, home remedies, non traditional, non Western medicine. So she completely immersed herself in that world because she had some of her own health problems and she believed that a lot of things homeopathy prescribed could help people for colds, flus, anxiety, allergy, asthma, digestive disorder, you name it. She was really convinced that homeopathy and non Western medicine worked out and she tried this herself. She had had some health problems and felt better until she didn't. And this story, which I'd urge you to read, talks about her whole journey. She did the whole traditional licensing thing of regular medical school, then she did the whole sort of non traditional licensing for homeopathy. And what she found was that while sometimes people felt better, there was no way of testing it. So she couldn't figure out what of homeopathy was really having a positive impact on people and what was just correlation and not causation, what part of it was psychosomatic and you give people sugar pills and tell them it's aspirin, your headache will go away. It will go away for some people because they convince themselves. But the more she studied, the more she dug into homeopathy, the more she found it was a big business just like any large pharmaceutical company. People selling stuff where there was no quality control, people putting chemicals in home remedies that could not be accounted for causing injury harm. But her biggest concern was she simply could not find proof that the non western homeopathy worked. So I'm not an expert on this. I would urge you if you are fascinated by this whole divide of western medicine, Eastern medicine, this is bad. This is bad. Take a look at the article I've linked to@vox.com because I do think it is quite eye opening. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. I am a personal development trainer. Now I use the word trainer rather than guru or expert or speaker or personality for a particular reason. My background is specifically as a trainer. For many, many years I only train people on public speaking, media training. I've now brought that mentality of a trainer to the personal development world because in personal in training you're not judged by how good you are on the platform. That's nice, but that's not how you're judged. You're not judged on your packaging or your materials. You're judged on. Did you actually change someone's behavior? If I'm training someone on how to be a better public speaker, I better make them into a great speaker by the end of the eight hour period or I failed them. I try to bring that speaker same mentality to the personal development space. So anytime I give people advice, whether it's in an online course, whether it's in a speech, a workshop or a live session like this, I try to only give you practical tactical tips that you can actually implement today to see instant improvement. Now, I can't make you lose 300 pounds if you're wildly obese in one day. That I can't do. But I do take the trainer's mentality, which is if you are 300 or 150 pounds overweight, there is a specific tactic tip that you can do starting today to make a difference. So for example, I was not that long ago 40 pounds overweight. I wanted to lose weight and it's very difficult to just go from 40 pounds overweight to perfect weight by eating right. That's too generic, that's too general, that's too fuzzy. So I gave myself highly specific goals. One goal was simply a matter of instead of drinking three, four cups of coffee a day with cream and sugar, limiting myself to just one cup of coffee. So I wasn't depriving myself and I still had cream and sugar in it. Now, since then, I've taken the sugar out, but as a first step, that is specific, that is quantifiable, and that's what makes it have a specific impact. So that's the general approach I bring to my own version of self development. And you'll be hearing a lot more about that here. I do believe we live in the most fantastic era ever to be a human being, to be alive. Because it's an era where there are fewer gatekeepers than ever. Through most of human history, you either appeal to the king or off with your head, or you were stuck being a slave, a serf, an oaf of some sort. Thankfully, we don't live in those days anymore. When I was growing up, if you wanted to be in the media, you wanted to speak. You had to go through all these gatekeepers of New York City, publishers, major TV networks, or you were digging ditches or doing something else. We live in a different era. So that's why in every show, I look to like to put a spotlight on a special creator. And today's spotlight goes to Christina Randall. I'm going to put a link. You can read all about her major profile in the New York Times this week. And she is not what you would think of as a typical personal development guru celebrity. She's not big and tall like Anthony Robbins. She is not a white male like Dale Carnegie. She doesn't have, I don't think, a big booming voice like Les Brown. And here's the interesting thing about Christina Randall. She was in prison for three years, hard time for theft, battery. You can read all about her profile. She's totally candid about it. She now has her own YouTube show where she talks about goals and how to be a millionaire. No, she talks about what she knows. She has a YouTube show where she talks about prison life and she talks about the transition from prison life to the real world. It was just sad and highly emotional. Reading her story where she talks about she got out of prison, had nothing started from scratch. Every time she got close to getting that job and she was told, yes, we're hiring you, they Would come back and say, oh, you know, we did the background check, we didn't know you were a felon. We are rescinding the job offer and the tears she was in for years. Finally, she took matters under her own, in her