- Hello Believe Nation, it's Evan. My own word is believe
and I believe in people more than they believe in themselves and my sincere hope is that
if you believe in yourself as much as I believe in you, you'll be able to change the planet. So to help you on your journey,
today I'm doing a video on the 10 skills that are hard to learn but will pay off forever. And as always guys, if you're watching, if you hear something that
really resonates with you, leave it down in the comments below, it's much more likely
to stick with yourself and if you leave a comment
within the first few hours of the video going live,
you have a chance to win one of two daily prizes. Enjoy! Skill number one is speaking up. - One of the things you
would want to be sure to do is whether you like it or not, get very comfortable, it make take awhile, with public speaking for example. I mean, that's an asset that
will last you 50 or 60 years and it's a liability if
you don't like doing it or are uncomfortable doing
it that will also last you 50 or 60 years and it's a necessary skill. - Skill number two is
being honest with yourself. - One of the big things that
all startups do is they lie to themselves, over and over and over. Mine's faster, mine's
cheaper, mine's better, mine's this, mine's that. No it's not and the
reason it's not is because whoever it is you're competing with, it's not like they're ignoring you. It's not like, oh my goodness, this guy just started on Shopify
in the startup competition and he's doing a million
dollars this year, woe is me, I might as
well close up the doors. What are they doing? I'm going to copy what they're
doing and now you've got to stay ahead and so, you
know, you've got to be very careful as a entrepreneur
to be brutally honest with yourself and those
are some of the things that you'll hear from me as a mentor. That know what you know,
know what you don't know, but you got to know your
business better than anybody. - Skill number three is having confidence. - I don't know if you'd
agree with me on this, but in many ways, one of the key factors to legendary success isn't
your natural ability. It's not whether you
have the right product, it's not whether you're
in the right field, it's not whether you've
had a blessed background. It's not whether you have the right IQ. I want you to really think
about and deconstruct and play with maybe later
tonight win your journal. I want you to deconstruct
this idea of confidence and it seems like a very simple
work but just think about it in your own life. When you have confidence or
we could even call it fire, when you have that fire
within you, that confidence, that interior bravery, you almost have this power
to do whatever it takes to get your brave vision done. You see, in this world, it's
not about, in many ways, your strategy and your
business or your ability in your life, it's about
this thing called confidence and we've all had these times
in our lives when we are full of confidence and what
other people see as a problem, we simply do see as an opportunity. Other people see it as a
stumbling block or a wall and we see it as a stepping
stone or this solution. So confidence is simply
something that you really want to wire in. Confidence is something
you really want to develop, confidence is a practice,
confidence is a muscle and like any muscle,
the more you focus on it and practice it and train it,
the stronger your confidence is going to grow and I
just have to say it again. When you are at a place in your life, when there is ongoing,
steady stream of confidence moving through your mindset,
moving though your heartset, you do the heroic in your business and you achieve the
remarkable in your life. - Skill number four is listening. - Nelson Mandela is a
particularly special case study in the leadership world because
he is universally regarded as a great leader. You can take other personalities
and depending on the nation you go to, we have different
opinions about other personalities but Nelson
Mandela, across the world, is universally regarded as a great leader. He was actually the son of a tribal chief and he was asked one day, how did you learn to be a great leader? And he responded that he
would go with his father to tribal meetings and
he remembers two things when his father would
meet with other elders. One, they would always sit in a circle and two, his father was
always the last to speak. You will be told your
whole life that you need to learn to listen. I would say that you need to
learn to be the last to speak. I see it in board rooms
every day of the week. Even people who consider
themselves good leaders who may actually be decent leaders
will walk into a room and say, here's the problem, here's what I think, but I'm interested in your opinion, let's go around the room. It's too late. The skill to hold your
opinions to yourself until everyone has spoken does two things. One, it gives everybody else the feeling that they have been heard. It gives everyone else the ability to feel that they have contributed. And two, you get the benefit
of hearing what everybody else has to think before
you render your opinion. The skill is really to keep
your opinions to yourself. If you agree with somebody, don't nod yes. If you disagree with
somebody, don't nod no. Simply sit there, take it
all in, and the only thing you're allowed to do is ask
questions so that you can understand what they mean
and why they have the opinion that they have, you must
understand from where they are speaking, why they
have the opinion they have, not just what they are saying and at the end, you will get your turn. It sounds easy, it's not. Practice being the last to speak. That's what Nelson Mandela did. - Skill number five is managing your time. - My challenge in our
generation is that gradually through entertainment, through
television, through media, through every way possible,
we are living in a generation of the dumbing down of ideas because we have traded
effectiveness for busyness. Statistics say, yeah somebody
ought to clap on that. We are busier than any other
generation we have seen in the last three to 400 years. We are so busy, we are
busier than a one armed wallpaper hanger, we're just
busy, you'll get it later, don't worry about it,
it'll hit you in a minute. We are just as busy as
we can be and we think because we're busy, we're effective. But I want you to challenge
your schedule for a minute and ask yourself, are you
really being effective or is your life cluttered
with all kinds of stuff that demands you and
drains you and taxes you and stops you from being
your highest and best self and are you substituting
busyness and all the chaos that goes along with busyness
from being effective? Let me tell you, a bunch
of scientists got together, they begin to do some research
and they begin to determine that 80% of the things we do
are busy things that we do in an area that is not effective,
that the average person only spends 20% of their time
doing the thing that they are really gifted, creative
