the easiest thing i've done was to get
out from under the labels and to live
the life that i live
the most difficult thing i've ever done
was to believe
that i can do it
the difference is that
when you don't know what's impacting you
and it's it's something that that's
holding you down and you're not aware of
it
there are things that when you in my
situation
you live in a dominant culture that is
designed to destroy your sense of self
and your belief in yourself and
and you have to learn ways in which you
can begin to connect with this power
that you have within yourself to handle
where you are
the key is to be
constantly in a perpetual process
of discovering the truth of who you are
and
fighting constantly to
look for ways in which you can escape
the inner conversation
between ages
0 and 5 we determine what's available to
us
and what's not available to us and so
that was a defining moment i knew
there are certain things i could not do
certain places i could not go they used
to have signs on miami beach that said
jews
dogs and cullets not allowed and so now
you have to operate within
the constraints of the dominant society
and the things that they've created for
you and
it's a challenge to see yourself beyond
that and to work to get outside of that
even after
those laws have changed because that has
become so much a part of you
you unconsciously operate within the
parameters of what has been put in place
like you go
you're driving on the expressway the
four or five and
and you'll get off on an exit that you
weren't going in that direction but you
unconsciously did it because you've done
it so many times that many people
because
they're not
making a conscious deliberate determined
effort
to think outside of what life has thrown
at them they end up doing the same thing
over and over and over again einstein
said that thinking that has brought me
this far has created some problems that
this thinking can't solve
and so through relationships through
reading through studies through goals
and dreams beyond your comfort zone it
allows you to begin to live out of your
imagination as opposed to out of your
history disney said the imagination is a
preview of what's to come
they have to expose themselves to
something
that will give them a different vision
of themselves and in addition to that
they have to put themselves in a
community of what i call oqp
only quality people a gentleman who
dramatically transformed my life i was
a junior at booger t washington high
school in miami florida and i went in
his class looking for another friend and
and he said go to the board and work
this problem out for me i said sir i
can't do that he said why not i said
i'm not one of your students he said do
it anyhow.
and and the other kid started laughing
saying he's leslie he's dt
and he said what's dt he's his brother
is smart but he's the dumb twin
and and i said i am sir and he came from
behind his desk and he pointed at me
said don't you ever say that again
someone's opinion of you does not have
to become your reality
and he taught me three things he said if
you want to become successful in life
young man he said number one you got to
change your mindset he said you don't
get in life what you want you get in
life what you are number two practice
oqp
only quality people you earn within two
to three thousand dollars of your
closest friends i found that out i left
all my broke friends i said y'all got to
go
cause i used to be so broke i passed the
bank and tripped the alarm you know
and the third thing he said develop your
communication skills because once you
open your mouth
you tell the world who you are he said
those are three major things that you
want to work on that will liberate you
from living in liberty city living in
poverty and over town
it will help to
escape
out of where you are right now because i
see you watching me and i know you want
more i can see the hunger in your eyes
you get hungry by finding something
that's you
i believe that all of us are born unique
but most of us
dye copies
you've got to find out what is it that
turns you on what resonates with you
one of the things that i realized and
what allowed me to become successful as
a speaker
the speaking industry has been hijacked
by people who speak
to sell and it's okay to do that and
make money i speak to change lives
because somebody spoke
and changed my life so this is my
passion this is my drive this is
something that i feel in my heart
and and so the key
to that hunger driven life
is a heart-centered life i didn't do
what i'm doing for years because of my
programming because of the culture in
which i was raised in i would see other
people with with degrees and phd's and
and mbas and credentials i don't have
and i convinced myself i couldn't do it
but mr washington
on that day we became friends and and he
taught me not only someone's opinion of
you just does not have to determine your
reality he said that you have to work on
yourself and you have to have an
unstoppable attitude and no excuse is
acceptable and you've got to to
make it a a priority a non-negotiable in
your life and hold a constant vision of
what it is you want to achieve see it
accomplished and go all out find a way
to win
in spite of the setbacks in spite of the
disappointments in spite of your
failures i tell people when i'm giving
presentations you will fail your way to
success i have a saying is life knocks
you down trying to land on your back
because if you can look up you can get
up
and so
those experiences of of going after
goals that's beyond your comfort zone
and having relationships that will
challenge you and surrounding yourself
with coaches and mentors who can take
you to a place within yourself that you
can't go by yourself because you can't
read the label when you're locked in the
box
and so those experiences they challenge
you to go to that next level and
continue to move forward in your life
doing new and exciting things that i has
not seen ear has not heard noah's in the
heart of mankind what god has in store
for you when you live a hard-centered
life deciding that you're going to live
a life that will outlive you you're
going to live a life that counts a life
that will build a legacy and change the
planet you know horror's man said we
should be ashamed to die until we've
made some major contribution to
humankind and so my goal
is to make a major contribution to
humankind
[Music]
every day when i get up
my mindset is what is it that i can do
to touch and impact somebody's life
today what is it what does that look
like
don't live the life that has been given
you by their circumstances
by the people that's around you
that sydney port here wrote a book
called the measure of a man and he said
when you go for a walk with someone
something happens without being spoken
he said either you adjust to their pace
or they adjust to your pace
whose pace have you adjusted to
and so the things that we pick up and we
think that there are choices but they're
the choices that we've been programmed
by life to to do
when we leave our homes in the morning
we're bombarded with over 6 000
advertising hits through facebook
through twitter through instagram
through television through our phones
and through our communities
and through the computers and so all of
these things are impacting us every day
so if you don't have a program for your
mind then your mind is going to be
programmed and you'll find yourself
doing things that you did not know
and and that they affected you that they
through marketing techniques and
strategies
that
they will create a thirst within you i
came up in an era that said if you built
the best mouse trap the world will be
the path to your door but if you know
marketing people will sleep outside your
store
to buy a telephone they've never touched
or seen let's try to think what can i
say that could actually be helpful or
useful to you in the future
and i thought perhaps tell the story of
how i sort of came to be here how did
some of these things happen and maybe
there's some lessons there because i
often find myself wondering how did this
happen
so
when i was young i i
i didn't really know what i was going to
do when i got older people kept asking
me and eventually i thought that the
idea of inventing things would be would
be really cool
and the reason i thought that was
because i i read a quote from autistic
clock which said that
efficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic
and that's really true
if you go back
say 300 years the things that we take
for granted today
you'd be burned at the stake for you
know being able to fly
that's crazy
being able to see over long distances
being able to communicate
having um effectively with the internet
a group mind of sorts
and having access to all the world's
information instantly from almost
anywhere on the earth this is stuff that
that really would be magic it would be
considered magic in times past in fact i
think it actually goes beyond that
because there are many things that we
take for granted today that weren't even
imagined
in times past they weren't even in the
realm of magic
so that it actually goes goes beyond
that
so i thought well
you know if if i can do
some of those things basically if i can
advance technology then that that's like
magic and that would be really cool and
i always had sort of a slight
existential crisis because i was trying
to figure out what does it all mean like
what's the purpose of things
and i came to the conclusion that if we
can advance the knowledge of the world
if we can do things that expand the
scope and scale of consciousness then
we're better able to ask the right
questions and become more enlightened
and that's really the only way forward
so i studied
physics and business because i figured
in order to do a lot of these things you
need to know how the universe works and
you need to know how the economy works
and you also need to be able to bring a
lot of people together to work with you
to create something because it's very
difficult to do something as an
individual if it's if it's a significant
technology
so i originally came out to to
california to try to figure out
how to improve the
energy density of
of electric vehicles basically to try to
figure out if there was an advanced
capacitor that that could serve as an
alternative to batteries
that was in 95 and
that's also when the internet
started to happen and
i thought well i can either pursue this
with technology where
success maybe may not be one of the
possible outcomes which is always tricky
or
participate in the internet and and be
part of it so i decided to drop out
did some internet stuff
[Music]
they did a few things here and there
one of which was paypal
and and i think maybe it's helpful to
say one of the things that was important
then in the creation of paypal was kind
of how it started because
the initial thought was with paypal was
to create an agglomeration of financial
services so if you have one place where
all your financial services needs would
be seamlessly integrated and work
smoothly and then we had like a little
feature which was to do email payments
and whenever we'd show the system off to
someone
we'd show the hard part which was the
agglomeration of financial services
which was quite difficult to put
together nobody was interested then we'd
show people email payments which was
actually quite easy and everybody was
interested
so
this is uh i think it's important to
take feedback from your environment
you know you want to be as closed loop
as possible
so we focus on email payments and really
try to make that work and and that's
what really got things to take off
but if we hadn't responded to what
people said then we probably would not
have been successful
so it's important to look for things
like that
and focus on them when you see them and
you correct
your prior assumptions
and then going from paypal
i thought it will
what are some of the the other problems
that uh are likely to most affect the
future of humanity
it really wasn't from the perspective of
what's the rancor best way to to make
money
which is okay but it was really what i
think is going to most affect the future
humanity so i think the the biggest
terrestrial problem we've got is
sustainable energy but the production
and consumption of energy in a
sustainable manner if we don't solve
that the century we're we're in deep
trouble
and then the other one being the
extension of life beyond earth to make
life multi-planetary
so
the latter is the basis for spacex and
the former is the basis for tesla and
solar city
and when i started spacex it was
actually initially
i thought that
well there's no way one could possibly
start a rocket company i wasn't that
crazy
i thought well what is a way to
increase nasa's budget that was actually
my initial goal
so i thought well if we can do a
low-cost mission to mars something
called mars oasis which would land seeds
and dehydrated nutrient gel and you
hydrate them upon landing and then you'd
have this great sort of money shot of
green plants on a red background
the public tends to respond to um
precedents and superlatives
and this would be the first life on mars
the furthest that life's ever traveled
as far as we know and i thought well
that that would get people really
excited
and therefore increase at nasa's budget
so obviously the financial outcome from
such a mission would probably be zero
so anything better than that was on the
upside
so i actually went to russia three times
to look at buying a refurbished icbm
because that was the best deal and uh i
can tell you it was very weird going
there in 2000 late 2001 2002
going to the russian rocket forces and
saying i'd like to buy
two of your biggest rockets but you can
keep the nuke
that's a lot more
they thought i was crazy but i did have
money so that was
that was okay
after making several trips to to russia
i came to the conclusion that actually
my initial impression was was wrong
because my initial thought was well that
there's not enough will to explore and
expand beyond earth and have a mars base
and that kind of thing but i can't
conclusion that that was wrong
in fact there's plenty of will
particularly in the united states
because the united states
is a nation of explorers of people who
came here from from other parts of the
world i think the united states is
really a distillation of the spirit of
human exploration
but if people think it's impossible or
it's going to completely break the
federal budget then they're not going to
do it
so after my third trip i said okay
what we really need to do here is try to
solve the space transport problem
and uh and started spacex
and uh this was against the advice of
pretty much everyone i talked to but one
friend made me sit down and watch a
bunch of videos rockets blowing up
let me tell you he wasn't far wrong
it was tough going there in the
beginning because i'd never built
anything physical i mean i built like
little model rockets as a kid and that
kind of thing but i never had a company
that built anything physical such kind
of figure out how to do all these things
and bring together the right team of
people
and so we did all that and then failed
three times
it was tough tough going
because thing about a rocket is the
passing grade is a hundred percent
and uh
you you don't get to
actually test the rocket in the real
environment that it's going to be in
so i think so the best analogy for
rocket engineering is like if you want
to create a really
complicated bit of software
you can't run the software as an
integrated hole and you can't run it on
the computer it's intended to run on but
the first time you put it all together
and write it on that computer it must
run with no bugs
that's basically the essence of it
so we missed the mark there the first
launch i was picking up bits of rocket
near the
launch site it was a bit sad
but we learned with each successive
flight and were able to eventually with
the fourth flight in 2008 reach orbit
[Music]
and that was also with the last bit of
money that we had
so um
thank goodness that happened
i think the saying is both times the
charm
[Music]
so we got the falcon two orbit and then
uh began to scale that up to the falcon
9 which is
about an order of magnitude more a
thrust it's uh around a million pounds
of thrust
and
we managed to get that to orbit and then
i developed a dragon spacecraft uh which
um
recently was able to dock and return to
earth from the space station
that was a white-knuckled event
it's a huge relief still can't quite
believe it actually happened
but there's a lot more that must happen
beyond this in order for humanity to
become a space faring civilization
ultimately a multi-planet species
and that's something i think it's
vitally important and i hope that some
of you will participate in that either
at spacex or at other companies because
it's just really one of the most
important things for the preservation
