Stop Fearing Rejection & Be The Real You | Marie Forleo on Impact Theory

every single moment is an opportunity for us to check ourselves before we wreck ourselves if i'm miserable if i'm upset if i'm angry if i'm cranky it is my responsibility because it's what i'm doing up here that's making me have that reaction and if i'm the problem i am also the solution [Music] [Music] hey everybody welcome to impact theory our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams all right today's guest is an eight-figure entrepreneur recognized by inc magazine for building one of the fastest growing companies in america she's also one of the biggest names in personal development with a socially conscious global empire that reaches millions of people across 195 countries a multi-passionate entrepreneur indeed she's also an international best-selling author whose work has been translated into 16 languages and her award-winning show marietv has established her as one of the most credible and impactful content creators on the planet she's interviewed or been interviewed by a litany of the brightest minds alive including tony robbins sir richard branson oprah winfrey ariana huffington and a mountain of others simultaneously through her widely lauded educational platform b-school she is both disrupting education and helping to develop tens of thousands of the next wave of mission-driven entrepreneurs with over 30 000 graduates to date and countless successful businesses launched it's clear that the curriculum she and her team have developed is highly desirable and undeniably effective she is raw vulnerable wise hilarious and one of the few people i've ever encountered who can simultaneously disarm people and inspire them to greatness so please help me in welcoming the woman oprah winfrey referred to as the thought leader for the next generation the avid philanthropist and former mtv hip-hop choreographer marie forleo wow that's really me that is really it that's funny i'm so excited to have you back i'm thrilled to be here man the last time that we got to spend together was so much fun partly because you really are just you at all times and what i love is that you talk about how much control we have over being ourselves how we feel what our state is yeah talk to me about that so i think what's important to do is go back when i first started as a business person i was 23 years old and i was so insecure in my mind starting a life coaching business as a 23 year old like the logical part of my mind was like who the hell is going to hire a 23 year old life coach this is the dumbest silliest stupidest thing you've ever tried in your life and i had been on wall street i had worked in the magazine industry i had done all these things and basically hit all these different walls and when i was trying to figure out how to be an entrepreneur at 23 and this is like the late 90s early 2000s this is at the very beginning of all things digital i felt like i didn't fit in you know i was trying to live into this idea of who i thought a businesswoman would be with like big shoulder pads and you know a corner office and tried to write an online newsletter at that time that was like uber professional and it was lifeless i wasn't getting anywhere because i wasn't being me and i'm just a girl from new jersey who was brought up in a very um you know kind of normal middle class way no one in my family ever went to college my parents my mom especially you know she curses like a sailor so i had this very unique upbringing and i was trying to fit myself into this idea of who i thought i should be and it wasn't working so it wasn't until i actually allowed myself to just be the weird wacky energetic kind of a little bit crazy person that i am that things actually started to work and so now it's been almost 20 years of doing this and i've seen it time and time again where people tend to feel stuck and stifled where they tend to feel like their life force is just drained out of them there's gets to be despair and depression they just feel stuck is when they're not expressing the fullness of who they really are they're trying to fit themselves into a conventional box they're trying to live up to other people's expectations they're trying to be someone who they really aren't because they're afraid that the real them is going to get rejected wow so knowing that that's the depth that drives people into that place which i think you're right is ultimately a very dark place how did you give yourself permission to to really let go and be that quirky person even in the face of the potential rejection yeah so uh it wasn't an easy road and i didn't get there overnight um so i was raised catholic even though i'm not particularly religious now i consider myself more spiritual but i went to seton hall university and i actually used to work for the church so when i was about 23 i was still in this mode of whenever i'd hit a crisis i'd ask god for some guidance and the way i did it in those days when i was right in my journal and so i remember writing in my journal at those at that time and just saying like why can't i figure this out like i so believe in my coaching business and i also had all of these other ideas of things i wanted to do like hip-hop dance fitness writing i was so enthralled with marketing and business but traditional wisdom was all about focusing in it was all about choosing one thing dominating a niche and every time i tried to follow that traditional advice i felt like i was cutting off a limb and so in that plea in my journal and writing what's wrong with me what's wrong with me why can't i fit in why can't i follow all the traditional ideas of what it means to be successful i got to a point where i just said [ __ ] it i can't do this i can't i was failing i was miserable and i said if i'm not going to be able to fit into this traditional notion of success why don't i throw out the whole notion together and just do what i really want to do at that point i was about 25 and i said to myself you know you've always wanted to dance you've never taken a dance class in your life the only experience that i had was like moonwalking across my mom's kitchen linoleum floor to thriller with like my white socks on when i was like seven years old and i always loved dance but i'd never had any experience or training and so at that point i was living in a tiny studio apartment in new york city and i said you know i should just go take a dance class like wow what a novel idea but tom i have to tell you i tortured myself about that idea for years like i thought about it i fantasized about it but i never gave myself permission to do it because it didn't fit in to being a successful life coach or being a successful person on wall street or being a successful person in the magazines i had such narrow ideas of who i could be and so when i threw out everything and just said i'm just going to do this my own way i took my very first dance class at broadway dance center i had the dorkiest outfit on i remember standing outside class and you know the class before was finishing up and my jaw just hit the ground because everyone in there was so talented they were so good i was so like intimidated and i felt this panic come over me cut to me going into the class hiding in the back getting down on the floor to start the warm-up and the music came on about seven seconds in i started sobbing uncontrollably i had no idea what was wrong what was going on i was so thankful that the music was so loud and i had long hair that i could cover my face and once i finally kind of started moving i realized my body was saying yes this is who you are this is part of who you're meant to be and so you ask the question like how did i get there it was because i tried so hard doing everything everyone