Motivation Daily by Motiversity - MOTIVATIONHUB - BEST OF 2023 | This Will Leave You Speechless

Episode Date: December 12, 2023

Some of our best speeches of 2023. Listen when you need motivation.Special thanks to our amazing partners:Jürgen Höller: https://bit.ly/JürgenHöllerYouTubeTom Bilyeu: https://www.youtube.com/TomBilyeu Valuetainment: https://www.youtube.com/user/patrickbetdavidLewis Howes: https://www.youtube.com/@lewishowesSpeakers:Jordan PetersonRobert KiyosakiAndrew HubermanRobert GreeneBob ProctorEric ThomasVarious speakersMusicAudiojungleSoundstripeEpidemic SoundReally Slow MotionBuy their music:Amazon : http://amzn.to/1lTltY5iTunes: http://bit.ly/1ee3l8KSpotify: http://bit.ly/1r3lPvN▶Subscribe for New Motivational Videos Every Week:http://bit.ly/MotivationVids▶DOWNLOAD our Top 100 Quotes of All Time:https://bit.ly/topquotesfreepdf▶JOIN our Newsletter for Exclusive Updates, Discounts, and Deals: https://bit.ly/Motiversitynewsletter▶READ our Weekly Blog -https://bit.ly/motiversityblog▶SHOP Official Motivational Canvases and Apparel -https://bit.ly/motiversityshop▶BECOME A MEMBER of our loyal community!https://bit.ly/motiversitymembers Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello listeners. Motivosity is excited to share that we have launched a new podcast called Morning Motivation by Motivore. If you are looking to start your day with positivity and the most uplifting motivational audio, this is the show for you. For today's episode of Motivation Daily by Motivority Podcast, we are sharing a recent episode from the Morning Motivation Podcast. If you like it, go follow the show. New episodes are being released every week.

The link is in the description. Your ambition, if you have any sense, is actually to become competent. So the lesson to young people is don't take a job for the money. Take a job for what you're learning. I've always been fascinated by the dark side of human nature. What happens when you're an adult and you want to change your brain? Intuition is an intellectual factor. I realized one day what was missing was confidence.

I have waited. my whole life for this moment. Do you want to be competent and dangerous, or do you want to be vague and useless? We learn from our mistakes. Mistakes are opportunities to get smarter, be humble, and take a look at something. You've got to be persistent.

You put yourself together, and your life does get better and richer and more abundant. Do yourself a favor and look back and realize that in a short period of time, you're going to be creating and working at a level that's far more efficient and productive than before. Today in the world, America especially, is a gap between the rich and everybody else. Now, this is truly getting into the spirit of the thing.

That is what being inspired is all about. You're here to live, not to, not to sleep. Remember your why. It is the why that gets us to win. You don't believe that you belong here. Your dream, your idea, whatever goal you have. Get up and run after it. And understand that if it goes pretty well today, it's going to go even better the next day.

So what you don't like is very instructive to you. You're looking at things that are very powerful inside of you that are emotional, they're not intellectual, their feelings, they're emotions, they're visceral things that you connect to. Prepare yourself. Let yourself go. Fall free into it. Step into it. You are worthy.

It is definitely the case that there is no more. exceptional form of the capacity to be dangerous than to be articulate. And so it's a moral endeavor in some real sense. To become articulate is to become the master of your own tongue. Every advantage comes with a disadvantage. So if you're extroverted, you're social and you're positive, but you're impulsive and you can tilt towards hedonism and you can't stand being alone.

No matter where you land in the temperamental landscape, you're going to have your associated faults and temptations. You've got to go all, and you'll see. that as you progress towards the goal, there'll be obstacles that emerge, and some of them you don't want to confront. That's why it's useful to order your room. Chaotic room makes you anxious. Why? Too many pathways, man. People don't really repress the things they don't want to face. They just fail to unpack them. You want a horizon of ever expanding possibility. We're built to walk up hill. And when you reach the pinnacle of the hill, you want to stop and appreciate the vision. But the next thing you want

is a higher hill in the distance. Beware of unintended consequences. It's like, oh no, this thing will just do what I want it to do and nothing else. It's like, no. Turns out that not only is what we want from each other, the real thing, but that's also the adventure of your life. And so if you aren't truthful, and that means, unfortunately, especially at the beginning, when you start to be truthful,

it means deeply coming to terms with your inadequacies in humility. So it's very painful. Without that, you don't have the adventure of your life. You have the role that you've acquiesced to. And that'll take all the meaning out of your life. It's good for you to go to go take your place in the world. Have some ambition. Have a vision. Have a goal. Have a strategy. Try to be a good

person. Not because it's your duty precisely because that's the proper way to live. You sit on the bed and say, okay, man, I'm ready to learn something. What's one thing I'm doing wrong, that I know I'm doing wrong, that I could fix? You meditate on that. You'll get an answer. You grow in proportion to the weight you take on voluntarily. And it's also true that we have no idea what the upper limit to that is. It's from the uphill climb that we derive our value, and I mean this technically. So almost all the positive emotion we feel, especially the emotion that fills us with enthusiasm. And that's experienced in relationship to a goal. And so in some sense, you want a goal that you can never attain.

So you can always move closer to the goal that recedes as you move towards it. You think, well, that's frustrating. It's like Sisyphus pushing the rock uphill. But it's not because as you pursue that goal, you put. put yourself together and your life does get better and richer and more abundant. That's why the highest levels of virtue and goal are in some sense transcendent. You want them to be above everything you're doing so you can continually move towards something that's more sublime and better. That's what you are. You're here to live, not to not to sleep. And the problem with the vision of

my ties on the beach is that, well, first of all, that's a vision of drug-induced unconsciousness. Second, it's only going to work for about a week. Third, you're going to be a laughing stock in a month and depressed and aimless and goalless. No, that's not, it's, you want a horizon of ever expanding possibility. And so it does happen to people as they, because they've staked their soul on the attainment of an instrumental goal. And it can be a pretty high order goal. But then you think, now I'm there. Now what?

Well, the answer can't be. well, I'm going to live in the lap of luxury and never have to leave the fate. What do you want to be? A giant infant with a gold, with a gold bottle? You never have to do anything but lay in your back and suck. It's like, you see the problem with that as a conceptualization. It's no, you want to be like an active warrior moving uphill with your sword in hand. And that's, that's dynamic.

