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Discipline creates freedom. Discipline creates freedom. That's it. You have to be disciplined. You have to have a method. You have to act, learn, and repeat. And you have to keep figuring it out. I think what people get confused is, you know, they're grinding with a goal. And I'm not saying you shouldn't have goals, but you should be grinding for grinding's sake. You know, you should grind because that's what you do. You're passionate about what you do. You know, and so you're waking up every day with this concept of, I have two goals.
I have 24 hours and they're mine. This 24 hours belongs to me. Don't think when you get to a certain level, you just know everything. The same as a goal of getting a certain amount of money. Because the minute you feel you know everything, that's the only time you're never going to learn anything. Right? Because you think you know everything. And it's part of the process of always trying to figure myself out.
And whatever I do in this 24 hours will determine where I'll be tomorrow and the next day. And I think that's what people need to focus on. Like, get off of this, I want to make six figures. I want to drive this car. I want to live in this house. I think what people should be focusing on is I have 24 hours. Like, Oprah only has 24. Bill Gates only has 24. Like, Warren Buffett only has 24 hours. And in that 24-hour period, I can either break my life or make my life.
And I know everybody's main questions, work-life balance, health, working and enjoying life against working and creating something big. And that is always, no matter what, throughout your education process, it's something you constantly have to learn about. I think, and I'm not saying you should have goals. I just think that goals for people is too high on the priority list.
And I think what should be on the priority list is go into bed so you can wake up the next day and you can grind it out.
I know that you're getting some comfort and satisfaction out of just laying around, doing nothing, eating, getting fat. But your life would feel better and richer if you had a goal. You chase that goal. You accomplish some things. You would get this boost of confidence. You'd get this boost of self-esteem. Like whatever it is that you're into doing. Maybe you're into drawing comic books. Maybe you're into making pottery or sculptures. But find whatever the f*** that
that is and pursue that instead of doing nothing like the people that are doing nothing those are the real like doing something might be as simple as like that Alex Honnold guy he just climbs rocks but he's world class rock climber it's something
And I'm just a dude that believes you reap what you sow. So if you're grinding on Monday, grinding on Tuesday, grinding on Wednesday, if you're grinding six, seven days a week for a span of five or six years, something's got to come out of it. But if you're only grinding, you know, on Monday, you fired up. Wednesday, you're back to sleeping in. Thursday, you got to keep it.
the funk of the world is on. Like I heard people say, hump day. Every day is hump day. Wednesday is hump day, like Monday hump day. Tuesday is hump day, like every day is hump day. And I think if we would spend more time on what's my goal, you know, meaning what do I need to accomplish in this day to live this lifestyle and you go after it, then I think more people will be successful. Practice. You know, really, like,
Well, there's a couple of things is helps to read a lot. It really helps to write. So if you want to make yourself articulate, which is a very good idea, then not only should you read, but you should write down what you think. And if you can do that a little bit every day, 15 minutes, maybe you could steal 15 minutes and do it every day. But if you do that for 10 years, you really straighten out your thinking. If you're going to speak
Effectively you have to know way more than you're talking about No So if you this is often difficult for beginning lectures at university because they'll do a lecture on a topic But they only know as much as they're saying in the lecture and they get kind of stuck to their notes because of it but you want to know ten times as much as you are saying in the lecture and then you can
specify a stepping path through it and elaborate with the other things that you know, but to do that you have to do a lot of reading. But you also have to do a lot of reading because that's where the synthesize, that's where the synthesizing comes. So that's on the input side and then on the output side, well there's some tricks, techniques let's say, is like if you're speaking in front of a group, you are not delivering a talk to a group.
That's not what you're doing. The talk isn't a package thing that you present to a group. There isn't a group. There's a bunch of individuals and you talk to them. So when I talk to a group, I always talk to people one at a time. And that makes it easier too because you know how to talk to a person. It's like, can you talk to a thousand people? Well, probably not because it's too intimidating. But there isn't a thousand people there. There's...
thousand individuals. So you just look at an individual and you say something and you can tell if they're engaged, they look confused or they look interested or they look angry or they look bored or maybe they're asleep, in which case you look at someone else and they give you feedback about how you're doing. And so one thing is to have something to say. Yeah. But the next thing is pay attention to who you're talking to, because I
unless you're very badly socialized, and that seems unlikely in your case, because, you know, you present yourself at least moderately well, you know. And, well, I mean, I don't know you very well, but on first sight, you know, you're doing fine. So the probability that if you pay attention to the individuals that you're talking to, that your natural wealth of social skill will manifest itself is extremely high.
