Episodes
Tuesday Nov 08, 2016
What To Do When Shit Hits The Fan
Tuesday Nov 08, 2016
Tuesday Nov 08, 2016
WELCOME BACK!
Today we are going to be focused on those moments in life when things don't seem to go as planned, when sh*t hits the fan or all hell breaks loose!
In those moments, inevitably, unwelcomed guests (namely: stress, tension, and anxiety) all start to show up and completely distract us.
We land up spending all our times trying to put out fires and keep everything together vs. staying focused on the outcome and pushing towards progress!
In this week’s episode of JRCtv, we review 3 simple suggestions that you can use to free yourself from the stress, get greater clarity and build up tremendous momentum.
These three simple steps, as well as many other custom tools and strategies, have been key for many of my coaching clients during times when life, work, or even a relationship wasn’t going according to their plan.
Just to review the 3 suggestions are:
You'll have to tune in to find out!! :)
Wednesday Nov 02, 2016
James Altucher on Simplifying Your Life & Reinventing Yourself
Wednesday Nov 02, 2016
Wednesday Nov 02, 2016
Jairek: Welcome to our learn to live it podcast and Facebook live conversation. We're chatting with some wonderful guest; this is James Altucher you're looking at right now if you're viewing live on Facebook. This is Pamela Susan right there, hi I'm Jairek nice to see you. We're going to talk to James a little bit about what's going on. But I'd love to start with for those people who may not be familiar, which I'm sure there are very select few in the world who might not have crossed paths with your amazing podcast or read your book yet. But if they haven't yet, let's give them a little.
James: I would say 99.999% of the world has not yet, so we're good.
Jairek: I just met the uber driver who's driving us up here, he's like "oh where are you guys going?" we're like, "We're late for a podcast." He's like, "oh what show?" I said, "James Atlucher's." "Oh, that's a great show!" So trust me.
James: He was lying to you. He just wanted to get a higher tip or something.
Jairek: I don’t think so. The reciprocity might have been emotion. But they do know. We were excited. I have lots of friends who when we recorded for your show the first time, 2 years ago in Miami, a lot of friends who were listening were like, “Whoa, you’re on James’ show! That’s amazing!” And they were so excited to reach out to me.
James: That’s funny. Thank you for telling me that.
Jairek: Yeah! I was excited too! I had to find out that lots of friends listen. But let's do a kind of background. How'd you get into podcasting? You have a successful podcast; you have awesome books out there.
James: Sure. So I've been on a lot of different fields. Part of my whole thing, and we're talked about this before, is I never feel like I have a purpose in life. So I'm constantly exploring new and different things like whatever is interesting to me. I tend to get like obsessed with and fascinated by and try to learn everything about and then create like almost a mini career in that field before moving on to the next thing. And I don't necessarily think that's a good thing or a bad thing, it's just what I do. So I've been in everything from, you know I've started a bunch of businesses. Let's say I've started 20 businesses, 18 have failed, maybe 2 have succeeded, 3 have succeeded. I do a lot of investing. I write a lot of books, both in let's say kind of a personal improvement category and in a business category and entrepreneurship category. I work for a television company – HBO – so I've run hedge funds. I've done all sorts of stuff.
Jairek: question to start with, just to throw us out there. You said started let's say 20 companies then 18 have failed. How do you keep going when stuff seems to fall apart? The whole thought process, you're going to have to keep reinventing yourself but how do you get through that moment? Because there're lots of people that were talking about before we go on your show where they're young, they've gone out, maybe they're 22 years old, there are young guys, they've started their own business and went well for a while and then it just flat fell apart. And now they've labeled themselves a failure, they've labeled themselves that they could never do it, it won't work. They don't know what to do with their life now that their 1 business failed. I mean you've done it 18 times and kept going.
James: Well, first off I want to get rid of the kind of failure myth. There's this whole failure pornography where I like "oh if I fail, that's just a badge of honor I failed so now I'm going to go on and succeed." It sucks super bad to fail at a business. Life's the worst; It's one of the worst feelings in the world because when you put all this time and energy into a business, I don't want to make this direct comparison but it's almost like this is your baby, this is where you've put all your energy into. And to watch it fail, maybe you've wasted one or two years of your life, it's hard at this moment to see what you've gained from experience. I mean of course, it's easy to say "Oh, I'm going to learn from failure now." You can't say that the second after you failed. When you're actually on the floor, you're on the floor. But the only thing I could say is, I mean the very first time I felt at something where I lost millions of millions of dollars and went completely broke, I was upset, and I thought "that's it, I'm dead'. Like I won the lottery, and now I'm never going to make this kind of money again. I don't have the skillset, I'm stupid, I'm an idiot as evidenced by the fact that I lost all these money because we correlate intelligence and talent with money in our society. And so I'm just never going to have a chance again. And so I felt really bad for a long, long time. So that's the first time. I'll tell you on a more recent time; this has happened over a year and a half ago, a friend of mine was making a TV show. And I was on the set, you know watching him film this great TV show with all these great stars in it, and a great director and the show has been on the air with my favorite shows out there. Anyway, in the middle of the day, I got a phone call from another business I'm involved in, a billion revenue business and I had a significant stake in this business, and there's a special emergency board meeting. And I had to leave the set for like an hour to go on this board call. And we're essentially notified that something had happened that nobody knew about. And we're going to be out of business within 3 days. So basically in that lunchtime on the set of this TV show, I lost $9 million. And then everybody on the TV set was looking for me; they were going to start shooting more episodes. It's like go back out there, and I spend the rest of the day. And then I told my friend, the writer of the show what had happened in the middle of the day. He's like, "Oh I thought you just went to the bathroom and when you came back you were just as happy and curious and asked questions, and you stayed all the way to the end of shooting at like 9 pm that night, and we had no idea that anything was going on". And so what happens is you get better and better at realizing, you switch into a mindset and realize something bad just happened which means something good is about to happen in my life as well. It's not like a karmic thing; it's just that the end of something if you use it correctly, does mean that there's going to be some beginning. So the beginning might simply be that I don't have to spend as much time like this, I can now spend more time on something I enjoy more. So for instance, yes I lost these millions of dollars, but I did not enjoy being involved in that company. Unenjoyed, it made me unhappy to be involved in that company. So now I didn't necessarily do something that the very next day made that money back, but I was able the very next day to read more or spend more time with kids or family or work on podcasting more. Like I was able to eliminate something from my life that I didn't enjoy and replaced that with something I enjoy. So in a weird way, I replaced that one kind of failure with a different kind of success. And so you learn that skill, that's skill. So you learn that skill more and more as you fail more and more. Again, not that failure is good, but you just learn the skillset of what to do with it. I will always be upset at what happened. Like I do this or that. And why do this company do this or why do people react like that way. I wasn't going to let it take away this enjoyment of being on the set of this amazing TV show, and b) I had to figure out ok I didn't enjoy it anyway so yeah I'm not going to get that money back but what can I do tomorrow that I enjoy now. So that's what happened.
Jairek: very cool. Now what’s interesting is, you didn’t always start off with a ton of money.
James: No no I had, nothing, I came out of nothing. I paid for all of my colleges. I had to graduate a year early, which is a whole story in itself so that I could afford it. Ah, moved to New York, lived in the worst place in the world. Worked in HBO for a while and then just gradually built up.
