What you Believe Becomes Reality – Chris Do, The Futur AIGA 2019

why do some people succeed while others fail what makes them so different so your life really depends on how you look at the world what do you see if you don't like your story just change it it's that easy next speaker Christo is an award-winning Emmy award-winning designer director strategist lecturer consultant and entrepreneur the last two decades he has run the Santa Monica based motion design and branding agency blind working for iconic brands such as Nike Xbox Sony and Honda he also founded the future an online content and education platform please welcome Chris doe [Applause] hello so good to see you guys alright let's kick this up a little bit that was a lot of energy and I don't know why but I'm feeling a little thirsty right now put this down I've been told I have 30 minutes 30 minutes let's see how we do oooh my slides already moving okay what are we going to talk about today alright here we go I'm used to doing a very long livestream so 30 minutes it's a crunch for me and this is a version of my to our mini workshop and we're gonna just bang it out in 30 minutes so I'm going to talk a little bit fast and if I do I'm gonna warn you right now you probably want to get your cellphone's out because we're gonna fly through this I'm Asian we do things on time alright okay okay all right all right whoo all right okay we'll see you the lights are so bright your future's bright okay I will let you guys know about this big hairy audacious goal that I have which is to teach and impact 1 billion lives on planet Earth and I understand there's 1,400 of you guys here so hopefully if I do my job I can take 1,400 from that 1 billion ok what do we talk about today we're gonna be really addressing mindset and belief systems I'm not gonna show you my portfolio there's no process here but I'm gonna try to share with you some of the things I've learned in coaching so many people across this great world question for you to think about why do some people succeed while others fail what makes me so different and a lot of times we think it must be because they were born with it or maybe it was Maybelline right or could it just be something else and I was a teacher it doesn't help me to believe that you're born with it so I have to believe that you must be able to learn this so I'm going to start it off with a story and this is a true story and the events described in this talk took place over the internet or most of my conversations happen the names have been changed sort of and out of respect for you the rest is told exactly as it occurred this is a story not about a woman named Carrie she's a mom she lives on a farm in South Carolina she studied mechanical engineering she's a self-taught designer and she's the primary income earner for her family and carries somebody I'd befriended on the internet and I was coaching her and she kept telling me Chris I can't seem to build more for websites than $8,000 dollars so she was hitting her glass ceiling and I said you can charge more she goes no you don't understand I work with influencers and experts and coaches and authors and they just don't value design I've tried and tried and they just it's $8,000 so here's the good news about this story is that I coach and teach a lot of people so I meet this other person his name not bene but I talked to penny and Benny does the exact same thing for the exact same market but Benny charges somewhere between twenty to fifty thousand dollars I knew it I do know what she was lying to me all this time so I call up Carrie again see Carrie you know I met this gentleman he does exactly what you do every charge is way more than you and she goes is not possible what's his name what's his website and she searches on the internet she looks it up shout dang it it is exactly the same so I leave Carrie alone for a little while to think about this and I told Carrie Carrie I've been talking to you for a really long time now I don't know why it is that you haven't implemented anything that I've taught you so far I think I'm wasting my time this is the tough Asian dad love thing going on here I say to her if you're not willing to change I think I need to move on I got to spend time with somebody else and I'm going to teach somebody else she was Chris please please don't give up on me I can do this so what Carrie does in the very next call is she summons up the courage to ask for more money I'm gonna fast forward in this story a little bit about six months later she told me she already billed more in the six months than she did the entire previous year so what was different this is what I asked her what was different what changed she was I don't know what you mean I said well did you change your landing page did you write new case studies did you rebrand did you say anything different she was no nothing's different so no something is different your belief and what is possible has changed and that's all it takes I know it's hard for some of you to hear this because I do teach a lot of people how to find their value in the marketplace but the thing that you need to do is to believe and then do it that's a secret formula I love this quote from Marcus Aurelius our life is what our thoughts make it it is so true so today six points want to dive in first one is belief systems and this is normally a workshop so there's parts to this that you just have to imagine us working together and me getting a response from you but that's not possible okay so we'll we'll try to do this okay so here's how the cycle works and there's five spokes to this wheel what you think is what you say and what you say is what you wind up doing right and what you do becomes your behavior your behavior becomes your identity and so it goes on and and on in a circle and before you know it your life is falling into a groove and you know this works on the needle the longer you play the track the deeper the group gets the harder it is to move the needle from the track so what we have to do is to examine our belief system why do you believe what you believe and do you believe it to be true examine them and I'm gonna tell you this little story it's called the monkey ladder experiment some scientists got 5 monkeys together in a room and they put a ladder and at the