else told me i should do and when that didn't work i just had to go off and bust out on my own and it was through that experimentation and moving my body and tapping into the wisdom of this vessel that everything started to move it's so interesting the the getting to the point where you can really own who you are and what you want is already fascinating enough but you've really codified a lot of this in terms of how you think about our ability to control our state and things like that did you have that awareness then were you sort of beginning to grapple with that you know i think it's interesting because in college i took a class from a woman who taught with deepak chopra and the class was all about the seven spiritual laws of success and that was my first introduction to meditation it was my first introduction to the world of personal development in kind of a major way and so i started gaining clues kind of at around 17 or so of this whole new world but it wasn't until i went through my coach training which was like a three-year experience and then going through the world of dance and fitness that everything kind of started to weave together and then i just understood too from an experiential level how much wisdom we have in our bodies you know at the same time culturally we were starting to spend more and more time on our computers and then devices started to come into play cell phones and i just watched as how so many people started living from the neck up and started losing touch with their intuition that inner voice the very innate wisdom that each of us are born with they just didn't know how to access it so for me in terms of tapping into your body in terms of movement and incorporating all of these different modalities into how you figure out your life um it's become second nature to me but i think now more than ever it's so important that we reconnect to this thing so we can hear our truth all right we got to talk about that because you just did an episode of q a which your q a's are amazing thank you now for real like the way that and i think it was the most recent when you did you walked this woman through she wanted to either be an astronaut or a sociologist if i were all right yeah anthropologists there we go and so she wasn't sure if she was going to pursue a doctorate or really make an attempt to be an astronaut and the way that you guided her through that largely through how i want you to imagine the scenario and tell me how you feel in your body walk people through the reconnection process because i think if if one people should watch that episode you like hit her from like all these different scenarios and you could feel her like changing and unlocking things as she went which is really extraordinary but walk people through how to reconnect what is what does that process look like yeah so first of all it taps into slowing down we're all moving so so so fast we want the answer instantly we're always going up here so i think step one is to slow down and actually breathe and feel your body you know if you're someone who works out even you may not be that practiced at doing this you know if you go to the gym and you bang out your reps or you're doing squats you're hitting a class which just go go go go you may not be actually feeling the physiological signals that come through your body so i always like to frame it like this a lot of people ask me what's the difference between fear and intuition like fear a fear that you should actually move through it's an opportunity for you to grow it's something that you actually want to do but you're just afraid of failing or what if it's your intuition telling you this is the wrong move it's hard to decipher that sometimes so what i like to do is i give people a very simple test how to decipher the difference between that fear and intuition here's how it works you have to slow down you can close your eyes if you can and ask yourself in terms of the opportunity you're thinking about saying yes to when you imagine yourself saying yes or moving forward with this idea or this person in your body in the nanosecond you ask the question how do i feel about this do you feel yourself expand or contract this is a tiny tiny micro movement of feeling within you expansion might feel like lightness joy excitement fun all of those feelings where you almost perceive your body moving forward in space ever so slightly contraction think about it in terms of dread despair something in you is saying no there's a heaviness a pit in your stomach even if that opportunity even if that idea or that person that asked you something on paper it sounds like you should say yes but something in you is like pulling back that's your no so it's a really great way to help people train themselves to tap into their inborn wisdom that's already within them that's working to guide them on their best path you know what i found really interesting about what you were doing with the woman in the q a was that it was as the audience it was pretty obvious where she was leaning emotionally and you simply pointing it out like you feel your voice lightens your energy changes when you talk about being the astronaut and one thing that i really resonated with was you weren't trying to give her an answer until you really understood the problem yes and so that was really interesting that you kept like this open space for her to figure it out but then you'd say okay will you sound different when you talk about that and and you had her do like this deathbed like flashback thing which i i think ties perfectly with what you just said but there's another part i want to get to which is you've said that exercise you think is like a catch-all how can people use exercise because you start in the beginning saying like if you're even if you're working out and you're just going going going yeah you may not be feeling it so how can i leverage exercise as a way to really begin to not need the outside voice that you were so potently for that woman but wanting to be able to you know discover this stuff for myself so how do i use exercise as yeah i think a few things one it's find modalities that you know work for you where you have an opportunity to get so into the movement and the process itself that this thing recedes to the background when i say this thing i mean the thinking mind so for example for me when i take a spin class a really good spin class where i'm loving the music and i can absolutely let go and charge into my body i can like feel into every single movement i can let the sweat pour off of me i can get lost in the in the rhythm i find that it opens up a channel in me like nothing else sometimes it could be taking a great walk i think i want to push you a little bit on opens the channel so i really understand it yes is it where you feel like you can hear the little voice in your mind is it where you're ironically you can't try and force it to show up so oftentimes when i hit a roadblock in my business and i'm just at this stalemate i'm like oh i can go this way or this way i'm stuck let me go work out let me go take a walk let me take a spin class let me take a dance class and get immersed in that so that my subconscious and the rest of my body has a chance to work through it and it will produce an answer or an insight when i'm not looking for it it could happen at the end of the class when i'm done in the shower sometimes it happens on the bike it doesn't matter but what you just have to do is have a level of faith and trust and you can't go in forcing it does that make sense yeah definitely so i know you meditate quite a bit daily um is it a similar moment of opening or is that completely different for you for me in my own experience it's very different i feel like what happens through exercise and again it's when you