and extension of consciousness
it's worth noting as i'm sure people are
aware that the earth has been around for
four billion years
and civilization at least in terms of
having writing has been around for 10
000 years and that's being generous
so it's really
uh somewhat of a tenuous existence that
civilization and and consciousness as we
know it has been on earth and i think um
i'm actually fairly optimistic about the
future of earth i don't want sort of
people to have the wrong impression that
i think we're all about to die
i think things will most likely be okay
for a long time on earth
but not for sure but most likely
but even if it's sort of 99 likely a one
percent chance it's still worth spending
a fair bit of effort to ensure that we
have backed up the biosphere you know
planetary redundancy if you will so i
think i think it's really really quite
important
and in order to do that there's a
breakthrough that needs to occur which
is to create a rapidly and completely
reusable transport system to mars
which is one of those things that's
right on the borderline of impossible
that's sort of the thing that we're
going to try to achieve there with
spacex
and then on the tesla front the goal
with tesla was really to try to show
what electric cars can do because people
had the wrong impression we had to
change people's perception of an
electric vehicle because they used to
think of it as something that was slow
and
ugly and had low range kind of like a
golf cart
so that's why we create the tesla
roadster to show that you can be fast
attractive and and long range
and it's amazing how
even though you can show that something
works on paper and the calculations are
very clear until you actually have the
physical object and they can drive it it
doesn't really sink in for people
so that i think is something worth
noting if you're going to create a
company the first thing you should try
to do is create a working prototype
you know everything everything looks
great on powerpoint you can make
anything work on powerpoint but if
you're an actual demonstration article
even if it's in primitive form that's
much much more effective for convincing
people
after we made the tesla roadster people
said oh sure sure we always knew you
could make a car like that it's an
expensive car
and it's low volume and it's small and
all that but you couldn't make a real
car like okay fine you gotta make that
too
but um
i i think the overarching point i wanna
make is that you guys are the magicians
of the 21st century don't let anything
hold you back imagination is the limit
and go out there and create some magic
thank you sit on your bed one day and
ask yourself
uh
what's
what remarkably stupid things am i doing
on a regular basis to absolutely screw
up my life
and if you actually ask that question
but you have to want to know the answer
right because that's actually what
asking the question means it doesn't
mean just mouthing the words it means
you have to decide that you want to know
you'll figure that's out so fast it'll
make your hair curl
there's no better pathway to
self-realization
and the ennoblement of being than to
posit the highest good that you can
conceive of and commit yourself to it
and then you might also ask yourself and
this is definitely worth asking is do
you really have anything better to do
and if you don't well why would you do
anything else
if you orient yourself properly
and then pay attention to what you do
every day
that works
and it i actually think that that's in
accordance with with what we have come
to understand about human perception
because what happens is that
the world shifts itself
around your aim
because you're you're a creature that
has a name you have to have a name in
order to do something you're an aiming
creature you look at a point and you
move towards it it's built right into
you
and so you have a name well let's say
your aim is the highest possible aim
well then so that sets up the world
around you
it organizes all of your perceptions it
organizes what you see and you don't see
it organizes your emotions and your
motivations
so you organize yourself around that aim
and then what happens is the day
manifests itself as a set of challenges
and problems and if you solve them
properly then you stay on the pathway
towards that eighth and you can
concentrate on the on the on the day and
so that way you get to have your cake
and eat it too because you can you can
point into the distance the far distance
and you can live in the day
and it seems to me that that's
that makes every moment of the day
supercharged with meaning that that's
how because if everything that you're
doing every day is related to the
highest possible aim that you can
conceptualize well that's the very
definition of the meaning that would
sustain you in your life
well and then the issue is well back to
noah well all hell's about to break
loose and chaos is coming it's like when
that's happening in your life you might
want to be doing something that you
regard as truly worthwhile
because that's what will keep you afloat
when when everything is flooded
and you don't want to wait until the
flood comes
just start doing that because
if your arc's half built and you don't
know how to captain it the probability
is very high that
that you'll drown
ask and it shall be given you seek and
ye shall find knock and it shall be
opened unto you for everyone that asketh
receiveth and he that seeketh findeth
and to him that knocketh it shall be
opened
that sounded pretty optimistic again
but but
again i think it's a description of the
structure of existential reality and and
by which i mean
when i'm in my clinical practice and i
observe and this is also the case with
my students is let's say
people's lives aren't what they would
like them to be
and so then you ask why
well forget about tragedy and
catastrophe because that's self-evident
and we're not going to discuss that
although the degree to which you bring
about your own tragedy is always
indeterminate but i would never say that
every terrible thing that is visited on
a person is something they deserved
i think that that's a very dangerous
presupposition especially because
everyone gets sick and everyone dies
but one of the main reasons that people
don't get what they want is because they
don't actually figure out what it is
and the probability that you're going to
get what would be good for you let's say
which would even be better than what you
want right because you know you might be
wrong about what you want easily but
maybe you could get what would really be
good for you
well why don't you
well because you don't try
you don't think okay
here's what i would like if i could have
it and and i don't mean
i don't mean
in a way that you manipulate the world
to force it to deliver you goods for
status or something like that that isn't
what i mean i mean something like
imagine that you are taking care of
yourself like you were someone you
actually cared for
and then you thought okay i'm caring for
this person i would like things to go as
well for them as possible what would
their life have to be like in order for
that to be the case
well people don't do that they don't sit
down and think all right you know let's
let's figure it out you've got a life
it's hard obviously it's like
three years from now you can have what
you need
you got to be careful about it you can't
have everything you can have what would
be good for you but you have to figure
out what it is and then you have to aim
at it
well my experience with people has been
is if they figure out what it is that
would be good for them and then they aim
at it then they get it
and it's strange because they don't
necess it's a strange thing it's not
quite that simple because
you know you may formulate an idea about
what would be good for you and then you
take 10 steps towards that and you find
out that your formulation was a bit off
and so you have to reformulate your goal
you know you're kind of going like this
as you move towards the goal
but a huge part of the reason that
people fail is because they don't ever
set up the criteria for success
and so since success is a very narrow
line and very unlikely the probability
that you're going to stumble on it
randomly is zero
and so there's a proposition here and
the proposition is
if you actually want something
you can have it
now the question then would be well what
do you mean by actually want
and the answer is that you reorient your
life
in every possible way
to make the probability that that will
occur as certain as possible and that's
a sacrificial idea right it's like you
don't get everything
obviously you
obviously
but maybe you can have what you need
and maybe all you have to do to get it
is ask
but asking isn't
a whim or or today's wish
it's like you have to be deadly serious
about it you have to think okay like i'm
taking stock of myself and if i was
going to live properly in the world and
i was going to set myself up
such that being would justify itself in
my estimation and i don't mean as a
harsh judge exactly what is it that i
would aim at
and so the issue is
not so much the blindness of others
even though
there's as much blindness
among others as there is
in
as there is for you
but the issue here the advice here the
description here is you should be
concerned about what's interfering with
your own vision first
and you should leave other people to
hell alone in relationship to that and
so if your mode of being in the world is
if you would just act better things
would improve for me
or if
you identify the evil and the
catastrophe as something that's outside
that someone else needs to fix or that
someone's response someone else is
responsible for then you're not going to
fix that
and you're going to remain blind to the
things that you're doing and not doing
that make things not go well
and so it's just better to think all
right i'm probably blind in many many
ways and maybe there are some ways that
i could rectify that because it's highly
probable that you're blind in all sorts
of ways i mean it's in fact it's
virtually certain and so
it's just more useful to think
how is it that i'm wrong in this
situation i'll tell you something that i
learned to do
when i was arguing with my wife which
happened quite frequently
because
when you actually communicate with
people you find out that there's many
things that you don't agree on and
that's because you're actually different
creatures
and so if you're actually going to have
a truthful conversation then you're
going to find out that
you don't see things the same way and
then you can either pretend that that's
not the case and gloss over it and then
end up in a 30-year
silent war
or you can
or you can have the damn fight when you
need to have it and see if you can
straighten it out
so now and then we'd get in a situation
where we were at loggerheads we couldn't
move
and
you know it would spiral up into hate
speech let's say because yeah everyone
laughs because they know they manifest
plenty of hate speech towards those they
love
so one of the things we learned to do
was when we
hit an impasse was to separate and to go
our own ways and to go sit and think
okay look we're at this
unpleasant situation we can't figure out
how to move forward
i'd always think
of course it's her fault obviously it's
her fault
at least 95 percent but
maybe there was something i did that
contributed like five percent to it
the amount information that's been
created from the dawn of humanity since
human beings walked this planet to the
year 2003 which is only what a decade
and a half ago that amount information
how long does it take to create that
nowadays
two days
the amount information is doubling at
dizzying speeds
but how we learn it how we absorb it
focus retain it apply it it's pretty
much flat line and that growing gap
creates something called anxiety they
call it information fatigue syndrome
because everything's a syndrome right
higher blood pressure compression of
leisure time more sleeplessness
because we live in an age where
you know electric cars and spaceships
that are going to mars but our vehicle
of choice when it comes to learning and
education is like a horse and buggy you
know like the education system has not
we all grew up with the 20th century
education that prepared us for 20th
century world which at the turn of the
20th century was working in farms and
factories
and that's what the education was it was
assembly line cookie cutter one size
fits all but now we live in a world
where the world's changing so much
someone graduating school today is going
to have 8 to 14 different careers can
you imagine that not jobs but different
careers because we don't know where the
world's going to be
so your ability to out learn out think
outperform i mean that's your greatest
advantage if there's one skill to master
in the 21st century it's your ability to
learn rapidly to be able to keep up so
digital overload digital this second
digital super villain today that i think
is a health threat to everyone listening
whether you're an entrepreneur you're a
parent you're a high achiever
is this thing called digital distraction
i think about all the social media
alerts the app updates i mean our minds
are being fried because we're getting
these dopamine fixes all the time
do you know how often the average person
opens up instagram
it's now 150 times
and then if you guys are opening up a
list that means somebody's opening up a
whole lot more but that's by design
right because every like share comment
you get this dopamine flowed and it
drives our you know our
our habits and our addiction if you will
and we talk a lot about routines and
then we're going to talk about how to
jump start your brain morning routine
evening routines because
i mean really the success that everyone
is desiring it's hidden in our daily
habits right first you create your
habits and then your habits create you
but one of the things that a bad habit
the most successful people they have
their to-do list and we all have our
to-do list but i've also noticed that
some of the highest achievers they have
a not-to-do list
you know what i mean they have a list of
non-negotiable things they will not
indulge in because you know we've all
read the book good to great you say no
to good so you could say yes to great
right and a lot of times when you get
more and more successful you suffer from
this opportunity stress right you get
more and more offers more and more
opportunity and you can't say yes to
everything and that's a big challenge
because then you have so many windows
open on your computer and even if
they're minimized they still take up
energy and they still take up space and
memory and you wonder why you're
fatigued all the time you wonder why you
don't have the mental energy to do the
things that you need to be able to do so
digital distraction and on the top of
your not to do list
should be not checking your phone in the
first thing in the morning and i know
everyone's listening to me and and
automatically
so many people are just like oh my god
you know like i hate you i hate this guy
but the first hour of the day the reason
why you don't want to pick up your phone
is because and we're all guilty of this
is because it rewires your brain for two
things number one it rewires your brain
for distraction when you wake up first
thing in the morning you're in this
relaxed
alpha creative it's a very suggestible
state right you just woke up and so
you have to be very careful and protect
and stand guard to your mind from
outside influences because number one
the first thing you see on your phone
you're watching these cat videos and you
know everything's going on social media
you're getting these dopamine flood
which is building your distraction
muscles because when it comes to focus
focus is
it's like there's a focus fitness if you
will and you have focused muscles but
you also have distraction muscles and a
lot of people their distraction muscles
are way over developed because of
picking the phone up first thing in the
morning
but the second reason for neurological
reason why you don't want to pick up
your phone the first hour of the day is
because it also rewires your brain for
reaction it's training your brain to be
reactive
and so you know as you know you go
through your phone you wake up in the
morning you pick up your phone you get
one text one voicemail message one
you know email and all of a sudden your
date is shot like it puts you in a bad
mood and you carry that mood throughout
your entire day and that's a big
challenge because
you know if you're just fighting fires
then you're just on the defense if
you're just trying to fulfill everyone
else's needs without going through like
what's going to help me to win this day
to own this you know this day to be able
to make it the best then um then you're
you're reacting and i have a friend