Jairek: And there's a way you've built up that was really interesting. I know you've told this to me personally before. But it was your way of opening the door to different relationships and places. I remember you told me about this TV show where you had written in it, and you identified like "Hey I'm a subscriber, I'm a reader, I wish you would do these things." And you're the same with Amazon too and how that open doors there.
James: Yeah so one of the times when I had failed I had, it's like all these times I failed I had to remember which times specifically. So one time I was losing a home, losing everything once again, and I got interested in investing. I had never been interested in investing before, which was probably why I lost so much money because I had never really made a study out of it. But I made a study of it, I got obsessed with it, I read hundreds of books, I wrote all these stuff where I'm modeling the stock markets and then I decided you know what, I'm going to write to all my favorite investors and say hey I'd love to meet you and take you out for coffee and blah blah blah. And I wrote like 30 or 40 emails to all my heroes in the investing space, and I got zero replies. Because it's not like Warren Buffett's going to say "Dolores hold everything, James Altucher just wrote me and he's going to buy me a free cup of coffee. I have to go downstairs and meet him immediately. Or fly to New York and meet him immediately". No billionaire is thinking like that. So that's the wrong way to meet people. And I get these emails, you probably get these emails too, like people say, "is there something I can do for you?" Yeah, don't give me more homework. Like, don't ask me to think of ideas for you to do for me. You come to me with the ideas. So what I started doing, and this is so critically important for everything, is I started writing down 10 ideas a day. And that does 2 things – one is, you start exercising this idea muscle. And just like any muscle, like you go to the gym and if you didn't go to the gym for 2 or 3 weeks, your muscles would deflate and you would notice it physically, like you would look in the mirror and you'd say, "Oh my I didn't work out for the past 2 weeks". It's the same thing with the idea muscle. The idea muscle deflates or atrophies if you don't use it. The way to use it is to pick a topic if it was 10 books I want to write, which 10 things I'm grateful for that I've never been grateful for all my life, and write them down. So that's exercising the idea muscle. One step further is ok I want to meet Warren Buffett. Here're 10 ideas for how Warren Buffett could improve his business. And then I would send those to Warren Buffett.
Jairek: Which is wild because that’s a big claim. I mean to look at someone like Warren Buffett or I think it was Jim Kramer?
James: Yeah, so just to add to that, it is a big claim. So Warren Buffett still won't respond to me. Not yet, eventually. But Jim Kramer, I wrote him 10 ideas for articles he should write. So it's not about me at all. It's about him. 10 articles he should write that would make me subscribe to his service. So I'm busy giving something for free. I'm not asking for coffee. I'm not saying, "hey I will be up at 6 in the morning, I'll meet you wherever you are" because he's famous for meeting people at 6 in the morning. I'm not doing anything; I'm just saying – and I thought about it – here're 10 ideas right now on articles you could write that I would love to read if someone of your caliber wrote it. He wrote back instantly, I've never had contact with him before, he wrote back and said "These are great ideas. Why don't you write these". And that started me writing for thestreet.com. My editor at thestreet.com went to the Financials Times and suddenly I was writing for the Financial Times. Then I started writing for Fortune, Forbes, Yahoo Finance. And then book publishers started contacting me. I've written 18 books since then. So that one email started the whole kind of career of writing. I don't even write about finance anymore. I've zero interests about writing about finance. But I've started this whole career of writing. I framed . Actually, I got a $200 check for the first article I wrote for thestreet.com, I framed it. I had Jim Kramer sign it. About 6 months ago, I threw that out, but that's a whole other story. But that started me out. So I would send 20 emails like that. Here're 10 ideas for you to improve your business that I think would be good. 2 people responded: one was Jim Kramer, one was the hedge fund manager where I gave my entire software package of modeling the markets. And I said, "Here's how it works, here's how your employees could use it to figure out what patterns are happening in the markets right now and go for it. Knock yourselves out; I don't care". And he allocated his personal money to me to invest in the markets. And then I started a hedge fund off that. And that ended, that was like a 5-year career for me was or even more because of a few times, my other financial activities were like an 8- to 9-year career for me.
Jairek: An 8- or 9-year career off of a couple of emails to people saying "Hey, I've done my work. I've learned about you. I've learned how you could improve and here's legitimately 10 reasons or 10 things you can do to improve whatever you're doing. And 2 out of 10 or 20% return or came back.
James: And that was then by the way. That was 2002. I do that every week. So I send out emails constantly like that all the time. That's why I'm meeting Amazon this week over something similar, and I'm just constantly meeting people. I just got asked to be an advisor for a medical company, which by the way we were by coincidence discussing at lunch based in San Francisco where I'm probably going to be an advisor for them. So these things happen to me all the time now because – serendipity, you create it. Like you have to create the luck in your life. And you do get lucky, people get lucky. It was all luck when Jim Kramer wrote back to me, but he would never have written back to me if I didn't do this particular technique.
Jairek: And it does work when you try to add value. And it’s not just like hey here’s my 10 things, if you can make yourself better, you’re welcome.
James: Right. And I wasn't asking for reciprocity. Reciprocity is built into the universe. You don't have to ask for it. So if people are good people that you should be doing business with, you're going to have reciprocity automatically.
Jairek: That's awesome. I love that. And I love that for people who are tuning in life with us right now. I would throw it their way and say like you said, you can start your idea training that muscle each day. So each day if they want to listen in and say what's 10 books you want to write. And they could put those things, what are 10 things you're grateful that you've never been grateful for.
James: Well what they've never been grateful for is important. Like I heard you mention at the beginning of Facebook live that list thing you're grateful for – which is great. I think that is showing to make people happier. But what I try to do is like everyday I can be grateful for my children for instance. Oh, I'm so grateful for having children. But that is easy. So I try to solve for what I call difficult gratitude problems. So if something bad is happening in my life, how can I dig through that to find what to be grateful for because that will exercise that idea muscle a little more. You want to sweat, right? So just like in the gym, it's not working if you're not sweating a little bit. So you want to make sure that idea muscle, or that gratitude muscle, in this case, is sweating a little bit. So yeah, of course, I'm grateful for my kids. But how can I be grateful for losing that $9 million in one day? Oh, I had some business issue last week where somebody was real, just inappropriately angry at me. And instead of just concentrating I'm going to write back to him and say this, where can I find the opportunities in how this person is treating me? And of course I did find the opportunities, and I'm working on them now and everybody, including him, is happy. So that's how things work in life.
Jairek: Nice. I love that. You mentioned this a little bit – minimalism, cutting things down. I know there was a big article that I read about you.
James: I was on the cover of the fashion section of the New York Times about this article. It was like why James Altucher.
Jairek: Fashion week?
James: No, fashion week was like last week. It was the week before maybe. So I drive my kids crazy now, they're 2 teenage girls, daughters. So I tell them you have to listen to my fashion advice because I was on the cover of the fashion section. And they're like, "I don't think so daddy. We're not listening to your fashion advice". But I think they thought about it for a quick second. I don't know.
Jairek: Did they get you?
Pamela: I’ll totally revamp my wardrobe. I’m down to 10 things.
