REPROGRAM Your Mind To DESTROY LAZINESS & PROCRASTINATION Today! | Rory Vaden

the human brain is not designed for success the human brain is designed for survival survival is about conserving energy success is the opposite success is about expending energy doing things that are uncomfortable if you do this if you struggle with procrastination if you've made bad choices it doesn't mean you're doomed for failure it actually means i think you gotta have a dream the school of greatness really yeah please welcome we are talking about the science of success and how to really achieve anything that you can imagine in your life your biggest goals your biggest dreams but a lot of people have dreams they have big goals but most people never accomplish them why is that so the number one enemy i think that is working against people that they don't even realize is procrastination okay um why do we procrastinate so there's a number of reasons there's a number of reasons why we procrastinate the number one reason according to psychologists why we procrastinate is because of self-criticism really it's thinking that i won't be good enough that i'm not you know i'm not smart enough i'm not capable so why should i even bother like or this isn't going to work out for me and and there's a lot of extraordinary pressure with that but there's three types of procrastination that and and most of us are aware only of the first type so so classic procrastination is consciously delaying what we know we should be doing right so i've i have some bills on the counter i know i should pay them but i'm tired and i'm exhausted right so rather than paying the bills i'm gonna like netflix and chill and like not pay my bills so that's the first type of procrastination okay which is classic procrastination classic procrastination yeah the second one is actually one identified in my own life um back when we were doing the research for for this um which is is funny because you know when take the stairs came out suddenly i'm supposed to be like one of the world's experts or whatever on procrastination and here i struggle with procrastination in my own life so rather than calling myself a procrastinator i invented this new term which i really love because it not only does it more aptly describe what i struggle with it also sounds very like academic and security and so the term that we coined is creative avoidance okay and creative avoidance is different and this is something that people do as an art form creative avoidance is subconsciously creating things for yourself to do so that you can do those things as a means of feeling productive but really it's a giant scheme for avoiding doing the things you know you should be doing even when you don't feel like doing them for example for you what's a creative avoidance i mean email is probably the is the is the the ultimate perpetrator of creative avoidance right is this like i know i need to do this other thing i know i need to work on my book i know i need to create this process for my business sales calls yeah you got to deal with a negative customer service issue you have to have confront and underperforming an employee i mean there's i know i got to go to the dentist and clean my teeth yeah the things that you know you need to do but you want to avoid because it's painful or it's frustrating or it's going to take energy and time energy yeah and we blow it out and we make it we make it way worse in our mind than it actually is but you know you can it's wild how we do this and this is this is where some of the neuroscience comes in because you know your your brain is actually working against you here in in that if you look at a brain like under brain scan the brain loves to complete things there's a hit of dopamine which is the chemical you know that's released in into your body which makes you feel pleasure when you complete things so um when you check things off like you delete an email or you um by the way you know this is you struggle with this if you've ever completed something that wasn't on your to-do list and then you added to the to-do list just so you can cross it off yeah why because the brain releases and says oh i'm i feel good i'm accomplishing things but really what we're doing is we're allowing ourselves to engage in the in the trivial um in the in the absence of clear intention we become strangely loyal and addicted to meaningless acts of trivia because the brain is rewarding that behavior people are literally addicted to email or clicking on their text or their dms or social media they're addicted to it the way you would be addicted to a substance but it's like it's you're tied to this chemical reaction but ultra performers um you know the people we study these people we profile these top 1 percenters they do things differently and they they have realized that that success and greatness is not related to the volume of tasks that you complete but simply the significance of them and uh ultra performers are able to get themselves to do the things they know they should be doing even when they don't feel how do they get themselves to do that so there's seven seven things and we can we can rip through them but you know the metaphor here is take the stairs okay so so you know that's the title of the book comes from take the stairs which is a metaphor for we just we live in an escalator mentality world it's easier to gravitate towards the path of least resistance towards what is convenient towards what is comfortable this is an escalator and yet the truth of success in in any endeavor any industry like when you all the people that you've interviewed here it's always the same story it's that they were able to get themselves to do things they know they should be doing even when they don't feel like doing them i.e take the stairs so what we're trying to do um is take the stairs it's discipline um discipline is the antidote to procrastination yes um and there are there's seven key strategies um that you know we can talk through but but understanding that the enemy is procrastination and these three types which we haven't covered the third one yet but um procrastination is always there and in fact so the third type of procrastination is called priority dilution and this is fascinating to study priority dilution is the chronic overachievers form of procrastination what's different about it is unlike the first two so classic procrastination and creative avoidance um you know priority dilution is not about being lazy or disengaged or distracted but it is the same net result of of the first two which is that you you leave the office or your end your day with your most significant priorities incomplete not because you're lazy but because you allowed your attention to shift to less significant but perhaps more urgent tasks uh charles hummel once wrote an essay called the tyranny of the urgent i believe it was in 1969 and he's talking about how we uh are victims to the tyranny of the urgent and the the more successful you become the the the more you become a leader the higher you accelerate in an organization your enterprise grows as an entrepreneur you've got more and more people vying for your attention the bigger your personal brand grows you've got more and more opportunities more distractions more things coming at you and your priorities if if left unchecked naturally dilute right so you gotta yeah okay so priority dilution so that's the third type of procrastination so you know the question is all right if procrastination is problem what's the solution right and i really believe the solution can be boiled down to one word and it's a word that nobody likes um it's discipline yeah and it's not hard work there's there's a there's a difference there's a distinction discipline is doing the things you know you should be doing even when you don't feel like doing them if you can develop the ability to do that then you literally have unlocked the ability to do anything in life which unlocks the ability to achieve virtually anything yeah and i think greg mcewen was talking about you know the effortless pursuit of accomplishing like how can we what's the the there's like the path of resistance that will get you there but when you know you need to take the hard path how can you make it feel effortless how can you play games with yourself when you got to do chores how can you sing a song when you're mopping the floor whatever it is how can you make it feel effortless so it's not like this is exhausting and draining and i got to do this in order to get somewhere in 10 years it's how can i reframe my mind around the activity to support me and having energy in the thing i don't want to do so let's not be drained by the thing that i don't want to do yes so that is the first principle actually it's called the paradox principle of sacrifice so um now you mentioned greg mckeown um his essentialism was his big like breakout book um and the whole message of that book is the disciplined pursuit of less really that's not trying to do everything no yeah just the pursuit of less that's what essentialism that's how he describes it the discipline being disciplined by focusing on by focusing things on on less things that are more significant right so but you bring up the conversation of going okay well you know people here take the stairs and it's like well i don't want to take the stairs you know it's like i don't want the hard work and you have to reframe it so here's the paradox principle um in fact i'm going to tell you a story so in colorado where i grew up we are world famous for the rocky mountains yes okay so to the western part of the state we have the great rocky mountains um what a lot of people don't realize about colorado is that as a state it's divided almost exactly in half and to the eastern part of the state are the great kansas plains so it's really flat because of that unique topographical landscape colorado is one of the only places in the world that has both buffalo and cows in very close proximity to each other interesting um have i ever told you this i don't think i've ever shared this with you yeah okay so what happens um there's a fascinating lesson to learn about greatness and achievement and success from studying the way that these two creatures respond to storms so when a storm comes storms almost always brew start in the west and they like brew in the west and then they roll out towards the east and what cows do is very natural cows can sense that a storm is coming from this direction and so a cow will turn east to run away from the storm now the only problem with that is it's going to catch up catches up with them right so the storm catches them and and without knowing any better the cows continue to try to outrun the storm and they actually run with the storm and they get trapped by the fence and then they're stuck there like they're they're they're doing they're making it worse um because they're trying to outrun the storm which is stupid but here's the thing humans do the exact same thing right all the time we are constantly trying to avoid these inevitable challenges that come along with the difficult circumstances that our very own choices have led us to be in i can speak from personal experience here um there was a time in my life where i was 45 pounds overweight people who are