brendan burchard he says your inbox is
nothing but a convenient organizational
system for other people's agenda for
your life
so you're training your brain to react
and you can never have an incredible day
if you're just reacting to things right
so for me i wake up in the morning and
what i just start journaling and i write
down
three things i want to accomplish
personally that day and three things i
want to accomplish professionally and
it's different every single day but i
always begin with the end in mind one of
my favorite books of all time is this
book called seven habits of highly
effective people and we've read this
book some people like i have that book
and it's sitting on my shelf and it
becomes shellfield not self-help right
because nobody's actually like reading
that book because so many people buy
books and i have the i like to encourage
people to read at least one book a week
because the average person reads about
two maybe three books a year but what i
love about reading number one is the
best exercise you know for your mind and
you know it's it's like
reading is to your mind what exercise is
to your body it's an incredible workout
and most people they don't take the time
to read but the other reason i like to
read
um is if somebody has decades of
experience in leadership negotiation
entrepreneurship fitness and they put it
into a book and you could sit down in a
couple of days and read that book you
could download decades of experience
into days and that's a huge advantage
right because leaders leaders are
readers
when i'm writing what i need to
accomplish i'm writing put first things
first put first things first meaning i
believe that the most important thing is
to keep the most important thing the
most important thing
the most important thing is to keep the
most important thing the most important
thing because a lot of people have a
fear of failure or fear of success you
know my my fear has always been
i don't want to succeed at things that
don't matter it wasn't so much about
failing it's about getting really good
at something that didn't make a
difference and stephen covey talks about
it like you're really good at climbing
the ladder of success only to get to the
top and realize that it's leaning on the
wrong wall
and so if you begin with the end in mind
so i'm thinking about
my friend clay bear has this phrase
about champagne moments you know in
sports it's very clear when you're
popping that champagne what has to
happen your criteria and for me i think
about if i'm coming back you know at
night and somebody asked me how my day
was and i was like i crushed it today
you know what had to happen working
backwards in order for that to happen
and i think about three things
professionally three things personally
and so i write that down first thing in
the morning and then i don't check my
phone until i get one of those checks
done just at least one thing you know
and then i'll get some positive momentum
for example but that's the reason you
don't want to check your phone it's
training you to be distracted and it's
rewiring your brain to be reactive and
you can't be successful and fulfilled if
you're just giving up the sovereignty
your power to some something outside of
yourself
the third digital
like
super villain if you will when we're
talking about you know digital uh
challenges is um so you have digital
overload digital distraction is digital
dementia have you heard this term yet no
you're going to hear this a lot in
healthcare it's basically where we're
outsourcing our our brains our minds to
our smart devices oh this is why i can't
remember anybody's phone number exactly
i mean how many phone numbers did you
know growing up
all of them all of them literally all of
them because we had to right and how
many phone numbers do you know right now
two but
exactly so you know like one or two
there could be somebody you're texting
or calling every single day and if your
phone was dead or if you didn't have it
with you you wouldn't honestly know what
that number is and here's the thing i
don't want to memorize 500 phone numbers
nobody wants to do that but we've lost
the ability to remember one phone number
we've lost the ability to remember
a conversation somebody's birthday i
mean i feel like absent-mindedness i
mean how many people feel like senior
moments are coming too early like you
walk into a room and you just forget why
you're there or you open up the
refrigerator you go to the store to buy
one thing and you come back with like
two bags full of things except for that
one thing you went to you know get there
get there or you can't remember if you
you're in the shower you can't remember
if you shampooed your hair your hair and
i believe two of the most costly words
in life and in business are i forgot you
know i forgot to do it i forgot to bring
it i forgot that conversation i forgot
that meaning i forgot what i needed to
say i forgot that name i mean i think
number one business etiquette networking
skill there is is remembering people's
names
we don't realize how much time we're
spending on these devices right when you
go and you actually look at the numbers
when you look at your phone and you look
at like just somebody saying like 24
hours a week you know on social media or
whatever it is i mean that's people
always say i have no time to read or i
have no time to work out it has nothing
to do with with time management it's all
priority management
i think the definition of greatness is
to inspire the people next to you yeah i
think that's what greatness is or should
be it's not something that's that
that lives and dies
with one person
it's how can you inspire a person to
then in turn inspire another person that
inspires another person and that's how
you create something that i think lasts
forever
and i think that's our challenge as
people
is to um
is to figure out how our story can
impact others and motivate them in a way
to create their own greatness
there's a quote from one of my english
teachers a little marion named
mr fisk
he had a great quote that said rest at
the end not in the middle
and that's something i always live by
you know i'm not going to rest i'm going
to keep on pushing now a lot of answers
that i don't have
even questions that i don't have but i'm
just going to keep going i'm just going
to keep going and i'll figure these
things out as you go right you just
continue to build that way so that i try
to live by that all the time and what
brings you the most joy right now being
with my family really that is man that
is the most fun
it's just um
you know it's uh
hanging out with them all summer
being able to like do things that i
ordinarily couldn't do yeah uh because
of training because shirts and stuff
like that so being around them and
watching bianca grow up because a lot of
things that i missed with natalie and
gianna because i was playing so being
there every day with them is so much fun
man so
it brings me the most joy
what does love feel like
hmm
happiness is such a
i mean
i think i would describe love as
happiness i think i'd describe it as a
beautiful journey
um
you know it has its ups and downs
right whether it's in marriage or
whether it's in the career
you know things are never perfect
yeah but through love you continue to
persevere and you move through them you
move through and then through that storm
beautiful sun emerges yeah right
inevitably another storm comes guess
what you ride that one out too
so i think love is a certain
determination
and persistence to go through the good
times and the bad times with the someone
or something
that you truly love
my parents
were great you know growing up they
instilled in me the importance of
imagination of
curiosity understanding that okay if you
want to accomplish something
i'm not just going to sit here and say
yes you can do whatever you want
yes you can
but
you have to also put in the work to get
there right so they taught me at a
really early age man and uh when you
grow up as a kid thinking that the world
is your oyster all things are possible
if you put in the work to do it
you know you grow up having that
fundamental belief
my mom was there on a daily basis
my father
uh was really influential at a really
critical time where i i had a summer
where i played basketball when i was
like 10 or 11 years old
and a very prominent summer league in
philadelphia called the sunny hillbilly
where my father played my uncle played
and they were like all-time great stuff
and will chamberlain played in the
league you know uh earl of the promo
role playing league
and here i come
playing and i don't score one point
the entire summer really not one how old
were you 11 10 11. you're playing
against other 10 11 year olds or you
didn't score once not one were you in
the game i was in a game how did you not
score because that was terrible
really yeah
that happened 11 years old that's awful
i mean i you know and i had these big
knee pads on because i was growing
really fast i had socks all the way up
here and i had like the hot top
like skinny as hell
and i scored not a free throw not a
nothing not a lucky shot not a breakaway
layup zero points and i remember crying
about it and being upset about it my
father just gave me a hug and said
listen
whether you score zero or score 60 i'm
gonna love you no matter what wow now
that is the most important thing that
you can say to a child
because from there i was like okay
that gives me all the confidence in the
world to fail
i have the security there
but to hell with that i'm scoring 60.
let's go right right right from there i
just went to work i just stayed with him
i kept practicing kept practicing care
practice
you know when you're in this culture in
our society you can do some phenomenal
things individually
but they'll never reach their full
potential
unless you do them collectively you have
to figure out how to do that
the challenge for me was always
compassion and empathy
i think about 09 things started changing
for me i started really
making a conscious effort to better
understand
and that doesn't mean
you have compassion and empathy so you
go softer
it's more like you you put you put
yourself to the side
and you put yourself in their shoes and
understand what they're feeling
and then you have to make certain
decisions of okay what buttons do i need
to push with this player to get them to
the next level so it's never
it's not sit around and all it's all
happy go lucky type of thing if your
leader your job is to get the best out
of them
um even if you know they may not like it
at that time
one of the things i had to learn is how
to get the best out of my teammates yeah
and most people think it's a simple
thing you know passing the ball you know
but that's not how you make guys better
you have to really affect
their behavior how do you do that so
yeah like i would tell guys
you got it back to backs you know i
don't care if we're in miami i don't
care if we're in a great city in chicago
you can't go out we gotta get rest right
back-to-back games back-to-back games
right monday tuesday play monday and
play again tuesday guys are gonna listen
right you're gonna you're right so a few
times all right well i'll go out
go out together really i'll drink with
you
right but the next morning i'm banging
on your door at five in the morning
let's go they're not getting where are
we going
i hung out with you now you come hang
out with me wow this is what we do all
right let's go
here at the gym we're working out right
we hit the bus we go to practice we play
that night and they're dead and they're
dead and they're like lesson learned
lesson take them out once listen if
you're going to do that do that
but don't let that compromise what we're
here to do right this is why we're here
this is why you're here in the first
place
what does losing feel like to you
oh it's exciting
why is it exciting
um because it means you have different
ways to get better there are certain
things that you can figure out that you
can take advantage of
right certain weaknesses that were
exposed
um that you need to shore up
right so it was exciting i mean
it sucks to lose
but at the same time their answer is
there
if you just look at
them i give an example so katie lou
samuelsson is one of the best college
basketball players in the country she
plays at uconn she's going to be a
senior and they just had a really tough
season last year where they lost to
notre dame in the final and so i
actually said have you watched the notre
dame game she was like no well why not
he said i don't want to watch that i
said i know you don't but you're going
to play notre dame this year yeah yeah
there's a chance that you see him again
in the final
well you probably see me here
say well you can't show up and play them
without knowing why you lost that one
right so
you know the mistakes that you've made
in that game you have to do the hard
stuff and watch that game and study that
game
to not make those mistakes over and over
again just because you weren't brave
enough to face it so she came down to
the office i brought down the office and
we sat down we watched that game
together wow right you gotta
you gotta deal with it gotta deal with
it face it learn from it
when you play for 20 years i play for 20
years you reach a certain level you're
like okay wait a minute i have to start
again at the base of a mountain
and try to climb the top of this
mountain first of all what mountain am i
climbing i don't even know like what the
hell am i going to be doing it'd be it's
very it's very scary it's very even for
you oh absolutely
absolutely and the thing that helped me
actually was hurting my achilles
because that forced me to sit there and
say okay
the day could be today
that your career is over now what do you
do
you have these ideas about doing
something with your life after
basketball
but what if today is the day that you
that's it now what do you do so i had
all this time sitting there with my
achilles injury and contemplating and
thinking and
i said i better get to work
wow that was that
the mentality book is is really about
process and craft i've broken a book up
into two sections and process is really
about
the process of preparing
you know through injury recovery uh
studying of the game and then the craft
is the actual performance and the
tactics and so a lot of things that i
learned through the game were through
photos
you can look at a photo and see like a
player making a movie look at the angle
of his feet look how he's using his
hands on defense and i can really break
down things to the smallest detail
through that and that's what you'll see
in this book i mean it's really a
basketball bible you see how i break
things down like how i'm looking at
things the smallest of detail yeah and
that's the best way to understand how to
have that kind of mentality is to ask
questions then find answers and then
lead to more questions you find more
answers and that's what the book is so
how can we teach our children what it
means to work hard
well you do it through training right so
when i get up in the morning my daughter
goes with me 4 am 4 am my 15 year old
goes with me she goes with him before
school and it becomes a daddy daughter
thing that's cool she just got a permit
right so she drives in the morning it
becomes a cool thing right but
through that process she understands the
value of hard work
and things taking time
and the same thing with my 12 year old
she practices every day right so it's
through those behaviors
is where i find the motivation to do it
i found that nothing in life
is worthwhile
unless you take risks
nothing
nelson mandela said there is no passion
to be found
playing small
in settling for a life that's less
than the one you're capable of living
now i'm sure in your experiences in
school and applying to college and
picking your major and deciding what you
want to do with life i'm sure people
have told you to make sure you have
something to fall back on make sure you
got something to fall back on honey
but i never understood that concept
having something to fall back on
if i'm going to fall
i don't want to fall back on anything
except my faith
i want to fall forward
i figure at least this way i'll see what
i'm going to hit
fall forward
this is what i mean
reggie jackson struck out 2600 times in
his career the most
in the history of baseball but you don't
hear about the strikeouts people
remember the home runs
[Music]
fall forward
thomas edison conducted 1 000 failed
experiments did you know that i didn't
know that
because the one thousand and first was
the light bulb
fall forward
every failed experiment is one step
closer to success you've got to take
risks and i'm sure you've probably heard
that before but i want to talk to you
about why that's so important
first
you will fail at some point in your life
accept it you will lose you will
embarrass yourself you will suck at
something there's no doubt about it
