How to Take Control of Your Reality | Isaac Lidsky on Impact Theory

you know in that moment of Epiphany when I started to think more about the cane and less about you know blindness capital B I it was it was a liberating experience it was an empowering experience that's when it really you know hit me that everything I thought I knew about going beyond her being blind was was these awful lives that's when I was able to make that connection between this experience of sight we have and I said we'll wait a minute isn't that kind of exactly what I did with my fears and shortly thereafter kind of in that realization I guess was this idea that life is choice and I said if you keep if you tell yourself you're gonna live this small on the remarkable pathetic life and you're you know not gonna love or respect yourself and you know you're not gonna find a mate not you can make that happen for yourself or you can choose to have a different life everybody welcome to impact Theory you're here my friends because you believe that human potential is nearly limitless but you know that having potential is not the same as actually doing something with it so our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams all right today's guest has had one of the most staggeringly diverse and successful careers ever he began acting in commercials when he was an infant and then after being cast in roughly 150 commercials he got his big break in Hollywood when at the age of 13 he landed the role of weasel weasel on Saved by the Bell the new class overnight he was a teen celebrity but the show did not last long and it was over just as quickly as it began but rather than lament the death of his Hollywood dream he skipped a few grades graduated early and headed off to college graduating from Harvard at the age of 19 and then Harvard Law shortly thereafter he went on to clerk for Supreme Court justices Sandra Day O'Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg ultimately becoming a litigator for the US Justice Department where he argued more than a dozen cases in federal court never losing a single one somewhere in there he also founded an Internet tech company that would later self over two hundred and thirty million dollars after realizing that his high-powered career in law wasn't for him he finally left his high-paying manhattan-based international law firm and bought a rapidly failing cement company in Orlando a very unlikely choice that nearly cost him everything but the odds he turned it around and in just five short years he established OVC construction as one of the country's most successful construction companies taking it from roughly 11 million dollars in revenue to north of 150 million dollars and did I mention that he did all of this blind literally at the age of 13 he was diagnosed with a rare degenerative eye disease that slowly robbed him of his sight what he's accomplished in life puts him in rarefied company already but doing it blind puts him in a class all of his own so please help me in welcoming the New York Times bestselling author of eyes wide open the man whose main stage TED talk - received more than a million views in the first 20 days alone the only blind law clerk ever to work for the Supreme Court Isaac litski pretty amazing dude and writing that I was like your career accomplishments are so crazy like you don't need to lead with the fact that you're blind like the it would be easy to write that intro regardless of that so the fact that you were able to build a mindset that allowed you to do all of that is really astonishing now what set me on fire for you is this whole notion that we live in a virtual reality explain that what was it about losing your sight that led you to that sure and then we'll dive in so you know we have this experience that you know site is is truth right seeing is believing we say you know you open your eyes there's the world it's immediate it's passive and it's it's reality well the experience that I had sort of progressing progressively losing my sight from about a 13 to about age 25 really shattered that illusion for me and I literally saw firsthand that sight this is this magical experience of sight far from objective truth or you know external reality it's this personal virtual reality we create for ourselves that implicates our memories opinions emotions our conceptual understanding of the world all sorts of things and and yet we experience it sort of passively as this direct representation of the world and that really was if you're pardoned upon an eye opening realization for me that led to this this vision that I have because sight is true in just one way right that we shape the reality as we experience we create our own worlds in many other ways really in every way and having the opportunity to literally see that firsthand as I lost my sight you have turned out to be really one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life that's really incredible that you're able to begin to frame it that way and one of the things that was so fascinating reading your book is your breakdown of how much resources the brain sucks up with sight now walk us through that like how much of the brain is allocated to site and then what have you begun to sort of reengage with the world now that you don't have vision sure so sites obviously very important evolutionarily biologically but it's not everything and it's certainly not infallible and in some respects I think you know as I was saying that I think there's a an interesting metaphor to be made or interesting lessons to draw from the way in which we experience sight is this all-consuming you know passive reality you know versus what's what's sort of really going on in the world and was really going on in our minds and sights a crazy thing I apologize from rambling but so some electromagnetic light hits the back of our eyes you know our retinas photoreceptor cells in the back of the eye respond to that light send a signal to the brain we