yeah people only root for those who don't need to be rooted [Music] for and so I just asked them a couple questions I was like who here before pledging started was like I want to be a part of this house the guys were like you me okay like okay got it who here thought it was going to be easy who here thought it would be hard they raised their hands I'm like guys this is what hard feels like and all of a sudden there's just like this big EX in the room they're like expectations get
reset this is normal you wanted this thing you expected it to be hard reality now matches conditions sorry expectations now match conditions this is what heart feels like and then all of a sudden it's like they got permission to feel shitty and by getting permission to feel shitty they stop feeling and the next one is like what if we confront it and say like what if they're right now what cuz a lot of I think a lot of effort gets put into trying toy deny reality right like there's this clip that I shared uh from
B and he was talking about how he gets made fun of for his ears being big right and I think it's a really good clip cuz his point that he was making um cuz it's such a visual easy example for people to understand he's like is that it's true I do have big ears and and so that's that's like the if they're like you have no right to be making content are they right okay and yeah I'm still going to do it anyways because the thing is like I one of the things that I had
earlier on in my career was like I didn't think I was a really good person like I was like I'm not a good person like some people like yeah I just had that right and I had a you know whatever and one of the things that gave me a lot of respite or relief from that kind of thought process was like comma that's okay because I can still do the things that create success and not deserve it and still get it and that actually felt very powerful for me because it was like I don't have
to deserve to success I can still just do the stuff that gets it it's like you don't have to you don't have to deserve the girl but you can still do the things that get her and do deserve it when you have her I don't know who knows I hate the word deserve to begin with right yes but like that concept because also I I could segue into like gratitude around like if you think you deserve it then you don't you don't enjoy it but um that has been super powerful for me which is like
what if they're right and because a lot of people just trying to they spend so much effort trying to fight the fact that the comments might be right this might have been a [ __ ] terrible thumbnail you know what this might have been a boring video this this post might have been regurgitated content this post might have been inspired too closely by someone else's post right what if they're right and yeah does it make me a piece of [ __ ] what if it does and I hear stats like that and I just think
man it is so easy to win like that I mean like when I hear that that's exactly what I think I'm just like man if everyone's like struggling to win it's like you like most of the pain that people experience is purely in their own minds and so to your point I think there's an interesting one between like burnout versus hard and so like for me burnout is when my I would Define it as my output per unit of time decreases so I can see that that's measurable right now like I can say like number
of pages that I edit or the quality of the content that I create like my output per time like the team knows when I like when I'm like 6 hours 7 hours into recording something they're like I literally start like slumping you know like like physically I just start like slumping and like my Cadence isn't as like I'm just not as sharp right there's that versus emotional burnout which I think people mislabel as burnout out when really it's just like they don't know how to reframe reality and so what it really is is they got
a comment on a post that bugged them and like again it's like pulling it from the Shadows it's like no this stuff doesn't work it's like hold on what's the one voice that actually is coming through what is the real thing well there is this comment okay great it's embarrassing to even have to say that but when you say it then you admit it and all of a sudden you put it in the light and the shame kind of starts to evaporate because then you can name it and be like is this Comet better than
my bigger than my future is this Comet bigger than me and one of the things that I um that has helped me was saying like what's true about this you stay in poverty until you learn the first lesson of poverty which is two words my fault and so when I was younger I was really angry at my parents like many people are right Justified or not doesn't really matter I was very angry and I blamed them for the woes of my life and I realized when I was 19 that these people that I hated I
was giving all the power over the fact that I wasn't the person I wanted to be and I was like well it's their fault and the idea that I had actually given these people that I hated Power Over My Success was ultimately something that made me feel sick to my stomach and was what allowed me to point the finger of blame inwards and say my fault and then at least take ownership over the fact that like and like sure maybe your dad didn't hug you enough or maybe your mom was in PR or whatever it
is right it's like and and like I said this the other day and it'll probably piss off a lot of your audience so you know we can put our soft ear phones on um like if you were if you if you suffered from racial inequality if you suffer from gender inequality if you suffer from being born in Bangladesh if you were ra uh not racial sexually abused your entire life you would be completely justified in the fact that you are not achieving the things that other people who didn't have those disadvantages have achieved and I
say this as a white guy who was born in America to a doctor father I understand that but to the same degree you have the opportunity that Chris nor I have which is that you can be an inspiration to people who just who went through the same thing and succeeded comma despite those circumstances because I can promise that there is somebody who has had it worse and has done it better and I think that that one single point of proof and like there's a global point of proof that you can look for for sure but
like you can be that very local point of proof in your community or subc community and I think um as soon as we shed that that's like I just I'm a big fan of uh Power follows the blame finger so like wherever you point the blame finger is where the power follows so it's like if you point it if you point it to the government government has the power if you point it at your your spouse and say like it's their fault that I'm I'm not in shape it's their fault they never let me do
anything it's like well you're giving them all the power and so it's like until you're like it's my fault it's also becomes my responsibility what is what if it's not your fault it doesn't matter and like I can't run marathons because I lost my leg at Birth and either you can just never try or you put the metal thing on and you do it anyways shoot I can't remember where it was from um but basically that the best art is Art where the artist makes it for themselves and where you see commercial work is where
a bunch of people are trying to make something for an audience and so it's they're trying to like rinse and recycle stuff that actually solves no one's problems because no one is actually the audience whereas when you make it for yourself there's thousands of people just like you who will Who will have the same depth of understanding of it but it feels selfish in the moment to make something for yourself but when you make it for yourself you actually make it for every and so I think when you're on the start path you can't look
