but someone who is obsessed and motivated and pulled and driven you just can't beat that level of operation but all the time that you spend talking about these things you want to do comes at the expense of doing the thing you want to do if you don't take the chance and you watch other people taking the chances and doing well now you're one step behind Julie I think we should just Dive Right In let's start with discipline and
motivation you've said that relying on discipline is the worst strategy you can use and suggest we replace it with something more powerful yes I mean like one of the things that I think about um is that you know oftentimes people get the uh advice that like you have to rely on discipline and from working with people who are at a very high caliber of operation one of the things that I find honestly is that you know discipline
requires a lot of push right like I'm going to be I'm very disciplined about my workout I'm really going to push it motivation is a pull it is something that like is internal that fuels you that drives you and a number of the people that I tend to work with are very obsessed like you don't have to push them to go to a meeting you don't have to say hey Ted like you have to go to the you know go to work today and Ted's
like oh Heming and hawing you know he's stoked to go to work in fact his wife is probably telling him to turn work off in at night at some point to stop talking about work to stop thinking about work on the weekends um so I think that oftentimes you know discipline is very useful and I think it's useful in a few different cases right so like if you want to get back on a you know a virtuous cycle maybe you've fallen out
of your exercise routine and so you need to get back into it and you really do have to push yourself that day to get back to the gym perhaps you know it's useful if you're doing something completely new you know you're going to really take a leap and I really have to push myself I know it's good for me I don't want to take that chance but I'm going to do it um and so you really push yourself so I mean and you know
sometimes people have off days right you don't feel like doing things and you just do them anyway but I feel as though is the discipline is often really uh I think there it's talked about because it feels tough to do like you know we're
doing the hard thing we're slogging through but when we are at our best we're not slogging through and great people are obsessed and they're not slogging through either they are driven they are motivated they are deeply
deeply engaged and so I find that often times when we over rely on discipline those are the times we start to see like Olympic athletes retiring right like they don't want to if it starts to feel like a slog and you're pushing yourself every day I mean we have all have periods of that but too long and that really becomes um laborious and to me it's often a flag that perhaps you shouldn't be in that area at all I think
that's fascinating you mentioned off days right like we all have these off days and I think one of the differences that separates people is the fact that um outliers if you will do it on the off days they don't let their emotions dictate what they do yeah I think that they do use discipline in those times right like we all push through and I think that makes it we feel a lot of gratification in that in fact you know
it's an interesting correlation that grit and happiness are actually correlated right so when we see ourselves pushing through things we're proud of ourselves and we feel good about Who We Are but we certainly don't use that as a primary strategy in in Life or it makes life pretty unbearable seems like the people who are great at anything are obsessed with it and they have this inate drive and I want to relate that to
motivation because it seems when hiring a lot of people talk or think that they can motivate other people what's your take on that oh that's such a good question I think that internal drive is something you can't teach uh and I'm very you know perhaps that goes against current wisdom I do think that as long as someone has that internal hunger and that internal drive you know there was a there's an old saying that you should
hire people who are phds poor hungry and driven um and while that may not always be the case I think the internal drive aspect is something you really can't teach I think you've got it or you don't and I think that for other people however like can you tap into that absolutely so for example you can have an incred internally motivated person who doesn't see the opportunity to really Flex at the particular job that
they have and can you motivate that person and engage them with things that tap into their internal drivers absolutely so knowing that person really well you know in your oneto ones figuring out what is this person's goals
what are their drivers what are the things they want and being able to tie your work and your opportunity to those things I think can really pull people I think it get them really engaged but you have to have kind of this Baseline
internal hunger to start with um and so that's kind of how I conceptualize that that's interesting because a lot of organizations and a lot of people try to create motivation in other people when it sounds like in reality we don't necessarily have the ability to create that drive but we do have the ability to get in the way of Drive I agree that's a great way to phrase it and I think we have the ability to release it in our
direction if can align it with like the company goals can align with your goals if you know you can help them see that that kind of overlay I think it's amazing I think it's also when you look at like equity for example in startups you know part of why Equity is useful is because you can create you know if you do it right life-changing money for not just you but for you know an entire team of people and does that end up tapping
into things that line them up and motivate them absolutely people are pushing harder or at least that's the theory right that they're pushing harder and they really want the company to win because not only you know do they want this company to succeed but they have you know generational investment in making that happen for themselves and their families and uh and other people in their lives I want to come back to
drive again there's two sort of like subcategories of this I want to get into I I think the first one is do people sort of like have drive and then reach a certain level and become complacent I don't see that in the people that I work with but I I imagine maybe it's out there I haven't I have not seen that so I mean I think that the challenge with the people that I've worked with is that you know they'll reach a certain point