unhealthy are always making rationalizations for why it doesn't matter nothing works i've already tried it it's not that big of a deal it's fine um i've also been there was a time in my life where i was over 50 000 in personal debt people who are in debt constantly finding trying to find ways around paying their bills and and you know paying off the minimums and spending money on other things yeah they keep spending um people who are struggling in their marriage are often avoiding the difficult but meaningful conversations that need to be had yes if there's any hope of reconciling that relationship and the key insight that the ultra performers have had that most of us have not is ultra performers have realized problems that are procrastinated on are only amplified problems procrastinated on us are amplified yeah so waiting always makes it worse now here's what buffalo do this is very unique for the animal kingdom so buffalo wait for the storm to cross like right over the crest of the of the mountaintop and as the storm rolls over the ridge buffalo turn and they charge directly into the storm crazy so they run at the storm and by running out the storm they run straight through it which actually minimizes the amount of pain and time and frustration they experience from that storm it's such a great metaphor for all of us because all of us are dealing with different storms in life uh you know we have relationship struggles and health battles and we're trying to launch a business and we got young babies and you know all these different you know covet and we all have challenges um we don't get a choice about whether or not we have storms the only choice that we have is how we respond to those storms yes and more specifically when we respond to those storms so the natural human default is to run away from the storm but we what we what we miss is that it actually makes it worse so this brings us to the paradox principle of sacrifice which simply stated is this easy short-term choices lead to difficult long-term consequences yes meanwhile difficult short-term choices lead to easy long-term consequences i've got a perfect example of living on right now from a long-term consequence 20 years ago i had i had surgery i had eight teeth removed because i needed braces so i i put that off for a number of years without doing that but then i finally got my wisdom teeth removed and then four more teeth so it's wisdom and then four and i was delaying a delay delay but i was having like pain right finally get the teeth removed and i'm supposed to do let it heal for a couple months and then go get braces on okay and i'm thinking this is so painful i don't want to have two three more years of braces now and deal with more pain and i said you know what i'll just live my life like this with four four gaps i can still chew everything it doesn't look too bad uh let me just live my life like this okay and for 20 years i had problems little problems that continued to stack up i had digestive problems because my back teeth weren't fully touching so they weren't actually chewing the food properly i finally started chipping my teeth in the front that i had to fix a couple times because it was only the front two teeth that were actually chomping and connecting and i realized wow this is gonna impact my my overall health not just my teeth in my mouth but my entire lifestyle if i don't solve this pain now so at 36 i said okay i'm getting braces and uh and making you know retainer braces and it's more painful now but i'm also glad that i'm taking the actions now and not waiting 5 10 20 years when it's my teeth are falling out or something so i'm i'm taking the disciplined uh pursuit of the pain now for greater health for the rest of my life yeah and that's the the switch and right problems procrastinated on are always amplified now here's the shift and this is really important we think of it as a sacrifice i'm enduring pain but the truth is we always experience pain you i we all we're all trying to go through life trying to dodge pain it's impossible it's inevitable the only we always experience pain the only choice we have is whether or not we pay that price now today or we pay it later with interest procrastination and indulgence are really nothing more than creditors that charge you interest which means when you make the sacrifice just as the buffalo charging the storm it's not a sacrifice you're just you're it's a short-term down payment on a a rich future blessing it's it's just harder now but it's easy in the long term see people misunderstand take the stairs they think it's like oh just you know do the hard thing make your life as hard as possible no it's the freaking opposite take the stairs is a methodology for giving you the easiest life the best life the most rewarding life like the easiest life but it is predicated upon an unpopular truth which is that the shortest most guaranteed path to the easy life is to do the hardest parts of things as soon as possible yeah so as to avoid the the interest that will come with it if you wait yeah what is um there's like this quote about entrepreneurship or something like you know those i'm gonna butcher this but be willing to do the things today um it's like a meme online what others want what others can't yeah later yeah yeah that's the things that others aren't willing to do now so you can have what others won't have later for the rest of your life yeah dave ramsey says live like no one else so later you can live like no one else exactly you're teaching people to get out if you don't pay the price today you'll be paying the price forever later right so it's like it's not is life going to be hard life is hard either way yeah it's do you want it to be a little bit hard now or a lot of it hard later so that's the reframe and and this is what what was really fun about about the take the stairs book was realizing oh ultra performers don't like discipline any more than i do i like to sleep in yes but they have learned to train their brain to think differently about it and you have to train the brain to process choices differently and once you do discipline isn't as hard as we think once we know how to think about it the right way and this is a great example when you make the calculation most people just go oh that's hard i'm not going to do it well an ultra performer goes well that's hard but if i don't do it it's going to be harder later so i'll do it now yes and and that opens the gate so that's the first it's the parrot we call it the paradox principle of sacrifice that's sacrifice what's the second yeah so the second one is the buy-in principle of commitment um and this is really interesting so whenever we're forced to make a choice a decision about something that is is hard um there's two types of energy that are expended in our decision making we have a visual for this that's called the the commitment continuum and so basically you know the first type of energy is the one that we all think of it's the physical energy required to execute the decision um for example you know let's just take an easy one like new year's resolution i'm gonna lose weight right when the time comes to go to the to the gym the thought process for most of us sounds like this we say do i feel like working out right now and what's the answer to that question no no never i don't feel like working out now or ever and for many people most people that's the end of the conversation um the human brain is not designed for success the human brain is designed for survival right survival is about conserving energy success is the opposite success is about expending energy doing things that are uncomfortable so it doesn't mean if you do this if you struggle with procrastination if you've made bad choices it doesn't mean you're doomed for failure it actually means you have a perfectly functioning healthy normal human brain but success is not normal success is not average success is not what most people experience if you are trying to experience success you need to rewire literally the neural pathways in your brain it is a neurological rewiring that you're doing to yourself it's like you're reprogramming your own computer right right and part of that is knowing that um we learned from the ultra performers there's another type of energy expended in our decision making which isn't physical energy it's emotional energy and what we learned is that there's emotional energy expended in simply making decisions and in fact very often the emotional energy of making the decision is much greater than the physical energy of executing the decision and if you think about the gym example it's not getting ourselves onto the treadmill once we're at the gym that's the hard part it's when we're sitting on the couch deciding whether or not to go to the gym to go to the gym yeah but once you get there the physical energy is there it's the emotional energy that is clouding the decision it is making it feel worse than it actually is is that why it's important to when you make the commitment to schedule the commitments in um yeah i mean that helps every every every little thing helps but so so here's here's the strategy to follow through on commitments that um you make that become difficult which happens yes okay so in the commitment continuum you make this decision emotional energy is expended and then it becomes difficult and you've got two choices you can move forward with what you said you wanted to do or you could turn back towards the way you've always done things so i'm gonna go to the gym five days a week for the year that's my that's my commitment oh for the whole for the whole year yeah that's what someone might say news resolution i'm gonna go to the gym five days a week for the year yeah so so so yes so it could be that it could be i'm gonna i'm gonna double our growth you know i'm gonna triple our growth here's what happens in the moment when it becomes difficult most people okay um you know the the attitude that most most of us have is like is this possible you know did i make the right decision um can i can i do this and the and and the key is to instead ask the question how not is it possible can it be possible do i feel like doing it okay the most of it it's it should it should versus how most people say should i do this should i follow through should i make a different commitment um and you know you end up becoming what i like to call a should head right don't be a should head because should gravitate you back towards the neutral towards towards the safe um the the the mindset of the ultra performer is one degree different and and their attitude says well i'm in this for good i already committed to this and so the question is how how will i pull this off how will i execute this commitment how will i hit that target how will i meet this deadline how will i get out of debt how will i lose that weight how will i save this marriage how and so you have to intentionally create the question how okay so that you don't inadvertently create the question should because should i or can i or is it possible pulls it back towards the negative or towards the neutral and and here's the thing about the brain and just science in general neutral isn't good enough neutral is negative neutral is absent to positive charge neutral is negative so it doesn't