own hands and she started her own thing. Her own thing was her YouTube channel. And she speaks. She speaks with passion. She speaks about what she knows and she has an audience. Now, is she making $10 million a year? I don't think so. But she is making money following her dream, following her vision, following her expertise and her passion to help other people, especially women who are in the same shoes she was in. And she now gets money not from large corporations, although she gets a little advertising revenue. But she has fans who give her money, give her donations. She earns money through patronage because people value her and respect her. It's not a show you're going to see anyplace else. If you watch the Today show, they're not going to have tips on here's how you make eyeshadow out of old coffee grounds because you're in prison and you can't go to the drugstore to buy makeup. That's the sort of tip she has that's unique, that is content you cannot get anyplace else that I'm aware of. You certainly can't get that the mainstream media anywhere. It's too niche of an audience. But I have to give tremendous credit to Christina. She's figured out a way of making it all work. Now here's the other interesting thing about Christy. She's 35 now, so she's been out of prison for 10 years and has really cleaned up her life. She has an eight year old son, and guess what? The eight year old son has a YouTube channel, has thousands of subscribers and views. So part of my challenge to you is if you're just watching me, thank you for watching me. But what's stopping you from having your own Facebook videos, your own YouTube show, your own show, if nothing else on TikTok, it only has to be 15 seconds long because here is someone 8 years old, didn't grow up in extremely privileged background, obviously a parent in prison and being a convicted felon. And yet here they are, both sharing their messages with the world, sharing their passion to the world. So if you have a moment, please take a look at that story I've linked to it. Part of what I like to do in these shows and I'll be doing on a regular basis is just reaching into my bookshelf and sharing with you. Things that I read. Classics, all time classics from the personal development genre, but also new books that I want to put a spotlight on. So here's one I think many of you would be familiar with. And I've referenced him already today. Awaken the Giant from within by Anthony Robbins. Hugely successful book. He wrote this when he was a very young man, and this, along with his infomercial, really made him wildly famous around the world. Here's a passage, though I bet you don't remember and I do want to share it with you. This is very much in the beginning of the book and I'm reading directly from the text. I became an excellent public speaker because rather than once a week, I booked myself to speak three times a day to anyone who would listen. This is when he was roughly 18 years old. He said, forget college, I'm going to be personal development expert. And he really dove in. So other people were speaking once a week. He was speaking. He was giving three speeches a day to anyone who would listen. Nowadays, my understanding is if you want him to speak, you got to come up with a couple hundred thousand dollars. But back then, as he was building his skill, he'd speak to anyone, anywhere, three times a day. Says while others in my organization had 48 speaking engagements a year, I would have a similar number within two weeks. People always wonder, how did he get to be so successful so young? He's doing two years of work in two weeks. That's how you do it. Within a month, I'd have two years of experience, and within a year, I'd have a decade's worth of growth. My associates talked about how lucky I was to have been born with such an innate talent. I tried to tell them what I'm telling you now. Mastery takes as long as you want it to take. By the way, were all of my speeches great? Far from it. But I made sure that I learned from every experience and that I somehow improved until very soon I could enter a room of any size and be able to reach people from virtually all walks of life. So that's the Anthony Robbins secret people think it's about. Rah rah and high five. No, that's just window dressing. I'm going to share with you from from another book that I like in just a moment too. And we are going to take questions and comments. Although I do see a couple of people are calling me on Facebook. I can't take live calls yet during this show. Although working with my colleague and producer, Marceau, we do hope to be doing that relatively soon. Joanne can hear us. That's great. Luke says hello. Luke, good to hear from you. Thanks for joining us. And Bill writes in good morning. And Luke, Luke, are you, you're in Australia, if I'm not mistaken. Is that correct or did I, did I miss that up? Please post where you're from. If you are on Facebook, please post a question, a comment, or just say hello, I'd love to hear from you and see what you're up to. But also any single platform you're on, because we're on many platforms today, say hello, post a question, post a comment. More than happy to hear from you. We have a couple of other people joining us on YouTube today. And ASD writes the sound is delaying a bit. So we are still working on some of the kinks of doing a live broadcast. Live video is the hardest form of really communicating in a media. You, you write a blog and you do a spell check and you keep refining it till it's good. You make a video, you can edit it, get it just right, hit delete, do it over. But when it's live, you're kind of out there and technical problems can pop up. So I realize it may look like a badly dubbed English movie to Japanese or Japanese to English where you see me saying one thing and the mouth is going in a funny direction and it's not