call the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes respond to the visible spectrum right well that spectrum of light of electromagnetic one-ten trillionth of the total spectrum of electromagnetic radiation that's out there so you know we got this back of the eye that responds to 110 trillions of electromagnetic tro magnetic radiation in our world from that you know we create this abstracted unique personal virtual world that involves like I said all sorts of things that have nothing to do with data from the eyes the site itself is really only about 10% data from the eyes and yet we walk around or decided to folks walk around thinking that they you know quote unquote know what the world looks like the idea is crazy it's not as if that to me is is one of the most powerful things about your book it and in fact the reason that you've said you wrote the book wasn't for people with disabilities or blindness specifically certainly that you wanted your kids to read it one day so that they would have that frame of reference so that they would understand that basically you're living in this virtual representation like you said it gave me the chills that only 10% of vision is created from the data that's coming from your eyes and so the rest is being constructed it's being constructed by what right so once you realize that your brain is constructing the world around you and it doesn't necessarily always serve you then it empowers you to start making choices about not only what to believe but perspective how to see things and so taking that perspective shift you've talked a lot about fear very powerfully what is it what is fear why is it such a potent force in our life and with new perspective what can we do to it sure so you know real world experience have you ever had you know the experience where you spot someone across the room you walk over tap them on the shoulder and it's a complete stranger yes right so you know we say very quickly we say oh we thought it was our friend or we thought it was our colleague and that's just not true we knew it right and you're in your world and your reality your friend was there and then it turned out they weren't so fear we if we're not careful we can experience much the same way fear is this natural response it serves an evolutionary purpose to be sure it's very helpful in a lot of ways but it's also powerfully destructive so fear is this mechanism that sort of fills in the unknown right when we when we confront times of change times of crisis you know we're uncertain you know our fears kick in and we fill in really the worst case scenario right we awful a psychologist call it authorising which i think is a great term you know we fill in the worst case scenario and we have all these dark imaginings and these are things that we tell ourselves their machinations of our own mind but much like that friend at that party these aren't things that we think we experience them as things that we know right if we're not careful when I was first diagnosed with my binding disease I knew that blindness was gonna ruin my life right it meant I was gonna live a wholly unremarkable life small and sad you know it would be the end of achievement for me I thought I'd never have a family because you know I wasn't even in love or respect myself how could I expect someone else to love or respect me and on and on and on and these were lies born of my fears born of ignorance but for some time I knew them to be true and I think had I not had the blessing of this this sort of shattering of the illusion of sight itself that I speak of they sort of peek behind the curtains and to sort of you know the way the mind works the wizard behind the curtains right if I hadn't learned to see through those fears eyes wide open I would have I mean that's the world I would have lived that would have been my life and the only difference is perspective it's in here it's it's nothing out there in the world so you know like I said this this this is this journey of mine losing my sight and then gaining this vision has been immeasurably rewarding for me and fulfilling and it's been one of the best things that happened that makes so much sense to me when I think about the man behind the curtain or though you know The Wizard of Oz once you realize that that there that's been really potent in my life as well so when I first started on my entrepreneurial journey I was a total mess and I had no idea how to make the things happen that I wanted to make happen and I found that my own ego was getting in my way and that once I realized that my ego was based on something and I could change what that was that I could flip that around then all of a sudden I could value myself based on being a learner being willing to admit that I was wrong instead of trying to be smart right or whatever and that was really transformative and being able to visualize the structures of the brain being able to understand from an evolutionary perspective why I was set up to be fearful or whatever was incredibly powerful do you find that being able to becoming aware of the visual tricks because you've said that things would morph right before your eyes as you were losing your sight I think one time you said you went to wash your hands and realize you were actually touching a urinal and but it looked like a sink until you finally realized it was a urinal just being able to visualize the the physical mechons of the brain help you with things other than sight oh absolutely and you know as you said I mean that the the value in this desire out of envision that you know that I speak of is is you know it's it's not about sight it's not about blindness it's it's about the less we can take you know in really taking control over the reality we want for ourselves literally choosing who you want to be and how you want to live your life in any moment right so yes we do this with sight but we do it with the self limiting assumptions we make about ourselves you know we do it with