at, passionate about, excited to do and the rest
of it is all the dismal, dumb stuff that we all have
to do in order to survive. Just crazy stuff that we're doing. Wonder what would happen
if we would go from doing 80% of things that are
busy but not effective and 20% of the things
that are really effective, if we would switch those
numbers around and only give 20% of our time to the
things that we have to do and 80% of our time to thing that we were created to do. (audience applause) Wonder what would happen to your life. Now think about it a minute,
there's a lot of things you could take from me
and I could make it. You could take my suit, I got another one. You could take my car,
I could get another one. You could take my house,
I could get another house. But when you take my time, you
have taken something from me that is totally irreplaceable. We take all kinds of questions
from money management. We know how to manage our
money, we know how to repair our houses, we're working
on our hair and our bodies and all of this kind of stuff. We do everything except
the most important thing is to value our time. It takes time to be creative. You were meant to be creative. You were created in the
likeness and the image of a creator and in that
likeness and in that image, you have creativity. If you had time, you would be creative but in the absence of
time and with busyness and clutter the ring ring
ring, the phone ring, beep, beep, beep. You all got music playing on
your phone, all kinds of stuff. No matter kind of song you put on, after awhile you hate to
hear it because every time you hear that sound you
know it's somebody else wanting something else from
you that's taking you away from what you are gifted
and created to do. - Skill number six is stop whining. - So I have this thing that
I've been promoting called No Whining Wednesdays. Wednesday you cannot whine,
complain, or criticize. And people are like, well what is whining? Whatever you think it is, don't do it. And every time you do it, you have to put a quarter in a jar. If you whine about anything,
I can't, I'm tired, why me, why don't you? Every one of them will cost you a quarter. Or complaining, why don't
you, why do you always, how come you, I am always, they never. Oop, cost you a quarter. Then last week, I had people
send me pictures of their jars of quarters. Oh my god. (laughs) What they said to me also
was, this was wonderful because I was never, ever
aware of how much whining and complaining and criticizing I do. I've got mothers doing
it with their children. So Wednesday is No Whining Wednesday. We need to practice that. We need to stop whining
about what isn't happening, what we don't have, what we can't do, what somebody didn't do. We got to get it clean in 2014. No whining, no complaining,
no criticizing. - Skill number seven is
staying present in the moment. Skill number eight, being consistent. - Success is not a destination. People always think that
oh my god, this person's so successful because they've
had a successful movie or a successful show but
success is a journey. You have to consistently
always, always be successful. That's when you're really
successful because otherwise you'll be remembered for your last failure and I've had a few but I
just have to compensate for my failure by just getting up and running. The more time you take
to sort of mourn it, you're wasting that much more
time in being successful. So you just have to perk
up, pick yourself up, dust yourself off and
just say what can I do? There's always a solution. You can't expect, people
always get mistaken that just because this year
has been what it has been, it's been because I
consistently worked hard for about 10 years. So now, I know my job enough to be able to be appreciated for it. But if I hadn't had the last 10 years, I would never have had this
year or the year before that. So success is not a destination where you, or power is not like okay
today you're powerful. You have to consistently be powerful and consistently be successful
and that is a journey. - Skill number nine is
getting enough sleep. - Well, first of all, I prioritize sleep. That means saying no to
things you want to do. It's not easy. - [Interviewer] No, it's hard,
I think the hardest thing. - Last night, you know,
Sheryl Sandberg interviewed me at the San Fran Symphony Hall
and then I had to sign books and I would have loved to
go and have dinner with her but I went to bed. You know, because if I
had gone out to dinner and hadn't gotten my at least
seven hours sleep that I need and had to get up early to do TV, I would not be enjoying
being here with you now and I'm really enjoying
it and I'm 100% present and I'm not tired and I
hate being tired more than I hate anything. - And skill number 10 is having empathy. - I've thought a lot about
the power of empathy. In my work, it's the
current that connects me and my actual pulse to
a fictional character in a made up story, it allows
me to feel pretend feelings and sorrows and imagined pain. In my nervous system is
sympathetically wired and it conducts that current to you sitting in a movie theater and to the woman sitting next to you and to her friend so that we
all feel that it's happening to us at the same time. It's a very mysterious
and valuable resource of the human species and women, I think, access
it most effortlessly. We cry at sad movies, we
don't feel we lose face or stature or position doing it. We see a news story that
enrages us and we write letters through tears, our hearts pounding. I often used to wonder why
human beings developed these inconvenient and embarrassing responses, this sniffling, choking, wet obstruction. You know, the thing
physicians and soldiers and stock traders and journalists
and fashion models and politicians and news commentators and venture capitalists
all must suppress in order to work most efficiently. (audience laughing) I thought what possible
value, function could it serve in the Darwinian scheme of you know, survival of the fittest and the strongest and the most heavily armed. (audience laughing) No seriously, I thought
why and how did we evolve with this weak and useless passion in tact within the deep heart's core. And the answer as I've
formulated it to myself is that empathy is the engine that powers all the best in us. It is what civilizes us. It is what connects us. - Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I'd love to know what did
you think of this video? What did you take from it
that you're going to apply immediately somehow to your
life or to your business? What was your favorite from the 10 and how you're going to apply? Leave it down on the comments below, I'm really curious to find out. Also if you think there's
11, 12, 13 that you want to add to the list, leave
it down on the comments. I'm super curious to see
what you have to say. Thank you guys again for
watching, I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is. Much love, I'll see you soon.
