What It Really Takes to Reach Your Highest Self (My Ultimate Message)

23:46And so it's a really big deal to be able to say that and to change one's mind is one of the most profound things you can do. I agree. Why do you think it's so hard for people? I think they think it's a weakness. I really do. And I think you have to have a tremendous amount of strength and confidence to actually say that I'm wrong. It takes both. There's humility in saying I was wrong, but there's also confidence. I think there's a third thing that's the most terrifying and it's why this continues to be a problem. I mean, now you think about this. you also have to be good. Like here's the scary thing.

24:15If you want to succeed in life, you talk about this in the book. You talk about Napoleon Hill, Think and Grow Rich. That book also changed my life. I have the chills again. I remember where I was when I was reading that book and it hit me because he says like in the first, whatever, 40 pages, I've told you the answer. Like the whole reason I'm writing this book is on every single page of this book. I was like, what does he say? Cause I was like, where are we going with this? And the only thing he had said on every page was if you believe you can, you can. And if you think you can't, you can't.

24:44And I was like, oh my God. And so, yeah. But as you go to great lengths in the book to point out, your actions also have to line up. You're never gonna be able to think your way to success. I love Think and Grow Rich. It's my favorite book other than my scriptures, but I gotta be honest with you, you don't just think and get rich, you gotta do stuff. The question then becomes, what do I need to think and what do I need to do simultaneously or in congruency that produced the result? And that's why I did the things that I, I had the things in the book. second chapter, as you know, and I know you're a huge Matrix fan.

25:11As I'm writing this chapter, this is Tom's chapter. I was like, this is the greatest chapter ever written. I love this. But one of the points that I make in the book is being able to slow things down and get into bullet time. But there's two things I love about the Matrix. One, I think that's an absolute example of the reticular activating system in the brain. And so you do have to be good. But the question in life becomes, listen, I believe you're one decision, one relationship, one meeting, one show, one thought, one new emotion, potentially away from changing your entire life. I've proven this in my life.

25:40So have you. And the question then becomes, how do you find them? And this RAS is super powerful in our brains because it's the mechanism that filters the entire world to us. It literally reveals to us our reality. Just like you just said, it reveals our reality. I just bought a Tesla. I drove it here today. I like what Musk is doing. I'm like, I'm gonna get one of these Teslas. Man, every freaking where I go, I see Teslas now. Red one, babe. Hey, there's a white one. There's a plaid. Three lanes over, other side of the freeway. Babe, black Tesla just drove by. She's like, how in the world do you know this?

26:11Because it's become important to me. And it's now in my filter. It's now a part of my RAS. That's why when you're in a loud room, all the auditory sounds, someone doesn't even say it loud. Tom, you can hear your own name in a room because it's become important to you. See, the question in life is, can you make your goals, your ambitions, the emotions you want, the thoughts, the relationships you need to become your Teslas? And if they become your Tesla's things slow down the other part of the matrix I love I'll come up for air is Neo is the one He's the one and when my wife and I were little I literally live on the beach now brother that we used to walk on We were in high school We were dating and we'd walk in this beach school, babe I'm gonna get you one of these beach houses or we're gonna get one of these beaches because you are you yep And I have no idea how and I go home.

26:51I go dad. Who are these freaking people who lives there? He's like, I don't know that they are but they don't work with me, you know And I figured something out. When you find a family or a person that's happy and successful or either one, somewhere back in their lineage, they weren't. That family wasn't. And then the one shows up. The one. And that one changes that family forever. It changes the way they live, the way the world treats them, the way they think. They're the neo. They're the one in their family. And in my family, I'm the one. I'm the one. I didn't like it. I didn't hope for it. I fought for it.

27:29I fought for it. I did the things in this book to become the one in my family. And if you're listening to this or watching it, why don't you consider the fact that potentially maybe you're the one? And the fact that you don't think you are, or that you're not qualified to be the one, or don't have the background or the skills or the confidence, probably makes you the one, because that was me. Now, what does the one do? What do they introduce to the family that changes it so profoundly? I think they introduce a different way of thinking, Tom. I think they introduce a belief system that the world doesn't dictate the terms to our family anymore.

28:02We're going to dictate the terms to the world and that we have some measure of control over the results of our lives. I think most people go through their lives thinking they have no measure of control. And I had a huge breakthrough, brother, two weeks ago after I wrote the book. And as you know, as I wrote the book, when my dad died, I thought I need to write this book because my dad taught me all these profound lessons of one more and I'm the next to go. I don't know if it's this week or 60 years from now, but I'm the next to go. And I woke up about 3 o 'clock in the morning, 3.15 exactly. And I woke up, Christian, I said, babe, wake up.

28:32And I was in tears. This was just two weeks ago. I said, babe, someone helped daddy. I'm 51, bro. My dad was sober for 35 years. This never occurred to me. She goes, what? I said, someone helped my dad. She goes, what do you mean? Someone helped my dad in his darkest moment of his life. Get sober. in some coffee shop or quiet place when my dad was down on his knees, losing his family, some precious human being helped my dad. I don't know who they are. They changed our entire family. Max and Bella's lives are changed because this person that we don't know, millions of people I've reached because this person helped my dad.

29:12She goes, that's amazing. I said, here's what's more amazing. What qualified them to help my dad? Their shame. their mess, that they were also a drug addict and alcoholic. This precious soul, the things that the most ashamed of, that they think disqualified them the most in life, is the very thing that qualified them to help my dad in the most important moment of his life, is where their giftedness, their experience, their shame, their setbacks, is what qualified them to change my life and my dad's life in this dark space. I've been in personal development. My dad's been sober forever. It never occurred to me.

29:52The mess you have in your life, the things you are most ashamed of and embarrassed by that you think are the most insignificant, that disqualify you the most are probably the very things that will qualify you to connect with another human being in your business or your personal life to change their life. And don't ever underestimate the ripple effect. They were just helping some man get sober in some dark space in his life, never knowing the one was his son. Never knowing that this whole existence of my family was changed, not just by me being the one, not just by my dad's decision, but by a completely flawed person.

30:28Remember, think about this person. At some point, maybe they were stealing from their family, driving drunk, did things they're completely ashamed of in those states. That was the experience that qualified them to change my dad's life. So if you're listening to this or watching it, stop discounting yourself. Stop carrying these bags of your life of the things you're embarrassed or ashamed of or that you think are insignificant, that don't amount to anything. Those are the things, you, precious you, that could change another precious human being's life in a moment where they need you the most. And if you don't believe you're qualified, if you don't believe you can do it, you're going to miss those moments in your life.

31:02And your entire existence here wasn't what it was supposed to be. All right, my friend, I have a big announcement. My incredible and talented wife, Lisa, is about to launch her new book, Radical Confidence. In it, she has managed to perfectly capture the process of how to go from feeling lost and insecure to taking control of your life and doing amazing things despite feeling fear. Sometimes a lot of fear. Now, let me tell you, nobody knows Lisa better than me. But when I read Radical Confidence for the first time and heard her describe what it was like for her to go from having these big, exciting dreams as a kid to then as an adult scheduling her life around the TV shows that she wanted to watch.

31:42or how lonely and isolated she felt instead of pursuing her dreams. It was brutal for me. I would never say though that it was worth it for her to go through all of that just so that she could write something down that allows others to avoid it. But I will say that at least she was able to capture the strategies that she used to break out of that rut, find her voice and begin doing incredible things despite her insecurities and fears that she wasn't going to be good enough to achieve great things. Order your copy today because if you act now, you can claim the bonuses that Lisa has created for you at RadicalConfidence.com.