saying so. I apologize for that. But I can tell you this. If you wait until everything is perfect, whether it's for a speech, a new business, an ACT app, any project, you'll never make it happen. At some point you have to start do the best you can, get feedback as I'm getting from you and I very much appreciate it and then using that feedback to make it a little bit better next time. And we have a few more comments on Facebook. And Luke, you're in London. Yes, thanks. Thanks so much for joining Luke, one of our online training students. And Bill writes. Oh, Bill is in Milwaukee. So great to hear from folks in Milwaukee. My own family have family from Mineral Point, Wisconsin, which is a small town. I don't think it's that far away from Milwaukee. So I have long standing roots in your state. My father used to love going to Mineral Point in the summers and he got to to hang out on the family farm and have a great time there. So Bill, thanks for joining us from Milwaukee. Other thing I like to do for my bookshelf is pull out newer books, more recent books. They're not quite in the canon of personal development, but they are books that I think are worthy of attention, worth your time and have made an impact already and may become a part of the canon. One of these books is called 10% happier. This is by Dan Harris, who is a well known news anchor here in the United States on ABC News. And he was a guy who was frankly anti meditation, self development, self help, always kind of thought that was nonsense, but had a variety of personal crises, health issues, came to it and came to basically fall in love with meditation. His theory though is you can't oversell it. So his big theory on meditation is it'll make you 10% happier than you are. So I like how realistic he is, how he's not trying to oversell it. He still kept his day job as a news anchor, but he has apps, websites, books that really help popularize the ideas of meditation and other aspects of self development yoga to people who might not normally be that into it. I wanted to share with you just a brief passage from this book by the way, both books I've linked to them on Amazon. I'm not an affiliate, I'm not selling anything or making any money on this today. But I put that for you just to be convenient and if you are interested in checking out the books. So this is something he learned in eighth grade. An ex girlfriend told him, quote, when you have one foot in the future and the other in the past, you piss on the present. Now you might say that's a little vulgar, but that is a perfect crystallization of the mindfulness movement. Eckhart Tolle really focuses how you have to focus on the presentation. And what this author Dan Harris found in his own life is he was so obsessed with ratings, getting the next job, getting the next promotion. Life was kind of miserable. Didn't matter how much cocaine he was doing, how many promotions, how much money. It was always about more and more future. He was never actually living in the present. And that's when he discovered the beauty of meditation, yoga, other processes like that that helped him stop thinking about the future, stop thinking about the past and to spend some time just focused on the present which is what most meditation does and does well for people. I'm TJ Walker. Thanks for joining me today. If you have any questions, comments, you can post them. We are going to take a quick break. I will be back. I'm going to take more of your questions. We do have a lot more show to come and I'm also if, if you're interested, I'm going to share with you a few new things like haiku that I've Written and Questions of the Day and a few other segments. So I'll be back in just a moment. Marceau, I think we have some slides that will take us out of here and give us a little break. Sa. Okay, we're not on me now, are we? It says live shot. Are we showing me? How do you conquer fear? We all have fears. Some of them rational, some of them irrational. I have a fear of my daughter walking across the busy street unattended, being run over. I deal with the fear by walking her across the street myself. I think that's a pretty rational way of dealing with that fear. But sometimes we all have fears that are not rational and that hold us back. What I find is the number one way to get over a particular fear is to actually see yourself demonstrate competence. So, for example, the field of public speaking. If you listen to most pollsters, they will tell you that public speaking shows up as the number one fear most people have, ahead of snakes and death. There's the old Jerry Seinfeld joke that most people, if they had a choice, would rather be in the coffin than delivering the eulogy. Here's the thing. I don't really believe that. Here's why. If you're on an airplane 30,000ft above the ground and someone says, I'm going to push you out without a parachute, or give a quick little speech to everyone on the plane, I'm pretty sure you'd come up with a speech no matter how much you fear public speaking. But what public speaking is, is something that makes people uncomfortable. That is something they're likely to have to face in the real world that they do have some fear for. It's the most common type of thing that could make you uncomfortable that you're likely to face. Your boss at work is not likely to ask you to pick up poisonous snakes, but your boss might ask you to give a speech or a presentation. So the way to conquer this fear is not to meditate, although I like meditation for other reasons. It's not to visualize a standing ovation. It's not to visualize your audience in their underwear so you can feel superior. No, the way to get better at this is to practice your speech on video. Until you see it and like it, you're convinced it's great as is. You'll now have a role model for yourself so that you can see that image when