Kind: captions
Language: en
most people live by the law of accident
don't let that be you
if you think of uncertainty as a muscle
and you train it like a muscle things
start changing you've got to find a way
to be excited about what you're doing
what you have assigned meaning
to the experience fueling that work
rather than letting the job description
be your only definition of it when they
say do i want to make an impact and the
answer is yes and they own it
they realize they're going to have to
develop
[Music]
the thing that i love is that you're
using the word build because that's
exactly what we're going to be doing
here you're going to construct what you
want your life to be you're going to
break it up into different hours and
segments so you know when it's go time
and then you're going to build rules
into your life that mandate that you
show up during those times so i have a
whole host of rules in my life
they can be small simple rules like i
get out of bed in 10 minutes or less
they can be more profound and impactful
goals or excuse me rules and i have a
rule in my life where
monday through friday if i'm awake i'm
either working or working out so if i
were doing something like you in this
situation i would say okay these two day
two hours or five hours however much
time it is that you want to allocate to
the business you're gonna say i am
working on the business during these
times i'm gonna tell myself i'm gonna
tell other people that way there's
accountability then i'm gonna score
myself at the end of that session did i
show up did i start when i said i was
going to start did i go hard the whole
time and i'm just going to give myself a
rating every day depending on where i'm
going how i did that day was i
distracted did i have flow was it a
great day a bad day and by doing that
i'm going to hold myself accountable so
i can see over time did i show up when i
said i was going to show up
what was the score that i gave myself
for staying focused staying on task and
getting things done and then the third
thing to really make this stick
you've got to find a way to be excited
about what you're doing and oftentimes
when people come and they say that
they're having trouble making a new
habit stick the reality is they just
don't want it badly enough
and
when you realize that that's not an
indictment on you as a person that's a
simple statement about the fact that
desire is a process so you don't there's
very few things in your life that you
just sort of automatically are excited
about most of things if you really want
to kick ass at something you've got to
build a ton of energy into getting
excited about that thing now that comes
in a couple different forms number one
is your why why are you doing this so it
might be hey my husband and i we're
really excited about this this is going
to be our path to freedom and building
something with him like this means
everything to me and i couldn't be more
excited more honored to be working side
by side with my husband to build
something to show each other what we're
capable of to take care of each other to
you know give ourselves what we need to
build a family whatever you're going to
make that why you're going to say it
you're going to say it with enthusiasm
it's what i call embodying what you want
to feel so if you want to be excited
when you're telling other people when
you're even talking to yourself when
you're talking to your husband you're
actually going to let yourself get hyped
up there's a mechanism in the brain that
says whoa hey we're all hyped up about
this it must actually be worth being
hyped up about
and it becomes a self-reinforcing loop
so we've got our why and then we want to
make sure that we're putting the
identity into it that we want to get out
so if we want to be the kind of person
that shows up and works hard then we say
i'm the type of person that shows up and
works hard and you're gonna lean into
that and the why that you have with your
husband you guys are building something
you're excited about it you're telling
other people you're embodying it and now
you've got the identity statement of i'm
the type of person that does this i see
this through and you repeat that
cocktail over and over over and over and
following it up with that score and all
of a sudden over time and it will take
time because it is a process but over
time you're going to stick to it because
it means something to you and your
husband you've got to rule about showing
up you're rating yourself on how you did
that day you're feeling good on the days
that you killed it and you're reminding
yourself to dig a little deeper on the
days where you don't and i promise if
you just work that process over and over
and over
two weeks a month into this it's just
gonna be second nature you're gonna be
showing up you're gonna be excited
you're gonna see it through
and that's it just work the process i
think even one step before that is is
opening yourself up to new role models
and new experiences
see we live in echo chambers
we're just surrounded by the same
thinking how often do you bump into a
monk you know it just doesn't happen you
don't have no one has a dinner party and
goes oh yeah we just invited the monk
you know from town like the local monk
like no one ever does that and so
we meet people who are just like us most
of the time
and we talk about this in business all
the time if you want to be a billionaire
spend time with billionaires if you want
to be a millionaire spend time with
millionaires if you want to be a tech
startup spend time with you know that's
that's the common rhetoric that we hear
all the time
but what if you want to find purpose and
master the mind there's no one better
than a monk who's mastered the mind
so so for me the first step is just
opening yourself up to new experiences
and new role models
because most of us can't see ourselves
in people so then we try and fit