the way we miss perceive success and weakness and failure and strength in life which with the way that we I think really miss perceive lock the force of a lock in life our insecurities or vanities are seeming struggle to listen to each other let alone to our own hearts and and on and on and on so this really is for me it's it's uh it's it's my daily philosophy right it's it's it takes effort there was no aha moment right up on some hill where it all you know flipped you know a switch flipped and it all became perfect for me I struggle with it every day some days I'm not so good at it but it is my aspiration and it's certainly worthwhile I think on the days where you're not so good at it what actually is happening you know there are times still when I you know have fears when I fear failure right when I wrestled with that critic in my mind telling me all sorts of awful things when I you know I'm uncared for and find that I'm projecting onto others insecurities or vanities that are really all my own and step one is being conscious of it and being aware of it but that that doesn't always mean it's super easy to overcome it but I try again you know to I hold myself accountable above all else for my role in in in shaping you know the reality that I experience in every moment so I do try to you know talk to my I do talk to myself often and say listen you're feeling lousy you're worried about this you're scared about that you're upset about this and you know it's okay you're human but let's let's pull it apart and you know let's go through the strategies that I've developed over the years to you know overcome those things so I want to get into some of those strategies that in the book one of the most incredible parts was when you buy the cement company in Orlando which by the way when you look back on it and becomes insanely successful like there's a safety net to that we've all already landed we know it works out right but you didn't know that it was gonna work out you've got your business partners like telling you hey it took me 20 years to you know save up and protect my family financially you ruined it in three months your mom is having to offer you money for you to keep the company going you've already had to tell your wife that we're gonna have to declare a personal bankruptcy move in with her parents right just to really make it fun yeah and in the book you actually walk through like step by step what your brain was telling you the critic so you you differentiate between the critic and the strong man which is want to hear more about sure and then you really walk through like super raw and vulnerable those steps what what was that like for you going through that and how what were the mechanisms or that just the dialogue in your brain they used to silence the critic sure so you know it's it's I I wanted so badly to surrender gracefully at the company we bought was toxic it was a merging money and it looked like you know we had lost everything and then I had this this lifeline from from my mom this offer of essentially her life savings to try to save my business and that was a it was almost an unwanted offer right I wanted so desperately like I said to just kind of give up but again you're sort of putting my money where my mouth is on this sort of philosophy and taking a step back to you know really hold myself accountable for you know the choices I was gonna make and what I wanted in life you know on the inside of the business we were even more excited about the vision we were super excited about our team we felt we could bring you know technology and professionalism to a very unsophisticated industry and so logically rationally you know with with some money with some time you know we could turn the ship around and that was certainly a better approach than then given up right so you know when you're honest with yourself and and you know the right step you got to make and you know you got to do it and you got to get yourself there what I love is looking at your life it'd be really easy to dismiss you it's just being unnaturally smart and just saying like look this guy's genius like it is what it is I could never do what he does and what I found so empowering about your book what I think is so cool about what you're doing in this phase of your life is in the book you you walk people through where you're saying you're putting this map together these incredible entrepreneurs that have come before you that have been bold but you're not that good like you're never gonna live up to that and I was just like whoa whoa wait a second like the guy who it would be tempting for me to just dismiss as being a naturally smart is saying it's easy for him to like dismiss other people as being unnatural smart and it is this so natural thing for everybody to have that voice in their head that says that they can't do it and then the the punchline is that it was basic execution that ended up pulling you out of that so talk to me what is the strong man what is that whole concept yeah so you know the this critic in our minds you know it's that that nasty voice that is quick to pass judgment to tell us what we can't do you know to keep us off the field to tell us what others are thinking and saying about us right and the way this sort of critic can be so effective so powerful in kind of dominating our lives in my experiences by through an insistence on perfection right which is impossible the critic insist upon perfection which essentially guarantees our failure through comparison relative merit right that critic will compare you to anybody right real or imagined from any era especially when you compare unfavorably you know I'm the critic will swap out you know different definitions of success or value or purpose or you know for your own and you know you will need to notice it so you know the critic and of course this comes from Teddy Roosevelt's you know brilliant remarks about the critic and the strong man the critic for me really is sort of