you're giving your speech in real life. That reduces fear. You talk to most rock stars, they'll tell you it's scary being on a stage in front of 50,000 screaming fans. But the really good one, the groups like you too. They always analyze and listen to and watch every concert they did because they want to learn what worked well, what can they do more of, where can they improve? How was the choreography? How was the movement around the stage? They're always watching. You look at many of the best professional athletes. You know, what does Tom Brady do? He watches the game film. He watches himself when he's doing the touchdown passes. So he learns how to do it again. He also learns from his mistakes. He's constantly analyzing every single game. And he watches opponents that way too. Confidence comes from having already experienced competence. When you see yourself making small steps, being more and more competent, it builds your confidence. When your confidence grows, your fear goes down and at least gets to the point where you're manageable. So many great stars from Hollywood, Broadway will tell you that even late in life, some of them in their 60s and 70s, before going on stage, might throw up. They're still so nervous. But once they're on stage, you never see it, you never notice it. They pull it together. And part of it is just habit. Even if you have the habit of getting nervous, if you have a habit of doing it anyway, it doesn't cripple you. Unfortunately for many people, their fears just stop them and it prevents them from going outside their comfort zone. Now, I want you to be comfortable. I do. But true comfort is just staying in bed with the covers pulled over your head all day long. And if you do that, you'll probably end up dying. You're starving to death because you're not working, you're not doing anything productive, you're not going to the grocery store, you'll starve to death. So in all aspects of life, it can never just be about short term comfort. The key to me is incremental steps. You don't have your child enter the calculus competition in first grade. You have your child learn simple addition and then simple subtraction, and then it's all done in stages. When you show a competence at one level, you take it to the next level. The first speech I ever gave to wasn't to 10,000 people. You have to build up to that. Most people I know, if they do media interviews, are not doing their first interview live on prime time. Although occasionally it does happen. I met an author the other day whose first talk show ever. Her first media interview ever was on the Today Show 35 years ago when it had a giant giant on one of half the country was watching it. She was terrified. She handled her fear by taking Valium and coming across like a zombie. Not the best solution, not one I'd recommend, but that's how she got through it. I do want to be responsive to you. This is not just me pontificating. It's not just the T.J. walker Show. It's your show, too. This is a way for us to have a real communication and an interaction. And we're on virtually any social media platform. Let's take a look here. And Luke has posted a comment. I need to focus more on the present. And Luke, that's. You're like a lot of us. I've been guilty of that in the past. Certainly when I was younger, you know, high school, it's about, oh, can I get the best grades to get in the best college? And in college it's, oh, if I could just get the best grades to get into the best law school. And a lot of people who consider themselves ambitious and smart get into this trap of, if I could just get to the next level. And the problem is, no matter what level you're in, there's always a next level level. Certainly people of my generation, it was like, if I could just get into the top law school or just get into medical school and then just become a partner. And then before you know it, your life is over. And you never really lived it because you were always thinking about the future. Now, if all you do is live in the present, then that can be a problem if you're not learning and preparing and saving and investing for the future. Not suggesting you only live in the present, but I do believe that a part of every single day needs to be about purely living in the present. That's why I meditate for 10 minutes every single day, which is not a long time. There are people who meditate for two and three hours a day. Some meditate for one to three minutes. I find that 10 minutes is a good sweet spot for me where all I'm doing is closing my eyes, consciously breathing in through my nose, consciously exhaling through my mouth, and actually listening to a selfie speak audio. My own voice telling myself, breathe in through your nose. Relax. Think of nothing. Breathe out. Very, very simple. But it allows me to live in the present rather than being obsessed and bombarded with constant ideas. Let's head over to. Is this from YouTube or where is this? Okay, we have another comment from from Assad, and it says, I learned so much from your courses on Udemy. Well, thank you. And There are about 140 courses there and public speaking. And I was extra interested in presentations on how almost useless PowerPoint is except for graphics and you know your field and help us extremely in practice. I use many of your pieces of advice and I say they're spectacular. Thank you. Well, Asad, thank you very much. He's in first place now for most insightful comment of the day. So I appreciate the kind words. Here's the thing about PowerPoint. You know, a lot of times people like to say, oh, PowerPoint's awful. I hate PowerPoint. Death by PowerPoint. The problem isn't PowerPoint. Saying PowerPoint is bad is like saying television is bad. Well, yeah, there is a lot of bad television. Jerry Springer Trash TV. There is the test pattern at 2 in the morning. Some places there is