at the outcome as The only positive cuz you will never make it and so the positive frame that I've always used is sure you can have the external ones of like I like thinking about my first videos had like 13 views and I'm like well if I had an audience of 13 people I used to spend years pitching you know weight loss stuff to rims of 13 and that was fine and so thinking about that way was helpful but the the most helpful frame was thinking about who I was becoming as the asset that I
was building so in real time when whenever I finished a Long Day's Work I was becoming more like the type of person who could work for 5 years without reward and that would be part of the story I would someday tell and some some of the biggest reinforces I've had in my life has been futurecasting the story that I would tell about the shitty period that I was in like I remember when I was sleeping on the floor at my gym cuz I didn't have enough money for two rents and I was like I will
[ __ ] tell this story and when I lost everything for the first time I like I have the screenshot of the bank account like when I show it people are like oh look there's that thing but they forget that there was a person who screenshotted it to be like this won't [ __ ] happen again and I think having a larger Narrative of where you're ultimately going one gives you the vision of where you're like the like knows where he's going but it allows the dragons that you have to slay along the way the
hard things that you have to overcome to feed into the larger Narrative of who of the story that you'll someday tell and so like no one ever tells stories about the hero who made it all happen immediately and had no hardships no one cares right like okay you were born to a billionaire is there a story there not really but everyone loves the story because we can see ourselves in the character and how much we hope to be like them and it's the being like them not the having what they have that we usually like
and so reframing ourselves as the hero of that narrative in my harder times was what really got me through that and thinking I will tell this story someday I want to give you the single easiest razor to predict my behavior and I I said whatever will be the most epic story is the thing that I will most likely do and so often times the most epic story is not the shortest outcome to Victory it's the long Saga that results in this big thing later eventually and I was like if you ever want to know if
you're like I'm not sure what he's going to do in this situation just wonder what the most epic story to tell would be and that's usually what I will do and I don't know if that's self-aggrandizing but that's that's genuinely my Razor for even making the dis the big decisions about okay I'm going to sell gym launch I'm going to I'm going to marry ilila I'm going to slum it and live at the gym I'm going to fly around and do turnarounds I'm going to start this whole idea of a media company that just gives
exclusively like how do like how do I put all these together it's like well what would be the most epic story and I thought of this idea of just like when I think about who that story I want to tell is is this billionaire that documented the entire thing the whole way and just gave because I always I was like I wish that Elon Musk and and Warren Buffett and all these guys would have like and Jeff basos like would have just like I would love to have seen 1997 Amazon content and a lot of
the content in terms of like it it's getting five views it's like it's okay because when we make it they're going to come back and watch this so I don't need them to watch it today I want them to know that it's here when I do and I think that got me out of the the loop of it I have to win right now and then every one of them is just dropping uh a kernel or a bread comom for future meat to refer back to it won't get harder like this is the hardest part
and so if you can just make it through this everything else is downhill it's not that the things that you're the dragons are going to slay aren't going to get bigger they are but you become so much more equipped to slay them back and you have so many more allies you have people in the stands cheering for you you have the audience you have all of these other things that are behind you but in the beginning it's just you with a stick against a bear and argu that fight is a harder fight to win than
beating a dragon when you have a nuclear bomb and Six Nations behind you and so it's not even like the the size of the hardship it's just also the resources and how few of them you have and how so much of the beginning is literally burning the one thing you have which is time because you have no leverage you don't have the money to pay other people to help you you don't have the resources to go like get someone to to no one can learn it for you it's like there's a lot of the things
that that we care about a lot like no one can work out for you doesn't matter how much money you have no one can learn skills for you and so in the early days like it feels so painful cuz you're like you look around to see who can help you and then you're like [ __ ] it's me again and I think getting comfortable with the idea that each of these things kind of like Slum Dog Millionaire if you've seen that movie where he I'll give you the tldr he goes through his entire life of
Randomness and he gets on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire version in India and it has 12 questions to make a million dollars and from only 12 random experiences in his life that seemed meaningless at the time was he able to answer all of the questions and then ultimately win the skills that you develop along the way like Steve Jobs learning calligraphy that then became Apple fonts that you know transformed how we type those early days that little trench winning in the weeds often times gives you these huge advantages later on because you have more
context than anyone else and so rather than lament them and hate the fact that you're going through it remembering that these will be arrows that you put in the quiver that you're going to be using to slay the future bigger dragons and so expecting it to be easy is what makes it much harder than it ever is because in the early days hard was ooh stop this isn't good I should I should this is a warning sign this is a red flag I should slow down or I should stop you know I should pivot but
the more I think about it as a competitive landscape as I'm clear on what this path is supposed to look like and these rocks and these dragons are things that I'm going to have to slay along the way to get the princess or get the treasure I get happier about the harder it is because I know that no one else will follow it's a selection effect and I think if you can if you can shift from this is hard to no one else will be able to do this then it it's it flips from being
this thing that you're like oh poor me to oh poor everyone else who's going to have to [ __ ] try yeah and I think that is so much more motivating as a frame for the exact same circumstance like the amount of times when I was on my lonely path where I was too different from the friends that I had but not successful enough to be friends with the people that I wanted to be friends with that's when that's when you want people to root for you that's when you want people to support you once
you've already won people are like he's amazing he's so good but like that's the time when you need it the least and so you always have to be the person who roots for you before everyone else does and it's usually a single clap in the auditorium for a very long period of time it is a slow clap that's just you rooting for you um and that visual I think is one that you can kind of take because it is people struggle to do things alone and the path of the exceptional person is one of an
exception which means that you are not with other people and rather than fighting that or bemoaning it see it as an indicator that you're on the right path because if everyone else were cheering you on then it means you're not in the right place because it means you're just like everyone else and that's not where you want to be [Music] [Music]