mean you have to be like over the top crazy like you know banging on your chest doing affirmations like all the time like you can do those things it just means you have to at least be on one degree to the side of i'm not i'm not allowing myself to question if i'm gonna keep the commitment i'm dedicating a hundred percent of my energy into asking how am i gonna keep this commitment sure it's not should i stay married it's how can i fix this how can i stay married how can i resolve this that one degree of of separation in the brain over the course of time creates a trajectory of two completely different outcomes um for the same person got it okay so that's about the the question how around the commitment intentionally ask the question how okay and what would be the next step then yeah so focus um is is is one of them um you know as we just kind of breeze through some of these um focus is the idea that focus is power uh yeah how does someone stay focused when life happens when you go through a uh someone dies in the family when the pandemic hits when you go bankrupt whatever someone breaks up with you you lose your job how do you stay focused under extreme emotional breakdown well you can allow your you can't allow your ability to stay focused to be dependent on your circumstances because there's always circumstances always always you're there's always some thing going on in your life that's creating challenge and difficulty and pressure so it's almost like certain things need to be non-negotiables yeah you decide so so so here's what you do is it is you decide you have to decide each and every day consciously intentionally deliberately um i know we did another episode on multiplying time in the focus funnel yes that that is kind of a framework that's from the procrastinate on purpose my second book about how to figure out what to focus on but at the end of the day you just have to decide what you are willing to and and wanting to go after and realizing that until you accomplish those things everything else in your life is a distraction everything else is a distraction but but focus is power and when you have diluted focus you get diluted results right most people are getting diluted results in their life not because they're not smart enough or not good enough it's because they're distracted they are allowing their time attention and resources to fragment to dissipate to disintegrate to spread and what you need is focused energy to create a breakthrough and this this is the example of sheehan's wall right yeah we talk about that with personal brands what is what is she who is she han i always love this concept though um so sheehan's wall is a is because before we go into that because a lot of people especially in the entrepreneurs that are following are listening and watching the people that are building personal brands they have lots of things they want to do at once i've got this passion and these passions and i want to try this thing and i want to build four different companies at once yeah and they say which one do i choose so when someone's got a lot of passions they want to do it all at the same time how can this example support them well is your question how do they know which one to choose or or i guess set up why do they need to choose one yes why do they need to choose one okay so sheehan's wall is an illustration we named it after peter sheehan who is a colleague of mine he's a speaker really brilliant guy uh he's the first person that i kind of heard the concept for and we've adapted a little bit but it really came from him so we named it after him which is that in personal branding you've got two groups of people there are those who are unknown and there are those who are known yes and there's this huge invisible wall that you have to break through and what most of us do is we're trying to break through the wall and so we're trying to emulate you know these people over here and like going oh i want to have i want to talk about all these different topics and have all these different business models and be on all these different social media platforms and i have to do all these different jobs and they're bouncing off the wall they complain about noise but they actually are the noise they are part of the noise because they're doing a lot of different things and when you have diluted focus you get diluted results the way to break through the wall and this is you know kind of to build audience attention credibility results all those things yes so and that's you know personal brand is what we just happen to do but this sheen's wall applies beyond that but in personal branding we would say we help clients figure out what's the one thing that they could be known for uh find their uniqueness this is the term that we would use and you the way you break through the wall is by becoming the world's leading authority on one thing um not ten things one thing one thing first and then when you break through then you can expand into other things yes um so i mean if you look at my personal brand as an example okay so we're talking about take the stairs i broke through the wall and take the stairs that book you know when when we launched it and you know aj and i created this plan and our whole team we worked together we launched this book we hit number two on the new york times i was 29 years old that was part of how we broke through all that's how i met you that was how i got the first time on the podcast was years ago at this point yeah and then now you know we've been able to expand into some other things influence really is what we study um but money is the same way so um the sheehan's wall applies to money you've heard people say multiple revenue streams yes multiple revenue streams is horrible advice it is horrible advice for a beginner for a beginner yes you do not want multiple revenue streams when you're beginning you need one revenue stream that is really good focused attention that is how it works and if you look at almost every billionaire they didn't do it by having a lot of different things at first at first they made their first million on one thing they dominated one thing and they blew through the wall and then they got a little bit of money and then they invested it and then then diversified into different assets and then it grew into other things yes but you don't need multiple streams of revenue all that's doing is diluting your focus which is going to dilute your results you're going to bounce off the wall financially it's the same thing so something when we uh you know when i got into teaching linkedin in 2007-8 and yes you're a great example of this i remember um at that time i was researching and reading a lot of blogs and following people on social media had called themselves social media experts teaching all social media and i was like i'm i know a lot about these things but i'm not the expert on all social media but i don't know i was like and very competitive and ego driven at the time i was like i will out beat anyone i'm teaching i will crush you linkedin like no one can out teach linkedin like me that was my mindset because i was just so uh so much time and energy on it and i was getting results for people and i just said i'm gonna create i created a book that helped with credibility i was doing workshops and events for about a year and selling the book um and then when i found kind of like my breakthrough thing which was creating a course and using webinars as the engine to sell and build audience and then teach and then sell i just said i'm going to sell this one course over and over until it doesn't sell anymore i'm tired i you want to do something else and for the next year and a half i sold a thousand dollar course every single week and i just said how can i master being a better teacher of this on the webinar presentation how can i learn webinars better to draw audience how can i gain credibility to get leads and i just sold that same thing over and over about a year and a half and that and you that one thing one thing every week every week and that helped me break through the wall of being known as the linkedin guy that everyone came to for advice speaking opportunities articles whatever it may be then after about a year and a half of doing that i said okay people are now coming to me and asking me can you teach me about facebook can you teach me about email marketing can you teach me about webinars how have you done this so much to get these big results selling this program then i had the credibility i broke through the wall on linkedin teaching open up a little funnel where okay i can teach this if i want to and this but you have to also be aware of not diluting your efforts once you break through because then opportunities come in and you can say yes to everything and be back to kind of like one at a different level yeah there's really a series of walls and they get they're bigger and bigger ponds it's like you're a big you you want to be a big fish in a small pond and then you go to a bigger pond and then you gotta cross everyone yeah and each one is a matter of focus i mean bruce lee said this uh great he said i fear not the man who has a thousand kicks i fear the man who has one kick that he's practiced a thousand times all yes like so that's what we're talking about here and and this is a massive problem the personal brands that we work with um this is one of the number one things that we're helping them with is going like if you want to get to the next stage you don't have if you don't have a team of a thousand employees right you can't do everything that dave ramsey does or gary vaynerchuk does like you got six people like you need to dominate the thing and crush it which is what you guys have done a very disciplined job of of going all in on the podcast in recent years and it's growing exponentially and you guys i mean look you're one of the top podcasters in the world and you're you're you're because you're focusing it but you've said no to a lot of other things a lot of money making opportunities and that's the thing that's hard and scary for people that it's like well i could make money here and i can do this cool thing here but how much time and energy will that thing take away from the main thing which could multiply and expand and be ten times more revenue or opportunities uh if you actually just focused on it and so for years we did everything we tried to build multiple different programs and courses and events and things and we realized okay what are the things that are supporting us and what are the things that we could do but we shouldn't be doing because it's taking too much time and energy away from the main thing and uh the more clarity and focus you can have on that main thing and be committed to that sacrifice the better results you'll get absolutely so what's the next step all right so the fourth fourth of the seven here i know we're reason through them but is the creation principle of integrity uh what does integrity mean in your mind well so to me integrity is simply the congruence between your words and your actions but people underestimate the importance and the value of the spoken word as it is connected to creating the life that they want all of creation follows a very simple pattern all of creation you think it you speak it you act and if