That's exciting. People are afraid of the truth because often if you reveal it, it causes conflict in the moment. Telling the truth is definitely an adventer. seeking for sure, but also telling. Another way of going about it is to just say what you think and see what happens. That's an adventure, because you don't know what the outcome is going to be. So look, there's this old idea that it's necessary to have faith in the truth. And so here's a way of thinking about that.

Someone asks you a question and you might think, well, here's the outcome I want, and so here's how I'm going to answer that question. So that's one way of approaching it. But another way of approaching it is, you ask me a question, I'm going to think about the answer, and I'm just going to tell you you, just going to tell you what I think. And it doesn't matter what the outcome is, because I'm willing to see what the outcome will be predicated on the idea that there isn't a better outcome than the one that truth produces. Even if it's harsh and terrible in the short term, and sometimes it is,

it's like there isn't a better way of doing it. Now, you might say, well, how do you know that? And answer is, well, I don't know that. That's why it's an article of faith. Because I believe, and I believe this deeply, the being that you produce as a consequence of telling the truth is Good, by definition, even though it's harsh and often uncomfortable, because you get in trouble. So it's one of the most important messages I have for entrepreneurs is that failure should inspire you to get smarter. Don't let failure ever stop you, you know, use your brain, use your creativity. And unfortunately, our school system says if you fail, you're stupid. That is not true.

So the lesson to young people is don't take a job for the money, take a job for what you're learning. In school, they compensate for a risk by telling you to memorize the right answer. So in other words, these kids leave young people like you, leave school thinking, oh, if I know the right answers, then there's no risk. And it drives old guys like me crazy. You know, we learn from our mistakes. Mistakes are opportunities to get smarter, be humble, and take a look at something. You know, millennials are the most highly educated.

They know all the answers, but they're afraid of doing anything. Robert Kiyosaki is a renowned author, investor, and entrepreneur who became famous for his best-selling book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. In the book, Kiyosaki talks about his own experiences growing up with two dads, his real dad, a highly educated college professor, the other, his best friend's dad, a self-made millionaire and entrepreneur. Robert noticed that despite his father's hard work and dedication to his job, he struggled financially and was not able to provide the kind of life he wanted for his family. On the other hand, Rich Dad, who never finished college, was able to build a successful business and accumulate significant wealth. Success doesn't come easily, especially when the education system fails to teach the fundamentals of business and money. However, you have two choices. Use that as an excuse and remain uneducated, or rewire your brain, be open to new information, and learn how to be successful.

You know, the most important thing is change the neural pathways in your brain, and the brain is driven, driven by your heart. And when I meet somebody with an employee's brain, they said, I want job security. I want a good pension. Does that have medical benefits? That's our brain. I can't help them. They've got to rewire the brain, yeah. Because the economy takes place between this year and this year. That's where the economy takes place and in your heart and in your guts. I started playing Monopoly. I was nine years old. Everybody's played Monopoly, except I play it in real life. You know, four greenhouses, one red hotel, tax-free. If you really don't learn to be rich, you have to learn how to sell, how to use debt, and how not to pay taxes. That's the game.

Kiyosaki realized that there's a gap between the rich and the poor, and that traditional education and employment do not necessarily lead to financial freedom. What does the school system teach about money? Nothing. education system is outdated and fails to focus on topics that would prove much more beneficial to students. While finances and taxes may not be as entertaining as chemistry or biology, having such knowledge would better serve most students as they move into adulthood. Today in the world, America especially, is this gap between the rich and everybody else. And I know the game of the rich. You know, my rich dad taught me, you know it because you're the

banker. The game, the bankers and the rich part, play is different than what they teach you in school. And that's the story of rich dad, poor dad. You know, my poor dad, PhD, students, stands for poor, helpless and desperate. They don't know anything about money. And they're teaching our kids. And my rich dad was an entrepreneur who never finished school.

The pieces of the puzzle and my life started to come together. The question I asked all over the world, what does school teach you about money? you about money. And the answer is nothing. And that's not a mistake. That's not an accident. I knew that. Most people know that. But the way to keep the poor middle class working hard is never teach them what the rich know. So if you read Rich Dad Poor Dad, which came out in 1997, it's what the rich teach are kids about money, the poor middle class do not. Many of us who have not learned about money likely share one common belief.

debt is bad and dangerous and should be avoided. There are countless stories of people who have run up their credit cards to the point that they cannot pay them off. Many people accumulate student loan debt as they try to gain in education. These people then spend much of their life desperately fighting and trying to dig themselves out of debt. However, there is good debt and bad debt. It can be a powerful tool for those who understand how to use it. Debt is a four-letter word for most people. There are many people in my position, so-called financial gurus, who say live totally debt-free.

And there's other people who say cut up your credit cards. And, you know, that's good advice for certain types of people. So you should definitely cut up your credit cards if you don't know, you can't control your spending. Income, expense, asset, liability. So debt falls in here. Everybody says, I'm going to buy a house. And I says my house is an asset. That's not true.

Your house is a liability. I don't care if you have no debt on it or not. A house is a liability. Same as if you have a car. A car is a liability. The average person, they have a job. Money comes in here. They pay for their house.

And the money goes to a bank through a mortgage. So it's not an asset because the cash is flowing out. So it's a liability. So the definition of liability does it take money from your pocket? And for an asset, does it put money in your pocket? So when I have a rental property here, it puts money in my pocket. When I rent a property, I've done a good job buying it and structuring it. Every month, it sends me money.

And the other thing about debt, There's good debt and bad debt, which I classify student loan debt as bad debt. The main reason is bad debt is because it's the worst possible type of debt. You see, if I get into trouble as a businessman with debt, I can declare bankruptcy and I'm clean. But the trouble with student loan debt, you can't do that. You know, it hangs around your neck for the rest of your life. So what most people do is they have student loan debt, SL. and that debt is going out this way.

You know, he doesn't put any money in your pocket. You can say, well, I have a job. Well, there's still you working for it. I don't work for any of this money here. I do this job once, set the deal up. Every year I add more and more and more on it. I'm borrowing money from here. It's coming here and going this way.

So the debt is putting money in my pocket and bad debt is taking money from my pocket. So the problem is if you're going to use debt, you've got to be much smarter than this person here. Because you buy a piece of real estate and you make a mistake, this turns into a liability. If I get the renter leaves the place, this goes here that fast. And the cash flows that way. So it's nothing to do whether it's a boat, student loan debt, a house, a car, or whatever.