have that level of faith to surrender to your body to surrender that you have wisdom within you that you're not going to access grinding to it it unfurls almost like a flower blooms when it's ready that's super interesting and and um by way of just being really who i am so you talk powerfully about feminine and masculine energy i have a really hard time because i think by nature i tend towards the feminine i have a really hard time like when you use a metaphor like that my brain immediately translates it into something tough and cool yes um but that's probably not helpful talk to me a little bit about that duality um you've talked about how we all hold those both inside of us how can we because that may be exactly the moment to lean into that yeah and the more you can help me understand it as a process of of being able to consciously move from one energy to the other that would be extraordinary so consciously moving from masculine to feminine for any of us people access those different modalities within us in different ways for me one of the most effective ways is actually breathing into your heart now i think when we're in our masculine we want to stay connected to our heart when we're in our feminine we want to stay connected to our heart for me when i get in masculine driving mode i can unhinge from my heart more easily i can get really focused really driven i can feel my stress level go up i can almost tune everything else out and just hit it really hard do you know what i'm talking about oh yes when i'm in my feminine and i allow things to be and i stay really connected to my heart and my emotional self and i feel this sense of joy and the sense of trust around me i find that i don't know if this is helpful to you that helps me kind of dance in between both of those and it helps me detect which mode that i'm in so let me make sure that i'm hearing your question right do you want to tap into your feminine essence more or your masculine essence which is the one that you find it difficult to see where you're at i think that what the truth for me is getting to the point where um one i can do it consciously so that i'm recognized because uh an insight to me when you were describing the masculine as like a shutting down and i understand that um that that isn't necessarily good it sounded awesome to me and it was like such a sexy description i was like yeah that's what i want to do i want to like you were doing tune everything i was like [ __ ] yeah which we all need to do sometimes it's required but god so for me it's like is it as i have like doing that has led me to extraordinary success yes and so but from that i'm also hyper conscious like i'm constantly asking myself the death bed question now the irony is i've um part of my what i talk about a lot is wanting to live forever and so i think people think that i don't recognize that i have i'm just awash in mortality right now so i do play that out and i think about that a lot yes and i can feel sometimes that it would be a mistake to make that the only mode that i live in but because i had to find a way to to toughen up that was my job as a new entrepreneur that was the thing that i lacked i did not know how to be tough and so i had ambition but no drive and so my journey has been one of getting hard now my wife will tell you hey great job you made it you've gotten too hard so now my thing is to refine my playfulness which is certainly the right word yes and so letting go of some of the judgments i have about the the sort of earlier way that i came to things which i'll say was more feminine in nature yeah so if i'm hearing you correctly is there a judgment in you that feminine energy and this is again no judgment on my part but that feminine energy is potentially weak yes yes okay first of all that is a notion that many of us have myself included until fairly recently culturally speaking we've mostly been taught that the feminine is weak right that's why so many women man up to run a business for me for years and years and years it produced incredible results but you know what at a tremendous cost where i felt myself and my creativity starting to just drain down where i felt myself getting more and more stressed less and less joyful where i found myself feeling more and more tired and asking the questions why because i know my core essence so that is one of probably the biggest mistaken notions that we have culturally is that the feminine is weak and it is not it is one of the most beautiful powerful forces within all of us and i think and i'll speak particularly to the women who are watching right now one of the most profound things that you can do over the course of your life especially if you struggle with being in your feminine is to understand that it will unlock your most powerful beautiful creative life that you can imagine which includes your ability to kick major ass in business and it includes your ability to heal others all right i want to go deep on that's the most interesting thing that i came across between the first time i researched you and this time was you were talking openly about um there was i i don't want to use the wrong word but a declining um sex drive perfect no we have to go right there um because and that's kind of what i was alluding to before as a woman who's built this incredible business which i am so proud of right and building it from scratch like so many of the people in our audience have and they're working really hard in their careers even if they're not entrepreneurs they're busting their buns every single day they're raising kids they're taking care of a million things especially women right and at the end of the day you're like where what happened i used to have this like incredibly powerful libido i used to have all this desire and for me in my experience in my relationship i don't want to be with any other men that's not what it was about but i was like gosh where did it all go and it really took many many years and different me experimenting with different modalities and things to go what is wrong with me and how can i figure this out how can i get this back and it wasn't until i really started to understand on an experiential level the power of my feminine that everything started to come rushing back and you know as a woman i think this is important for people to hear because there's a lot of messaging that well you know once you're done with your 20s or 30s like it's all downhill and that's [ __ ] it's total total [ __ ] in my experience it can keep getting better and richer and sexier and hotter and more exciting than ever before we're getting a lot of claps today big time yes but but i think the thing that we fail to realize is that all of this is integrated right so it's not like the joyful playfulness that you bring to your relationship doesn't impact the joyful playfulness that you bring to your business or your creativity or vice versa that in the middle of let's say a business [ __ ] show that if you can bring some levity or you can bring your emotional self or you can be vulnerable that you're not going to spark a breakthrough amongst the team so i think all of this really interplays quite nicely and it's important that we recognize that they do feed each other i want to go back to your guys's relationship and if i understand correctly you're saying that as you stopped at least in the relationship stop being so predominantly in your masculine energy i was an [ __ ] i'm just gonna say it like once i really started to understand how controlling i was how directive i was how many times that i just you know cut off his ideas or thought that i knew better and wasn't setting us both up to win man i made tons of mistakes now i can look back and go oh my god what an idiot i was but no one teaches us about this stuff