and i know that's probably not a
traditional message for a graduation
ceremony but hey
i'm telling you embrace it because it's
inevitable
and i should know
in the acting business you fail all the
time early on in my career
i auditioned for a part in a broadway
musical
perfect role for me i thought
except for the fact that i can't sing
so
i'm i'm in the wings i'm about to go on
stage but the guy in front of me he's
singing like
like like pavarotti he's just wrong
just going on and on and on and i'm just
shrinking i'm getting smaller and
smaller
so they say oh thank you very much thank
you very much and you will you'll be
hearing from us
so i come out with my little sheet music
and
it was it was uh
just my imagination by the temptations
that's what i came up with
so i hand it to the the the accompanist
and uh she looks at it and looks at me
and looks out at the director and was
like
right
[Music]
so i i start you know that's i'm gonna
sing i'm like
it's just my imagination
once again
and then
and i'm not saying anything so i'm
thinking i'm getting better so i just
started getting into it
running this oh yeah thank you
thank you thank you thank you very much
mr washington thank you
so i assumed i didn't get the job
[Music]
but the next part of the audition he
called me back the next part of the
audition is the acting part of the
audition now i'm like hey okay maybe i
can't sing but i know i can act
so they pair me with this guy and again
i didn't know about musical theater and
musical theater is big so they can reach
everyone all the way in the back of the
stadium and i'm more from
realistic uh naturalistic kind of acting
where you you know you actually talk to
the person next to you
so i don't know what my line was my line
was well hand me the cup
and his line was well i will hand you
the cup my dear the cup will be there to
be handed to you
i said i said
okay
will
should i give you the cup back oh yes
you should give it back to me because
you know that is my cup and it should be
giving back
to me
i didn't get the job
but here's the thing
i didn't quit
i didn't fall back
i walked out of there to prepare for the
next audition and the next audition and
the next audition
i prayed
and i prayed
but i continued to fail
and fail
and fail but it didn't matter because
you know what
there's an old saying
you hang around the barber shop long
enough sooner or later you're going to
get a haircut
so you will catch a break and i did
catch a break
last
year i did a play called fences on
broadway
someone talked about it
won the tony award
and i didn't have to sing by the way
but here's the kicker
it was at the court theater
[Music]
it was at the same theater that i failed
that first audition
30 years prior
the point is every graduate here today
has the training and the talent to
succeed
but do you have the guts
to fail
here's my second point about failure if
you don't fail
you're not even trying
i'll say it again if you don't fail
you're not even trying my wife told me
this great expression to get something
you never had you have to do something
you never did
les brown's a motivational speaker he
made an analogy about this he says
imagine you're on your deathbed and
standing around your deathbed are the
ghosts representing your unfulfilled
potential the ghost of the ideas you
never acted on the ghost of the talents
you didn't use and they're standing
around your bed angry disappointed and
upset
they say we we came to you because you
could have brought us to life they say
and now we have to go to the grave
together so i ask you today
how many ghosts are going to be around
your bed when your time comes
you invest you you've invested a lot in
your education and people have invested
in you and let me tell you the world
needs your talents man does it ever
i just got back from africa like two
days ago so if i'm rambling on it's
cause i'm jet lag i just got back from
south africa it's a beautiful country
but there are places there with terrible
poverty that need help and africa is
just the tip of the iceberg the middle
east needs your help japan needs your
help alabama needs your help tennessee
needs your help louisiana needs your
help philadelphia needs your help
the world needs a lot and we need it
from you
we really do we need it from you young
people i mean i'm not speaking for the
rest of us up here but i know i'm
getting a little grayer
we need it from you the young people so
you got to get out there
you got to give it everything you got
whether it's your time
your talent
your prayers
or your treasures because remember this
you will never see a u-haul
behind a hearse
you will never see a u-haul
behind a hearse
you can't take it with you
the egyptians tried it
and all they got was robbed
so the question is
what are you going to do with what you
have i'm not talking about how much you
have
some of you are business majors some of
you are theologians nurses sociologists
some of you have money some of you have
patience some of you have kindness some
of you have loved some of you have the
gift of long suffering whatever it is
whatever your gift is
what are you going to do
with what you have
[Music]
all right now here's my last point about
failure
[Music]
sometimes
it's the best way
to figure out where you're going
your life will never be a straight path
i began at fordham university as a
pre-med student
i
i took a course called the
cardiac morphos i still can't say it
cardiac
cardiac morphogenesis i couldn't read it
i couldn't say it i sure couldn't pass
it
so then i decided to go into pre-law
then journalism and with no academic
focus my grades took off in their own
direction
they are down i was a 1.8 gpa
one semester and the university very
politely suggested that it might be
better to take some time off
[Music]
i was 20 years old i was at my lowest
point and then one day and i remember
the exact day march 27 1975 i was
helping my mother in her beauty shop my
mother owned a beauty shop up in mount
vernon and there's there was this older
woman
who was considered one of the elders in
the town and i didn't know her
personally but i i was looking in the
mirror and every time i looked in the
mirror i could see her behind me and she
was staring at me
she just kept looking at me every time i
looked at her she kept giving me these
strange looks
so she finally took the dryer off her
head and said
she said something i'll never forget
first of all she said somebody give me a
piece of paper give me a piece of paper
she said young boy
i have a prophecy
a spiritual prophecy
she said you are going to travel the
world
and speak to millions of people now mind
you i'm 20 years old i'm flunked out of
school in fact like a wise ass i'm
thinking to myself maybe she's got
something in that crystal ball about me
getting back into school next fall
[Music]
but maybe she was on to something
because later that summer while working
as a counselor at the ymca camp in
connecticut we put on a talent show for
the campers and after the show another
counselor came up to me and asked have
you ever thought about acting you're
good at that
so when i got back to fordham that fall
i got in and i changed my major once
again
for the last time
and in the years that followed just as
that woman prophesied i have traveled
the world and i have spoken to millions
of people through my movies
millions who up until this day
couldn't see me i who up till this day i
couldn't see
while i was talking to them and they
couldn't see me they could only see the
movie
they couldn't see the real me
but i see you today
and i'm encouraged by what i see
and i'm strengthened
by what i see
and i love
what i see
the word yoga means union
union means
whether you are aware of it or you are
not aware of it right now you are
happening here as a part of everything
else
what the trees exhale your inhaling what
you exhale the trees are inhaling
not just on the level of respiration on
all levels this is happening
what you think as myself is just a
psychological boundary that you have set
up
so yoga means consciously obliterating
the boundaries of your individuality
so if you sit here
if you experience everything around you
as myself this is yoga
if you experience all this as myself
do you need morality
be good to people don't harm them don't
do this don't do that would it be
necessary no
did anybody teach you out of this five
fingers this is a small finger don't cut
it off is this a morality needed like
that anything that you feel is a part of
yourself with that you don't need any
values ethics morals nothing because
it's a part of you this is what yoga
means you experience everything as a
part of you when somebody experiences
the whole universe as a part of himself
then we say he's a yogi
charles darwin said
that you evolved out of a monkey
you were a monkey then you became a man
some of the genetic scientists are
saying this
that the difference the dna difference
between a chimpanzee and you is only
1.23
so in that sense physiologically you're
only 1.23 away from a chimpanzee not a
big difference isn't it a shade
it's just a shade of difference
but in terms of intelligence and
awareness you are worlds apart from a
chimpanzee
so your problem is just this you have an
intelligence for which you don't have a
stable enough platform and that's why
yoga
to create a stable platform so that your
intelligence works for you
right now you may call it so many things
so many exotic names have come up
stress tension anxiety depression
madness all kinds of things
all this essentially what it means is
your intelligence has turned against you
that's all
you can give any number of reasons but
essentially your intelligence has turned
against you if your intelligence was
working for you would you create
blissfulness or misery
plus this all why your intelligence is
turned against you there's no stable
enough base
so the entire yogic system is about this
that you create a stable base so that
your intelligence works for you if your
intelligence turns against you no power
in the universe is going to save you
you're a done thing
if you become what you make up
unfortunate isn't it
yeah
your thoughts belong to you or you
belong to the thoughts you must make up
your mind
[Music]
they can be dangerous those thoughts
they're not dangerous
they're fantastic
only thing is fantastic things
mishandled can kill you
a car can kill you isn't it it's a
wonderful thing an automobile
it's made our lives
if you handle it irresponsibly it kills
you
every possibility is like this
every possibility if you do not harness
it it becomes a problem
so the same goes for your cerebral
capability if you do not harness it it's
a serious problem
[Music]
it's taking away
80 percent of the human beings are
simply suffering
they don't need any outside help
they're on self-help
to understand when i say i'm thinking
this you another word another way of
saying it is i'm making up this i'm
making up that
you can make up whatever you want as
long as you enjoy it
to transform your life you want to do it
in two minutes
so is that what your life is worth
so if your life is worthwhile
is it not important that you invest a
certain amount of time and energy
rather than looking for this stupid
stuff of one mantra with which i will
transform my life
it will not happen like that that's the
reason why most people have remained the
way they have remained because they have
not invested in their well-being
so it's a serious long-term investment
it is not long term i would say
if i ask you is your life worthwhile
enough to invest 30 to 32 hours of
focused time to bring some basic
transformation within you
if i teach you a way where you can
manage your chemistry the way you want
but we need 32 hours of focused time do
you think your life is valuable enough
for that much investment i'm asking
yes then you must invest that's what is
called an engineering program
it's 32 hours of focus time
we can format it in different ways but
that much investment has to go in
see all human experience comes from
within isn't it i don't know what kind
of geniuses start these things i know in
america there must be a million books
telling you how to
uh you know milk happiness from
something else or somebody else
but
all human experiences generated from
within
what comes from within you must be the
way you want it isn't it
isn't that simple enough i'm asking
what comes from around you
may not be the way you want it
but what comes from within you must be
the way you want it if whatever happens
within you the way you want it will you
be blissed out or miserable
blissed out
see most people understand
complexity has intelligence
if they make themselves difficult
they are supposed to be intelligent
making a simple thing difficult
is not intelligence
making a very complex thing simple is
intelligence isn't it
so wrong sense of intelligence idea of
intelligence has entered people's minds
they think if they make a problem out of
every solution they're intelligent no no
if you find solutions for every problem
that is intelligence that's my
understanding
so essentially this whole
this whole attitude and questioning and
this kind of thing has happened to the
world in a big way because our education
is confusing people
to make them believe that memory is
intelligence memory is not intelligence
memory is useful as data
but intelligence is a different
dimension
we have gobbled this up that we have
made children believe from a very early
age if you remember something you are
smart
no no
a tape recorder can remember everything
this camera can remember everything this
doesn't mean it's intelligent
so
one
major aspect of my work is to separate
these two in your within your experience
your memory and your intelligence are
two different things
if you have an intelligence which is
unsullied by memory you will see
everything just the way it is
but if you look at everything through
the filters of your memory everything is
prejudiced
people who are all this is fine but
what's the takeaway
they want a commandment
we are talking about consciousness
commandments won't fly
commandments means you're trying to fix
your life consciousness means you want
to liberate your life
my intention is you must liberate your
life
people come and say sadhguru please
teach us how to control my mind so you
want your mind controlled or liberated
oh yes yes liberated but how to control
because they think
that intelligence is a serious problem
and it's been in their lives
so what is the solution if you remove a
part of your brain you will be fine
you're
essentially complaining i wish i had the
brain of an earthworm this human brain i
am not able to handle yes that is a fact
we have come to a place where
to grow our food we need chemicals
to be healthful we need chemicals today
70 of the population is on prescription
medication of some sort
to be peaceful we need chemicals to be
joyful we need chemicals to be ecstatic
of course you have ecstasy
[Music]
so we are going towards chemicals in a
huge way the water that you drink is
full of chemicals the air that you
breathe is like that and the food that
you eat is like that
so
if 90 of humanity
goes into chemical consumption
consciously or unconsciously if they
consume a lot of it
the next generation that we produce
will be of a lesser quality than who we
are
that's a crime against humanity
what i'm saying is
the important thing about life whether
it's a grasshopper out there or you
both of us are striving to be the
fullest possible life that we can be a
grasshopper is trying to be a
full-fledged grasshopper a human being
is trying to be a full-fledged human
being
so suppose you cut off one of
grasshopper's legs which is supposed to
hop the hopping leg if you take it off
have you enhanced its life i'm asking
you
no
so similarly for a human being if you
take away any of his faculties
in any way even temporarily have you
enhanced his life
no
so intoxication is just that it is
taking away your faculties for a period
of time but if you continuously do it it
will take it away for your life so
you're taking away or subjugating your
faculties for a little bit of pleasure
or maybe a lot of pleasure whatever you
wish to describe it but the important
thing is you're taking a backward step
with life because life can only be
enhanced by sharpening and increasing
our faculties not by decreasing our
faculties our ability to
be active
physically mentally emotionally
spiritually if this is in any way
crippled
this means we are taking a backward step
though there may be pleasure attached to
it
every human being wants his life
enhanced
if you don't show them proper ways to
enhance they will find shortcuts see a
man who goes to the bar and a man who
goes to a church or a temple or whatever
they're seeking the same thing they're
trying to enhance their life
isn't it
if you do not show them a proper way
they will take whatever ways are
available on the street that's all
