You don't achieve worthwhile goals
quickly or easily they take time,
they take struggle, they take relentless pursuit day in and day out. That's what
it takes and that's why I say, you've got to pay attention. You have to watch, you have to watch
every single second because those seconds they turn into minutes, then minutes turn
into hours and hours turn into days and days turn into years and so that second? That second that just
went by, that counted and so did that second and so did that
one and in those precious seconds you're either building or you were decaying. You
were either gaining ground or you were losing ground in that second
and in every second. Every second counts. So make every second count. You're still
here and you get another chance. This day to do better and be better.
Another chance to become more of who you were created and what you were created
to fulfill. Everyone in the world is capable of living outside the role or
beyond the roles that they place themselves in no matter what it is
you're not just a Dad. You're not just a banker, you're not just a brother or a
son or a convict. It doesn't matter like everyone is
bigger, much bigger, infinitely bigger than the roles they place themselves in
and is capable of reaching potential greater than anything they could imagine. You can live the life you desire. It's
right there in front of you but in order to achieve it you must first see it and then
believe it and then you must graciously ask and train your brain to help you
execute your vision. So when you start to focus and you
delete distraction from your life and you start to get seriously invested in
doing one thing staggeringly well and you practice that one thing over and
over, a term to think about is mundanity. You do one simple seemingly
insignificant thing every day around your main skill and it's very mundane
with small daily improvements over time lead to world-class results. Well here's
what happens in your brain. You start to isolate a single neuro circuit around
that skill and that starts to trigger a certain type of brain cell called an
oligodendrocyte which then releases myelin. Myelin is a fatty tissue that
starts to wrap around that single neuro circuit related to that main skill
you've been practicing and when myelin starts to wrap around
the brain circuit, what happens is you have accelerated learning times, you can
see more quickly, heightened perception and you'll learn more quickly
and that is really the quote unquote secret of the great producers. It's not a
result of some natural gift but their daily practice, their relentlessness and
their grit, their work ethic and their singular focus and sacrifice. I don't care what you've been through. I
don't care who you are. I don't care where you came from. I don't care what
your past is like, I don't care what your stress is like, I don't care what stress
you're under, I don't care what problems you have right now, I don't care what you
don't have right now, all I care about is what your mindset is like in terms of
today and your future. Are you going to make today count? Because that's all you
can control and that's all that matters.
It doesn't matter where you start guys it doesn't matter what talents you're
born with. It's about where you finish and this race isn't over. It's not over.
You can still come in first in the marathon but you got to start today. You
got to start now. You have everything, you have everything you need is inside you.
It doesn't matter what you don't have now because you can go get it but it
starts today. It starts with a commitment it starts with the principle, it starts with
the discipline, it starts with effort, it starts with energy, it starts with an
idea that you're gonna make today count and a lot of people want to know what my
routine is like. Well, it's predicated on that idea - that I'm going to make today count and that means that before
everyone is up, I'm going to have entered a peak state already.
I'm here to help you but you have to help yourself. No one's going to do it
for you in terms of the action but you got to say something with me. "I'm going
to make this thing work. I'm going to live out my dreams. I'm going to live out
my purpose, I'm going to be who I was destined to be, I'm going to fulfill all of the tasks necessary to live out that purpose, to become who I really want to be. Not be who I am shackled by in the past, not live in a world of constraint." Most people in life, they die or they
retire before they see all the huge results. Why is that? Because when they
were in high school and in college they pissed away all their time. They didn't
build a great foundation and so they never experienced what's possible to
experience in life. They never experienced that high level of
satisfaction and fulfillment of being on a sense of mission in life, of having a
life purpose, of living their passions, of having an incredible career. You have the
potential to gain a lot and you have the potential also to lose everything that
you could gain. In the sense that you'll gain it if you put in the work right now
to build your foundation and you'll lose it if you slack off and you're lazy and
you don't think about your future. Then you will not gain all this stuff and in
fact your life will probably go downwards, not upwards because you can't
experience negative growth in life. That's actually what happens with many
people is that not only are they stuck but they get more miserable, more angry, more depressed, more of a victim as life goes on because they start to really see
like, oh man I wasted my youth and all the energy I had, and all the free time I had, I
wasted all that on partying and drinking and other stupid things. I didn't invest it
properly and now I feel like a victim and now I feel like I can't turn it
around. This is a matter of life and death. I don't know who told y'all. I
don't know who told y'all this was about math, this is about English, this is about
science, right y'all thinking why do I need math to blow up? Why do I need English
to blow up? Look this is not about, this is not about what you think it is.