It has to do with these two words here. If the cash is flowing into your income statement, into your pocket, it's an asset. It's good debt. But if it's taking money from your pocket, it's bad debt. A catalyst for success is to find a mentor in your area, someone who has done what you want to do, someone who is where you want to be. Years of experience and countless failures make them seasoned veterans and excellent teachers. They won't do the work for you, but having someone to support and guide you will accelerate

your progress towards achieving your goals. And she says, if you're going to be a success in your life, you've got to find the best teachers. And so with that, when my poor dad said, go seek out your rich dad, I was just following her advice. And today, that's why you and I know Jim Rickards and Nomi Prins and all these people. They're the guys that actually came from the inside, just like you, from the inside the machine. And they know what's going on. and they tell the world what's going on. So I've had a habit ever since then or a policy

if I find out there's a great teacher and a great teacher is somebody who comes from the inside, not the outside. You'll ruin your life somehow some way. It is everywhere. It can pass into all the cells and tissues of your body. It was a very progressive decline in my aspirations. Alcohol is normalized in our society.

You want to figure out something that you're doing with your life that's worth not getting drunk and screwing up. I drank in search of happiness and in search of a lifestyle that I thought would bring me to happiness. It didn't. And I woke up one morning going, wow, I've drank a lot, but I'm still not happy. What's that about? I recall in high school, the motivational speakers will come to my school and say, don't do drugs. But absent from those talks was any reference to alcohol.

Alcohol got introduced to my life. You might say, well, why do people drink too much? It's like, if you like alcohol, that's a stupid question. It is ingrained. It's the social glue that sticks everything together. And my mom was chiming in with, it's way bad, you don't want to do it, you don't want to end up like that. Over 3 million people worldwide will die this year to alcohol-related causes. From baby showers, christening's fresh as week, weddings, parties, funerals, barbecues, celebrations and everything in between. So she's in my ear making it sound really logical to not do it.

And I'm watching people act a fool who are doing it. We've been brainwashed into thinking that there are just two types of drinkers. There are those at rock bottom, alcohol dependent, and there's everybody else, happy social drinkers who are just occasionally a bit lightweight and can't hold their beer. You do stupid things when you're drunk, you hurt yourself, you compromise your health, it's really hard on the people around you. You tend to turn into a liar and it screws up your life. Yeah, it's like, yeah, but it's pretty fun.

Yeah, well, it is, but you need something better than that. And I burned every bridge that I had virtually unemployable. My options had been eliminated. My life was eviscerated. My family didn't want anything to do with me. I'd lost my friendships. I had no way forward. In fact, the reality is very different.

It's a spectrum. I would highly recommend you get off the booze elevator before it hits rock bottom. And I just continued to dig that hole deeper and deeper and deeper Until one day I had that moment that you hear with people who are in recovery, that moment of clarity where I realized I just couldn't live this way any longer. My elevator had, you know, gone down to the bottom floor. And I met my pain threshold, you know, back to this thesis around pain. Like, I had reached a point where I could no longer tolerate the pain of my current situation.

And the fear, the pain associated with the fear of change, was eclipsed by the pain that I was feeling in that moment. And that's what motivated me to change. I went to a treatment center where I lived for 100 days, which is a pretty long time to be in a rehab center. And I did that because I knew if I didn't get this right that my life was done. And so I took that opportunity seriously. I recognized that despite the fact that I think I'm a smart guy, my best thinking had me, literally institutionalized, and that if I couldn't get a grasp on how to live and develop some new skills and a new toolbox for how to approach my life, that I was going to end up in jail or I was going to kill somebody else or myself.

You know, now we're about a year and a half later, and my life has been as turned around, immeasurably. It's a wonderful thing. And I say to anybody watching or you're listening to this, that, you know, it's, there is a lot of pressure on young people not to drink necessarily, but to find happiness through going out and getting mashed. And that's fun and have a good time and good luck to you. But if it doesn't work for you and if you keep waking up going, hmm, I don't see if you having nearly as good time as most of my friends, then, you know, then think about it. It doesn't have to be something you do is what I'd say to people. And what's better isn't being straight and not making mistakes.

It's like that's all prohibition in some sense. What's better is, no, you need an adventure, man. You need to get out there and have something to do and something worth waking up for. And you need, that's the substitute for the addiction. Excessive drinking is considered 13 or more drinks a week. If you have three glasses of wine every night, which would be splitting a bottle of wine with your friend, your husband, whatever, you fall in that category. An alcoholic is defined as someone basically where they can't stop once they start.

Often they'll drink until they pass out. Wow. Or they'll drink to where they become dysfunctional. They become the kind of person. Everyone goes, my God, you're slurring your words. You're not safe to drive. They get DUIs. Their boss has trouble.

Like, you need to quit coming to work hungover. But an excessive drinker is 13. If you drink six drinks a week, if you're a woman, you have a 40% higher incidence of breast cancer. if you drink up to 10 drinks, it goes up to 70% higher chance of getting cancer. So just the health benefits, one of the things that's coming out of England is research that if you stop drinking for 30 days, just come back. And what they're finding is people are living longer that's clearing out their kidneys. It's arterial sclerosis is being reversed.

You know, people are having all kinds of more energy. They're losing weight. most of the things that we do that are addictions are to numb out our anxiety, to numb out our pain, to numb out the memories of trauma, to numb out our discomfort around being people in a social, being with people in a social situation, the fear that I won't have fun, I won't be interesting, I'm more relaxed, I'm more fun, you know, and that's the big myth is I won't have a fun life. There's something about my mom. She has a way of making it sound like a really bad f***ing idea. and my I had a lot of aunts and uncles and second cousins and stuff that were all alcoholics, drug addicts.

And watching them, I thought, ooh, that is not a good look. Real like some real white trashy stuff. And so I was just like, no. And my mom was chiming in with, it's way bad. You don't want to do it. You don't want to end up like that. So she's in my ear making it sound really logical to not do it. And I'm watching people act a fool who are doing it.

So I just thought, yeah. When I thought I was going to have kids, I wanted to ask my mom, like, you were so good. Like, neither my sister or I ever got into trouble. We never did drugs. We never drank. No trouble, nothing. My sister, to this day, is like the most straight, narrow person you will mean.