that's why i'm saying it's not a moral
issue for me it is just that it sets you
backward you want to go forward but it
sets you backward most people can't
concentrate because they've never been
taught how to concentrate
and they don't practice it so if we
don't learn to concentrate and we don't
practice it well obviously you can't
practice something you haven't learnt
then how can you be good at it and what
we practice all the time is distraction
so the more you practice distraction the
better you become at it and people are
masters at distraction people think
technology is distracting you know i've
had so many people come up to me hold
their cell phones up into my face and go
these things are ruining our lives
and i go no these things are not ruining
our life this is a beautiful piece of
technology what's ruining your life is
your inability to exercise discipline
around the use of it so the idea is that
you use technology as opposed to
technology uses you in the same way you
know if you look at your whole day how
do we integrate the practice of
concentration throughout everything that
we do
the one way i tell people to practice
concentration is doing one thing at a
time
so giving someone your undivided
attention is a great way to practice
concentration every time i speak with my
wife i give her my undivided attention
my awareness drifts away i bring my
awareness back to her and i stay focused
on that conversation the two things we
need to understand there's the mind and
there's awareness and you're not the
mind rather your pure awareness moving
through different areas of the mind so
your mind doesn't move rather your
awareness is moving through the mind
so when i'm speaking with my wife if i'm
getting distracted it's my awareness is
leaving her and it's moving to a
different area of the mind i might be
thinking about a client or a contract i
need to sign a business opportunity and
then i bring my awareness back to her
we keep chatting for a minute and then
my awareness drifts away again and i
bring my awareness back
so i define concentration as my ability
to keep my awareness on one thing for an
extended period of time
until i can consciously choose to move
it to another thing so if i'm speaking
with you i give you my undivided
attention i keep my awareness on you
every time it drifts away i bring it
back it drips away i bring it back and i
train myself
and i think that's where
you know people
in today's world i feel so many people
are lazy and they want a quick fix
because everything that's being sold to
them is a quick fix you know you only
need to do so many hours before you get
certified as a yoga teacher
you can come to the weekend cost your
enlightenment that's a one-week seminar
to understand mind-body connection i'm
like what bs i have 10 years of my life
learning this and the way my teacher
taught me was just like wax on wax off
just one little thing at a time a
relentless practice you first you
understand how it works
then you learn how to practice it and
then you just repeat that mindlessly
till it becomes numb and everybody wants
new things right they're tired it's like
i'm done with part one can you give me
part two what's next you know it becomes
like cocaine everybody wants to learn
but nobody practices anything
and they think by learning something
you're actually
maturing or becoming wiser no learning
doesn't make you wiser if you don't
implement anything that you're learning
so people are going from one course to
another to another to another and then
people in my industry
the self-help industry that's how they
make the money right it keeps selling
you
you know over and over again
and you just keep buying
and you think you're learning and
growing but you're not because you don't
even practice the first thing you do
you're taught so for me the first thing
you want to learn
is concentration because if you can't
concentrate you can't solve problems you
can't be better at what you do how can
you be a great athlete how can you be a
great singer an artist a scientist
a doctor if you can't stay focused long
enough to gain mastery over the topic
where awareness goes
energy flows and a simple analogy i
always tell people to look at awareness
as a glowing ball of light your
awareness is a glowing ball of light
that's floating through the mind and you
can control where it goes in those
different areas of the mind as an angry
area of the mind as a healthy area of
the mind as a science and sex and food
and photography
and if your awareness is going to a
particular area of the mind that's where
energy is flowing because where
awareness goes energy flows and energy
is like water if whatever i water will
start to grow
right so if i took a watering can and i
watered a garden bed with the weeds grow
or the flowers grow
both right because water can't tell the
difference energy works the same way if
i put energy to a particular area of my
mind it will start to grow so if i want
to develop a particular area of the mind
all i need to do is harness my awareness
take it to that area of the mind and
hold it there long enough so there's
enough energy going to that area and the
area starts to get strengthened
and and different people cultivate
different areas of the mind some people
are happy they're always happy they're
always an optimist
because that's where the awareness is
going and because awareness goes there
energy flows there more energy is
deposited there more energy deposit
there means more magnetic which means it
pulls awareness there much easier the
mind basically has no ability to tell
what's good for you and what's not good
for you if the mind actually knew we'd
all be perfect i'd wake up in the
morning my mind would tell me meditate
for an hour do yoga run work out
eat this breakfast
then
sit down for two hours or one hour then
stretch then do this no my mind just
like do whatever the hell you want to do
the mind doesn't know right so whatever
we tell our mind whatever we repeat over
and over in our mind creates patterns
and these patterns when they're repeated
whether they're repeated consciously or
unconsciously become deeply ingrained
and become extremely difficult to break
he said learn to lean on your own spine
and in the monastery that i lived in
there were 27 months and
you know in the 52 years he taught he he
had 27 months when he died so it wasn't
easy to get in he was a tough teacher
a very loving wise teacher and wasn't
easy to stay in
but you know the one thing he always
said to us is that don't lean on me
because one day when i die
you're gonna fall over learn to lean on
your own spine and i think in today's
world people lean on so many things
right whether it's drugs or technology
and we just complicate things right for
for thousands of years i believe
people
learn to become sensitive to their mind
their body and their nervous system and
that's how we survived on this planet
all over the world whether it was in
europe africa asia people went out to
the forest they knew what leaf or root a
plant healed something and that's how we
survived right there was no
doctor or pharmacy to go to
we understood our body we knew how to
connect with plants with things we were
sensitive enough and now in today's
world we are the most amazing tool on
the planet our body and our mind but yet
we don't try to understand it ourselves
we need technology to tell us about our
body we need other things to tell us
about our mind
right get to know your mind get to know
your body so that you can understand it
and we have the most amazing tool in the
world yet we turn to other things like
technology and drugs and everything why
just go within yourself and find out all
answers are inside of you so one common
thing people say to me is danpani if i
meditate five minutes a day in the
morning will that help me concentrate
two things here one is meditation
doesn't help you concentrate this is a
total
false uranus
belief
concentration leads to meditation you
cannot meditate unless you can
concentrate so meditation doesn't help
you concentrate
second is
look at it this way
your whole day is a preparation at first
your rituals throughout the day is what
supports you
then you start meditation all right you
can't meditate for five minutes a day
and then the rest of the day practice
distraction
don't lead a life that supports
meditation my guru had a beautiful
saying and he quite often would say that
you know most people can't meditate
because they do not lead a life that
supports the practice of meditation one
of the brilliant things about my teacher
was that
he proved to us and showed us that
technology
and material things are not bad there's
nothing wrong with tv there's nothing
wrong with the cell phone there's
nothing wrong with computers there's
nothing wrong with the internet as long
as you are in charge
but if you allow
the internet whatever's happening on
your computer on your phone to dictate
your awareness in your mind then you
become a slave to technology and then it
can train you to be distracted but as
long as you're in charge of it then it's
totally fine
what beautiful tools huh i can pick up
my phone and facetime my mom in
australia i can see her i can talk to
her i can smile and laugh
why is that a bad thing but i need to be
in charge of my phone and i think in
today's world
we allow everything on the phone
everything on the computer on the
internet to dictate where awareness is
going and therefore we become a slave to
everyone and everything around us
problems are not problems the
subconscious patterns that need to be
adjusted and i love that saying problems
are not problems there's subconscious
patterns that need to be adjusted once
you understand that all you have to do
is adjust patterns in your subconscious
and you can change so much in your life
because so much of the patterns in there
were either placed in there by you
or your surroundings your family your
school
what you watch on tv what you listen to
your environment
program to subconscious so if you can
adjust those patterns
to what you want you solve the problem
i think at the end of the day is all
about desire
how badly do you want it
and most people to be honest with you
don't want it badly enough and when my
guru asked me when i told him i wanted
enlightenment a self-realization he
asked me what are you willing to do for
it and i said i'm willing to give up my
life so i was willing you know in my
early 20s when all my friends were
graduating from engineering school with
me they were going out and
parties and shagging women and getting
drunk and you know earning money buying
a car getting an apartment and traveling
the world i said no because i wanted
something more not that i didn't think
those things were great i wanted
something more and i think today
you know how many people really want to
be concentrated i would say there's so
many incentives for concentrating right
benefits for concentration number one is
that ultimately i would like to think
that most people want to be happy i
think very few people wake up and say i
want to be miserable today most people
want to be happy how do you be happy
first you become clear of what you want
in life you identify your purpose in
life you identify who and what is
important in your life your purpose
defines your priorities once you
identify who and what's important in
your life then when you're doing what
you love when you're spending time with
the people that you love how do you get
the most out of it so if you love going
to the gym and working out for an hour
how do you get the most out of it you
get the most out of it by being able to
be concentrated while you're doing that
so if i'm if i love spending time with
my best friend and having a glass of
wine with him and sitting with him for
an hour and chatting
gives me tons of joy and that's a
priority in my life the only way i can
get the most out of the experience is
learning how to concentrate if i can
give him or her my undivided attention
for an hour i can get the most out of
that experience the byproduct of that is
i feel happiness right at the end of the
day if you really want to have a life
that's a happy life
you really have to be clear who and
what's important in your life and in
doing those things
you have to be fully present and the
only way to be fully present so that you
can fully experience those experiences
is to be able to be concentrated
your brain is the most powerful weapon
in the world
once you put away your phones and your
computers and all that we have nowadays
that's great we're up to date
you know you but
your brain
is the only thing you have when you're
going through depression
when you're going through hard times
you're going through death real life
you can't google that man
you're alone
you're alone you may have a shrink
you're going to you may have a best
friend you're going to
but there's 24 hours in the day where
you're alone in this brain and your
brain is talking to you in all kinds of
ways and it wants to control you and
pull you in these different pockets
if you can't control your own brain and
your brain controls you
you got to tell your brain where you
want to go and how you want to go and
how you want to get there
you got to control it if not it's over
what existed for me was okay man how am
i going to make this work
and and all i knew back then was hard
work
the only way anything gets accomplished
that's all i heard back in those days
you gotta work hard you gotta work hard
i'm not getting how to
i can't get this paragraph i can't
remember what the [ __ ] in this
paragraph to pass this test to get in
the military
read again
still not getting it read again but if
not getting it write it out
and that's how i started learning
okay well i can't i gotta write out
everything i do and then write it out
again and write out again and guess what
happened
i got it
i got it i can't swim i'm negative
buoyant go back again i can't swim go
back again go back again go back again
i got it
i realized if i keep going back and
going back and going back until the sh
just becomes your mind was safe
okay
we're gonna figure it out
because he is not going to stop
it's not like i'm gonna try one more
time no
i'm gonna it's just like alarm clock
goes off boop
we're going back
i can't read right we're going back
i gave myself no way out in my mind
realized that they said okay we're gonna
adapt and overcome now
like a lot of people say
trying hard
they your mind knows man
you know this guy's bull me man this
guy's lying there's no truth behind it
when i was in navy still training people
how are you there for 18 months
the program is only six months long you
were in three hell weeks in one year no
one's ever done that how did you do that
i talked about the new norm
when i lived in a seven dollar a month
place when i was growing up for a short
period of time i loved it
i didn't know any i i knew any different
that was my norm once we moved out of
that place we moved to a 236 dollar
month place i was like i never want to
go back to that little piece of
but
if you go back
to that seven dollar month place
and you realize this is where i live
that's all i got
your mind says roger that this is home
so when i was going to navy seal
training for 18 months
and going back to all the hard parts
over and over again
i told myself after the first time i
knew it was gonna be a long journey
there my body was breaking down
it was it was just how it was going on i
said you know what this is my new norm
so my mind said it's like going to work
like you go to work you put your suit
tie on
i go into suffering every day
every day suffering being broken duct
taping my feet up stress fractures shin
splits being broken
this is my new norm and your mind says
if we're not broken
this ain't normal
we got to be broken so then your mind
starts to get tougher and tougher and
more cows people how how did you run on
broken feet
broken broken shins
my mind knew this is how we operate
we're we're navy still training this is
what we are i became hell
and that became my new norm i gave
myself no way out there was nothing
outside these walls of hell
nothing i became i love god but for a
short period of time i became the devil
because that was hell
i became i became the boss the owner the
ceo
of navy seal training that was my
mindset
and that's how you get through things
you put yourself you immerse yourself in
wherever it is and you become that
you become that and give yourself no way
out
when i was 297 pounds and i was fat as
hell trying to be a navy seal
the scariest thing in the world to me
even to this day
was that that could have been the rest
of my life
i thought then i was trying hard
that's the scariest thing in the world i
thought then 297 pound
working for eco lab spraying for
cockroaches making a thousand dollars a
month
i thought that was me
at my 100 potential
coming to find out a few years later
