How To Do 10 Years Of Work In 2 | Ed Mylett

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“So today's topic is what advice would I give my younger self?”

Or to young people in general about winning in their life and being successful? And prosperous? And so that might even be a 10 year old. It could be 15, 18, 25, you could be 30. It may even be that it's not even young and age,

but it's young in the sense that you feel behind in your life and you want to turn it around and you need kind of a game plan to make things happen and just completely change your life. So, but I've wrote this today and thought about it in terms of talking to a 10, 12, 15 year old person,

but it applied to anybody. So here's what I want to start out with 15 keys that I think are required. There would be my advice that I've given to my own children who are now both in college,

but I started giving them this advice when they were very, very young, 8, 9, 10 years old.

So number one is this. If you're going to win in life, very simple rule. Outwork everyone. And I know that there's all these substitutes about shortcuts, works smart, not hard. Let me tell you the truth.

At the top of everything in life, everybody's smart. And what separates them is hard work. Remember that again. At the top of every craft, there are brilliant people. There are very smart people.

There's no secrets or shortcuts to success in life. And if you're listening to this in your 30s, you want to go to the next level. Whatever it might be, I want to remind you or maybe for the first time tell you, maybe it's a wake up call. You got to outwork everyone.

And I've pushed this with my children over and over and over again. Quite frankly, I saw my own dad do that. My dad was a hard worker. My dad was up every single day before anybody else in the house was gone. And before the sun was up, and he came home when the sun was down, and I watched hard work

happen. Now one of the things I would love to see happen for more of you is that you prove that hard work pays off.

I watched my father work and work and work and really never get all the rewards that

I thought he deserved. But if you find the right outcome, the right business, the right thing you're passionate about, outwork everyone, number one rule to being successful in life, number two. Be willing to work for nothing or very little to be right next to a mentor. Too many people aren't willing to sacrifice short-term.

I've told my children if you can get close to a mentor. Even if you've got to work for free for a while and have a second job and get close to them and up close.

“See, listen, there's a great Chinese proverb that says, "If you want to know the road”

ahead, ask those coming back. If there is a hack to success, it's finding somebody who's got there. They have the directions, they have the instruction manual. You can get close to them. And you can compress timeframes, things that maybe you would have won anyway, but I might

take a new 10 or 20 or 30 years. Maybe you can compress that time frame into 5 or 8 or 9 or 10. And so do everything you can to get a qualified mentor. If you can go to work for them and get up close to them and work for not a lot of money for a short-term period of time, I would recommend you do that.

If you can't do that, I would find a way to pay for mentorship. You're going to pick the right one and you've got to study them, which they're back around. You know, they've done something you want to do. Somebody can be very, very successful in an area of life, but it's not the area you're

going into. There's probably somebody more qualified. So number one is outwork everyone. Number two, compress timeframes by getting close to a mentor, go to work for them.

“If even if it's not for a lot and maybe hire them if you have to, third thing.”

Do something entrepreneurial while you're young. You know, when I was 13 years old, I started selling sodas and candy bars at the golf course. There was this little part at Diamond bar golf course, there was a street that backed up to one of the tea boxes and I would sit behind the chain link fence.

And I'd go to the store and buy 12 packs of different sodas and candy bars and chips and snacks because they did not have a lady or a guy in one of those golf carts going around that would provide beverages and food. I didn't sell beer, obviously. But I started a little business there when I was a very young man and I'd walk out of

there on a weekend and put some money on my pocket and I learned about profit and loss. I learned about supply and demand. I learned about marketing and selling and closing and how to get somebody to buy maybe more than one item. If I gave him a deal, I made little packages.

I created the science and it just got me thinking like an entrepreneur and it really changed my life. I loved the excitement of it. I loved the thinking you had to do strategically to make it work. How could I improve it?

What could I do more next week? Was I sitting in the right spot? Did I say the right thing when they walked up? You know, all these little things I learned is really a very, very young man. And then that morphed into an auto detailing business that I had.

It was called ENJ detailing and that morphed into a baseball card business that I had.

I was a guy who bought and sold and traded baseball carts.

And so I had these businesses when I was young. In fact, I'm very proud of two nephews that have auto detailing businesses now. And I have to think that that has something to do with the fact that I had one. When I was a young man, my gosh, 40 years ago, I had an auto detailing business. And that taught me about all kinds of things.

It taught me how to interact with people, how to persuade. It taught me about doing really good work. It taught me that not everybody's nice all the time and grateful for your work and I developed a little bit of a thick skin. So I went from sodas at the golf course to auto detailing to baseball cards.

And then I went off into the world and I had different jobs and there was a bus boy and a bus boy at the hole and she allowed a restaurant. And then I was a, I was a grosser at the bad gross reason, safe way. And I did these things that I worked to do. And I watched how businesses run.

You know, I watched how this man's name was Guil that owned the restaurant, how he ran it, how he thought the standards that he set the things he did well, the things he didn't do well. And I learned an awful lot about being an entrepreneur by working in someone else's business. And then very early in college, I started reading books which we're going to talk about secondly today and listening to entrepreneurship because those discussions didn't happen

to my family and mindset and dreaming and vision and these were all things that were not discussed in my family. We were just a great family, but we just just worked and just sort of, you know, existed day to day to pay bills.

And so third is do something entrepreneurial when you're young.

If you have children encourage that my own son has saved a lot of money, started a little golf club trading business where he would buy clubs online and then sell them in person or advice person. He's made a significant little game when he was a little boy to go to school and he would buy and sell video games and I'd love to the little entrepreneurship to make in the deal

that shaking a hand that keep in your word, learning how to persuade and communicate correctly. These are all really important traits in life. So that would be the next one. Four thing I would tell you is constantly work on and study the art of communication.

“One of the great separators in life is somebody who's a powerful communicator.”

It's a lost art form with the digital age. So many people have their noses and faces in a phone. They don't really interact. They don't want to make eye contact. They don't want to persuade.

They don't want to transfer energy or articulate their words. Quite frankly vocabulary is limited in a lot of people. And so I would study the art form of communication. I would study great communicators. I would read books on it.

I'd watch them when they speak. I'd someone in your life that's a friend of your families and they're just an outstanding communicator. What is it that they do well? You know, as a speaker, I studied to stand up comedians.

I studied pastors and preachers. I watched people give speeches, political figures that I thought were really good at it. But also just one-on-one. My dad had a couple of friends that were just great communicators. And I'd watch how they position their hands, how they walked, how they used a rich vocabulary.

You know, at the same time it was simple and it was easy to understand how good a listeners they were. I've created a great deal of content on communication because I'm such believer that it's a separator in life. I think that if you can become a great communicator in life, whether that be the written

word or the spoken word, or both, you've separated yourself to a very small percentage of people. Maybe 1%, most people that I made are not great communicators. Most people I made aren't even very good at introducing themselves, making eye contact, shaking

“a hand, these things seem basic, but you should evaluate it if you're a young person”

listening to this, certainly, but even if you're in your 30s or 40s, how good of a communicator are you? And is that something limiting you? And if you're a young person, you want to separate yourself, you become a great communicator.

What I meet young people, the thing that impresses me is when I meet somebody who's an incredible communicator. Hello, Mr. Milet, how are you? They shake my hand. They look me in the eye.

They understand that a conversation is asking and answering questions. It's not often times you meet a young person, how are you? Good? What greater you're in fourth, right? And when I meet a child who's like, I'm in fourth grade, Mr. Milet, and by the way, my

favorite subject is math.

Always wanted to ask you, were you good in school?

Were grades important? And then now I'm at a conversation, wow, this is amazing. And I feel connected to that person, because clearly, somebody's emphasized to them that they need to learn how to communicate in life. It's very difficult to become wealthy in this world.

If you can't communicate well, now there are exceptions to it. And some of the tech businesses and a few, there are some exceptions, but not very many. And even in that world, if you have the ability to communicate to get hired, to get in a

“position, to get advancement, I think it's a huge advantage.”

Number five, build a brand or a network or both. Work on building your personal brand or your network, your network will ultimately become your net worth. In life, often times, it is all, it's two things. It's who you know, your network, who can you call, who can get on the phone, who can

refer, who can make a connection for you.

can meet people like that, go to places where they are. And the other one is brand, which is who knows you, both are important in life, not only who do you know, but who knows you. And so build a brand and build a network and make that a priority in your life. Number six, live below your means for a long time.

Don't be somebody who wants to impress people by buying fancy dinners or going to the club and buying or spending a bunch of money, live below your means. Be somebody who builds the habit, young, very young, of whatever you make, you keep some

of it that you save money, you pay yourself first.

This is a habit. It's a personality trait of successful people. They save money, they live below their means, they resist the temptation to spend frivolously. And by the way, some people can do that for the short term, you know, they make $5,000 a month and they spend three.

That's great. But then as they accumulate that pile of money, then eventually the temptation to blow that on a fancy car, right, or take a crazy expensive vacation, blows all the work they did. So build the habit of living below your means, it's something that, man, if I emphasize

that to my kids, I don't know whether they both have it yet or not. But it's something that I talk about all the time. Number seven, have an emergency fund.

“And I mean, starting young, you should have three months income.”

If you're young, you don't even have an income.

You should have a pile of money set aside in case of emergency in your life.

Why? Number one, there will be one. Number two, it gives you confidence when you have some savings in life. And if I say this to people all the time, what I was making minimum wage, I found a way to save $20 a month.

And that may seem insignificant, but it wasn't because that 20 turned into 200. That 200, eventually over time turned into 600 enough. I had some money saved after three or four or five years and it gave me confidence when I made decisions. It made me, it gave me some security and comfort in knowing I had an case of emergency.

I was going to be okay, in case my car broke down, in case somebody needed something. In case something came up where I had an expense, I had to make that I had an emergency fund. These are, these are, these seem small, but these are significant things that breed success. So if you're 10, 12, 15, 18, 20 years old, these are important things.

If you're 30, 40, or 50, and you're struggling in life, go back through my list. Do you have the emergency fund, right?