just mindless violence sometimes. But you know what, if you love World cup soccer and you can't fly to the event and you have a really giant high definition TV and you can watch World cup soccer, all of a sudden TV's pretty good, right? So it's really about what do you put on the tv? TV is just a tool. If the TV is hung upside down and not plugged in, TV is worthless. But it's not because TV is worthless. It's because how you're using it. I am a fan of PowerPoint. I use PowerPoint all the time. But I don't use text on PowerPoint when I'm in the same room with people. Now, a webinar is a little different than I have used text on a PowerPoint slide for a webinar. And text is fine too. Like this. You want to communicate with a book, Give people a book. I've written six books, but PowerPoint with text on it is a complete waste of time. And if you want more information on how to really use PowerPoint effectively, I do have a new course out that really goes into advanced techniques. Plus I give personalized critiques to all my students in this course. You can learn more by going to selfiespeak.com that's 3W selfie, just like you take a selfie speak.com But Asad, thank you for those kind words. And okay. And Clinton writes, the timing on this video, incredible. Now, I don't know if you mean incredibly good or incredibly bad, because I do understand from some of our viewers that we're experiencing a slight time lag where you're hearing one thing, but it doesn't sync with my lips. And if that's the case, I do apologize. And if that's what you mean, we're trying to fix that. We're still in kind of the experimental stage. We didn't promote this show anywhere today. We appreciate you stopping by, but it's really a test to see can we do live streaming on a regular basis to a lot of different platforms to reach as many people as possible with personal development issues. So, Clinton, if you don't mind, can you tell me what you mean by that? Because I don't want to assume negativity, but I also don't want want to assume you're complimenting me saying it's incredible in a good way too. So if you do have any questions or comments about the, the quality, the technical quality of our show today, I would love to hear it. You don't do me any favors by saying it's great if there's something wildly distracting or off or off putting. So any kind of feedback you have on the technical side, but also the quality of the sigh. So we are still experimenting with mics. For example, this mic, I understand, sounds a lot better if I'm this close. But since I'm doing this as a video TV show, it's a little awkward to be this close. And yet if I'm back here, perhaps it's a little echoey. So we're still working this out. I don't have all the answers to everything. We are here just in my living room in my home. I wanted to invite you in. Just seemed like this was a little warmer, friendlier. Had a fire going in there this morning. Sometimes I'll have a fire going for you too. Just seemed a little friendlier and warmer than my regular TV studio, which is just a six foot by nine foot room. So that's why we're here. But maybe technically it's more of a challenge and it's not worth it. So that's why we're experimenting. Luke has written, I've learned so much from you as well and share it with others at work. Luke, thanks a lot. Do you mind let me practice what I preach Because I always tell people, don't just accept praise. Ask people specifically what stands out. What of my lessons do you find helped you the most in your practice and that you share with others? So if you don't mind sharing that with me, I would love to know. Now we also have, we have some more comments on YouTube. YouTube. I told you, Clinton. I told you in his life. Oh, and Clinton says, oh, you are a blessing. Thank you. I appreciate it. I do not mind the sound lag. It is okay. I'm just grateful to get the message. And I'm reading in reverse chronological order. Sorry about that, Clinton, you also are nice enough to give me a big smiley face. The timing, it was exactly what I needed to hear when I needed to hear it. And so, Clinton, what. The timing of what? Because we covered a number of different topics today. If you don't mind me asking, what specific message did you find useful or helpful? Part of the beauty of us doing this live is we can actually have a give and take. We can have a conversation. It's not just reacting to a video on a motivational channel that was put together from old clips from someone from 12 years ago. We can have a real. And those are fine, too. I like those, too. But we can actually have a real conversation. Part of what I stress in all aspects of personal development and when it comes to public speaking and presentation skills is always dig for a little bit more to improve yourself. One of the strengths of great speakers is, is that they make every single speech they ever give just 1% better than the last one. So, Clinton, that's why I'm asking you, what specifically did I say that was a helpful message? And would you like me to do more topics on that in the future and to cover it in more detail? Because I'm still trying to figure out the exact structure of our daily show, the format, what sort of segments go where I'm going to experiment, and some of them are going to bomb. That's okay. This isn't a show on ABC TV where tens of millions, hundreds of millions of dollars are at stake in ad revenue. So there's a luxury of experimenting with things. And maybe I do something that only one person likes. I might continue doing that. I might do something else that a lot of people like, but I just feel it's not a great use of time and isn't helpful. So, Clinton, it says it does not have to be perfect the first time. Well, absolutely. That is so critically. I mean, I have an iPhone here and I've had a dozen iPhones, But I gotta tell you, I bought