32:17Then, once you've done that, we'll get back to today's episode. All right, guys, read the book and get ready to be the hero of your own life. Peace out. That's really powerful. Isn't it crazy? That is really crazy. Now, how do you, so one, I hope that people actually listen to you because people do discount themselves. They do things or have things happen to them that they're not proud of, that they think define who they are and they never allow themselves to bring something beautiful to the world again, which is an absolute tragedy. So if the one is bringing this new way of thinking, if the person that thinks they are the most disqualified is able to channel that and make somebody's life better, how do they turn that into like something concrete that they can articulate?

33:01How do they turn it into a habit? Like what is that process of going from, you know, Neo waking up and realizing that he can do something to actually dodging bullets? I think one of the things is the way that we approach time. This is something that almost no one talks about anymore. So I feel like you may be behind. You may actually be behind your destiny right now. Like maybe you're not on pace. In fact, I think most people watching this, listening will say, I am behind on achieving my destiny. I'm not exactly sure what it is, but I feel like it's slipping. I feel like I'm behind. So you better figure out time differently and you can bend and manipulate time to your advantage the most stupid antiquated Ridiculous concept on planet Earth today.

33:44Very very well. Maybe that a day is 24 hours It's so stupid. It's the dumbest thing ever 24-hour days were contrived when there were no cars There was no electricity if I wanted to get you a message I had to write something down if I could send it on a horseback. Hope you get it. That's insane. Never mind the internet So it used to take hours days weeks months years to do can be done now in a millisecond in the internet or on our smartphones Yet we measure the time the same way that guy did that's bananas. That is so stupid yet everybody does it And so I about 25 years ago when I'm not the most talented I'm not the smartest and I'm really not and you've had guests on your show with IQs Maybe a hundred points higher than mine.

34:26This is the truth. I know a couple of them. I had them on my show How in the world I don't come from you know A whole track record of success, right? I don't have the perfect upbringing. How in the world am I going to win? I got to do things other people aren't willing to do, which I'm doing. That's the one mores. And I got to fix the way I look at time. What would I need to believe about time? What would I need to believe? What would the question be? And so my days now are from 6 a.m. to noon. That's a day. It's six hours. And in that day, some days you just chill. But in that day, I'm going to get the amount of productivity, faith, working out, fitness, money, business, you name it.

35:00in that day. We've all had a morning where we go, I got more done this morning than I have in weeks. Well, why can't you do that every morning? So I measure time. I've compressed and condensed time. I've bent it. My day is 6 a.m. to noon. And I'm not crazy. You're crazy for thinking it takes 24 hours, just like some dude in a cave did 300 years ago. That's bananas that you still think that way. And it's unfair that people have taught you this. My second day starts at noon and goes till 6 p.m. That's day two. But what the cool thing is at the end of day one, this clock goes off about noon every day, bro, and goes, what did I just get done?

35:28What didn't I do? What do I need to be accountable for? What do I need to double my efforts? Just like you do at the end of most days, right? And then the next day is 6 p.m. to midnight. And some of those are just fun days. Sundays, I chill, right? But some days, they're really super productive. What I've done now is I have changed a manipulated time. I now get 21 days a week. Stack that up over a month, I'm going to kick your butt. Stack that up over a year, you're toast. Stack it up over five years, my entire life is different than it would have been otherwise. And if you do this for about 90 of your traditional days that you think are, you will come back to me and go, that profoundly impacted my life.

36:01And here's the other thing that happens. The world responds to you differently when you value your time like that. What is precious is valuable. That's why a diamond or this watch is way more expensive than the piece of paper that's written down there, because it's more scarce. When your time, when you interact with the world is slightly more scarce, they respond to you as if you're more valuable. So you get more accountability, more productivity, more fun, more joy, and the world flips its response to you. All of a sudden, you become more valuable and precious to people when your time is different.

36:31And you'll get thousands more days in your life and live a much more blissful and happy life than the person who only gets 24 hours. Yeah. So this is a concept that I really hope people take seriously. So I'm often asked how frequently I evaluate my progress. And I'm like, that's probably about every three hours. And I think people are surprised to hear that it's not daily. It's not weekly, certainly not monthly or yearly. It's like I'm constantly, okay, was I productive in this period of time? Yes. In the book, you reference it, if I remember correctly, is like squeezing the air out of all those gaps where most people like, okay, if I get this done in my day, then I'm fine.

37:08And if you took that and made your day those six hours, suddenly it's like, okay, I need to be really efficient. What if you took that day, Tom, and then combined it with the power of doing one more of that mindset and then chasing inconvenient things on top of it in those days? and on top of that, sprinkle the little self-love to make sure that you don't burn out. Little self-love, little reticular activating system where we're doing repeated visualizations, where we're finding the things in those days that we need to be able to find. Uh-oh, you may just change your life. You know, I know exactly what happens.

37:35And you liken this to Kobe Bryant. And walk people through what Tim Grover has said about his work ethic and extra practices and stuff. because it's like, I don't know how many times the successful people have to say the same things for people to get like, oh, okay, cool. I get where this is going. You know, one really simple thing is this. You need to get in a bigger hurry. If I could just distill it down to something simple, you need to get in a bigger hurry. You're too casual. You're too slow. You walk too slow. You talk too slow. You think in terms of too much time. And if you would just speed up the pace, man, like you know this, when you're around someone like Kobe or Grover or you or anyone that kind of vibrates at a frequency that feels like success energy, it's faster.

38:16They don't have to talk faster. Many of our most favorite people talk much slower than you and I do, but they're just in a little bit of a bigger hurry. I'll give you a Kobe thing that's not in the book, though, that just for me and you and everyone gets to listen. Kobe was scheduled to do my show six days after he passed. Oh, God. and deeper than that i was with kobe the week before he passed away let me tell you the story about this because i think it's pretty profound about the one mores in a volleyball tournament our daughters play volleyball together and um it's if you have a kid who plays volleyball you all are going yep i get what that is these are long days and noisy days so this thing starts about 8 a.m.

38:58All the dads are there. The last match was 10 p.m. Oh, God. Yeah, dude. And I'm the last dad in there except this other guy in a black sweatsuit with white stripes on it. And he's about 6 '6". And it's Kobe. And we've been around each other many times at these tournaments. We're the last of the two dads left. And so the tournament ends. His match was on a different end of the court than my daughter's was. Something happened. I have no idea why I did this, brother. I watched him this day. And I was on the other end and I watched him. He had his baby in his left arm, his little one. And he was rubbing the back of his daughter that was playing.

39:36And literally I went, I don't hug Bella enough. Look how affectionate he is. It just stood out to me. And because it stood out to me, his outward affection, I watched him, bro. And I watched Kobe walk out of the gym that day with this baby and his arm around his other one. And I watched him walk out. And he obviously stood out because he was so tall. And I can picture him right now, Tom, walking out of that door for the last time. Six days later, he died. And I wonder, see, if you want to know the power of one more, it's when I take it from you and you can't have it anymore. I wonder if someone would have whispered, Kobe, when he got in the car that day, six more days.

40:18How would that week maybe have been different for him? What would he have said? Who would he have loved? Who would he have reached out to? What would have mattered to him? How about the Saturday before? Kobe, one more day. He's getting on that helicopter. Kobe, one more hour. See, it hits us when I say that. And there's a whisper happening that you can't hear. Tom, eight more years, 18 more years. Whatever it is, there's a whisper. We forget. We're going to die. Napoleon Hill says, begin with the end in mind. What if you did that with your life? What if you began with the end of your life in mind and worked it backwards?

41:03Bro, my favorite thing in the world was to golf with my dad. My favorite thing, man. We're both no good at golf. Pose my hero in a golf cart with me for five hours a foot away. And the conversations. Watch my dad walk a car. Do you know what I would do, bro, for one more round of golf with my dad? One more time. Hey, dad, good putt. Yeah, that was a good one, wasn't it, Eddie? put his arm on me, high five. You know what I would do for that? What would you, how would you act if you started to think about all the elements of your life like Kobe's last six days, Kobe's one more day, Kobe's one more hour, me getting that back with my dad.