“Are you doing the different things I'm referencing here?”

Are you entrepreneurial? Are you working on your communication ability? All of these things matter. So even if you're struggling in your 30 or 40 or 50, are you outworking everyone? Are you willing to work for nothing or getting close to a mentor and joining a group where

you get a mentor or hiring a personal mentor? Are you doing something entrepreneurial? Are you constantly working on the art of communication? Are you building your brand and your network? Are you living below your means?

And do you have an emergency fund? These are all really important things. Number eight, learn and study money and the stock market. You understand how money works. Learn how the market's trade.

Understand how interest rates affect things. This is not that complicated. Learn a little bit about inflation. Understand how the markets work. This is an important leg up in life.

You don't have to know everything. You don't have to be a guru. I'm not saying day trade or anything like that. What I'm saying is it's a huge deficiency in life to walk around in life and not know anything about money.

And I need people all the time that make money, but don't know anything about it. And it's very difficult to hold on and grow a pile of money if you don't have some basic understanding of how the stock market works, of how money is traded, how things go up, why they go down.

“In fact, I'm going to tell you that I think less than 5% of people that I meet have any”

understanding at what's so ever of money. Pick up a book on money, right? Go to a seminar on it. Do some research. There's information all over the internet, watch some videos.

Pick up a financial periodical that you read on a regular basis that you subscribe to. Start to just, by the way, there's just a part of life when you're thinking about money. When you're thinking about learning about something, it leads into different roads.

And when you never think about it and you don't know anything about it, it's going to be

a hard time to get any of it, right? Just that's just logically speaking. So if I wanted to become, you know, accumulate, you know, become a great athlete, I'd have to know a little bit about the sport. And so learn and study money doesn't take a lot of time, then it'd be full time.

If you're young, you're 10 to 12, 15 years old, you will have such a massive leg up in life. If you just start to study markets and money and the dollar and how it works and currency and these things aren't that complicated, they're really fascinating things for most people. And you're going to be in a percentage somewhere between 1 and 5% of all human beings who have any real understanding of it.

So you think about these things I've listed. You know eliminated like 95% of the competition in your life if you do these things. So you shrunk the billions of people, right? And then really, in that case, it's not everybody has the opportunities you have. Some people just weren't blessed like you were to be born into a place in the world where

So many pressures don't even have running water, right? And you've been blessed of an opportunity, if you're listening this more than likely, to be somewhere in the world where you can change your stage in life. You've already, you've won the genetic lottery in that case, right? And so that shrunk down life, lucky you, lucky me, right?

And then these other things, you've now, it's a very small percentage of people. I tell my kids this all the time. The more you understand success in winning, you're going to find out you're competing with a very small group of people. Very small.

Now, here's the thing. That group, it's competitive. That group, you better have your act together.

“And that's why these things matter here that I'm describing.”

But I don't believe winning and success, whatever that means to you, whether it's a, an abundance of money or you climb to the top of your profession or you contribute ultimately to the way that you want for a lot of people to listen to this, that it's not money oriented. I still think if money's not a priority to you, you should still understand how money works because you're going to retire someday.

You have to have basic understanding of retirement and taxes and how money moves at any age, even if having a lot of it's not your priority, okay? But you've got a real chance to move forward in life if you do these things, okay? For nine, in life, try and pick something that takes advantage of some gift you have. It'll make your life much easier.

I'm not saying that you have to be great at what you do. I wasn't great at anything that I've done it first.

I've never really naturally been good at anything I've tried.

But I have finally landed on things that took advantage of some natural giftedness of mine, meaning my competitive nature, my resiliency, my willing to outwork somebody. I wanted things that would separate that. I was lucky in life that, you know, if you're listening to this, I was given a deep voice, right?

“So using my voice in life is an advantage.”

Now, by the way, there are some of the best speakers in the world who don't have a great voice, but they have great presence, right? Or unbelievable vocabulary, or just such an amazing heart to serve that people feel and sense it. Whatever that thing is, I'd like to think that I have that.

And it's, you know, I have a deep voice. Why would I not want to use that, right? And so it's taken advantage of something that I have. I'm not good at engineering. I would have been at, I was an electrician's apprentice one summer.

And I had such admiration for people that can do that work. I'm just not inclined. It was just so difficult for me to get to baseline competency because none of my natural talents or gifts seemed to fit in that world. I wish it did, but it doesn't.

I'm not really good at fixing things physically, you know, whether that's working on a car or, you know, stuff around the, I'm just not good at it.

And I probably could get Oak hay at it, but I never be great because I have no natural

proclivity for it. I would have never been an NBA basketball player. I probably could have been a pretty good, I could have got to eventually where if you went to a, a wreck league, I could shoot, but I was never going to get to the NBA. I'm not tall enough.

I'm not fast enough. I'm not coordinated enough. And so that wouldn't be the career choice for me. It's so many people will choose a career. And I'll think sometimes this just doesn't take advantage of any of your giftedness.

So start to identify your gifts when you're young. What are you good at? Not just what do you enjoy. I don't think what you have. I don't think what you do for a living.

You always have to enjoy.

Okay. I've done a lot of things and work that I didn't enjoy. But those things allowed me to accumulate the resources that, and my off work time, I did things that I enjoyed. So I don't think everyone says you got to do what you love and you'll never work a day

in your life. Well, that's true.

“If you can do that, you've really won the lottery, right?”

But not everybody has that luxury. And so I can't, you know, I love golf, I can't make a living doing that. So there are, there are blessed people in life that have chose a profession, not only they're good at, but that they love. In my case, some things I did that I loved and some things I did because I have to because

that's what work is. And I want to challenge you to do the same thing. But if you can find something you've got a proclivity for, at least one element of the career, there's something you could take advantage of a giftedness you have. And different businesses I've had, it took advantage, at least one element of that business

took advantage of one of my gifts, maybe not all of. So I had to get really good at things I wasn't good at, but there was this one thing I was good at that made it something that I could get to the top of. And so I would recommend that you pick something that takes advantage of some gift you have.

If you know what that gift is, and if you don't know what it is, try a lot of different things until you find the thing that feels like home, that feels natural to you, that you have a passion for, 10. Become an expert as soon as you can be on real estate. This is the basic thing, become an expert on it.

And as soon as you can in life, find a way to buy a deal, get your first deal done.

has done part of it at least through owning real estate at some point in their life.

“And I'm talking about real estate that generates a cash flow real estate that can be flipped.”

I'm not talking about a primary residence. And so read about it, learn about it very young, very young, while I was still in college, I started to do it, I bought a course, Carlton Sheets, how to buy real estate and nothing down. And I listened to these cassette tapes over and over and read the books.

And then I found some friends who had similar interests that had actually bought properties. And I learned a little bit from them and then I spent money I didn't have on a credit card to go to Robert Allen's real estate seminar. And I sat for three or four days in a seminar, I really was money I didn't have to spend. And that was actually my entree into personal development because a lot of these people

that are at these events were listening to Tony Robbins or Jim Rown or Wayne Dyer, different

people. And I thought, okay, so personal development's a part of it, growing my identity. But I was learning about how real estate worked. And I think it's just a great leg up in life and the sooner you can buy a deal, you know, I love the idea of, you know, at some point if you're a young person, if you can find

away, you know, by the way, has to be the right deal, the right price, I'm not recommending any property. But, you know, if you've saved enough money and you buy a dueplex, you rent one unit out, you live in the other, you buy a fourplex, you know, there's depending on where you live, there's great, you know, FHA financing.

If you're veteran VA financing.

“And you have to write the right time, but it's, but at the right time when you can, I think”

one of the principles of success is to learn and eventually invest in real estate. These are just success leaves clues, these are some of the clues I've seen in my life. Number 11, acquire cash flow producing assets. And so about obviously includes real estate, but there are other things that pay cash flow.

So become somebody, I guess, what I'm saying here, who is owns assets and doesn't put their money into liabilities, begin to understand the distinction between something that is a liability and an asset, and particularly if that asset can spit off cash flow, there's all kinds of different things that pay cash flow, real estate being, you know, one of the more significant ones, but the higher barrier of entry capitalized, but there are things,

I mean, I consider a CD, something that can spit off eventual cash flow, right? And so anything that pays a rate of return, start to be someone who is really in defining assets and not liabilities, that's why I say don't spend money. For the most part, I was very, very wealthy. I avoided things that were liabilities like fancy dinners or cars that were going to depreciate

and value, right? Things like that, close that after you buy them really aren't worth very much money, they depreciate. I liked buying cash flowing assets, whether that was real estate or putting my money into some type of a fund that paid me something.

I learned about how money worked, I learned about how real estate worked, I learned on growing me and my identity through the mentors and personal development that I had. So 11 is a choir, a cash flow producing assets and not liabilities. Number 12, reduce all distractions, become great at life of not being distracted. Most people in life end up not winning, not because of their lack of talent or lack of opportunity,

but because they get distracted too easily. They get distracted with social things, they get distracted with televisions, social media, drama, relationships, they just get distracted, whatever that might be, a hobby they're too into gaming, whatever it is, be somebody who eliminates distractions and you are someone who's going to kick some tail in life, I can tell you that right now, reduce all distractions.

13, be a business athlete, be somebody who decides that you're going to train like an athlete, even though you're in business, that means you're physical body, you're weight training, cardiovascular training, you're hydration, begin to treat yourself like the, if

“you own a thoroughbred horse, how would you treat it, right?”

It's sometimes we don't treat ourselves that way when I was very young, I read a book called the Corporate Athlete, I'm like, wow, I'm going to be an athlete. In fact, I'm old enough that back in those days, very few people lifted weights or even did any strength training that were also entrepreneurs that were also business people, there was very few of them.

Most of the gyms I went to were mainly kind of gym people, right, who then went out and went to a corporate job every day or their, their blue collar job, they were very few entrepreneurs

training and I wanted to be an athlete and so I've always approached my business as a sport.

