I found that nothing in life
It's worthwhile
unless you take RICKS
NOTHING
Nelson Mandela said:
There is no passion to be found
playing small
and settling for a life that's less
than the one you're capable of living
Now I'm sure in your experiences in school
and applying to college and picking your major and
and picking your major
and deciding what you want to do with life.
I'm sure people have told you
to make sure you have something to fall back on
make sure you have something to fall back on
But I never understood that concept
having something to fall back on
If I'm going to fall,
I don't want to fall back on anything.
I don't want to FALL FORWARD
I figured at least this way
I will see what I'm going to hit
without COSISTENCY
You will never finish
so do what you feel passionate about
take chances
Don't be afraid to fail
there is and old IQ tests nine dots
and you had to
draw five lines with a pencil
within these nine dots
without lifting the pencil.
The only way to do it was to go outside the box
So don't be afraid to go outside the box
Don't be afraid to
Think outside the box
don't be afraid to fail big
to dream big
but remember
dreams without goals
are just dreams
You can either live your dreams
or live your fears
and I think the majority of people actually
are not living their dreams
but are living their fears
So I want to ask you a question
What are your fears?
What are you afraid of?
What are you scared of?
Because we all have fears
we all have something that's blocking us
that's holding us back
And as we began to look at life
what we realize is that
The reason that most people
are not living out their true potential
and not doing all of the things
that they would really like to do
is because of fear.
When you face your fears.
It's not as bad as you think it is.
And when people tell you
"I just can't do it
"I can't handle it"
What they're envisioning is
that they're not going to be
if they're going to clock out
like you're going to die.
Guess what?
we all had occasions when we
confronted our fears
we had to do something
we felt uncomfortable with
we didn't want to do it
and we did not die.
What you gotta do
to get the life that you want you to have.
You got to put more air in your bubble
you got to blow your bubble up
expand yourself
take yourself out your comfort zone
do not live in your bubble
if you stay in your comfort zone
that's why you will fail
so don't be afraid
You have nothing to fear, guys
You already overcame all the time and stuff
get that goal
get that dream
And so I'm telling y'all you have come too far to quit now
you have invested too much to quit now
you have lost too much to quit now
get a reward for your pain
Don't cry about it
Don't worry about it
Get a reward for it.
I am constantly trying to find my new 100%,
even though life gets at you
age gets at you
sickness may get at you
I have friends of mine who lost legs, who lost arms,
who lost all kinds of stuff.
and they called me and said, Hey man, what am I going to do now?
I said, well, it's up to you to find your new norm.
It's up to you to find your new 100%
No, you cannot
do some of the things you used to do
but what can you do today
What can you do now with what you have
And you must find your new norm
As you all know, your mom has a cookie jar,
and sometimes you might have a Oreo, sometimes you might
have a Chips Ahoy, sometimes you might have a oatmeal
raisin cookie.
You never know.
It's just in there.
My cookie jar
has every single failure and success of my life.
Somethin' I overcame.
So, what happens in time of life when you're stressed out
and things get bad, even the hardest guy in the world,
me, everybody thinks, and I think I'm the hardest guy
in the world, you've got to believe that.
You got to believe you are somethin'.
I will, in my mind, reach into my cookie jar
and sometimes you forget how hard you are in times of need.
'Cause you're stressed.
But you forget.
I'm a *** Navy Seal, I'm a Ranger, I'm this and that,
but you forget all that 'cause your life sucks.
I calm down, take that one second, get control of my life,
reach in the cookie jar,
"Wow, you got called Nigger your whole life
"and you're now the only person in history to do"
this, this, and this.
Put it back in the cookie jar, reset my mind.
You have to remind yourself of how badass you really are
in times of need.
That's the *** cookie jar.
No one has the most of everything.
So when you measure yourself by numbers, you'll always be second,
third, fourth, fifth in something.
And I think by measuring yourself by
needing to have the most of anything is probably a recipe for unhappiness.
Oh, okay.
I'm not gonna have the most of anything, but I'm gonna have the most money.
You're still going to be unhappy.
Totally.
Even if you have the most of something, doesn't mean you're gonna be happy.
Totally.
I think it was Albert Einstein who said it best that.
Not everything that can be counted counts and not everything
that counts can be counted.
And, and I loved that because it removes this belief that
things are finite and limited.
And then not, if you want to be happy and successful, if no matter
that there are 700,000 podcasts, if that is your Dharma, if that's your
calling, if that's your purpose.
Like you can do that.
There's, there's no cap on, on how many successful soccer players that
can exist at the same time or how many books are out in the world.