that embodiment of you know again our fear of failure you know are our own worst enemy in our minds Roosevelt strong man on the other hand you know as someone who has no use for perfection right only progress i someone who values effort and growth whose focus is the moment is momentum right the next step not this overarching Enterprise this overwhelming endeavor but what is my next step and you know for the strong man success lies in in striving and actually striving towards a noble pursuit which at the end of the day is the only thing we can control right whether or not we are striving to our best toward a noble pursuit and the outcome is less important it's funny you mentioned that at the time that I was going through it I did not know that we were gonna turn around oh do you see construction and it would be a great success you know you make a big decision and you know later it either works out phenomenally well or is a catastrophic failure well it's so tempting in the face of the catastrophic failure to go back and beat yourself up and say oh this was the worst decision and I'm an idiot and this was terrible and likewise in the face of great success it's very easy for people to tell themselves well man I must have been a genius right how did the smartest guy there is and just as a law of physics right as a proposition of logic that can't be true it cannot be that subsequent events you know determine the quality of actions you make decisions you make conversations you have you know behaviors you exhibit you have to assess those things from the perspective of you know the time in which they take place so how does that how does that pain out in my experience was I a you know you know visionary genius to buy this struggling construction company you know when we did know I mean was a it was a disaster we thought we were buying a you know a humble company but a going concern and we we bought some you know company that was sinking like a stone did it work out well yeah of course and it worked out phenomenally well I'm blessed beyond contemplation you know again I credit the team with that and the timing and the vision and luck and all those things but I'm not gonna go back and say it was you know a great decision and likewise this is the harder part likewise you know I think it's really important that we don't you know we don't read our own press right we don't get too excited about great outcomes where maybe the the decisions that led to them or the journey along the way was you know was less than worthy and that makes a lot of sense there's a quote in your book about the strongman that that echoes what you just said which I thought was so powerful I want to read it exactly as it is the strongman savers the first step he is impatient for it craves it as long as he strives valiantly with his first step he has won what do you mean by that we are you know so often our own worst enemies right we we keep ourselves uh you know off the stage you know for fear of bad reviews and don't even realize that you know in the process we're you know forgetting how to dance and losing the joining right and it's just such a shame you know for me that first step of the strong man to me kind of conveys encompasses you know sort of victory over that critic right that's where you've said look maybe this is crazy maybe it's not maybe you know maybe everybody thinks I'm you know way off base here whatever all the what-ifs although you know why not why I should watch whatever I put all that aside and I have committed to you know enter the arena and that is the defining moment I think for the strong man and well I I think when we're honest with ourselves and when we start to recognize significance in moments like that in our lives when we start to say well if I did this it would be it's a big move right and it doesn't have to be a huge move financially or economic sense to anyone else why it's a big move it's a big move for you it's important to pay attention to those feelings because often that's that's the strong man inside trying to tell you we can do this you know we let's get over this you know our fears let's get over our you know our self-doubt and let's let's do this you've talked earlier about how people miss perceive things they miss perceive success and that the critic will even change the definition of success what is an anchor point of vision of success is there something that's Universal that you think applies to everybody or is there a process to defining success in a way that will resonate I don't think so personally I think you know Who am I to even begin to contemplate what someone else should or should not aspire to do with their time or their lives or whatever right we're all masters of our own universes right alone in our own worlds and and I you know I don't purport to tell anyone how they should behave or what they should aspire to or what success should be however however I certainly think everybody you know should should figure it out you you should figure it out for yourself because time is going to go by either way and you could live a life of happenstance of reaction you know or you can take some time to figure out how you want to spend your time who you want to be who you want to be at work you know you want to be as a parent who you want to be as a spouse and on and on and on and and you know you can you can try to be that person and you can try to live that life so that's what I have in mind when I say you know you you really should define your success your purpose and and labor towards it well let's get really specific then so you had such a diverse life one I'll just walk through a few why not you have success in Hollywood but you immediately stop you then have success at law that is just on another planet and you stopped obviously the tech firm ended up doing very well but as far as I know you moved out of that fairly rapidly so all of these things like you've been able to break free of the trap that most people get