WEBVTT 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:04.800 People want to have problems because it gives them a reason to suck, and it be okay. 2 00:00:04.800 --> 00:00:09.680 It gives them ego-padding, so they can protect themselves for the reason why they're not successful. 3 00:00:09.680 --> 00:00:12.800 For the reason they haven't accomplished what they said they were going to accomplish. 4 00:00:12.800 --> 00:00:17.760 And so they lean on their potential, comma, and their trauma as the two reasons that people prop up. 5 00:00:17.760 --> 00:00:21.760 I've got lots of potential, but I have all this trauma. And neither of those matter. 6 00:00:25.360 --> 00:00:28.880 Welcome to the game where we talk about how to sell more stuff to more people in more ways and 7 00:00:28.880 --> 00:00:33.040 build businesses worth owning. I'm trying to build a billion-dollar thing with acquisition.com. 8 00:00:33.040 --> 00:00:37.200 I always wish pesos, musk and buffet had documented their journey, so I'm doing it for the rest of us. 9 00:00:37.200 --> 00:00:38.160 Please share and enjoy. 10 00:00:40.800 --> 00:00:45.120 If you have your menu option of things that you can do in life, just remove quitting as one of them 11 00:00:45.120 --> 00:00:50.560 and then try your next idea. And if you are in that rocky cutscene, and you're two months in, 12 00:00:50.560 --> 00:00:54.640 three months in, remember that the rocky cutscene in the movie lasted a couple seconds, 13 00:00:55.280 --> 00:00:59.760 and the rocky cutscene in real life my last a few years. And so whenever I get to a low point 14 00:00:59.760 --> 00:01:04.240 where I think, why don't even bother doing this? I just like to remind myself, this is where most 15 00:01:04.240 --> 00:01:09.280 people stop, and this is why they don't win. And as hard as this is going to sound, the best thing 16 00:01:09.280 --> 00:01:13.920 that I ever did was not listen to other people's opinions about my life. They don't want the best 17 00:01:13.920 --> 00:01:20.720 version of you. They want the version of you who best serves them. And unfortunately, the closer 18 00:01:20.720 --> 00:01:25.760 people are to you, the more similarly they'll see themselves and you, and the more your success 19 00:01:25.760 --> 00:01:29.440 will make them feel bad about themselves. And I can promise you this from somebody who might be 20 00:01:29.440 --> 00:01:34.000 a little further, I have more people who root for me now that I've already won than people who 21 00:01:34.000 --> 00:01:40.000 rooted for me along the way. No one is doing as well as you think they're doing. So by comparison, 22 00:01:40.640 --> 00:01:46.560 everyone is better off than they think. Because the cumulative median visually is probably three times 23 00:01:46.640 --> 00:01:51.520 higher than what the actual median is. And so if you're like, oh, I'm average or slightly below 24 00:01:51.520 --> 00:01:56.960 average compared to the perceived median of society, you're probably way above average. And that's 25 00:01:56.960 --> 00:02:03.360 okay. And being above or below average doesn't even matter anyways, because you've got a lot of 26 00:02:03.360 --> 00:02:08.800 innings left. There's a lot of quarters left to play. And so like until the day you die, you still 27 00:02:08.800 --> 00:02:12.800 have hope, you still have a chance, you can still keep moving forward. Whenever someone gives you 28 00:02:12.880 --> 00:02:16.800 their opinion about what you should do with your life, it's really them saying, this is my 29 00:02:16.800 --> 00:02:21.040 preference of how I want to live my life. And I say, great, live your life that way and I'll 30 00:02:21.040 --> 00:02:26.320 live my life this way. Because me living my life has no effect on you. So live your life the way 31 00:02:26.320 --> 00:02:30.240 you want to live it. And I don't want your life either. They state, make those statements because 32 00:02:30.240 --> 00:02:35.360 they feel uncomfortable. And so they have to like release it. And so they say that to you to make 33 00:02:35.360 --> 00:02:40.720 themselves feel better. And that's their problem, not your. I think I've learned a lot of frames 34 00:02:40.720 --> 00:02:45.920 around not caring about other people's opinions, be out of necessity. Because I was so crippled 35 00:02:45.920 --> 00:02:51.840 by the opinions of other people for what