The Truth About Money and Happiness | Tom Bilyeu AMA

welcome to another edition of AMA live I'm your host Tom bill you and I'm here to answer all of your questions and today we are going to be talking about the truth of money and happiness so our first question is from Sarah Chee this came in via the connect inbox and she said I quit my job to start my own business something I've always wanted to do I'm earning less than I was earning in my corporate job but enough to cover my living expenses in a world where success is typically measured by how much money you make rather than how happy and fulfilled you are how do you keep the face faith whilst still being objective in your journey all right so here is the reality about money so the reason that people chase it even though I know you've heard a thousand times and it is absolutely true money can't buy happiness that if you're chasing money the odds of you ending up with some level of dissatisfaction is incredibly high but the reason that people ignore that and the reason that they keep chasing it the reason that I myself live the cliche of money can't buy happiness is because money actually does have power now the thing that money lets you do the thing that gives it that power the reason that people will chase for ever and ever and ever is it is the great facilitator now being the great facilitator does not mean that it gives you the thing that you secretly want in your life so here's the punchline about happiness the goal of all of this the goal of this game of life that we're all playing it is not money it is not success it is entirely brain chemistry it's entirely how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself it's about being deeply fulfilled it's about being proud of who you are now those are all for me synonyms it's the same thing which I'm just going to shorthand to fulfillment the thing you're chasing is fulfillment it's the only thing that doesn't sway with the wind so happiness in its typical definition is very transient so I want to shift people over to thinking about fulfilment fulfillment is often born of suffering it's born of not doing something you want to do it's born of doing the hard things being proud of yourself comes from that being proud of yourself comes from working your ass off to acquire a set of skills that by the way in and of themselves in acquiring it you found that pleasurable it's something that you're interested in you've hopefully crafted developed built a deep passion around and in acquiring those skills in service of that thing that you love and enjoy you're able to serve other people that's it that's the truth of happiness that's the truth of the thing that is going to give you that sense of fulfillment that's going to allow you to enjoy your life money is never ever ever in and of itself going to do that money buys cool money is able to give you those temporary dopamine rushes of going and shopping for something and getting it and then it's cool but then that coolness factor wears off very rapidly the flipside of that using that money to build something that you believe in that not only empowers you but helps empower other people that will help you develop long lasting fulfillment so that's the real thing but if you're doing something that isn't making you a lot of money but you're passionate about it you enjoy the day-to-day and it's allowing you to build skills that serve you and other people I promise you if you had to choose between the two which by the way you don't but if you had to choose between the two always in forever every single time choose fulfillment they say a smart man never learned sorry they say a fool never learns a smart man learns from his mistakes and a wise man learns from the mistakes of others I beg of you to be wise on this one even though I couldn't be and unfortunately I was a fool for a long time in this issue smart finally but never wise so I chase money it took me down a very dark path it left me so unhappy that I literally gave back two million dollars worth of equity just to go be it feel alive again so be wise learn from my mistakes learn from the mistakes of the army of humanity that has come before me that said the same thing that I ignored at the end of the day the thing that you're going to be grateful that you pursued was that thing that's giving you that pleasure in the moment makes you feel good about yourself so go after that all right next question TQ marimba this is on YouTube one man talks podcast you on man talks podcasts all right you talked about being capable of producing the extraordinary and that to be able to play on a world stage you were willing to break yourself in half what does that mean so for me it I am literally willing to do whatever it takes within my code of ethics to achieve my goals so that's what I mean by break myself in half I'm willing to work literally Monday through Friday if I'm awake I'm either working or working out so to the point where I brush with my brush my teeth with my headphones on so that I can get the last little eeks of the day out from the moment I wake up I go immediately to the gym I workout and then I immediately do my morning routine which I've gone through so many times and won't waste my time with it now but I go right into that immediately and that carries me all the way through so like today I woke up at what 4:15 so I wake up around that time every day somewhere between let's say 3:00 and 5:00 that's my typical wake up window and I'm going to work or workout from that moment until I go to bed and I go