and and I see this perhaps with people who get these large offers and they turn them down right they think I'm capable of more I think one of the primary reasons that people engage with me to begin with is that you know deep down they feel just like probably anyone else sitting in your audience probably feels like hey I'm capable of more than where I'm at and so you know they're on a mission to really actualize that drive
and when they reach a certain point you know their companies are large their their State of Affairs is fairly envious I don't think that that goes away and you know it currently I even have someone that I I work with um and it's like a a very large kind of family business and the gentleman who is a chairperson is I want to say he's in his mid 70s or so and man that guy uh is hungry as ever even though he's just advising and he's a part but he is
engaged and you see that with Warren Buffett and you see it with others like they just kind of don't lose that and that's where I see you know when you talk about motivation that's a pole that just it is an endless source of fuel and then when you tie that with something you're like obsessed by you know the researcher who can be in a lab and look at a a peptide for 20 years you know it it's just something that is very very
challenging to beat and I think that's what really creates a lot of you know Elite operators because you know you can be interested casually in something but someone who is obsessed and motivated and pulled and driven you you just can't beat that level of operation and where does that fire come from it seems like a lot of outliers have a chip on their shoulder if you will you know that's a really it's it's interesting because
there's a lot of people who talk about that chip and um and there's a lot of controversy I think I've read around you know should you be using these negative things to fuel you and you know I'm a big fan of using negative drivers as well as positive drivers I think if you have deep rage deep anger deep resentment um it's how you channel that that will make it beneficial or detrimental I mean those things can be
absolutely destructive and people can really kind of you know burn their own homes down with that kind of energy but channeled properly that energy is also a force to be reckoned with and so I think that that chip on your shoulder can be a real motivational Poll for a lot of people because there's nothing that they will ever reach that will fully prove it wrong right I mean so that becomes that endless Source you know that your third
grade teacher told you you'd never amount to much and now you have you know you 50 million bucks in the bank but that's still not enough I'm G to still show her right like I'm still going to push that forward and it isn't so much about her but proving it to yourself um and that's when it really becomes um quite a motivator and if you talk to people you'll still hear these kind of Echoes as you've said of people who have
chips on their shoulders and they're still running hard a friend of mine Josh Wolf who says chips on shoulders put chips in Pockets right yes yes Josh is very famous for that one I love it and I I think you you hit the key point there which is harnessing that fire in the right direction but it is a fire that never goes out and if you can learn how to harness it then it just becomes this Perpetual sort of fuel source it does
and I think that that is uh I think that's really the key to a lot of things you know people are more Adept to working against than oftentimes we give them credit for so we often think of people working for things but they often work against things too they work against poverty they work against their upbringing they work against some of these things just as much as they're working for them and uh you know some
people are very fear-driven and we talk about fear as being very negative but it also can be very po positive you know like there's Muhammad Ali U and others I think it was Mike Tyson who said you know Tyson would say that he is he was afraid you know every single day that he was going to be humiliated in front of groups of people and he would just be training and training and training out of fear that he was going to be you know
just publicly humiliated and he would know notice in himself as he's walking to the boxing ring that like that fear starts to go away and he began he says that he begins to feel like a God because he had trained so hard and there's nobody on Earth who could have trained as hard as he did I see that sometimes with people who will tell themselves you know I will never be poor I will never be ex and there is a
certain type of driver even there that we can use something negative and really flip it to something positive if we have it in the right framework and I think that's where you begin to see some uh discrepancies in Psychology there are these kind of inflection points in people's lives where they will choose to overcome or they will choose to be kind of beaten by things and you will you will see over and over again that there
are groups of people who will always choose to overcome and there will be people who choose people can argue whether they choose it or not but there will people who will be beaten by certain things and then kind of this creates a a cycle where they don't feel they are capable of overcoming and that's a real challenge that's a real cognitive setup that um Can defeat people for long periods of time and uh and it can be a really tragic end for in
that case how do you shift that mindset where circumstances uh sort of like when you feel you're a victim I mean effectively you're a victim to circumstance you feel like you have no control and you're powerless and there's nothing you can do what would you say to to somebody like that that's a really great question I think that there are two ways of looking at at victim uh things that have happen to you you know
you can be a victim or you can be a Survivor and those are two very different cognitive positions you know you can't control what happens to you in either circumstance but one is very powerful um You have overcome one is you know you have had something happen to you and you are under that thing for quite some period of time so for me if I hear someone and I I hear that kind of helplessness um one is that I never I I
want to reframe that experience I want to tell a different story I want them to tell a different narrative to themselves I want them to rewrite that um and in some ways you want them to rewrite that narrative to survivorship and overcoming and what it took and you ask the right questions to get them to see um you know that their own throughway in that case is based on their strength and ability and you want them to see those things