until it's too late and i honestly think there's a lot of couples that separate or get divorced because they've just never had these tools or no one's ever taught them about this yeah so this is something lisa and i talk a lot about we actually have a show now called relationship theory where we dive into this stuff and we talk so my wife is very powerful and to be clear on my side i don't think women are weak and men are strong i just think i had traditionally viewed in myself the moments where it was vulnerability and all that as as a weaker oh yeah way to approach no and just to be clear for everyone watching i didn't hear that from you i just know that traditionally speaking many many women again myself included until fairly recently have a mistaken notion culturally that the feminine is weak yeah 100 and talking about having like we have roles in our relationship for sure which i will say certainly from a sexual energy perspective she responds when i'm in a definitely a more masculine energy and i respond when she's in a more feminine energy which i think is really really interesting i mean i've seen tony talk about this where you know people guys not being willing to step into that masculine energy and saying that almost certainly your woman wants that yes and so i'd love to hear a woman's perspective on that it clearly has some amazing insights in this like what does that mean exactly how can a guy that's listening now do that in a way because like when you were describing the masculine when you had masculine energy they weren't traits that you're saying you want him to adopt right to cut you off to be short with you or be an [ __ ] like that's not what you're saying yeah so how can a guy step into their masculinity in a way that's received well where the woman feels awesome about it well a couple of things that i'll say a i'm so not an expert on this like i will happily share from my experience but i think that some of the best teachers out there tony robbins speaks into it i think david dida is absolutely incredible with a lot of his work there's a lot more educated experience better teachers on this than i am but i'll say that there are three things that i learned and actually i learned this from tony in terms of what men can do to support women staying in their feminine so the first one is that women want to feel seen and noticed so when your woman feels unseen she's going to just honestly not be that happy and so this is about a man stepping into his masculine right so noticing not only how she looks but what she's doing like god honey you've done so much today i don't know how you keep all these things running you're absolutely amazing for amanda walk in and acknowledge how many plates most women spend how hard she's working all the time notice a detail about you know what god your skin looks beautiful your smile is amazing i think about whatever x y or z it could be the tiniest tiniest detail where you really see her she'll come alive you're noticing you're in your masculine you're picking out a detail that's something that men can do very well but to verbalize that has her lean into her feminine so unseen is a thing that when men don't see their women things go downhill if we feel misunderstood right like you didn't actually listen to us you go in and just try and solve our problem shuts down the feminine we get really angry and we're going to come back at you hard very very hard so when i hear snickering around here i hear lots of laughs these are the laughs of recognition people it's so true absolutely and so um to be a strong masculine presence and to be there and to listen to have her feel understood that's one way that you can stay in your masculine and it'll pull her into her feminine and then unsafe is the third you when a woman feels unsafe she's going to close down so a lot of men sometimes express their anger or their upset and a woman feels unsafe and she will close and pull away or she'll get masculine to try and get herself to feel safe so if a woman feels unsafe that's going to put her into her masculine and if a man can help a woman feel safe in every way he's going to be in his masculine that's extraordinary and i imagine that that feeds into the kind of relationship that i'm guessing you have which is high functioning high communicating yeah what are some tools that you guys use to keep the communication open to be raw to be real how do you guys do that dance i think part of it is each person in the relationship has to take 100 responsibility for the state of the relationship at all times so if i'm walking in and i see josh and something in me doesn't feel connected or doesn't feel like our hearts connected it's not his fault it's got to be something that i'm doing so i need to take 100 responsibility like wow was i in my head did i disconnect from my heart am i judging him am i trying to control him so that way the quality of the relationship is always in my hands it's not his fault it's on me and he plays that same game so in that way if we're both playing that full out and at that level where the health and the connection in our relationship is each 100 percent our individual responsibilities it's worked like magic it's not perfect but it really does work well i would say the other tool that i would recommend for everyone to check out have you ever heard of getting the love you want no oh my goodness you guys are in for such a treat so this amazing couple harvard hendricks he wrote a book i think it was back in the late 80s or early 90s called getting the love you want it sold a bajillion copies and getting the love you want teaches you a few communication tools one of them is about this thing called imago dialogue and it is a relationship saver i would say for anyone listening who is interested in exploring this between understanding more about masculine and feminine energy and training that in yourself and with your partner and having the imago dialogue toolkit between those two things i think you can heal practically anything whoa give us a quick thumbnail yeah so the imago dialogue is about listening to another without judging them and having them feel really really heard so the process goes like this one person asks for an appointment so i would say hey tom are you available now for an appointment because i really have to talk to you about something and you would either say you know what marie i totally am i have time or you'd say you know what i can't talk right now can we do it at six o'clock tonight because i have all these other things to focus on so that's step one you ask for an appointment then step two is one person is the sender and the other person is the receiver so let's say i had something to say to you there was just a little thing that maybe got me upset or you know didn't feel so good but i didn't want to unleash on you i just wanted to talk about it so i would start talking i'd be like tom you know gosh when i came home and there were all these dishes in the sink it made me feel like you really didn't see that i had such a big day it was so hard on me and it would have really been great if you would have taken care of that because you know how much it means to me your job would then be to mirror what i said to you and reflect it back in the exact words so give it a try when you when you came home or say it exactly like no say like so marie let me see if i got that okay so marie let me see if i got that um when you came home and you saw that there were dishes in the sink it made you feel like um i didn't see how much you have to deal with um and those were as close as i'll get yeah exact words that was really good keep going you're doing awesome um then i'd be i'd be vamping i got the vibe but not the exact words right so you'd say okay i got that can you tell it