to bed at the same time every night which is 9 p.m. so somewhere around about 8:45 is when I begin my nighttime ritual brushing my teeth and all of that but even then I am listening to a book or something along those lines so that is what I mean by break myself a half and then on the weekends by the way on a lazy weekend I probably work five to seven hours a day and then on a hardcore weekend like last weekend where I was working literally until midnight on a Saturday I'll clock say 13 14 hours of work that's on a weekend so that's what I mean by break myself in half now the whole point is that I'm building something that I believe in I'm building something that gives me a deep sense of fulfillment I believe that not only am i empowering myself and making myself stronger and more capable of the things that I want to do and the things that give me joy and give me more energy than they take but that I am doing something that serves a lot of people that goes way beyond me and the not-so-secret thing I love the puzzle of seeing if I can figure out something that other people can't figure out that is a deeply enjoyable pastime of trying to improve myself to learn enough to think of the problem in a new enough way to challenge my own assumptions to do all of that to be able to see a problem in a way that nobody else can to see a solution that nobody else can see I love doing that so all of this energy and effort it is in things that give me more energy than they take so it's just a pleasurable existence and I don't want to hear people I don't want people to hear in what I say that I'm just like writing it out I tried that I did that for six and a half years and it was a total misery so I'm not saying that I'm saying work that hard in service of something that you believe in that makes you feel alive that you love doing if you do that then breaking yourself in half that just becomes a metaphor for the amount of energy that you're willing to put into the things that you believe in so and I wish that for everybody by the way I wish for everybody that you could find something that interest you enough that you'd be willing to go down the path of gaining mastery and developing a passion so that you can engage so fully with that thing that as you get into this virtuous cycle and I think building a passion is a lot like falling in love it is reciprocal it is two-way if it's just one way it's not real love if it's just you going down the path of gaining mastery and there's no reciprocal feeling positive about yourself and being able to help other people if you're not getting that feedback you're never gonna be able to develop a real passion and what it looks like is as you find that thing that interest you you go down the path of gaining mastery you're getting better at something that actually helps other people so you start feeling good about yourself and then you take that energy and you get even better at it which allows you to serve other people more which makes you feel even better about yourself which makes you want to go out and get more skills and you get in this feedback loop and the more skills you get the more powerful you are the more you're able to help other people the better it makes you feel about yourself which makes you hungry to get more skills and you now get in this loop I wish for everyone to get in that loop to create that level of love and enjoyment for something that you think about it the way that I think about building this dude that it feeds you that when you think about the people the lives that you're touching like that gives you so much energy that even if what you're doing isn't giving you the fight the financial rewards that you want that it's giving you that life satisfaction of knowing you're doing something that matters that it has that purpose that it's feeding your why that is the thing that I want for everyone that is the thing that makes me do this content that is what I hope that you guys focus on because if you do that then not only can we have a massive impact on the world but you will enjoy your life and that's the punchline Thorg hemin we're gonna go with org hey Tom why don't you learn during school why don't why don't we there we go hey Tom why don't we learn during school that money doesn't buy happiness it is so important to know I will give you the real answer the people teaching you and my heart goes out to them but the people teaching you haven't learned the lessons yet the people teaching you oftentimes have only been in that environment that went to high school that went to college together degree to teach they went they go in to teach the whole system is built by people that have only existed in the system and so literally their frame of reference is the system to keep the system alive to feed the system and especially if the system gave them joy if they loved learning and if they loved the idea of teaching they don't want the system to change people fear that change and so they want to give to other people that beautiful thing that was given to them and they don't see that it's not necessarily affecting everyone the way that it affected them and the more terrifying part is becoming a teacher oh god this is gonna be horrible but this is actually true becoming a teacher if you haven't gone out and used the thing that you're teaching in the real world is like becoming an influencer for being an influencer the only reason that I can step in front of this camera and be very confident in what I'm talking about is I spent the last almost 20 years building businesses