And part of that is my energy level, my focus level, my training, my presence, my strength, my stamina, these things all matter, so be a business athlete that mindset alone is a shift for most people and an advantage when you walk in a room, how you look physically, I might talk about your handsome or pretty, I'm talking about that you make an appearance that you make a presence when I see somebody that's fit, I think this is a discipline person,

this is somebody I should take seriously, no, I've taken a lot of people seriously in my life that don't have those things, I'm not saying you have to have that to be taken seriously,

because you don't even have to say anything, there's obviously something about you that says

I'm disciplined, I keep promises to myself and your strength, your energy, your ability to affect people is dramatically better when you're an athlete in business, so be a business athlete, 14, Tithe and/or be charitable now, find a way on your very limited income to give something

“away to give to others, I believe there's a law of reciprocity in life and I believe when you're”

somebody who starts out giving even if it's small, even when it hurts, that eventually that you're blessed and that there's something to be said for feeling good about the fact that you're contributing to others and not waiting until it's easy to do, and so even if it's very small, I mean it could be a very marginal amount of money, but just to take a part of it and to give it to your faith or to give it to a cause you believe in or to give it to somebody in need,

it'll come back to you tenfold in my opinion, so Tithe and be charitable now, and then 15, be careful who you let get close to you, be very careful of that. When my dad was getting older and I was still pretty young person, I thought, my dad doesn't have a lot of close friends, I almost felt bad for my dad, my dad would say, Eddie, as the older you get, you'll realize that most people are in your life for a season and it's not

that most people aren't good, most people are good, but I would just caution you to be careful

“with who you let get too close to you, and I think it's some of the best advice I could give you.”

I can tell you, most of the people that are past 30 years old right now are nodding their heads with me when massive agreement. People have to earn your loyalty, they earn your trust and giving that away too early to somebody, I believe is a mistaken life, and so be careful who you get close to, be very careful, and who you are around regularly will determine your future. Very short in our mission here, folks, I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget

to follow the show on Apple and Spotify, links are in the show notes, now on to our next guest. There's something unique about you, Ed, that's no one else, and I'm not saying this because you're here, I don't think I've said this to anyone on the show, there's someone unique about you that I don't think I've ever experienced around anyone else. There's an essence, there's a presence, there's a power, a command, an authority, a humble confidence, there's like this essence about you.

And I'm really curious, what do you think made you you? What were the elements growing up that made you all the things you are now? Was it the pre-13 kind of everything that happened with your parents? Was it stuffed more from school? Was it a relationship that really kind of flipped these things on for you? What were the elements early on that made you this commanding time presence today? Well, thank you for that. I thank you, that's nice to hear. I am, because by the way, I love people that

have that combo, like I love people a lot of self-confidence, a lot of humility, because people a lot of humility that have no self-confidence, you're kind of dragging them through life as a friend. Some with all the self-confidence and no humility, they're going to burn out. They're going to make them stay, they're not curious, they don't grow. I think that, I think even the reason I'm in the personal development space, why do I believe so much that people can change? I watched my dad do it.

And then, in my case, I had to learn these things, man, to be like a baseline functioning person. So, my default personality is insecure, even today, even today. Come on, very much. I was at the fault. You wake up and you say, "I'm a nobody or what's not?" I was like, like, this, I'm following everybody. They if they really knew, you know, pretty, some imposter syndrome mixed with just like tremendous, I was bullied as a kid. My dad

“was an alcoholic. I wasn't a real big guy. The only thing I wasn't good in school,”

the only thing I was good at was sports. A lot like with you, you were a great athlete.

So, my default is tons of insecurity. So, that's probably never going to go away the humility

part. So, the part that I've worked on, really hard, is the self-confidence part. And so, I've got all this stuff in the book on those tips and what have I done to build it? Because I had to get there just to get to baseline. And then, I'm like, this stuff works. What if I refined it and made it my own and started to build these other strategies and stuff? So, the confidence part is the thing I'm always going to have to work on.

Even today, even with all the success and the, you know, the massive show and the big businesses and all the homes and everything that people see, the truth is, what else do you need, though, to feel more calm? I don't need other things. It's an internal game. I don't need other stuff. In other words, the stuff is really fleeting and temporary. So, I don't need another, you know, about an island lately, you know that, right? Like, I wouldn't have bought this island.

It didn't make me more confident. It just was something that I've always wanted to be able to do.

living in my intention, which is to serve, which is to like help other people. When I'm not doing that, Wayne Dyer, when I met him, really, really young, told me, you're going to change the world at my, and I'm like, and then he, I'm sure he said this to a lot of people, but he would compliment at me. I met him on a beach. We watched the sun come out. Yeah, in Maui. Yeah, I was running another

beach. Yeah, I was running on the beach. What was he like? I never met him. Incredible. So,

we became a dear friend of mine. But I'm running, you know, you know, you get up before the sun comes up. I'm running on this. I'd won this incentive trip. And there's this bald dude running towards

“me with this hairy back. I'll never forget this sweaty hairy back. And it was so long ago,”

because I had a Sony walk man on. Wow. He had one, and he ran by me. That's Wayne Dyer. And I said, "Doctor Dyer, you changed my life." And he had this deep voice, like mine, and he pulls that music, well, I doubt that. Wow. And he goes, "I bet you changed your life." But he was, "How did I help you?" And then he walked towards me, and we'd like to get emotional. Like, God's been so good to me. We sat on this beach together and watched the sun come up for about

a hour and a half. And about an hour into it, he goes, "You're going to change the world." And I'm sure he said this to a lot of people. And he's like, and it's, you're very talented. You're brilliant. You're a good, good communicator, you know. And he goes, and that's not the reason why. And he was right in the book at that time called the Power of Intention. That's great book. Great book. Incredible book. And he goes, "You really intend to help people." And he goes, "All these things

with your father and you're upbringing and all that eddy goes, that's all made you." And he goes,

"You have such a heart to want to help people." And he goes, "Would you do me a favor if we never

meet again and we ended up meeting many times?" I said, "Yeah." And he said, "You never link your confidence to your ability." Because I know you struggle with your confidence. That's predicated on your abilities or your achievements. You're always going to be chasing it. He goes, "But if you link your confidence to your intentions, man, you have beautiful intentions." And that is something I knew about me. I know I have a good heart. And I've never forgotten that. So when I do a podcast or a

speech, I just connect to my intent, you know. And it's been the one thing that's brought me confidence. Because if you said, "Hey, you're going to be confident because you're great or you've got a house or you have a plane." I go, "Yeah, but yeah, but if you go, you've got to be confident because you have beautiful intentions to help me by a go." My mentalist team might be right. And that's where my confidence comes from. So as an athlete, I gain confidence from results. From actually getting

the result of becoming better. That's not going to get it. That's not going to get it. I was not good. And then I put in the effort and all the mistakes or the failures of the feedback, well, I could call it, gave me the lessons and taught me how to get better to accomplish the result that I was looking for. The goal, win the game, or just improve my abilities. So what I'm hearing you say is linked also linked confidence to intention. Some people say, link it to the effort. Right? Like

the effort that you show up, that you just keep showing up. And others talk about the results. She'll be thinking about it. There's two. I have a whole, I've called the Holy Trilogy in the book of self-confidence. What is this? But the confidence trilogy is faith. You have confidence. So if you're a person of faith, no matter what you believe them, it's amazing to me how people

“to believe in energy, quantum energy, or they believe in their Christian, like me. I believe in both”

by the way. But whatever their faith is, that they have it on Sunday, they have it at Bible study, or they have it when they get together with their friends, or when they meditate, but somehow when they walk into a business meeting, they're alone. So why are you alone then, but you're not

alone these other times? So I'm never alone. So that's number one. Number two is my intention

and third is my associations. Change my confidence. But here's the biggie. If you don't have self-confidence, here's what you have. You have a really bad reputation with yourself. Yes. You have built a habit of not keeping the promises you make to yourself. We've all heard this before, but there's a level of a book, chapter in the book called One More Standard. Here's how I built what I would call almost superhuman confidence in spite of my insecurity. Think about that. Superhuman confidence

in spite of my insecurity. That's exactly what you just said. It's an effort play. If you don't have self-confidence, you've never kept the promises you make to yourself. Check that box. If you have

“self-confidence, you've started to keep the promises you make to yourself. If you want to have”

superhuman self-confidence, you keep the promises you make to yourself and one more. So if I'm going to get up and I'm going to work out, I'm going to do 10 reps in the gym. I do one more. Come to do 45 minutes on the treadmill. I do one more. If I want to make 10 contacts in the day, I do that and one more. So I'm going to tell my daughter I love her every day. I'm going to do that and one more. And so that higher stance is in life. We don't get our goals. We get our standards

long term. And so if your standard is one more, what starts to happen is you go, I'm willing to do things. Other people aren't willing to do. And I combine that that I have great faith, great associations. And I intend to help people. This is a formula to build wonderful self-confidence and never lack humility when you have it. So when did you learn this one more mindset? Was this from your dad or the honor? Was this from my dad? So we talked about this a little bit earlier,

sober, he gave it one more try. He was going to stay sober one day at a time. And then my dad, I, there's no dreaming in my house. There's no like my jet, you know, I've had I've been blessing like multiple airplanes, right? In my life. My jet was in almost walking distance of my dad's house.

He's never been on any of the, wow. And I would say to my dad, I would say, hey, let's go play golf

and Maui. Let's go. There's these great golf courses in the ocean. My dad would say, well, why would I go all the way to Maui to play golf with my favorite person, my son when we can play here in Chino? It's not about there. I want to be with my son. So this, my family had none of that stuff. But my dad knew I was a dreamer. And my dad would always say, you know, I was one decision away from changing my life the whole time, one choice. And he'd say, Eddie, you're not as far away

from these dreams as you think you are. And I'd say, really dad, and you go, no, you're actually a lot closer than you think. But because you think it's so far away, you behave in accordance with that belief system and it always keeps it that far away from you. So how do we bring our dreams

“closer to us? The first thing is, that's a great question. The first thing is you need to believe”

and know that you're one decision, one relationship, one meeting, one book, one thought, one something away from a completely different life. And when you know that, when you're, then you begin to look for them. And so in the second chapter of the book, I have a thing in the book called The Matrix. And your matrix is your particular activating system in your brain. It's the filter for your entire life. Okay. And this filter reveals to you the world that's in front of

you. Again, an example of it is, I just, I like what Muscus is doing. So I just bought a Tesla. I drove it here today. I got a Tesla, too. You do. Model X, everybody, yeah. I got a plaid. Okay, wow. It's a plaid. It's a good one. Nice. And so about this plaid. And all of a sudden, man, everywhere I go, there's Tesla. See you everywhere. There's everywhere. Like, well, I said, they're everywhere. You know, three lanes over other side. Great. Freaking Tesla. This is crazy.