felt like such a long time that I always had to face my death 36 00:02:51.840 --> 00:02:55.840 in order to get myself to move. And so I talk about death a lot because it has actually been one of 37 00:02:55.840 --> 00:03:00.640 the few things that actually motivates me to change my behavior. And so when I had done all the things 38 00:03:00.640 --> 00:03:06.240 that I thought would impress other people, one, I realized that they didn't really care. And secondly, 39 00:03:06.240 --> 00:03:10.800 I realized that I deeply cared about how much I hated my life. When I was like, is this what 40 00:03:10.800 --> 00:03:15.120 winning feels like? Because if this is what winning is, then I don't want to play. By thinking I'd 41 00:03:15.120 --> 00:03:20.080 rather be dead than continue to play this game, I was forced to change the game I was playing, 42 00:03:20.080 --> 00:03:23.920 which is like, well, what is a game that I would like to win? Well, I'd like to win a game that 43 00:03:24.480 --> 00:03:29.120 is by rules that I set out and there are things that I can control. And then those people, 44 00:03:29.120 --> 00:03:32.960 because you break their mold of what they're supposed to be doing and they might be miserable too, 45 00:03:32.960 --> 00:03:35.840 but they are not willing to take the risk that you're willing to take because they care about 46 00:03:35.840 --> 00:03:38.720 other people's opinions more than you do because they haven't gone through that little journey that 47 00:03:38.720 --> 00:03:43.600 you just went through. Fine. You do it your way. They do it their way. I mean, I went from 48 00:03:43.600 --> 00:03:47.360 prodigal son, my father's super proud of me, graduating Vanderbilt in three years, present 49 00:03:47.360 --> 00:03:52.960 the fraternity, vice president powerlifting team, management consultant to a minimum wage employee. 50 00:03:52.960 --> 00:03:57.920 Like, that's a pretty significant drop in status. I have these frames because people will say whatever 51 00:03:57.920 --> 00:04:02.800 they want, but for me, that relative drop in status was a lot. I went from about as high status as you 52 00:04:02.800 --> 00:04:08.240 can get in a, as a 22 year old to about as low status as you can get. I mean, I remember having 53 00:04:08.240 --> 00:04:13.120 people be like, so did you go to college? And I was like, yeah, I went to college and I fucking 54 00:04:13.120 --> 00:04:17.280 murdered it. And I did everything. And the, because the implied question is why are you here? And so 55 00:04:17.280 --> 00:04:22.560 that's what in the beginning hurt a ton. But then I just realized that they just didn't know. 56 00:04:22.560 --> 00:04:26.560 And they were asking genuinely. And all of my judgment around that was just my own problem. 57 00:04:27.280 --> 00:04:32.320 How I'm perceiving this question is affecting my mood to such a great degree. What if I applied this 58 00:04:32.320 --> 00:04:35.680 to every question? All these people are asking me things and I'm either getting offended or getting 59 00:04:35.680 --> 00:04:40.160 complimented, but the statement doesn't change. So that sounds like a me problem. And so the more I 60 00:04:40.160 --> 00:04:44.560 started diving into things like that, the less bothered I became by everyone else's opinion, 61 00:04:44.560 --> 00:04:49.760 because they also have no context, even if they did mean it as an insult. So what? If they're saying, 62 00:04:49.760 --> 00:04:55.200 well, I'm better than you. I'd be like, yes, you are. A lot of even really successful people frame 63 00:04:55.200 --> 00:05:00.160 their success around trying to prove someone wrong, right? But when you try and create your entire 64 00:05:00.160 --> 00:05:04.800 existence in opposition to someone, you actually give them complete control over your life. It means 65 00:05:04.800 --> 00:05:08.000 that because of the things that this person has said, I will choose to change all of my behavior, 66 00:05:08.640 --> 00:05:12.880 which basically means that the directives from that person have commanded you to do whatever you do. 67 00:05:12.880 --> 00:05:16.320 And if you like to be a free person and want to be somebody who acts of their own volition, 68 00:05:17.040 --> 00:05:23.360 then I choose to accept insults so that I can live my life rather than living in contrast to 69 00:05:23.360 --> 00:05:28.720 them and giving my control to the person who insulted me. That would mean I put me changing your mind 70 00:05:29.280 --> 00:05:33.280 above my goals, which I don't think. My goals are more important to me than changing your mind. 71 00:05:34.160 --> 00:05:38.800 I'm super sensitive to IM statements, labeling statements like this, like I'm a neat freak. 