not being an influencer not being in front of the camera but literally going from laying on the floor of my unfurnished apartment flirting with depression not having any idea how I was gonna do anything with my life feeling totally hopeless and lost and then having to build myself brick by brick in order to become the person that I wanted to become in order to become capable of what I wanted to be capable of and now all I'm doing is telling what I've actually done so it's not me coming on here telling you how to build a following because I built the following and I built my following by telling people how to build the following and so it becomes it's like really weird loop I'm telling you that in the trenches from the bottom how I rose up so I know it worked at least once and that gives me the power to come on here and give you nuance that you're not gonna hear somewhere else and that is why teachers usually aren't able to give you such a different perspective because they're still chasing the same things they haven't learned that lesson about money they're struggling enough that money is still a major factor in their life because until you get all of your needs met until you have enough disposable income that you're not sweating every bill and I remember having to choose what bills I paid during the month until you get past that money is an overwhelming amount of what you think about so there's no way that you're gonna be able to teach people that money can't buy happiness because let me tell you poverty can't buy happiness either and we have myths on both sides of the equation people that tell you that money is the root of all evil that's a myth people that tell you money's gonna buy happiness that's a myth the truth unfortunately for the most part has to be experienced by people that man if we could snap our fingers and create a world where people had to go out build and do things for ten years and then come back and teach and that we rewarded people handsomely for doing so that would fundamentally change the education system but that is so easy to say and pretty much impossible to do so I have many many times said I am NOT the man to fix the education system so take my pontificating for what it's worth next up Noel Alise face book how do you suggest chasing your passion career-wise when you have children and bills that demand you stay the course of making a and reliable income to survive okay so this is brutally hard in everything I'm about to say I want to preface by saying you're in a super difficult situation I don't want to cheapen that at all I just hopefully want to give you a slightly different perspective now when you have kids which this is one of the reasons I don't have kids there are people that are impacted by your decisions and making sure that you provide for them and take care of them that is that is Noble in a way that I can't explain now having said that I think that when people are given context when they understand why you're doing what you're doing suddenly the needs that you have as a family aren't as big as you think they are you just have to be willing to face scrutiny and embarrassment to shrink your lifestyle down so I once read about this family that sold everything bought a boat and then sailed their kids around the world and they were like they ranged in age from like 12 to 6 or something so it wasn't like oh they weren't in school yet or something like that now admittedly that seemed crazy dangerous to me but pretending that there's a way around the dangerous side of it I thought that it was just immeasurably cool how little they really needed to get by and to sail around and it was just an incredible story of cutting their expenses to essentially nothing and showing their kids the world different cultures educating them on the boat they had time to read obviously they didn't weren't wasting any time with social media like all of that stuff all the things that people complain about being these time sucks and stop people from really discovering who they are and discovering all these different things they found a way to just reduce their expenses to next to nothing so that's gonna be step one how much can you reduce your expenses obviously everybody needs to be fed there should be a certain amount of security that we know where our meals are going to come from we know that we have roof over our head of some kind whether it be a boat or a normal typical house but there are ways to cut your expenses to the quick now kids aren't going to like it they're gonna squawk they're gonna complain because they want all the things that their friends have and all of that so I it's super brutal but that would be first and foremost how much can you reduce your expenses now once you reduce your expenses then you're gonna set about getting six months of money in the bank so that you know that you can live for six months you can take care of your kids you can make sure that they have health care all of that I think that's super important to your well-being forget the kids for a second when you have six months income saved up and you know without another dime coming in you could live your life exactly the way that you're living it for six months you're now in the driver's seat from your job now you can go out and figure out exactly what it is you want to do while still having your job and spend an hour a day everyday looking for jobs what is your dream job what company would it be with what's the culture that you're looking for what do you want to do on a day to day basis and the way