Jairek: This is a new style. This is where we're going for. If you've read the New York Times, you've seen the fashion section; this man has been on the cover of the fashion section. And he's about to share how he did it.
James: Not to be a fashion icon. You can tell I’m not a fashion icon.
Jairek: What were you there for? Why were you on the cover?
James: In general, over the past few years, I've written a lot of books detailing my failures and how I bounced back from them. I always say advice is an autobiography. So I never say this is what you should do, I just say this is what I did to kind of bounce back.
Jairek: Just to throw this thought out there real quick, I'm a huge proponent of that. Because in the past, if you live in the 80's or 90's or 2000's, there're lots of people who will tell you here's my 5-step formula for success. Follow these steps, and you too will be successful. I think that's a dated way to go about it because what we're learning now is everyone's different. Now I think those steps are radically and totally useful as a model of where to start. And you have to be able to use them to get yourself going and understanding the basics. Then as an individual we have to say, "ok that's what works but how do I massage it in a way that works for me?" And so I don't believe in preaching like here're my 5 golden pillars to success. I will say hey; these are 5 pillars that work for me like you, and take them for what they are. Use what works out of it for you. Then make it your own and do something great with it and hopefully pay it forward.
James: Exactly. I think that's very important because it's like I'm going to quote the great personal improvement guru Mike Tyson. And he says you can have all the plans in the world, but once you're hit in the face, the plans are out the window. So like if I'm taking someone else's advice and thinking oh my life's going to be great now, it won't work. I have to build up what works for me and what I know works for me and what I'm confident in and so on. So I'd written all these books and a lot of it enforces the idea – you know talks about personal growth, personal achievements and so on. But a lot of it is that experiences are greater than goods at the end of the day. And I have been for years throwing out more and more of my belongings. But finally, I still had like an entire house of belongings, an apartment full of belongings. And so I hired somebody just to go to both places and throw everything out, don't call me. Like no furniture, computers, books – either throw out, keep, sell or donate. So that was her mandate. So we can't just throw out everything. But some things you can't donate.
Jairek: your trash can’s somewhere with lots of valuables.
James: there were 80 trash cans. It wasn't one trash can. But you know like her family took the bed. Her cousins took the computer. Then I had iPads, I had old phones, I had TVs.. you know, the things you accumulate. Also things from childhood, just the things you accumulate over life. And she said, are you sure you don't want me to call you during this? What if there's something of sentimental value like photographs? And I said don't even talk to me. She did call me once; she said look you have a framed college diploma. And I'm like nobody has asked me about that diploma in 25 years. Just burn that, it's a wooden diploma, like burn the diploma. So I ended up with one bag, it's like a small carry-on, like a small pouch with 2 or 3 outfits in it. And then one bag that's like a backpack that I have a computer, an iPad and a phone in. And that's it; that was all my belongings. And I didn't have any apartment anymore. So I gave up the 2 leases that I had. And so now I've just been doing Air BnB's where it's all furnished, and I don't have to think about contracts or this or that. I'm able to move around. And again, that's just for me; I'm not recommending it to anybody. It was just a direction I've been going in for a long time and allowed me and the people I'm with to focus more on the experiences of my life instead of any accumulation of goods.
Jairek: Speaking of people you're with, Pamela what's your experience with it? When we were talking over lunch, you said listen 50 thing's great but I'm a lady, and I need a little bit more options. I'll give you an interesting story; we were travelling the world. We're going to move to Florida. We were going to buy our house in South Florida. The week of closing, the bank decided to try to change the offer, so the deal's off. We decided not to go through with it. We've 15 business flights out of Ft Lauderdale for the rest of the year already booked. And we went on like shit what are we going to do? So we took a compass, we drew a big circle of flights to figure out where our flights go from Ft Lauderdale, hopefully, to find a cool place to live or an apartment for a while in a cheap flight zone so we can get in quick. We drew a circle; we ended up in Costa Rica living on the beach in Tamarindo for 2 ½ months. Then from there, we came back up. We taught on a cruise ship from Florida, 14 days, 7 countries, back in San Diego. From there, hopped on an RV with 3 friends and into a 20-day volunteer road trip back across the southern route, back in Tampa. Landed in Tampa, we're going to wait there until it warmed up and then move up to Vancouver for this summer. Now we just kept going; we love that stuff. And when we got to Tampa, we had been almost about 4 ½, almost 5 months without a suitcase. And we just had 2 bags with us.
James: And you realize you didn't miss any of that? Like where did you keep stuff in storage at the time? I'm assuming you had stuff on storage. So you had like a shit pile of stuff somewhere.
Jairek: And what was interesting was at one point, I remember the sweetest look on my wife who's filming space. She looked at me, and she say listen, I'm a lady. We've gone from beach to business event to formal affair to volunteer road trip to building a house without habitat from humanity in New Orleans so like construction workers, to weeding out a meditation garden for the children's hospital in Austin, to Polarthandra just freezing driving through. And also, your bathroom tick freezes if you're in an RV and it gets too cold. So you had frozen stuff. As we went through all of these and she's like all I had is one big double bed. She said can I please get my dress out of storage and at least get a couple more options? I think like a guy when life has a different experience compared to a lady, so I want to know your experience with the 15 things like combing all the way down. I know you've also kind of jumped into an extent
Pamela: I was a bit of a minimalist. But I think it's very freeing to have fewer items. You know you just take the best, forget the rest. And you can apply that even to like learning from other people.
Jairek: Take the best, leave the rest. I love that! And we thought about this; we're looking right now at even packing up all our stuff in our Tampa house. And just going some more, just keep going. We love the part from place to place to place just because we enjoy that. I don't know if we can do 15 items because we tend to pack at least a couple of duffel bags and some backpacks.
James: But the one thing you can do is view the 15 items as a metaphor also. So ok I'm not going to worry about more than.. as most people worry about a lot of things and they don't realize it. I'm going to minimize the things I worry about. Or I'm going to minimize the kind of things I try to achieve in life like you don't have to achieve everything that you set out to achieve. There're lots of ways in which, you gotta enjoy, you know, as Ryan Holiday who wrote Ego is the Enemy once told me, Alexander the Great doesn't care that Alexandria was named after him. Like at some point we all die, and it's a cliché to say of course, but you just got to enjoy every moment.
Jairek: What's interesting, and I'll give you a metaphor but also something fascinating in our lives. So I moved out when I was 18, took whatever stuff I wanted and just built everything since kind of my way clothes. I think I do have my college degree, some little stuff I collected. But my mom, specifically, has some old things that she collected. These were your baseball cards when you were young; they should probably worth something.
James: But they always think it’s worth something. The baseball cards, they worth nothing. But they always… you have the thing number 237 comic book is worth nothing.
Jairek: Yeah, but the grandkids need it. And you see what you collected when you were their age. I have my old football helmet from high school, random stuff. So she has collected like a whole storage full of stuff for me in Los Angeles, and it's sitting there. We pay the bill every month because you don't want anyone else to. But we keep laughing and thinking like why is there a storage unit full of stuff that we've not seen for four years just sitting there, you never know what's in there. I can't say that we don't care because I'm sure it's part of history but it would be nice to see it and let it go. It's your family that decides to collect stuff for you.