There's no cap, there's no one stopping you.
And that's the mindset that we're educated for that scarcity.
And what's the difference between the monkey mind
And the monk mind.
Yeah.
I'm glad you brought that up.
So the monkey mind, it is what we experience on a day-to-day basis.
The monkey mind is restless.
The monkey mind is jumping from branch to branch.
The monkey mind is trying to find a bigger banana.
The monkey mind is constantly just like feeling flustered, dissatisfied,
or scarce and overthinking everything.
The monk mind is the exact opposite.
The monkey mind is the exact opposite.
The monk mind is calm and composed.
The monk mind knows to be focused and aware. The monk mind knows
So everything in this book and everything that we're talking about is
the transformation from the monkey mind that we experience to the monk mind.
the transformation from the monkey mind that we experience to the monkey mind.
The monkey mind is almost the enemy to the monk mind.
It's the opposite.
And how does someone who is living in a sense of scarcity?
Because there are people living in scarcity where
they're unable to pay their bills.
They're not able to provide food for their kids.
They're single moms.
They're, they're stressed, they're stressed, they're overwhelmed.
It's hard to get into a sense of abundance when you are in scarcity and stress.
So how does someone find purpose
In chaos when they can't even get out of the thinking, because
they're just trying to survive.
Yeah.
So beautiful question.
My biggest answer is first of all
I empathize with anyone who's been in that situation, having.
I can't ever say I've been in that situation in the same way, but I've
experienced similar things or I've ceiling in your life in my own way.
And I've seen my mum go through stuff like that.
I know that my mom worked really hard to raise me and my sister
while working while running around.
And I've, I've seen my mum be that incredible powerhouse of a person.
And that the main thing I would say is.
What you can do right now is find meaning in what you do, make what you do,
meaningful, passionate, and purposeful.
You don't need to suddenly look to become an entrepreneur or start a side
hustle or find some more time, find meaning, and the way you find meaning
as you genuinely stop, press pause for a second and go, what am I living for?
Like, what am I living for right now?
And if you're living for your child and if you're living to provide and put
food on the table, that is a beautiful thing that we should celebrate more.
And sometimes it takes us a moment to stop and celebrate that.
And so I would say, find a meaning because you can't always find happiness.
You can always find positivity, but you can always find meaning in that position.
So I'll give an example.
Like I lost someone really important to me, a mentor, a few days back.
I can't be positive about that.
You can't be happy or sad.
Yeah.
It's hurtful.
you feel Sad.
you feel lost, but guess what?
I can find meaning in it because I can make a list of every lesson he
taught me and make a plan to try and live every one of those lessons.
And so if you were in a really tough situation right now,
don't look for positivity.
Don't look for happiness.
Look for meaning.
That's a good one.
Not trying to, and not trying to get yourself out of pain too quickly, or
discomfort or frustration, which I've been guilty of being like, I'll just be
positive or whatever to people, but I think it's like, you know, have your experience.
Yes.
Live your experience and find meaning as quickly as possible.
And.
Create a commitment to how you want to use that meaning moving forward.
Okay.
I may not be great tomorrow, maybe not next week next month, but I'm going
to use this meaning to serve other people, to continue to do what I love.
Continue to be great to my friends, my family, in the best way possible.
I think there are people who would be born with what I would call leadership leanings.
They would have a, a tendency to lean or be gifted in that area.
Just like somebody is gifted in music or whatever.
So I think that, that, that, that starts it.
And I think I have that, but then I, I grew up in a leader's home.
In fact, my father is 98, still living.
And in fact until two years ago was still working full time
and, and was a terrific leader.
So I grew up in a culture and environment of leadership.
And so when I look at myself at where I am today, uh, so much of it was caught.
From from not only my father, but I've had great mentors throughout my life.
In fact, while we're out here in Los Angeles and every time
I come out here, I think of John Wooden who mentored me for the last,
probably 11 years of his life world.
And, um, In fact, when you're, when you talked about that sometimes
you win, sometimes you learn, uh, he did the forward on that book and he
just loved the idea of, of, of how to get back up after, after you fail.
So when you look at my home background, uh, the leadership experiences.
That I had because a person learns to lead by practicing leadership.
And at a very early age, I was practicing leadership.
And so it all comes together.
And then when I began to realize everything rises and falls on leadership,
I became really intentional Tom of developing my leadership skills.
So I can remember for example, I was probably, I don't know, maybe 26.