They were always there. Why did I see them before? Because they weren't part of my RAS.

So the key thing, I teach you in the book how to slow down time and create the matrix of your life. When you make the Tesla's of your life, those relationships, those meetings, those thoughts, those encounters. You can very easily do this. But there's a process of repeated visualization you do that's not complicated. It's chapter two of the book. And it will shift you. The other component, too. I've a chapter in the book called Becoming Impossibility Thinker and a Possibility

Achiever. Here's how most people's frameworks. They don't have an RAS program. They're not intentional. So they keep getting. If the things most important to you are your worries, fears, anxiety, problems, bills, you will continue to have people, places, and things reveal to you that confirm it. And if you operate out of your memory and your history, if this is your pattern, your framework,

“you will continue to find those things. You need to learn to operate out of your imagination”

and your dreams. This is a different framework for life. Imagination is different than dreaming.

Imagination causes you to create dreams and thoughts that never happen. When you imagine something,

you create a space. Once you have a thought, this is powerful. When you have a thought, you create a space that did not exist in the world before you had that thought. And that space is now exists. And the way your brain works and your life works and the universe works is it tries to furnish that space, whether it's a negative or a positive thought. It starts to hear things that wouldn't hear. That's why like when you're in a crowded room and they say, "Luice, you can hear

Lewis audit poorly over all the noise. Why it's in your RAS? That's why you see the Tesla." Okay? So, if the key thing is being able to operate out of this imagination, why is imagination so important? When you were a child, three, four, five years old, you were probably happier than you are right now. Why? Two reasons. A, you were closer to God. You had just been with God more recently.

“And two, you operated out of your imagination. You did not operate out of a history in a memory because”

you didn't have one. And slowly over time, by the time you were 10, 11, 12 years old, loving people and stalled their limiting thoughts and beliefs. They're software into you. Because most things in life are caught, not taught. You catch them. Wow. And so now you're starting to operate of history and memory and you repeat it and your RAS begins to see the things that reinforce that history and memory. And so you basically have the same life over and over again with a different

cast of characters in a different environment, but the same emotions. You have the same emotional home. My dad used to say to me, "Every call grow, till the day I he died, I'd known 50 years old, blah, blah, blah, whatever time of last thing he would always say to me." Be careful. Be careful. And I'm going to go with what? I don't know. I never knew. But when is that programming from the time you're eight years old? Yeah. Be careful. Hey, go to school. Be careful. So, with that,

an operator this fear thing, right? All that. And you be careful. And you be careful. But don't make this risk. Don't take that business. You don't start a podcast. Don't get on that stage and speak. Don't do this. Don't do that. You say that to an already unconfident insecure person. He made it lovingly by the time I'm 50 worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Be careful. He even knew he was saying it to me. But what was he doing? He was installing God bless him. His limiting

beliefs into me as a little boy. So a lot of these things that you believe, you were defense this when you started to believe them. They were installed in you by loving people who were around you.

emotions you experienced pretty regularly might be really familiar from your parents. One or two of them.

“Right? And so you need to look at your emotional home. What's your most powerful emotion and”

the emotion that you wish you could let go of? Love is the most powerful emotion in the world.

We will all do everything for love. If there were more love in the world, the way we treat one another, the way we express our thoughts. You know, you'll do anything for love. Right? So love is by far my most powerful emotion. It's like, I love you. Then when I just saw you, we didn't just hug for like one second. Yeah. And you do this better than I do. I hold people. I make it uncomfortable because I just want to hug and love our people.

But it's not uncomfortable, bro. Right? Because the reason you're so successful is you truly do love people. Yeah. And you come from that place. And I know we're bigger dudes and like like that's a beautiful expression of a man. A real man is capable of real love. That's the sign of real strength. So that's the most powerful one. And then for me, I know the emotion that I wish I didn't have. It's chaos. Really? I, how often do you experience chaos? Unless you because I'm aware of it.

But I'm going to tell you all the time till about five years ago. Even when we first met,

“why, I used to even say this, man, I operate great under chaos. Man, you should see me operate”

under chaos. Most people can't handle chaos. I'm calm under pressure. Well, the reason for that was I grew up in an alcoholic home. So I'm very familiar with chaos. It became a very familiar emotion. And what we do is we gravitate towards the familiar emotions in our life, even if they're not ones that serve us. And I don't think there's negative or positive emotions. I'll say this in the book. They're just R. Yes. Fear is a negative. It's fear in abundance is negative. But some fear,

being afraid to do this podcast, they do some extent causes us to prepare. So a dose of it, it was given to us in the caveman day, so T-rex didn't need us. So some fear is good. Some anxiety is okay. Some frustration, some anger is appropriate. It's to the dosage level. And we get these four five of them for me. Some chaos is okay. It's fun. It's exciting. It's exhilarating, right? But getting it every day, every week, every month, all the time. And so how do you get rid of it? Well,

one way you get rid of it is just being awareness. We have an awareness of a thought. It loses its impact and power over you. It almost becomes like this. I'll do it. I'm doing it again, aren't I? I'm doing the chaos. Everything's great right now. The little houses are paid off. The kids are happy. Mary, do a great woman. You got a great friends. I'm doing the chaos thing again, aren't I? You dummy. You're doing it again. It kind of loses its power over you. So I have a chapter in the book

called One More Emotion and how to take an inventory of the emotions you have. And so yeah, man, mine just definitely love. And the one I don't want is chaos. Because chaos causes me to act out of anger and frustration. It can depress me. And your intentions are not going to be as, uh, I guess. It's a gateway emotion. Chaos is my gateway emotion to the ones I don't want. Chaos gives me stress. Chaos gives me anger. Chaos gives me frustration. Chaos gives me fear.

So it's a gateway. What is the result when you create from that space of chaos? It's funny. I've been, I have found the ability to externally create something pretty productive. Right. But stay with me on this. But the process and getting there is destructive. The process and getting there is not beautiful. And I used to think a lot of successful force in your way to get the results. Almost through force, you know. And I still do it sometimes. I'm thinking

of a situation this week or I did it. And I used to think, well, that's a superpower though, because I've created all these external, look what I made, look what I did. Yeah.

“And I'm doing it because of that, the truth is I did it in spite of it. And there's a lot of”

things in our lives that we have linked to our formula, our recipe of success that we hold on to, that you've done in spite of those things, not because of those things. So you're 51 now, 51? Yeah, 51. When you were 40, on a scale of 1 to 10 of that, the self-confident happiness joy scale, 10 being like you loved yourself fully or peaceful, you out in the abundant mindset, you were had inner peace, you know, joy,

1 being, you hated yourself, you were miserable, you were in chaos 24/7. Where were you on that scale at 40? Okay. The real answer is probably a three of happiness. And but if you met me, I could convince you that it was probably an eight that you were super happy and you had it. Probably a three. And since your father passing where you know, probably in nine, really? Yeah. And I no longer feel the need to convince you,

because I've learned that this has already existed within me. I didn't have to go get it. I just had to allow myself to experience it. And it took me a long time to

treat myself in such a way that I allowed myself to feel these things that have always been there.

I had them when I was a little baby boy. I just lost them along the way in these patterns and programs that were installed to me and my experiences and I got to share something with you, brother, that just dawned on me. I wrote this whole book and two weeks ago I had this, I just,

of always, you're not this. Why is that? It always shocks people, even people that know me

really well, they're like, not you. I have that, but there's no way you have. Yeah, you're too confident, too talented, too. I don't know that I'm too talented, but I think I can fake it pretty well.

“And I disqualify myself because the truth is that maybe for a while,”

everything that I got that was loved when I was a child only came when I achieved something. So I started to conflate early on in my life recognition and significance with love. In other words, my dad would love me if at the home run, my dad would love me if I get straight A's. And so then when I would feel these things, but something really, and also like, I'm really big at holding myself, I love to beat myself up with mistakes I've made.

I did this, I did that. I should have done this. I didn't do that.

And I've always thought these mistakes, these weaknesses of mine,

disqualify me from being happy or helping people. And this amazing breakthrough, the one decision that changed my family forever is my dad's decision to get sober, and it changed my family forever. I'm talking to you because my dad made that decision. And I've always been so proud of my dad for that. But this is just two weeks ago. Three, fifteen in the morning. I wake up. I'm crying.

And I wake Kristiana up. I go, "Babe, someone helped a dad." And she went, "What, honey?" I said, "Someone helped a dad." She was, "What do you mean?" I said, "Babe, I never thought of that." And my dad's darkest worst moment of his life and some coffee shop or some room somewhere, some precious soul helped my dad reach out to him, talk to him, talk to him, and got him sober.

Wow. And I said, "Babe, that's not the powerful part. And I have no idea what this person is, but I wonder if they know the difference they made in Max and Bella's, my children's lives, or your life with the millions of people I've helped, that one decision they made.

And she goes, "Oh my gosh, I said I never thought about this beautiful human being.

I always gave the credit to my dad, but some stranger helped him." And I said, "Babe, this is the banana's part. Do you know what qualified them now, my dad? They're messed up life." Well, they were in alcoholic. They were a drug addict. Little did that person know. The things they were the most ashamed of, the biggest mistakes of their lives. When they were using drugs and drinking and stealing it, that was qualifying and the change my dad's life.