James: Well I didn't. So I also had everything in one of my places, and I currently don't want to outsource to my children the decision to get rid of my stuff. So eventually I'm going to die, and I may get my stuff. So they now have solved the problem which is they don't have anything to sort through with me. So there's just nothing.
Jairek: taking care of future generations.
James: yes.
Pamela: It's clutter. It's a burden on your mind.
Jairek: it is. I remember watching a TED talk, I forget who it was, they were talking about how much storage space is in the United States and it's enough storage space that if we empty it all out, just everyone's extra junk, it would be enough to put housing or roof over every single person in the entire country. And instead, it's just sitting in storage doing nothing and accumulating money.
James: but we're a storage culture. We love shows like Hoarders. And these storage companies are great companies; they generate cash forever. So if we stop paying them, they'd sell your stuff on eBay. It's like a giant pawn shop.
Jairek: it’s crazy. But going down this route, I know you have a book called Reinventing Yourself that’s coming out. And this minimalism route, where is it leading?
James: I don’t know. I mean everything’s an adventure. So I don’t have to know.
Jairek: that’s one of my top values. Love, health, adventure.
James: Yeah, I think it's an important thing to be curious about the world. Because you don't know all the answers, but it's fun to be curious. And I think it's a big problem in the education system that everybody is focused on memorizing facts without asking questions. When you look at all the great scientific discoveries ever, all started with questions. None of them started with facts. But the educational systems' in reverse.
Jairek: I just saw a video of Michael Moore, there's a research about the education system between the United States and Sweden. There's a short little clip, was it Sweden? No, Finland I think. Right out there. Nordic countries. And so, both of us are like battling for the 34th position or something in the world. And they changed something. And when they changed it, all of a sudden we are still somewhere in 34 and they went all the way to number one for the past several years. When they went to an interview, they were asked: "What did you guys change?" And they said we believe that kids should be playing more. So they took their school day from like 7 or 8 hours all the way down to 3 hours including an hour lunch break and recess break. So they spent 2 hours a day in class, they have zero work, and that's how they've become the best students on Earth.
James: I totally believe it because… and I'm going to ask you a question, and it's a question I ask a lot of people. I ask the entire audience this question. Every year of high school and college, we learn about Charlemagne – the greatest emperor in European history. But I'm going to ask you when Charlemagne was born? No clue, you just guess. Give me a guess because it doesn't matter. I'll tell you the range of guesses.
Jairek: I’m not even connected to Charlemagne. I don’t remember…
James: Ok so I ask one guy, I was on this podcast. He majored in European history, and he told me like 1300 something. And I asked the audiences; they never get it right. They usually say around 1300.
Jairek: Give me half a second. If you’re watching right now live, in the comments section, tell us: When was Charlemagne born? Let’s see what their guesses are. Let’s give them a shot.
James: Alright. They can google it, though; that's the problem.
Jairek: Oh, don’t google it. Just take your best guess. Just type in the comments section. Charlemagne… where were they?
James: Here in what is now France. Like, Gaul.
Jairek: So what are the answers that popped up? Anyone guessing?
Pamela: Nothing yet.
James: I will just say it. So 1752. But we learn it every single year of high school and college. We learned it, we got tested on it, we remembered it, and we answered it. But it just goes to show you how little we retain from just being like force-fed facts. We don't retain any of it. But, questions you remember. Like you know Einstein would ask the question: What happens if one person's moving at the speed of light and another person is standing on the ground? From that question, he develops the theory of relativity. He didn't start with a bunch of equations and said ok let me try to prove this. He asked the question and wondered out loud to himself what happens. And that's how every discovery happens. So you know art, what happens if we take a soup can and say this is a work of art? And they would ask the question, and now he's got a $30 million soup can. So that's how stuff's created.
Jairek: So the question right now for you is, what happens if I downsize completely to 15 items?
James: Yeah then I just.. for reinvention, it's like what we were talking earlier. I want to see what gets me excited and then that's what I'll pursue. So I'm always in the process of reinventing. Everybody always is. I want to write more. I want to write fiction perhaps, which is completely different for me. I want to you know meet more people, try more things, and also figure out better and better ways to be happy which are an incredibly difficult thing to do in this world.
Jairek: We've been talking about in this Facebook live in the podcast The Happiness Advantage by Shawn Achor from Harvard. And what's interesting is back in the day, you know people would tell you to be happy. But then they'd tell you a bunch of personal development tactics or tools some guru guy says is the way to happiness. And you don't know it; it's all subjective. You can look at case studies, but there's no real proof. But now things in positive psychology, there's people studying this and showing you like hey we took 200 studies, 275,000 people. And between all these people across the board, if you do these things everyday – simple little activities – it makes you happier within 21 days according to 275,000 people across 200 studies. That's like wow, that's legit! There's actual proof now coming out in places too. Which is the other part because you have a private company do a study and you're like ok who are these characters?
James: But it's still hard to get into the habit of even those 21 days. So I'm going to pitch you an idea for a TV show and tell me what you think. I think we know the same cast of characters, so the show's called Guru's Gone Wild. So the whole idea is all these self-help people are trying to build their businesses, trying to live their practices and stuff. But you and I both know they all…when you're down to having lunch and drinks or whatever with them, they all have their problems like everybody has their issues. You can't get rid of them. It's not about getting rid of issues; it's about how you cope with them. So it's just kind of like funny kind of, in some cases, the contradictions are extreme with what they recommend and how they live. And I just think it would be a fun idea for a kind of an almost fiction like an entourage style TV show.
Jairek: It would be hilarious. I thought it would be neat. We started making adventure retreats just because, in all honesty, I love adventure and I love giving back through traveling. So I thought how cool it would be to get paid. Actually travel, go on adventures, volunteer and have fun. Like if you get paid, I don't know what the job description that is. And so I thought about it, and a friend of mine challenged me, and she's like why do we just do it. And so I was on this little trip, on this sea ship and she was like hey there's speakers on board. And the speakers were like Sandra Day O'Connor – the first female Supreme Court justice, Julian Bond – the hotshot lawyer from Martin Luther King. These are historical figures of history, they've done things like amazing things in history. She's like why don't we ask them if you can speak on the next one. I was like that's sweet, I know you believe in me a lot but I don't think I necessarily fall into that category of history. Like I don't think I fit next to Sandra Day O'Connor and Julian Bond. She's like that's ok let's just ask. And we went ahead and asked, they're like sure we'd love to have you. Am I like really? So first I felt incredibly humbled. And when we introduced ourselves to the community, the average age on the ship was like 70. So I'm like I'm 30 years old, I'm just beyond excited to be here. If I can share something that would help you guys, I'm happy to. I'll share with you everything I know and hopefully it's useful to this community. And they'd love it; they round back a bunch of times in a row. But while we were there, what's interesting – we took people with us into this adventure and what I found was people would sign up for the vacation aspect of it, the adventure side of it. We did like go to an active volcano where you like a hike up a volcano, and you sled down a volcano. Takes about an hour and forty-five minutes to hike up, 45 seconds to get back down to the truck. It's insane; it's fun. I never thought sledding would be crazy. But how steep the damn hill is freaking people out. From there, we volunteered with the Merriment in Ecuador. We brought Christmas to 200 families who couldn't afford it locally. So we brought Santa and elves and like all these school stuff. We helped build the school and a house for like a community in Guatemala. All these beautiful stuff. Now what's wild is, we took people who most of them were doing ok. I mean good enough to afford inexpensive things, like a hundred bucks a night which is cheap for a vacation that long but it was… you know they can afford it, they went, they have the ability to get time off, so they're kind of in a privileged position thus far. But not all of them were in the best place mentally and emotionally in life. And we had some people, one lady actually, who joined us and we didn't notice until afterward. She told us in the very end. She said I got on this ship because my intention was my house just burned down, I lost all my stuff, I took my money, and I invested it to rebuild my home, the insurance money when I got back. The head contractor told me 2 weeks ago that he bailed the money and there isn't any left, and I'm sorry I'm out, I'm not getting the house back, and he didn't pay the other workers. So I took the rest of my life savings and gave it to the workers because otherwise, their families won't eat. I'm going to the gym every morning and taking a shower there and living in my car and reporting to work as if there's nothing wrong, so no one knows. And I positioned all my belongings in a way so it would be easy for my kids to take care of if I'm no longer here. I plan on getting on this ship and throwing myself off the back at some point and just say it's over. And she said I happened to have listened to your dad's stuff so when I saw you on board, I thought you know how cool. It would be fun to poke in and see what he's going to share. She joined our little class, she sat in everyday with us and went through the whole thing. And she said there were a couple of days on board, one of which that we were working on like getting rid of past stories. Just a simple luxury I learned a few years ago. Two of which is the other time that helped her was volunteering and helping other people in need. She said between those two days; I decided that I should stay on this planet and keep going. At the end of the day, she stood up and told us that story and said thanks for saving my life. The way I was looking at it was like I get paid to take a vacation and share some stuff that seems really valuable and meaningful to others, volunteer and has a lot of fun.