ourselves into the boxes that we do see
and and i mean there's this beautiful
quote that i've been saying it
everywhere and i wish i wrote it but i
didn't so it's by a philosopher and
writer named cooley
and he said that today i'm not what i
think i am i'm not what you think i am
i am what i think you think i am
right and just let that blow your mind
for a moment it's uh it's so powerful
i'm not what i think i am i'm not what
you think i am
i am what i think you think i am
so we live in this perception of a
perception of ourselves
hence my identity is made by what my
parents think i should be my identity is
made up by what my college or university
thinks i should achieve
while you're living in that bubble in
that echo chamber
getting to what you really want to do is
impossible because maybe that just
doesn't fit and i think so many people
feel that way today that they don't fit
into the current education system they
don't fit with the three or four or five
careers that you're taught exist
so
that process of self-excavation and
actualization first requires being
exposed you can't be what you can't see
if i never saw a monk i would never have
wanted to be a monk if i never meet a
billionaire i wouldn't want to be one
because i wouldn't know what that feels
like i don't know what it looks like i
don't know what it takes
and i think that's the biggest challenge
of our society that we're not exposed so
that's the first step being exposed to
unique experiences and role models
second step is finding that experience
or role model that you're passionate
about and exactly like you said taking
it seriously shadow them network with
them spend time with them observe them
even from afar it takes that observation
being addicted to observing that
person's lifestyle
and then the third step is going yes or
no
does that work for me
not everyone who's going to go off and
become a monk is going to feel like the
way i did and that's cool
but not everyone is going to go and
follow and shadow a billionaire and go
that's exactly the lifestyle i want they
may want the result but do they want the
hard work that goes with it and so for
me that's the third step it's observing
focusing shadowing getting as close to
the process of that individual and then
going yes or no do i want that process
not do i want the result everyone wants
to be that monk who's fully enlightened
you know can walk through has an
incredible aura that people just
gravitate towards but when you realize
he has to wake up at two am every day
and sleeps about four to six hours
you're like ah you know i don't want to
do it
sometimes
instead of pushing back against the way
that we are we can lean into it so
finding a way to structure your life
such that you have a job that actually
lets you do that so if you know hey i
need to be moving around i need to have
a high degree of physicality in my job
all of that find a job that lets you do
that you've already said that all of
your past jobs sound like they were more
suited to what you're doing now so that
basic question what does the ideal job
look like for you i'm guessing you've
taken other jobs in your life because
you wanted to move up right so you want
to make more money you want a better
title whatever the case may be and so
recognizing that where you're at now may
not be fully suited to where you want to
be so what are the things that need to
change and i think it is very
instructive for people to ask the
question who's living my ideal life
and that doesn't mean who's making the
most money it means what person's life
do you want to live the real day-to-day
grind of it and when you identify what
your dream job is now we need to go
about figuring out how we get that job
and so very quickly a question about
managing our adhd and figuring out how
to stay focused actually becomes a
question of how do we get good at
finding the right job and so if you
think about
orchestrating your life
and most people live
by the law of accident
i want to repeat that most people live
by the law of accident don't let that be
you right you bump into somebody they
know there's a job offering or it's
closer to where you live or it's you
know easier for you with the kids
whatever and so you bump into these
things it's like oh yeah cool oh i'll
make that little thing and instead of
designing your life you end up just
responding to sort of little bumps along
the road that end up leading you down a
path that was never a conscious choice
the concept of building in the concept
of and and i love this you can imagine
how much i agree with you on this uh
that it's not just about doing what
comes naturally yeah so what is it about
yeah oh my gosh i'm glad you relate with
me because i'm getting a lot of flack on
that so uh
the big huge finding that really
scratches the surface of a lot of like
cultural assumptions is especially in
high performance is this big cultural
conversation we have about strengths and
you know find your strengths follow your
strengths the strengths are everything
and you know take the strengths finder
figure out your top five strengths
follow those don't do anything else or
you know at least know what they are and
really aim your career to that or aim
your behavior towards that or you know
use that as a guide for recognizing
pattern and by the way i'm all for
that's all great i'm that guy who says
you know what any self-reflection you do
i'm cheering you on
like any assessment any tool that makes
you look at with inside i'm like all for
it it's just that
strengths
are not highly correlated with long-term
success
right there's not a lot of data and
there is not a lot of research that has
shown it leads to long-term success with
the positive outcomes
associated with what we care about in
psychology which is we care about
happiness we care about health and we
care about your positive relationships
and this myth that oh we just follow our
strengths to you know