i wasn't anywhere near that 106 pounds
less
graduate navy still training went on to
do all these other things
looking back on that that was me trying
hard
that's why people got to understand
what is in us
we have no idea until
we start trying hard and i mean really
trying hard where you're obsessed with
hey this is my new norm
my new norm is that wow
this isn't always fun
it's not always meant to be fun
and that's when you know you're trying
hard
people hear my story and think this guy
is sadistic
i realize how how the brain works
i figured out how the brain works i i'm
a scared kid and that's what gives me so
much power
i had no foundation
and i built this off of just
researching the mind
the feeling you get
is basically invincibility
you realize that
you can't do it all the time
when you need to do it i know i can go
to a place
that i can live in and when you know
that you can run
on broken legs and you can do certain
things that a lot of people can do
but they're not willing to do
this power
this sympathetic nervous system of fight
or flight in your fighting
it it gives you this charge of energy
of when you're sitting there at 3 30 4
o'clock in the morning and you're duct
taping your feet up because they're
broken
and you're doing it by yourself and
you're going through arguably one of the
hardest training in the world
and these guys most of them are healthy
and you're going through a broken
and you already at a disadvantage but
you're still there
you can feed into that and tap into that
for a lot of power
but if you look at it well i'm broken
man
like i'm not going to make it but if you
look at it as man i'm broken and i'm
still here
and i'm fighting and i'm gonna find a
way to get through this
because i have no other place to go
it gives you a lot of power
when things start to suck really really
bad
my brain
in a lot of people's brains they they
don't go to your dad beating you up your
brain says we get out of here this is
miserable
so anger goes away
a lot of times when you're suffering
because your brain just says we gotta
run we gotta go
so that anger is not popping up saying
oh i wanna show them i wanna show those
people no there has to be a much deeper
if i say deeper
it has to be down to mineral
mineral soil
it has to be down to that nice mineral
soil where nothing can burn
you can't burn dirt
so it has to be down that low that
literally is something in you that's at
the core of your soul
and but you but you don't find it
unless you spend a lot of time
with what you want to be in life
you i i can't give that to you right you
can't give it to somebody
when when you find your true passion in
life and my passion for me when like oh
i want to be and i can give navy seals
army round give i want to serve my
country
i cared about i want to be someone that
i'm proud of
i want to look at myself in the mirror
because i was so disappointed that
accountability where i talk about
i was so disappointed in what i saw
every day i wanted everybody to love
david goggins
and a lot of people did
i didn't love myself
but i knew a lot of us want to find
peace
first
some people say man you always talk
about this suffering and pain is
i'm at peace right now because i went
through that right
you don't find peace first if you do
merry christmas more power to you
more power to you
i found peace
on the opposite end
of finding myself
and no one really finds himself without
going through
trials tribulations suffering
accountability and accountability
is
suffering
being accountable every day for doing
right
for yourself for the people next to you
it's miserable it's hard so you know
even the smallest details if somebody
tells me visualize i go why
like how does it work like if you ask me
to visualize like why does it work like
why should i invest my time on that
versus something else if you're asking
me to use affirmations like how
specifically why how does it work if
you're asking me to emotionalize well
what's happening in me that tell me i
need to create these false
senses of feelings
i want to know why it works and why does
it work especially emotionalizing i
think that's something that people hear
a lot i talk a lot about
embodying something really feeling it
yeah but why does it work right great
question it has to do with circuits in
the brain and neurochemicals that are
released
and so when we feel something
chances are that we're going to release
dopamine in the brain the feel good
neurochemical that activates the reward
center of the brain
and chances are if we feel that
and we have this positive emotion around
it and that neurochemistry is flooding
our brain and our body with feel-good
chemicals we're actually activating the
motivational center of the brain
and so when we visualize when we set a
goal when we take an action step when we
emotionalize when we read our goals the
initial flood of neurochemicals dopamine
serotonin feel-good chemicals and then
if we share it with a friend oxytocin
those three neuro chemicals those are
the neurochemicals of goal achievement
but then there's the other side of it
the other circuits of fear of stress
where
norepinephrine cortisol or epinephrine
the stress hormones can be released as
well
and so i'm fascinated and i want to
teach people the stuff that we've
learned about
beliefs
self-esteem self-worth
fears um and the stuff that really holds
people back because all the how to how
to get healthy and stay healthy we know
how do i build a business and sustain we
know how do i get into a relationship
and make it success we know we we know
most of the how-to for anything that
anybody wants to do in this time frame
that we live in so the how-to is the
easiest part of the equation
so the harder part of the equation is
why am i not doing the things that i
know i should be doing and why am i not
doing the things that i could find out
easily how to do
let's talk about that so in your real
estate company
you said i'm giving everyone the same
training they're reading all of the same
books and yet they're not getting the
same results and it wasn't like oh well
the smart people are doing better than
the dumb people you said sometimes it
was people that you were like god in
real life this guy's not that bright but
he's crushing it so what ended up being
the difference between the people who
didn't do anything with the information
and those that did so in this is going
back sometimes i think in 1992 we were
stuck but i knew there was more
possibility there was there was room for
growth
and
i wanted to figure out if the stuff that
i did in the 80s when i was a kid you
know that broke free
would it work with some of my agents and
so we took 75 agents randomly agents
said hey do you want to get into a
six-month program to like retrain your
brain your subconscious brain around
your beliefs about what is possible for
you to achieve around your habits of
what you have to do in order to achieve
that
and we focused on retraining their
subconscious mind
and so for six months they had to go
through a process of listening to
certain audio tapes reading reading
certain materials every day and
following the process of training their
brain specifically their subconscious
brain which controls 95 to 98 of all of
our thoughts emotions and behaviors
today
and within six months that group
increased sales by 100 million dollars
jesus 100 million dollars and i said
holy [ __ ] right this is working
and so we started to teach some of what
we teach now in neurogym actually now we
have the technologies we have the
systems that are far better than what we
did back in the 90s and we went from 1.2
billion to 4.5 billion a year
and it wasn't because we taught them any
more skills to be real estate agents we
taught them how to change the way they
thought about themselves we taught them
how to change their habits
our agents who made 750 000 or more were
in front of a client 75 of the time
and we asked all the agents that weren't
in front of more clients like why are
you doing that like why aren't you in
front of people that are going to help
you earn more income oh well we're busy
doing this and doing this and doing this
and they had stories and excuses and
reasons why and so part of the work that
i love to do now is is really help
people understand what is your story
like what's the story you're telling us
because we all have a story we have a
money story a relationship story a
health story we have a story for
everything and then that story keeps
recreating our lives over and over and
over again and we have beliefs that
support the story we have habits that
support the story we have people that
support the story we have systems that
support our story
and so my question i always ask people
who would you be with a different story
the first source of shame when i was
five i moved from israel where i was
born to montreal and i just started
kindergarten in israel and then i was
thrown into a class with 50 kids in
montreal
in grade one
i didn't speak english or french
and so i felt stupid i felt like i sat
there you know looking up at the
ceilings bugging the other kids
and was consistently reprimanded
consistently put in the principal's
office
and then i was consistently
you know brought you know to my knees
with my parents my father was physically
abusive
which you know is a challenge in itself
his words weren't a way you know that he
communicated hands and feet were his way
of communicating and so when i did the
wrong things um that was the punishment
and so i felt embarrassed that i wasn't
smart enough that i wasn't good enough
that i wasn't going to amount to much
and back then school was you know my
parents were trying to say go to school
do well that's your your way out of you
know where we were living that's your
way out of this life that we're having
which wasn't a bad life we had food on
the table we had a roof over our heads
but there was always a struggle
you've become this really extraordinary
example of rewriting your story how did
you get out from under the story that
you would have had to have been forming
if your father was abusive i know a lot
of people are watching this right now
they are stuck in a story man like
something happened to them as kids or
whatever's happening to them now they
don't know how to get out from under
that story and could never conceive of
having a beautiful relationship
you know that that they've re sort of
re-explored and reimagined
when i was in my 20s one of the things
that alan put me on a path to was
personal development you know read a
book a month go to events listen to
cassette tapes back then of motivational
stuff for motivation for inspiration for
strategies for tactics of what to do to
lift raise your your level of skill and
knowledge
um so i went to this event and i brought
up this uh this uh challenge that i had
with my father
and
the instructor said like when are you
gonna forgive him i said never i'm never
going to forgive him that forgive him
was so much pain
and the instructor said well
if you're never going to forgive him
then you're the one taking the poison
pill hoping he's going to die or he's
going to be affected
he says you don't forgive him for him
you forgive him so you can move on
i was like aha number one
and then he said why don't you ask your
father why he did it
whoa
like why why was he like that and so
when i mustered up enough courage on the
phone with my father i said dad
like how come you've never said i love
you
he says well my father never said he
loved me that's not what a man says
but you say to my sister
says well that's okay to say to a girl
or to a woman
i said why did you hit me so much why
did you says because you were being a
bad boy
i said but why didn't you talk to me
like why didn't you just talk
and he says well because my father hit
me too that i had to put you in your
place i had to teach you the right way
to stop the behavior
and it was at that moment that i
realized he just didn't know better he
that's what he learned
was the process
to try and help me
it took three years i used to call him
every week
i started telling him i love you dad
hang up i love you dad i hang up i love
you dad hang up
then once one day he says to me i love
you too boy
and then he has never not said i love
you
to me my brother or my sister since then
on my my epitaphs he lived he loved he
gave he had fun
i always thought that if there's a way
that i could somehow use my life in a
way that i can make somebody else's life
a little bit easier to live either
through knowledge or understanding or
love or a process
then my life has been worthwhile
and so i just want to make i just want
to make a difference and i'm one of the
people that doesn't believe that there's
anything wrong
in the world everything's unfolding
exactly as it should
there are many things not to my taste
that i don't understand
but i just want to make the journey as
good as i can for as many people as i
can
don't tell people what they what you
know keep them poor
but you know unfortunately the poor will
always be amongst us because it starts
up here it's it's in their words you
know and the words become flesh but when
they say i can't afford it or i can't do
that
they become what they say
and i made so many people i don't i
can't afford it you think i'm made of
money
my phd daddy says what do you think i am
made of money i can't afford that
and my rich dad would say
that's why he's poor
poor people say i can't afford it i
can't do that i don't have time
because this is escape
it's an escape you know i mean it's easy
to say i can't afford it oh like i'm too
tired oh i can't go to the gym
when you could go to the gym but no i
can't
truth is i'm just too lazy to go to the
gym a question opens a mind a statement
closes the mind see when you say i can't
afford it your mind shuts down and you
become what you say
but the thing is is that we become
creatures of our own habits
and until we break the habit we don't
change
poverty is passed on
it's taught in your families
and middle class is taught in families
and so the people right now who are
sitting at home
who are struggling financially or
worried about money or
unhappy they may be making a lot of
money but unhappy with what they're
doing
it was probably taught to you
you know your super ego was taught
get a job work hard or or you'll never
be rich or the rich or evil or whatever
if you're poor you'll always be poor
just like most pro athletes you know
they make millions of dollars and what
65 percent are bankrupt five years later
it's because they come from poorer
families
now you tell them that they get very
angry at you it's not it's a rich fault
you know as you guys ripped me off and
government ripped me off
but unfortunately it's passed down
genetically
that's the frightening thing we're going
to change what we teach our kids
so i remember raising my hand when i was
nine years old talking to my my fourth
grade teacher and i said you know what
am i going to learn about money
she says
the love of money is the root of all
evil we'd all teach money at school i
said why not
and she couldn't answer me and she got
very flustered she says go ask your
father he said he's my boss
my father was the head of education
phd all that stuff i go home and ask him
i said why don't we learn about money in
school
[Music]
and he looked at me says because the
government doesn't let us teach that
subject
the government tells us what we can
teach and what we can't teach
and i thought that was strange and i
said but
why aren't we going to school to learn
about money he says no
your job is to get a job
i said but you get a job to earn money
he goes no
you're supposed to just get a job i'm
going no no no no no
isn't the purpose of a job to earn money
he goes you're correct
i said so why don't i just learn about
money i can skip the job part you know
and he got flustered and he said
look if you want to learn about money
why don't you ask your best friend's
father about money
so i ask him
he says because mike's father is an
entrepreneur
and i said what am what are you he says
i'm an employee i'm a government
employee
i went
oh what's the difference
this is the differences an entrepreneur
must know about money or that they're no
longer entrepreneurs
and it says an employee doesn't have to
know anything about money because the
government will take care of the company
will take care of money on one condition
and that condition was he would never
pay me
he says the moment i pay you you think
like an employee
he says that's the trap
entrepreneurs work for free
and now i'm nine years old my head is
going cracking in half
he says you never want a paycheck you
understand that kid
he said okay i got it
and he said well how do i make money he
says
that's what entrepreneurship around
it's like it's like it's a cat you know
what just comes first a cat where the
you know the
cat chasing his tail i said
so how do i learn about money so he