72 00:05:38.800 --> 00:05:42.240 I'm the type of person who. So whenever you're dating someone, you're getting to know someone, 73 00:05:42.240 --> 00:05:47.120 people like to blanket IM statements really early on to set the stage like, I'm the type person 74 00:05:47.120 --> 00:05:51.600 you like to chop early, I like to clean things, I'm a labeler, I'm a whatever. And then, and this 75 00:05:51.600 --> 00:05:57.040 is the insidious part, they then say because. And then they insert a reason that they made up or 76 00:05:57.040 --> 00:06:02.080 that sounded good in the past and people nodded their heads and agreed with because my mom never 77 00:06:02.080 --> 00:06:07.120 loved me enough because I didn't get enough hugs because I gave a speech once and everyone laughed 78 00:06:07.120 --> 00:06:13.280 at me because you don't know. And the reality is you will never know. All we know is that you do a certain 79 00:06:13.280 --> 00:06:19.040 type of behavior. That's it. By giving these because statements all this power, you actually put all 80 00:06:19.040 --> 00:06:23.280 the power into something that is unchangeable in the past. And so you have to keep dealing with it. 81 00:06:23.360 --> 00:06:28.320 Whereas if you just said, I do these things, period. Now, if I want to change what I do, 82 00:06:28.320 --> 00:06:31.200 then I should just reward myself in the present for doing something different. And that makes 83 00:06:31.200 --> 00:06:36.000 it a lot more malleable and it makes your identity and what you do as a result or rather what you do 84 00:06:36.000 --> 00:06:38.400 and your identity as a result, something under your control. 85 00:06:40.640 --> 00:06:45.360 Hey guys, love that you're listening to the podcast. If you ever want to have the video version 86 00:06:45.360 --> 00:06:49.840 of this, which usually has more facts, more visuals, more graphs, you know, drawn out stuff, 87 00:06:49.840 --> 00:06:53.760 sometimes it can help hit the brain centers in different ways. You can check out my YouTube 88 00:06:53.760 --> 00:06:57.600 channel. It's absolutely free to check that out if that's what you are into. And if not, 89 00:06:57.600 --> 00:07:03.280 keep enjoying the show. You don't want to blame the things in the past that you can't change. 90 00:07:03.280 --> 00:07:07.360 You want to blame things in the present that you can't. So if you said, I have trouble getting 91 00:07:07.360 --> 00:07:13.360 close to girls because my mom and I aren't close, one, you give your mother all the power in your 92 00:07:13.360 --> 00:07:18.160 love life. You give power to something that happened in the past that you can't change to things 93 00:07:18.160 --> 00:07:21.760 that are happening in the present that you can't change. And so would it be more useful to say 94 00:07:21.760 --> 00:07:28.480 in the past, I have struggled to get close to girls period. Now that could be for a number of reason. 95 00:07:28.480 --> 00:07:32.880 Thing is to say you don't know what reason it is because I could say, let's say imagine all these 96 00:07:32.880 --> 00:07:37.120 things happen. You struggled with your mom. Let's say you had a bad breakup at some point in your life. 97 00:07:37.120 --> 00:07:42.240 You're not in shape. I could say I struggled getting close to girls and I could use any of those 98 00:07:42.640 --> 00:07:48.880 as my reasons, but which of those serve me? None of them. All we know is that you struggle to get 99 00:07:48.880 --> 00:07:54.400 close to girls. Okay, well then just look at what it would take to get close to girls and then do 100 00:07:54.400 --> 00:07:59.520 that rather than having this other thing that's attached to the behavior that you can't do anything 101 00:07:59.520 --> 00:08:05.280 about. It just makes changing who you are and what you do a lot easier. Sometimes people are such 102 00:08:05.280 --> 00:08:09.600 douchebags. They will tell a young child, you will never have a successful relationship with a 103 00:08:09.600 --> 00:08:14.240 woman because you don't respect or love me, a mother or the reverse could be true of a father. 