top of the ladder they put a bunch of bananas and each time a monkey went for the banana the whole group got doused with cold water and over time no monkeys would climb up the ladder and then they were removed one monkey at a time so they introduced one new monkey and when that monkey went up to go for the bunch of bananas before remaining monkeys beat him down so he - also learned not to go for the bunch of bananas and they just slowly swapped out one monkey and till all the monkeys had never been doused with water and none of them went for the bunch of bananas so this is what I talk about when I talk about your belief system and examining it and maybe another way to examine your belief system if you don't like the results that you're getting is to rethink what your belief system is that's just your BS so we're gonna hit command escape I'm going to start over what we need to do is to do something to shock your system so that we can disrupt these patterns okay so I'm talk a little bit about input and output now that clock is killing me looking at thing over there okay so let me ask you guys a true or false question okay do you get out of life what you put into it - or false okay thank you that's how we do it's like a bunch of designer is very quiet so true you get out of life what you put into it right okay well look at this input output it seems to make sense but what I want to do is to interrupt this and insert one critical step that you may not be aware of and that is interpretation input and depending on how you look at things determines your output okay so I'm gonna put this image up I don't want you to say anything yet but when I say please tell me what you think how would you describe this glass okay what are you guys saying okay and any half empties in this room come on come on you guys it's like 90% of the room please let's be honest with each other okay so some of you guys said have fun but you're thinking Chris is gonna trick us he told us think positively you know re-examine our belief system be optimistic what's that it's half water right so how cool half empty or could it just be a glass of water could it just be a glass of water right so we have to kind of think like what is real and we think real reality it's all the same and in fact it's not there's this thing which you believe to be real which is just really subjective individual reality and sometimes that rubs up against objective objective physical reality so your life really depends on how you look at the world what do you see so listen re-examine this same flow chart again your input depending on the interpretation has an infinite number of outputs right so if you want to be angry you will find a way to be angry and if you want to feel hurt you will find a way to feel hurt I just happen to choose to be happy that works much better for me so I've develop a belief system that lifts me up that reminds me that when I fall down it's okay and that everything is a work in progress and I have something to learn okay so I'm gonna put you guys to the test right now okay what you see just look at this for a second what do you see just read this in your mind and most people who read this will feel a little bit angry and what does this make you angry somebody will say well that's unfair to women and some will say that's unfair to men because your answer totally depends on where you put the comma so here we go we'll read it now with a commonplace woman without her man is nothing and so it's how a lot of us read this now if we put another comment here woman without her man is nothing yeah they you all right yeah like this crowd you guys are good I can't see you but thank you appreciate it was so quiet back that was scared scared out my mind it's like I'm gonna go back to to the west side forget this okay part two part two ooh I need to hurry up okay storyteller storyteller okay here's the thing about human beings we're just not comfortable with not knowing so when we don't know things we just make things up we assign meanings to things right you guys I'm talking about and we've been doing this for a really long time we've had a lot of practice back when were cave dwellers it would be a fire and we'd stand around there get warm protect ourselves from danger and make up stories about like angry gods in the sky shooting lightning bolts down or giant Titan is holding up the clouds with her back or why when fire and smoke come out of the top of the mountain it's something else so we love stories and that's cool and we can use this to our advantage but I want to ask you this question here does the story you tell yourself match what others say about you and not just anybody a very specific somebody somebody who loves you who supports you who's loyal who wants to see you succeed maybe a best friend a brother or sister a cousin a parent a teacher a mentor or coach somebody do those things line up this is what your best friend think about you line up with you or is a little bit different and why is that so what we need to do is we need to learn to see ourselves for the way others see us already they see us as smart as generous talented honest support of inspirational maybe even heroic maybe if you don't have a best friend maybe try to see yourself like this guy sees you you could do no wrong all you need to do to be perfect is to come home and let them up sometimes okay so you can tell I'm fond of drawings and charts and diagrams it's the way my brain thinks so I hope in doing so it helps you think of things in a more simplistic way so what others see you could choose to say that that's the real me or you can choose to say well I don't deserve that that isn't me I don't know why they say those nice things about me okay so I'm going to give you three prompts here normally we would do this together you tell me your answers I would make fun of you that's how it goes okay so here are the three prompts three things about my physical appearance people compliment me on our what and just write those down what do others people say they're probably a better judge anyway so we should trust them three traits talents and skills people admire me for what are those you have gifts you're doing things you're going places and here's the last one three ways i express generosity the way I give to others without