rather than seeing the the kind of helplessness and powerlessness it's the reason why oftentimes you know like people engage with me and they think we're going to go back in time and talk about their I don't know inner child or something um but I am I am someone who's going to start with who you are today because going back to the past is not really useful unless it informs who you are standing in this moment we can't
change it we can't uh you know go back and going back to times of powerlessness also it puts you in a bad mindset it sets you up in a negative way so I oftentimes will go back and restructure some things around you know risk for example is a really good area where we'll do some uh discussion when people are hesitant to take risk I want people to go back and say hey tell me about times you took risk and it really paid
off like let's talk about that I want people to understand what they're capable of and sometimes to see what they're capable of in ways that they um that they quickly forget right I mean negative things sometimes Shadow our
entire mindset and how we think about things and we end up tossing aside some of the good things right like you'll have uh you know 20 compliments on your haircut and one person says oh what' you do to your hair and that's the person
who gets all the attention so you think about I don't want them shoving aside those 20 compliments or those 20 times they took the chance or the 20 times that they overcame something really incredible that they kind of you know kind of shove off to the side I want them to see those things very clearly and to see the minority of yeah you know things happen periodically that aren't great for us and don't make us feel well
and we make bad some bad decisions but so what everyone does I think that that that's really important I mean we all make bad decisions is what you do next that sort of matters I want to go back to something you said about childhood though which is I hear this a lot and I've always sort of wondered about it which is like uh when people are in therapy and they're talking about their childhood and then they do this sort of
like destructive behavior and and then it's uh or self-sabotaging behavior and then they explain it away with well that's because of this when I was a child and it you know I'm always listening to this and I never comment but in my head I'm going but you're an adult now right right like at some point you take control over your your response and awareness of it is not the same as doing something about it right I mean
like I think that it's so this is this is really fascinating to me too and I I love hearing things like that when they come up because they're such clear like flags and clearly they are for you as well like you hear that and you're like oh this is a problem right I mean immediately so I think about it like this you could be sitting and this is the example that I always think about because it pulls people away from some
of the more emotional stuff but you could be sitting in traffic and we've all sat in traffic right I mean traffic is long as the eye can see and there will be some people you'll look out and they'll be like beeping and dodging and you know like they're all over the place and you can surmise how that person must be thinking right I mean it's just like never going to get there I can't believe this is happening like we could
anticipate that these are coming from strong thought patterns and emotional places but if you look to your right I mean there's probably also some guy or girl listening to a podcast texting someone windows are down look as relaxed as could be and so some people are going to say you know when you get home like why are you so upset oh it's the traffic the traffic makes me nuts right right but if the traffic really makes people
nuts it would make everyone nuts and so it can't be that it's how we're thinking about the traffic um that really makes people be relaxed and productive or it makes them be just absolutely enraged and out of control so when people are telling me that like you know I'm doing this because of my childh or I'm doing this because because of this I think you know you're you know you're giving up some amount of um Power you're giving up
a lot of power to something outside of yourself and you're also how you're interpreting that event is not useful to you you know it may be there may be a lot of Truth to the terrible things that have happened but you know those those terrible things you you have to shut the door at some point and say you know I am my own man or woman and I move forward and you know working on those traumas is
important if you go to a therapist and I think that that's really valuable stuff and it's worthwhile because it can change the course of your life but if you're somebody who uses other events as a reason to self-destruct your seating power and we see that even with um you know in companies right like I'm doing this because so and so made me angry I'm doing this because you know and you end up making some poor decisions um and
seeding power because of someone else you know you're willing to make a poor decision you're willing to give up you know sometimes people are willing to give up you know their entire future dreams because you know of X Y and Z and it's a tragedy uh so you want people to really understand the power they have to create their own lives at some point and that they that creation is not given to anyone else but you I love what you said
there I think it's these ordinary moments that really dictate the outcome of our life for a lot of our big decisions we know we're making a decision we're well aware of it but in these ordinary moments when things like this happen we sort of tend to react without reasoning and when we do that we put oursel in an increasingly bad position right you go home you yell at your spouse well now your whole weekend's wrecked your marriage might be
wrecked like all of these things sort of like compound and then you can't be present at work because you're solving something at home and we just don't realize how the these innocent little moments uh can derail us and put us in a worse position I agree I think that like being intentional and being deliberate is something that we don't we let life happen to us right and we don't decide that we are going to control the
trajectory of it and I think that that's true whether it's in the small moments and sometimes even in the large ones like people will stay unhappy at a job or stay unhappy in their role and they'll just stay unhappy uh instead of just saying hey you know like eventually they'll reach a point and this is true for for everyone right like they're unhappy they're unhappy they're unhappy and then finally I've had enough and all