104 00:08:14.240 --> 00:08:19.520 They're a fucking douchebag for saying that because they are labeling you with something that you 105 00:08:19.520 --> 00:08:24.560 can't change, but that's their problem. It also is no basis in fact. When people are like, 106 00:08:24.560 --> 00:08:29.840 look at how the sun treats the mother, that's how he's going to treat his wife. Why the fuck would I 107 00:08:29.840 --> 00:08:34.720 treat my wife like I treat my mother? Dear God, look, that's just a statement that sounds good, 108 00:08:34.720 --> 00:08:38.560 but has no basis in fact. You treat your wife like you treat your wife, you treat your mother like 109 00:08:38.560 --> 00:08:42.880 you treat your mother. There are different people. People want to have problems because it gives them 110 00:08:42.880 --> 00:08:49.040 a reason to suck and it be okay. It gives them ego padding so they can protect themselves for the 111 00:08:49.040 --> 00:08:52.880 reason why they're not successful. For the reason they haven't accomplished what they said they were 112 00:08:52.880 --> 00:08:57.680 going to accomplish and so they lean on their potential, comma and their trauma as the two reasons 113 00:08:57.680 --> 00:09:01.920 that people prop up. I've got lots of potential, but I have all this trauma and neither of those 114 00:09:01.920 --> 00:09:06.960 matter. I've gone through three stages of like mental development in terms of how I see changing my 115 00:09:06.960 --> 00:09:12.400 behavior. In the beginning I attributed my behavior to my past traumas. The second phase was that I 116 00:09:12.400 --> 00:09:17.200 I chose to change the story. What if my mother was just trying to feel better and it wasn't my fall? 117 00:09:17.200 --> 00:09:20.880 So then I changed my behavior in that sense. The third phase, which is where I'm at now, 118 00:09:20.880 --> 00:09:25.280 I'm maybe there'll be a fourth phase, but the third phase was I behave this way period. The 119 00:09:25.280 --> 00:09:29.280 because statement in the second half is completely irrelevant. One, because I don't know it too, 120 00:09:29.280 --> 00:09:32.560 because I can't change it. So I might as well just choose to do the thing that I want to do. 121 00:09:32.640 --> 00:09:38.160 A relevant of my past. The single strongest predictor of my behavior is what will make the more epic 122 00:09:38.160 --> 00:09:43.360 story. I've thought about that frame a lot and it's still continued to win out. And so when I'm forced 123 00:09:43.360 --> 00:09:48.000 to make a decision between two things, I prefer to choose the one that's the more epic story. 124 00:09:48.000 --> 00:09:51.600 Because either you have an epic story of failure or you have an epic story of success, 125 00:09:51.600 --> 00:09:55.680 but no 85 year olds regretting their epic stories. They are regretting the stories they never 126 00:09:55.680 --> 00:09:59.520 told. Our minds are meaning making machines and they have to be because they create associations 127 00:09:59.680 --> 00:10:03.600 many things we know and things we don't know. That's how we learn. The problem is that our brains will 128 00:10:03.600 --> 00:10:08.000 make wrong associations and then they will play us for the rest of our lives, but we can just redefine 129 00:10:08.000 --> 00:10:11.520 what the association means for ourself to make our lives easier. Because whether you miss the 130 00:10:11.520 --> 00:10:15.760 game winning shot when there's a huge crowd or you miss it with no one else is there, the only 131 00:10:15.760 --> 00:10:19.120 reason it hurts more is because you choose to let it hurt you more. Now there are things that you 132 00:10:19.120 --> 00:10:22.320 can do prior to the game winning shot that can increase the likelihood that you make it, which is 133 00:10:22.320 --> 00:10:26.320 that you practice way more in high stakes conditions over and over and over again. If you do that, 134 00:10:26.320 --> 00:10:29.840 increases the likelihood, your confidence, that you'll be able to make it. Why? Because you've 135 00:10:29.840 --> 00:10:34.000 made them before. And if you're like, why I missed my first ever game winning shot, now what do I 136 00:10:34.000 --> 00:10:37.920 do? Will you practice in every other condition that's as close to that as you can until eventually 137 00:10:37.920 --> 