expectations so here's what we know about stories if you don't like your story just change it it's that easy fill it instead of with negativity and pessimism and dogma fill it with hope optimism dare I say love I want to tell you a story about my two boys one of them was here with me today one of them is super confident almost invincible the other one needs a little help and his name is Matias and so I see this boy and I my heart aches for him because he's not always so confident he doesn't believe in himself and the reason why I understand this is because I see myself looking back at me so Matias and I develop little games to help him make him more resilient happier to reinterpret the world in a way that's advantageous for him so here's the first game that we play it's called war Jitsu it's like jujitsu but we do with words okay or Jitsu you know juxtaposition okay all right so what are limiting beliefs eliminating beliefs okay the lens let's reinterpret this limiting beliefs are just lies we tell ourselves that's what a limiting belief is so there's all these words that have great power over us that lists that prevent us from asking that beautiful person out for asking a boss for a raise or review or client for a little bit more money and I want to take away their power I want to strip them of their power I want to neuter the words okay no animals were harmed making this it's just Photoshop guys it's just Photoshop relax Creative Cloud okay I got it alright so again here's that same input model right through our interpretation through our mind through our subjective individual reality do we want to see something that empowers us or disempowers us that lifts us up or tears us down we get to decide so I coach a lot of young people and something that I realize is there's a lot of great everything's graduated nothing's like just totally good and nothing totally bad so they live in this murky middle area so for this one thing just to preserve your own brain and your your your mental health just think a little bit more binary this is good for me is this bad for me does it empower mate or does it disempower me and see what happens okay so impossible can just be reinterpreted as I'm possible so every time somebody tells you that's impossible like you'll never build an online community and teach hundreds of thousands of people at the same time says you watch me fail fail is a very powerful crippling word for many of us it prevents us from taking a start even well isn't fail just a first attempt in learning and what about no a door closes it's not the end it's just time for your next opportunity how about fear oh that's a big one more people do less because of fear fear could be a fantasized experience appearing real has it happened yet don't give it the power pain what could pain mean maybe pain is necessary for good things it could be the precursor to anything notable so let's do one last one you've seen this chart a hundred thousand times probably this is the comfort zone and you know that's where the magic happens and you like to stay inside a comfort zone so what can safe mean so we've been taking negative words and making them positive what if we took a positive word and made it negative so you don't want to be safe anymore well safe could be simply always following everyone now who wants to be safe here okay good and this is working safe could be state average forever if you want to insult the designer just tell them your work it's the average and those of you guys have signed up for my portfolio critique be prepared and be prepared okay point number four reaction reaction okay when you have undesired outcomes when bad things happen to you you have to start to flip these things around so I've been asking my son to say this is to say when everything something bad happens say congratulations congratulations you failed congratulations and then find one reason why this could be exciting news for you and explain to yourself why how could this become a learning opportunity for you well for me I'm not afraid of the word failure because I know failures the tuition I pay for future success that's it every time I feel like that's the lesson I needed to learn a lost $30,000 that was a powerful lesson that was the beginning to a graduate degree okay so when you're exhaust and you lack energy just say to yourself instead of beating yourself up congratulations you put in a good day's worth of work today you're not motivated uninspired congratulations you need to find your true calling you've been let go congratulations time to find something better for you something was holding you back and most sometimes when you get a new job you get a raise okay last one you are alone congratulations time to finish off that book list okay now this is something I go around the country in the world teaching people and then I'm tested every once a while like is this just BS is this my own belief system projecting onto others and can I do this myself okay so I'm gonna tell you a really quick story about my son the confident one he's taking Latin for the first time he's a super bright kid and one day I come home and my wife is there and she's like look at this and when your wife says something like that to you you do not want to look at it trust me nothing good is gonna come from this I look at it I'm like what is this it's your son's test results from Latin can you believe it I asked him earlier how is he doing in Latin he said I'm doing fine mom he got a 15 on his test I'm like 15 out of what 15 out of 25 when we talk about she goes no 15 out of 115 had a hundred and I was overcome with emotions I was sitting here thinking I need to respond and deal with this because my wife wants me to be the disciplinarian I have to be the bad guy you know I work all the time I got to come home and be the bad guy now and how else was thinking like I'm hearing my dad's voice creep up in my head I'm hearing it really loud and just for all you got all you non agents let me just tell you what 15 means okay this is the Asian grading scale I know there's a lot of white people here this for you guys alright okay a average okay it has to be better than a B is bad C is you can't eat dinner I mean I've had to forge my report cards before when I got a C trust me alright DS like there's not