So when you tried it, what was it like for you? Oh, alcohol made me feel like I was suppressing the urge to dance on the table. It is awesome, and I love it the most. I just don't let myself do it because it's not in, it's not congruent with wanting to live forever. There's just too many downsides, but that shit is fun. So, like, I get how people get in trouble. I just don't have an addictive personality. So for me, it was easy to be like, yeah, this is fun, but I can weigh it against the disadvantages, and there are way too many.

Unlike a lot of substances and drugs that actually attach to the surface of cells, to receptors, alcohol actually has its own direct effects on cells because it can really just pass into those cells. And the fact that it can pass into so many organs and cells so easily is really what explains its damaging effects. Ethanol produces substantial damage to cells, because when you ingest ethanol, it has to, it has to be converted into something else because it is toxic to the body. And if you thought ethanol was bad, acetylaldehyde is particularly bad.

Acetylaldehyde is poison. It will kill cells. It damages and kills cells and it is indiscriminate as to which cells it damages and kills. That's a problem, obviously. And the body deals with that problem by using another component of the NAD biochemical pathway

to convert acyldehyde into something called acetate. Acetate is actually something that, your body can use as fuel. And that process of going from ethanol to acetylaldehyde to acetate does involve the production of a toxic molecule. Again, acetylalaldehyde is really toxic. If your body can't do this conversion of ethanol to acetylaldehyde to acetate fast enough, well, acetylaldehyde will build up in your body and cause more damage. So it's important that your body be able to do this conversion very quickly. And the place where it does that is within liver and cells within the liver are very good at this conversion process but they are cells

and they are exposed to the acetylaldehyde in the conversion process and so cells within the liver really take a beating in the alcohol metabolism events it is the poison the acetylaldehyde itself that leads to the effect of being inebriated or drunk I think most people don't realize that that being drunk is actually a poison-induced disruption in the way that your neural circuits work. It's very important that people take control of their mind and their body in a way that allows themselves to calm down, to reduce the so-called stress response.

You're too activated, you're too alert, you're too agitated, and you want to be less alert, less activated, and less agitated. When we're too activated and we want to calm down, and we're trying to say, calm down, don't say the thing that you know you shouldn't say. Don't do the thing you don't you know you shouldn't do and then there's the other kind of limbic friction Which is the world is happening really fast and we feel buried we're overwhelmed and we need to get more Activated we need more energy we need more energy we need to be able to lean into life and we're feeling overwhelmed So the first thing for anyone trying to navigate stress and then we'll talk about drama

Is to understand in what kind of stress they're dealing with are you exhausted and having a hard time getting your energy up? Mm-hmm. Or is your energy to be? high and you're having a hard time getting your energy down because the solutions to those are often quite different trying to control the mind with the mind is like trying to grab fog it's it's vapors you're never gonna grab it the nervous system includes the brain but also all the connections to the body to act again and so the when you can't control your mind you want to do

something purely mechanical all trauma anxiety fears they all map back to stress some way. Now you can have stress without trauma, you can have anxiety without trauma, but you can't really have trauma without stress and anxiety. Even though there aren't really strict definitions of the boundaries between trauma and stress and fear, I think it's fair to say that trauma is a fear and or stress response that's happening at the wrong time, right? It's sort of carrying over from an experience it's making life uncomfortable or in some cases exceedingly challenged. On the other side of things, you're feeling overwhelmed and fatigued, there are two ways to approach that. First is the kind of foundation of fatigue, which is almost always poor sleep and scheduling of sleep. This is something

that doesn't get discussed a lot. I don't think I've discussed this on any podcast previously. But, you know, getting better at sleeping is a whole set of practices. But sleep is a slow tool. It's not a real-time tool because if you're feeling exhausted and you have to get up and have your day, deal with children, deal with work, deal with life. we can talk about how to get better at sleeping, but in real time, what you want to do is you want to bring more alertness into the system. Focus and alertness. The way to do that is to take advantage of a very well-established medical fact. All medical students learn this, all MDs know this, which is that there's a direct relationship between how you breathe and your heart rate.

So when we inhale, when we inhale, it almost feels like everything's moving up. But actually what happens is our diaphragm moves down. When that happens, our heart literally gets a little bit bigger. The volume of the heart gets a little bit bigger, which means that whatever blood in there is moving per unit time a little bit slower. And there's a set of neurons in the heart called the sinoatrial node that sends a signal to the brain

and says, hey, blood flow is slowing down. And the brain sends a signal back to the heart and says, okay, let's speed up and speeds up the heart rate. So the short, concise way to put it is when you inhale, more vigorously or longer, you're speeding up your heart rate. This is actually, there's a name for it in the medical community. But the important thing to understand is as you inhale, you're sending a neural signal to your heart to speed up. And when you exhale, the diaphragm moves up. The heart gets a little bit smaller, literally because there's less space there.

Then there's a signal sent to the brain and the brain sends a signal back and says, slow down the heart rate. So if you want to become more alert, you actually can just simply make your inhales a little bit more vigorous or a little bit longer than your exhale. Longer or more vigorous inhales will speed up your heart rate and make you more alert. Longer or more vigorous exhales will slow down your heart rate and make you less alert. The repetitive breathing more quickly and deeply, this kind of thing, or some variant of that, all through the mouth or all through the nose, brings up the heart rate and causes the adrenal glands, which sit right above the kidneys, to secrete adrenaline. They make you more alert.

And you see these big inflections in heart rate when people do this. Typically, it makes people feel agitated at first. They feel a little bit agitated. And then when you exhale and hold your breath for 15 seconds or so, or what you're doing, essentially is you're learning to be calm as your body is flooded with all this adrenaline and the heart rate is going and that is 100% top-down control what you're doing in those moments is you're learning to take your forebrain and say fight the temptation to move fight the temptation to breathe this particular

pattern of breathing 25 or 30 times followed by an exhale and a hold and then a big inhale in a hold sometimes doing more inhaling and exhaling type repetitive breathing that is really somebody training themselves how to self-induce stress and we know from some good literature and some emerging science that's still ongoing that it is possible to get comfortable in these agitated states so that your mind is okay feels okay when the body is feeling like it wants to tremble or move that you can learn to suppress that activity the ice bath is another good example of this Some people go straight to the ice bath because cold water will almost always induce a low level of stress in people.

You have to kind of fight it. Even if you learn to love it. You still have to every time jumping in there. Okay, I got to control the mind essentially to calm. Exactly. So the body is saying, this is really cold. Get out. Get out now.