I heard Earl Nightingale say on a tape that, uh, if you had spent one hour a day,
every day on one subject for five years, you could become an expert on that subject.
So I said, wow, I want to become an expert.
In leadership.
So for the next five years, you know, I spent an hour a day reading
about leadership, talking to leaders, asking leaders, questions, practicing
leadership, but it really was consistent.
And when I started that process, I was thinking five years, Earl like i said
could become an expert in five years.
Okay.
Wow.
actually leadership expert
Hello.
And, and so I kept, you know, I was kind of like doing countdown five
years, four years, three years, I'm thinking I'm Cape Canaveral.
Okay.
But something happened to me about halfway through that five-year process.
Instead of keeping asking myself, how long will it take?
How long will it take?
Instead of KPN asking myself, how long will it take?
How long will it take?
One day I began to realize high was growing as a leader and the
change that was happening within me.
And I stopped asking the question, how long will it take?
And I started asking the question, how far can I go?
And everything changed that day.
I realized that you can set goals and have five-year goals, whatever.
But, but I, I changed from a goal mindset to a growth mindset and the fact that
if I would be intentional in the areas of growth that would have the return and
would fit who I was, then I could really be successful and help a lot of people.
And, and that was kind of a shift for me.
And so when I wrote my first leadership book, I thought I
would write one leadership book.
Can I be done?
I, I, you know, I didn't think a hundred books later.
I, I had to leave...
They said you've written more books than I've ever read in my life.
You know what I mean?
But I didn't have any intention write a lot of books.
I, but, but growth allows you to continue to expand yourself and your world until.
There's just so much more that you know, and so much more that you want to share.
So, you know, my journey has been really one of, of understanding that, that if
I, every day intentionally grow, the question is just how, how far can I go?
And I don't know that answer.
I'm still, I'm still growing.
I'm still, I'm still moving towards the finish line.
We spend a lot of time talking about mindset from the
standpoint of think positive.
So positive things happen.
And I do believe in having a positive mindset
obviously I think that the actions that you take are way more important in terms
of developing that mindset, but we don't spend enough time on what you were just
talking about, which is understanding how the automatic nature of worrying
about stuff all day long, how that
is making you less money, how it is making you less happy, how it is disconnecting
you from your spouse, how it is keeping you unhealthy and how it is a habit that
robs you of joy and opportunity and power.
And it is one of the easiest habits to break.
Number one, um, your life happens in five second windows,
number two in five seconds, you can
control what you think you can decide what you're going to do and you can
change absolutely anything which changes
absolutely everything.
And so the five second rule is a mind trick.
That's all that it is a fancy way to, to call it as a, you know, it's a form of
metacognition, but it's basically a hack.
It's a cheat code.
Okay.
And.
The way that it works.
And this is the challenge with getting it out there is that it sounds so profoundly stupid,
like a gimmick that it took a while for people to actually take it seriously
and to really stack up the science to make.
You know, anybody that interacts with it go *** like this actually works.
Yeah.
So here's what it is.
Basically the moment you catch yourself hesitating or doubting or starting
to worry or about to chicken out or shrink or shut up or whatever it
is that you're about to do
that is shrinking your power.
You just go five, four, three, two, one.
You count backwards.
Five, four, three, two, one.
Um, what happens when you do that?
Don't do it out loud.
Cause it'll say somebody like ...
like a psycho everybody i'm talking yes, exactly
Yes, exactly.
Although, you know, we, I say it's, it's so simple that people
this is the saturday night live skit in the making right here i can see it
I would love that because that means I've really made it, um,
Uh, your kids will use it on you.
So my kids will use it on me.
So if I have a certain tone that comes out, I'll hear my child
here and go five, four, three.
Watch that tone mom.
You know, um, our mom, five, four, three, two, one.
I thought you were gonna go to the gym.
Um, yes.
So, uh, by counting backwards, the, the, uh, kind of cheat code that you're doing
in your mind is you are interrupting.
What are called habit loops that get encoded in the central part of your brain.
And you are starting up the prefrontal cortex.
It's a little trick that causes focus.
And it's, it's a lot like having a mantra because you're shifting gears.
But the thing about having a mantra is, and I suppose that as you
count backwards more and more and more, you become used to it, but it
becomes a habit that triggers action.
So what you do is go five, four, three, two, one, cut off this
part of the brain, awaken this part of the brain and then move.
And what happens with the counting backwards is
there's nowhere to go after one.
And your mind is socialized in a count down situation to go.
And so, um, counting up won't work because you can keep going and you
do it in many aspects of your life.
So it's actually not something that requires any focus.