you have integrity it happens you think it you speak it you act it happens you think it you speak it you act it happens everything from this table to this building is somebody had an idea they thought it then they spoke it they wrote it out they told somebody they created a plan then they acted they they built it and then it was real and somebody sold it right like you think it you speak it you act it happens and if you've got integrity throughout the entire process it's gonna accelerate it it's gonna be more likely to come true and if you don't have integrity it's not gonna come true because because the um words are the first manifestation of our ideas into reality um you know people have different religious beliefs but if if you look at ancient scripture um just the the bible strictly from the purpose of how does it say that god created the world it says he spoke the world into existence and then it says that we were created in his image which if that's true that means we have the same power now whatever your religious beliefs are are what they are but it's it's kind of irrefutable to say look as i say something if people know that i am someone who does what i say i'm gonna do yeah it's easier for them to rally behind me it's easier for them to support me like if if i say we let's meet up for lunch tomorrow at 11 and you trust me you're going to be there but if i say yeah we should be in for lunch tomorrow 11 you're like he's not going to be there like or he'll be there 11 30. it my integrity affects my integrity and my track record of the alignment between my words and actions actually shapes the way the world externally responds to me and everything that i do as i am known for integrity people put a lot of stock and weight and trust into what i say and they align around it yes as there is a breakdown or a breach of my integrity then um people don't push much stock and weight and trust and they don't align around it but you know if oprah says she wants to do something the whole world will jump to a line around it you know um she has that that trust that's talk how does someone learn the art of being 100 in integrity when we are flawed broken human beings that will probably in some way shape or form always be a little bit out of integrity on being exactly on time or there's breakdowns or traffic you know it's sure how do we learn the art of being the best level of integrity we can be it's it's mostly just a constant pursuit of that alignment and it is and it is intentionally creating a future for yourself so this is this is also the way that you talk about yourself so look if let's just say if if a student says um let's say a kid has a teacher that says you know what oh you know that your that answer was stupid i can't believe you said that and the kid hears it as i'm stupid okay and then they start repeating to themselves i'm stupid so you think it and now now you're thinking i'm stupid and then you speak it you start telling people yeah i'm stupid i'm not good at school i don't like school school is dumb school's a waste of time so now you're speaking it if that happens then when it comes time to study for the test which is the action do you think somebody who says that all the time is going to study for the test no because i'm stupid why it's not relevant to me i'm stupid this is not for me and so if they don't study for the test they don't take the action then when the test comes what result do you think they're going to get a good score or bad score they're going to get a bad score it happens you think it you speak it you act it happens now here's the part that sucks that happens once you get that bad score now it reinforces your pre-existing story see i am in effect stupid i and what we do is we organize the brain organizes itself and life and processes the world around it to prove itself right of course um and it orients it's the reticular activating system it actually notices pays special attention to things that reinforce beliefs it already has which goes to say this what you believe isn't necessarily what is truth we believe what we hear most often and we have a lot more control over that than people realize yes whatever you tell yourself most often is what becomes true and um it's it's it's you have to rewrite this your own stories about yourself lest you are guaranteed to live in to the stories that you tell yourself about yourself yes and some people louis this is heartbreaking because one of the things that we have noticed is that um some some of you some of you uh would never allow a stranger to talk about your kids or your spouse or your family or you the way that you allow yourself to talk about it crazy and it's it's heartbreaking and you are creating your own future through the spoken word and then the alignment so you know to your other question our goal is just to as much as possibly aligning our our words and our actions right so and it's like okay if i'm late fine tell me louis i'm running five minutes late and then trying to be there you know four four minutes late not seven right so it's just a constant alignment it's it's a muscle that you can build you it can be as small as saying i'm gonna pick up a piece i'm gonna pick up that piece of trash and then you pick it up you have added weight to your integrity yes reinforced it it's being your word and your brain wants to reinforce it which is what you got to be careful of you just got to be intentional of that your brain is going to reinforce whatever you tell it the brain is happy to do whatever you tell it to do you have to tell it to do the right things and so once we are in alignment with our integrity with our thoughts our words and our actions what's the next thing yeah so the fifth the fifth one is um the harvest principle of schedule and so this is a lot so the harvest or hardest harvest harvest harvest principle of schedule what's that mean yeah so um when people think of time you know the most common thing they hear of is the concept they hear the most is balance i think balance is a horrible metaphor for how we spend our time because um balance by definition means equal force in opposite directions right so for these to be balanced right they would be equal force in opposite directions that metaphor applied to our life and specifically our time suggests pretty directly that in order to you know achieve happiness or whatever that we would spend equal time on different activities well it's not only a discordant metaphor it's it's virtually an impossible pursuit i mean if you sleep eight hours a day and you work eight hours a day then the only way you could ever achieve balance is to do one other activity and it would have to be that one activity eight hours a day it just doesn't make sense it's impractical the other thing is the truth about achieving results is that first of all it doesn't take the same amount of time to achieve great results in different areas of our life you don't have to work out good news you don't have to work out eight hours every day right to be really healthy now if you want to be the rock you probably got to work out four hours every day right okay but if you just want to be healthy you might work out 30 minutes a day and be like in the top 10 percent of health you know in america eat well eat well exercise right um every day that's good news you also don't have to spend eight hours every day with your spouse to have a deep relationship no in many cases eight hours a day with your spouse over 10 years you might ruin the relationship that it's it's more about dedicated a focused relationship talking about things that are really deep and and personally intimate yes intimacy is allowing yourself to be seen to be known that is is powerful um you don't have to make cold calls eight hours a day to be a great sales person if most salespeople made one hour of legitimate outbound prospecting activity their pipeline would be so full in six months that they would just they would have enough warm relationships but they don't they they do creative avoidance and they spend an entire career doing everything they can do to dodge making a sales call and they just procrastination uh you know is a creditor that charges them interest and they never get ahead it just gets worse because they're not confronting the things so what's the harvest principle of schedule it's this concept that great results are not achieved through balance great results are achieved through short seasons of intensive imbalance like a harvest you know a farmer when the harvest season comes you know i clearly i'm an indoor type but you know people who farm i hear when the harvest comes they will work 18 hours a day they have to work 16 18 hours during the harvest because the harvest is when the harvest is it's a season and during that season if they want to maximize the results they have to imbalance everything else for a short season now that shouldn't be their lifestyle the whole year that would be unhealthy they'll be burned out they'd be burnt out but again it's focus the way you create breakthroughs like okay here's a great example for me when i was 55 pounds overweight working out five minutes a day when i'm 45 pounds overweight it's not gonna do it sweetheart like what i did is i said i'm never gonna drink soda again i'm never gonna eat fast food again i am never going to eat sugar again and i'm going to work out every single day until i get to where i want to be and it is this short term imbalance a harvest season where i go for this moment in my life i'm super focused on this um you know and and that's how you you you create a breakthrough and then once you create that breakthrough it's much easier to maintain that level of performance um so so the way we think of it is you actually allocate the minimum amount of energy expend the minimum amount of energy maintaining everything else right and dedicate 100 of the excess energy in one direction to create an explosion to create the power the focus the breakthrough and you know launching a book is a season and this is true about you know authors we have book launch season athletes have seasons accountants have tax season retailers have retail season seasons are a much more accurate reflection of our lives and how they work and how you actually create results you're speaking my language with sports there's a pre-season there's a season there's a playoff season and then there's the post season post season you got to recover from that time but the pre-season the training camp you're going hard you know the season you've got weeks and moments you've got the game day but you build up to it and you go a lot first part of the beginning and then the end yeah in the postseason you've got all your attention on giving your best for those last couple weeks and then okay it's time to recover regroup re re-visualize what you want and move move from there um what are the last two steps because i think this is a lot for people to take on yeah this is a ton we're covering a lot of ground here you've got this entire process with lots of examples and exercises on how people can implement this in your book take the stairs the seven steps to achieving uh success but what would you say are the last two um and i want people to get this book and go through it as well so they can have all of it but what are