This is life and death. School is about setting a foundation. Are you hear what
I'm telling you? I need you to try. I need you to try to read every single word. If
you don't know it, write it down, look it up. I need you to try to do every single
assignment. I need you to try to go to every single class, I just need you to
try because I know something about you. I know something about you. I know when you
put forth 120 percent effort it ain't nothing you can't do. It ain't nothing
you can't accomplish. I don't want you to live to die anymore. I want you to die to
live because I know if you try, I know if you put forth 120
percent effort it ain't nothing you can't do but live in a world of freedom
and that's yours to have. That's a choice that you can make. That's a decision that
you can follow through on, that you can carry out, you gotta wanna make this
thing work for you. You gotta make today count. What are you doing with your time?
Are you wasting it, are you going to make today count because it's precious or are
you gonna let it just slip away? Let it fade? You need to be in a peak
state at all times. That's gonna be predicated on your will, your intensity
your integrity, your character, your energy, your effort, to get what you want
out of this life. It's on you. This is iPhone 10. It is the biggest
leap forward since the original iPhone and we are calling it iPhone. Today,
today Apple is going to reinvent the phone. When I was 17 I read a quote that
went something like: 'if you live each day as if it was your last someday you'll
most certainly be right.' It made an impression on me and since then, for the
past 33 years I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself 'if
today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?'
and whenever the answer has been no for too many days in a row, I know I need to
change something. Remembering that I'll be dead soon is
the most important tool I've ever encountered to help me make the big
choices in life because almost everything, all external expectations, all
pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure, these things just fall away in
the face of death leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are
going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have
something to lose. There is no reason not to follow your heart. I'm convinced that
the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You've got to find what you love. Your work is going to
fill a large part of your life and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do
what you believe is great work and the only way to do great work is to love
what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking and don't settle. As with
all matters of the heart you'll know when you find it and like any great
relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep
looking. Don't settle. Of course it was impossible to connect
the dots looking forward when I was in college but it was very, very clear
looking backwards 10 years later. Again, you can't connect the dots looking
forward, you can only connect them looking backwards so you have to trust
that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in
something. Your gut, destiny, life, karma whatever because believing that the dots
will connect down the road will give you will connect down the road will give you
the confidence to follow your heart even when it leads you off the well-worn path
and that will make all the difference. I never really had a career plan. We all
have plans, we all make plans, it sometimes starts when you have
to declare a major and I of course was at a college that didn't have the major
that I would have declared, which was film and television so I was an
undeclared major. I majored in English because my father told me I needed a
fallback career in case the movie directing thing didn't work out and the
thing I really want to emphasize is, I didn't have a choice. I didn't have a
choice. When you have a dream and the dream isn't something you dream and then it
happens, the dream is something you never knew was going to come into your life.
Dreams always come from behind you not- not right between your eyes. It
sneaks up on you but when you have a dream, it doesn't often come at you
screaming in your face 'this is who you are, this is what you must be for the
rest of your life' sometimes a dream almost whispers and I've always said to
my kids, the hardest thing to listen to: your instincts, your human personal
intuition, always whispers. It never shouts. It's very hard to hear so you have to
every day of your lives be ready to hear what whispers in your ear. It very rarely
shouts and if you can listen to the whisper and if it tickles your heart and
it's something you think you want to do for the rest of your life, then that is
going to be what you do for the rest of your life and we will benefit from everything you do.
What's your art form? You got to find what that is. People who find this when
they're 6 years old or 10 years old, they have an exponentially better advantage
in life. Competitive advantage. Then those that find their life purpose only in
their 30s or in their 40s. So find it as early as possible, do whatever it takes
go experiment with your passions. Right now you're young, you're not sure what
your passions really are, you don't really understand yourself so start doing the exploration process, If you
have some nascent passions, you know some passions that are still kind of like
just starting to bud, go and nurture those and just see where they take you.