even a deed it doesn't even exist don't come home or find a new family okay and I was trying to channel like how can I find a positive in this how could I flip the situation around in my mind and he said to her have you taken Latin before she goes no I have in college much older than him it was very very difficult I had to drop that class here's the way I look at it he got 15 right right you got 15 right how many more words of Latin does he know more than you a lot and then I could see but anger and her though the tiger mom was like huh put her claws away you're right maybe it's okay I was like shoot I didn't want to go upstairs and tell my son he's a bad kid it was like me and Neil like dodging bullets right that's what I'm doing so I go upstairs he's in his room totally oblivious to this whole conversation like hey how's it going it's okay dad I heard you got 15 yeah keep it up keep it up and then you know what in a few short months he's acing every single test and now he's in his second or third year of Latin and that's a really difficult language okay I'll give you another one this one's pretty funny that clock is killing me God is a designer God is a designer I'm not even religious I'm wearing a hat it's a conversation starter God is a designer and I want to make these hats right just so happens in my inbox I get this email we can help you just totally unsolicited you know I get these all the time we can help you with cut and sew products like snapback hats it's almost like they're reading my mind we could turn around 25 days amazing Wow so I sent him my design it's not my design it's a collaboration project and send them designs he gets right back to me he's like you know what we can get these done really fast send us a deposit for 100 bucks I'm like glue let's rock and roll what these hats made right now money sent okay money sent and then I'm replaying the conversation my mind as I'm in the shower okay PayPal account is hotmail.com like who uses hot now and the website is well succeed calm what I'm in the shower nothing look good right now I'm telling you I'm not feeling good here's the kicker look at who send it to me fish you I'm like this you this new I'm in a shower I'm like taking fish fish you know it's a cybercrime kind of thing right and you know how ballsy this person is here told me I'm gonna fish you and a hundred dollars is not a lot of money it's not a lot of money right but I was thinking wouldn't a fool my wife she said I told you watch out for these cyber criminals and there you go you just sent him the money fish you fish me and in that moment I was like congratulations Chris congratulations you fool what can you do about this thing right and I was like oh kind of find your moment and I was thinking wouldn't this make an excellent post on social media like how can you pay for that kind of story that's worth 100 bucks so by the time I'm talking I'll fish me fish me that's right we got this right and I go tell the guys at the office like because this is a good story we can't find out what's gonna happen it turns out it's totally legitimate but whatever the story worked anyways right either way I win you see I like to design my life so legitimate I win illegitimate I still win even more or I win both ways hey I'll take it off okay point number five poop I'll make it up for time okay in complete sentences I used to teach storyboarding and there's this concept called retroactive storytelling that the true meaning of a story is never to the very end a classic one is six cents yeah I see dead people right I see dead people in an end it's like oh my god Bruce Willis has been dead the whole time spoiler alert sorry right so what we want to do is take the negative input in our life and just change it just ever so slightly so it's either neutral to positive so if you say to yourself I can't draw like that I can't draw like that yet if I charge that much the clients will think that I must be better than the competition I'm not who the client would typically consider for something like this it's not my portfolio well lucky for them I don't do work that looks typical okay so I love this line from Sean rker a core TED speaker the lens to which your brain views the world shapes your reality change the lens change your happiness change every single outcome at the same time okay we're about to get deep now you guys I save the deep part for this part morning some of you may cry okay when we just take the energy level down a little bit when I ask you guys this question whose voice is that you hear inside your head this is a question my therapist asked me like duh sounds just like me it's me it's Chris I know it's Chris and then through a little bit of a little therapy I'm like oh my god okay who's that stranger in my house so I want to share this quote with you from the Dalai Lama whatever brings disaster or harm should be called an enemy so the ultimate enemy is actually within ourselves and I'm browsing through a used book store and I see this title the title screaming out to me I'm like oh my gosh conquer your critical inner voice conquer your critical and I think a lot of people I know need this book I need to read it and so I learned some things about the way our brains work is that most of us as a very young person develop certain self defense mechanisms to cope that we internalize the angry sometimes it's one sometimes it's both but it's almost always this is very common with the kids that the psychiatrist works with dr. fire son that we feel rejection neglect or hostility and we start to internalize this dialogue and we develop a system to survive the armor protects us it gets us through childhood but what happens is the armor becomes really heavy into our adulthood imagine literally right now if you had to carry around an 80 pound suit of armor everywhere you went to the bathroom to this stage it would be really difficult to live your life and there's something else that we learned too when we discovered death somewhere between 3 & 7 that we now learn never to fully invest in our lives like why should we then we don't attach to other people and so it creates negative moods we self-sabotage and you know what we do when we get angry other people it's usually cuz we're angry inside about ourselves so here's what I want you to