the last two thank you um yeah so real quick so the perspective principle of faith is number six yes uh which is my favorite of the seven because um it is the other six are all strategies to achieve the perspective principle of faith is all about how do ultra performers respond to failure the short of it is just this that faith is choosing to believe that what is happening now is somehow for a greater good later on so hard for people to think that way hard that's i i believe that's the only way you can think in order to not go crazy in some level because there's so much pain there's so much unfairness in the world for a lot of people there's so many things that you wish didn't happen to you friends family loved ones that happen and they're going to continue to happen and we can either live in pain and suffering and frustration and resentment and anger of the world or whatever unfairness has happened or we can choose to have faith that this is happening for a greater cause a greater reason and i don't know what it's going to be maybe i'll know in a year maybe it takes 20 years maybe i'll never know and someone else will know but you've got to learn that principle you have to make that choice it's the hardest of the seven choices but it is most most significant in the long term i actually once heard someone describe heaven as a bunch of people walking around going oh now i see why that happened right now i see why that happened one little shortcut on this um because pain is is real and we live in a broken world and it's painful when you're experiencing pain the healthiest and and i think like the only way to respond to it is to is to is to choose to believe that the pain you're going through is preparing you to become the person you one day need to be for somebody else oh man otherwise i run out of endurance otherwise i give up my discipline is gone right otherwise you'll go into addiction or drinking or binge eating or binge watching and you'll just say what's the point we can do a whole a whole other conversation on this at some point what's the point why do i even show up this is unfair this happened i lost my child i i got injured or why is this happening in the moment it is unfair yes but in the through perspective it's the perspective principle of faith our ability to have peace is directly proportionate to the term of our perspective if i'm focused here and now it's unfair it's angering it's enough to break you if i zoom back and i go oh maybe i'm being prepared to help this person or maybe that's going to lead to this maybe that flat tire that i got that really made me mad prevented me from a fatal car accident down the road if i don't have in the moment all i see is the flat tire and i'm i'm pissed but if i said if i had the perspective of going oh it saved me from a fatal car accident i would look at the same incident in a completely different way and we don't have that gift of foresight but we do have the gift of choice absolutely absolutely it's strong it's not easy that's a tough one this is hard that's a tough thing that's a tough one and the last step last one is the pendulum principle of action the pendulum principle of action okay i'm not going to tell you the whole story but here here's what i will tell you with and this is a good thing to leave you with is that um you know all of these are difficult decisions they're difficult choices it's a decision to take the stairs in every area of life in every way it's the truth of greatness it's the truth of every success story success is never an accident um it it is um but it is deciding every day to keep going yeah it's something that we call the rent axiom which is that success is never owned success is only rented and the rent is due every day and the rent is paid through the small seemingly insignificant trivial choices that we make each and every day and success is simply the the trajectory of those choices compounded over time in your life but to become you know a multi-millionaire is not some big extravagant event that happens overnight um it is small decisions made repeatedly and a decision and a commitment to make them each and every day what's the muhammad ali quote about service is the rent you pay for your room here on earth or something like that no i don't think i've heard that one that sounds like it's something like service is the the rent you pay for your room here on earth i like that some are the house here on earth something like that and i think if you can take action uh and be in service with your action to whatever your gift is whatever your truth is in that season of life and you can be of greater good through your actions some way somehow then that's going to even multiply what's coming for you in the future absolutely and and one thing that is huge of of this is we have we have seen and we have some data that proves that the the more accountability you have in your life around these principles the more likely you are to succeed and it just makes sense you are who your friends are but we don't live in a take the stairs world we live in an escalator world most of the world is looking for shortcuts uh and quick fixes you have to surround yourself with take the stairs people people doing the things that other people aren't willing to do growth-minded people and you need accountability it's hard to stay focused to commit to being integrity to manage your schedule to make sacrifices and to choose faith choose faith in a time of pain we're all gonna have it and to take consistent action this is one of the reasons why we created greatness coaching some of you guys may have heard about this if you haven't applied for greatness coaching go to lewishouse.com coaching right now check it out it's a year-long accountability program that supports you in your goals getting clarity having a community of high achievers surrounding you with support and having a monthly game plan that you can focus on and take action on to build momentum month after month year after year check it out lewishaus.com coaching and apply if you feel like it's right for you you can read all about it there see testimonials and all that stuff again lewishaus.com coaching for greatness coaching for a year of accountability rory this is amazing take the stairs this is all about the science of success we just scratched the surface on these things they can learn more by getting your book following you on social media rory vaden everywhere online and i appreciate you man thank you so much for being here my pleasure brother appreciate it always let me know some of your biggest takeaways in the comments below and make sure to share this with someone you think needs to hear it and stick around for more inspiring content coming up right now in one interview with one of the world's largest uh ctos chief technology officer he said brennan you know they're they're a top 10 brand in the world so we we don't uh he said my team he said i'm not creative my team's not creative but we know how to execute and scale and execution and scale is really important to long-term high performance creativity might get you in the game but a lot of people are creative but can't work their way out of a bag and i was like i would argue that forever because i'm a crap a writer and a coach i would have never thought that um age nationality ethnicity and here's a big one compensation here's a big one personality here's a big one strengths they are not correlated strongly with high performance some of them have weak correlations and all those things by the way because if academics are listening to that they're like no he's wrong and this is tied towards high performance it's not that those aren't important those things can shape your mood they can shape you know uh lots of important life outcomes well-being health happiness when we're talking about high performance those are less important than these six and what i keep telling people is i'm not saying those aren't important these just happen to be more important so the six habits you want me to do sure yeah so the personal habits and these are the ones that move the needle most number one high performers you like this one high performers seek clarity more often than their peers and what that means for them is every situation they go into they're seeking clarity and setting intention and it's not like once in a while they're doing way more often it's like uh you know i've been blessed to work with oprah winfrey when she has a meeting at the start of every meeting she asks what's our intention here what's the intention this meeting not what's the agenda what do i do what's the intention that's every meeting so she's seeking clarity at the beginning of every meeting that's why she's so amazing right if you think about her whole career she was always trying to have people seek clarity on who they were so they could be themselves that's what high performers are doing they just do it more often they seek clarity before they shoot that video before they have the podcast interview but specifically we found three practices help you get better at seeking clarity uh number one they are seeking clarity in what we call the future for so you've probably heard that successful people are more future minded it's true and specifically what they're looking at if you talk to a high performer they're more clear about who do i want to be in this upcoming situation and by the way it's not about who i am it's about who do i want to be they're more future oriented they're more intentional about who they want to be in social situations so it's like i want to have this type of interaction with louis today that that's intentional they're more clear about what skills they need to develop to reach their next level of success right here's how you really know an underperformer open up their calendar and look for any evidence that they have planned their own curriculum for greatness if they don't have classes or courses if they if they're not actively skill building there's no chance of high performance i mean maybe they can dumb luck into it for initial success but high performance is long-term success you got to be building yourself growing constantly learning constantly growing being aware about and the last of the future for is i know the service i want to provide in the future talk to any high performers i'm sure you've interviewed they kind of know the service and the difference they want to make maybe not precisely but they're asking the question so that's some of what we know they they seek clarity um and that's kind of the first practices asking questions in those areas and the other two real fastest uh when you're seeking clarity they're more clear about the feeling they want to have like an olympic sprinter who's won gold is more likely to have said before he went or she went on the track how do i want to feel out there not like just the result like when i when the foot's in the block and arms down like what do i want to feel like they're very aware of the feeling they're trying to get yeah i don't want to feel nervous and stressed i want to feel calm and yes clear and smooth yes and they're doing that self-talk which is seeking clarity and then the last one which is really important they're clear about what's meaningful to them now and what might be different in