41:44What if you started to look at the relationships you have in your life like it was the last time you had the conversation with him, the last time you get to hold Lisa's hand and look in her eyes, right? But how much more precious does she become? maybe it's the last podcast, the last interview. How much more precious would it be? How much more engaged are we, as engaged as we are? That next meeting, that conversation with, is it Gerson over here, right? That conversation with him, man. See, when we begin to distill downs and we realize, yeah, there's a power to one more because they're not promised how many we have.

42:15And so that day with Kobe, it just burned it into my soul, man, when I watched him. And then to see six days later, he was gone. That time with his family was so precious. And so I would just challenge everybody, if you want to know the power of one more, it's when I take it from you. And there's a power and there's a blessing that you get one more in your life. You're going to get another chance to talk to Lisa. You're going to get another great dinner with her. You're going to get another show. Those listeners have another day to change their life. They have another opportunity to do one more.

42:44They have another opportunity to make their family proud of them. They still have more time. They don't just have one more day probably to be the one in their family. Life is beautiful. It's precious. And sometimes we only have an appreciation for it in its absence. Sometimes we only have an appreciation for the power of the one mores or the people in our lives when we imagine their absence. And so I would just ask everybody to consider that. The thing about work is that I think you should enjoy your work. I think there's a part of that. But I think it's. I agree aggressively with that. I think it's this notion that everything is separate.

43:18What do you mean? Well, like I think people ask me all the time about, well, you know, I feel like, man, if I'm crushing it at work, that I'm not going to be as good a dad. Or if I'm really a great dad, my body's going to suffer. And there's this limited scarcity idea that somehow that there's a finite amount of it to have. I just don't buy into that at all. In fact, I found in my life that when I'm crushing it at work, man, I'm a lot better in the gym. When I'm crushing it in the gym or work, I'm a better dad. I come home pumped. I come home engaged. I come home excited. I'm not saying there's not fatigue.

43:48But when I'm not crushing it at work What am I not bringing to bear in my family in terms of energy ideas my vibrational frequency my ability to give out Information and love I'm cheating my family when I'm not working and conversely I think I robbed my work when I'm not engaged with my family people ask me. Well, what is changing you? I was a little bit more of an angry intense dude before I had kids and for me in my case having children caused me to pause in the way I speak to people. Sometimes I'm ashamed when I was younger of ways I spoke to people that someone talked to my son or daughter the way that I used to talk to people.

44:24So me crushing it as a dad has made me a better businessman. Me crushing it as business has certainly, driving out here, my daughter said to me, driving out here, she goes, daddy, I'm taking the real estate exam today. She's 18. She's going to college. I'm taking the real estate exam today and the life insurance exam on Monday. And I'm thinking that's wonderful. Plus, she's got finals for school, right? She is. But what impressed me about that was that, hey, that means my work has transferred over into me as a father. So these things are interconnected in life. When you decide not to work and you think that's going to make you better at home or better in other areas of your life, you're absolutely wrong.

45:00You're a whole person and growing the wholeness of you matters. And that's why there's such value in work. Work is not always just labor. Work is expansion. of oneself. And that's why you're robbing yourself. Yeah. And I also think there's something to just taking a cynical eye to the world and feeling like, oh, if I'm really giving my everything, then somebody is taking advantage of me. My thing is like, if I were working for somebody else, when, in fact, when I did work for somebody else in my early twenties, I was completely cynical. I was like, oh, I'm being taken advantage of. And like, this is terrible.

45:36I'm not getting paid what I'm owed. And then I discovered work ethic and how far I could push myself. And I discovered one immutable truth. I could get so good that people would be terrified to lose me. There you go. And in fact, Kobe has a quote, it's even better, which is booze don't block dunks. You can get so good people can't stop you. The greatest players in the world, in fact, scouts were paid an obscene amount of money to go around the entire globe to find people that they could pay millions of dollars to to stop Kobe Bryant from scoring a basket during a game. And despite the best athletes on planet earth, getting paid millions of dollars to stop him, he once scored 81 points in a single game.

46:15And so my thing is like, who are you pushing back on? You can get so good at something. People can't stop you. I tell my kids all the time. I say, greatness rises. Greatness is eventually found. I have a, I won't say who it is, but I have a relative that's like, Hey, the coach is discriminating against me, man. He's got, he really favors these other guys. And I said to him the other day go, no, he's not. He's not. Greatness rises. He wants to win basketball games or he wants to win baseball games or he wants to win this. The fact of the matter is get great at something. There's such a, there's such a wonderful feeling of being great at what one does.

46:47Yes. That if I would a terrible way it would be to get through this earth, have your whole journey through this earth and never get great, never get great at what you're capable of being great at. And I would encourage everybody to pursue that. That's why they listen to your show, watch your show. It's why they listen to mine. It's why they read our books, because this pursuit of greatness. We have started to create a culture that I think has an ill-gotten eye towards success, towards progress. And maybe some of that's earned. Maybe some of the examples in the world about what financial success looks like hasn't been the most elegant or beautiful examples of it.

47:23But the fact of the matter is that my experience with successful people, whether that's financial or not. I believe successful people in their work are happier people just overall, whether that's my sister who's a school. People ask me one time, who's one of the most successful people you know? My sister. Because I think success is that when your external life matches your vision for it, whatever that is, you have a vision for your life and you produce it. My sister is blind. That's right. She was born a diabetic, right? She was born a diabetic. You're so connected. And she's a school teacher, a Christian school teacher.

47:52She's amazing at it. Why she's in the service of other people that's the blueprint for her life and she's using her giftedness in the service of these people She's kind. She's a great teacher. She's patient. She's 411 She's the same height as the students. Wow see her giftedness is just perfect for what she does She's so successful. How does she deal with because I have to imagine students use the blindness to Mess around or whatever. She knows they're doing it. That could be it would be very easy to feel victimized How does she deal with that? Well, and because by the way my sister could see some things She just can't drive.

48:23She shadows and whatnot, too. My sister, though, and here's the other thing. Imagine being able that you used to be able to see, and you've lost it. I think it's one thing to be born blind. It's another thing that you had sight. I mean, if an average person just, you've been able to see, and you close your eyes, even for 10 minutes, and be able to imagine not able to see, it's a really traumatic experience. What my sister does that's really interesting, she uses humor really, really well. So she takes it from you before you can give it to her and when someone is self-deprecating Self-deprecation is a great form to diffuse hate to diffuse pain And so she's learned to really use humor about it and almost poke fun at herself to where the students don't do that And you do it very well by the way you're self-deprecating all the time be easy for you to kind of You know your homes your success your show your wealth your intellect is extremely high you are a very self-deprecating dude so that it allows you to navigate and operate without the resistance that you would get if you didn't have it and so a lot of you that are receiving that you know self-deprecation is something to look into just poke fun at yourself take yourself lightly don't take yourself too seriously that's how i avoided getting beaten up as a kid i believe it yeah i believe that was humor was my best defense this episode is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

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51:41Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Be sure to follow The Ed Milet Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Here's an excerpt I did with our next guest. I'm so grateful to have this man here today because of the timing of his visit in the economy, in the world. I have found him over time to be one of the brightest business minds in the entire personal development space. He's a co-founder of RSE Ventures. He's got a book out right now that I love called Burn the Boats, Toss Plan B Overboard and Unleash Your Full Potential. This guy dropped out of high school.

52:15Now he's a fellow at Harvard Business School. His background is incredible. He's helped run the business side of the Jets before and the Miami Dolphins. And he's been successful in investing in many different businesses. And so the timing is perfect for Matt Higgins. So Matt, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. High praise. Thank you. It's good to have you. Now, listen, let's talk a little bit about how we then equip ourselves to be successful at any time in the world. That's one of the reasons I like burn the boat so much. So it's different than what you would think when you say burn the boats.