that I always tell people is ask yourself one simple question what do you want to learn more about than anyone else in the world once you know the thing you want to know more about than anyone that's gonna be the thing that fuels you that if you were reading about that then you would have fun if you were getting pushed and you had to work late nights but you were doing that thing learning about that thing that you would still love it and who do you want to serve and once you know that once you have those things in place something you want to learn about in a culture that makes you feel good and you're serving people that you really care about serving when you have those three things and you know that you've got the six months savings so that if you get into the job and it's not quite what you wanted that you can then get out of it and go find something else that's just hugely important and then I am actually not I think people think I'm a fan of burning the ships at the shore but the only time you should burn the ships of the shore is when that's what you have to do to succeed I did not do that when we started quest we kept our software company during the day and then yes I took a risk by cutting my salary in 1/3 and going out and being the first one to go full-time at Quest but even then I had enough coming in that I knew that we could make ends meet if we were willing to just lock it down stay in the house not go out not eat out things like that get rid of one of the cars all that just cut our expenses to the quick so that is exactly what I would do once you have that clarity you know you're after you've got the six months saved you've cut your expenses down to the quick now you can really go look for the perfect job and do it while you still have your job and then when you find the perfect thing you're able to take the risk there it is and you just because you don't need to make as much money you may be able to start at a lower rung and then work your way up which is just the thing for me not everybody wants to work their way up but I'm super ambitious like that so I would always leave myself that opportunity alright Daniel bro damn bro Fitness Facebook I have been watching Amy Cuddy's TED talk about powerful body language and how it impacts your brain what methods have you found a lower anxiety in a networking situation so the thing that I have found that I use on a routine basis is I stand upright I breathe from my diaphragm I do the shoulders back and I don't put my hands in my pockets and I smile a lot and that has been huge so in a networking situation I adopt my goofy neutral face which is a little something like that and then I try to smile as much as humanly possible and I tried to be effervescent I tried to like when the cameras come on and I really push my personality out and I try to sound fun and inviting and warm and engaging and all of that stuff those have been this the physical techniques that I use and then I will also say as not a physical technique but a very powerful technique in networking situations that allow me to lower my anxiety is asking questions of other people rather than trying to step in the spotlight myself so I find that asking questions is a lot less anxiety provoking than feeling like I've got to be on and I've got to impress people so in a networking situation I use one tactic for impressing people and that is I try to really be curious about them ask them a lot of questions get them to feel good about themselves talking about themselves and then they paint that feeling onto me and so just by asking questions I find that I can make a good impression so as the saying goes if you want to be interesting be interested so ask a lot of questions Adrian cubby this is on YouTube hi Tom I heard you talk about winning two naveen Jane by saying that he already won by making a lot of money do you always associate success to making money absolutely not so going back to the topic of this whole am a today is the truth about money and happiness so I asked that question and I use those words and I remember thinking at the time people are gonna think I mean this from my perspective I'm saying I know people looking at the VN think you've already won dude you've already made all this money so why do you keep pushing so I was asking that question so people would hear themselves their own thoughts and the question because I knew what he was gonna say to the answer now as they say in law never ask a question to which you don't already know the answer so a lot of times when I'm doing an interview I'm asking questions in a way that definitely hopefully seems fresh but I know what they're gonna answer because I've seen so many videos on them I know the direction that they're gonna go and that way I can steer the interview to give the people watching hopefully something that is massively impactful and gives them the takeaways that I think that person really has to offer so that's why I asked like that I don't think money is success I think money's super powerful and I think it's very usable but it is one thing and one thing only and that is a great facilitator so once you know what you want once you know you're trying to accomplish what you know what you want to build and all of that money is incredibly powerful but Naveen is the perfect example he's taking the money that he's made and he's building companies that he thinks her game-changing and so I knew that was gonna be the punchline of asking him that question is he believes that there are these huge fundamental world problems that