And so you don't deliver a talk to an audience. That's a really bad way of thinking about it. You're actually engaged in a conversation with an audience, even if they're not talking, they're nodding and shifting position and, you know, looking like this or... And you can pull that in and use it to govern the level at which you're addressing the entire audience. So...
The last thing I would say is well having the aim to be a good communicator is a good start and you think well I could buttress that to some degree. There isn't anything that you can possibly, this is the whole point of a liberal education, there isn't anything that you can possibly do that makes you more competent
in everything you do, than to learn how to communicate. I don't care if you're going to be a carpenter. I mean, being a carpenter, by the way, is very difficult, especially if you're a good carpenter. But if you're good at communicating as a carpenter, you're like 10 times better as a carpenter. So, and this is something that the liberal arts colleges, I think, I don't know if they've forgotten it, but they don't do a very good job of marketing. It's like, what's the use of a bachelor's degree, a bachelor of arts? It's like, well, you can think, you can write,
You can speak, you've read something. It's like the economic value of that is incalculable. The people that I've watched in my life who've been spectacularly successful are, they have skills, clearly, that's a minimum precondition, but they're also very, very good at articulating themselves. And so whenever they negotiate, they're successful.
Well, that's kind of like the definition of success in life, right? You negotiate and you're successful. It doesn't mean you win. Because if you're a good negotiator, if you're a really good negotiator, everybody walks away from the negotiation thrilled. And so then people line up to do things with you. So, and that's all dependent on your ability to communicate.
Practice. There's a thing in our culture that's killing our culture. It's killing success. And that is that we've become addicted to other people's opinions. We've become addicted to other people's approval. And social media is wonderful, but it's all about how many likes do you get? How many selfies can you take? That may feel good when you get it, but then what it does is it governs your behavior. You begin to only do things to seek other people's approval. And even when you get it, right, it
It's short term. It doesn't really feel very good. It's not fulfilling. What we really want is not just success, we want fulfillment. The way we get fulfillment is self-respect, is self-confidence.
And that's how somehow in your life you must begin to separate what you do from what people think about it. You know this, the people that have really won in life and in business, they eventually drop the addiction to what other people think about them. They're most concerned about what they think about them or if they're a person of faith of what their God thinks about them, not the rest of the world. Because the higher you climb, the more haters you're gonna have. There's absolutely no question about it. You ought to hope you have more of them. The only thing I will warn people of is the higher you climb, the closer to you the haters are.
So right now, if you're at one level of success, it's people at a distance that are haters. But as you climb higher, there's always the one or two people in your close circle who begin to try to pull you back down because they think you're leaving them. Your success is making them uncomfortable about where they are. And so they begin to do everything they can to pull you back down. So the closer the haters are to you, the even more success you're having. Key to self-confidence is really simple. And this is absolutely, I've trained many,
Hundreds of thousands of people. I've spoken to millions of people around the world. I can tell you this. The self-confident people I know, whether they are athletes, school teachers, mechanics, parents, stay-at-home moms, you name it.
They have a pattern of keeping promises they make to themselves. The groundwork of beginning to build self-confidence is to begin to keep the promises you make to you. And that's why it's important to begin to even make small promises. If you're going to get up at a certain time in the morning, not only do it, but then give yourself credit. Say, "I did what I said I was going to do." If it's in your diet or your fitness, don't just eat the healthy foods. Go, "I'm doing what I said I was going to do." You begin to build this reputation.
If you're constantly being influenced and moved by what other people think about you, it means there's a deficiency in what you think about you. And so the key is not some, you know, and so esoteric like belief system. It's a pattern of keeping the promises that you make to you. That's the groundwork of self-confidence for sure.
And it is a pattern. When I meet people that lack confidence, I think, "Let me serve you. Let's begin to keep the promises you make to you." You're so worried about... There's this addiction to other people's approval in the world, right? It's the greatest addiction today. It used to be drugs. Before that, it was alcohol. There's all these addictions, sex addictions, whatever. The number one addiction in the world today is the addiction to other people's approval. And that's because we don't approve of ourselves.
Or we don't feel a spirit, a universe, a God that we believe in that approves of us. And so my confidence comes from both my faith and in the fact that I keep promises I make to myself. That's the groundwork of all confidence to me.
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