the future which is something i didn't know until we did a lot of the interviews or the conversations is a lot of people kind of know what i like now they know what their passion is but it's like what's gonna be meaningful to you later like in five years they've thought about that then you know i would say they you know they've done the work so that's just the first habit and so the book kind of opens with with that story of like finding what's we all have to decide who we are and what we want and how to get it at this stage of our life and when we don't know that you know reaching high performance can be really hard yeah it's all about clear vision for me it's the first chapter in my book is yes the greatest leaders in the world have a clear vision love that yeah that's it and they got that vision by seeking clarity yes that was the habit that gave them the vision they were consistently seeking like how do i what do i i mean they ask themselves more questions that's one of our findings they literally are doing more of the self-talk asking more of the questions which is so important yeah awesome yeah and and you i love how you talked about this you say the world cares less about your strengths and personality than about your service and meaningful contributions then why do so many of us focus on our strengths and personality yeah that was a huge finding and i would that's another one i would have completely freaked out on anybody strength finders all these other books out there you know it's like yes we focus on our strengths and then unfortunately one that's in the history of personal development that is the greatest false dichotomy there's ever been focus on your strengths or it's like you have to do both you have to do both but what we found in our research which surprised me high performers do not report working on their strengths any more than regular people so that's not what gives them the edge uh one of the chapters opens up with this guy he wrote this email really highly successful guy and he wrote this emailed me says you know and i'd put him through all this i put him through strengthsfinder the berkman the colby the myers-briggs everything this is one of my first coaching clients ever i knew everything about him we knew all his background did all that we did all the homework had his peer review you know his 360 assessments from work and then i watched him fail for two years and he wrote me this email and he said brendan stop telling me like what successful people are like because we know my strengths i'm not getting ahead and start telling me what they do and that's what this book became it's like what do you need to do because and in this email he wrote this which is where that finding came from he said this was so good listen this line he said as a leader i have to be honest with myself that my mission and vision should never be made to bow down to my limited human strengths i should have to rise up to my mission or vision the strengths aren't the relevant thing is the question is what is necessary for me to develop into to reach that mission it's like your strengths are great and it's like yes of course do your strengths but that's kind of like what i tell people is like uh if let's imagine you have a bear and that bear wants to go on top of this cliff over here and it's never been on the cliff and he wants to get that new honey up there right telling the bear to focus on the strengths to go somewhere that's never gone before and do something that's never done before is stupid it's like saying hey you know what just try being more of a bear right if i just you say brent i got this big new vision i just say just try being more of lewis i mean it's a spiritual level that feels good but you and i both know you're going to develop far beyond your comfort zones and strengths are typically comfort zones yeah we got to overcome that and go next level and develop new skills and overcome certain fears and all these other things that are going to help us get to the next level yeah yeah the whole conversation of beyond the comfort zone really requires us to go beyond our strengths it really requires that is our comfort zone that is our comfort zone we already know what we're good at and the problem with the strengthsfinder and all of the strength space movement is the assumption and they're all written academically this way based on what are called innate strengths and innate strength is the assumption that you had that from birth and that those innate strengths are sure what you focus on and i'm like well if you had at birth you probably had it when you were 15 years old too so if it's a nate you had it to 15. are the strengths you had at 15 sufficient to serve you at 50. hell no you need to develop beyond what's innate and go to a whole other level and so i take on strengths in the book in that way uh because but i also say it almost doesn't matter because a lot of people have strengths and they suck at work because they're not doing these habits well i mean how many people do you i know who are amazingly strong their strengths finders are amazing and they don't do anything all day that's it yeah a lot of people i mean in the sports world there's a lot of great talented people who have the greatest gifts but they still weren't able to win yeah or they were lazy or they wouldn't you know hustle or sacrifice their body because they just relied on their talents their strengths and so they were never able to get to the championship game or get on the best teams because and they had all the talent in the world and you're just like if i was as gifted as this person i would be incredible you know and that's the whole thing about the talent code or a lot of new sort of newer research and performance it just says what's more important is what you do with what you got to develop into the vision of the mission you need to serve and so the book kind of lays out a lot of the science behind that and then goes into you know obviously most of it's oriented towards the six habits so in terms of clarity what is that habit that you take on on a daily or monthly basis with habit with clarity what do you think about you're like every morning what am i clear about or yeah you know how do you apply that habit to your life uh i apply in a couple ways first for me every situation i go into i'm consistently asking like what what's the feeling i want to have here if you ever see me teach it's often i would say bring the joy so i have joy triggers that i've set up in my mind that makes me more intentional about things so for example a door frame trigger whenever i walk through a door i say bring the joy so when i walk through that door right there it's like bring the joy into this room it's just it's just a mental trigger that i've set up for myself every morning in the shower i ask myself three questions and not that i shower every morning the first question i say what can i be excited about today so it forces me to be clear about what's going to draw joy enthusiasm for me number two i say what might trip me up today because usually i know what's going on today i'm like what what might mess me up what my where might i perform well what might bother me and number three i say what can i do to surprise somebody today to give a gift of appreciation or acknowledgement today and so i think through that in the morning so i think that helps me begin my day pretty clear um then when i sit down before i do work i literally look at my calendar of the day this morning and i look at whatever's going on the day and i think about it for 20 minutes it's one of my 20-minute routines in the morning i literally think about my calendar for 20 minutes a day people think that's crazy but what i'm thinking through when i'm looking to count i'm like okay i'm going to have that call what do i want to happen on that call you know what's my intention for that call what's my goal for that call what's the feeling for that call how do i want to end that call you know i'm gonna have that time with louis like how do i want to be there and and how can i make sure i enjoy it because it's a big deal you know i love your show i want to do a good job i want to share something good for the people even though i have no idea what you're going to ask i want to be present for that and and make sure i i'm i'm really there even though maybe i have a head cold today you know it's like that it's like just thinking through it i think that helps me it keeps me asking questions every sunday i do a life arenas assessment that just means i think there's 10 areas of our life and i score myself in them and this is about my 11th year of doing this wow so each area of my life you know from from emotional quality to happiness to relationships to time to hobby etc i just give myself a score of 1 to ten and one means i suck and i i was horrible in the previous week on that ten means i did a good job and then i asked how can i do better it's my sunday routine yeah and it just keeps me clear and it's not like i don't sometimes like everyone else you know wonder what's going on or what i'm doing but those habits those were my habits you have to establish your own for seeking clarity but when you have them you weaponize your life well if we get the fear thing right we have a relationship with fear and we look for moments to challenge our relationship with fear i can talk a lot i'd love to talk about that with you and the other is getting the fatigue thing right and we we've come in modern times to believe that we need to do more to be more and it's broken right it's fundamentally broken the idea is that we need to be more and let the doing flow from there be yourself be your authentic self be here now you know be grateful be present and let the doing flow from those that orientation is a completely different model that you know it's like i i've i'm spending my life efforts i think working to share that and to help the some of the best doers and thinkers in the world to reorientate what got them good but is slowing them down from being their absolute personal best what's slowing them down fear and fatigue still yeah well the idea the the framework the psychological framework that i need to do more to be more and that's born out of anxiety mm-hmm right not doing enough yeah could be doing more in the trip stressing about yeah flat out and the trick though there is that that guy that'll get people good i need to do more damn i missed that jumper how am i going to miss that jumper let's keep like you know drive them to be practiced more too yeah yeah so that's this um you know it's like just enough anxiety will get you good but it will slow you down for being your absolute best at some point why do we fear so much about what could go wrong what other people think about us who we're gonna let down that we're not worthy enough good enough why do we fear that that's a great question so much yeah it's a really great question whole life yeah is that so there's some biological things we can take a look at and then there's also psychological right and then so it's the interaction of those two biologically our brain as best as we think and it's three pounds of silly putty that sits in our skull that's more complicated than you know like the brightest minds in neuroscience are still amazed by