52:45Doesn't necessarily mean like abandon everything in your life to do one thing. It's almost a metaphor for burning the things in your life that may be holding you back to some extent. Right. And so in your case, why'd you write the book, number one? And number two, I know the answer to this, but I want you to share it. What was the boat you needed to be burning? Yeah, no, great. It is a degree of a Trojan horse. Maybe I'm too clever for my own good. But the reality is I wrote this book for the angst-ridden, those with anxiety, who self-select themselves out of this idea of full commitment because they think it's not for me.

53:19It's not for going all in. So I want to appropriate this phrase, and we can get into the history if you want. I want to appropriate this phrase that goes, that's the OG life hack that goes back to the beginning of recorded history. This idea of sabotaging your own escape that military leaders intuitively understood is what's the best way to get the most out of us. I want to take that jingoistic term and use it for everyone else who maybe doesn't have a support system or infrastructure around them to teach them how to be fully committed to your goals. So I do think the book is leading you to believe one thing and then you pick it up and realize it's entirely different.

53:51It's entirely different. But in your case, it's very different than what I expected. Like what, give them an example of the boat you needed to burn. All right. So, so on the boat, this picture, which could look like a pagan symbol, depending on how you see it. But in reality, it's a paper boat floating in a, in a child's bathtub. So my boat, my metaphorical boat that I needed to burn were the legacy issues that were a hangover from childhood. And I could give you a little bit of context of that. I grew up in Queens, New York and really tough circumstances, abject poverty. Those words lose their meaning.

54:23So you have to explore, what does that mean? You know, we'd eat government cheese. My mother would take us on a bus to go to an hour away to a church to get food so that the neighbors wouldn't see us. So my whole early childhood was shame and then defiance. So from an early age, I would sell flowers on street corners. I was that little kid knocking on your door, you know, trying to guilt you into buying flowers for your wife on Valentine's day and scraping gum under tables at McDonald's. So my context was poverty, was no cavalry coming, constantly frustrated. Like, why isn't the system set up to do something?

54:57My mother deteriorating physically. She was obese, but brilliant and had no education. And I watched her go leave my father, raise kids in squalor, but still aspire for something better, get a GED and go to college. So there was this convergence of all those variables happening. And around, you know, 14, 13, 14, I found myself increasingly desperate, frustrated, becoming self-destructive, not for any particular because I didn't want to be here because I didn't want to be in charge. And I was like, why is no one coming to help? And then eventually capitulation, it's on me. And I don't know where, thank God, the universe gave me this innate sense that I can take custody of my life.

55:38and I came up with a life hack and I'll get to the, my, my burn the boats moment, which is I was making maybe three 75 an hour at the time of McDonald's, five bucks an hour at a deli. And I would read these little ads in a newspaper and it'd say college students only$8 an hour. I was like, what is it about a college student that suddenly two X is my income? But I was like, I have to have it. I came up with this idea. What if I dropped out on purpose? And if you did well enough on the GED that you could go to college because in a slightly condescending way, it's like, Like, we love redemption stories.

56:09Nobody ever chooses that path. And I remember so excitedly telling my guidance counselor, everyone, hey, I got a plan. I have a way out. I'm going to get my GD. And of course, they said, you're going to be a loser. The entire system was set up to convince me to stay the course. Now, I was hiding my true life. I never had a single person over my home until the day my mother died and they came and they took her body out. So no one knew the extreme deprivation and I was concealing it. And so my burn the boats moment came when I realized, how am I going to resist all this pressure to execute this plan that I know works for me?

56:43But the all conventional wisdom is trying to talk me out of it. Police picking me up at McDonald's to bring me back to school. Guidance counselor calling. I mean, the state collectively was trying to get me to stay the course, but not fix the problem. And then I realized sabotage. if I dropped out and failed every single if I failed every single class and got left back for two years in a row the system would transition from trying to make me conform to get rid of me and that's what happened so I hung out I called it the land of misfit toys me with the kids with the beepers and the drug dealers and you know failing my classes sleeping on the desk I did typing because typing I thought would be useful to this day I type 100 words a minute and then I had to execute and I go into the book a little bit about how because I don't want to glorify it Like, look at me.

57:24I was full of doubt, anxiety. This is a crazy plan. But I executed, dropped out. And this is the most important lesson of my life. The look on the teacher's faces went from derision and a judgment and a shame to when I came back a year later as president of the Bay team to my own prom. I remember going up to Mr. Rosenthal, who the day, last day of high school tells me, I'll see you at McDonald's. What a waste. Did he really? Yep. And I told him as I walked out the door, if you see me at McDonald's, it's because I own it. Now, in fairness to Mr. Rosenthal, statistically, probably a pretty good projection.

58:01But I came back as president of A-Team and the look on all their faces was begrudging admiration. And it was like, I tell the story always because it contextualizes and encompasses everything about this book, right? How to strengthen your conviction against the weight of conventional thinking. how to put yourself in a position that you have no other alternative, how society responds when they wish to put you back in that box, how the input you get from people is corrupted when they don't have the full story because you're concealing it. So the metaphor that I've extended from the military context to here is the boats are all the things in our life that you so eloquently talk about, the prison of our own making, how to fully commit, which is beautiful, how to burn those things down.

58:41And the book is written for anyone out there listening right now who feels like you've self-selected out. because you don't have what it takes to achieve your true purpose. And I don't believe that's true. I just think no one's taught you how to do it. It's very good. You know, you said something in there in the very beginning. This is a term I've not heard before, but I love. You said, take custody of your own life. And so many of us sort of surrender custody to conform, to just conform. Like this is the direction I'm supposed to go is what everybody expects me to do. And it takes a lot of courage.

59:10And I'm watching you even as you speak, you know, your face breaks a little bit a couple different times. It's still an emotional thing for you. Oh, it's raw. And when you talk about it, I actually picture you as that little boy. I picture this little dude wanting to be somebody, wanting to do something great. Everybody should remember one thing as Matt's talking, and we're going to go through some real detailed things now in a minute. But there's a lot of tests that can measure IQ. You can measure someone's height, their jumping ability, their speed. We can look at someone and determine whether or not they're physically attractive.

59:39There's never been a test designed to measure somebody's heart, their will, their desire, that thing inside of us. And that's the thing that's invisible about you, that when you're getting feedback or you're getting advice from people telling you what to do, they can't measure that. And they don't know that about you. And that's why most advice is not good advice, because they don't know your heart. Similar story. Everyone that's become successful has something similar in their life. And what they didn't know about me, what they didn't know about you, was that will to win, that heart to overcome things and be resilient and overcome adversity and also make good decisions.

1:00:13And so there's something I was watching an interview you were in and because I do something similar and it surprised me because I think most people think successful people have this abundance of confidence. But you ask yourself when you're about to make a difficult decision, right, because it is a difficult decision to go. I'm going to make a career change. I'm going to leave this relationship I'm in. I'm going to start a part time side hustle. I'm going to drop out of high school. Right. These these are difficult decisions. decisions you kind of go through a series of questions with yourself that help you make the decision and i think it's brilliant so would you start by sharing that no i love that uh setup because the book i when i wrote the book i kept thinking okay what are the natural objections to the book right i knew a vast you know significant percentage of people would hear burn the boats and think that's risky you know and uh you know what if it doesn't work out all the things we say to ourselves so so i i want to underscore for anyone listening like i am the most paranoid risk taker you're ever going to meet.

1:01:09And burning the boats and fully committing to your true purpose does not mean you don't process risk. It's the opposite. It's actually, you need to process risk at the beginning of the journey. So my process, and I'll make it less abstract with the book itself, but it's fourfold, right? Number one, I ask myself, okay, what's the worst that will happen if I fail at pursuing my true purpose, my plan A? Now, usually that answer is reputational. It helps me audit. I realize I'm worried about judgment. I also catastrophize that little boy never left that apartment. So I was still worried that somehow all the money is going to get taken away and I won't be able to take care of my kids.