And all of us, we run around carrying these bags of, I'm not qualified because I made this mistake. I had this bankruptcy, this relationship didn't work. I did this thing you don't know about.

“I'm so ashamed of that. That's why you're qualified. That's the thing that qualifies you.”

The humanness in you, you are the only human being with your combination of gifts that you were given, whatever they are, and your experience. And real human beings help real human beings by being vulnerable and transparency. I know where you are. I've messed up worse. I've made greater mistakes. I know that depression. I know that anxiety. I know that shame. I know what that feels like. That beautiful soul who was a drug addict in alcoholic, they didn't know all those mistakes

they're making. We're leading them out of their heart. And they finally got to a point where their intention was to help my father in the lowest moment of his life. They changed my dad's life. And they're changed mine. And maybe me and you were changing a few today because of that person's mess. It's crazy. Is that crazy? That's amazing. I know. I love them and thank them. That's amazing man. That was a great conversation. And if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the

Ed My Let's Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest. Welcome back to max out with Ed My Let. I got him. I got ET. Hey. We're so glad to have you here. Thank you so much. Beautiful home. Thank you. Thank you for family men. I feel I don't do a lot of this. So those who know me know, I probably have done two, three podcasts. Yeah. Well, wow. So this is, this is special. And as good as this is, have you here? It's better to have Dee Dee. Your wife here with Dev.

If you think you're in it all out. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No question. Thank you. Yeah. Thank you. So this is Eric Thomas,

“as you all know. And in my opinion, you guys know that I've been speaking for a long time. I think this”

is an anointed gifted, incredible communicator because it comes from your heart. You're outstanding. So for someone listening to this, talk about routine because if you, everyone wants to be free. One of the challenges is they act free before they are. You know what I mean? Like you, there's a certain amount of disciplines in routine and habits and rituals. You've got to have that could get you free at one point. Talk about that for a second. Yeah. I'm going to say honestly,

man, you know, I came to the realization one day. And again, love my biological father, you know, much respect, much respect for the person that raised me. But I realized at some point when I looked at my family's history, I was like, some things I don't want. Some things I want, but there's

your father's child. Like, you know, even though he didn't raise you, even though in the beginning,

you guys had, you know, whatever little stuff you're going to get through, he don't lie. You are lazy at times. You know what I'm saying? Like, he, you are super social and you were the talk then work. You know what I'm saying? I just had to grow up when they just be real myself and just say,

“eat the only way you're going to be successful is you've got to discipline yourself. You know, when you”

look at when you look at a horse, I'm talking about a thorough bread. It still needs that. What is that thing called it? They put on it. It's still, he needs that. Without, you know, you can't, you, you got to control them. You know, you got a lot of Jews got a lot of energy. He can go for, but you got to, you got to hone that. And so I realized, like, you know, eat, you sleep in, you play video game. Don't lie to yourself. You, you are powerful, but you have some vices. And you have some vices

that take you down a crazy road. Like, you are, your father. You are your grandfather. You are your mother. You are your grandma. Like, it's real. And so I start saying, okay, you got to discipline yourself. And that's for me. That's ain't for everybody. I start getting up at three o'clock in the morning. It's like, you're going to have to get up a little bit earlier because you didn't finish school. You didn't take care of your business. So you can't get up at the same time. Another man who gets

up who has to do his business. So you didn't get up at three. If you go catch the grapes,

you got to get up at three. You got to go to bed earlier. This is why I said, I've never drank

or smoked because the men in my life who did it were extremists had an uncle who died. So roses are delivered. You know, I had other uncles who drank and my father bless his heart, but he was drunk out on drugs for about 14 years. And I was just like, you know, eat. You can see that they don't know how to do it casually. Like, they ain't social drinkers. Like, they ain't social on substance. They taking it to a home of the level. And so for me, it was like, you got discipline yourself.

You're not going to die if you never know where alcohol tastes like. But if you taste it, you might have the same experience that has. So you just got discipline yourself. You know, I do vegan most of the time. You know, I'm saying, and I tell people, I love fried chicken. I love macaroni and cheese. I love a lot of desserts. But in my family, it's diabetes. So it's like, you know, if you do what they do, then you're going to get the results they got.

So you, yeah, chicken is good. And macaroni, cheese, where my grandma make it is great. And yes,

“the pound cake is phenomenal. But if you want to be with Dee Dee for the next 30, 40 years,”

you want to be able to walk. You know, I'm saying, you don't want to be on the cruise. I'm just on the cruise. And then it comes with people, you know, it was on the motor scooter. I'm saying, people with the Kangs and the walkers. And I'm not mad at them. But I'm like, I don't want that. I want to be able to walk at 60 as 70. I want to be independent at 80 if I can't be. So I'm going to have to make some sacrifices now for the long run. I would drink pop every day

of our cook is everybody hearing this though. Like, I mean, this and all of us that want to win. Like, you already said, like, I got to get up at three o'clock. And we're going to catch the greats because I started with some deficiency. Successful people are very self-aware. Like, they don't be as themselves, right? Like, I have laziness too. I love laying around. I love sleep. Right. No, but before I wouldn't have got to sleep here if I, if I was just me,

I had to get these rituals and habits and disciplines. And people think sometimes they listen to me and it was so intense like these new students are freaks. I'm not a freak. No. I don't know what you know what I say. Because it makes it easier for them to say, I can't do it if they freaks. Then I can't do that's they're out. You're exactly right. And I'm not going to give you that out. Neither are you. Like, I'm lazy. I got to get up early. I got to get up because if I don't get up by like,

I get up at 435. But if I don't get up by then, I will be in bed at 8 o'clock. I have to get up. I have to move my body. So I'm with you 100%. That was a great conversation. Be sure to follow

the ed my let's show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an

episode that way. I mean, you live in a space where there was a lot of other people that came through

“that could have done something big. Yeah. There's no question. By the way, I think it's successful”

relative to what, right? Like, I think both you and I are pretty good at this deception thing. Like, people do it in reverse. So some people deceive themselves into thinking their further ahead than they are, right? Yeah. But constantly, I'm, you know, they really want to tell you how well they're doing and they're sort of deceiving themselves. And that deception leads to lack of activity drive, desire, blah, blah, blah, blah. You and I do the reverse. Yeah. I see myself. I'm further behind than I am.

I know you do this too, because we've talked about it. Oh, I love deceiving myself. I love to see in our company. I love being, I love to see even the team because I want us to feel like we got, Malcolm X says this great quote, he says, that which you do not hate, you will eventually tolerate. I'm a big believer. And I, I got almost despised where I am right now. And I do. So I'm, I'm the kind of the king of deception with myself. So you are the same with you saying. Okay. He

deceives himself. Okay. You, you, most people that I mean, like, I'm doing good. Really compared to what? Correct. Okay. If I tell you, hey, a guy says to you, he's living the dream. Yeah. You like that? I don't, I don't like that. I, every person has ever said that to me, I knew he had already pulled off the side of the road. Hot of person. I'm living the dream. I'm like, what dream is this? Yeah. I literally is funny. One of my top guys at our firm a few weeks ago. One of my favorite

be watching this. But he said that to me, he goes, I just wanted to share with the world how amazing

“and incredible my life is. And blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I told him I said, when I was at”

your level, I couldn't stomach it. Yeah. I couldn't handle it. I couldn't live on that kind of income. Yeah. I didn't want to live my life like that. And I said, it scares me that you think somehow this is the dream. Yeah. And then, of course, he kind of corrected himself and backstop. But the fact is, I'm constantly deceiving myself that I, and I, it's not even, it's really, I really do feel that way. Like, I really don't feel successful. I'm not, I don't think I'm a failure. Yeah.

Imagine you're up against the highest version of me, my highest expression as opposed to what? Is it opposed to measure yourself again? Other people? Uh-huh. Uh, that's the biggest thing people do. They're so obsessed with other people. It kills them. They think about, what do they think about me? What do they gonna think about me? What do they say? And then they measure themselves against other people too. And I don't think, I mean, I've been

around you. Yeah. Your, your powerhouse, but neither one of us are, I think you're talking about Einstein at the break. Neither one of us have a super crazy off the charts IQ. Yeah. I sure know you don't. So I got, I'm going to talk to you for a second. I know for sure you've done

“a couple of tasks. Yeah. He just, he, he's taking shots at obvious. They're watching. They know”

they've seen you. No, but the fact of the matter is, you think it will be hard. No, but you think you didn't get, you didn't get, you didn't get where you are because of some gifted education. I can't wait to get into life though, man. I, you know. No, but it's fact. Both of us didn't get there because of some unbelievable natural giftedness we had that just produced success, right? I, so I don't measure myself against other people because they got gifts that are different

in the mind. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Would you've done unbelievable with, with what you've had? Okay. And I agree with the statement you made in the first segment which was this middle class thing. Yes. I got enough food. Yeah. I got enough, you know, I got enough food. I got enough money. I got a car. I got a bike. Yeah. Could it, it can be very easy to become to see, but

it's good enough. Well, here's what it is. People's, for most people, we have to ask you

stuff this too. Most people, this is what's different about. Yeah, I just told you this the other day. The thing that impresses me the most about you is that the more successful you've become, the more you've been fed, the hunger you are, which is irrational. Most people the more they eat, the less hungry they're right, the freaks of the world, the mega successful, somehow the more they're fed and they get hungrier. So the question now for a guy like you and that they're asking,

when's enough enough? Yeah. How many times have you been asked this? I've been asked that a lot and there's no such thing for me because I'm not trying to get to necessarily a place or just in a amount of goals. I want to be a billionaire. I have these things I want, but I'm not trying to just get to destinations. I'm trying to see where I can get as a man and every fast bit, my body, my spirituality, my family, my finances, my influence, my ability to communicate and here's for most people. This is

what I love about you since I took the shot at your limited interval. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Hey, we all have a limited interval. I don't kid you sell. Oh, you're right. I can recognize it in

others because I suffer from it. But here's what it is. Most people's will to win is for sale.