needs to be solved and Commerce's the way to solve them and so he's gonna build these self-sustaining economic engines but he fuels them with his own capital so he can get them off the ground so he can do them the way that he wants to do them so he's not beholden to other people on and on and on so but money in and of itself is while what most people call success I am just terrifyingly consistent on what answer to me the only thing that I care about is how I feel about myself when I'm by myself that is my true definition of success Steve Hurley YouTube hey Tom I like my job now but the pay is very meager should I take a job I'm not passionate about with a kill date when I'm in a better position financially so I'm no longer making ends meet I'm super open to that strategy however I will say there's almost certainly another way to go about it which is to find a job that's in that zone of things that you like in your wheelhouse the thing you want to do the universe of stuff that you want to be around that pays more and it's probably maybe not just as easy because I'm guessing you're asking this question because there's another job that's already presented itself that you could take but I'm guessing it's gonna be almost as easy to just go out and find a job that's in line with what you want to do in line with what you want to get great at that's gonna pay more and more as you bring more and more value so I would focus on that be in that universe of things that you want to do but I've got no beef if there's some unique situation in your world where you know I could go and I remember people back in Tacoma used to do this all the time they would go spend a summer in Alaska fishing and it was a super brutal job but they could make a ton of money doing it and then they would come back and you know use that money to do something else so by all means if you've got that opportunity I've got no hate for that personally having done that where I ended up chasing money in a position that I thought was like surefire I'm gonna make me all this money and then it didn't end it took me years of my life to finally realize that all right the struggle is guaranteed the success is not so I would much rather pursue something that I really care about and that's when we built quest which ended up being way more successful but quest was born out of me saying I'm not just gonna do anything to make money I'm gonna force myself to only do something that I actually care about and care deeply about and so I'm gonna go down that path and hey if it allows me to make more money amazing and I certainly work to make sure that the foundation was there so that it could it make me more money that I could move up that it could grow and be bigger but I was chasing fulfilment so that is my suggestion to you - Mira Benitez YouTube I found out my definition of happiness doesn't list any feelings it's all basic material stuff if there was one thing I could do to change my definition of happiness what would that action be that action would be to really go recursive and go inside yourself and figure out the times where you feel most alive and you most feel like I want to bottle this feeling what are those moments what is creating that and while I'm gonna guess that you get like a pretty rad feeling when you buy something that you really wanted that you see that that declines and that there's no way for you to sustain that whereas there gonna be other things where it's you're learning something new and you think whoa this is so cool like I want to learn more about this I want to read about this you're losing track of time you're totally swept up in that thing you want to talk to your friends about it all that stuff and here's the real thing there's no insecurity around it now here's the problem with money when you buy something and you think it's cool and you want to show it to your friends in that moment there's a deep sense of unease and insecurity because you know if your friends reject it they laugh at it they say it's not cool all of your emotional energy and attachment to that thing will go away instantly the reason 99 times out of 100 people want to buy something cool is because it's going to impact other people which now means you're beholden to the way that they think about it and so you have that sense of what if they don't think this is as cool as I do and you know that if they don't that then yourself that feeling of coolness will go away when it's something that you just love when it's something you find interesting when it's something that you've gone deep and I'll use music as an example so let's say you love playing the cello everyone else thinks of the cello is stupid but you love the cello because the way it makes you feel when you play it when you're able to express yourself in a way you're not able to express yourself in words when you write something down or in any other way in your life nothing makes you feel like you're really externalizing your internal state like the cello and so you work and you practice and you fumble and you get better and you work through the things that you're not good at not so you can impress other people that's awesome and you love it and when people love your music you were way into that and that feeds you and you enjoy that part of it but even if they didn't even if they laughed if they laughed at you and you felt terrible about yourself you'd want to play the cello you'd want to go home and be by yourself and play this thing to really get that emotion out of yourself that is the thing that I hope