00:10:40.320 you make one? And then when you do make one, you'll have evidence that you've made one and you 138 00:10:40.320 --> 00:10:44.560 try to make one again. What you probably don't know is that Michael Jordan has missed more game 139 00:10:44.560 --> 00:10:48.640 winning shots than he has made. But he's remembered for the ones that he made and how is he able to make 140 00:10:48.640 --> 00:10:54.160 them? I miss it and being willing to shoot again. On that basis of story, the many excuses that we 141 00:10:54.240 --> 00:10:59.600 give ourselves in reverse can make a more epic story. And so rather than say like, these are all the 142 00:10:59.600 --> 00:11:04.800 reasons that I can't succeed. I think reframing that is these are all the reasons that when I succeed, 143 00:11:04.800 --> 00:11:08.800 it'll leave an even better story. And it'll be more inspiring to other people as a much more 144 00:11:08.800 --> 00:11:12.560 powerful frame. The more disadvantages you have when you start, the more epic story you have when 145 00:11:12.560 --> 00:11:17.280 you win. Donald Miller has one of those powerful frames of heroes and villains I've ever heard of. 146 00:11:18.000 --> 00:11:22.880 Heroes and villains always have the same backstory. It's pain. They're always an orphan, right? Or 147 00:11:23.040 --> 00:11:28.240 the villain has some sort of disfigurement to show that they went through hard times. The difference 148 00:11:28.240 --> 00:11:34.720 is what the character chooses to do about it. Villains say the world hurt me. I'm going to hurt it back. 149 00:11:34.720 --> 00:11:40.240 Heroes say the world hurt me. I'm not going to let anyone else hurt this one. So heroes use pain. 150 00:11:40.240 --> 00:11:44.160 Villains are used by it. And so I think all of us have the choice to become our own heroes or 151 00:11:44.160 --> 00:11:49.040 own villains in our own life simply by how we choose to do with the pain that we all inevitably 152 00:11:49.040 --> 00:11:55.280 experience. So pain is a constant. The choice about how we react to it is the thing that dictates 153 00:11:55.280 --> 00:11:59.920 the path of our lives. You know, there are certain rules of playing the game that have served me 154 00:11:59.920 --> 00:12:07.760 really well. One of them is, and that's okay. And I probably use that frame more than anything else, 155 00:12:07.760 --> 00:12:14.320 which is I'm not close with XYZ relative, your parent, your mom, your sister, your brother. 156 00:12:14.880 --> 00:12:20.640 And that's okay. I spent a lot of my mental effort trying to untangle stories that I told in the 157 00:12:20.640 --> 00:12:24.800 past about things that were my fault or were a problem. And the easiest way that I found a solve 158 00:12:24.800 --> 00:12:29.440 problem is to decide they're not problems to be in. I have a handful of pictures that I took for 159 00:12:29.440 --> 00:12:36.960 the first five years of sucking during business. And I use those pictures all the time every day. 160 00:12:37.600 --> 00:12:43.680 And the zillions of pictures after I became successful, I barely use any of them. The time to 161 00:12:43.680 --> 00:12:48.960 document your life is when it sucks, not when it's great, because those are the stories that you're 162 00:12:48.960 --> 00:12:53.600 going to tell. And those are going to be the reminders that you use in the present day of things 163 00:12:53.600 --> 00:12:59.200 that you have been through and prove as to who you really are. Because my favorite line in the matrix 164 00:12:59.200 --> 00:13:04.800 is in the second or third matrix, when Morpheus is standing on the hill and he's looking at towards 165 00:13:04.800 --> 00:13:09.840 everyone, and he said, I stand here truthfully unafraid, not because of the path that lies before 166 00:13:09.840 --> 00:13:14.640 me, but because of the path that lies behind me. And so the struggle period that you may be in 167 00:13:14.640 --> 00:13:20.720 right now is the path behind your future self that you are building so that that man or that 168 00:13:20.720 --> 00:13:24.960 woman can stand on the pulpit and look at you straight dead in the eyes of the mirror and say, 169 00:13:24.960 --> 00:13:30.400 I'm confident. And I stand truthfully here unafraid not because of what I said my goal is going to be, 170 00:13:30.400 --> 00:13:42.960 but because what I've been through to get here.