into which is there's momentum in their life they're succeeding everyone says they're crazy when they go to leave but you've done that over and over and over so you obviously are way in touch with your balance sheet so like what walk us through one or two of those and really say like leaving law I'm gonna guess was the hardest one like you'd so that was a tough invested like how what did you walk through what were the I've got this going but not this so that was a tough one you know unless and until I actually thought about it rationally illogically right and then it ran and it was pretty obvious what sure those are often the hardest decisions to make right but so you know here I was I had been blessed to have phenomenal experiences in law in the public sector right working for the Justice Department clerking for a couple US Supreme Court justices I loved that and then I sort of took the easy path the direct path you accepted a phenomenal cushy job at a very fancy elite law firm international law firm and parents were very very proud I had gorgeous business cars and a skyscraper office and all that but you know I was expected to you know to work to build you know 60 70 80 crazy hours every week and I was involved in kind of litigation as warfare with a constant view towards the Billings of the law firm and and it just wasn't the way I wanted to practice law a lot of people warn people I wanted to practice a lot with I certainly didn't want to spend you know 100 hours a week doing it just none of that made any sense so huh everybody thought I was completely nuts and maybe they're right but you know the more I thought about it the more I said look you know nothing is permanent in life there's nothing that says if I ever want to practice law again I can't go back to it or in some other capacity or you know some other city or whatever but you know for now what's important to me and what am I looking to accomplish in my life going back to that balance sheet and at that point my life really by far above all else you know we was it was really quality of life and time with my family got the talking with my roommate Zack as you mentioned and and you know we thought hey let's buy a small business together and he would help me you know you pay for most of it but he would keep his fancy day job I leave behind my fancy day job and run it and you know what could possibly go wrong so that was the thesis I guess you would say that brought us to Orlando and that you know sort of took me to take the helm as the first chief executive officer of our residential construction subcontractor and of course you know they say man plans God laughs didn't it didn't turn out quite that way but that was a good decision at the time to leave law that was the right decision for me and my family so then the construction company blows up you make a lot of right decisions I'm sure you'd tribute it a lot obviously to the team but to luck as well yes but now things are going well and instead of just continuing to scale it and grow it you decide that you want to back off again a pretty atypical choice well so look you know again my goal was quality of life for my family you've said that happiness is a choice sure in what way how do we choose to be happy everything's our choice every moment of your life is a choice how do you want to spend that moment who do you want to be it is not the circumstances we confront that dictate the lives we experience it just cannot be there are counter examples all over the place I'm just a blind guy like that's no big deal but you think about your prisoners of war who endure the most unspeakable of you know human atrocities Nazi concentration camp survivors and on and on on and you find examples of remarkable people who despite these circumstances make a choice to find purpose in life to find joy to be a source of strength for others in their lives and you know these these shining folks you know again to my mind prove categorically it's not the circumstances we confront that dictate how we you know the lies of experience so choose to be happy literally in every moment and again I'm not saying it's easy again and I'm not you know I'm not saying so it's easy for me but it's certainly a worthwhile endeavor I mean you know you spill on yourself or you you knock something over or you know you're late for a meeting there you know it can be rail you it can be you know something quote-unquote awful would you know meanwhile most of the world is worried about you know health care and food and clothing but you know or you can choose to laugh about it and you can choose to have fun with it you can choose to let it go and again every I think every moment is is you know an amalgam of of precisely those choices and I think it behooves us to spend some time thinking about our answers and do you have a process or a mantra or is it as simple as choosing to laugh when you want to do anything else so you actually manifest that happiness it's not simple I don't think there's much in life that simple everything's nuanced it really just sort of it depends on on the context here in times of crisis is a little different than if you're a failure and other sorts of things so there's some nuances there and then you know other strategies I think we can bring to bear to look at things like luck in our lives and the fundamental idea like I said is you know you're the master of your reality and you know once you buy that once you're willing to take responsibility for the fact that you know you are literally creating the life you are experiencing the reality you know your reality is your creation again the rest is details and so getting into some of those details at least of that process so we're living in a reality that we create which I buy into more deeply than you can imagine literally my entire company is predicated on that notion the success I've had in life is as a result of realizing that in the same way that you have what are what are the processes