It's for sale. My most people's will will is for sale. A win is for sale. They can be bought. I can't be bought. So if we give you a just, if most people, if we give you just enough money, if there's a certain dollar amount, you stop working hard, you have a title, you stop working hard. We give you a car or a plane or a house or if the book broke. That's the book. That's the book. Yeah, that might be the book. That is the book. It's a win. Your will to win is for sale.

That's right. And I decided once I realized that because I watched it happen with people in their body and their finances and their family and their faith, whatever it is, I'm not for sale. So there isn't a place you're going to buy me. You can't get me. There's not a stop, a place of destination where you're going to get me to relent to quit. I want to improve. That doesn't mean I don't struggle with my motivation from time to time. Yeah, it doesn't mean I don't get confused or

down, of course, I do. But I'm not for sale. Yeah. You can't buy me. And you know this, too. We see a friends of ours. You've been guys in their sixteenths and they sold their company for Bob Abla. And that they golf nine days a week or whatever. You know, that's fun. But they're for sale. They were bought. You were for sale. I'm not for sale. Tell me about, tell me about, I mean, Ed Malette today. You got, I mean, I know you don't like to brag or anything. He's got a plane.

He's got four or five homes. Tell me homes you got. I have, I have Kylie, man. I mean, homes you got five houses. Where where are they? Okay, Laguna Beach. On the same thing. Okay. I got Palm Desert. Palm Desert. I got two hours away. Yeah. I got, oh, I got my, I got one in Diamond Bar where I grew up. Diamond bars where I grew up. My first house. How far is that from your main house? Not that far. I want to have a way. Okay. And now I've got a place in Hawaii.

Four. Yeah. And I got a place in my favorite places in Cordoid, Idaho on Lake Cordoid Lake, which is

“heaven on earth. Just so you know, the most beautiful. Why does anybody need five homes, though?”

They don't need five homes. They don't need five homes. Why do you have five? I'm okay. If you get answered four, I did it. One, I want to do enjoy nice things, but it was part of my dream early. I wanted to hit those places, but here's the other reason. I don't like traveling. And I don't like feeling like I'm on vacation. So I wanted to buy houses where I could live on vacation and work. So I can be in the most beautiful places where I can get the sand of the ocean of the beach. I don't

have to go to Fiji to do it. I can grind and work from my house, my backyard. So it feels like I'm on vacation, but I'm not living on vacation. I want to waste those days traveling and taking two weeks off. You know, you meet these guys out three weeks in Cabo. I don't do that crap. I live in a good beach. I don't need to go to Cabo. I go once in a while. There's a business reason or some break.

Well, okay, you don't want to have the details. But one of my mother-in-law lives in because they couldn't afford to keep their house, right? The other one is I'm going to build on it eventually some day and quarter lanes my dream place, man. I just like, I had a big pop desert. Is it a

“place called Big Horn, which I'm going to take you to? Okay. I think it's the best golf club in the world.”

So what I do want to go golf or I do want to entertain or I do want to get my vision stretch. And here's the other thing last thing. I got my question and all these homes yourself. I don't want it out today. What I question is whether I should own them all cash. Because I have no debt on any of those homes and I wonder whether I leverage them. I don't want to question having the house. Let me say something. The other thing is, there's a lesson in this. These places

have brought me into associations and meeting people that were further ahead of me in my life and stretched me. And so getting in the environment, changing my environment to be around people that were further ahead in some of the games of life I wanted to be in, has had a huge impact on me. So a couple of these homes and paid for the damn sales just because of the people I got around. Before we start the interview with my next guest, just want to remind you all that you can subscribe

to the show on YouTube or follow the show on Apple or Spotify. We have all the links in our

show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. Now on with the show.

Welcome back to the show, everybody. Well, I wish this was in person, but it'll still be fire today.

“I'm with there is no better motivational speaker of all time. That's what you all know him for.”

But I got to know him a little better. And I'm going to tell you one thing about him. I don't know a better man. I wish I was around him more. So I could tell you more stories. But I will tell you this. When my book came out, very few people step forward said, "Hey brother, how can I help you?" And this man stepped forward in a way like nobody else did and helped me in ways that I will never forget to the day I die.

His support for me and my family. And as great of a communicator as he is, I admire him. I look up to him as a husband, as a father, as a friend, and as an entrepreneur as well. But particularly as a man of faith, and as a husband and a father, I know no better man than him. And I could give somebody no bigger compliment, man, demand than I'm giving him right now. So E.T. Eric Thomas, welcome back to the show. I love you and it's great to have you here. What's up, man? I love you as well.

And yeah, you know, it's a lot of entrepreneurs, a lot of people in the business world. You know, but when you run across a couple of people, man, who share the same values that you share, you know, trying to leave their mark on the world, you know, and so yeah, likewise, man,

just coming to the house the first time I remember, my wife still talks about it and look

“on the beach. He's like, hey, before we die, you need to give me a house, a beach front house.”

I was like, okay, I'll try. I know, but you could do it. You know, just, you know, just yeah, where your family was, man, and that's your love and support. It's just been rich and their opportunities I've had and business things that I've done, you know, because of this relationship, man, and I'm a, I'm grateful for you know what I love the most. It's while it's public, you know, it's private, you know, it's not one of those things where you have to walk around and be like,

boom, boom, boom, boom, you know. So I'm just grateful for you, man, publicly and, you know, privately, bro. Thank you, brother. You've been around lots of highly successful people and you are one. And one of the things that I think most people don't know is the level of work required of effort, meaning like, I don't know. I, I, I, I think if someone spent the last five years with me in business, and they, I'm not trying to brag, but like if they thought they worked hard, there's levels to

this game or like in the speaking game, you and I talk when the, the stuff hit the last couple years. There's just levels to, the work ethic and the grind, the things you got to do. You look at a Steph Curry and basketball. Oh, he's such a gifted shooter. Actually, he's not actually, it's the grind. Actually, Tiger and Jack Nicklessly amount of golf balls to hit. Actually, Judge and Otani and baseball, you have no idea the amount of work. And even in coaching,

you and I've been around all these great college football coaches. I think it's one of the hardest jobs in the world. There's a level, though, where Saben played at Davos Sweeney, who I know you've been with, like, so talk, I think most people are like it about, and you talk about this a lot. Maybe they're 50, 60 percent of their capacity are effort. And that is not going to get it done, no matter how much you sit around and do other things that serve you. There's a level to this thing, and you've been close

to it and you are at it. Talk about that for a minute. Look, I want to say this to everybody's

listening. Here's what I think would be the easier thing to do. Just lower your expectations.

I'm just being real. Like, you know, when I was with Anne, and he was doing the book launch, I'm just being real. I did the book launch. It would probably 70 percent on that level. In terms of, I wasn't just in the rough. Don't get it twisted. I'm not a good guy. Okay. I'm God makes me a better man. I was in the room learning. I promise you, I wasn't just in there talking. I listen to me. I don't even know if it knows this. After before I did my thing, and after I did my thing, I was all

away in the back sitting down. I didn't know that. I was all away in the back of the room. When I'm

not on this level. Like, you're not, you're not on this level in terms of like maximizing,

“you know, your network. Like, you're not, you're not on that. The space that we were in.”

Listen to me. I don't know if I told you this, but your, your guy, he ended up helping me. Like, what would you call it? Like renovate the church and put beautiful sign you know on it. You don't even live here. You don't even live here. He, he, he helped me. He made some phone calls. He called and he's like, if I gotta leave Charlotte and come down there, I got you. But I'm gonna try to find somebody. This is what I'm talking about. You're all like. So I was in the

building learning seeing who it was connecting with them after it. Look, so here's my deal. When I was in the room, I had to say to myself, e, if you won't summon this stuff, e, e, you're gonna have to, got to raise your game song. So you got an option. You could even go, hey, me being in the room with Ed and watching what Ed was doing. This is strictly for recreational purposes. You feel me? Yes, I am. This recreational purpose, bro. Go ahead and get out of here.

“Or, a, e, you, you got showed it to you. He showed it to you. He showed you a level. Are you ready?”

And so for me, it was like, absolutely, I'm ready. So I just want to say this to you guys. Either lower your expectations, because you don't have to do everything you see other people do. You don't have to do it. You could just go, man, it's like going through a basketball game. You're not trying to suit up and do what Curry does. But when you look at it, Ed, you kind of think, oh, he human, like, I'm human. So I can watch yourself. Okay. Watch yourself. You might not want to put

them sneaks on. You might not want to get in that gym. And when I saw Ed doing, I went back. I was like, okay, Ed, number one, you got to get more organized. So like, you got passion, you got energy. But what you saw, Ed, you saw a system, you saw structure. You saw people over here and people over here. And people doing it. And people in the back. And when you get in, people in the parking. So it's like, even you get to the crib from a speaking standpoint, you, you've definitely given 1,000 percent,

but from a structural standpoint, you're not giving 1,000 percent. Then I look at the packages in the deep. And I was like, Ed, you don't got, so you all might have saw, if you watched it, it was a group of here that was a group out there. And then the level of men that was on stage, who are also dominant in their particular area. Or I was with people who, I've only seen

in a podcast. I only see these dudes on social media. I've never been in a room with them before.