the first iPhone. I thought it was a piece of junk. I realized that makes me an enemy to some people. But when I bought the first iPhone typing on a piece of glass back then, they did not have the kinks worked out. I returned my iPhone and I went and I got an old palm tree. I went back to my trio, which I don't think that company even exists anymore. Apple didn't wait for that first product to be perfect. They had something that in many ways was advanced and they put it out there and you know what, couple months later it was better and the next version was better and it keeps getting better. You don't have to be Steve Jobs to figure that out. You can be a one person company and figure that you can be an individual, try things, get feedback, figure out how to make it better. So Clinton, thank you very much for that feedback. I do very much appreciate we have another comment from Clinton. It was above that I was complaining that my Zoom meetings were trash because I was not able to connect. And then you showing up made me feel better. It is about slow improvements. So a lot Zoom is a platform for those of you not familiar, for video conferencing. Kind of like Skype. Many people prefer Zoom over Skype, so it's a great way for job interviews, meetings with colleagues, new business pitches, conferences with people from different locations. But it can be tricky. I found it very difficult for some reason on my main TV studio. I could connect with my broadcast quality camera for Skype but Zoom wouldn't take it. So I've had my own frustrations with Zoom, but I'm glad that you continue to try and now I can use Zoom too. So the whole thing with modern technology is a lot of times you just have to get over the hump and say I'm going to learn it. It's about not being lazy. You don't have to learn technical skills as far as computer programs, you have to just type into Google how do I fix X and read it and do it. That is so of all the skills in the modern world that I think is valuable for a young person starting a career, it's the ability to say, I don't know, let me type quickly, find an answer and make it work. When you have that skill, young person or old person, you're always going to have a job. If you have the habit of saying, well, I'm not really a techie, I don't know, do we have a tech department to call? That's career death in many situations. And the problem is your colleagues, the people you might be interning for, they'll never tell you that. So hugely important Scan. I've been guilty in the past of not being as aggressive at learning new technology as quickly as I should. Let's go to more comments. This one from Luke says what's helped me the most is getting over the fear of public speaking and the power of stories as well. The that's what I love sharing. Well Luke, I'm so happy to hear that you've gotten over your fear of public speaking. To me, it's so bizarre. On the one hand, I can relate to it because I grew up, I was very shy. On the other hand, to me, it's bizarre in that it's a thousand times easier than learning how to hit a golf ball in 100. And people will spend a fortune to trying to lower their Golf score from 100 to 90 to 80 to 72. And they go to school and golf camp and all these things that frankly, never going to have an impact on their life. They're never going to make a penny from their golf skills. And yet they'll invest thousands of hours and dollars to improve a golf skill, which really is a very difficult thing to do. To take a tiny ball, a huge long metal club, swing it through the air and try to get it 3, 4, 500 yards away in a hole, that's insanely difficult. And people spend so much time and effort doing that. And yet learning how to speak has a huge impact on almost every career. Most people never learn anything. Most people never take a single course. Most people never practice. And today, the easiest way of all to get over your fear of public speaking is pick up your phone, practice. Just look at your own phone, record it in the video record mode, look at it, figure out what you like, figure out what you don't like. Keep doing it until you're happy that you're coming across the best you can. So, Luke, so happy that you have gotten over that fear of public speaking. And of course, stories are the most powerful way of, of making any speech memorable and to come alive. And people sometimes say to me, well, T.J. you talk a lot about stories. Why stories? Are you a frustrated storyteller, comedian? No. I wish we didn't have to tell stories when we gave speeches and presentations and did live webinars. Unfortunately, I don't know of any more effective way of grabbing the attention of an audience and getting them to understand what you're talking about and to remember what you're talking about. So that's really the power of story. It's simply more effective than any other tool. Marcel, do we have any other comments? We are here for you today. So if you're thinking of any other questions, any other topics you'd like me to suggest, and I apologize, we're, we are getting a couple people calling in, appreciate the calls on Facebook, but we're not yet quite technically set up to take calls on the show. So we will go to the, the next, the next segment of our show now. This is something new. I've not done this before. This is something that is a little risky. I won't say I have fear, but I don't have especially an optimistic feeling that what I'm about to do, you're going to love. But bear with me. One of my daily habits, and I've done this now for about six months, is checklist. I have a checklist first thing in the morning. One of the 50 or so items I have is to write a poem every day. Now I just write a simple haiku. The simplest way of under. This isn't all the elements, but the main element in English version is first line is five syllables, second line is seven syllables, third