would just break out a monopoly game
board so i would work for free and pick
up cigarette butts and get hotels and
restaurants and i would clean and do
menial tasks and as i got older i
started getting into office work and
marketing and accounting and i was an
apprentice basically but i always work
for free
he says the moment you accept the
paycheck your brain goes dead
as long as you're hungry you'll think
and he was a great great teacher
you see most teachers in school
they're out of ethics they teach
subjects they don't they themselves
don't practice
a fake teacher is somebody who just
wants a job and they'll teach anything
you know they teach how to shine shoes
if you paid them more money
but they really don't know what they're
teaching for example my calculus teacher
i was at went to military school in new
york
and um
i asked the teacher i said you know i'm
in my third year of calculus now i said
am i ever going to use this stuff he
goes
no you know i said
why do you teach it
because i get paid
he said do you ever use it he goes no
and that's why
you know i you have to in life
one of the things i suggest to people
you gotta find a real teacher versus a
fake teacher
and a fake teacher somebody doesn't do
what they teach
and a real teacher is doing what they
teach every day
school systems are making our students
weaker
so in school they have these things
called now triggering effects
so you can't as a teacher you can't say
anything that might upset the student
they don't want anything that might jar
their point of view
so if i went into school i'd be thrown
out
because i threatened them you know and
to me isn't school about opening your
eyes and minds to new ideas
but that's now out of the system
so everybody's got to be pc you know
politically correct now
and it's killing us it's killing the
brains of our kids they're going
backwards but in their minds they're
more
enlightened
if i didn't have ideas that shook me
i wouldn't learn anything new
but now these trigger have trigger
mechanisms we're actually making our
students weaker in school
my success comes from spirituality not
finance you see people say well why
don't you give the poor money so the
only problem with that is just creates
more poor people you give a man a fish
you get a lot of people want more fish
you know
but you teach them to fish
we're more antagonistic more anti-social
you know social media is anti-social
that's the danger part so the reason i'm
speaking on spirituality we got to
evolve
you know it means meditation if it means
yoga it means praying means going to
church whatever it takes
but you got to get back to calm and
peace and meditation one generalized
principle is emergence through emergency
so when you look at the word emergency
the base word is emerge
the only way humans evolve
is via emergency a big one's coming
and it's gonna be as we all know our
banks have ripped us off
immensely there's just a bunch of crooks
i don't know how they can live with
themselves but you know the bankers
rip off trillions they get bonus in
billions nobody goes to jail
that's the sickness of our society
so that's what i write about financial
education it's almost like self-defense
it's almost like taking judo against our
own government and our own banking
systems and wall street people who are
afraid of making mistakes like they
teach in school they don't ever grow
because spirituality is there's good and
there's bad there's right and there's
wrong there's up and there's down
most people don't want to be right they
only want to be positive
well you can't have that that's not
reality every time i failed it was like
good it's okay what have i learned
and the average person the reason
they're poor is they haven't failed
you know they play it so safe
they haven't made any mistakes like they
taught in school
that means they don't learn anything
that's why the school system is actually
fundamentally corrupt
it's anti-education
don't make mistakes and don't ask for
help
and
if i didn't ask for help i have my
accountants my attorneys my bankers and
all that
you know i go into business like a rugby
team you know boom boom
and we kick butt
but the average guy is standing there oh
i'm an a student i'm gonna i'm going to
do this all on myself and a bunch of
rugby players run you over and you go
well they're not playing fair
you know what you're not you're playing
stupid you should have a team you have
accounts attorneys and bankers and all
that stuff
but that's not the game i want to play i
said then don't play the game
so what i say to young people is you
find your game
so i'm not here to tell you don't do
this do that don't do that do this i'm
here to change the way you think
and if i can change the way you think
i can't help but change what you do can
i
let me introduce you to the concept of
success
ben franklin was a pretty smart guy and
i want to start with a quote by him
if you do tomorrow what you did today
you will get tomorrow what you got today
you want to know what that means
the average american makes between three
and five percent more each year that's
the deal
and in today's economy i'm not sure
we're gonna make the three to four to
five percent next year as employees
so it takes you 20 years to double your
income in america as an average person
that's the mediocrity that we're stuck
in in life
and then you meet people who have the
uncanny ability to double their income
in a year
to get promoted five times in a year
the ones that beat the system the ones
that conquer it you've all seen them
haven't you
the difference between them and the ones
that don't do that is that they wake up
in the morning and they think
differently
they understand that if i do tomorrow
what i did today i'm going to get
tomorrow what i got today you want a
bigger car
how about a nice house in tahiti
sure would you love a nice house in the
hills we all want better things don't we
we all want more friends more stuff more
money more security more travel more
enjoyment
if you do the same thing tomorrow that
you did today you're stuck
stuck
and it doesn't change
and it grows a little at a time and you
get a taste of success
but it's never fast enough it never
excites you
and when it does it's a good month or a
good two months or a good three months
but it doesn't provide a trajectory
that creates success
[Music]
so the first thing i want you to think
about today is i want you to wake up
tomorrow and do something different
and understand if you do the same damn
thing you're stuck
just because you did it a certain way
yesterday there's no reason to do it
that way today
i want it to hit hard that's not what
drives success you do
[Music]
there's no place for patience in
business
you know patience in life
means things happen slower
than they could
so if you're going to be on this planet
for 70 years and things happen slower
than they should at the end of 70 years
you're going to have less aren't you
less experiences less time less money
less of everything
so let's all hurry up man and get more
out of life
if you think your life is complete
then i suggest that you're an ass
because tomorrow always has a great
opportunity in it your life is not
complete until you close your eyes
so when you say somebody who's in a job
they hate
would love to be able to do this
my comment is why the hell are you in a
job you hate
don't you have the courage to leave it
so you're in a job you hate you're doing
nothing to change it but you'd like
better
sometimes i have to do that i have
mouths to feed sometimes i get it but
what were the things about you listen
we'd have to go over those specific
cases i think and really getting into
each person to break them but what do
you think that were the things about you
one of it is you always had your eyes
open to tomorrow and new opportunities
what were some of the other things as
part of your personality for because
i've there aren't many people like you
but i've seen and i'm studying more and
more people where amazing things are
happening at 55 and 60 and putting them
on life journeys that they never thought
they were going to have and i'm and i'm
seeing that you guys have a lot of the
similar attributes but what do you think
what was it about you john courage
courage you know the first time i went
and shot a pilot for bar rescue was
really hard
you think it's easy to scream at people
on national television to insult people
on national television to call you a
jerk challenge your marriage challenge
challenge your integrity challenge your
professionalism that's hard
that's not who i am i don't wake up and
embarrass people in front of their
friends right in front of their family
bar rescue is the hardest work i have
ever done
the courage that it takes for me to go
out there and do these things
the only final advice i would give you
is i've lived a very unconventional life
and it's because i live my dream every
day
dreams are inspiring
work is not
find a dream
dreams make this world go on it built
our whole country and when we
get in a rut
as human beings
is when we lose touch with our dreams
we lose the ability to fight for those
dreams so don't be an employee of google
live your dreams at google
find a way to
you know match your dreams with the
goals of your company and your own work
because there's nothing worse
than when you see somebody who lost
touch with their dreams
you wake up in the morning
you're failing so you blame the
president you blame congress you blame
greece blame the euro
i mean you construction in the street
it's the mayor oh it's it and you wake
up in the morning and you look in the
mirror and you're not failing because
it's the other guy's fault what's the
economy's fault but if you looked in a
mirror and said i'm failing because of
me
you wouldn't like it
and you changed that
and i believe the common denominator of
failure in any business is excuses
as long as you wake up and blame poor
sales on the economy or an environment
then you have no motivation to make it
better
because it's not your fault
but in the worst economic environment
four or five years ago in this country
that we've seen in our lifetimes there
were people making a lot of money
weren't there
in the height of that recession are
people selling advertising people
opening restaurants people building
businesses somebody's making money so
the excuse is bull it's ball
so wake up in the morning and own your
failure look in the mirror and say i'm
failing because of me and you won't like
it and then you'll change it but as long
as you don't put it on you
you have no motivation to change it so
in short if you own your failure you'll
own your success if you don't own your
failure you'll never dig out and i find
that in any business always the common
denominator of failure personally
is excuses you don't want to be a
failure do you not at all you don't want
to look in the mirror and experience
that if you can't blame anybody but
yourself you're gonna change
you're gonna fight it out that's the
deal
i have a dear friend who works for a
large company and he wants to open a
franchise of buy a franchise of sandwich
stores
so he meets with me he says john i need
some advice do i leave my long-standing
job and benefits and do this
or do i admit
so why can't you have your cake you need
it too right why can't you bring in a
partner why can't you bring in somebody
to do it there's ways to get there it
doesn't have to be absolute so if
somebody wants to create a second career
create new opportunities in their life
figure out a way to do it without
risking what you have right and if you
want it enough you'll figure it out
i de-est my way into jobs that i didn't
have the experience to do and pulled it
off but i had to believe in myself to bs
my way into it but i knew i could figure
it out too and that gave me the
confidence to show up at the interview
and convince that guy to hire me because
i was convinced myself
that i could do it and that comes across
you got to wake up in the morning and
drive revenue which means you got to
have the promotions the ideas the energy
to elevate a business you got to be a
rain maker in business or you're never
going to get anyone wet
and when they don't get wet they dry up
and go away
and it's that wetness of a rainmaker
that filters down and trickles
to everybody's success
you have to drive the energy of revenue
to be successful and when you do you'll
have no expense problems
i drive quality as a leader my systems
maintain quality now with regard to new
projects to me every new project is a
ball
and i have to move that ball every day
so i know for example that i have four
balls on my desk there might be five
pads let's say five balls on my desk
they might be five different pads five
different books five different projects
every day i'm gonna move those five
balls that's the way i live my life and
i can't go to sleep at night if i don't
move every one of those five balls every
day sometimes i have three balls
sometimes i have seven balls but the
amount of balls that i accept
and put on my desk
every one of them is going to move
forward every day and i become
relentless
so i've learned to live my life based
upon the progress i make on a daily
basis and i believe that business is
defined by what we do every day every
single day and business is defined by
the days that we have so if you move
those five balls every day
you can't help it be successful you will
achieve it but you'll achieve it on a
daily basis
it's an interesting concept because
you have to think about this why is it
that you can give someone
a sugar pill
a saline injection or perform some false
surgery or treatment
and a certain percentage of those people
will accept believe and surrender to the
thought without any analysis that
they're getting the real substance or
real treatment
and they begin to program their
autonomic nervous system
to make their own pharmacy of chemicals
that matches the exact same chemical or
treatment that they think they're
getting
now
it says a few things number one
it's not the external substance that's
doing the healing because it's inert
there's some type of innate capacity for
the body to heal
and there's some correlation between the
mind and the body
so that pill
[Music]
represents possibility for the person
and so
if you think about this
when they
see the pill they're conditioned into
thinking that that pill can do something
good for them
so in a depression study for example
three out of four people that are taking
a placebo in a depression study get
better
now that's 75 percent
which means that when that person sees
the pill the pill represents hope a
possibility for them they begin to
select a new idea a new thought that
they could be better a possibility it's
called a clear intention
some people will begin to become
inspired enthusiastic
excited
and when you combine that clear
intention with an elevated emotion you
are changing a person's biology from
living in the past to living in the
future
and they begin to make their own
pharmacy of antidepressants
it begins to help them
now
it's not a one-shot deal
because in those studies
for example the person who's taking the
placebo has to take that pill for
six weeks or eight weeks
so every day
then they're reminding themselves of a
new future reality
and that that pill represents a symbol
it represents a symbol of hope
a symbol of possibility
and instead of them relating to
themselves in a limited way that they
have to resign to the idea
that they can't think greater than how
they feel
in a depression study or
feelings have become the means of
thinking
they're actually changing their
physiology by thought alone
and the redundancy and the repetition of
that cycle
begins to select different functions in
the nervous system and your nervous
system is the best pharmacy
or drug
producer in the world
and begins to select new genes and and
instruct new genes
to cause a person's biology to begin to
change and if you keep
knocking on the genetic door there's a
good possibility that you can program a
gene or regulated gene to do something
well and down regulate a gene to turn
off
and so my interest is in understanding
how the placebo works
how does it work once you understand how
it works will you be able to teach it
because do you need the sugar pill in
order to move into a new state of being
or can you teach a person to select an
unknown
instead of a known
and continuously select that unknown and
emotionally embrace that future before
the event occurs
so much so that the body is the
unconscious mind begins to believe it's
living in that future reality in the
present moment and if the person does
that just like taking the placebo for
six weeks
alters their state of being every single
day
is it possible that that unknown becomes
known
and they begin to change their
physiology and biology just by thought
alone
you better be willing to have a new
experience
that is no longer a wishy-washy belief