of making that subconscious process right because we're not consciously creating this virtual reality it's happening subconsciously so how do we take conscious control of that or what are the insertion points to grab on to something like that so that we can begin to construct a reality that's more useful sure so you know how to strip away some of the you know some of the noise some of the some of the chaos let's take you know again this notion of the critic and and this notion of the way we you know can keep ourselves off the stage an hour can be our own you know worst enemies in terms of our fear of failure you know there's several at several sort of key moments in my life there were two really simple questions that I've used to try to take back control of my reality in those situations you know one being what is it truly that I aim to accomplish I think very often when we find ourselves debilitated by you know fear of failure that that you know that critic anxiety you know whatever it can be a relief to say well wait a minute I am loading so much junk onto this on to what's going on here and to what's at stake let me just take a step back and remind myself what am I in this for right what am I trying to accomplish what you know what what is my endeavor here what's my purpose and oftentimes in my experience once when you do that there's kind of a big sigh of relief oh yeah it really isn't all that big a deal this isn't so bad and the second one really is is uh what's my best next step right let's focus on today this moment right now in truth that's all there ever is right so we spent a lot of time on doom and gloom future foreboding you know awful izing and not enough time on this moment right now what is my best next step what can I do right now to make progress and you know the truth of the matter is the world changes you know a million times a day you're gonna change a million times a day who knows what's gonna happen on the journey from you know from A to Z just focus on getting from A to B and get that done and we'll worry about coz later I love that notion of taking action and strength and you in the book you have an amazing quote about that that I want to read which is strength on exercised will atrophy in action makes us weaker so flipping that and thinking about something else you said in the book which is there is no blindness with the capital B only fire hydrants which I thought was so amazing like how do you use those concepts of encouraging yourself to be strong to take action with that notion of and in fact define what does it mean when you say there's no capital B blindness only fire hydrants so I was diagnosed with my binding disease when I was 13 before I was aware of any symptoms so you know those awful eyes I spoke of earlier that you know that awful sort of a narrative I told myself about how it would be the you know the ruin of my life you know I spent three four years really really feeling that and that was were some some awful years there it was easy to have this perspective or without even knowing it I have this sort of perspective of even blindness capital B to your point this amorphous force this sort of you can't describe it it's this is this foreboding it's it's this awful future it's this monster that's gonna you know track me down and destroy my life and that's not a very productive way to think about charge that is not a you know a construct that's susceptible to much by way of progress concrete progress you mentioned the fire hydrants you know I went to meet with an occupational therapist at one point when I still had a great deal of useful sight but well before had it ever started using a cane and I was prepared to talk about you know blindness capital B I assumed you know she was the expert on you know low vision and going blind and we were gonna be talking about you know tomorrow in the future and this awful you know fate and she dove in and said well do you use a cane and I said no and she said well do you ever hurt yourself I said of course I hurt myself right I walked into a fire hydrant a couple days ago and this and that and you know it wasn't until she had to literally spell it out for me like do you realize that if you did learn to use a cane you wouldn't bump into things and hurt yourself that it just kind of clicked for me and I was like god that's really all this boils down to it's it's a million small details like that which aren't so bad and they're straightforward and they're certainly susceptible to some type of progress but you know you can you can look at it as blindness capital B this again amorphous force or you can look at it as nothing more than this oscillation of discrete practical challenges and the fact is every single you know human being every human faces their own discrete constellation of a challenge right it's part of the human condition there's nothing special or unique in these these big challenges or obstacles but how we handle it and how it's used to look at them that makes all the difference in the world talk to me about the difference between effort and results what's the difference which one matters oh effort absolutely effort matters a lot more than results results are the factor of a lot more things luck being a big one timing circumstance who knows like we were saying earlier you know there are you know there's there stories of countless entrepreneurs who great vision great Drive worked hard you know tried to make it happen and it just it didn't work out that's the nature of the beast well do you do say those people you know waste of their time you see their failure didn't know they worked hard they say I strove towards a worthy pursuit right they made maybe found fulfillment and who they are expression of their best self okay didn't work out you know that's such as life and again the opposite is true too there are a lot of terrible people in this world who seem to achieve what we we loosely call success right whatever that means financial success