If you're interested in art go do some art. If you're interested in music go play some
music, if you're interested in starting a business go maybe try starting a
business and just see where that takes you. You might discover like oh I really
love this or no, you know I thought I loved it but I actually kind of hate it
and those are very valuable insights for you to have but as you're exploring
around always keep your eye out for the choice. You got to make a choice, you
got to make a commitment and a decision as to what your life is going to be
about. What are you going to be mastering? Is it art, is it music, is it business,
is it Human Resources, is it accounting is it math, is it science, is it history,
what's it going to be for you? A lot of people think that wealth makes
you great but it's a lot of wealthy people who are not great people. On the
other hand, poverty is equated to greatness in a lot of people that, that
if they have nothing they must be great. You're not greatness. Your greatness is
not based upon your income. There are some people who are good at doing but
they're not good at being. Greatness will cost you something, not somebody else,
It'll cost you something. It's going to cost you some time, it's going to cost
you some energy, it's going to cost you some resources, it's going to cost you
some hours of your life laying down, paying the price, going the
extra mile, doing what other people are not willing to do. Greatness is not cheap.
Greatness always costs more that's why there's not many people who achieve
greatness, they're not willing to pay the price. Greatness is not immediate. In other words, greatness takes time to
develop. You can't just run in your room and come out great. Greatness is not
immediate. You got to stay with it, you got to stay at it, you got to keep
working on it, we give up too quickly. When you're alone with your thoughts you get
an idea of what your thoughts actually are. If you live your life just acting
constantly on the momentum of other people's expectations, of you wanting to
be liked by these other people, you can run into a trap and you- you- you set up a
life that you didn't really want. You're- you're- you're trapped in this
situation where you have a mortgage, you've got credit card bills, you've got
student loans you have to pay, you have a bunch going on that you have to continue to feed and all that and especially if you
have a family and you have to feed them, oh my goodness!
Then you're fully locked in, you can't take any chances whatsoever and
oftentimes people make the mistake of getting stuck and it is just a tactical
mistake just like it would be a mistake if you got stuck on a video game.
Just like it would be a mistake if you followed a map incorrectly and you get
stuck in the woods. Your life is certainly some sort of a journey, it's
certainly some sort of a journey and we have to all be aware that when we're
making journeys, we're not going to always make the right steps and
sometimes you have to back up and try again and if you're in a position where
you can't back up and try again, you've trapped yourself and the system will set
out honey pots for people to get trapped in. The system will set out the ideas of
retirement, the ideas of the golden years, providing you benefits, providing you a
healthy work environment, why? Well because they want people to work for
them. They don't want people to realize their own dreams and escape, those, that's a pain
in the ass so you got to hire more people and train them and they want to set it up so
that you stick around. Stick around some
sort of an unsatisfying world. It's up to you to see that video game problem. To see that issue as it comes up on the map. No, no I think this is a right turn. To see all the problems that could
potentially lay in front of you and calculate your- your future and then also
look around at all the people that didn't do it and look at the misery that
they're in and learn that you don't want to be like that and then look at the people
that are, have kind of taken chances and navigated their way. What did they do
differently? What- what- what objectivity do they have that maybe you lack? What
insight into their own mistakes are they willing to delve into that you're not?
That you step back and think you know, I just don't, I just don't want to look at
myself that closely but the person who's able to look at themselves the closest
is gonna get the more rational results. Learning is a lifelong thing. It doesn't
end at Harvard Business School. It's your responsibility I think if you're in any
profession at all you have to do it consistently, all the time. I think I
spend probably fifty or sixty percent of my time learning, reading, talking to
people, traveling that's the only way you can keep on top of this global world of
ours and it's even tougher now because of the globality of the businesses
you're all going to deal in. How, reading is the most important one but the second
one which is often forgotten is talking to other people. You can learn more from
speaking to people in fifteen minutes then if you spent your life doing
something. They can explain it to you and you can learn from watching people,
you also are going to learn by I'm gonna call it imitation but by watching other
very good people and how they operate in difficult circumstances. I learned a
lot of things. What not to do and also a lot of what to do by watching other people. The
main thing I try and tell all my friends family, kids is do your homework. Why do
you want to compete with somebody on a level playing field and be exactly the
same, have the same chances of winning as the next guy. Well you already know
you're at a disadvantage, so you need to change the odds. You need to tilt the
odds in your favor which means you need an advantage because otherwise
the next guy is gonna beat you. You know how it is. If you didn’t go what you’ve gone through, you wouldn’t be who you are today. And I’m not belittling your pain and don’t worry, I’ve seen pain in my life, and I’ve seen it not only in my live, but people’s lives and people say well at least I have no arms and legs and then what am I’m supposed to say? At least I’m not a African orphan who’s dying at four years old and I met that person. What about the 10-year-old girl that was bought for 700 US dollars in Mamba and kidnapped as a sex slave, to have 350 clients before the age of 13, pregnant at 12, put the baby under the bed while she works on top abandoned by her family. After she pays her debt of 700 US dollars after three years with her child she leaves on the streets of Mamba hoping for a new life. No family, no job, no food.