James: And save a life.
Jairek: I didn't think that was on the list. I planned it. We're like wow, this can like to save someone's life? I just thought this was a random cool idea of how to get paid for doing something I thought was cool. And that thought process when you connect it with how you're going about life and what you're doing, and how you're showing up. I was trying to connect the dot there. I got lost in that.
James: Well the idea of adventure.
Jairek: Yeah the idea of adventure and connecting it.
James: You never know what the outcome is.
Jairek: Oh how to be happy. And what we found was. Oh TV show, I’m sorry. That’s what it was. So in that, I always thought it would be really neat to take someone who’s kind of like down and out and in a really tough place in life, and take them on some type of trip to get them out of their own world in their head and give them a place where they can have a little adventure and see the world. Or at some part of the world, maybe another city, it didn’t have to be anywhere exotic. But like take them a couple of states over or something, or outside of their town. So they see a different perspective. Put them in a place that they’ll realize they have a lot of value to add to another human being’s life because they dig within themselves and have to share with someone else something of value, which makes them feel valuable in that moment. And then to wake them up a little bit. You know, give them an adventure. Give them something fun that’s thrilling.
James: That’s a fun idea.
Jairek: But I thought to go with that TV show if you took people and threw them into that mix. Maybe learning from those gurus is wild and maybe the adventure is going to visit these gurus in different places and doing these things with them. Something like that. I just think it would have a profound effect on people watching because I've learned that random act of kindness and doing something kind for others, the person doing it gets a kick of dopamine and serotonin, the people receiving it gets a kick of dopamine and serotonin, and anyone who observes. So on TV they have something like that consistently being done, for the viewers would get a kick of serotonin and dopamine in their mind which is making them happier and feel better and healthier.
James: That’s a good idea. You got me thinking on that.
Jairek: I always thought that'd be a neat thing. Again, I signed up for the cruise because I thought like in my mind how cool it'd be to be able to go on free cruises every year and do cool shit like this. And you could make money doing this? That's the coolest thing in the world. And then to have someone's life be saved because of it? I was like… like my mind blew a bomb. I have seen others like that but when you had your first tangible experience with it like it rewires some circuitry in your head like whoa! This is cool.
Pamela: Some people does feel a little bit of inspiration. And they can go to the next level. And they can just carry forward with it.
Jairek: Yeah. Just the right time, the right moment. Just someone to be like hey. Just a little spark and all of a sudden it lights in there and then it go again. The other one I thought would be really neat, and I don't know why this is catching me right now, and I don't know why this is in this conversation. I always thought it would be neat, in this space specifically right now in history, the mental health space – it's struggling. And if you've ever gone out and visited any of the mental health facilities, they're very calm and relaxing. It reminds me of a day's bomb, like shit, I should check in here just to relax now and then.
James: Yeah I just thought they're for me.
Jairek: It's very nice. I'm going to kick back in the garden; I'm going to chill here for a while. It is quite relaxing but the way people are treated ain't all that well. Because a lot of the times they just met them up on a bunch of stuff just to get them to sleep or relax or something. And then because of the environment that people are dealing with, so many people in a state of mania or like ups and downs or bipolar or all those other stuff, they tend to react towards them instead of care for them and love them through. And there are big-hearted people who are taking care of them but they can only last so long before they kind of snap, and they start treating them badly. I always thought it would be neat specifically for young guys to create a place that isn't a mental health facility but it's kind of like a boot camp to build the right habits, rituals, the simple daily things that would build them into young men. And I don't mean to compliment them at all, I just understand a man's world better, because I was a young man and I grew up in those place. It might be the same for a young woman to go through this type of thing. But I need a woman to help me design it. For a young guy, there's certain things to do like face your fears, stand up against obstacles, challenge yourself, build a community, little things – be a contributor to the community. I have a feeling if you can build at a camp like this, you know you check in for a year when you're in your 20's, and it just builds the right structure that you can go out and build your life on top of. The military used to do this. I don't think it does anymore.
Pamela: I think men lack it. I think that's a good idea. And they lack it. That's a good space.
Jairek: It's just a new space. I think it would be something you could go to, you check in for 6 months or a year, you contribute to society like you go do volunteer work, you build some may be building a business on the side or something creative if you want or do whatever you want, you contribute to the community that you're locally in. You build them into a solid human being, and I think you have a lot of insight on this. The reason I brought it up is that you've gone through so many things and a lot of these young guys either give up over, freak out over, quit and throw in the towel over. You're resilient as hell; you just keep going.
James: Sometimes.
Jairek: 18 out of 20 failed and you just stood up, dust it off. You went through a shit moment, and you get real. You suffered through it for a little while, but then you stood up and kept going. And you've helped people do that too through your books and other podcasts and stuff. So you know this. I just.. with the TV show thought, I thought there'd be another thought throughout there.
James: Yeah I know. It’s an interesting thought like all these things are just saying that. Because we’re all looking for ways to… I mean the world’s becoming increasingly complex. The economies are crazily complex which you think doesn’t matter but it does because how we support our family and ourselves and our retirement and so on and how we deal with this complexity is getting more and more difficult. And learning these skills is valuable.
Jairek: And it's simple stuff. Like we were saying earlier, it's simple, but not everyone does it consistently.
James: No, it's simple, but it's hard. Sometimes simple is hard. People keep wanting to doing the complex because they think that's… like going to a job everyday. They think even though that's actually complex and more difficult in our society than ever, that's their easy way out at the moment. They think.
Jairek: And the wild part is with machines and artificial intelligence, a lot of that stuff's going to be replaced soon.