to the promised land
is just not true when you actually talk
with high performers
because my favorite question then if
anyone's down is just go up to anyone
who's good and say were you always good
at that
and then be like
no they'll be like not at all
well did you always have an inclination
to do every element of do where you're
doing really well no like me
man i sucked on stage this year i've
talked to 60 000 people live this is
really important because
this idea that we're just our strengths
are going to give us everything it's
just it's just not true i sucked
speaking on stage
matter of fact i was terrified of it
terrified
but one reason i love your show
is because i had that intention of i
want to make an impact
and when someone actually asks
and and kind of owns that like when they
say do i want to make an impact and the
answer is yes and they own it they
realize they're gonna have to
develop they can no longer leave their
growth to
meet you know to to to randomness
because if they do they'll always be
mediocre and they realize i got to
become something entirely above both of
those
that's what most people don't see
they're like
it's we've made this binary
false conversation right it's a it's
it's not a true
sort of choice here it's a false
dichotomy we call it right it's not
strengths or weaknesses many of you if
you have a big dream a huge goal you've
got to become something entirely above
and beyond any strengths you even know
about feel or own and go way beyond any
weaknesses you've ever even addressed or
even you know about because you're going
to discover so many new strengths and so
many new weaknesses on the path
that it's almost irrelevant what they
are now it's what's the goal and build
into that you know i didn't know how to
write
um i get a lot of uh critics who are
like literary guys about my books
because every book is different right
six books all of them different
and the reason they all read differently
is i'm challenging myself as a writer
to develop
to get better every book i write i'm
going to write this like nothing i've
ever written before
and i go to work at building a new skill
set
to be able to write like manifesto
i researched for two and a half years
just how to write it well not what to
write
how how do i get that pentameter how do
i what was the rhythm in which
revolutionist rhetoric
was spoken in or written in just to
understand that took me two and a half
years so i had no conceptual
understanding of it it wasn't a strength
i didn't even it wasn't it wasn't on my
radar
part of the reason that people don't
take the leap is because you're stepping
outside of your zone of certainty but no
one ever got no one ever made their
dreams come true in their field of
certainty did you have the best memory
remarkable dude i was really into
to the book and just everything so that
makes it easy to remember that stuff but
like how how do you train to do that
like how do you get better at that so
something that i've learned from
and you know over the course of the
journey there's the people who i spoke
to for the book but there's also people
i got incredible advice from along the
way and one was drew houston the founder
and ceo of dropbox i think i was like 20
years old and you know it's a pretty
cool
brunch to be having i'm sitting there
with him and i'm asking similar
questions
and he told me something that was
amazing
he said the problem people have with
dealing with uncertainty which is
uncertainty is entrepreneurship
that's the difference between being an
employee and being an entrepreneur is
the entrepreneur takes on the
uncertainty right
drew said the key that people
misunderstand about uncertainty is that
you're not born with it it's a muscle
and people just assume that because they
don't have it
it's not for them
he said if you think of uncertainty as a
muscle and you train it like a muscle
things start changing let's say you
haven't worked out your biceps
you don't go to the gym and just start
lifting the 60 pound dumbbell no you
start with two and then you go five and
you go 10 and then you take you know a
couple days off you have to you know
have rest days if you think of it the
way you train a muscle all of a sudden
uncertainty becomes this manageable
thing
where you start small and you work your
way up and something that drew said that
i love he said
when you feel the pain
that means you're working up a weight
class
that's cool and then he said when you
pull a muscle like psychologically if
you've taken on so much uncertainty that
you're having a panic attack
you're way too high in your weight loss
tone it down a little it doesn't mean
it's not for you
but you know if you're i've done it you
know you're lifting weights and you you
know pull something
all right you're going to go down maybe
10 or 20 pounds the next time you go
into the gym and then you work your way
slowly back up emotion should never stop
you from achieving your goals so if you
feel stuck overwhelmed low on confidence
you're beating yourself up or you feel
like you're not deserving of the things
you want in life i have something to
tell you emotions are not facts and you
should never let them hold you back and
yet i find that people do this all the
time they mistake that feeling for
objective truth and it sends them this
downward spiral
reaching greater levels of success in
life means knowing how to use your brain
and if you're in a rut right now or if
you've been struggling for a while to
achieve your goals then i've pulled a
class from impact theory university to
help you get back on track it's called
six steps to getting unstuck and it's
for anyone who wants to know the exact
steps to achieving big goals when life
puts challenges in your way if you want
to check it out go to
unstuck.impacttheory.com
to get access it's a free preview
alright guys i'll see you on the inside
now let's get back to today's episode