of those excuses they've used there will come a point when none of them matter and they're going to take that leap but why does it have to get to that point and why can't we kind of flag things earlier on and I think early intervention you know I I talk about that notion of like fighting upfront early intervention in almost every case is worth it's it's worth the attention that the hassle the time that it takes because those are the the
moments that allow you to really gain ground and to have a much more productive future to have much more productive relationships to be more productive at work is to really intervene early um and I think intentionality is really the key thinking about you know um how you want your life to look and what you're willing to put up with you know what kind of standards are you holding for yourself and and you know how do you
value yourself and a lot of those are around you know when you take action and you know how much you give and what you're waiting for and how much you're willing to take there's so many things in in that response that we're going to talk about later in this show including fighting UPF front and the standards you set for yourself and the people you allow around you before we get into that I I want to ground people in sort of
imaginary rules if you will what are they and how do they work and how do they get in our way so I the thing about imaginary rules that I think are really interesting is that you know we're all raised with rules and some of those rules are great right they teach us to be well-mannered and not to get arrested and how to operate in society and all of those things and I think those are fantastic but we are also simultaneously
ingesting other rules that are unspoken and that are really unsubstantiated right like what is possible for us um you know what are the things that we can do what are we capable of you what are capable of earning or doing or creating um and I think that those things are ingested and we don't talk about them and then we end up becoming uh kind of we're raised in Eco system like Echo Chambers and and kind of little systems of operation that
are reinforcing these rules all the time the the rules that we don't challenge the rules we don't talk about and you know unless you find a way to expand Beyond yourself and the internet makes that wonderful by the way but you know unless you find ways to expand Beyond yourself these imaginary rules that you carry around often keep you very small because you will limit what you feel you can do you will limit how much you feel
you can earn you will limit what you feel you're capable of because you've never seen it and also because other people have reinforced it you know I don't know about you but you know when you grow up sometimes you have a very limited world you know for me growing up I thought the wealthiest person you could be was a physician right I mean that's what I thought and you know my their imaginary rules that everybody
lives by you know it shapes their world what they try for and what they think and then you start to see outside of those imaginary rules and all of a sudden they start to break that is those are incredibly important moments in people's lives but many people I I would say that most people if you ask them most people will say you know you ask them do you feel as though you are you know you're the author of your life you
are the person who is in charge everyone will say yes I mean of course and then you ask them what did you want to be when you grew up right like what did you want to do and they'll say oh I wanted to do this or I wanted to do that most of the times they haven't done it um and or you'll you know or I didn't know that was possible for me or oh I didn't even think I could do that you'll hear them bumping up against these rules all the
time and I think people in everyday life are bumping up against them and they don't know what it is but they're frustrated and so then they begin to ascribe things to other people that aren't true like the only people who make a million dollars a year oh those people they must exploit other people those people must be born into money those people I mean all of these rules you'll hear them and they're not
necessarily true but their ways in which we kind of figure out our own place and we're figuring out other people's place and you know it's kind of what we tell ourselves and I think that we could do a lot more most people are capable of far more than they imagine themselves to be and you know we stay small because we believe these imaginary rules to be true I think the most powerful story is the one we tell ourselves and I think these
rules create our mindset and our mindset shapes how we interpret all of the information and the world around us uh when you were talking about imaginary rules like one of the ones that I was thinking of is you know what do we do as humans we seek validation of others like that that is sort of like an imaginary r that your approval matters to me we're sort of brought up with this uh in the notion of raising kids I guess that's
sort of implicit right you want to you want to impress your parents and your parents play on that as a way to get you to do certain things uh but it creates this sort of barrier where it's like it's serving you for a while maybe as a child but then it it's serving you in some situations but it's not serving you in all situations and it can be very harmful I agree and you know you hear people say you know um screw what
everyone thinks right and I think that that's you know that's a quick way to become a jerk because you don't want to do that um you want to care what some people think and so you want to care what people think who are maybe you know your spouse or your children or you know some people around you but that's where I think your Social Circle really matters because you know these people are going to reinforce certain imaginary
rules that will or they'll help you break them they'll say hey you're worth more than that why are you putting up with that at work or they'll say man yeah we all got to deal with these terrible bosses and like we're all in it together and those are very different groups of friends right I mean there'll be people who are cheering you on to start something new or maybe pushing you to start something new and then there
are the people who say ah I wouldn't risk it like why do you want to do that you know so these are people who like the people that surround you are going to really be important in you know how you think about those as well so seeking
validation I think is normal and is natural uh I think being in a you know social media world makes that really challenging and and I think that that makes that uh hard for a lot of people being able to establish boundaries