and final line, five syllables. Doesn't have to rhyme. Others would say, well, it needs to have some strong emotion, imagery, maybe something in nature. I don't even worry about that. I write a poem every day. Confession. I can't stand reading poetry. Easiest way for me to fall asleep is to start reading a book of poetry. But I do this because it helps build another creative muscle. I do this because it builds writing skills, creativity skills, and it just gets me thinking in a slightly different way. It gets me away from reading about news and impeachment and Brexit and other crises around the world. And I only spent one minute a day. Now I'll read just the one I wrote today. You may think it's stupid. You may say, tj, don't quit your day job. Well, guess what? I'm not quitting my day job. My job is not to write poetry and sell it for a living, but my job partially is to put a spotlight on the creative spirit. And my job, as I see it, is to help inspire other people to use their creativity in all aspects of life. So that's the beauty of a poem. Even if you think this is the worst poem you've ever heard, I hope it inspires you to say, well, teaching poem is awful. I can do better than that. And then you write a poem. And you know what? If you do, please share it. Share it in the discussion section, whether you want to leave a comment on YouTube, Facebook or anyplace else. Okay, that was a big build up. You're expecting something either grand or awful here, so it's bound to disappoint. Want to improve your. That's the first line. Spouse, kid, first improve yourself. That is the best tool. Is that a brilliant poem? No. Our publishers here in New York are going to come to me and say, TJ, loved your haiku. We have to do a whole book of haiku with you? No, but it's just another way for me to express myself, my philosophies, my thoughts on life. So that's why I wanted to share that with you. We do have some. Some of you wrote questions in, in advance, and I want to answer those. By the way, when you post questions here, if you're watching this on demand, I will typically, not always, but typically answer those questions. The next day. We do a live show, which pretty soon will be every day, Monday through Friday. So if you want me to answer your question in detail, you can post your question here even if you're watching this on demand. So a question posted earlier from one of my online students, TJ what is the best way to use a teleprompter? Here's the problem with teleprompters. We've all seen people use teleprompters and they start to look like this. Their head stays frozen for the most part, their eyes look glassy, and their voice starts to speak at the same speed and the same volume and the same tone. And there's no pause. And it's bizarre. They look like they are in a hostage video. So here's the real secret to using a tele, and I'm not using a teleprompter here, but the real secret, I do use them from time to time. The real secret to using a teleprompter is variation. Part of it is visual. You need to continue moving your face, your hands, your body, not be frozen and stiff. Because when people are having a conversation, their face moves, their head moves, their body moves, and their hands move. So that's one big tip. Part of it is you have to speak a little louder and a little softer. You have to vary the tone of your voice. This, the volume of your voice, and part of it, the speed. You have to change the speed of your voice because in real conversation, you speak faster and sometimes you speak slower to make a point. It can't be always speaking like this. That would be robotic. So it's not like that. You have to vary the speed of your voice. And then finally, if you want to come across, well, reading a teleprompter, you have to pause. People who are not experienced with the teleprompter always are fearful. Oh, if I stop for a second, I'll lose the text and I'll. So they, they follow the teleprompter. The teleprompter is to help you. You're not there to follow the teleprompter. So you follow those tips and you'll be in great shape using a teleprompter. Let's go to YouTube now with a comment Clinton writes in that Rudyard Rudyard Kipling poem. If I'm certainly familiar with Kipling, I'm familiar with the poem, but forgive me, I'm not able to quote the poem verbatim. But certainly that is an absolute classic that means a lot to many, many people. So Clinton, thank you so much for sharing that. So I wanted to go to one aspect and forgive me if this sounds self serving, but people do ask me all the time, what is your newest course? What's new? What's the latest? I do have a new course on creativity, how to really spark your creativity, even by doing things like writing a poem. That's awful. You may want to be the most creative software developer. Things like spending 60 seconds a day drawing and writing a poem can help. So I've posted a link in the show Notes to my latest course and there's a very deep discount there for you, so you can check that out. My course on how to develop your creativity. Now, did you, did you say we have another comment? Okay, and again, if you have questions, comments, post them. If you're watching this on demand, feel free to post your comment or question and then I will come back to you, if not tomorrow, very, very soon. Also in the news, one of my favorite writers is Cal Newport. You've heard me mention him before. If you've watched other videos of mine. He is an expert on time management, how the brain works. He's actually a computer science professor at University of Georgetown. He has a book called Deep Work and it's all about how people can work more deeply by removing all distractions. So he has a column in today's New York Times that I thought was fascinating. In this column and I'm linked to it in the show Notes, he does an examination of a German entrepreneur