James: Well look, driverless cars will eliminate 90% of the auto industry.
Jairek: Driverless cars, factory workers… I mean I saw a robot the other day that cooks and cleans the kitchen like you type in…
James: Oh that was in my house. But no…
Jairek: So now robots do everything else.
James: Lots of robots.
Jairek: It's wild like this thing cooks and cleans, it chops off the food, cooks it. I saw a robot that gardens for you. You put it in a garden box. It perfectly keeps the temperature of the soil at just the right temperature, gives it just the right amount of water, it de-weeds, it pieces weeds coming and picks them out before they can even sprout. It's amazing. I mean the future is going to take away jobs from so many people that currently exist. But they have the flexibility like you've done to say hey, how will I reinvent myself? I mean if you've been a taxi driver for 32 years, and now taxi drivers are no longer needed. Now, what the hell do I do with myself? They are going to have to have that conversation to truly come up with some plan. What… maybe one or two tips when that moment happens to them. Because you've had it a handful of times and some people had never had it, I mean they're going to be 50 years old and the first time in their life they're going to have to look at a mirror and go, "What the heck do I do with myself now?"
James: I mean a lot of it is being aware that you don't have to know the answer. So just know that you're in a state of reinvention, so keeping an eye out for what excites me, what interests me, writing those 10 ideas a day down, reading as much as possible, going on an adventure, so you learn from things outside of your comfort zone. You know the comfort zone looks like this tiny little circle, but the little life zone that you live in is a bigger circle. So finally kind of figure out more and more ways to get outside of that comfort zone and get to the real live zone is important than how people did it. You build on the people who came before you, so you read the biographies o f important people and see how they did it. But then you figure out how to do it yourself; everyone's got their path.
Jairek: Very very cool. I know you're little ones are here. It's 2:25, we might need to start wrapping up. I'd love to know if there're any questions coming in? Nothing, no questions coming in? Ok.
James: It’s a Saturday afternoon, everyone’s enjoying their day.
Jairek: Oh but they're all tuning in. That's not.. they will be tuning in. So if you have questions for James, write them in the comments section. I'll see if I can pass them for you. But I'd love to know if they're looking for you and they want to learn more, where do they go? How do we connect everyone with you?
James: You know if you just to go jamesaltucher.com, that’s good. Or buy the book Choose Yourself, that’s like my favorite book that I’ve written. Either one of those.
Jairek: So couple insights about the book, Choose You. What is maybe 2 to 3 lines that they would understand what they're getting?
James: I mean, just the idea that we've outsourced our decision making throughout our lives to parents, peers, bosses, colleges, to government and agents or you know recruiters. And a lot of that we can now pull back. Like we have to choose ourselves for success because no one else is going to choose us for success. We have to start doing it more and more ourselves and me give how I did it for myself through all these ups and downs. And that's a quick summary of Choose Yourself.
Jairek: I love it! And then the new book comes out?
James: I think November 15th. Aiming for that.
Jairek: So keep your eyes open somewhere around November 15 sort of. So keep your eyes out a new book called Reinvent Yourself after Choose Yourself. Check those out. Check out this man's podcast; it's awesome. I've been on it. There are amazing other guests there. The James Altucher Show. So check that out. And thank you both for hanging out with us. Pamela thanks you. James, thank you, sir. Amanda thank you so much for filming. Hopefully, everyone is listening in. We look forward to seeing you next week for another amazing episode of learning to live it a podcast. And those on Facebook, we'll see you tomorrow. See you later.
James: Bye.
Thursday Oct 27, 2016
How to Instantly Overcome Self Doubt & Negative Beliefs
Thursday Oct 27, 2016
Thursday Oct 27, 2016
Wednesday Oct 26, 2016
3 Books to Become Happier, Healthier and More Fulfilled
Wednesday Oct 26, 2016
Wednesday Oct 26, 2016
3 of my favorite books that I am currently readingright now
1. The Happiness Advantage byShawn Achor
- this is a book where they have come out andhave done 200 studies in over 25,000 people in the world and found that happypeople (where they say there is happy, neutral or stress) tend to have bettermarriages, better health, more money, have better performance rate and is intoall these amazing stuffs.
I know that you’vebeen hanging with us on Facebook live every day and have heard a lot about thisover the past month. But if you haven’t I didn’t want you to miss out so here’s5 simple things that you can do to what Shawn says is rewire your brain for theHappiness Advantage.
1. You need to train your brain bywriting down 3 gratitudes per day. At the end of the day, write down “what arethe 3 great things that have happened today that I am grateful for?” It doesnot matter how complex or simple but if you can identify it, what happens isthat you train your brain to scan your world and to look for what’s right withit instead of what’s wrong with it.
2. You want a journal about 1 greatthing that happened this week. Spend about 10 minutes writing in detail aboutwhat it meant to you and how important it was and what you really appreciatedabout it. This will also boost your happiness.
3. Exercise for at least 30 minutesat least 4 times a week. What it does is that they did a research study wherethey took people who are clinically depressed and one group they gaveanti-depressants and the second group, they gave just exercise and the thirdgroup – they gave a combination of both. What’s amazing was there was a hugerelapse rate for the people who just took medication. The people who had both,had a much lower relapse rate but the people who just exercised had a relapseof just 8%. Exercise was more effective than and just as effective asmedication was.
4. Meditate. There’s an awesomedevice called ChooseMuse.com and it’s a little headband. You throw thisheadband on and what it does is that it measures your simple brainwaves andheart rate. This little app gives you bio feedback and neuro feedback. Asyou’re trying to keep your mind silent, it tells you through noise if you’reallowing thoughts to creep in or if you are keeping your mind silent.
Use it for just 3 minutes each dayand what it starts you to do is to control your thoughts. So when your mindstarts to get flooded with negative thoughts or fearful thoughts, it gives youthe ability to take a couple of breathsand clear all those thoughts out, refocus, get in the game and get to work andreally perform at your best,
5. Random Acts of Kindness. Thisdoes not only help you but it also helps the person who’s receiving it andanyone who’s observing it. When you do a random act of kindness, it shows thatdopamine and serotonin both kicks off on your brain. The person who receives itrandomly just says, “Oh wow, thank you!” – they get a kick of dopamine andserotonin. What they found in research is anyone who observes it even in thevideo also gets a kick of dopamine and serotonin. That’s why it feels so goodto see random acts of kindness.
2. Peak: How Great CompaniesGet Their Mojo from Maslow by Chip Conley
In this book,there is a really simple diagram that is so valuable in life, business andrelationships. In this book, he says there are 3 levels of communication andtransaction between individuals. Whether that’s you and your team or employees,you and your clients, you or your significant other, you or your investor.
The first level istransactional. Meaning: I will do X for you if you give me Y.
The 2ndlevel which is the relationship level, you build a true relationship, you careabout these people, you acknowledge, identify their strengths, and reallyconnect with them on those and really help on make them feel valued in whatthey are doing.
Transformationalis the 3rd level – by being part of this relationship, they areliterally becoming a better human being in the process.
How do you createthat?
3. Mindset by Carol Dweck
She did tons andtons of research about the difference of people struggling in feeling vs.people who are radically succeeding. Based on all her scientific research, whatshe found was data that backup that there is a difference between growthmindset vs. fixed mindset.
