as you're gearing up to step back into
your normal life if you haven't already
done that
um i thought i'd just give you five
little quick little triggers just
reminders that are so simple but these
are the five things
that i personally did when i first got
kicked out of my house uh some of you
know the story my
mom was a very powerful woman i had four
different fathers and she kicked my dad
out and
on christmas eve she decided i was on
his side so she kicked me out too
and i had nothing and i had to figure
out what to do she got my 1960
volkswagen
i weren't burned at 40 a week and don't
get me wrong i love my mom but she
abused alcohol and prescription drugs
and when people do that they're not
themselves they do little crazy things
but
i'm i am who i am because of her and
part of that was even that first step
where i had to just figure out what to
do with my life but it was incredibly
depressing i have a younger brother five
years younger younger sisters seven
years younger i love them
loves of my life and i was separated
from my brother and sister and i'm
walking in the rain
trying to figure out what the hell i'm
gonna do and i'm still in high school
so one of the things that i did is i
slept on this mountain top
um and of course it rained and so the
next day i
talked to a friend a lady friend not a
girlfriend but a girl who was a friend
and i that her parents let me stay in
their laundry room and
america is so depressed i don't know if
you've ever been to that place where
you're like wondering why you're even
around or whether you should be around
it was a pretty brutal time
uh but what turned me around was feeding
my mind
what i mean by that is um about a year
earlier i've gone to this seminar by jim
rohn i know many of you have heard of
jim
he's no longer alive past some years ago
but he was a mentor of mine and
i went to a seminar with 17 and in the
seminar he
really talked about the importance of
feeding your mind and you've got to feed
it because
otherwise things come at you and so i
remember i i took a little bit of change
i had left in my pocket and i got on a
bus
and i drove uh they drove me anywhere on
the bus for about
i don't know it's about an hour's away
from where i was because i've been to
this place once before at this amazing
bookstore
and i figure i'll go in there and i'll
just read a bunch of books while i'm in
there because they can't afford any and
then i picked up a book called the magic
of believing by claude
m bristol and in this book it talked
about
training and conditioning your mind and
how what goes in your mind
becomes the experience of your life and
how to do it and
i was so depressed i didn't know what to
do and so i went and i'll never forget i
went back to this little laundry room
and there was a mirror there and the
book said
you know put your goals in the mirror so
you look through your own eyes into your
goals and you see in your own eyes and
you read those goals do it with soap and
so i do in the mirror
and i made these little posters that
said things like only a loser is
depressed now that's not true
uh because but i felt like i'm not a
loser and that was the leverage i had
right
i can't be depressed if the loser's
depressed and so i just try to work on
everything
but gradually i started turning my life
around and i did five things
and i did them again i got to tell you
and multiple times in my life when i hit
really bad places when i was told i had
a tumor in my brain
and that you know i might die you know
when i uh buried
all four of my fathers over the course
of a year and a half and my mother
those are rough times they start to
shift you when 2008 happened and looked
like everything was going under
and i went back and i reapplied in here
at the beginning of the pandemic as well
so they're really simple
but first of the five keys to transform
your life i don't care where you are how
great it is if you get to the next level
the first step is stand guard the door
of your mind
and i got that from my teacher jim rohn
i remember he came to me one day and i
was really frustrated and saying you
know i'm just i'm working so hard and
nothing's really working and
i don't understand it and and i was just
i was super frustrated
and remember he came and he said tony he
said listen to me
he said think of tell me who's what are
you reading he said tell me who you're
talking to
he said tell me who you're surrounding
yourself with and i said well i'm mostly
isolated by myself and i said but i'm so
frustrated
listen to me he said answer this
question for me
he said what happens in the world if
let's say
you know your worst enemy comes by and
drops sugar
in your coffee and then i said well
you'd have sweet coffee he said well
what if your best friend
even by accident drops one drop of
strychnine what if it's your brother
your sister your mother your father
somebody you love
accidentally drops one drop of strict
nut i said well then you'd be dead
he goes that's right so remember life is
both sugar and strychnine so watch your
coffee
and what he really meant was stand guard
at the door of your mind
because today we live in a world where
the media they're not bad people they're
good people but they're companies
and they got to take care of their
shareholders and the only way they win
is by getting your eyeballs and the only
way to get your eyeballs in a world
where there's so much information
is to startle you the news is not
designed to educate you inform you you