to me again okay i got that can you tell it to me again so the piece that you missed was that it would have really been great for you to remember how important it is for me to have a clean kitchen and again we're riffing here yeah way close to home riffing but yes uh so so let me see if i got that so let me see if i got that the part that i missed was how important it is to you to have a clean kitchen yes you got that so then you would say is there more is there more and then either i would say yes or no but that is there more statement is like this magic statement because for both people usually there's other things that they want to say but we never ask our partner so if you said is there more and i had more like oh yeah and x y and z and then you'd mirror it back to me the next step is about empathizing it's about saying okay so marie and i'm going to play you for a moment so if i heard you correctly it really made you feel uncared for and like i really didn't remember the request that you like a clean kitchen and i didn't really see how much you had to do today did i get all that and really get into the feeling and their perspective and then i would say yeah you actually did really get all that and then the final step is you can either wrap it up and say i understand your perspective and that really does make so much sense so you're validating the other person's point of view you may not agree with it but you're validating who they are as a human and having them feel heard and you close up this dialogue and i will tell you this has allowed josh and i to back up out of some crazy [ __ ] shows so fast where you know it could have been you guys know those explosive arguments where then they last hours if not days you can use dialogue to handle things so so quickly and i feel bad here because i'm like teaching other people's material but please go read the books or take the workshops because they're phenomenal wow yeah it's amazing and definitely don't feel bad i think more people will go check it out because they at least now have an understanding yeah um we did an entire show with them they teach the dialogue on marietv and they kind of show you and then please go get the book because it's it's the best like 12 bucks you could ever spend wow it's amazing um so speaking of being able to back out of a [ __ ] show yes you've talked about having shit-tastic days yes great word yes um we all have them but you also talk about our ability to control our state and that we can actually shift the way that we feel inside without having to have any new external stimulus just literally decide i'm going to change the way that i feel how do you do that because i think if people can understand not only the effectiveness of that but actually the steps to take it could be a game changer yeah i think it's really simple for me i try and play this practice of you know if i ever feel like in any moment life is not going the way that i think it should be going it's because i'm resisting what is you know if someone didn't turn in their work on time and i'm just like you know getting that way or something didn't come out right or the delivery doesn't come or the technology breaks again we can list anything in that slot right it's me arguing with reality i'm making myself miserable in that moment because i'm choosing to argue with what is that's always a losing proposition so the more awareness i can bring to that and go like is this really how you want to live your life in this moment marie because every single moment as you know sets you up for the next moment and you string these moments together and guess what you have your life until we get to that incredible death bet we never know when that's coming so every single moment is an opportunity for us to check ourselves before we wreck ourselves and so i just try and play the game if i'm miserable if i'm upset if i'm angry if i'm cranky it is my responsibility because it's based on what i'm thinking or believing in that moment it's not the outside world causing me to feel this it's what i'm doing up here that's making me have that reaction and if i'm the problem i am also the solution so how do you in your own life begin to unwind that so i i'm assuming you literally walk yourself through that so you realize okay i'm the problem i know this yes um is it visualization is it framing is it saying i'm going to take a new perspective on this yeah it literally is like lighten up girl but you're fine like do you have a roof over your head right now yes then things are damn good is there some food in the fridge you're probably luckier than millions of people on the planet right now is there running water in the kitchen and in the bathroom yes again you're better off than probably a billion people or more so that little reframe helps me and then in the moment again it sounds so simple but i think we're all searching for these really complex things and we don't need them if you can catch yourself arguing with reality in the moment and realize that's not a wise thing to do you can then back yourself up and go okay that didn't turn out right so what am i going to do about it am i going to be miserable in this moment and let this ruin my night or am i going to send off the email to say hey when's that work going to come and let's readjust our communication plan so this doesn't happen again but the argument and the irritation is not necessary to get a new result yeah energy is something that's i find really interesting and i'm picking up on something that you said in that um oftentimes i find people can't talk about in a way that uh does anything but give me the hives but you actually can so just because it gets so detached yeah from my real experience yes but you one way that you make it really concrete which i think is super interesting and gave me this real sense of how to externalize what i'm doing internally to actually change the neurochemistry that i'm experiencing yes in order to be able to convey something new which is you've said hey you're about to write somebody an email and then you give people advice on like what to visualize and all that um do you know what i'm talking about i don't so it sounds really good i'm like wow did i come up with this this is great it's you so now i get to teach you yeah please teach me my own stuff so this sounds awesome it it uh you said that hey you're about to email somebody and depending on what it is you may be in an aggressive statement oh yes yes yes um so the fact that your energy gets embedded into your communications we all know that right like you've received the email that's curt and you can just almost feel the punch in the face that comes through you've gotten the text where you're like they are definitely pissed at me um i believe and i do this a lot with email marketing especially in our business every time i sit down to write a new email i want the other person who receives this email to the best of my ability to feel the love and the energy and the respect and the excitement that i have not only for the idea that i'm about to share but for the impact it could have on their life i want them to feel all of me you know if i'm sitting there writing an email and i'm like just feeling flaccid i mean what's that copy gonna be like it's not gonna be any good but if i'm there and i'm like playful and i'm excited about it so that excitement is conveyed and when someone's looking through their inbox and they see something from me nine times out of ten because i'm consistent they know if they click open it's going to be a good time right there's going to be love in that email there's going to be an energy to that email that's different and i mean you've probably experienced this in your own life in simple ways when someone makes a request of you they care