A fixed mindset issomething that says, “I’m stuck the way I am, I can’t really change it I justhave to figure out what I’m good at and only do that because I am not meant orable to do anything else.” A growth mindset says, “hey, it doesn’t matter whatI am capable yet or not capable yet as long as I am willing to put the time,effort, energy and focus and everything I have inside me, I can become a masterof this.” She relates this book to business, finance, relationships, health andeverything in between!
Monday Sep 19, 2016
Things I wish knew when I started my coaching business
Monday Sep 19, 2016
Monday Sep 19, 2016
If you don’t know my story, I’ve worked for about 6 ½ years from one of the world’s leading coaching companies. Within that company I’ve learned a lot of skills and information. Eventually I reached a point where I wanted to try it on my own, so I left the company back in 2008. When I made that transition, like most coaches starting out, I found it was a little bit tricky trying to get my first few clients.
After 6 ½ years of working in the best coaching companies, I had 250 hours of training and took hundreds of calls. I had a mentor who was constantly listening in on my calls and helping me do better.
There were times when I was amazing, but there were also times were I kind of slumped. With all that practice, I decided to open my own coaching practice. I think there’s way too many people today who decides to call themselves a coach and they are 22 years old, just out of school and like “I’m a coach, let’s do this!”
I want to give you 2 important distinctions that a good friend of mine, Topher Morrison, gave me. He works for Key Person of Influence here at Tampa, FL and runs a growth accelerator for businesses and has partnerships all over the world. He came in to our Performance Coach University training program where we were teaching our trained coaches how to market and grow their business. While he was there, he taught us 2 really important points and what I realized was that these were the things that I had done back then to grow my business from 2 to 3 clients a month and rolling to 20 clients in a day, all the way to 52 1-on-1 coaching clients a month (way too many clients!).
Finding the NICHE
3 ways you can market:
WIDE to NARROW: Market to a wide audience with a very specific topic – help anyone with a specific thing –losing belly fat for example.
NARROW to WIDE: Help one type of person to do array of things.
NARROW to NARROW (BEST OPTION!): Help one specific group to do this one thing and be the best in the world at it. In the beginning it can be very scary. The truth is the better and more refined you get in the process, the quicker you will get more clients.
The next major lesson I learned early on in my business was about partnerships. Luckily I found a partner early on who helped me grow my business tremendously. However, at the time I didn't know these 3 criteria that especially make partnerships successful, which could have saved me a lot of time, money and energy with other not so great partners down the road.
3 Criteria For A Great Business Partnership
There are three components to a great partnership: product, great brand and great distribution.
Product: a product must be scalable and creates raving fans – they love it!
Brand: brand reputation must be rock solid. People trust it, refer others, and keep coming back.
Distribution: Reach and platform are key to connecting with prospective customers with your product/service.
The key is that one of you have at least 2 out of the 3 and the other has at least 1 (or 2) to compliment each other, so that when combined you have all 3 components to a great partnership.
My first business partner had great distribution (she was holding events for women starting their own businesses), she also had a great brand (people trusted her). When we partnered, I had an excellent product they needed (coaching focused on mindset, achieving goals, accountability). I also had a great reputation as I was still building my brand. Together we had all three components and this made a high mutually beneficial partnership that helped us grow both of our companies.
That's all for today. Hope you're able to grow your own business from some of these great business lessons.
To your success,
Jairek Robbins
Monday Sep 12, 2016
This Simple Shift in Expectations Can Improve your Performance & Results
Monday Sep 12, 2016
Monday Sep 12, 2016
Check this out. I was recently reading about a research study done where they figured out how expectations that people have are shown to directly help or hurt a persons results and/or performance. Spoiler alert: You can immediately increase your performance by following along and download today’s worksheet.
This is how the study went down.
A group of researchers who went and worked with the cleaning staff of seven different hotels. They split the staff in half at each hotel.
The first half of the cleaning crew were told something to “reset their expectations.”
They told how many calories they burn per day of cleaning, which was accurate. They told them about the health benefits that come from what they do every single day – vacuuming, picking stuff up, etc.
The other half, they didn’t tell any of these, and here’s what they have found out:
Within a six-week period of time the first half of all 7 cleaning crews that were informed of the health benefits came from their daily activities got healthier, lost more weight and their cholesterol readjusted itself in a positive way.
The other half, whom they didn’t tell about the health benefits saw zero performance results in any way, shape or form.
What does this mean?
It means doing the exact same activity as all the other people, but with positive expectations, allowed this group to improve their health and perform at a higher levels just because they had an expectation that was going to happen. This is scientifically proven and researched!
Monday Sep 05, 2016
How to rewire your brain for happiness and why it is important
Monday Sep 05, 2016
Monday Sep 05, 2016
When talking about happiness, there’s awonderful book called “The Happiness Advantage” written by Shawn Achor fromHarvard. In this book, he lists that:
· There are over 200 studies doneon over 275,000 people that include happiness leads to success and nearly everydomain of our lives – including marriage, friendship, health, community,involvement, creativity, jobs, career and business.
· Happy workers have higher levelof productivity, produce higher level of results, perform better in leadershippositions, receive higher performance ratings, receive higher pay and enjoymore job stability. They are also less likely to take sick days, quit, orbecome burned out
· Happy CEOs are more likely tolead teams of employees where both happy and healthy who find their workclimate conducive to high performance.
Now a lot of people have said this – some peopleare born with it, some people are not. After all the research done by thisgentleman and all the others, they’ve concluded that you can actually rewireyour brain for happiness – they call it “The Happiness Advantage.”
Meditation – 5 to 10 minutes of meditationeach day. Studies show that it can actually grow your pre-frontal cortex – the partof your brain responsible for feeling happy. Regular mediation for 5 to 10minutes per day can rewire your brain to raise the levels of happiness, lowerstress and even improve immune function.
Finding something to look forward to –anticipating future rewards can actually light up the center pleasures of yourbrain as much as the actual reward well.
Commit conscious acts of kindness – decreasesstress and strongly contributes to enhanced mental health
Induced positivity in your surroundings – wehave a lesson in our Rapid Results Formula 2.0 online program which is called “CleaningUp your Environment.” What it means is going around and give you a simplerating system and how to rate every single element of the environment aroundyou that is either slowing you down or speeding you up to be more productive orless productive. If it is something that is slowing you down, we give you tipson how to revise it, get rid of it or how to update it.
Monday Aug 22, 2016
How Assumption Destroys Us
Monday Aug 22, 2016
Monday Aug 22, 2016
I don’t know about you but personally I’vehad all kind of experiences in life – great, interesting, bad, horrible, tough,challenging, fun experiences – all kind! What’s interesting is somethinghappens in our nervous system, a research concept that proves this to be true,as we go through life when we have significant emotional event is that isstarts to leave triggers or little marks on our nervous system that reminds uswhen it starts to happen again how we are supposed to respond and what is aboutto happen next.