popularity celebrity whatever you want to call and you know there are terrible people who without much by way of of effort or character you know arrived at these outcomes so what so one thing that you've had to go through that I think would be really hard for most people and not necessarily that exact thing but when you're losing something or if you're overweight or if you're living with your mom like whatever your thing is where you feel unworthy and you had said that you didn't think you would ever get married didn't think you would ever have kids because you weren't worthy of love you didn't you didn't think you would ever love and respect yourself so I'll get somebody else Levin respect you so how did you get over that you know really in that in that it's sort of in that moment of Epiphany when I met with that occupational therapist Chris and I started to think more about the cane and less about you know blindness capital B I it was it was a liberating experience was an empowering experience started to talked about all sorts of practical solutions I could employ to make my life a little easier a little better and you know that that's when it really you know hit me well you know first and foremost that everything I thought I knew about going being blonde was was these awful eyes that's when I was able to make that connection between this experience of sight we have this virtual reality that we experience as truth and I said well wait a minute isn't that kind of exactly what I did with my fears and there shortly thereafter kind of in that realization I guess was was this idea that life is choice and I said if you keep if you tell yourself you're gonna live this small unremarkable pathetic life and you're you know not gonna love or respect yourself and you know you're not gonna find a mate know you can make that happen for yourself or you can choose to have a different life that is so powerful and when people understand that you're gonna become what you believe about you so much you talked a lot about that in the book the self-fulfilling prophecy absolutely how is it that like what are you gonna teach your kids about self fulfilling prophecies what should they be telling themselves how should they be thinking like if somebody watching this wants to empower themselves are there things that are like you could just plug and play this belief that thing you repeat whatever sure so you know you know again throughout the book I talked about you know this idea in different in different contexts or concepts so you know struggling with insecurity struggling with how we perceive ourselves now others perceive us for example you know we talked a little bit about luck we talked about fear and in different contexts or the specifics vary you know that said at the core really is a commitment to introspection right introspection I think is a lost art we can know everything that's going on with everybody every single one of our quote-unquote friends and secondary friends and tertiary friends through Facebook and LinkedIn and you know but it really have no idea what's going on with ourselves in our own minds and hearts and that's crazy to me that's absolutely crazy but so introspection I think is where it all begins a commitment to talk to yourself to figure out you know where you're at what you're thinking what you're telling yourself what decisions are making and why and the rest really flows from that let's talk about communication sure so what you've done with your company culture is pretty staggering and you obviously have and I've been very aware of it in this interview as well which total side note here for a second then I'll get to that question sure do you intentionally communicate with me with your eyes well yes I guess it's the shorter because you look me dead in my eye and literally through this whole interview I have to keep going he's blind he's not seeing you nod like yeah and I find myself giving you those micro expressions that we would normally communicate with right because it is so convincing when you help me I'm like is he for real Brian like somebody Tessa's guy I've had I've had people insist that I could see and then I was pretending to be it's compelling man is awesome because I'm like you ought you got me tell you all the advantages that the pretending to be blind it's just I mean there's no end to how convenient my day is if I live is a blindness it's just great nope so I grew up with sight and I grew up you know acting as well and so I'm expressive and I haven't lost that with my son with the loss of my sight so you know I do look at people I know where you are because I hear where you know where your voice is coming from it's amazing what you pick up from from your ears if you if you pay attention my kids know that I know when they're looking at me and when they're not wow so I'll say you know what one of my sons in particular I love it although when he's not looking at me when I'm talking to him I'll say like are you looking at me and then they'll look at me in a go yeah yeah dad I'm looking at you I'm like okay were you looking at me no I wasn't it's like the answer literally the question yeah but but so I do probably get more information about what's going on with you than you would think yeah it's it's really impressive quite frankly and it made me think about what you're doing in your company and how you'll have you'll be talking to them and have to remind them hey I can't see if you're nodding and that that ended up becoming this incredibly advantageous thing because people had to really put words to how they felt I really there were times when I stressed out a lot I was anxious about the fact that you know I thought maybe my blindness was a burden on my team and a burden on my company because you know we get in these meetings and someone makes a point and you know and then silence I don't hear a thing I'm like well what do we think silence again then I gotta be well guys are you nodding you know oh