And you're pushing back on that. It's top down control. It's pure top down control. And you could do this any number of ways. There's actually something called the hour of pain. The hour pain was actually described to me by a friend of mine, a former military special operations guy, who said that they place you, this wasn't through military, but this is kind of outside the military. Extracurricular activities.

Placing you into one position on the floor, and you have to stay there for an hour, which can be excruciating. There's so much limbic friction where you want to move so badly because the stabilizing muscles of the body and the feedback and on muscular skulls, system says move move move I don't want to move the tiniest of it and so all that practice is it's just a different version of the ice it's you're learning top-down control so you know long exhale breathing lying down on your back completely relaxing your body and learning to completely turn off thinking which sounds hard but you can learn how to do it very quickly if you do that practice for about 10 minutes a day yeah humans are fascinated with what we repress and so by hitting

that nerve, that little thing that we don't really want to talk about, but we're secretly fascinated by. I think that's what kind of led to the success of the book. But I've always been fascinated by the dark side of human nature. People generally bring to anything in life, their own psychology, their own mindset. But for most people, most people in this world are naive. Most people don't understand the 48 laws of power. They don't understand that you want to talk less to appear more powerful. And that naivete is what gets you into. a lot of trouble in life. I was one of those people who was a bit naive and didn't understand this kind of secret language that people in power have. But I don't want to be in a position

which a lot of people make a mistake of in life of constantly repeating the same success of formula. I've always followed the laws of power which has changed things up. Interaction with boldness. Don't be afraid to do things differently. Adapt your strategy to the circumstance. So every book represents a new challenge to me, a new subject. It's never too late. It's better to start earlier on in life. I mean, I wrote a book mastery that deals with that subject The early you figure it out the better off you are, but it can happen later in life Now I figured out in an early age that I wanted to write. I didn't know what I wanted to write, but I loved words and I love writing And if I didn't have that connection when I was eight years old all the way into high school and college

I would have been a lost soul and I empathize with a lot of people who don't have that feeling when they're eight years or 18 or in their 20s. But I've tried to tell people, everybody has it. You're just not listening to yourself. You've lost touch with who you are, the core of your being. You're on social media too much. You're listening to what other people are telling you. You're listening to what your parents told you you should be doing in life.

Listening to what your friends think is cool. You're listening to what the culture is all about, you know, the entertainment industry, etc. You've got to cut all that shit out. You've got to listen to yourself. What makes you different is your strength is your source. of power. You've lost touch with it. Let's go back and try and find it. That's the whole problem. How do you find it? Well, it's a process. We all come from the same origins. We can trace it back. They've done it genetically to like one woman, the source of homo sapiens, like hundreds of thousands of years ago.

We're all cut from the same cloth. No matter our culture, no matter our gender, no matter any, our period in history, we all have the same genetic. components. We all went through the same evolutionary process, the same brains wired in the same way. So if some people are deep, what I call deep narcissists, no doubt, and they're toxic and they're difficult. But if some people have that, how is it that other people don't have any of it? That's not possible. There must be something within all of us that would make us all prone to becoming deep narcissists. But some people, it triggers, it makes them fall into that deepness. Others were able to save ourselves, right? But if aggression is something that's built into human nature, and I try and go through it, the whole history of it, right? So you're wanting to exclude

yourself. So, I mean, I get, I, people have posted comments on YouTube about my ranting about narcissism. They go, well, Robert, you're a snake oil salesman. That's absolutely ridiculous. I'm not a narcissist. You know, 0.05% of people are known to be narcissists. I can bet you that the person's saying that is a narcissist, right? Because the fact that you want to deny that you have this quality is a sure sign that you have it. You're in denial. You're trying to shine a great light on yourself. Look, I'm superior. I'm the one person in the world on this planet that doesn't have it. Man, you're a narcissist, right? That is a sure sign of it. So, stop denying it. Laws of human nature should be a painful book to read. It was a painful

book to write because it throws a mirror on yourself. It makes you come to terms with some of your own nooks and crannies that you don't want to look into, right? You don't want to come to terms with the fact that you feel envy. But envy is the most common human emotion of them all. There's a deep history of it. I go into it in the book. Our hunter-gathering ancestors, chimpanzees are prone to feeling envy. You feel it 50 times during the day, particularly on social media. You're just denying it. If you deny all of these qualities, how can you ever change yourself? You think that you're a Gandhi, but how can you be a Gandhi if you won't like look at yourself and change yourself, right? The only way you can become good or or kind of of overcome some of these qualities is by looking at it, seeing the reality, and then confronting it and then trying to change it. What's your advice for young people? Well, don't be too hard on yourself and be patient.

It's a kind of a mix that you have to go through, a bit of a dance. So on the one hand, you want to be serious about life. Life doesn't go on forever. Your youth will be over in 10, 12 years. You better believe it. It goes faster than you can imagine. So take it seriously. You want to realize what your life's task is. You want to develop those skills that will make it so when you're in your 30s,

things will come together as they fortunately did for me. It's a common story that 31, 32 is that year where things turn around for people. But on the other hand, you don't want to be so damn serious, so damn linear in your thinking, I've got to head down this path to make this amount of money, et cetera. you're young. Have some fun, have some adventure, have some excitement. But at the same time, also have that sense of discipline, that sense of purpose. You can do both things at the same time. Now the circumstances now, it's easy for me, a boomer, I have to admit that,

to preach to you when you have to gone through like two, you've gone through a pandemic, what looks like to be a recession. And then if you're a millennia, you went through another, you went through the crash, in 08. It's easy for me to preach. You're dealing with really difficult circumstances. And there's what they call what the great resignation now is that it, right? So a lot of people are rethinking their lives. They don't want to work at crap jobs just to get by. And I applaud that 100% right. That's great. So you want to think about working for yourself is the ultimate position in this world. And even though times are difficult, even though it may seem like

just a dream. There's so much potential out there for entrepreneurial spirit, for creating your own startup, for creating your own podcast, for going your own path in life. You don't have to follow other people. It's not like it was when I was growing up. There were things that were better back then, but there are things that were a lot worse, right? You have so many more options. It's just that you're not going to reach them. You're not going to be happy in this short time that you have to be alive unless you take it seriously, unless you learn skills and develop and go through an apprenticeship in your 20s, et cetera. So if you can balance those two and still have some fun and adventure and excitement, just don't listen to your parents go, I got to be making $100,000

when I'm 23 and go to law school and do all this stuff. You're going to burn out. So kind of understand you. I guess the main thing I would say is know who you are, know what you're, what You know, deep down your core, what you love, what you hate, and what you were destined to create in this world. That's like the most important process you can go through. Don't ask, are you worthy of the goal? Ask is a goal worthy of you? You're trading your life for it. You want to have a goal that's worth failing for.