Let’s say you’re in a relationship and you’vefallen in love, everything is amazing, beautiful, and incredible and you’re soin love. All of a sudden, one day you were listening to a very specific song onthe radio and you are thinking about your lover and how amazing they are. Allof a sudden they call you and dump you. I hate to bring up bad memories but I’msure it has happened to any one of you. Here’s the crazy part: let’s say youare in a brand new relationship with a totally different human being, you’regoing through your day, everything is awesome and that song comes on the radioand as you’re listening to the song you’re thinking about all these moments ofhow fun the song is and all of the sudden this memory hits you. Right when thememory hits you of the time this happened, the phone rings and it’s yourboyfriend/ girlfriend of the moment. What do you think is going in on yournervous system? Whether it’s true or not, you’re nervous system starts toreact: “I’ve been on this road, I know what’s about to happen! They’re going tobreak up with me!” and you pick up the phone and “Hello?” “Hey! What’s up?” andyou start acting and maybe get mad at them, “I don’t want to talk right now!” andyou hang up on them and they would think what is wrong with you. They justcalled because they care about you and to say “I love you,” but your nervoussystem is linked up to past experience that was painful to a current experienceand thought THIS means THAT. It’s not true. THIS does not mean THAT.
Let me give you a little bit of sciencebehind this. There is a study done by Martin Seligman years ago where he tookanimals and put them in a cage. What he did was he put a little space inbetween so there are two sides that you can step on and on one side he put alever for the animal. On that side there were turn on and shock. Light currentunderneath their foot which would hurt and there was a lever. Then one cagethey allowed that if the animal hit the lever it would shut off the electricshock. In the other cage, they created the same lever and they made it donothing, whichever they do the electric shock does not stop – which soundspretty bad! They did the first round, the animal finally figured out how toturn off the shock. The other animal no matter what it did with the switch itdid not stop. Then they stopped it, pull them out, let them walk around and doother stuff. Put them back in and this time they gave both animals the abilityto control the electric shock. The first animal who was able to turn it off thefirst time, quickly turned it off and shut the electric shock. The animal who’slever did not work the first time, lied down and just suffered through theshock.
What does this mean to you? Where in yourlife right now are you allowing old triggers, old stuff that happened to linkup in your head that there is no point in even trying to change how it is? Isit in relationships, business, your finances, emotional life?
Where have you assumed it’s not even worthtrying anymore? Because maybe God, Universe or Mother Nature is giving youanother chance to making the switch active this time so when you do it, IT WILLACTUALLY WORK.
I want you to take a moment to dig throughyour emotions and identify what’s the couple of areas your brain is linked upthis means that and it’s not true anymore? Don’t allow something that happened10 years ago, 10 months ago or 10 days ago to dictate what you’re about to doin the future. I believe in learning from mistakes. I also believe in notallowing your brain to make assumptions that are not always true.
Tuesday Aug 16, 2016
How ZORO Can Help YOU Achieve BIG Results
Tuesday Aug 16, 2016
Tuesday Aug 16, 2016
How ZORO can help you achieve BIG results?
Whatdoes it mean by Zoro? In the movie, “The Mask of Zoro,” if you remember howit begins there is a scene where the guy is struggling, frustrated and notbeing able to get the goal he likes where he gets to the point that he startsdrinking, really just doling himself out of life and that’s the moment when hecrosses paths with his teacher. His teacher takes him back to the cave and inthe cave he draws a circle on the ground and he says, “Nothing in your lifematters unless it’s inside this circle.”
Forthe beginning part of this film they teach him how to fight, how to do allthese things, everything exists within the circle. Now what’s interesting there’sa concept because if you remember what Zoro stands for, he’s this wild,amazing man who fights off all the villains, does all amazing things, greatwith women and all other amazing stuffs. But it didn’t start that way. How didthey take him from a guy struggling, depressed and frustrated with life tosomeone who’s mastering the skills to take on the bad guys, defend the innocentand be so great with women and it all starts with this whole little, tinycircle concept?
It’sthe ability for him to focus only on the small manageable, controllable taskswithin the circle and mastering them. How does this relate to you and yourgoals? So many people in the beginning, especially young people, we getexcited, we get ambition, we have huge goals that we want to accomplish. Youstart hearing stuff like instead of trying to make a billion dollars, trying tochange a billion lives which is ambitious and huge and great to work towardsthat it’s very altruistic and amazing. At the same time, for most young people,according to research and science, if they start off with such a big goal inthe beginning it’s exciting and you start to work towards it, starts to makeprogress and get a momentum, then a couple things don’t work and then it startsto feel as if you’re so far away from the peak of this mountain that it startsto feel it’s not even worth continuing the climb. What’s fascinating is people start to give up.I remember a phrase, “people died in their thirties but don’t bury until theireighties.” What does that mean?
Whatit means is that people give up on their dreams, their goals and desiressomewhere in their 30s and then just kind of exists through the rest of theirlife because the huge dream they’re going after seems like they’re not gettingany or close to it by the age of 30 so they stopped trying.
Iwant to prevent that from happening from you.
Howdo we prevent it? Start small. Start just with a little circle of what you cancontrol and start building the confidence and the certainty through experiencethat you can absolutely make progress every single day.
Startidentifying :
a.What are your long term goals – what do you want to achieve 20 years, 30 years,40 years from now in the major categories of your life?
b.What are the short term goals – what do you want to achieve in the next 30 daysin each category of your life?
Startto link up in your mind everyday by doing this exercise each day it’s going tolead to that 20-year health goal. If you want more information about this, go toour book “Live It” we give you lots of details of how to do all this.
Whatwe want you to do is to start setting up the little tiny daily wins foryourself so you can feel the momentum building, feel the excitement behind itand really truly keep making progress towards your dreams, goals and desires.
Monday Aug 08, 2016
Where To Find The Best Sources For Personal Growth
Monday Aug 08, 2016
Monday Aug 08, 2016
The concept to figure out what works in life – and hopefully it would save you lots of time and money and help you on your journey. My hallucination is when we go out in life at the very first moment (and sometimes it’s later in life that we want to do this). But what you start doing is reading books, listening to tapes, watching videos like this, searching for answers. What’s fascinating is the first answer that you find are NOT ALWAYS the best answers (sometimes they are).
How do you figure out the difference between the really valuable information and the not-so-valuable information?
How do you avoid people to charge you ridiculous amount of money for not so useful stuff and people who charge you the right amount of money for useful stuff or no money at all – if you can find it online.
What factors need to be present in your personal filter to comb through large amount of information worth using and applying and what’s not worth using and applying? There’s a handful of things that I look for or a place to start for you and hopefully you will make a list.
- Personal experience – If I want to learn from them or study what they have done, I want to know that they’ve had personal experience getting the job done.
- Find someone who have messed it up so that I will learn what are things that I should not do and not just what to do. Just observe how they do it, when they do it, what they read and when you get their patterns you will be able to find out what to do and avoid and starts to add up to the results you want.
What are the key factors:
ROI (return on investment) – anytime I read a book, take a program, go to a seminar or a class, attend a course, etc. I look for the ROI that is going to come out of this and not just physical, monetary ROI but emotional ROI.
Define your personal values – what is most important to you in life, health, finances, relationships, spirituality and all these areas. Does the person teaching this concept in life is aligned with the values I think are most important in life? If they do, they are probably a good reflection to learn some knowledge from it. If they don’t, even if it is great knowledge, the way they are going to teach it and what they stand for might violate what you stand for therefore it is not the best place to gather knowledge.