to even put an emoji because it's not just them try it's like that was a genuine expression of their excitement um i'm sure if your wife asks super something and her energy is such that there's love embedded in it you're a hundred times more likely to want to say yes right 100 yes so we all feel this stuff and i think that if you can consciously begin to practice it then you're going to notice the impact and the results yeah i love the way you talk about that because there is so much like that we can influence each other so much by the state that we're in what we're thinking about whether we're amped up like like you said with newsletters specifically and and maybe because it's such a solitary experience like you're writing it by yourself i always had to wait until something like got its hooks in me right that it made me feel some kind of emotion because then i knew that i'd be able to convey that yeah and what i love about your through line from the you can change states and then giving people those you know examples of think about them and fill yourself with a feeling for them and i often tell people this if they come to me and they've got beef with somebody maybe it's somebody here at work maybe it's a loved one whatever i'm always like before you go into the exchange and i don't have better words for this yeah but fill your heart with love like you you have to you have to actually feel it like you've got to get yourself to that state because then you're going to approach this and the reason that i'm really beating this drum is what i want people to understand is you can do that like you can change your neurochemical state and that's the part that i want people to practice yeah and i mean you know so let's take that at two levels one is a really easy way to change your neurochemical state and your emotional state is put on some freaking music and dance i don't know anyone who doesn't put on a song that they love and instantly they feel differently instantly they get more energized or they want to move and everyone loves different types of music but get a damn playlist that you know when you hear any one of those songs you shift so that's an easy tactic that anyone can use but i think to speak more to your point about when you're pissed at someone or you've got some beef with someone an important thing to remember is that everyone is always doing the very best they can always so whatever behavior has happened whatever the situation is you have to know that that person innocently was doing the best that they could given who they were in that moment what they were believing and what they were thinking you don't know if they were scared you don't know if they have a ton of stress going on you don't know if they have a health scare you don't know a lot but all you do know is that every single person is doing the very best they can in each moment so if you can bring that level of understanding and compassion and try and take on their point of view it relaxes things because right you're not trying to be an [ __ ] sometimes people think you're an [ __ ] but you're not trying to be you were doing the best you could in that moment were you perfect at it maybe not i'm certainly not but i know i was doing the best that i could so i think that between the tactic of changing your state with some music and actually getting things moving and then having a little bit of humility and realizing that everyone really is doing the very best they can allows you to relax a little bit and not go in with so much hardness now because this is what i love about you talk to me about high standards because your team is crushing it oh my god they're ridiculous i don't even know i'm just like y'all are just smarter than me i should just sit down and stay in bed i'm not letting you get away with that you you are setting the tone you're extraordinary one i love the humility don't think that's loss of me but the team is definitely built around they resonated with you because they're like you i'm willing to accept that but clearly you're setting a tone what you've achieved is it borders on unimaginable especially when you think about how early you got in this how long you've been at it how much you've transformed yourself i mean it's really extraordinary oh thank you so what i want to know is the compassion is real it it leaks out of you on camera off camera and everything that you touch but the high standards are real so how do you balance that the like i'm really filling my heart with love i really get that you're doing the best you can but also we have some high standards that we have to live up to so i think it's a dance one of the things about my team in particular is we do share a lot of dna so everyone does have very high standards they want to be the best they want to crush it they want to come out with new things they want to be innovative they want to always be at that next level so i can only play with people like that because they're the only people that get my kind of little weirdness and craziness so that's number one number two is we're also realists and we've been in this game long enough to realize you're not going to hit a home run every single time i always like to call it the snl effect like i love snl i think it's a great show i've always watched it you know but you don't get to dick in a box unless you actually do all of these other skits i mean it was one of the funniest in my opinion i know people think but it was one of the funniest skits back in the day it was hilarious and i remember watching that thing so many times and going like this is genius remember justin timberlake and it was just like this whole thing again in today's culture in 2019 culture that would get ripped apart i'm talking about in that particular moment in time i thought it was funny you don't get to some of their most hilarious skits unless you produce a lot of work so coming back to your point in terms of high standards you can have really high standards for things but you have to allow yourself to do a lot of volume and make mistakes so an example was in the fall we went out and did some things on the road that it was a new thing and we're not using any of the footage because it wasn't very good i'm not crying in my cereal over that that's like part of the game so i think it's very possible to have high standards which is different than perfectionism and allow yourself the grace and the space to play and experiment and fall on your face or not use stuff i want to talk about that i want to talk about your persona your self professed persona as the turtle so oh yeah what what does it mean to be the turtle what do you mean by things at volume i think that those are really really important so i mean starting in the online world you know 1999 2000 when my business started um i go slow so for the first seven years of my business i had side gigs and a lot of that was by choice so in addition to my coaching business that was small and starting with one-on-one clients i was also starting to teach dance and fitness i had this whole simultaneous career doing fitness dvds and workout dvds and becoming a nike elite dance athlete working for mtv choreographing doing all this stuff i was also bartending waiting tables my focus was intentionally split as the multi-passion entrepreneur because i wanted to do all these things so i understood if my focus was on one thing i would probably go faster farther right i would speed up if my focus is diffused amongst different things i'm probably going to earn less money and go a lot slower but for me there is more joy and satisfaction there because that's what i wanted to do i wanted to have my hand in all of these pots so i'm always focused on the long game i think these days a lot of people want insta results they want to be