An ideal is an idea that you have fallen in love with. You see, the beautiful truth is you and I have more potential than we will ever understand. We've got phenomenal powers. Intuition is an intellectual factor. It's like perception, the will, reason, imagination, memory, and intuition. These are higher faculties. These are the faculties that separate us from all of the rest of the animal kingdom. All the rest of the animal kingdom is completely at home in their environment.

They blend in. You and I are totally disoriented in our environment. And that is because we've been given the godlike ability to create our own environment. You and I are spiritual beings. And if we are not inspired to do something, it's because we're not thinking of who we are. The essence of us is spirit. And spirit's always for expansion and fuller expression. He gets into that so beautifully in the area of imagination.

He said it's the most marvelous, miraculous, inconceivably powerful force the world's ever known. It's the imagination that permits us to move into the spiritual essence of who we are. It's your imagination that takes the idea that comes to your consciousness, and that's spirit wanting to express itself right or way through you, because spirit's always for expansion and fuller expression. And so it's the raising of our conscious awareness. He'll found this out. He writes about it. That's what changes our life. We're spiritual beings.

We've been gifted with an intellect, and we live in a physical body. Everything we own at the time of our death's going to belong to someone else. So it's not what we own. We're merely custodians. It's what we do with our life that makes the difference. You've got to be persistent. And he gives us a very simple formula here. He said there are four simple steps which lead to the habit of persistent. Number one, a definite purpose backed by a burning desire for its fulfillment. Number two, a definite plan expressed in continuous action. Number three, a mind. This is very important. closed tightly against all negative and discouraging influences, including negative suggestions of relatives, friends, and acquaintances.

And number four, a friendly alliance with one or more persons who will encourage one to follow through with both plan and purpose. He said these four steps are essential for success in all walks of life. When I set a new goal, I have difficulty believing I can do it. Intellectually, I've studied this long enough, then I know I can. But it isn't your intellect that does it. If it was the intellect that does it, our school system would be screaming successful. But we've got people graduating from universities all over the world.

They've got an enormous amount of knowledge in their intellect, and yet they're losing, they're broke, they can't find work. So it's not your intellect. Intellectually, I've studied this long enough to know that if I can see it in my mind I can do it. You've got to believe it in your heart. You see, the heart is what the early Greeks referred to, the heart as the subconscious mind. There's a whole chapter in here in the subconscious mind, and it's very, very powerful, because until you internalize the idea, it isn't going to happen. You see, you can want something once or of a conscious

nature. That's your intellectual part of your personality. The desire is the idea. The idea, in your subconscious mind, seeking expression outside through your action. Desire is when you've internalized the idea. You've got to believe you can do it on a subconscious level. You can come to believe it through repetition. If you take what you want and start to imagine yourself with it, the imagination enables you to go into the future and bring the future into the present. You've got to act like the person you want to become. Well, when we do that, and do it over and over, you come to believe. We operate on the premise that everyone thinks,

and the very truth is that very few people think. My old employer and mentor Earl Nightgale often said that if the average person said what they were thinking, they would be speechless. The late and great educator Dr. Kenneth McFarland said 2% of the people think, 3% think they think, and 95% would actually rather die than think. General Henry Ford said thinking is the,

hardest work there is, which is the probable reasons so few people engage in it. Thinking is the highest function that you and I are capable of. The problem is, very few courses teach thinking. You see, an idea is a thought or a collection of thoughts directed towards a purpose. Most people would never do what they're doing if they're thinking. Listen to the average conversation that's going on. People would never say what they were saying if they were thinking. You know, the truth is that thinking is not something everybody gets involved in.

But you start studying this material, and I can assure you one thing, you will begin to think. If a person is going to accomplish anything of any consequence in their life, they have to get into the spirit of it. In other words, I think we have to understand where does the information come from? Where does the energy come from to create things? Well, we go to spirit. Spirit flows to and through us, and we can think the highest function that we're capable of, and we build an image in our mind. Then we have to be true to that image. We have to use our will to hold that picture on the screen of the mind, and we turn the image back over to spirit which is within us. Through the reciprocal law of spirit, it gives it back to us in physical form.

Now, this is truly getting into the spirit of the thing. That is what being inspired is all about. And all great work came about because some was inspired to do it. All the great paintings, Rembrandt, Van Gogh, all of them, they were inspired to do the great work. We have to understand that whatever Rembrandt or Van Gogh used, we have available to us. We're God's highest form of creation. Spirit flows to and through us. It's our responsibility to decide what we're going to do with it. I think we've got an obligation to do great work. We're only here for a short time, not a long time.

And we've got the faculties and the ability to do great work. I think we should. If you gaze into the abyss long enough, you see the light, not the darkness. I'm betting my life on it. Bring it on the adventure along the route, man. and I would say, where's that adventure to be found? You don't want someone else's fate. Man, your fate's enough, and your adventure's enough.

It's plenty. It's more than you can ever fully realize. And so that's also part of the reason that we all believe that the individual has some intrinsic dignity. Don't be so sure that your position and your room is so damn trivial. It might be your attitude towards it that's trivial. And if you're in dire straits and dire circumstances, just look at how much opportunity you have to make things better.

Well, maybe the same thing's true of life, right? You bind yourself to it. And that tighter you bind yourself to it, the more you find out what it is. And that's like a radical embrace. We're built to walk uphill. And when you reach the pinnacle of the hill, you want to stop and appreciate the vision.

But the next thing you want is a higher hill in the distance, because it's from the uphill climb that we derive our value. almost all the positive emotion we feel, especially the emotion that fills us with enthusiasm. That's experienced in relationship to a goal. And so in some sense, you want a goal that you can never attain. There's nothing that makes you more formidable than verbal competence, than being able to articulate, be able to think, to marshal your arguments, right? Aim yourself in one direction, and you might say, well, I've gone halfway down this path,

and I found out it's wrong. Well, how do you distinguish that from just giving up? Well, that's a really hard question, right? It's a moral hazard. But then the absolute is, yeah, but you have to play one of them. You have to learn to play one of them. They have to become an expert at at least one of them. And then that's not a relative proposition.