1:01:43So it makes me confront that. That's number one. And two, I try to put a probability on that. What would I do if the worst thing were to happen? How would I mitigate it? Humans vastly underestimate our ability to respond to almost anything. We are terrible at anticipating what will go wrong. We're great at being able to handle it when our back is against the wall. So true. Right? If I were in the beginning of the month, I've done this before. I put all the things on the left-hand column that I'm worried that are going to happen this month. And man, my mind goes to terrible places. It's like, if you were in my head, you're like, Matt, you're not going to end up at landlord tenant court.

1:02:15I was like, you don't know. I'm one bad decision away for that happening. But I say, how would I mitigate this worst thing that I'm imagining? And then my third step is, let's put a percentage handicap on the likelihood that that might happen. Even my irrational brain knows that that's like a 2 % remote scenario. The worst thing, right? And then the last thing is so important to me. And I keep all this very raw to me. I don't want to heal over some of these things because that's the gift. The pain is the gift and I don't want to get over it. I said, so the last thing I said, what would I be willing to do to endure, to suffer through, to be able to achieve my planning?

1:02:49So in the case of this book, what pain and suffering and aggravation would I not be willing to subject myself to in order to reach somebody out there who doesn't have a parent or support system or self-esteem and make them believe that they could pursue their true purpose? Like that is almost breathtaking. And usually my wives are so grandiose teaching in Harvard Business School. How does a kid with a GT go to end up teaching in Harvard? What would I not do? And the answer is usually walk on glass, come within an inch of my life, stay up straight for days, lose almost everything. And I think, and here's why that matters, to make this less abstract for those listening.

1:03:24When I did the book, use an example, and now I fully committed to writing a great book. And I was excited about the title. But there were a couple of things I put in the book that I feel very uncomfortable with that are hard for me to read. And the biggest one is about my divorce. I did not want to put that in there. And it kept repeating on me like acid reflux. And I get a call from a magazine excitedly. We love the book. We want to do an excerpt. Yay, great. We want to do the section on divorce. that one sec so so then i i rather than follow the own advice in the book i revisited all the anxiety about why i didn't want to put it in there now when i before i wrote it the reason i did it is i was feeling so desperate and alone in a really dark place when i was going through it and i know that if i wrote it a certain way somebody out there who was going through that would read that that paragraph and feel like how they had been seen yeah and so i had already did my four-step process before I wrote the book.

1:04:16Now the book was already at the publisher. I didn't let them publish the reprint. So let's talk about consequences of me not following my own advice of being all in on burning the boats, right? I do an interview and I talk about some of the themes in a book and I get a note from a guy and he says, I just heard you talking openly about the book. Tonight is the first night I'm alone with my kids. And I sent him a book and I circled the page and I said, this page was written for you. And he sent me a note saying, you changed my life. Like you saw me. So look at your face right now. Yeah. Yeah. So it's beautiful, brother.

1:04:51You should be very proud of that. So my point is, I'm actually trying to be critical, not emotional. I didn't let the rud the reprint. I could have reached more people. You know what I mean? And that's what Burn the Boats is about. It's a waste of mental energy to revisit the things we already did. And that revisiting of the decisions we've already made because we didn't process risk is enough energy leakage to go ahead and make you never, ever able to achieve your plan A. And so I like that little case study, and I need to be able to tell it without getting emotional. But it is a beautiful thing, right, Ed?

1:05:22I mean, you have enough wealth and success. I don't need another accolade. I want to use that, what I saw when I was 16 and what I've been through to redistribute that knowledge. And so that story of the guy reaching me, I was like, oh, you're such an idiot. Why didn't you let them run the excerpt? Well, the other thing you say in the book, I want you to talk about this a little further. You say, turn your deepest flaws into your most astonishing triumphs. And I've found like, for me, like, you know, there's this tendency to want to just impress people all the time. And I don't think you connect with anybody when you impress them.

1:05:57John Maxwell said this to me many, many years ago. He said, you know, Ed, if you really want to impress people, tell them how perfect you are. But if you want to connect with people, reveal to them your imperfections. And I think there's this stuff in our culture right now where the things, I say this often lately, probably too much, but we think these things disqualify us. our mistakes, our divorce, our bankruptcy, our sins, our averagedness, our invisibleness over our lifetime. We think, ah, because of those things, I'm disqualified from a future that's different. And the truth is, ironically, maybe the pathway to getting there isn't to revisit them necessarily, because I agree with you on that.

1:06:32But there's something pretty powerful to vulnerability. Like I can guarantee you out of this entire interview, the part that people are going to be the most moved by is what just happened. Because you are, you're vulnerable. You're saying, let me meet you where you are. I see you. I was just like you. And you are not disqualified. In fact, you're most qualified to help the person you used to be in your life. And so what do you mean when you say turn your deepest flaws into your most astonishing triumphs? What does that mean? Yeah. So 100 % agree with you about the sharing of the vulnerabilities, what creates space for self-awareness.

1:07:02People always ask me, Matt, you talk so much about how self-awareness is the greatest arbitrage in personal and professional life. But how do you cultivate it? I say you cultivate it by modeling it, right? Like you model the vulnerability and then others now either a sociopath, you won't meet me or you're a real human and you're thinking, oh, thank you. Give me a relief. So I talk to students at a homeless shelter who are getting their GED. So imagine being in a homeless shelter and you're trying to get a GED when you have no infrastructure, right? And when I walk in the room, they, you know, and I always ask this question.

1:07:32I said, so, you know, what do you think about me? What do you perceive? And they're like, yeah, you're loaded. You got a plane probably. Look at your suits. You know, you're a white guy, grew up, went to Harvard and all that. And then I tell the story in the non-airbrushed version that is not in the book. And they get the full story. And, you know, kids end up crying or saying, and I said, okay, now let me tell you something really excited. Everyone likes to feel good about themselves. And I love to do right by somebody who overcame hard circumstances. You're getting a GED in a homeless shelter.

1:08:02That is like a weapon of mass destruction. That will make people admire you for the rest of your life. you feel like the die is cast and i'm telling you you're sitting on such an incredible asset you just need to get to the other side and that's what i'm talking about right that i fortunately i think you feel the same way i i don't have any problem talking about it the only problem i have talking about these things is i keep them raw so that they are useful i don't want to like i don't want to package it so that they lose their power because i think that's why when we read instagram posts that say failure is great like okay but what does that really mean right well let me show you Let me show you what bleeding out looks like.

1:08:36When I tell those kids that story, their framing goes from one of feeling like they are less than or discarded to one of feeling like it is an asset because I'm able to make them understand. I think it gives you a level of belief. Even me listening to you, and I'm already 52 years old and I've had some decent stuff happen in my own life, right? But anytime I ever hear somebody's stories about what they've had to go through to get where they are, it frankly, in an odd way, alleviates my worrying and anxiety about where I currently am. Because at any given time in your life, no matter who you are, you're doing it today.

1:09:11I guarantee you there's something on your mind today. No question. That you're like, I'm really worried about this. I have anxiety about this. I think people think that, man, if I can get to a certain point, those things sort of dissipate. I'm going to let you both in. There's two very wealthy men talking to each other right now. Let's be real for a minute. I drove here today, and I had a two-hour drive here to the studio today. It was a long drive. I was excited to interview you. I have a couple other interviews today. But in all candor, I spent the majority of my time processing a problem I have right now.

1:09:39I'm processing it. And what helped me process that problem was two things. One, I actually prepped for this interview and I was reading about some of the things you've been through. And then me reflecting on other places I've been in my life. And I do just what you do. I have that same process. What's the likelihood of this happening? If it happens, what would I do? Et cetera, et cetera. How bad would it really be? But I think it's important for people to know. You're worth several hundred million dollars. So am I. Do you still have problems and things you worry about and anxiety and fears? And they're just probably as pronounced as they were when you were younger, I would imagine.