know that that's why it says
water drinking water may kill you film
at 11. you know anything that grabs you
and so we're living in a culture of so
much fear so if you're going to take
your life back you gotta
take into a limited amount of that media
and be able to pursue it not let it
pursue you
today most people like in order to get
your attention we all know what they do
it's called clickbait
let me create a headline that'll grab
you it doesn't matter if the content is
even
real news or not a lot of times the
headline isn't really what the whole
story is
but it pulls you in there's whole groups
of people whose entire life
is designing algorithms and language to
make you
stay online more so they can make more
money but it isn't necessarily to your
advantage
so what jim rohn used to say to me is he
said tony
this is your new daily practice because
this is what i really want to get to you
guys here is if you want to keep
momentum if you join me for those
few days they have the five six days or
seven i guess we did for the challenge
or you went
immersion with me as well the key is to
get momentum and keep momentum if you
work your tail off to get momentum going
and then you drop it
oh my god you got to start all over
again and so the way you do that is you
have a daily practice
it's not like you know years ago i went
to a seminar by jim rohn and then my
life was perfect
it's like i kept immersing myself in all
these things but i also made sure each
day i was making some form of progress
if you want to know what makes people
happy write down progress equals
happiness think about it you can achieve
everything in the world and still go is
this all there is
you can achieve something and be excited
but for how long
the only way you stay happy and excited
is to keep growing
progress is everything if you're making
progress on your body progress in your
mind
progress in your motion you're gonna
feel happy when you get there you feel
excited but again for how long a year no
six months three months three weeks
three days three hours because we're not
made to just sit
and you know be successful we're made to
grow we're made to then as we grow we
have something to give
so step one is let's see if you can put
a little system standing guard at your
mind and jim rohn said to me back then
the number one thing you have to do
is read 30 minutes a day so never less
than 20 minutes and i'm not talking
about what comes to your phone
i'm not talking about clickbait i mean a
book i mean something that you pursue
great ideas are never going to interrupt
you
they have to be pursued and you if you
don't pursue them you're going to get
what everybody else has which is all
this fear
all this uncertainty all this stuff
won't work because everybody's
focused on what won't work what can't
happen why because they're afraid
they're afraid to fail they're afraid to
try and
feel like they're not enough so you got
to stand guard that mind by
feeding your mind you know jim rohn used
to say to me success leaves clues
if you want thing to get better you got
to get better if you want things to
change you got to change
but you got to do it deliberately and
consciously and he used to say to me
constantly said tony you've got
to constantly find a way to feed that
mind something that's got strategy in it
philosophy something that's going to
improve the quality of your life
and if you really learn it you can help
the people you love with the things you
learn
and so i got hooked and so i decided i'm
going to read a book a day
i took a speed reading course and i
didn't read a book a day but i read 700
books over the period of
seven years all in the area of
philosophy physiology
emotion the things to me that mattered
most and what i really try to do is each
day try to use something i learn not
just read not just let my
learning lead to knowledge you know jim
used to say if you let your learning
lead to knowledge you become a fool
if you let you learn lead to action
that's when your life changes
so i started being aware of who was
saying what what i was taking in you
know jim used to say
you know success leaves clues if
someone's successful they're not lucky
they're doing something different than
you figure out what they're doing
different
he said the first thing is find out what
they're reading he said because
he said i remember he said me something
funny he said find out what poor people
read and don't read it
and we said poor he didn't just mean
financially poor he meant people that
were unhappy
people that were had no sense of meaning
in their life people that were
financially strapped because they
weren't managing to add value to other
people
people that found themselves not taking
your relationships their body poor isn't
just money
wealth isn't just money it's emotional
spiritual everything
he said so find out what successful
people do what wealthy people read what
happy people
and read that feed your mind so step
number one
is every single day you got to do
something to feed your mind and if you
do that if you just made that habit
say even five days a week i swear to you
it'll change your life but
again not what comes to you what you
pursue
something that has real value a strategy
that can change the game for your
business
your life a philosophy that can make you
more fulfilled or happy
a way to make a difference for the
people you love that's a daily
sought out practice for me started when
i was 17 i'm now 61.