you have this concept of
protect your confidence i've never heard
anybody say it like that before
why is that so important well because i
think
i mean in all the big decisions you've
had to make along your way have you ever
made a good decision when your
confidence was down no
once like can you say i walked in my
head was down your physiology's changed
you're like a little nervous like you
just don't make good decisions when your
confidence is down and and i don't think
it's like we're either confident or not
confident i think it's like if if
confidence is a hundred percent if our
confidence is 95 we play smaller i know
with me like big opportunities come if
i'm not in that like space i'm like you
know what guys let's just
let's hold let's not like i won't make
smart decisions so i think i think we
have to do everything in our power to
protect our confidence so that that
theory of protecting your confidence has
been has been a a major thing in my head
always in fact i have a you know we all
have our own morning routines not maybe
not everybody but i have a morning
routine that i have to do
to get me to play the way i look at is
play offense for the day not play
defense with lower confidence what does
that look like um
i've tried a lot of variations and
for me it's if i
immediately when i wake up i can't check
my phone in fact i put it on airplane
mode and i move it i got that from
ariana huffington who's amazing and
she's like is your phone still by your
bed she goes airplane mode on the other
side of the room you know
um
so that and then
i just know so many people roll over and
grab their phone and to me that's like
russian roulette you put a bullet in the
gun and you spin it it's like what if
the email says the deal didn't happen
numbers are down life's not working out
like
and immediately for me it's like you
open up and and this little box is gonna
dictate the first couple hours or maybe
the whole day by what you see so i just
i just won't look at my phone when i
first wake up
so but when i first open my eyes this is
all and i like doing things quick for me
because i want to get to the gym because
the only time of day i'll go if i try to
wait till the afternoon it doesn't work
for me so as soon as i wake up i
immediately try to think of something
i'm grateful for which everybody knows
that and thinks about it but i've i play
this game myself on how far i can lower
the bar
meaning
i i try to do a gratitude journal about
three years ago and after about five
weeks i ran out of stuff to say i'm like
i already wrote my kids and this and
life like what did i put in here like
and then i was like wow 150 000 people
die every single day you can google it
that's the number it's like some days i
wake up i'm just like i'm here awesome
and i let i feel that silly little thing
like i'm here or i'm like oh my god the
sheets feel
softer than they've ever felt and i'll
literally think to myself these sheets
are really good like
what a third of the world sleeps on the
on a dirt floor
and i have sheets and an amazing bed and
look at the view i have and that's
enough just because the way i do it is
i'm just just tweaking my brain enough
to be in a grateful place it doesn't
have to be this for me and you guys
might have better practices i'm not
talking about a half hour gratitude
meditation i just need one little thing
or i pick up a book if i'm reading one
of the books that you have on the shelf
i'll pick and i'll just pick three
sentences and read something empowering
and i'll get that state of mind for my
brain and then i think about
one win i had the day before because i
know as entrepreneurs as somebody
searching for success we never give
ourselves credit we never treat a friend
the way we treat ourselves it's like i
know i've had days i've gone till 10
o'clock at night go man i got nothing
done today was the biggest lie like we
beat ourselves up we just we're like
these racehorses we wouldn't even treat
a racehorse that we owned as bad as we
treat ourselves right so
i wake up and i'll do a quick little
gratitude and they'll say what was one
win yesterday that i accomplished and
i'm like wow you did do that yesterday
and then i'll think of one win i wanna
do that day like what i'm gonna need a
million things done today but what's a
must today that would be a great win
and then for me then i immediately go
downstairs in my house and i drink i
felt like i fed my my mind and then i
want to feed my body so for me i've been
doing the same drink forever i do apple
cider vinegar lemon
mct oil a scoop of green powder
and uh mix that up and i down that and
then i immediately got to go to the gym
millennials these days kind of rub their
hands oh we're digital natives it was
like yes this year
but in ten years from now you're going
to be a newbie like everybody else and
have to relearn everything and unlearn
what you already knew
and so there is a sense in which
constant lifelong learning is the main
node that you have to be in
and that uh
part of learning that the people who
study it understand is that a lot of it
is is unlearning what you already knew
kind of forgetting or trying to overcome
ingrained patterns of thought
previously so you have to sort of like
you have to think differently about
things
and by the way that's one of the reasons
why i travel a lot because i find that
there's almost nothing
that forces me to unlearn
and think in a different pattern than
traveling in a real sense of kind of
being on the ground and confronting
things that i don't understand
that everybody else understands you
talked about the the shifting um peaks
and
unlearning but you've also talked about
okay in a world where all this stuff is
moving um the thing you have to get good
at is learning to learn and that
really learning a specific skill may not
be as useful as it once was so what can
people that are in the thick of the job
market now that are going to get slapped