And I believe that's true. So you want to commit to something. And then when you commit to something, you require yourself to bring all of your disparate components moving in a single direction, united in a single direction. So it's a unifying. It's a unifying act. You said that a harmless man is not a good man. A good man is a very dangerous man who has that under voluntary control.

How should people become more dangerous? Oh, becoming more articulate is definitely, I would say, that's the primary array of weapons. I mean, physical prowess is something, and it's not nothing, that physical confidence that comes along with that as well. but the same thing replicated at the level of the ability to communicate and to think. That's way broader field of battle and opportunity. In a world with seemingly infinite options,

it can be challenging to decide on the best course of action for one's life. Pearson suggests that a useful approach is to focus on what bothers you or what you find most challenging. These discomforts or challenges can be an indication, of where one should focus their time and energy. By leaning into what is difficult or uncomfortable, individuals can discover their strengths and find direction in their lives. Be honest with yourself about your interests,

abilities, and limitations, and pursue the path that aligns most closely with your values and passions. There's a lot of things you could be bothered by. Like a million things, man. But some things grip you. They bug you, and they might make you resentful and bitter. and bitter because they bug you so much. Like they're your things, man. They've got you. So then I look

for a question that I would like the answer to. I would really like the answer to it. So I don't assume I already have the answer because I would actually really like to have the answer. So if I could get a better answer, great. And so that's the first thing. And that's like a prayer. It's like, okay, here's a mystery. I would like to delve into it further. Well, so that's humility. It's like, here's a mystery, which means I don't know.

I would like to delve into it further, which means I don't know enough already. And then comes the revelation. It's like, well, what's a revelation? Well, if you ask yourself a question, it's a real question. Do you get an answer or not? An answer is, well, yeah,

thoughts start to appear in your head. From somewhere. That's right, from somewhere. Where do they come from? Do you have a sense? Depends on what you're aiming at. It depends. It depends on your intent.

So imagine that your intent is to make things better. Then maybe they come from the place that's designed to make things better. Maybe your intent is to make things worse. Then they come from hell. Some of you in the room right now, you are where you are, You're giving 60% when you have 120 in you. Why? Because you've never made a decision.

We all have 24 hours, right? What makes some of us average, make some of us good, some are great, is not the family you was born into, right? It had none to do with that. Had nothing to do with your social economic status. It has everything to do with how you command your life. So if you have a bad day, which is no such thing of, it doesn't exist.

You had a bad moment and you were so immature that you let that moment dictate the rest of it. your day, right? And y'all not kids no more. I don't do elementary school. And some of you are grown, but you're still a child. And you brag about how you're an adult. You're only an adult because of your age. You're not an adult because you command your life. I was homeless for two and a half years. And the problem with most of you, you never felt no pain before. Y'all spoiled. Y'all spoiled. Some of y'all spoiled. Just bottom line, your parents have done everything for you. You never have to do nothing for yourself. You're spoiled. We're going to keep it real tonight. Some of you are spoiled brats.

every time you ever got in trouble somebody in your house got you out of it every time you've done something you're not supposed to do people say Eric your mother's a tyrant you're right she kicked me out you're right she's mean but she developed a man because she put me out there and said you're going to have to grow up and some of you have never learned to grow up and so every time something get hard you quit you call mama I dare you to take a little pain I dare you I dare you not to go home you ain't going to die at the end of pain It's success. You're not going to die because you're feeling a little pain.

I'm not eating like I eat at home. That's why you're about to go to the next level because if you keep eating like you head at home, you will keep being a boy or a girl. It's time to become man, woman. I love my life. Y'all gotta start loving your life. And whether you make it to the league or not, you are not who you are because of the league. You are who you are because of who you are.

And if you make it to the league, then the league is going to be blessed with your presence. Are you hearing what I'm saying? Be comfortable on who you are. Be comfortable if y'all poor. If you come from a family right now that's broke, you use that to your advantage. I used that to my advantage that I was a high school drop out, that I was homeless, that I ate out trash can.

I love dealing with a dude who think, because he comes for money, he better than me. Let's go. Let's go. You got money, but do you got that dog? Yeah, you got money, you got prill, but do you got that dog? Do you got that stamina?

So yeah, you might have something I don't have right now, but if I work hard, I can have what you have. You have to give it everything you got. No more TV, no more parties, no more playing. If you don't have a 4.0, what you need to be doing is studying. Get off the phone. I'm sorry, I'm not available until the end of this year. No, I'm for real.

You've reached the right number, but you call me at the wrong time. Call me back January 1st. I'm about to get busy now. I want you to have a countdown of your own. And say when the countdown is over with a real, shh, watch me. Because when I was homeless, I knew something was wrong. knew that wasn't the best of me and one day I said will the real Eric Thomas please stand up

will a real Eric Thomas please stand up stop being this high school dropout stop giving up stop sleeping on the street stop walking up and down Finco Avenue like you ain't got nothing and get your GED stop being afraid to take a test stop being afraid to go to college because your daddy didn't go and your mama didn't go stop being afraid and be the best Eric Thomas you can be but listen to me it's going to be hard it took me 12 years to get a four years to get a four your degree but I got it and guess what on a degree it don't have dates but I'm exactly where I wanted to be because I realized I got to commit my very being to this thing I got to breathe it I got to eat it I got to sleep it and until you get there you'll never be successful in life

but once you get there I guarantee you the world is yours so work hard and you can have whatever it is you want I realized one day what was missing was confidence guys I remember like being number 20 in the world. I remember being like number 15 in the world and I remember when I became the best in the world. The only thing that changed is one day I got on stage and said I belong here. Of course, money changed. The blue checks changed. But I remember everything in my life changed when I got on stage and said, why are you nervous? You belong here. Why are you nervous? This stuff didn't come from a book. You didn't watch some video and pick this up. It's your life. You have the credibility. You belong. So when I got on stage, I realized one day like, yo, you were homeless and you came

out of it. You didn't know who your biological father was, but you fought to meet him and build a relationship with him. You were married. You've been married 28 years. E.T. You got two kids to say E.T. You got degrees when nobody in your family has ever had a PhD. Nobody in your family has ever wrote a book before. E.T. You went from the bottom to the top. ET, you belong on stage. You belong on stage, Eric. You have something to say. You really care about the people. Your motives are pure. Like all your stuff has been pure. E. You still doing middle schools. You're still doing elementary school. You're still doing high schools.