for for people that's the thing that you should be trying to cultivate in your life that's what you need to look inside and find that thing what's that thing that when people hurt you or you're feeling down what do you turn to when you find that thing that's the vein that you want to go hard down that's the thing that you want to cultivate in your life and when you start turning inward and looking at that and realizing that that's not something money can buy that's you pouring yourself into something that makes you feel alive that gives you that energy that's not beholden to what anybody else thinks that's the magic go after that Jayla Ali how important is rest and how much do you get of it I'm trying hard at the moment to pursue my dreams but sometimes I feel out of balance because I lack sleep for example all right boys and girls I'm telling you I'm just gonna be super arrogant for a second I built a billion-dollar business without setting an alarm prioritize sleep I work a lot in fact I'll take the Pepsi challenge anybody that wants to go head to toe with me in terms of what you get done not just raw number of hours aimed at a computer or whatever it is you're supposed to be doing and performing totally sub-optimally I'll just take the Pepsi challenge on that I always prioritize sleep I always prioritize my psychological optimization so for instance if I'm working around the clock and this happened not too long ago I was just working so many hours and it ended up encompassing too many things that took more energy than they were giving that I started to feel anxious isn't in fact I started to feel claustrophobic that's exactly how I felt I wanted to crawl out of my own skin I don't know how to explain it it's just like ah who's driving me nuts and I realized I need to chill for a minute I need to meditate I need to take an hour and go do something that's still moving me towards my dreams because that's my thing but that I really enjoy and so maybe in those moments I go read a comic because we're building a comic book publishing Empire so that's part of what I need to do anyway but reading the comic is fun I also need to meditate and just literally breathe from my diaphragm so get the sleep do you need that's super critical you do not need to set an alarm sleep as much as you need to and by the way if you're doing things that are exciting to you you're I know people some of you are gonna believe me because I hopefully I've earned the credibility with you up to this point and some of you're gonna call total you can ask my wife I can set an internal alarm clock in my mind only if I'm excited about something or really stressed out but that's a whole nother thing which I try hardly to do ever but when I'm really excited about something I can set an internal alarm clock this morning I told myself wake up at 4:15 what time did I wake up boys and girls not for 14 not for 16 I woke up at 4:15 because that was the time that I told myself to wake up I can usually get within 5 minutes of what time I tell myself to wake up it doesn't always work and if I'm tired I don't give myself that edict I tell myself to sleep as much as I need but when I'm really excited about something there's something I want to get up and work on and I'm afraid there just won't be enough time and it's a reasonable amount of sleep I'll say anything north of 5 hours I can usually get myself to just wake up so get the sleep prioritize cognitive optimization because then you're efficient and efficiency is the name of the game so sleep sleep sleep I am NOT a guy proposing the you know set your alarm get up at 4 a.m. no matter what it's not me go to bed early get your sleep meditate getting a good peaceful calm creative state so that you can really crush it Brian letting are this from YouTube Tom I think my goal may be too big anybody else gonna chime in on that one I write it every day but it makes me feel heavy daunted and terrified to pursue it rather than excited okay that's powerful have I chosen my goal poorly or or do I need to man up okay the dude Brian I love you so much for this question in in this question is like everything that people go through so first of all your goal is not too big okay you're just not yet the person you need to be to execute against that and that is absolutely fine I'm not yet the person I need to be in order to rival Disney I know that and so every day I'm waking up not saying am i there yet am i there yet am i there yet I'm thinking what's one really simple thing that I could do right now today to learn something that moves me down that path or who can i partner with you know what's the idea that I need to get other people excited about what I'm doing so that's super important so your dream is never too big even if you said you want to tear for Mars I'm with you right that's our boy Elon Musk is literally thinking about that so your dream isn't too big you just don't think about like the end goal and let it overwhelm you which is what is happening to you you're writing it every day okay so you're obsessing about that end goal that end outcome which first of all if that end outcome is about a thing like the thing that I think about every day is not building a studio to rival Disney even though that's often what I externalize to people what I think about internally the thing that warms my soul is I think about the people out there that are extraordinary they could do something amazing with their lives but they won't because they don't believe in themselves so what I think about the thing that drives me