1:10:10I mean, it's endless. And for a bit, I would judge the presence of them as an indication that I'm not evolved or I would condemn myself. Like, when are you ever going to feel, you know, that you got it under control? And the answer I realized is never because I am constantly putting myself in uncomfortable positions. Yes. You know what I mean? Wouldn't you worry? I'd have to interrupt you. No, please. I would worry. This is so weird. I keep using the word worry. I should stop that. I would have concern if I didn't have concerns. But you're complacent then. Like, I'd be like, what am I? There's nothing vibrating around me.

1:10:41There's no frequency. There's no expansion happening. There's no growth happening. I, I, the presence of some level of anxiety. Now having like you teach in the book and I teach in my work tactics and tools and strategies to deal with these things and flourish when they happen is important. But when I was young, I thought I'm going to get to a point in my life when I have enough money and good enough friends and this or that, that I won't have worries or anxiety anymore. And I think that's the picture the world sort of paints for us. And never in any interview have I said this out loud. It's just with you.

1:11:15I just realized that driving on here today, this is not going to end. Right. I'm 52 years old. This is a different kind of prison of our own making. It's a different prison of my own mind. But by the way, I like the escape. I enjoy the escape from the prison. It's okay for me in my life to have issues and problems. I rather enjoy the escape from the prison. And then just I just finally surrendered the false belief system that there won't be another one eventually present itself in my life. I just want you to acknowledge that because you people look at you like Shark Tank, Harvard, you know, different football teams, you know, a lot of really well-known people admire and respect you.

1:11:55It's just going to be there. Right. And it's having the tactics and strategies to deal with it when it appears. It's so funny. We're talking about this like it's never ending. It's every day. It's almost like the movie. Fifty first dates. I'm like, we're going to do this again. And it's always a constant refrain of like, this time, it'll be clear to everyone that there were other times were bullshit too. There's a little bit of like, and then when I audit, I'm like, oh, well, this is a painful, hard fact pattern that most people would never be able to engineer, nor would they try. And then every time I indulge myself in a new version of my life, like, you know what, though, I'm going to reap the rewards.

1:12:32It's time for the harvest. You know, and that lasts about 48 hours. And actually, I realized that is a feedback loop of saying you need a little healing, like you're taking it to the edge. But the premise of the book, I'm glad we're talking about this. I wondered, is this my confirmation bias? I do think the joy of living is in the striving, that we don't know exactly why we're here or where we're going. And we seek out what's the ceiling on my potential. And that's what brings us joy. It's why marathon runners feel melancholy afterwards and Olympians have depression. it's because we enjoy the training and we enjoy the pursuit.

1:13:03But we don't talk about that a lot and we don't kind of coach each other about how to say, all right, well, how do we endure in the life of perpetual pursuit? Here's how right you are. I love where we're going with this here today. Because I have to tell you, Andrew Huberman, I think you know who Andrew is. Andrew and I were talking and one of the things he shared with me is he said, they've actually proven that the dopamine hit is actually greater in the pursuit of the goal than the actual moment of achievement, that the benefit in our brains, that great feeling that we get is actually higher and in greater abundance in the pursuit and the journey of the goal or the achievement or the moment or the date or the whatever than it is when we actually get it.

1:13:45And there's actually a perpetual precipitous drop off after the achievement, which is why a lot of times when we achieve things like, ah, it's not what I thought it would be. It actually was. You just have to reflect on the pursuit of it. That's the cumulative effect of those little wins. It's funny. You say, I feel much more boosted by the little breakthroughs when I've lost hope on doing something. I'm going through something now. And it was like, I had a breakthrough and I'm like, wow, this is some of my finest work. And of course that'll fade within 48 hours. But I have actually come to accept that premise that at the end of this, I will not feel that big payoff.

1:14:16I do wonder where joy and celebration fits in. I don't think I have that fully calibrated. Rinse takes your laundry and hand delivers it to your door Expertly cleaned and folded So you could take the time once spent folding and sorting and waiting To finally pursue a whole new version of you Like tea time you Or this tea time you Or even this tea time you Said you hear about Dave Or even tea time tea time tea time you So update on Dave It's up to you We'll take the laundry Rinse. It's time to be great. When it comes to what your family eats and drinks, you know your choices matter. You're the expert because you know what fits your life.

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1:15:47kid you got there. Congratulations. See, you were made to do something great with your life, weren't you? And you've always known it. There's always been this little voice in your head since you were a little boy or a little girl. You've always known there was something special about you. Those of us that have faith in the room, we know we were made as a masterpiece. We know the Lord looks like us, looks at us like we can do anything with our lives through him, don't we? Is that right? You weren't born to be average. You weren't born to have a mediocre or existence on this earth, you were born to do something great, and that's why you're in this room, it's by no mistake that you've always had those thoughts, that intuition, that aspiration, and you find yourself in this room at this time today.

1:16:30So if this is the worst talk you ever heard, you heard from Ted Milet. But if it's the best talk you ever heard, give Ed Milet a little credit. Is that fair? Yes? And so do you feel the energy in here, by the way? Because see, the difference between maxing out 10x in your life has a lot to do with energy. There's a winning energy, right? People respond to what they feel more than what they hear. In fact, as I'm speaking right now, you already feel different the first three minutes of this, don't you? And the reason is you can feel that I mean what I'm saying. You can feel the transfer of energy.

1:17:04Let me ask you a question. What do you make people feel? And the more you become conscious of what you're making people feel, not what you say, not their opinion of you, but what they feel when they're around you, it's going to make all the difference in the world of whether or not you're going to influence them to change their lives or participate with you in business, your company, et cetera. Do you hear me on that? Say yes. Because the day he slapped you on that ass, a race started. Listen to me. A race began. And it's a race that started that first day when you were born to the last day of your life, and that race is to finally reach the ultimate version of you.

1:17:43You're chasing down the person you were born to be, that you were destined to be. And since that day started, the world, the people around you, are trying to get you to conform to average. They're trying to get you off that track to finally meet your twin someday, the best possible version of you. Every single day has to be a pursuit to get better, to improve, to grow, to stretch, because you are ultimately chasing the destiny version of you. Do you hear me on that? Say yes. So every decision you make in business, every call you have, whether you go to the gym or not, you need to put it through this paradigm, through this barometer.

1:18:21Does this decision, does this relationship I'm in, does this choice I'm making right now put me closer to becoming that man or woman or further away? Listen, you got to get a little bit more intense about your life, about your business. You got to stop being so dadgum casual. You got to get in the game. If you're going to play the game, let's play to win it. Let's play to max it out. Let's play to 10X it. Right or wrong, right? I want you shaking. I want you feeling it. I want your intensity level to go up. Not in this room, but when you leave this room, you're focused on more energy, more intensity, more focus.

1:18:59Because these people you see speaking here, they're not smarter than you. We're not better than you. I don't like when we get up here, I'm rich, I'm rich. You know what, who cares if I'm rich? I care whether you're rich. I want you to live richly. And I can tell you, I don't like it sometimes when we come to events like this because you always see the after. If this was a weight loss ad, we're all ripped up here. The power of the weight loss ad is you see the fat lady, then she's the skinny lady, right? You don't see the before, you're only seeing afters here. The before with me is an introverted, shy guy, insecure guy, low self-esteem, afraid of public speaking.

1:19:37That's the before me, a broke me. And I'm not gonna get into the details of that, but I want that to give you hope. Because it's decisions we make to chase that best version of us every second, every day. That every day alters the direction of the course of our lives. We've all made decisions that we regret. That decision took me off course. That decision put me further away of being the best life I could have, the best version of me. When you were a little girl or a little boy, there was somebody who knew you were special. It was your grandma, your uncle, a coach, a teacher. There's been one person in your life, hasn't there?