around that but I think also boundaries are very confusing generally for people right like how do you set the line on a lot of things in your life um but yeah seeking validation I think can really be a double-edged sword I think that we we should seek it from the right people in our lives but we certainly don't want to be seeking it outside of that and I guess I'm of the belief that that that Circle of seeking validation should be
incredibly small I mean a few people um you know your spouse your kids maybe one other person in your life that you really trust and feel like has your absolute best interest at heart but others I mean I remember there was a wonderful interview with Oprah and she said you know when I left my job to do uh to to start out on my own to do this talk show every single person in my life told me I would fail except for one and
you know it was it was her her best friend at the time or I I think still her best friend but the point being that sometimes you know those uh those areas the people who will cheer you on will be few and it doesn't mean that it's the wrong move you mentioned setting boundaries I'm curious how how we learn to set boundaries and the power of setting boundaries and what it does for us in relation to Performance it's it
frees us right um I think that when we set boundaries around you know what we should be taking on and what we should not be taking on we set boundaries around what is our Optimum use of time and what is not we set boundaries around um you know how you operate and how you don't what you make time for and what you don't whether it's you know Fitness uh Fitness is hard for people to get in I know that a lot of people talk about
you know oh I you know I get up and I do this and then I do that and you know but a lot of people I work with you know they get fit later they kind of are really like not as fit perhaps always during the cre process of their businesses it's hard to fit in and have a spouse or anyone else in their life um so you know boundaries are incredibly important but boundaries do ultimately free us as you're scaling for example as
a CEO or you know someone starting a business you'll notice you do everything at first and then you know you start to pull into your areas of highest and best use and those shift over the course of your business and if you stay in the weeds you're going to compromise on scale you got to boundaries if you get involved too much in you know product which is something very typical for a lot of people and you get your you know
your tentacles in there too much you're not paying attention to some of these other things so to me boundaries are Freedom they allow us to move quickly not overc committing not having too many open Loops you know all of those things are ways in which we're not having the proper boundaries um and then even committing time for our personal life right having a date night with your spouse once a week and holding to that
like actual holding to it and not saying well you know really important thing came up um so boundaries do free us and they allow us to live our best life but we have to really enforce them and we have to be really clear on what they are and we have to communicate that Clarity sometimes to others in ways that sometimes make people uncomfortable because we like to make people happy um and setting boundaries makes very few
people happy uh it will make you happy eventually but with other people I think their tendency is to kind of push and test uh but you have to really hold on to that so that you're able to operate in your highest use I like the idea of boundaries a lot you hit on in in that answer you sort of hit on sleep and nutrition and relationships and I sort of view those as the foundations of what you're building your house on and you
know you you can neglect them if for lack of a better term at any point in time but it has huge consequences ramifications it it seems like the first things that tend to go are sleep eating healthy and and these tend to create like this Doom Loop right the less you sleep the worse decisions you make the worse you eat the more unhealthy you are I I'm curious as to what you think of as the other foundations in life and and
what you've learned about these pillars and how you integrate them is it more of a balance or a mosaic or how do you think about this I think about it as that if you have only one leg of a stool it's easy to kick out right so like if you say hey everything that I am is my business and you put your identity in that it's when your business does poorly or it collapses it just it shakes you if you have multiple legs of that stool
you're much more stable and so I do think about creating stability and multiple prongs of success and multiple prongs of grounding in people's lives as foundation so for example like if you're relationship is is is uh very conflictual or high conflict that's going to eat into your head space in your work so take care of that like make it a priority and be good about it if you're going to invest in that I mean
there are some people who will say look maybe this isn't the right time for you to be in a relationship at all that's fine uh but have some stability in that and know who you are in that space and take care of it um if you're going to be somebody who you know in other foundational items as you've mentioned like with sleep and eating and nutrition and all of those things you know be good enough that it provides a level of of
stability and foundational elements I think about medical needs too I'll have people who will put off like a nagging shoulder pain for like you know I don't want to address this now as physical therapy oh my God you know like who has time for that address it right like address those nagging medical things get yourself up to par so it isn't eating headp space it isn't eating into your energy it isn't something you have to
worry about so basically what I'm trying to do is say hey like let's build a lot of different legs to that stool maybe you're someone who's in the spirituality or you're somebody who's in like have some foundational things in your life that you take care of but also don't have things that you're not taking care of that are going to tap into that energy source and actually pull you and distract you away um so what you're
going to have in your life be intentional include it nurture it make sure that it's stable uh because the things that are not are going to pull at you everywhere like if you think about it we bring our we bring ourselves
everywhere we go and so so those things that pull at us or who that take from us you know that is also going to be reducing our Effectiveness or our mood stability and some of those other things um in our work we think we're good at