Her baby needs food. She gets raped, beaten up on the street. She comes back to the only way that she knows how to make money. She goes back to the brothels. She gets pregnant at 15 the second time and then that child dies and then at 20 years old she comes up to me, yes, I have met this woman. She comes up crying and she says “Nick, I just found I’ve got HIV AIDS.” And I got fired from being a prostitute. What do you say to that? You may have arms and legs, but unless you know three things, number one, who are you and what your value is, number two, what is your purpose here in life and number three, what is your destiny when you’re done here. If you don’t know the answers of any of those three questions, you’re more disabled than I. The first thing I want you to take away from today is this you will have good days and you'll have bad days but you will always learn something more, something new and you will learn more overall on bad days than good days. You will learn more about yourself,
you'll learn more about relationships you'll learn about life and principles
and you will build your character. If you're a person who wants to let's say
improve on your character of patience let's say, don't complain when you're
waiting in a line. You ain't going to grow in patience until you're put in a
place to wait. It's like you go into a gym and you know,c you're walking through
the front doors and you know you tell your wife or your husband I'm going to
the gym, you go into the gym and you come in three feet and you do a u-turn and
you're right out. I went to the gym. Ain't gonna do nothing, you gotta go in
and what are you gonna do, you're gonna pick up the weights and you exercise the
muscles that you want to build. I stand before you without arms and legs
but a very strong man because of the bad days in my life and then just work like
hell. I mean you just have to put in you know 80 hour, 80-100 hour weeks every
week and then- that's a lot of work. All of those
things improve the odds of success. Okay I mean if other people are putting in 40
hour work weeks and you're putting in 100 hour work weeks, then even if you're
doing the same thing you know that in one year you will achieve what they
achieve. You will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve. I'd say
the common threat of anybody that I work with successful, financial, athletes, people
in politics, its hunger you know you and I both know intelligence is a pretty damn
valuable tool but there are a lot of very smart people that can't fight their
way out of a paper bag and then when you find somebody who has that hunger, the hunger
that doesn't go away, that hunger to be more, to do more, to give more, that hunger
that never ends you know that's how you get these people that are the best in
the world at whatever they do and so if you can oh I think everybody has a
hunger but for some people it's been asleep for a long time because they're
afraid. They're afraid that I'm gonna get hungry, I'm gonna try, I'm gonna fail and
so it's human nature to protect yourself from the fear by just lowering your
expectations but willings I've learned is you get what you tolerate, You get
what you tolerate yourself, you get rid you tolerate in your life and sooner or
later we sometimes hit a point where we say not another day, not another hour, this is
done. I'm not walking this way, I'm not talking this way, I'm not living this way
I'm not gonna be in this relationship anymore, I'm gonna change it and when
people do that, that's the beginning of a break through. Help to create a different
vision for myself. Some of you are already doing it right now. I'm saying
this is a time more than ever that you want to begin to inoculate yourself with
positive words. Coming to conventions showing up on meetings, being on the
calls to make yourself unstoppable. To get out of your mind the polluting,
negative thoughts that's causing most people to go through life being stuck
because their volunteer victims. Somebody said that many people die at aged 25 and
don't get buried until they're 65 because they got so much garbage in
their minds. You are here because you've got a
their vision of what you want and where you're going. Give yourselves a round of
applause. You were created to give life
and make a difference with your gift somewhere. That's why you came to this
place. You want to improve?
You want to give better? You want to get on a workout program or a clean diet
you want to start a business, you want to write a book or make a movie or build a
house or a computer or put together some mobile application, where do you start? You start right here and when do you
start? You start right now, you initiate the action aggressively, you go,