1:20:10They're the one who knew you were special. There's always one. If you're blessed in life, you may have two or three of those people. Just picture their face for a second. Who was that person that when you were a little girl or a little boy, they just looked at you a little different? They just knew you were special. They knew you were great. They knew you could do something great with your life. See, I think the key to being great in business is being that person in other people's lives. I don't believe in faking it till you make it. And you can listen to all my podcasts and know how broke I went.

1:20:37But I'm gonna prove to you how crazy entrepreneurs are. Because you know what entrepreneurism is, right? It's the greatest self-discovery process in the history of mankind, isn't it? You learn more about yourself, what you don't know, your resiliency, how tough you are, what your weaknesses are by being an entrepreneur. It's probably the greatest self-discovery program in the history of the world. It's also this. It's the greatest self-improvement program with the highest compensation package possibly attached to it, too. That's what entrepreneurism is. a self-improvement program with massive compensation package attached to it.

1:21:04And that's why too many of you are too focused on growing your company and not focused enough on growing you. Because your company will never, ever exceed your identity or your vision for it. You got to grow you. Because what will happen when it starts to grow, you'll start making unconscious mistakes to shrink it. Making bad calls. Getting weak. Getting lazy. Making mistakes. You're all nodding because you've all done it. Because at some point your business got ahead of you. Far too many of you in your life are obsessed with what cab driver number two and bouncer number one think about what you're doing instead of the lead characters.

1:21:38You're obsessed with what other people think about you. The thing that's gonna kill your dream is your addiction to other people's approval. And cab driver number two, he ain't gonna approve of what you're doing. At the end of your damn life, he's not gonna show up in any of the important chapters, yet you give him all this power all the time. Stop giving people power who aren't in your book. Do your life for the leading characters. You, your spouse, your children, your parents, your legacy. They're the lead characters in the story of you, of your life, and the more you focus on them. And I know that many of them are the very ones giving you a hard time.

1:22:12They're the very ones telling you, you can't make it, you should quit, you should give in. Let me tell you, somebody who experienced that, who's now written a pretty damn good book, they are thrilled with the book. And they knew you were going to write it all the time someday. But you get focused on the lead character. Here's the good news. a leading character can decide to live a new script at any point she wants. She walked in here one character, and she says, you know what? I am the lead character. This is some stupid script my parents gave me, or a script my boss gave me, or a script someone else gave me, or my husband gave me.

1:22:44You know what? Screw that. I'm the new leading character. This woman's more beautiful, more confident, more influential, more resilient, more evangelical. This woman's just a little stronger. And you leave here in the break, and you just feel different. You decide I'm a new character. I'm a new leading character in the book of my life. Because the more you decide to take control of the narrative, of the script of your life, and you live your dream, the more likely at the end of your life, you're gonna meet that dude. You're gonna meet that woman. See, at the end of my life, because I am a person of faith, the Lord's gonna go, hey, hopefully he goes, well done, good and faithful servant.

1:23:17And I have this other little hallucination. He's gonna go, hey, by the way, this guy over here, this is the man you could have been. This is the person you were born to be. All those choices you made, if you made them all, You got the right place. This is who you could have become. This would have been your dreams. This is where you would have gone, what you would have seen, who you would have helped, what you would have changed. This would have been your book. Meet him. My dream in my life is that when I meet that person, we're not total strangers. You don't want to get to the end of your life and that character is a total stranger to you.

1:23:47I don't care if you have faith or not. You know damn well there's going to be a funeral for you someday. And at that funeral, there's going to be a sense and a spirit of what you could have become. The woman, the man you could have become. And every day those decisions you're making to max out your life are chasing that person. See, you know what I want at the end of my life when I meet them? Watch how I pull this together. I want to be identical twins. I want to be identical twins. I want you to be identical twins. Ted and Ed are going to meet each other someday. And I'm going to say, hey man, good to see you.

1:24:20Been riding with you for quite a while. Been chasing you, man. He's going to go, I've been watching you. You're exactly like me, man. and we're identical twins. You maxed out your damn life. Congratulations. Max out everybody, God bless you. This gentleman to my left, just to give you a background, this guy parlayed a 990 SAT score into a multi-billion dollar company that he built. And we're gonna get into your head about how you did that, but I'm overwhelmingly impressed with impact theory. Tom Bilyeu, thank you for being here today, brother. Thank you for having me, man. I'm so excited to be here.

1:24:52We flipped the script before, so. I've been on his program, And now finally I get you here. What I want to do now, because you founded Impact Theory and I'm riveted by your content. I love your content. I love your guests, but I really love what you talk about. And so what I want to do now is I want to help the people watching this have a better shot at making their dream, their vision happen than they did before you and I sat down here together. Okay. Cause you've made yours. It's an unbelievable journey and you're just now taking on this new chapter of your life. I'm just curious first, because I want to understand you too.

1:25:26What's this fascination you have with The Matrix movie? I am fresh out of film school, about a year out of film school. So The Matrix came out in 99. I graduated in 98. So I'm hopelessly lost at this point. And I go to a comic convention, love comic books. And I come around the corner at this divey little comic convention. Like, if you're thinking San Diego Comic-Con, this was not that. This was like a divey little thing. And I come around the corner and there is Carrie Ann Moss, Keanu Reeves, Joe Pantaleone, Joe Silver, the producer, like just this whole panel of people. I'm like, what? And so this is like, I mean, film is the center of my life at this point.

1:26:05I'm like, I can't believe these people are here. I had no idea. And they're like, hey, we're handing out tickets to the premiere tonight. You can see it on the back lot of Warner Brothers. No way. I was like, oh, my God, it's incredible. So I go and I'm waiting in line. And as I'm waiting in line, literally just like in the back alley of Warner Brothers, the doors burst open. People come out screaming. And I was like, what is going on? And so I plug my ears because I don't want to hear if they're going to give spoilers. And they all go off. But I could tell. Something special. Yeah. They were into this thing.

1:26:33Go in. Sit down. We're watching it. And you know that moment where Agent Smith comes up to the cops, very beginning of the movie. And he said, I told you to wait until we got here. And he said, oh, we can handle one little girl. No, officer. Your men are already dead. And they cut up to, she jumps up. And in that moment, the entire audience all at once screams, oh, like they just go nuts. And I was like, that has never happened to me before ever in a movie. There was just something so captivating. And then ultimately, the matrix is the perfect metaphor for the human experience. It is about a guy who from the day he shows up has the same abilities as the day at the end.

1:27:09But once he learns to believe in himself, then he can actually do more. Even though he had the same potential, he's able to do more at the end. And I was like, that's life. Like, you've got this potential, but if you don't believe in yourself, you're never gonna put in the work to actuate it. And so it's a film with like multiple training sequences, which are like my thing. I love training sequences. So yeah, excuse me, that is like the dominant metaphor. So when I go to explain to, cause I've done a lot of work in the inner cities. When I go to explain somebody, you've gotta get them to how to be successful.

1:27:42You've gotta give them a new frame of reference. And so the matrix is, is that metaphor? Like there is a real world equivalent to jacking into the matrix and it's called reading. And if you read, you can get knowledge and you can get it fast. It's basically someone's life distilled down to something that you can read in a week. Like that's crazy. I agree. So that's, that's my obsession with the matrix. Bro, I love that. And there's all these parts of the matrix that apply in real life. And I love what you just said about reading too, because, and I just feel like there's this, we live in a matrix too, to some extent, like our RAS and our brain that you have, and I both know a lot about is this filter that reveals to us our own reality.

1:28:21And the more that we can begin to understand how our brain works and what we see, what we believe strongly reveals itself to us, the more we would take greater control of our beliefs. And so I'm a believer though, that there's this chase that you have in life where you're chasing your vision, all the positive, warm vibe stuff. I also believe that there's two great motivators. There's the gain pleasure. There's to avoid pain, right? For me, oddly, the greater motivator many times in my life was avoidance of pain. And just in hearing your story, just got chills again. And hearing your story, I think you tap into that a lot too.