compartmentalization and often we're not as good as we think well we think we just we're not talking about it so it doesn't affect us that's very different than you know sort of like compartmentalizing the whole thing because it does seep into you you can't be good at work if you're not good at home I think that we a lot of times people will use being good work as an escape if they're bad at home so like
for example you'll see that sometimes people who reach pretty great Heights aren't always the best dads they're not always the best husbands um sometimes they are they're phenomenal so I don't want to make that a generalization but I think that it's also very easy to be pulled into areas where we feel competent and good and where we feel rewarded and where we feel um that we're winning and it's hard to go into areas where we might be falling
down we might be dropping the ball we might need to do some work um so I do think sometimes that can also reinforce a very bad cycle where oh things are really crappy at home I'm going to stay at work for an extra two hours and you know I'm I'm really going to get you know set the company up for this big win and you feel good and everyone pass you on the back um and you're all you're creative and you're uh productive and
then you go home and you just you feel like you know you're losing and life isn't going quite as well as you'd hope I I I wonder in those cases uh you know in the moment we're not thinking in the future but I wonder what the hindsight
is in 20 years for for people who choose that right if if they feel like that trade-off was worth it if they consciously even made that trade-off right versus unconsciously making that tradeoff I don't know that's a really
good question I mean the whole notion of regret minimization I think hits us when we're already at the point where we're minim we're regretting um but I would hope that people are thinking about those types of things you know there was a guy that um I was able to speak with in the past at some point and he said he'd always bring a note card with him and he would write on that note card you know how am I going to be the best like
one thing I can do to be the best like husband today dad today CEO today and he just like had one thing that like you know and maybe it was something really stupid for his kids like he's going to swing by the store and bring home some candy or he's going to like take everyone out for ice cream after or maybe it's just watching a movie or playing a video game with them with wife maybe it was just like hey I'm going to
make sure that I'm you know affectionate or I'm going to do something you know whatever it is but he would always have one intentional thing and I always thought that was really interesting that he had something to make it intentional to be better in multiple spheres of his life um you know you're not going to hit a 100 all the time but it was still a really nice I think uh way of moving forward I like that it's it's easy when
it's one thing too right so you're not focused on a whole list of things you're just like there's one thing I can do today to improve this and I'm going to focus on that yeah what are the common sort of patterns at the risk of generalizing common patterns that you see in sort of outliers that you deal with you know um I love when I deal with people who are outliers because they are resolutely like themselves I think that
they tend to be very quirky people uh as individuals and I think it almost is a forcing function to pushing them where they end up going right like if if you're somebody who easily I often wonder and this is just my own Theory right like if you're somebody who easily fits in the crowd and you're somebody who's very much like the people I think it's easy to uh kind of tampen other areas of your life to be a part of those
people and to be a part of those communities and to be socializing and doing all those things and these are often people who are a little quirky and um maybe aren't the most popular person in high school uh but they are all smart and they are all um you know really focused um they have an ability to like Risk and they like winning and it's a they enjoy it right like they enjoy setting up things that they can win at
and I think they don't really care much about what other people think about how they operate I also think they're people who make really big bets and are willing to take really big losses um you know I have people who will do things in anticipation of their own growth that I think is is fascinating you know a a guy who's going to spend you know eight million bucks on a machine and then buy a few anticipating that you know his company
is going to catch up those are big bets uh you know people who are you know deciding that they're going to hire people in advance or that they're going to you know do something that's pretty close to the edge as far as um you know in regulations you take big chances uh and I think that they enjoy those kind of big swings I think part of the enjoyment and correct me if I'm wrong is that you go all in on something so you're sort of
like you burn the ships you've landed on the island you you've made a bet and you you've had the courage to take that risk and then you you've cut off all of your exit paths and my theory on this is is that that for 100% focus and we can do amazing things when we're fully focused on one thing I think that's absolutely true that like I I think that there's there's a truth and a nontruth in that if I can push back on
some of it so I think that like there's a truth in that there's a lot of power in focusing on one thing I don't think that they see themselves burning boates because I think that they see that no matter what happens they'll figure it out right I don't think that they're going to say like oh I'm going to lose it all if this happens I think they'll say well I'll figure out another way right like and I think that that is a
common trait that they'll say there's not just confidence in in taking on the task there's confidence that like no matter what happens in uncertainty that they'll figure it out and a lot of times they're often people who are learning new skills all the time so I don't think the boats are always ever entirely burned I think they see that there's probably a dinghy out there they can take somewhere um um but it's it's
fascinating because they do go all in and I think that's a that is a and they'll take do things that are just ridiculous and audacious and I think that that is fun to to watch and be a part of that kind of well why not why can't I do this um and it pushes against those you know imaginary rules that we talked about earlier where people would say oh you can't do that and yeah yeah some random guy is doing it and it's it's working out and I think