that obsesses me and fills me with excitement and joy to get good enough to actually do it is helping people develop an empowering mindset that's my obsession the whole rival Disney thing is a path and I think it's the right path and I'm excited to do it and I love it but at the end of the day the thing that keeps me going when I'm feeling overwhelmed is helping other people so figure out what that thing is that huge goal that you have why you want it because chances are that you're gonna be able to do it in smaller ways along the way as well so it's not like this you know 20-year chasm of of binary nothingness where you're not at all doing what you want to do and then suddenly one day it either happens or it doesn't like you know winning the lottery that it's you know these incremental steps okay so you write it down every day start writing down the the beautiful thing you want to bring into the world and also even that like you should be spending time what are you grateful for right now thinking about what you want to learn thinking about things that excite you it makes you feel heavy daunted and terrified to pursue it okay so if it makes you feel heavy daunted and terrified to pursue it because you're obsessing over the end goal it's some like traditional marker of success money and big company whatever and not how you want to help people then it's just a matter of reframing if on the other hand is because you think you're supposed to want that thing but you don't actually want it and so the idea of pursuing it and all you would have to do to get there is just horrifying to you then yes you've picked the wrong goal only you can answer that question I have no idea which of the two is true just remember don't chase something because people have told you that you should want it literally just look at what gives you more energy than it takes what's exciting for you what's fun what do you think about when nobody's looking what do you do when you're like in your default mode what do you go to reading playing video games whatever it is like that thing is pointing you in the direction of the things you like sports who knows that default thing that you go to to recharge to enjoy to play to have fun finding a way to make that a part of your big grand goal is really really important okay and then the whole notion of do you need to man up all right Manning up is awesome and I think that pushing yourself to be more to do the hard things is always always always a good idea if you've already taken the time to love yourself if you've taken the time to love yourself and see yourself as a vehicle for potential and that the fun of life is seeing how much of that potential you can actuate cool then I'm down then man up then push yourself then do the hard things but if you haven't taken the time to love yourself and be like hey what I love myself for is that I am human and I am literally wired from the ground up to be an adaptation machine meaning if I put stress and my self pressure and I put myself under pressure I can grow and I can get better and that's awesome and that's the thing that I value in humans and hey I am human and therefore I value myself for having this intrinsic potential now the weird thing to me is that then some people get freaked out I have this potential I'm not doing anything with it these are not the droids you're looking for you want to spend your time thinking that's rad I'm stoked that I have that potential and I want to play and I want to have fun and I'm not going to overly or prematurely optimize I'm gonna find something that means something to me and I'm gonna put that meaning and that purpose at the center of my life and I'm gonna pursue that and I'm gonna man up in service of that and I'm gonna man up and service of doing things that I love and getting better at them and finding joy in pushing myself but it all has to start from change comes from loving yourself you don't change because you hate yourself okay now look you've heard me talk 80/20 right I spend 80% of my time there and I do spend 20% of my time anybody but 20% of my time being deeply dissatisfied with myself but that's a conversation for another day for right now you need to love yourself first you need to get out from under this overwhelming pressure of this thing you're trying to do just remember you can learn anything if you put your mind to it and you give yourself a long enough timeline if that's something that you love it's something that you enjoy it's something that you want to know more about than anybody else and you actually enjoy the process of investing time and energy there then go down that path the man anything that chips away at you makes you feel less of yourself makes you feel heavy daunted and terrified we're just on the wrong path not necessarily to the wrong place you may have already picked the right goal but you're on the wrong path you're going about it the wrong way the whole point is to enjoy your life today I like to remind myself even though I'm trying to live forever that I may have an aneurysm and not finish this am a right that that's the reality that we all live under and when you remember that then suddenly it becomes so important to enjoy today so I'll give you an example Lisa and I were taking a shower together this morning which my wife absolutely loves and it doesn't hurt my feelings either and she was saying how she has this like impulse where she starts to feel guilty if she takes an hour off a day now imagine that and your entire day from the time you wake up till the time you go