E, you belong here. You're still doing a free program for 10 years at Michigan State. You belong here. You're putting out a video every day. You belong here. And before I leave, some of you, your problem is you don't believe that you belong here. There are those of you in this room. You're already there.

Your problem is it's some stuff. You don't want to give up to go. You're talented. You just don't want to give up sleep. It's not that you, listen to me, pound for pound. Any agent in the room, pound for power, motivational speaker, pound for pound, entrepreneur, power for pound for pound, athlete, power for power, weight lifting, pound for power, whatever you do. I guarantee you when you do it, nobody can do it like you do it.

The problem is you don't hardly do it. You love sleep too much. You love that alcohol too much. You love that substance too much. You love that vice too much. There's something that you love more than yourself than your dream. What do you do on the days that you don't feel like? So I'm going to be honest with you.

I'm way past that. Every day I feel like. Every day I feel like eating. Every day I feel like giving my wife the best life. Every day I feel like driving in a nice car. Every day I feel like flying first class. Every single day of my life, I feel like giving $100.20. Every single day, somebody said yesterday, E.T.

You gave $120. What you're going to do tomorrow? I said, I don't know. Get $1.40. I don't know, but I don't have days where I don't feel like it. Why? Because I'm counting on me. My wife's counting on me. I don't have days to waste. That person who was your hater, they thought they defeated you. That person who told you you'll never amount to anything. They thought they defeated you. I need you to say it so they can hear. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, two, three. One, three. I am. We're going to add this to the declaration. I'm going to read something to you. We're going to add this and then I'm out.

We're going to add this and I need you to say it like you meaning. We're going to say, I am. Therefore, it is. And when you walk out of here, you're going to live it. One, two, three. I am. Therefore, I love it. One, two, three.

I am. Therefore. All right, all right. This is good, but I don't got enough attitude. He knows how to have any little attitude. All right. One, two, three. I am.

Therefore it is. One, two, three. Aye. Therefore, one, two, three. Ah, one, two, three. The other side of your fear is a fulfilled destiny. How bad do you want it?

And like an eagle, it's the only bird that flies into the storm. It is time for you to fly into the next dimension of where you have been called to. What is your dream? What is your idea? What is your assignment? There is a new breed of champions emerging out of the ashes of doubt and fear. Your knees may be knocking your palms sweaty, but the time is now to rise up and run after it. Run after your dream.

Run after your idea. Run after your goal. that you have been called to do, I can see your giant of addiction running towards you with words of darkness, death, attempted to strike fear in your heart. Will you cower? Will you back down or when you run into battle? You see, many of us believe that just because our father was a drug dealer and our uncle was a drug dealer, that that is our life and that is all forever. but I want you to know something. That is only a lesson to show us to be something more than what they thought we can be.

You see, when a family tree is dying, all you have to do is take care of the roots. And if the roots is too dead to bring the tree back alive, you plan another one. Remember, you are not fighting for only yourself, but you are fighting for a generation of people who will come after you. You are fighting for the proud.

You are fighting for your family. You are fighting for your legacy. What you are fighting for is bigger than you. Do not forget this. Your dream, your idea, whatever goal you have, get up and run after it. But I see a generation rising up against the one who called you powerless,

rising up against the fire, fiery darts of the enemy, rising up against the lie that have held us down far too long, rising up against the despair in the heaviness and the chronic anxiety. I have waited my whole life for this moment. Thank you to everybody that doubted me. Knees buckling, palms sweaty, heart heavy, but I'm ready. I'm afraid, but I'm running. You will hear my feet walk in the pavement.

I'm no more complacent. There will be many giants in your life. There will be depression. There will be anxiety. There will be oppression. There will be stress. There will be overwhelmed. Will you buckle under the pressure?

Or will you rise to the occasion? If you are going to defeat your giant, if you are going to defy the odds, If you're going to remove the lids and the labels, if you are going to step and venture into uncharted territory, you are going to have to master the art of rising early. Keys and Queens life is like one man standing on one single street. If you stay in this lane, you will continue to ride. But if you pay attention to all the other cars, you will crash. I mean, don't pay attention to the next man.

Pay attention to the best man. See, the best man is whoever you believe he is because the mind has power. Your mouth and your words have power. It's a mentality. Roses can grow in the projects if you take care of the soil. It don't matter how big the house is, baby. It's the love inside of it. Take care of your community.

Brothers and sisters. for what they put in your neighborhoods. Put your crown back on your head. Let the world know your name. You see all these men standing on top of the world. You think they're special. You think they're everything, but you don't know what they did to get there.

Are you willing to sell your soul for material then? Because right now, we're losing a battle to the evil, and I'm telling you, young kings, I need you to come back. If you are going to defeat your giant, you are going to need heart. You must overcome what lies between the pit of your fears and the summit of your knowledge. Our Goliaths, our challenges, our giants, oftentimes meet us in our valley places. It's not on the mountaintop that David fought Goliath, but it's in the valley. I tell you this.

The tangible giants in our life are defeated by means that are intangible. If a man can conquer his mind, if a man can master discipline, then there is nothing he can't win. One thing we know about David is that David had a mind that was fully persuaded. He was not motivated by his sling. He was motivated by something very intangible,

something very supernatural. If you're going to defeat this giant, if you're going to win the war, it starts on the battlefield of your mind. This is where the war is won. Over the course of your life, you will discover that the obstacle is the way,

that there is great counsel in conflict. We would discover that we are most creative in the midst of adversity. So do not run from your battle. The battle is a learning experience. The battle is a platform for promotion. You got to overcome fear. The moment that you overcome fear,

overcome fear, then your opponent is bankrupt. There's nothing they can do. You're going to have to dispense with fear and with negative self-talk. Remember your why. It is the why that gets us to win. And it is the why that gives us the power to persevere through the how. Stop looking for the addition. Stop looking for the validation. Stop looking for everybody to agree with what you're about to do. Stop looking for everybody to understand. And know this. All you have is all you need. What has been tested. What has been proven. Do something with what's in your hand. Do what you can with what you have. But I'm going to tell you this, that you are phenomenal, you are a king, you come from royal blood,

you stand on the tip top of pyramids, you are royalty, king. You are a life, you are. The question is, do you believe?