I was in a room with them. And so, yes, you know, I had to come home. Not necessarily get up earlier, not necessarily grind physically harder, but I had to take my Mitchell game to another level. I had to take my systems game to another level. I had to, this is a grind that you probably don't know. I had to remove people, which hurts to bring in a different group of people to take me where I wanted to go because I realized a group that was with me for not going to group a human,

for not going to group a people. They probably would get to heaven before I get there. But in order to take me from number four to number one, they weren't necessarily the people that could do that. So the answer point, I personally went home and did a evaluation on ET. I personally studied ET and said, yeah, you got it going over here. But this seed is an apple seed and orange seed. This

is not a warmness seed. And these seeds that you're planning will never get you watermelon. So,

so, yep, you got some dynamic, you posting every day, you put no dynamic stuff. But that will not get what you saw Ed doing terms of systems. And so, you got to come home and your new grind is system. I don't know what your grind is. But I'm telling you, I had to start reading books. I had to go to conferences. I had to shift what I was watching online. I had to shift who I was following. Great humans. Great people. They were only going to help me sustain this energy. They weren't going

to help me with destruction. Here's what I realized. E, nobody's better than you. But there are some

“people who's got better systems than you. And so, if you want to see growth, you got to start grinding”

them on the systems level. So, I don't want you to get what Ed said. And you miss it. You like, oh, I got to get it earlier. I got to grind. Maybe you don't have to get up earlier to accomplish what you've already accomplished. But to get this done, you do have to make some adjusts. And that's what the grind looked like. And that's what the hustle of the life. And can I say this Ed? I don't even know what I've ever said this before. But sometimes, I don't know if you've experienced this,

sometimes, you put it up 40 with 30 rebounds. And you like whatever. And then you go somewhere God shows you. And I was talking to my son at the day. And he kind of was hurt because he was like,

you put it up 10. But the 30 points in the 10 rebounds have nothing to do with the assist.

You don't get credit for a sense because you scored and you got rebounds. They, they don't, they don't take your points and go, or we go, put those over rebounds. They don't take your rebounds and go, we're going to put those, which are assist. And when I left you, you know, I, there was a part of me that was like, God, you want me to do more? Yeah. You want me to do more? Am I not grinding enough? He was like, absolutely. And every seed you plan it is going to grow.

But you just looked at what it was doing. And you saw that was a gap. So you have a choice to make here. You got rebounds. You got points. But the assist, uh, you had zero. So what do you want to do? And there was a, there was a moment where I had to go, you're not overwhelmed.

You're just rising to the level that God has asked you to rise. Oh my gosh. There's no anxiety.

Yeah, the Bible said, be anxious for nothing, but in all things to prayer and supplication, make your request known to God. But that there was a 32nd boy was like, man, God, how am I going to be Black when I, he said, how? One, that's your boy. So you can just call. Of course. Then I had a Rory in the back interview with me, God, like, you know, you don't have to do it. You can just, and then just, and I did just that. My relationship with Roy, you know, went from a person that,

you know, respect him, the sitting at his feet, listen to the podcast, the studying you guys, not can honestly say, after that event, system wise, you know, I've gone to another level. So to me,

“that's what it looks like when you're expectations, your dreams, your goals, and your grind match.”

And if you're not ready to work, it doesn't make you a bad human. Just lower your expectations. Gosh, that's so, so good. And that idea of the grind, I want to say one thing, everybody. When he's talking about rebounds and points, the application of that for you is this, is that if you're average, you keep giving yourself credit for the things you're already doing, but if you want to be extraordinary, you've got to go, what's the thing? Like the power of

one more in the book, I talked about your one decision away. I think all of you listening to this right now, if I can be honest with you, you already know what it is. You know the thing you're not doing, you need to be doing that would change your life in your business. You already know what it is. It's having the guts, the courage, the faith to call the shot, like an E.T.s case. I'm going to go back, I need to work harder. I got to get more systematic. Maybe I can even work less hard if I put

“these systems in place. For you, it might be something you are doing or that you need to stop doing”

to get your life to the next level. Very short, intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Now on to our next guest. Welcome back, everybody. I wanted to have Alan on our show for a long time. I was just telling him this off camera. I wanted to have him on because he's got a really unique perspective in an upfront view to some of the key performers in the NBA for many, many years,

and he's taken the lessons he's learned from these high performers. He's distilled it down in information that everybody can use as an entrepreneur, as a father, as a mother, as just a human being. And he communicates it in a very unique way. We're going to go very deep today on performance

on your game, his first book I read, which is called Raise Your Game. The book that's out

now is called Sustain Your Game. High performance keys to manage stress avoid stagnation and beat burnout. I think everybody listening to this needs them help right now in the world with stress stagnation and burnout. So Alan Stein, welcome to the show, bro. Oh, man, it's so awesome to be here. My pleasure. Finally, man, and I've been doing the show for a long time. The truth that you're spitting here is remarkable to me and the application of it. Here's how people need to apply that.

So once again, and I'm so glad to be brought up at the point that well, I may use basketball examples because that's where I've spent most of my life. Folks need to take these and figure out how they can apply them to their situation. So step number one is figure out what does winning look like to you or what does success look like to you? Again, this could be in your marriage, this could be, you know, in your business, this could be for something you're doing in your

community, but figure out what does winning look like. Now, of course, in the game of basketball, which Simon Senate cassette is a finite game, and I'm a big fan of Simon's work, is a finite game. We have unanimously around the globe agreed that the team with the most points on the scoreboard, when the final buzzer goes off is the winner. Life, relationships, business, it's a little more acitaric. It's not as clear. How you might define winning in business might be slightly different than

maybe one of your friends or colleagues, but that doesn't matter. You just have to get crystal

“clear on what winning looks like to you. And then you need to figure out what are the measurable”

building blocks, the bricks, if you will, that will allow me to reach that goal. And then once you have that North Star, take your eyes off of it and just focus on the bricks. Think about a GPS, which most people need to navigate the world these days. I don't know how I survive without one

Not where you were five minutes ago, five days ago, or five weeks ago, you need to know where you are right now, and you need to have an end address. Where am I going? Those are the only two points you need. And then once you have those two points, you don't need to worry about either one of them. What you need to do now is pay attention to the directions and listen to every turn that you're supposed to make. And of course, the beauty with this analogy is, if you're like me and kind

of directionally dysfunctional, you're probably going to take a wrong turn and then what happens? It reroutes. It just reroutes. So the GPS doesn't get angry at you. It doesn't call you an idiot.

It just simply reroutes. And it puts you back on that course. And that's ultimately what all

of us should be trying to do is pursue our North Star by focusing on the steps and directions it takes to get there. And when you miss step or you make a wrong turn, don't get upset over it, just move to the next play and take the next direction to rerout. It's really, really good.

“And I think oftentimes people feel lost. And that's why this clarity of what success looks like”

to you or the blueprint that you want is really so important. The other thing that happens is people get tired. I think it's such a second chapter of the book. You talk about stress management. You talk about energy management as well. And that's a big thing in our culture today. I think people are tired. I don't think they manage their energy very well. I watch this even a basketball analogy. I watch certain teams that, you know, I think,

well, they're tired. And I watch friends of mine in business and life. They just seem tired to me.

So what is energy management? And what are some of your keys for it? Well, we need to make sure we're protecting both time and energy. And as we know, I know you've said this on many previous shows, you know, obviously time is our most precious resources. Because that is finite. Whenever that's done, that's done. We don't have any more of it. Energy is something though that we can actually replenish. And a lot of that has to do with

with our routines and our self care. Are we making the time to fill our own buckets mentally, physically, emotionally and spiritually so that we can keep that that battery, that internal battery of our lives is close to 100% as possible. You know, most people would freak out if they look down at their iPhone and saw their iPhone had three or four percent juice left in it. They'd immediately start looking for a plug or a mothy or something. But they allow themselves to

go down to three or four percent and they don't seem to do anything about it. And then you're just running on fumes. And there's no way that you can be your best self or make a maximum

“contribution to the things that are important to you if you're doing that. So part of it comes”

down to our discernment of what are we going to invest our time and energy into? And this goes back to two simple words. Yes and no. What are you saying yes to and what are you saying no to? You know, as a self-diagnosed people pleaser, this was one that was really challenging for me most of my life. Because I love saying yes. It feels good to say yes. I want to help as many people as I can. But I've learned that when I say yes to one thing, I am by default saying no to something else.

If I'm going to say yes to investing this hour with you, that means this hour in time can not be invested anywhere else. Now this happens to be a wonderful investment of my time. One I'm very happy to make. But we have to be very careful of what we say yes and what we say no to. So we have to have some discernment. And for me, I've learned to be able to say no respectfully with tact and to be polite. If something is not a good fit and how do we know if it's a good fit, is it an alignment with the

North Star that you're pursuing? If you're asking me to do something that is taking me away from that North Star, then it's most likely not the wisest investment of my time or energy and I'll politely decline. If what you're asking me to do is an alignment, then it's probably a great investment of my time and energy. So being able to step back and use our core values and use that North Star to design our lives and design our schedules and design what we're going to say yes

to is incredibly helpful. We can't rely on feelings and emotions. If you're just saying yes and no to things based on your mood or how you're feeling, there's no consistency in that. What a really good point because you know what? I have a hard time saying no and oftentimes it is just based on my energy rather than out of my values or does it fit into the vision of what I'm trying to create and what I'm trying to do. And that stays on the other word vision. You know what surprises

me is how little people talk about visualization and how much of it I do and how much of it happy and successful people, both happy and successful people that I know, spend and doing so. And so you talk about it's not a lot but you talk about in the book visualization and I'm wondering

“any keys you would have for that and also the importance of it because I think most people don't”

realize you're visualizing all the time. Yeah. It's just what are you visualizing? Yeah. And I think most people are visualizing their fears, their worries, their to-do list, the stuff they've got to get the kids to soccer. I got to go work out. I got whatever it might be, but are you taking control

of what you're visualizing in your life? Because I think ultimately our minds move towards what

it's most familiar with. Absolutely. And so you talk about it in the book and I don't want to use my version of it. But how do you feel about visualization and anything about it you want to share? One of the words that comes up in a lot of your shows and a lot of your work is intention. So we have to make sure we're very intentional with what we're visualized. There were a few different research

was they took three different groups and they were going to have them shoot free throws. And these weren't professional players by any means. These were just regular weekend warriors. And then the three groups, the first group, they got tested on the first day and then they practiced for 21 consecutive days and then they took the retest 21 days later. Second group took the test on the first day. Did not touch a basketball, but only visualized making free throws for the next 21 days and then

took the retest. And then the third group tested on the first day, didn't practice and didn't visualize and then retested on the 21st day. I think most people would realize the group that didn't practice or visualize. There was no improvement. In fact, they had a slight decline in their ability. But the part that blew my mind was the group that visualized was only a couple of percentage points less than the group that actually practiced. So by actually sitting with

your eyes closed and visualizing, making free throws, it's almost as good as being able to practice.