that's why i have the privilege to be
able to work with so many people but
most importantly i've applied these
things to me so i have the life
that i want i don't have a life that i'm
promoting to other people
so that's number one what's number two
real fast if you really feed your mind
every day
feed and strengthen your mind with a 30
minute practice and by the way i started
out reading all the time
but then i realized i was in my car all
the time in those days
i was like i'm going to turn this to a
university on wheels
and i'm all done i remember cassette
tapes and probably most of you don't
even know what the hell i'm talking
about
not real the real but the book is
updates you know we didn't have where
you could put 10 000
songs in your phone or go to youtube and
have a million different videos you can
watch over and over again
and the value for me on that quite
honestly was that
i had to pay for this stuff so i had to
value it and really use it
like when you part with a certain amount
of money and in those days you know six
cassettes six
one hour cassettes and a couple
workbooks was like 300
it was like the standard offer and i
remember i went down this place called
night education night like with a sword
you know and the shield
k and ight and it was this jewish man
beautiful man named mario that i became
friends with i was a little 17 year old
kid my little pot belly i was fat
and i drove all the way down downtown
l.a be about in those days like an hour
and 20 minute drive
and my little old volkswagen with no
reverse park on the hill so it wouldn't
because i could get out and um and
i got to be friends with this man and he
had collected is how old it was
all these albums of some of the great
motivational speakers and psychologists
and psychiatrists
and business people and then gradually
those things got to actually the
cassette tapes and so you had all these
things i'd say like what's
what's the most valuable thing he said
well what do you want to work on i said
well my body and my emotions and my mind
and my spirit he was like you want
everything and he
said okay let's start with this one and
i take 300
i was making 40 a week as a janitor so
this is literally the money i'd saved
and i'd absorb it and i'd be like i
can't afford this and i'd like well i
can't afford not to
because unless i get these answers i'll
still not be able to pay my basic bills
i'll still be struggling
so i was one of the smart things i
invested in myself
and so i go down and because i invested
300 and six tapes i remember jerome said
repetition is the mother of skill
here's something once and you kind of
understand it here again you kind of
feel
heard enough he said listen to stuff
every day
until pretty soon the things i was
hearing in my head were
these new thoughts from brilliant people
instead of the old thoughts that were
basically whatever i'd been around
before and it changed my life it started
to shift me because i fed my mind but
then number two
you got to everyday feed and strengthen
your body and you got to do something
even in the middle of covet if it's
still there even lockdown because if you
don't take care of your body it affects
your mind doesn't it
i mean think about this what is it that
screws up everybody's life
fear is the number one thing it's keeps
people from doing what's necessary
and anger and rage well it can mobilize
us if it becomes part of your life on a
regular basis
it destroys it so how do you balance
that out well
fear anger they're both physical aren't
they think about what do you feel like
if you're really
ever been so afraid that your throat got
really dry you feel this feeling in your
gut
right that's physical courage is also
physical
again courage does not mean you're not
afraid courage means you're afraid but
you do it anyway
right it's a way of being in your body
so one of the things that i started
doing early on is
understanding and those of you who spent
four days with me you know
day and night because we did it and it's
in your body still how to change the way
you feel
instantly by a radical change in your
body and so i really want to recommend
you do something at least five days a
week
first thing when you wake up in the
morning i don't it doesn't have to be an
hour workout even 30 minutes it can be
something as little as five or ten
minutes
there is not a day when i wake up i've
shared with some of you this already
first thing i do i go outside if i'm
lucky enough to be at one of my homes
anyway
i have homes in different parts of the
world because i've traveled the world
and done this i'm very fortunate but i
have
a cold punch i've installed in everyone
56 degrees and my home in sun valley i
don't know i don't have a cold punch i
don't need it i walked through the snow
in the winter or in the summer i walk
through the grass
and i get in the river and then
literally the river is usually about 39
to 42 degrees to give you an idea
every cell in your body is moved the
blood rushes through everything right
and i do it for two reasons there's
never a day i look forward to doing it i
don't go oh i can't wait to go in there
i do it number one because it transforms
your body the blood flow the lymph flow
is unbelievable from a health
perspective
you just go in for a minute pop out it's
like a different world
right i don't care what it is or you
could take a freezing shower would be
the minimum way you could do this you
couldn't do this
but it's about changing your body so
radically and it's also about
developing a simple daily discipline
it's like i don't negotiate with myself
i tell my brain i don't go oh wait i'm
not ready or let me
let me count to ten or maybe i'll do it
tomorrow
that pattern of thinking is what
destroys most people's lives
and their dreams you can settle for a
life like most people have or you can
create your dreams but to do it you need
to be able to push yourself
so you need to train yourself in little