named Lassie Reingars and well, he looks at the particular entrepreneur who was recently profiled in the one Wall Street Journal. This German entrepreneur has a 16 person technology startup. Nothing particularly unique about that. But here's what's interesting about this startup. They have gone to a five hour a day workday, only five hours a day. Now when you think of startup companies, you think of people working 20 hours a day. You think of at least. I think of Bill Gates in the early days when he would see employees working 12 hour shifts saying, oh, you're only working part time now because he was there 20 hours a day. But this entrepreneur is doing an experiment. He's reducing the total amount of time people work. And the theory is that it's going to dramatically increase productivity. So far the results are quite promising. The workers are not allowed to get to the office until 8am they must leave at 1pm they are not supposed to do any more work until the next morning. They also are not supposed to and are even cut off from email access and Internet access for their corporate websites and stuff. So the idea is if you're always on, which most of us are now responding to every email, responding to every text, we live in a state of constant distraction. I mean, if you're going to be at the office for 14 hours and a friend or family member sends you a text at 3:00 and you don't know if you're going to get home till 10, well, of course it makes sense to then spend a half an hour talking to that family member or friend because you got another seven hours of work. Turns out that destroys prison productivity. Now, there have been a lot of other studies about this, and for the most part the research is conclusive that when you give people harsh limits of the time they can work, there's productivity skyrockets. The whole reason we have the 40 hour work week and the nine to, especially the nine to five or the hour lunch in factories is Henry Ford did an experiment because the old way of having people work in factories and other places was six days a week, 12 hours a day. And what he found is by reducing the number of hours, the actual output per worker skyrocketed. Now, obviously, at some point you reach diminishing returns. The four Hour Work week was a great title for a book and a great metaphor. Not that many people can be wildly productive just working four hours a week, but five hours a day is an extraordinarily enticing possibility. I've been doing some experiments of this on my own. A typical day in the last two months, for example, I very consciously turn my computer off at 3:59pm to me it sounds better than 4 4pm, turn my computer off. And that's when I go for my hour walk. And it forces me to be much more productive in the day. If I know I can't just work till 6 or 7, it forces productivity. Now, it only works if you give yourself this deep work concept that Cal Newport fleshes out so brilliantly in his book Deep Work. And that is you've got to turn your cell phone off. No email, no text, no distractions. And I realize with your job, you may have a boss or a client who expects instant turnaround, but at some point in your day, there's got to be a time when you think, okay, I need no distractions. You may be working digging ditches now 9 to 5, but 7am to 8am is your time to do intense, deep work on your novel. Well, turn off your phone, disconnect from the Internet and just write for an hour. Don't multitask. Just focus on one thing. I'm interested if any of you have tried this experiment of really cutting yourself off and telling yourself, here's a clear divide, here's a clear work time, and then there's personal time. I'm not going to be on call to bosses and clients 24 hours a day. And I realize this can be tempting. I mean, I have clients from every time zone in the world. And yes, I do sometimes have a bad habit of it. If I'm up early at 6am and I see someone's called from Europe, I might want to get back to them right away. So I try to discipline myself into narrowing the amount of time of being responsive on email. Now, the other fascinating thing about this story, again I've linked to it in the show notes, is they ask their employees to check their email only twice during the workday only twice during the workday to dramatically improve their productivity. That does lead to the question of the day in every one of these shows. I try to give you one question to really think about. You don't have to answer here, although I would love it if you responded on YouTube or Facebook or any other platform you're on. And the question for the day is, do you need to be checking your email right now? Do you need to check your email in five minutes? What's the worst thing that would happen if you didn't check your email in the next hour? I realize that's three questions, but they're all related. I want you to think about that. And I like to pride myself on having a lot of good habits. As far as you know, I run every day. I lift weights every day. I start the day with a glass of water. I read a book every day. But I'm still guilty of checking my email more than once an hour. I want to know how you deal with that. So please let me know how you would answer those questions. You can feel free to share it on YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, wherever you're experiencing this show today. I'm TJ Walker. I do really want to thank you for your time for this experiment and for participating with us while we frankly were this is kind of a dry run rehearsal. We're doing this in part to work out the kinks and make sure we can do this on a broader level and a promoted level to reach a much larger audience in the very near future. So thanks for all participating. Thanks to Marceau and I will see you very, very soon. Please. If you're watching this on demand, post comments and question.