yeah sorry we're not in you know we forget that you can't see haha yeah it's yep still can't see that hasn't changed but you know and it was again it was awkward but I thought like again eyes wide open hold yourself accountable well maybe it is awkward maybe you're insecure about it maybe you're projecting yeah let's go through the steps here well this there's a practical solution here is it pretty important that you communicate with your team and you understand what they're saying yeah that's pretty important is it worth the effort to communicate you know orally yeah it's worth that effort so okay uh what next time this happens you know note to self next time they're all nodding or whatever I'm gonna say okay you know what guys let's go around the table I'm gonna ask each of you one at a time just say yes or no and that was the aha moment because you know of course first time I did it you know you agree or disagree everyone knots well folks I can't see let's go around the table you assume if everybody nodded everybody's gonna say yes right never happened once you get up well that's not it yes you know well let's talk about and you you wind up having an hour-long conversation that winds up being you know critical to the development of the team the growth of the business whatever that you might have skipped entirely if you had just left it at a knot so ultimately I came to learn that the the anxiety the awkwardness the tension was not born of my blindness but was kind of a necessary byproduct of true meaningful communication particularly in the workplace context right where everyone wants to succeed we valued you know your livelihoods at stake and so it's not a natural thing again you know sometimes we're sending you sometimes you know true and meaningful communication is not is not the defaults not the natural thing but if you can inspire a team encourage a team show a team how to relate at that level there's nothing you can't do and I know you say and it was one of your principles is that that's alive but you got to tell yourself that which I agree with yeah it's like so powerful you've said that fear rushes into the oh yeah how do we get rid of the unknown if it isn't by filling it with fear well information helps fear again is this evolutionary response there are some helpful reasons to freak out like for example if it's a you know vicious animal that's about to eat you and your caveman or whatever even if you've never seen this thing before it's probably good idea to say I should get running but so how do you overcome that we'll step one again introspection awareness realize that you know you're one you're afraid and to do a you know careful dissection what do you know what do you not know and then the most critical bucket is what do you think you know because that's where we get ourselves into a ton of trouble the things we think we know that we really don't so it's a shame that fear often no just at that moment when we face the greatest need to to take in new information right to thrive to transcend you know that's really when fear will it will be to retreat deep inside our minds but that's when you know again it's it's your choice to succumb or to overcome all right before I ask my last question where can these guys find you online the easiest place to find me is just my website litski calm which is my last name li d s KY calm I've got a blog there a podcast you can find my book my TED talk but the one thing that I asked folks is if any of this means anything of you and/or you learn more or read the book and any of that means anything of you please let me know what you think you can provide feedback directly on the website I read every single submission and and that's why I do this so so please let me know we think it's incredible alright my last question is what is the impact that you want to have on the world well first and foremost I guess that the if I gotta have is I want to leave this world with four happy thriving children and I mean I want that desperately beyond that you know I I feel that I was I've been blessed with this vision I have Morna blindness and and the more people I can share it with and the more impact it could have in their lives in helping them to you know choose who they want to be that's a real gift to Isaac thank you so much for coming to do incredible for guys I'm telling you right now his book eyes wide open you're going to want to read it is absolutely incredible it really is a life philosophy about not letting the unn be filled with fear about really facing the truth and asking yourself like he said what is the most optimal decision that I can make action that I could take right now in order to move myself forward it is absolutely incredible the amount of vulnerability that he shows in the book the way that his mind works understanding that we live in this virtual reality and that means that you have control and my favorite that everything is a choice I hope you guys heard that I hope you heard that you can choose even happiness that there are steps it is not easy but it is a process that you can follow in order to actually embody that and experience that in your life read his book it's literally an instruction manual on how to figure these things out it's absolutely incredible it really is an insanely powerful book I cannot recommend it highly enough alright guys if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care hey everybody thank you so much for watching and being a part of this community if you haven't already be sure to subscribe you're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset cultivating grit and unlocking your full potential

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 284,250

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, isaac lidsky, isaac lidsky eyes wide open, eyes wide open, reshape reality, how to take control of your reality, how to take control

Id: ttPkHABdyZY

Length: 45min 12sec (2712 seconds)

Published: Tue Apr 03 2018