that that's it's a it's a fun game for them you mentioned confidence that there's an interesting thing that I see with people which is I a lot of people who um don't do things and they talk about them and this is anecdotal of course and you maybe you can correct me if I'm wrong here they tend to not have the confidence to get to the outcome whereas people that I see that do things have the confidence to take the first
step and then confidence that they'll be able to figure out wiggle out hustle like whatever they need to do to get to the next step yeah I think that there is a very strong link um more than we think with like hesitancy and
self-esteem so for example I think the more you hesitate you see other people doing things you watch right and like if you don't take the chance and you watch other people taking the chances and doing well now you're one step behind
and then you you watch them continue to take chances now you're three steps behind and you watch them just over the course of a year you're watching someone blow up and do great and you know that person well like man that guy's doing it and here I am still thinking about that idea I had and I didn't do it and it just it's it's an erosion of uh confidence just over and over and over again that hesitancy and so I do think
that even if that bias to action and the ability of people to make those moves as you said you know you watch them do it and they do it over and over and over again they know they can figure it out because the First Leap just taking that leap is like a shot in the arm and it makes you feel a little bit more confident because you made that leap nothing went wrong and now you can figure out can you do the next one can
you figure out the next step it it like confidence Stacks as you begin to continue to take risks but I also think that hesitancy pulls you into this kind of negative Loop where you know it builds on itself too and you really have to be cautious that things don't kind of sit on the on the table and you just kind of look at them as you come in and out because that will keep happening and you'll keep looking at it and it will
keep bothering you and then eventually you just feel like you'll make up some rationalization why it didn't happen like ah you know I'm so glad I didn't do that because I didn't really have the time or I got to spend a lot of extra time doing this or whatever it is but you'll find a reason to rationalize it and eventually it will go to the place where dreams die and there will be a lot of other things that will set in that
bucket with it and it will be uh unfortunate for you because you never got to see what would happen I I think confidence comes from how we talk to ourselves would you sort of agree with that I would I think that that it definitely comes from how we speak to ourselves uh but also just how we think about ourselves as and and those are two distinct things right like how we how we talk to ourselves how we think about our
our eles um how we conceptualize ourselves who we see ourselves being in the larger space um and I think that that is a really important thing and and it's also why I I really dislike sometimes when people will say you know like never forget where you come from right like yeah I mean I guess there's some value but like if you're evolving you shouldn't be the same so someone's saying oh you've changed yes consider
that a compliment right like you want to change you want to be different you want to grow and I always feel like when people say things like don't forget where you come from sometimes it's a way of saying well you know remember you're not that great right like remember that you're still that person from X um so I do think that sometimes you know if you if you're ever on Twitter it's what's really fascinating is if you
put something big and bold out there you'll always get people underneath you get a lot of cheering folks but you'll get people underneath who will try to like set you straight right uh of why things won't work why things won't happen and I always like every time I see a response like that I always think oh wow like I am so sorry like this is a framework that is going to it's going to keep that person small and I always hope
that there is a way in which they can see that like this isn't the only way to look at it like keep following along like keep being a part of things and um and don't give up on reading some of this stuff because it'll hit eventually hopefully um as you watch people doing some of the things that they talk about doing have you you ever noticed that nobody like trying to knock you down or tell you no that's not how it works has
ever actually done the thing or you know done anything for that matter that sort of would give them the credibility to say that it's it's never an outlier who's like trying to knock you down you're right I mean it isn't like Sam Alman swoops down from the wherever he's he's at and says you know you're never going to do this um you're right I mean I think that that's a it's an interesting observation because you have
people who who are struggling themselves who want you to see that like that's the struggle we all should have um and it just it just isn't right and I think that there are different ways to react to people who are doing very well or who think differently than us we can say for example when someone is really focused on doing big things you know some people will be envious some people will see it as inspiration and I always think that
that's um every now and again I'll throw out that I'll say something like I guess this is is controversial but I'll say oh you know Chris Jenner's really done some amazing things right she's built multiple billion dollar companies and people tend to overlook that and they'll say oh you know she did it because of a you know this on her kids or you know they'll find a way to kind of discredit things and and I always think it's
fascinating that it's we will find ways to discredit things that we want to that we that we don't like or that we we don't think is possible for us and it's it's harder to say oh yeah she was a you know she was an airline stewardess and now she has like multiple billion dollar companies under her belt like that's pretty amazing um why aren't we kind of focusing on we always focus on like oh but this person did this or this
person did that and um and so it's it's amazing our tendency to try to tear others down rather than to see them as inspiration and say oh my God like how does someone who's an airline Steward is get to that point what a brilliant move or series of moves to be able to capitalize on what uh what they had in front of them I think that's so interesting you hit on something there that and I'm thinking out loud here so