instagram famous they want to have like a billion dollar business overnight and if you're just starting out you've never run a business you've never created content you've never sold marketed built a team done any of these things before to expect instant results it's immature it's unrealistic you're never going to get there and some of the people i admire most in the world no matter what their craft is dude they're in it for the [ __ ] long game they're not sitting around going like you know why can't i get higher conversions by tomorrow it's like that's not how this works man and if you're looking for that type of result it's just like i'm not interested in hanging with those kind of people i think we get better over time i think you have to really be patient i think people have to understand especially when it comes to any so-called like glamorous type career or people maybe things that people perceive are glamorous whether it's something like what you and i do an athlete an entertainer do you know what 90 of the work is [ __ ] grunt work that's what it is it's unglamorous sometimes people like i want to see what you do more i'm like you want to see what i do more i'm sitting with a [ __ ] messy bun in my sweatpants sometimes not showering for three goddamn days because i'm hammering [ __ ] out that's what i do i love it but if you're not willing to put in that kind of work you're not gonna get the outcomes on the other side yeah sorry did this get too rough real fast no man no all right good no that really was amazing and and a big part of my beef with upstart entrepreneurs is is that it's not realizing that it it's about building a skill set you know it's about getting extraordinary at something and that's one thing that i really resonate with in your teachings is your your b school is tactics man it's like how to for real run a business yes and i always say i'm like this is not a get rich quick overnight program this is get great over time like that's why we give people lifetime access because i'm like look dude you're probably not going to get through this you know in the eight weeks you're certainly not unless this is all you're doing and most of us don't have that kind of free time and i had people that have gone through the program i wanted to make an amend too um in the opening year like thirty thousand people have gone through at this point it's over forty four thousand grads yeah it's like a small town can i tell you something really fast yeah it's not just like a small town i ran the numbers at 30 000 because that was the yeah today i could get bring it that's 18 years worth of harvard undergrad graduates how crazy is that it's like when you awesome how many people have gone through your program that's astonishing thank you well i gotta tell you this though i didn't set out to do that and vision is great some people have amazing huge big grand visions and they love it and they step into it and they rise up to that occasion and that's awesome like if that's you and that's how you're built and that's what works for you [ __ ] rock on for many people when they have an enormous vision it paralyzes them they have no idea how to accomplish it i see people crying workshops all the time it's so big i don't know how to do it i want to change the world i'm like don't worry about changing the world change one person's life if we can focus there stay there for a little bit we're gonna get to that thing maybe otherwise it's all good because you're still doing the work that you were born to do but in terms of b-school it didn't start out like wanting world domination it started out seeing a gap in the market and feeling heartbroken because when i was trying to start my business everything that i saw in the marketplace lacked the soul it lacked the values it lacked the integrity it lacked the fun it lacked the playfulness the design aesthetic all these things that i thought would come together and create a more powerful learning experience so i was like well [ __ ] it i'm just going to create it because i wish i had this when i started out another thing that i i would be beyond remiss not to bring up along this line of like what beginning entrepreneurs often struggle with is indecision and you said what i have tattooed on my soul which is indecision is what will kill you yes indecision is a dream killer and the opposite what do we do about that it's probably one of the things i live my life by most besides the idea that everything is figureoutable is that clarity comes from yes yes we'll talk about that that clarity comes from engagement not thought so one of the things that got me off my ass right when i was thinking about should i be a dancer could i be a dancer am i too old to be a dancer oh i think i am was just getting into that freaking dance class that's what cracked me open to a whole additional career that by the way built the skill sets to what i do today so my little kind of offshoot my weird dancing thing got me experience in front of the camera teaching to big groups leading music all the stuff that we've talked about in this entire interview built this incredible skill set that now fuels the brand that i have today that's completely unique that would have been [ __ ] if i just stayed narrow and focused on life coaching i would have been you know that girl with like an awful pink suit and shoulder pads terrible so one thing that i really want to know your opinion about is the woman who's in that indecision of whether she should be an anthropologist or an astronaut you had her do the deathbed question and it really centered around what are you going to regret more what you do or what you don't do yes and what do you think is true about humans in that situation i think that we honestly don't think about our own mortality enough i think death is one of those taboo kind of topics in our culture and we don't really face it we don't think about it we don't talk about it enough we don't imagine ourselves dying enough we don't really just dive in and one of the weird little tricks that i use on myself especially when i'm just being horrible in my own relationship or i'm being not the person i know i'm capable of being i'm having a temper tantrum i'm stressed i'm just being an ass whatever it is i've used this in my relationship with josh where i will literally fast forward to the point where like i imagine him laying in a coffin and me going why were you such an [ __ ] why didn't you take that time why did you let that fight go on for four hours or a day or whatever it is or in those moments where i feel myself tightening up or shutting down or withholding love i try and check myself before i wreck myself i go there's going to come a day where you're going to flash back on this moment and wished that you just gave him a hug or wish that you went in and said i love you it's coming for all of us so if you can remember that now you change everything yeah i think that's super powerful and as you were saying that it's like i really like think about what it would be like if lisa were in when they die when someone that you care dies about the way that you are bereft that like i don't think about it in a detached sort of clinical way i think about it into like the way that someone [ __ ] throws themselves on a coffin yes and the the the sense of like hopelessness of never being able to get those moments back that's right and that yeah that like just [ __ ] devastating sense of loss it's pretty crazy how fast that'll snap you out of some [ __ ] oh it will snap you out of some [ __ ] and it will stop you from being in a temper tantrum and you can use that same notion again some people might say this is incredibly morbid i say it's incredibly inspiring i say if you can use it to wake yourself up out of that slumber of staying