how our brain works and so um but we think that our brain is designed to scan the world and find what's dangerous right and so our ancestors passed that gift on to us your lineage passed that gift on to you that they were able to survive and so how survived way back in ancient times that they could scan the world and easily discern how to be ready between now let me say it more eloquently they could scan the world and find what was dangerous or what was threatening so that they wouldn't be eaten eaten by the saber-toothed tiger as the story goes right right or they want to eat something bad or they want it whatever protect themselves that's right so and then so then not only was nature dangerous and all the elements in nature but other humans became dangerous to each other so now what we've created is the ability the heightened ability to read micro expressions and micro expressions are the small squinting of the eyes the frontalis muscles between the eyes and when those squint or don't move it's a sense of threat right because we don't know what's happening to that from that person and so if you got this ancient brain that's programmed beautifully to find what's dangerous and we scanned in an undisciplined way our environment around us we're going to find dangerous things and in modern times we're not chased by saber-tooths anymore the new modern saber-tooth are other people's opinions and so um we're well conditioned from an early age and this next generation is going to be even more well conditioned you know with insta highlight reels for everything my life is better than yours i'm going to show you via a snap picture is that um you know so we've got this real challenge that to pursue a path of our personal best we have to override our dna that's that's hard to do that's really hard to do it requires deep commitment to training yeah and that's like that's what psychology the optimal opportunities that psychology offers us is just that how to train our minds to override our dna and to use the smaller parts of our brain to scan the world and find opportunity how can we train our minds every single day throughout the day to do that yeah overcome this fear what are the things that we could be doing i will not i could i will rattle off as many as you want to hear like tactics and then i also want to put a small little asterisk next to this is that the tactic alone is not enough right it's the stitching of the tactics it's the stitching of the mental skills training to each other and to one's personal philosophy so without a personal philosophy it's like you we end up just trying all these different things to get better but what are we getting better at what other people want us to be so there's a fundamental piece of work first got it right what would be your personal philosophy i'll i'll share mine cool um it i've spent a lot of time with it and i'll tell if i could tell a story of how it worked i think it will harden a little bit is that um so i needed a mentor when i was growing up and i'm thankful what's up gary like i'm thankful for gary he helped me out in so many different ways even currently today um and so one day he says um hey mike i want to introduce you to my mentor oh great i didn't know there was such a thing as like a grand mentor like am i ready and so it was this moment i said okay here we go and it was this um but to my surprise it was this um small you know two uh three-bedroom two-bedroom a three-bedroom two-bath home um and it was well manicured and it was this pleasant like 78 82 year old woman comes out and i was just so pleasantly surprised like okay this is gonna get good because she just had that sense of wise woman and it's the setting that you would imagine the shag carpet was a little bit long the drapes were just a little bit you know um you know outdated yeah and so we sat at the table and uh she's pouring me tea and and she says you know welcome and so interested to meet you then we sat down and she said so tell me what you're about i said okay well um uh what well the things that i'm most interest well okay let me start this way and she looked at me and she looked at my mentor and she said i thought you said he was ready that's oh my i am i i am ready wait wait no no no i want to answer that and she grabbed my tea and she said you know when you're ready sweetie i'd like to share this tea with you oh yeah so i was like super embarrassed in that moment like i thought i let my my mentor down and you know it was like this really intense experience wow how old were you i was at that point um it was right after it was like 26 27 somewhere in that range and so i didn't know what to do and so it was this awkward moment but i knew that i had i was not prepared to even answer the most basic question who are you and so that's where that's where i just want to anchor that because i think that that captures what most of us feel like a lot most people don't feel like they know who they are yeah and so i had this dramatic moment for me but you know i think it's a really important process to go through so let's call it a personal philosophy but then let's extract one one level out from that the greatest and the most influential people across the globe are very clear about their philosophy the greatest movers and shakers and change makers are spiritual leaders and political leaders for the most part and now we're starting to see business leaders you know to do that um what was confucius your philosophy what was buddha's philosophy what was jesus philosophy they're really clear jesus was and i want to oversimplify a beautiful set of traditions but jesus was more about love and service buddha was more about you know that all people are suffering and then so let's work through compassion to live with love and kindness what was martin luther king jr's dr king juniors was about equality you know malcolm x equality totally different tone totally different approach mother teresa helen keller what was helen keller's like okay i'm gonna go for it and like i deserve to be educated as well she changed the educational system so the most influential people were very clear why because they lined up their thoughts their words and actions to the thing that matters most to them that's what a philosophy is about everybody already has one you have one i have one whether we could articulate it at knife point in a dark alley totally different element right and so i think that that's a nice litmus test like could you get it out in front of a deranged person who's got a knife to your throat like could you do you are you that clear what you stand for and do you have your personal philosophy so that's the litmus test for for folks i work with and i'll share mine it's every day is an opportunity to create a living masterpiece and so there's there's optimism embedded in there there's creative juices embedded in there and then there's you know this idea of a living masterpiece and so um when i met coach carroll head coach of the seattle seahawks about six years ago six seven years ago one of our first conversations it was it was over dinner mutual friend put us together and we had this really wonderful conversation and it was born out of like what is your philosophy so he had been on the same similar journey i should say where he was fired from two head coach jobs in the nfl and on on the second time he was fired so from pain creates change uncomfortableness is how we grow but change is how we i'm sorry uncomfortable and this is how we grow but pain is why we change so he experienced pain and said if i get another chance i'm going to do it exactly the way that is authentic to me but i got to figure out what that is yeah so he just went and scratched down on you know multiple pads spiral you know old school spiral notebooks just wrote and wrote and wrote and wrote took a second pass at it and said what are the words that keep showing up circled those words wrote more about those words and that's how it eventually spilled out of him his philosophy is always compete always compete for what you say always compete to be a great dad to be a great coach to be a great friend to be a great partner like always compete and so he says at his core he's a competitor and he's always trying to become better wow and so so he's built his whole life around you know that and including the seattle seahawks and usc before that so uh yeah so philosophy is really important to us and so that would be the most significant investment first the capacity to strengthen and increase your hunger is the one common denominator amongst the most successful people you know um you know richard branson's good friend of mine and peter goober steve wynn all these guys they've never lost their hunger most people are hungry to achieve a certain amount make a certain amount of money and then they get comfortable and relax or to get a certain level of fitness and then they relax but you know richard is as driven today as when he was 16 years old starting i mean he's like on fire and he's 65 years old warren buffett is 85 years old he's as driven today as when you know he began the journey right and so people that have that hunger i believe intelligence i love people that are wickedly smart and i work to be wickedly smart by educating and training myself and so forth and training my brain but intelligent there's a lot of intelligent people can't fight their way out of a paper bag right absolutely hunger is the ultimate driver because if you're hungry you can get the strategy you can get the answer if you can't model it you can find it so hunger modeling would be maybe the next best skill knowing that success leaves clues like why reinvent the wheel if someone took the j this plane uh was uh mickey's plane who owns the miami heat and owns carnival right i mean you can learn so much from them like mickey blow your mind what this man has been able to do in his life and so why would i go learn by trial and error and maybe take 10 or 20 years when i can learn from somebody in a few weeks or a few months or a few hours something that could save me a decade that's what it is that's why that's why i read 700 books in the first seven years because i was like if somebody takes 10 years their life they pour into a book and i can read that in an hour two or three or four why wouldn't i so how does someone continue to stay hungry or re you know rediscover what they're hungry about the best way is get around where it's better and things will hit you say it again get around where it's better and things will hit you who you spend time with is who you become so you know when i started coaching all these billionaires you know there's a part of me that said i you know i i'm as smart in certain areas as they are i got to step my game up it's not about the money it's about how can i take the invisible and make it visible how can i find a way to add more value to other people to such an extent where economics are not a question whatsoever and then i can take those economics and do even more where i'm not there i look at money as portable power i can leverage my money to do things for people even when i sleep i love doing these for people and i work 18 20 hour days still but it's really nice to have the leverage of that as well the most important decision of your life is deciding