1:28:55And I'm going to start out by quoting somebody named Epictetus, who's a Greek philosopher. And here's what he said. Not worry about anything outside of your control. The only things you can command are your thoughts and actions. We choose Use our response. Stop aspiring to be anyone other than your own best self, for that does fall within your control. And I start out quoting that today for this epic podcast because so many people of you have asked me this last few weeks, Ed, would you do something on truly changing your life? Like, give me a key on changing and shifting my life. What's an invisible thing maybe I'm not doing that I need to be doing, something I'm missing?

1:29:35And I can tell you right now that I know what it is for most people because I know what it was for me for decades. and here's what it is. You're not thinking big enough. Stay with me on this. You are not thinking big enough. And because you don't think big enough, it constricts and limits everything around you. For decades on end, I was what I would call a realistic thinker. And then I read a book called The Magic of Thinking Big by Schwartz. And it changed my life because I realized that if you're going to think, you might as well think big. And big thinking changes everything. One, it opens up your entire mind to the possibilities that you were oblivious to before you thought the bigger thought.

1:30:13Remember this, this is important. Your life will never get better or bigger than your best thought, than your highest thinking. You won't exceed it. And essentially it creates a ceiling on your life. And for years and years and years, I thought it was smart to kind of be realistic and pragmatic in my life. And there is some benefit to doing that so that you're not just pie in the sky and Pollyanna all the time, but it's such a limiting thing. Most of us in our lives are limited by our small and realistic thinking because the people around us have got us to conform that way. And so conformity is actually, in my case, I believe when you conform, it's the ultimate form of cowardice.

1:30:57Conformity is cowardice. You conform to the thinking of everybody around you or what conventional wisdom is of what's possible. But if you think about all the people that you admire in your life, they're not conformists. They're big thinkers. Even if it's someone who's done simple in their life, it's a big thought in life to decide that you're going to live a simple life. That's contrarian. That's not conforming to today's culture. But so many of us are limited. You're not going to ever exceed in your life your biggest and best thought. You won't exceed your thinking. And I have to tell you that I was so limited for years because I was a realistic thinker.

1:31:31And I want you to change this. John 3.18 tells us, let us not love with words or speech, but with actions in truth. So let me start out by today saying this. I did a podcast a while ago where I said, I want to observe people. I'm trying to figure out who's really going to work hard, who really loves me. And the way you do this in life is you have to stop listening to people. You have to turn the volume down on people and watch them like one of these old black and white silent movies. You'll learn everything about a human being. If you were to turn the volume off, stop listening to them. People have learned in life to use words to manipulate other people.

1:32:10They've also learned to use words as a mask. So even if you're wondering something as simple as how is someone really feeling? Are they okay? Most people tell you, I'm okay. Don't worry about me. I'm fine. But if you turn that volume off and you watch them, Are they really okay? Are they really fine? That relationship you're in, I love you so much, I'll do anything for you. You're my everything. Turn the volume off on that completely and then watch them. How have they behaved? How have they treated you? Do they go out of their way to put you first or make you a priority? Or do they just say they do that?

1:32:45We're so romanticized, aren't we, on words in this culture. How about the person that's working? I'm so fired up. I'll do anything for this company. I'm going to go all the way to the top. I'm going to do something awesome. But then they don't get there early. They show up late. They don't exceed expectations. They don't outwork everybody. But we want to believe them. And so we listen to the words. But if we just turn the volume off and watched them like a silent movie, we learn everything we need to learn. Now, here's the rub. We would with you too. And so if success was your boss, if success was where you were heading, if we took the last four weeks of your life and there was a private camera on you when nobody was watching you thought, and we turned all the volume off of here's my new resolutions, here's my goals, here's my outcomes, here's what I'm going to do.

1:33:39We turned all the sound off and you were being real. And this camera was watching you at 9.30 on a Wednesday morning, 3 15 on friday afternoon right 6 15 a.m what your routine and habits are what you were really doing during those times would success say oh you're heading my way or would success say i don't recognize you i want you to ask yourself that turn the volume off now on you and if there's a video camera watching you regularly are you doing all the things that are required to hit your goals and your outcomes because in life, you're not always going to get your goals. You're always going to get your standards.

1:34:19Our standards are what we do when nobody's watching. This is really important. Let us not love with words or speech, but with actions and truth. That's not just true in love. Let us have success without words or speech, but with actions and truth. I say this to you for me this year as I evaluate my year. I've got to start to think bigger because that thinking is the cap on my life. And that thinking is driven by my belief system. And so I've got to think bigger thoughts so that I'll do. Why does this matter, by the way? When you're thinking big thoughts, you vibrate at a much higher frequency than someone that thinks small.

1:34:58See, small thinking, realistic thinking. See, I had Benjamin Hardy on my show and we were talking about 10Xing things in your life. And he actually said, Ed, I think 10Xing a business, 10Xing your wealth, 10Xing your happiness is actually easier than 2Xing it. because at 2x, when you just want to double something or improve it, there's 100 different options. But when you want to 10x something, there's only one or two things you know you would have to do, big things you would have to do to move the needle in that direction. So to some extent, if you're going to do the work, you might as well go 10x something than 2x it because the options are more limited and you know exactly what you need to do to do it, don't you?

1:35:33This is true, by the way. If you're going to think, you might as well think big. I had a mentor earlier in my career who goes, Ed, dreaming is free, so dream big. It doesn't cost you anything to dream a big dream as opposed to a small dream. One of the things I tell my teams all the time, I'm always saying to them, let's get in the big. Let's get in the big, the big frame first, the big picture. Not enough people have built the muscle of being in the big. They're good at strategy. They're good at details. But how good are you in the big? As you're on your walk or your run right now or you're watching this on your YouTube, How good are you truly at building the muscle of big of thinking big thoughts because not only are you limited by your biggest thought But big thinkers vibrated a high frequency and they begin to attract people places and things into their life because they vibrated a higher frequency Than someone who thinks small this small thinking is limiting your your activity limiting your vibrational frequency your attractiveness level It's limited your ambition.

1:36:29And this is something that our culture has conditioned us to do is to be realistic. Get in your seat. Be a good boy. Be a good girl. The people you admire the most in life, no matter who they are of what they've done, we all know this to be true. Let's just be real. They were big thinkers. In fact, in the book, The Power of One More, I have a lot of quotes in here. And most of you know, but one of my heroes is Martin Luther King Jr. I wrote my dissertation on him. I want to read something to you about this building the gap between what we say and what we actually do and your thinking. I'm full of quotes today.

1:37:05Here's Martin Luther King. Listen to this. One of the great tragedies of life is that men seldom bridge the gulf between practice and profession, between doing and saying. Wow. A persistent schizophrenia leaves so many of us tragically divided against ourselves. On the one hand, we proudly profess certain sublime and noble principles, but on the other hand, we sadly practice the very antithesis of these principles. How often are our lives characterized by a high blood pressure of creeds and an anemia of deeds? We talk eloquently about our commitment to the principles of Christianity, yet our lives are saturated with the practices of paganism.

1:37:53We proclaim our devotion to democracy but we sadly practice the very opposite of the democratic creed. We talk passionately about peace and at the same time we assiduously prepare for war. We make our fervent plans for the high road of justice and then we tread unflinchingly the low road of injustice. This strange dichotomy, this agonizing gulf between the ought and the is represents the tragic theme of man's earthly pilgrimage. Wow. And so if we turned the volume down and we started to watch you, what would happen? If we really got in your head, how big are you thinking about your relationship and how amazing it could be and the things you could do and where you could go?

1:38:39Because it'll never get there. You will never exceed it if you don't think it or dream it. Your business your wealth your body You're limited by your biggest thought you must extend it. You must expand it and remember this write this down Extremity expands capacity This is the Ed Myron show