ways or it could be just going and
lifting weights
and you're going to do like 10 minutes
of pushing yourself or
a sprint or really fast walk anything
because when you get your blood pushing
when you push beyond what's comfortable
it develops this determination inside
you this sense of will
that you will then use everywhere else i
always say if you discipline yourself in
one area of your life
you're going to be able to do it even
more in other areas you get momentum
momentum is everything
so if you train your mind great but you
got to change your body as well in some
way
and i don't care again if it's five or
ten minutes where you really push
yourself
or a full-blown workout it's got to get
there because when you do that regularly
you're gonna find yourself having a
better mind the mind and body can't be
separated they're completely connected
you work on both of them you're going to
have a different world and you're not
going to be shut down and when other
people like oh it can't be done just
move
i'll handle it it's a different way of
being isn't it
third key in order to really believe you
can turn things around you need a role
model
and so throughout my life i looked at
different ones the earliest one i looked
for since i grew up poor
we had no money and you know that seemed
to be the real issue
my mom left all four of my fathers but
as i look back on it really wasn't money
they could have had all the money in the
world they still would have fought
but it looked like money so i thought
wow if i could make money my family will
never have this pain
so i looked around for role models and i
grew up in a place where there were no
financial role models
everyone was broke we have money for
food it's why i provide 100 million
meals a year through feeding america for
the last
six years by the way we're up to 700
million meals now
i said we'd feed a billion in 10 years
we're a year ahead we're going to hit it
but the bottom line is it comes because
i had nothing and
i found it's like who who also started
with nothing like me and then
turned it around and grew and who comes
from humble beginnings
and i saw you know sir john templeton
some of you may have heard of him
brilliant man
first billionaire investor started with
nothing
and the way he did it is he saved money
and he invested during the darkest times
and so i saw sir john as that and when i
was around when covert happened i
started looking around to see what are
people in businesses that haven't given
up even though everything's shut down
they found a way to serve their
clients and even though their way wasn't
my way it reminded me and inspired me to
say there is a way that's how i started
building
the way that we now deliver for so many
people virtually around the world
so find a role model and get a plan so
number one feed and strengthen your mind
every day 30 minutes a day
uh to me now audio is even better
because i can do it while i'm running i
can do it while i'm working out i can do
it while i'm cleaning the house i can do
it in my car
so i use audio that's why i've used it
forever in that area because it just
gives you more rhythm but it's either
reader audio
something you pursued every day strength
and feed your body can make it stronger
so that you're psychologically short
find the role model get a plan what's
for
massive action like everybody wants to
say well i don't know where to start
what do i do first well listen i got all
kinds of tools to help people do that
but
the most important thing is do something
you know you don't do throw the rock
wherever it lands talk to the next
person right it's like
you need massive action and then you
need to see what's working or not keep
changing and you'll get there anyone can
get to where they want to go
as long as they get in motion but again
it's about momentum
and that's the main reason i came to
join you last one step five real fast
give more than you expect to receive if
you are constantly trying to take care
of people give to people
if your worst time of your life you can
give to people i promise you everything
will change
i won't tell you the whole story bore
you with it right now because i want to
do this real quick for you but
you know one of the most difficult times
in my life when i was completely broke
not not even enough gas in my car trying
to figure out how to survive not able to
pay my rent
and i i had one more with the story but
i had an experience where i took the
last 19 dollars i had and i gave it to
somebody who else that needed it
and afterwards i was euphoric it made no
sense but it was the first time in my
life
you know people say i got to get beyond
scarcity you never get beyond scarcity
you got to start beyond scarcity you got
to declare you got to
take the last seed you got and plant
them and i remember
you know the next day i got a check for
1200 which in those days i could have
survived on for almost a month
from somebody who owed it to me and not
paid me for two years the very next day
after i gave every dime i had had no
idea i was even gonna eat
i just it was the right moment was the
right situation and i just i did what
was right
so find someone who's worse off than you
are in the middle of it
do something for them and i promise you
you'll remember how great your life is
and you'll feel fulfilled because
we all it's not about us you know what i
mean it's like
it's not about me it's about we and the
more you can get connected either people
you love or even strangers and
do things not for brownie points just
because it's right
somehow inside your own soul your own
spirit
you remember that problems are not
permanent only your soul is permanent
and you remember that i'm made for more
than just solving this stupid little
problem
it just it lifts the human spirit so
those five keys
i really encourage you to consider as
you're dealing with covet or coming out
of it here to maximize