to bed you feel guilty about taking an hour off okay as much as I preach like hey if I'm awake um either working or I'm working out let me tell you the second I feel like mad I don't want to do that right now today I wouldn't I'm only doing that because it gives me energy and so I was telling her like whoa like you've got to remember to love what you're doing and she was like yeah I'm starting to like feel like you know I'm spending so much time doing things that I don't love but they've got to get done again that doesn't make sense even when you're trying to do something big you've got to remember to have fun and if you're not having fun you're doing something wrong so if any of you need permission here's your permission enjoy your life please as a matter of priority enjoy your life nothing else matters accomplishing at the highest level but not enjoying your life is a waste of time never accomplishing anything of note but loving your life that's a win all right Fleming V Alona I think that's about right is there anything wrong with taking a shortcut when there is one available ie not using the shortcut to complete the quest but to take it to new heights if I can take a shortcut I will take it every last time I'm all about what I'm trying to bring to the world so yeah I don't get it doing something the hard way just because it's hard and you feel that that makes you tougher that doesn't make any sense either you actually want your goal to come true or you don't and so I would say absolutely take the shortcut now in life I find if all you're doing is asking yourself what's the least I can get away with instead of asking what's the most you can bear you just won't accomplish as much as you want to accomplish but at the end of the day I'll take any and every shortcut that I can because I know that I'm going all-out every day to bring as much value to other people as I can to optimize my love of life and it just so happens that for me with my personality going hard like that is so deeply pleasurable and makes me feel so good about myself and creates that thing inside of me that nobody can take away from me because I Know Who I am when nobody's watching I know what I'm doing so that is the single most important thing that you could do so you'll have to know why you're taking the shortcut yep man I'm all about it Yegor okona of youtube tom logic dictates that you should try all sorts of things to find your passion purpose but and start with why simon says that it's the thing directly tied your past childhood who do I believe man believe what you feel so I think that there is often a correlation between something that you loved in your childhood or something that was important to you or that you encountered in your childhood but you need to if you didn't encounter anything like think about those people that were like beaten their entire childhood like some of the they're just too heinous to even contemplate so are they supposed to spend their entire life in the darkness because that's what they grew up with that so absolutely at any time find something that sparks your interest and go after that thing I didn't get into entrepreneurship until I was 26 I think and it's become one of the deepest most thrilling passions of my life so yeah get after it find something that you believe in find something that allows you to build your skill set and serve other people in a way that you find incredibly meaningful whether it came from your childhood or not is completely irrelevant and I will leave you with one amazing I think it's Buddhist reference don't mistake the finger for the moon and what that means is when somebody's pointing at the moon don't mistake the thing the metaphor the story that they're telling you which is the finger for what they're actually trying to get you to which is the lesson the experience that thing Simon is merely trying to lead you on a path so that you can find that deep sense of fulfillment that sense of energy that wellspring of energy that comes from having a Y from having a mission in a purpose so if he's trying to help you get there by saying hey it's probably something that comes from your childhood that's the finger if you find that the moon is something entirely different for you the moon is all that matters all right guys thank you so much for joining me for this episode today by the way today's episode is brought to you by the be legendary shirt if you haven't already got one for yourself head to shop impact Theory comm right now we're gonna be launching by the way a whole new set of cool stuff in the very near future I won't steal whilst under yet but it's coming soon I'm super stoked on this we've been going hand behind the scenes and the rest of this year is gonna be ham central as we build towards a very climactic into 2018 so head over to shop that impact Theory comm right now and by the way if you haven't signed up for the newsletter sign up for that bad boy I think it's pretty awesome and it's something unlike you're not gonna get that content anywhere else so go check out our newsletter which is also found at impact Theory comm alright guys if you haven't already be sure to subscribe and it's held next time my friends be legendary take care [Music] [Music] you

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 60,511

Rating: 4.8738737 out of 5

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, the truth about money, the truth about happiness, the truth about money and happiness

Id: LV2qCdRE0t8

Length: 42min 21sec (2541 seconds)

Published: Wed May 23 2018