“And that blows my mind. Now I think we can also agree that the best thing to do is to do both”

is to get in repetition, you know, purposeful repetition as well as visualize. I visualize before

every single speaking engagement. Every engagement I do, I always arrive the day before and I

request to see the room, the day before I'm going to speak. I want to get a feel for what it's going to look like. I visualize before I came in here with you today. I watch several of your other guests on YouTube who were in this studio. I knew what this room looked like before I set foot in here, which gave me a certain level of comfort that I wasn't going to walk into anything that I hadn't, hadn't prepared myself for. And one of my favorite quotes that I learned from

a mentor of mine is make preparation your separation and that I want to be as prepared as possible for everything that I do. And that will also lower stress. Yeah, Ben Newman was told me this saving quote where he says, you know, most teams practice until they get it right and he says here at Alabama and we practice until we can't get it wrong. Yes. And it's just a different standard of preparation and I'm the same way, by the way. I try to do all of those things and I'll give you

“anything on a visualization to share with you. It'll take me a minute for the audience. But I got”

hurt myself when we were a college and I couldn't play. And when a team psychologist at the time he ended up being killed and I used a lot of his work to this day was in a car accident. I used a lot of his work and I get a lot of credit for it because he was so cutting edge even back in those days.

And he said, "Ed, here's what we're going to do." And I hit 2015, my freshman year, terrible year.

Pete, that's terrible. And then I sat out because I was hurt the next year I hit almost 380. And I wasn't any better of a hitter. What happened was he taught me to visualizing what's sit behind the batting cage with the other guys were popping some up, grounded double play. He's missing a few. He said, "Ed, you're going to line drive up the middle thousands of times." And he made me focus on my visualization. So he goes, "Ed, all right, visualizing you hitting the line drive

them and I go, "I got it." And he'd go, "Okay, really? Do you?" And he would make me hyper-vigilize, he'd say, "Ed, where's the camera?" I go, "What do you mean?" He goes, "Well, how are you seeing it from what angle? Is the camera in the center field like on TV over the pictures?" "Ed, shooting in?" Or is it from the batters box of your view out? And I go, "I don't know." And he goes, "Well, then you kind of should know." And I go, "Okay, actually turns out the cameras on me.

I'm looking out at the picture. He goes great. Not everybody has it that way." He goes, "Can you see the release point? Can you see the stitches on the ball? Can you see the rotating?" And it got to the point where he go, "What is it?" And I'd say, "It's a curve ball." He goes, "How do you know? I could see the dot on the stitches?" Right? And then I could see, "I got to the point where he'd make me work. I could see the stitches coming in. I could see the ball hit the bat and the stitches re-rotating

backwards the other way." Right back over the guys left shoulder. I just got to share this with you. So I come back. I'm a 2015 hitter. The first day in BP, first pitch showed to me is up and away. And I swat out and hit a line drive up the middle. Next ball down and away. Line drive up the middle.

“And I think it was 28 straight hits. My teammates are like, "What's going on with my let?”

Yeah." Line drive up the middle every single time. Then I popped one up and I hit like 16 more up the middle. I had not swung a bat in six months. But the upside to that was I didn't have any negative experiences from actually swinging the bat. And the subconscious mind really doesn't know the difference between what's real and what's imagined. I share this because your work is so good, bro. And the people that are listening to this if you would start to visualize

and then get better at it. Refine it. See it more clearly. Can you slow it down? Can you speed it up? Can you add color? Can you add sound? And the more you get good at visualizing, you're going to change your damn life. The better you get it this way. I just wanted to add second it and add to it that I have a real life experience. And to this day, things like getting to the studio and

visualizing it, I do that crazy stuff too because it's not crazy. All right, chapter five. Never heard

it said this way. Using stress. So usually people are taught avoid stress, minimize stress and you have strategies for that in the book as well. But sometimes you're almost like, hey, dance with it, use this stress. What does that mean? That goes back to something we said earlier. It's kind of the difference between viewing something that's making you nervous, versus viewing something that gets you really, really excited. I mean, I've, I said before off here, I'm a huge fan of your work.

You've had a massive impact on my life. I could have been nervous coming in here and to meet you

very similar feelings. You can have the butterflies in your stomach. You know, and I don't remember

who said that originally, but if you ever feel butterflies in your stomach, just get them all lined up in the same direction so that they can work for you. But we do. We need to have some stress in our life. If the stress is overwhelming, then you'll be completely debilitated. If I was completely overwhelmed with stress right now, this wouldn't be much of an interview. However, if there was zero stress, I'd probably be bored and there wouldn't be much of an interview. So we want just

enough to keep us sharp. It's very similar to fear. You know, fear and enough itself keeps us safe. We want to have some fear. If not, we just walk in the middle of traffic or we just juggle knives or do something foolish. But if, if we have too much fear, then we become paralyzed. And we can't actually do anything. So yeah, these things help, they help keep us sharp. So we want to have a little bit beyond a little bit of edge for the things that mean the most to us. That was a great conversation.

“And if you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the edmed my Let's Show on Apple”

and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest. Ed, when you think about all the people you've interviewed, you've talked to the people you surround yourself with, your inner circle. And you're obviously one of these guys, too. These are those who have sustained excellence over an extended period of time. What are some of the common alities among those few people? Standards. Period. You don't get your goals in life most of the time.

You will always eventually get your standards. And most people spend a lot of time

setting up goals and never take a real inventory of what their standards are. Standards are like actually how you live. Standards are everything about you. If you're meticulous, if you're excellent, if you're like what you did today. I mean, we're talking about meticulous preparation you did for this interview. That's a standard. So you don't want to happen. You're going to get a great interview. You're going to have a goal for a great interview today. But if you don't have the

standard of preparation of delivery that you have, that's different. So people who sustain greatness

“have super high standards and keep raising them. And the truth is, the place they're going,”

what I find oftentimes is not as important as the process and getting there. They're refining their processes. They're refining their habits and rituals. I have a whole really good chapter on habits because habits, it's I have bad day yesterday. I put this on my Instagram. I'll share my bad days to have sick. I didn't feel good. And I said, I did not, my A game was not yesterday. But the separator in life is not who's the most motivated. It's not. It's what do you do on the

days or not? The separator for these elite people who succeed long term is they can perform at a relatively high level on the days. They're not feeling it. They can win with their B game because of their habits, rituals, and disciplines. As I was just saying that many of you thought about different athletes that you, you look up to, you think of Michael Jordan's illness game. You're thinking of Tiger Woods winning the US Open on a broken leg. You're thinking of this sustained

greatness of a Brady between two different organizations. Those are standards. And if you interview or time Brady belongs to one of my golf clubs, right? Phil Mickelson's been on my show is told me many times I'd love to interview Tiger. I've interviewed Tiger, but Zack Johnson's been on Phil Mickelson's been on and their friends and they've both told me. This guy's standards are just they're he's a freak. He's just a freak. I want to come to golf standards, right? Kobe Bryant

became a pretty good friend of mine before he passed away. This man's standards of how he worked out and what he did. You say I'm in really good shape, right? I'm in pretty good shape. But then I've worked out with guys that are like world class body builders and athletes. It's a totally different standard. It's a freak show of the standard, right? So the long answer is you get your standards and

“that's what separates them. The last book I published, I was called the pursuit of excellence and”

I every once in a while I get a question, they're like, why? Why? Isn't it easier to kind of be okay with things? Like, isn't life a little bit easier that way? And I certainly have my answers for that and I've wrote about that. But why have high standards? Why not say, you know, I'm going to have really good standards. I'm going to do a solid job. I'm going to also relax quite a bit. I'm wondering what is the motivation for you? I know it is for you. What is it for you to have

such high standards? Very question. It is seductive to contemplate average. Very seductive. In fact, as we're talking, I'm looking at the beach that I live on and I could be sitting out there right now.

The truth is that I've grown to accept who I am and who I am is not that and I would not be happy.

I have this, you know, the point Hill says in Think and Grow Rich to begin with the end in mind.

whereas last breath, hold this hand actually. And it's okay to, you know, every once

“well, think about the end of your life. Because it's going to come at some point. You know,”

someday I will be my dad. Some day you will be where my dad was. And whenever you believe religiously is up to you, but I just have this belief. I'm a Christian, but I have this other belief

that God's going to introduce me to the man I was capable of being. The one he made in his image for me.

The guy I could have had the moments, the memories, the contribution, the emotions, the achievements, the times. And when I die, I want to meet that man in cop, catch him. I want to be identical twins.

“I want to catch the guy I was capable of becoming in my life. Because I believe that's what we were all”

born to do as to reach our destiny. And I believe we were all born to do something great with our lives,

every single one of us. Why do I have humility? Because I come from the same father and heaven you do, man. I'm no better than you were brothers. Anyone listen to this were brothers or brother and sister, right? And so to me, heaven would be getting there and I became that man. Hell would be getting there and I was total strangers. And I meet this guy, could have been the places I could have gone, the people I could have helped, the memories, the emotions. That's hell. And so that guides my

decision making. And for the record, I have a ton of fun. I have a ton of travel. I have a blast. But I've learned something. Winning is more fun than fun is fun. Winning is just more fun than fun is fun. And so I enjoy winning. I enjoy helping people. But believe me, man, my birthday is next week. I'm taking some time off. I'm going to stage coach festival last year for my 50th birthday. I was in Kabul. Going nuts. So believe me, I have a ton of fun. But I like to have left it all out on

the field before I take my break. What I'm like, you know what? I deserve this break. Nothing worse than taking a break and knowing you left a bunch on the field. You know, and you're like,

“I can't even enjoy this the way I want to. The truth is all of you just accept this. You can't”

enjoy the breaks when you haven't crushed it before you get there and you know it, you know it. So just lay it all out and then go do whatever the heck you want. Max out your fun. Max out your partying. But you got to max out the other stuff before you get there. [Music]