around by robotics and ai like how
should they be thinking so so
um you know a very common question
really related that a lot of parents ask
me is oh yeah here all this stuff is
coming ai in the vr what should my kid
be studying in school
and i think really
there's no language that's going to
survive very long there's very few
even skills that aren't going to be
obsolete by the time you graduate so
most of the jobs that you will have i'm
talking to somebody maybe who's in high
school right now are probably jobs that
don't exist right now
and
so then this idea of well
the only really skill you want to learn
in say school is the meta skill of how
to learn and what's really interesting
to me is that
that's almost taught nowhere
and
it turns out that um
almost nobody including me
really
knows how we learn ourselves so it's not
just how to learn how to learn
but how you learn best how to learn
that's a high bar and to do that it's
not going to be something you're just
trying around you need to be you need to
have teachers you need to be tested you
need to be scored you need to practice
there are lots of different ways to
learn so each variety you have to
test yourself and become better in that
and so so to actually
learn how to learn
would require of would require years of
discipline
improvement and we don't have that so
that means that neither i nor you
really have have learned how to optimize
our own learning but that should be the
general common thing that you're going
to be taught in school and that when you
graduate
you have a meta skill of knowing how you
learn and whatever kind of
problem comes up you least know your
best method for learning that
the whole notion of dharma
to me hit home really hard in that story
in the book and you talk about one of
the people in particular who was
changing like the photographs out for
people so that they had something new to
see and somebody asked her like is that
part of your job
and what was her response i thought this
this summed up dharma for me in a really
visceral way
yeah it was it's not part of my job
it's how i see my job right it's how i
perceive what i do and the term is job
crafting
where you have assigned meaning
to the task you've assigned meaning
to the experience that you're now
fueling that work
rather than letting the job description
be your only definition of it yeah when
she was stepping into that and saying
like okay i knowing who i am and knowing
how i feel and what it means to me to
take care of this person to look at a
small detail like that and to imbue this
thing which somebody else might think of
as you know sort of a gross job or
whatever but to bring the beauty that i
want to bring to it
it it's me recognizing she didn't use
the words dharma but it's me recognizing
my purpose it's me
like not asking what's the definition of
the job but instead how do i bring my
truest purpose the unique way that i
would do this job and bring that to this
situation now this is where your book
got really interesting for me is this
interesting interplay between
there's a uh
a sense of your essence who you are and
then there is
bringing that into the things that you
do and so you could take something you
talk about like cleaning the
um the monastery like in the tiny tiny
little ways but how what you would do is
you would think about cleaning this i
imagine myself cleaning my my own heart
and so now it becomes not actually
polishing a monastery it becomes like
the spiritual pursuit of
recognizing one that even as you get to
the end of cleaning it's dirty again and
so it's this continual thing but that
was
that that
being able to begin to tease those
things out that some things will seem
really boring and dull but you can imbue
them with meaning and then there's this
thing inside of you that when you align
to the things that you like and that you
enjoy
is like the the sort of raw response is
there but you can also create a response
yeah and how do you
help people like bring those together
you talked a little bit about it with
job crafting but how do you get people
out of a woe is me mentality into
you know finding ways to to make their
life beautiful i really believe that you
have to seek
the love and the beauty that you want in
what you have now
because that way you're training
yourself to extract meaning right now
which means in the short term
if you can like those hospital workers
we're doing if you can fill that role
with meaning and your true passion and
what's coming from you
then that's going to lead you to
discovering the power of it and i saw
that in my own life when i came back
from being a monk
and i worked in the corporate world i
was teaching meditation and mindfulness
and the things that i talked today
in the corporate world
and i remember in 2014 i was invited by
one of our executives to teach
mindfulness
to a thousand of my peers at twickenham
rugby stadium
and i was speaking in between the ceo
and will greenwood who won the rugby
world cup with england
and and i'm sitting there in the
audience as a complete nobody
and completely around people who are my
same age we all make the same money no
one knows who i am
and there i'm sitting there going how am
i going to share mindfulness but after
doing that experience i realized that
even though my job was digital strategy
and social media innovation and i was a
consultant i was bringing my passion to
the workplace
which actually gave me confidence that i
could do this outside of the workplace
and that's how the two ideas connect
that when you find how you can apply it
to your small world you then get the
confidence and the courage to take it
out and make something real of it
whereas i think a lot of us are waiting
for that break to get into doing it in
reality but we actually haven't even
tested it or experimented on it in in a
small space where we can develop our
our own confidence and courage around it
you