whether you're truly committed to being happy no matter what because life is going to throw all kinds of curveballs at all of us there's the one thing that's in common in this lifetime is extreme stress you're going to experience it if you haven't already and even if you have you will in the future how you like this positive thinking but it's just true someone you're going to care about is going to die someone's going to take advantage financially if you're not careful you're going to find yourself in a position the government might change the rules and you can't do what you're doing before um some may call like i've gotten a call saying you got a tumor in your brain those days alter you and if you decide that you're gonna live in a beautiful state of mind that doesn't just mean happy it means uh people say oh yeah i'm committed to be happy but my wife left me well then you're not committed to being happy you're coming to be happy unless your wife leaves you and you can't control that you can certainly influence it but you can't control it or i'm gonna be happy except my friend died your friends are gonna die your family gonna die so the greatest gift you could give yourself besides making this life about love and making this life about giving because to give you have to keep growing is i believe to make that decision and say life is too short to suffer and most achievers like you and i we never use the word suffering but we get stressed we get pissed we get overwhelmed some people get sad or depressed and those are all forms of suffering and all your entire life you live in one of two states states of suffering or beautiful states of being and in a beautiful state of being hey guys in a beautiful state of being we're still filming a couple minutes sorry that's good for your film thanks kirby yeah i know we're late we're finishing right now yeah last couple minutes sorry there you go all right and you can leave that in that's the real thing uh in beautiful states of being it doesn't matter what happens um you're going to find something to enjoy and appreciate and you know you know i both interviewed people i'm sure i'm sure you have that born with no arms or legs or they've been they've lost their sight and they're happy and then you meet billionaires or people families they got beautiful kids beautiful husband beautiful wife and they get miserable over anything i really believe you have to make that's the most important decision of your life is that no matter what happens i'm going to live in that state and then you have to do the work which is i got a 90-second rule they get pissed off or frustrated suffering comes up it always shows up but what i decide is within 90 seconds i kill it because in that suffering state i'm not going to be there for my wife or my kids and that suffering state if i solve it i'm going to be miserable even though i solve it right i um i realized i would give away my happiness so easily because look i got 1200 employees plus in 18 companies on multiple continents and multiple industries what are the chances that today somebody's going to screw up something a hundred it's 100 and so i would be like oh i was so happy and then john did this or this person what were they thinking or he opened the door in the middle of the interview or whatever there's always something right and so i decided that's the that's going to happen that's part of you know having multi-billion dollar companies and lots of industries so i'm going to enjoy it and when something doesn't work out we'll learn from it we'll grow it's all small stuff right you don't sweat the small stuff it's all small stuff so i i've i've really experienced in the last year that's probably the greatest growth for me is not letting that suffering last and calling it suffering because it's inconsistent with my identity and probably yours as well right yeah so i'd never do that stuff so i don't and i call a spade a spade pissed off of suffering worry to suffering stressed out as suffering and so if they're if i know it sounds esoteric because we're doing this in two minutes i usually take people now through like a day of experiences where they uncover this i ask people if i asked you what are two of the most magnificent experiences of your life so far um the first two things that came to the top of my head was visiting a third world country and building a school for kids and seeing their joy yeah and being in that experience and then two others was uh achieving a dream of being an all-american athlete when i wanted to early on yeah when i worked for it for so long and then also not to pitch myself but writing a new york time best-selling book and having a dream and creating that dream so and then let's now there's a pattern to those examples i'm not just listening to the content i'm listening to tell me what you felt what did you feel when you helped build that school incredible joy it was like uh it's like i was able to give i was able to use what god had created for me to give back and and support other people yeah that contribution that service for me was a major thing to see what i was capable of doing for so many other people beyond myself and when you became an all-american what did you feel i felt a sense of well actually the first time i was an all-american i was really happy and i was really sad i was really upset because i was driven by anger to prove people wrong that i would become it so i made it happen by this willing it and this commitment to like proving everyone wrong and all the people that screwed me over like here's why you're gonna accept me and why you're gonna love me and it didn't work completely it wasn't fulfilling no it was from a moment and then i was like this sucks what's the point of this so so you you just so beautifully demonstrated what i want to get across whenever we have our highest experiences of life two things are involved some form of growth within ourself and some form of contribution beyond ourself i don't i could ask a hundred people as i've done this for thousands and they always tell me something that where they face the fear overcame something but also in doing it it benefited their family or benefited somebody else or like what you did with the building whenever ask people the worst experiences of their life they will tell me something and it was all about them you what happened to them yeah so one of the reasons you valued that experience is there was growth in that experience to become the all-american but because you did it all just about you it wasn't fulfilling exactly that's when i say life's not about me it's about we and that's also why when people are suffering it's always because you're obsessing about yourself you're obsessing that something happened and now you have less you think you have less or something happened and you've lost something lost love lost money lost significance lost attention lost something or because you did this or said that or because i did something myself i'm never going to have something lost less than ever are the sources of suffering and when you say no i'm suffering because my children are doing well now you're suffering because you failed your children in your mind it's about you still when you get that all suffering is obsession with self you can snap out of it and all you have to do is stop expecting and start appreciating you look around and appreciate things outside yourself the people around you friends sitting across here anything of that nature and then starting to enjoy something if you start to learn or grow from that if you love which to me is an action if you love if you give if you're grateful suffering disappears instantly but you have to tell yourself the truth the only suffering is in your mind it's because this brain is not designed to make you happy it's 2 million years old it's designed to make you survive happiness is your job and happiness is a decision and it's a daily set of practices and the difference for me from before if you said do you have a beautiful magnificent life is are you kidding me i mean it's like i have this incredible mission i work with millions of people i have this beautiful family i love my wife i'm physically strong and healthy but it's like a business if you measure the business annually you feel good about the business but you're gonna have some bad years if you measure it monthly the worst you're gonna have is bad months daily when i take over company turnaround i find usually a dozen elements of that business and i'll measure five times a day in the beginning because the more you measure the better you can adapt and change and i make everybody have to focus on it well what i've done with this area of my life is instead of saying is my life beautiful course it is or magnum of course it is i now measure it moment to moment wow so if i feel that that suffering that frustration that whatever's coming up i go this is the mind i breathe in my heart i find something i can appreciate i become entertained by the experience and go you know what i'm gonna live in a beautiful state no matter what because not everything can i control and the things i'm most upset about they're fleeting anyway mostly everybody that you admire is doing the exact same thing they actually listen to their inner wisdom they have figured out how to tune out the critic up here and trust the instincts and you know i have this saying about confidence that i've only recently kind of stumbled into as i've been digging into more research around the science of confidence and the skill of confidence because a lot of people think that confidence is a personality trait it's not it's actually a skill that you build through action and a lot of people think confidence is a state of belief it can be but that's not where it begins and so i say that confidence is the willingness to try that's all that it is knowing that you may succeed or survive but you'll still try and to me all those people that we admire most that's what they're doing they have the ability to tune into those instincts that are true for them because the fact is there's only one you that's it and you matter because there's only one you and there's only ever gonna be one you and your instincts and your experiences and your inner wisdom is a gift to the world and every time that you tune it out because of the habit of hesitating or the habit of self-doubt or the habit of worrying or the habit of overthinking you are robbing the world of that gift that you have to to give to everybody efficiency is good all things being equal doing things faster is great the problem is that there is a point of diminishing returns to using efficiency as your only strategy for productivity which is that no matter how fast we move the amount of busy work always expands to fill the amount of time available

Channel: Lewis Howes

Views: 428,135

Rating: 4.8929181 out of 5

Keywords: Lewis Howes, Lewis Howes interview, school of greatness, self help, self improvement, self development, personal development, success habits, success, wealth, motivation, inspiration, inspirational video, motivational video, success principles, millionaire success habits, how to become successful, success motivation

Id: bsVWXylFmso

Length: 92min 4sec (5524 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 11 2021