do take out that imaginary piece of paper you don't have divided it into three even columns okay and we're to do a little exercise together you're going to want to do this I've shared it with people over the phone and they're almost in tears here's how we do it okay you have this critical voice the one that attacks you I want you to write down as many things as you can in the first person I want you to write them down as I statements you wanna maybe put on some music have a glass of your adult beverage you know and just sit there and write for 15 minutes you want to time this because you want to get past the surface answers you want to write as much as you can without judgment aye-aye-aye this what are all those voices I'm not good enough I'll never do it right I'm lazy I'm I'm whatever it is you write that down and then in the second column you're gonna transfer this over and you're gonna write this in the third person as you statements so if you say I'm not good at this you're gonna now say you are not good at this and after you write them all down what you need to do is you need to read them out loud you need to read them aloud okay and then you need to feel it and hear it and feel it usually what happens is this little revelation moment happens you start to identify that voice now is not your own so who do you associate with saying this to you and most often it will be one of your parents so what this exercise allows us to do is to create separation between the voices that we have in our head our true voice and the critical voice and it brings awareness to it so that we can make a decision now do you want to listen to this voice or not and then what I want you to do in the third column is to rewrite it in your true voice the real mean the one that's nurturing loving compassion and supportive the high statements back again okay this allows you to recognize to choose and then to interpret it differently I'll give you a couple of quick examples the lights flashing I get it here's example number one and this is my own okay being vulnerable here with you guys alright I'm a really slow reader you are a really slow reader you should work harder and be more like your cousin it's my mom I love my mom everything's good and just letting you know how this works it's like what it was the true voice what does it really mean I need to find something better in there well I read slowly because I absorbed more of what I read it's what makes me a good teacher here's another example okay I don't deserve the followers I have on Instagram I don't know why people follow me you are really inconsistent and don't deserve the followers you have and then the true voice the one that's compassionate despite not being consistent people find my content and story inspiring ok we're almost here at the end so I want to have you guys try this out - this is the extra part here is I want you to try to think about how your critical voice dictates what you do at social functions at a new business meeting public speaking when you have a client that's underwhelmed or angry when you're budgeting work write them down and then try to write it using the real you what would you do if you weren't afraid if you weren't judging yourself if you were supportive see what happens okay and tell me later tag me on social media go so here's the summary if you don't like your life you don't like the story that's your belief system your BS change it write a news story full of hope optimist optimism and love and start practicing where jitsu take any word that has power over you and make it into a game to turn it to twisted that bend it to reshape it to your reality because we know we know you like to tell stories right but anything that bad happens say congratulations and try to figure out something positive from it a learning opportunity and to know that no matter what happens the ending has been written and you can change it go through the critical voice and find your true voice I have one last thing one last thing here for you and you guys have heard this expression before just for the job you want not the job you have right everybody's heard this what we do for clothing why don't we do it for our so I'm gonna ask you guys everybody here who works for somebody who doesn't have their own business to take out your business card take out your business card alright buddy I know you guys are all in-house here I know yeah Jay come on guys everybody reach for something come on you work for somebody right I'm gonna check out your card okay and whatever title says on your card borrow a pen from somebody near you next to you talk to me later we'll do it together okay take out those big old fat pen and cross out your title I don't care what it says associate creative director general manager whatever it says I want you to cross it out I don't want you to write the word partner and I want you to act as if until one day the people who are running the business sees you as one where do partners do they show up they're countable they look for challenges they never wait I want that for you okay thank you very much you guys resources all right thanks very much guys a lot of times I try to envision reaching out to just a small group of people they say that if you can impact the life of one person within his conference of 1400 people you've done something wonderful and that was really awesome they were applying what it is that I taught some of that message cut through and they're able to walk away with something that they can use and apply for the rest of their life and being able to do that just made me feel just incredible just through the roof [Music]

Channel: The Futur

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Rating: 4.9558725 out of 5

Keywords: the futur, futur brand, disrupt design education, chris do, business of design, how to, belief system, limiting beliefs, graphic design, how much to charge for logo design, design business, aiga design conference 2019, aiga design chris do, mindset, limiting beliefs about money, limiting beliefs removal, mindset motivation, mindset is everything, inspirational talks, art center, pasadena, pricing design services, design career, graphic design career, self talk, self love

Id: f7T1Zs28Deo

Length: 35min 18sec (2118 seconds)

Published: Mon Aug 12 2019