in your temper tantrum or being pissed at your parents or pissed at your friends or pissed at someone who again if you can see them as an innocent doing the best that they possibly could with whatever tools and understanding and beliefs and thoughts they had in that moment you can find a way to transcend to reconnect to your heart and to be that love that you really are you say that we don't talk enough about death let's talk about death like you and me right now yeah um because i realize that i think about death and i think about it like i was just saying with lisa and that's probably the most potently i ever think about it is jesus christ like what would this really be like yes um you and i both decided not to have kids yeah which is a pretty still weird decision for most people in terms of the feedback that i get and i don't have any sense of what you think or feel about the long-term consequence of that for me i'm very aware so i think of life as being in phases and to me it doesn't make sense to make a decision based on one phase when you're going to live say the majority of your life in a totally different phase so i know deathbed moment i it's a different phase i will have a different frame of reference i will value different things in that moment and in that moment i will regret not having children that's very clear to me because i will want to be surrounded by those that i love but as the youngest in my family odds are that i will be the last to go um so i know in that moment i will regret it but right now i don't and right now i would regret having children now and i think that that the sort of vibrant phase of my life where i want to create and have impact and all of that is is something much longer how do you think about death in that sense in terms of the decisions you're making in your life do you think that things will change for you as you move through phases i mean talking specifically about the decision not to have kids i remember when i did a marietv on that i was so blown away by how many women were like thank you for talking about this um and i also it was friendly i was like i was waiting for the comments i was like i wonder how many people are gonna say oh but you're gonna regret it or you're gonna change your mind for me i actually don't believe i'll regret it at all in my own life i've run so much of it by my gut and by intuition and by listening to the still small voice within and as i said on that show that i did it was never a decision for me i didn't weigh my options i wasn't torn it was clear this meaning who i am right now is my path should some point happen between now and when i die that i want to have children in my life there are many many many different options for me to execute right there's adoption there's fostering there's like a million different ways that it could go should i change my mind which again i'm very open to so i don't believe in my case that i'm going to have any regret i believe so strongly in how my life has unfolded and i also have tremendous faith that it will continue to go exactly as it's meant to and whenever my time is up i feel really good about the ride how do you think about death in terms of does is death like a companion with life choices do you think is that a like i'll frame this by saying i don't find that a particularly effective frame outside of like being kind to my wife yeah but in terms of like my own death i don't find particularly compelling as a frame of reference yeah i don't think i do either um i feel as though it's useful to do a gut check you know if i were to look back and go ah you know so for example let me take this into context when it was around dance for me i actually did a 10-year frame on that i said in 10 years because i was 25 at the time in 10 years would i regret not going for dance right now while i'm still 25 years old because there's a difference physically or at least there can be right in a 25 year old versus 35 year old just starting to get into the dance world just you give yourself just a little bit more of a hurdle and my answer came back yes if i'm 35 and i didn't try this right now i would totally regret it so i find that shorter time frames for me become a more useful reference point yeah i i can definitely get that yeah i could talk to you forever for real forever uh before i ask my last question yes tell these guys where they can find you online maybe give them a teaser about the book sure that would be amazing and hopefully we'll come back we'll talk about that um so marieforleo.com m-a-r-i-e-f-o-r-l-e-o and that's true over instagram and twitter and youtube and facebook um but the main goods are at marieforleo.com i think we have like hundreds and hundreds of free episodes in the podcast and as long as you like humor and you don't want a little jersey straight talk it's good good stuff and then in terms of the book the title is everything is figureoutable how one simple belief can help you change your life in the world and it comes out september 10th of this year amazing i cannot wait to read that me too i'm so excited to see it all done that's incredible all right so my last question what's the impact that you want to have on the world i've always had this belief since i was little that every single one of us is born with a unique set of gifts and talents that only we can give the world so the impact that i want to have is i believe our world will transform significantly when every single one of us realizes that the world really does need the special gift that only we have so to see people wake up to that to know that it's already in them they don't have to do anything or be anyone different to just express that i think we go a long way i absolutely love that all right guys look i'm gonna put my most aggressive two-handed stamp of approval on this woman everything she does is absolutely extraordinary you will be mesmerized you'll be blown away everything she teaches is real it will actually make your life better if you follow her advice which is just the the most important thing i could say about anybody her content is hilarious it really is full of wisdom it's full of executable advice her q and a's are legendary in my opinion that you really get to follow somebody they're done live so she's on the phone with them and she's walking them through she's chasing them down uh it's it's really really moving and i think that you will see yourself in that and i think that you will be able to gain a lot of advice from that i highly recommend that you guys go to her website which is a it's gorgeous b it's full of incredible information it's in a portal into her whole world of content the b-school i have not taken it full disclosure but the people that have rave about it and the number of people that have gone through i think speaks for itself so i would really if you're thinking of starting a business i can't point you in any better direction i would definitely definitely check that out all right if you guys haven't already be sure to subscribe and until next time my friends be legendary take care [Applause] everybody thank you so much for watching and being a part of this community if you haven't already be sure to subscribe you're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset cultivating grit and unlocking your full potential you

Channel: Tom Bilyeu

Views: 604,343

Keywords: Tom Bilyeu, Impact Theory, ImpactTheory, TomBilyeu, Inside Quest, InsideQuest, Tom Bilyou, Theory Impact, motivation, inspiration, talk show, interview, motivational speech, Marie Forleo, Marie Forleo Tom Bilyeu, Marie Forleo Impact Theory, marie forleo money, marie forleo b school, marie forleo oprah, marie forleo q&a, marie, forleo, forleo marie

Id: 1-go0xQZ89w

Length: 60min 59sec (3659 seconds)

Published: Tue Feb 12 2019