apologies if this comes out wrong but like we tend to discredit things in other people maybe that we're envious of or that could have we could have seen ourselves you know follow a similar path or we we didn't get lucky so we want to Discount there yeah I think we have to put it on luck right like oh they got lucky I I think that a really good observation or that like we see things that other people have done and we'll
have to find immediately a reason why they did it and we didn't like maybe they're a bad person and we're not or you know they are not as immoral as we are or they are not as something as we are like I often hear that people who are very wealthy exploit other people and you know like that's certainly you know if we want to look at where bad people are I mean there are so many people who are abusive parents and I
mean it doesn't always have to do with wealth whether you're a good or bad person um there are bad people everywhere there are great people everywhere and I think that we always have to find reasons to to make ourselves feel better we're telling ourselves certain messages to keep us comfortable with where we're at and I think that's a really important point that like should we really be as comfortable where we're at I don't think
that we should be uncomfortable but I think that we should be grateful for what we have and where we're where we're at but always feel like hey could we do more would we be happier if we were able to do this other thing um and sometimes you know the end goal is not what people think you're going to I have certainly worked with people who want to build these massive companies and they're doing it because they want to be able to
give back in some other way or to have influence in some other way or to build wealth in some way that is beneficial far beyond themselves but those are often not the stories that are told um or the things we don't focus on we focus on the very you know loud bombastic uh radical actions of some people that capture headlines and we forget that there are thousands of people who are not represented because we you know good
stories aren't always the headline grabbing stories we'd like to read it's almost like we focus on things that keep us in place keep us with our current mindset oh that is so true that is so true um I think we like to reinforce ourselves um in ways that we in ways that we can and make sense in the world that we've constructed for ourselves so given that backdrop of sort of confidence and all that we've just
talked about how do we learn to take risks I think that we learn to take risks and I would I would have anyone who is hesitant around that to take risks in low stakes places first right like go sign up for a 5k if you've never run a race and you are physically capable of doing it and sign up for a 5K in like five months which gives you a lot of time download the you know couch to 5K app not affiliated with them in
any way and just say I'm going to try to do something here like I'm going to give it a shot and nobody has to know it's not about your work there's no kind of public anything about it it's just you and you and do something small for
yourself and like nail it and I think that if you can do small things even if just smaller than that right but you know challenge yourself to build something in your garage challenge yourself to be able to lift a certain
amount of weight uh challenge yourself in some small way where you're going to take a risk and go outside of yourself it translates and what you start to notice is that when you start having some wins outside you will start to pull that mindset in your work and your business and you know you get a little bit of a Swagger to you that I think is really healthy yeah definitely I think Swagger enables a lot of things in life
it's interesting that you said uh you know you don't have to tell anybody about it it used to be common wisdom that we would sort of like State your goals public L because that's going to make you and now it's so maybe uh that
happened before it was so easy to share our goals publicly and now I feel like people get as much validation from sharing them as actually doing them but all the time that you spend talking about these things you want to do comes
at the expense of doing the thing you want to do absolutely and you know research in Psychology shows that when you share your goals and people give you praise it actually pulls from motivation to achieve them so it's you know it's why I you know vision boards aren't really all that great for you because you look at it and you you tell your friend like you know hey Ted look like I'm going to buy that Ferrari one day
and he goes oh that's so cool that's so amazing and you get that that Reward Center hit and now like you know it's a little your motivation is a little bit different I think that oftentimes if you wanted to do something like that instead of doing like a vision board do something like a progress board right like have things that you're going to you can watch yourself getting closer along the way rather than just like this
is the end goal this is amazing because you know you don't want to hit that Reward Center just like on social media I know everyone's a big fan of like building in public and I not I am absolutely opposite of that and I'm much more of the Sun Zoo like let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night and when you fall fall like a thunderbolt right like that's my that's more how I would think about operating you get
yourself together you know what you're going to do you put your head down you do it and then when you fall I mean like pull back the curtain and let people see and you can get the praise if you want it then or get the criticism then but when you're talking about your goals online often times you get people who give you feedback people who say certain things people get in your head people give you suggestions and unless you want
those things like I don't know how useful it is and I feel like it's often a detractor and I don't see that as being common with other people Google doesn't say hey we're really thinking about doing X everyone you know not only does it flag all of its comp competitors at that point but it's because it's really not useful to the build of what you want to do and that's true for individuals too that's why I say you
know don't help other people if you're going to do this thing just make it you versus you and do the thing that you want to do and make it personal um and make yourself proud and then again like you see again with that grit and happiness correlation and then you're accomplishing a goal so that's building confidence all the research really Stacks in your favor when you start to do these little things and they make they lead to big changes is