it has to be
a very strong impression in your biology
it comes with an accompanying experience
that then changes your biology to
understand you believe something else
but that's not the end either
because then you have to question from
that point
what is the next belief that helps you
to understand the next thing for example
the person in our work
who i'll use a simple example
has a uh
very very difficult marriage
and her marriage falls apart her husband
was abusive
and
lived by the stress hormones for
extended period of time of course all
her energy is going for some threat in
her external environment she has no
energy in her internal environment for
growth and repair no energy for
long-term building projects the the body
is in vigilance it's
it's always anxious
she's anticipating something bad
happening all the time and she's got
food allergies to
everything
she's allergic to her environment
she comes to the event she does the work
it takes her three months and all of a
sudden in one event she has a
breakthrough and she's eating anything
she wants
now she's changed her belief about her
past because she's no longer saying i am
this way because of my
relationship with my husband see because
when you say i am this way because i had
an abusive father i am this way because
i had a difficult marriage i am this way
because i got fired from my job what
you're saying is i haven't changed since
that event emotionally
and so now you're viewing your future
through the lens of the past
when you overcome that emotional state
a memory without the emotional charge is
called wisdom
now you're ready to create a new future
because if you're still attached to the
emotion you're still attached to the
past and you can't create a future
so all of a sudden now the person has a
transformation
she has a shift she knows that she knows
that she's liberated from that anxiety
she's she feels it and as a result of it
in a matter of moments ben her biology
reorganizes to a new mind and now she's
eating i'm watching her eat pizza i'm
watching rita hamburg she's laughing
she's
and it's and it's sustained
but that's not the end
because if she's healed herself then the
next question is
i understand the physics and biology of
what i've done
is it possible if i heal myself
but i can heal another person
if people are really really believing
that
their astrological sign determines their
destiny
then they will look for based on their
perception the correlations
that are equal to their belief system i
don't particularly believe that because
i'm born at a certain time under a
certain
house that has anything to do with
me creating the life that i want to have
right so
many people will though and because they
do
they'll only they'll select like oh i
saw 11 11 on the clock well
well you've seen three 236 on the clock
and 4 18 on the clock but you're looking
for 11 11 well
then that's your reality because that's
where your attention is right so
i don't subscribe to
that but i respect that because that
person is going to keep that belief
until it no longer serves them and
they're either going to evolve their
belief or they're not
and if they don't so be it but if they
do they're going to realize sooner or
later it's not working for them i have
certain beliefs right now
that i honestly am questioning that i
still think are limited beliefs
but in order for me to change those
beliefs i'm going to have to come out of
my resting state have to step out into
the unknown and really check to see and
execute in a very different way
[Music]
i can tell you that there is a strong
majority of people
who are still taking the placebo
who are still making their changes
because we know that like in a
parkinson's study you give
parkinson's patients a placebo and more
than 50 percent of them their their
intention tremors go away but if you
take those people after they're making
200 times the amount of dopamine by
getting a saline injection or an
injection of distilled water they're
making their own dopamine parkinson's is
a deficiency in dopamine when they
return back to their life
and they see their caregiver and they
play chess with their friends and they
see their wife or sleep in the same bed
or whatever it is
their personal reality is creating their
personality reminding them who they are
their disease comes back because they're
back to the same identity and that's how
strong the environment is so our
students who continue to do the work
are still getting sustaining and
producing more changes
now that's the majority of our students
because our students are committed but
we do have students that don't make it
why because this is a this we're doing
something that is unknown we're doing
something not everybody is going to make
that like not everybody's going to
finish the mile
not everybody's going to make the
journey to the top of the mountain you
know it's it's a it's a journey
and so we asked people then
the ones that have had chronic diseases
or conditions
the majority of them by the way are
still doing exceptionally well
some of them have had a disease return
and what we have them do is measure
every three months or six months you
measure why because this is not about
denial
this is about knowing
so the people who have had
some conditions return
we ask them to measure and then we ask
them to go at it again
and if their values aren't changing we
ask them to intervene with other medical
means or whatever they need to improve
so the ones that have had the healings
though
the majority of them are still doing
exceptionally well some of them that
stop taking the placebo or get started
they lose their job they lose their
mother they lose their life and they get
stressed and they they go back to the
world itself well it's a matter of time
when we're going to start seeing some of
those conditions return
what happens if you take a cold shower
every day the heart rate is going to go
down with 20 30 beats a minute
24 hours a day that means stress is gone
if you take a couple of minutes and you
make sure all the body
adapts to the cold because you know you
are very warm you're warm like a hot dog
right in the when you wake up
i go directly straight to the cold and
get the biggest of reactions on my body
and within
30 seconds or something i'm completely
not feeling the cold anymore
and then two minutes later i just
finished it it's okay does it need
anymore well what the importance of that
in the morning is that you wake up your
vascular system
and your vascular system is like two and
a half times the world
around
in
the length of the veins arteries and
capillaries
everybody has it
and it contains
millions of little muscles
and they are trained if you go in and
adapt to a cold shower a day and that
way your vascular system is optimized
and then your heart doesn't need to pump
so much because all these millions of
little muscles they help the blood flow
go through
and they work with each other
yes
it's one closed system and the
originator is the heart
what happens if you take a cold shower
every day the heart rate is gonna go
down with 20 30 beats a minute 24 hours
a day that means stress is gone
this is what we do it's a harmonic
exercising automatic stress
exercising is a cold shower cold shower
a day keeps the doctor away
what happens more is that blood flow
runs much better through the system
the nutrients vitamins and minerals and
oxygen they get better to the cells it
produces more energy that's why
everybody feels so energized
directly after the cold shower because
the system is getting better into
feeding
all the cells of ours which makes up
molecules which is energy you feel more
energy
now because my vascular system is really
trained i just take the cold shower
and when i take my ice bath which is
even more colder i say to the people
i recommend two minutes but then uh in
very soon you are able to go five
minutes and today you and me we go for
ten minutes because we're gonna set our
mind
the power of the mind is amazing this is
what i've been showing the last study
to be able to make my skin temperature
not going down while ice water gets on
the skin just by using the mind
isn't that amazing
and that means we are able to make
stress go away just by using our mind
and this is the result after so much
training and exposing myself in into the
court that i've learned to awaken direct
connections in the brain that enables me
just by thought
to make the difference in my body
whenever there is stress and that stress
could be emotional
physical bacterial virus stress
mental stress daily stress stress and
stress
and you are able just by using your mind
to deal with that
type or any type of stress that that is
the message you got oxidative stress and
hormonal stress
oxidative stress is negative
that means that things you cannot handle
and they get into the cell mechanisms
and they have an absolute negative
influence on the cell
mechanisms and the mechanics and the
telomeres the longevity the cell
division the the dna
and it produces wrong genome expressions
which makes you sick or even cancer in
the end
a stress is like an attack on our
healthy mechanisms and if we learn how
to deal with stress the healthy
mechanisms stay healthy that's the whole
trick and this is what we do right now
with in san francisco
with 140 people with the top
researchers on the dna
to show how to protect the cell
by
exercising
the cold showers
and the breathing exercises
exercises they are into positive stress
activation which is hormatic stress
and that makes the cell
protected by proteins
around the cell like little guards
like little warriors who fend off
viruses bacteria
inflammation
and oxidative stress
so then the cell remains intact and the
healthy
production of the
mechanics of the cell they are able to
flourish and to keep on going it's
amazing what we found
because of me doing a study and i will
show you the study the first study i
i was staying like 80 minutes in ice
up till here
they took blood
like 36 of tubes out of my arm
while i was 80 minutes after my neck in
ice
and my core body temperature remained 37
degrees
80 minutes long and then they took the
blood
and their blood they injected e coli ex
vivo so i was not there but my blood was
there and normally you have a very
violent reaction of the immune cells on
the e coli bacteria injected in the
blood serum
and now there was zero reaction they
never had seen that and then they said
can you do this when we inject you
directly in your veins i said yeah hey
let's try it out
i think so
but i did not became sick
i did my breathing techniques i used my
mind
and
i did not became sick i felt great and
they saw that i was influencing directly
at conscious will the autonomic nervous
system
thought of inaccessible
in a medical scientific literature
that humans are able to do that and i
was
showing the contrary so with that
they said yeah
but you are the iceman you are special
you are different you are a freak of
nature this is with normal people not
possible then i told him
yes give me people for 10 days and i
will make them able
what science is saying that is not
possible with the human physiology at
will i will make them able at will to
influence so deep within their bodies
and
with that we will change medical
literature as it is
and they said okay finally they said yes
let's do it
and we did a comparative study with 18
people there who did not train with me
and 18 people who i trained 12 of them
were randomly chosen
to uh take part of the injection of the
e coli bacteria
and all of them non-trained and trained
the non-trained people
they became all sick
and the trained people after four only
four days of training they did not
became sick
and
then they saw 16
1334 people who had been exposed to the
same experiment all became sick and then
suddenly 12 people
did 100 score in one comparative study
showed not to become sick 100 score
what i do always with people is to go to
the mountains
i have a house in poland somewhere at
the mountain slopes
and i trained the people over there
every day
inside and outside in the snow barefoot
in shores
going to the waterfall
and slowly but surely in four days climb
a mountain in shorts for five hours in
freezing temperatures
and have a great time
then when we arrived on the top of the
mountain i knew these guys are ready
let it come let the injection come off
the bacteria they will show the
difference and four days later they were
in the hospital got the injection and
they showed turned around scientific
literary literature as it is
we are able to do so much more than has
been
believed by science and scientific
community and we have to bring this to
the people i remember walking across
this yard on what seemed to be a random
day
my head down lost in my own world of
issues like many of you do daily
i'm almost at the center of the yard i
raised my head and muhammad ali
was walking towards me
time seemed to slow down as his eyes
locked on mine
and opened wide
he's raised his fist into a
quintessential guard
i was game to play along with him to act
as if i was a worthy opponent
what an honor to be
challenged by
the goat
the greatest of all time for a brief
moment
his face was as serious as if i were
frasier in the thriller in manila
his movements
his movements for flashes of a pass
greater than i can imagine
his security let the joke play along for
a second before they ushered him away
and i walked away floating like a
butterfly
i walked away amused at him amused at
myself amused at life for this moment
that almost no one would ever believe
i walked away light ready to take on the
world that is the magic of this place
almost anything can happen here
throughout ancient times institutions of
learning have been built on top of heels
to convey that great struggle is
required to achieve degrees of
enlightenment
each of you had your own unique
difficulties with the heel
for some of you the challenge was
academics
and i want to say something to that
you know sometimes your grades don't
give a real indication
of what your greatness might be
for others it was financial
you and your family struggled to make
ends meet you had to work an extra job
or two
but you're here
for a lot of you your hardest struggle
was social
[Music]
some of you never fit in you were never
as cool and as popular as you wanted to
be and it bothers you so your social
struggles here became psychological
even though you made it up to heal you
carrying the baggage of rejection with
you
but you're here
or some of you went through something
traumatic you made it to the top of the
hill but but not without scars and
bruises
some of you fit in too much
you're waiting until the last minute to
do your best work and it's a wonder that
you made it up the hill at all because
you carry the baggage of too much
acceptance
most of you graduating here today
struggled against one or more of the
impediments or obstacles i mentioned in
order to reach this hilltop
when completing a long climb one first
experiences dizziness
disorientation and shortness of breath
due to the high altitude
but once you become accustomed to the
climb your mind opens up to the
tranquility of the triumph
most of you need some realizations
because
right now you have some big decisions to
make
right now
i urge you
in your breath in your in your eyes in
your in your in your consciousness
invest in the importance of this moment
and cherish it i know
some of you might have party last night
you should you should celebrate but this
moment is also part of that celebration
so savor the taste of your triumphs
today
don't just swallow the moment whole
without digesting what has actually
happened here
look down over what you conquered
and appreciate what god has brought you
through
i was on a roll when i entered the
system of entertainment theater
television and film
in my first new york audition for a
professional play i landed the lead role
from that play i got my first agent
from that agent i got an on-screen
audition it was a soap proper it wasn't
third watch it was a soap opera
on a major network
i scored that role too
i felt like
mike tyson when he first came on the
scene knocking out opponents in the
first round
with this so proper gig i was already
promised to make six figures more money
than i had ever seen
i was feeling myself
but once i got
the first script and was so problems
you very often get the script the night
before and you shoot the whole episode
in one day with little to no time to
prepare
once i saw the role i was playing i
found myself
conflicted
the role wasn't necessarily
stereotypical
a young man in his formative years with
a violent streak
pulled into the allure of gang
involvement that's somebody's real story
never judge the characters you play
that's what we will always talk that's
that's the first rule of acting and any
role play honestly can be empowering but
i was conflicted because this role
seemed to be wrapped up in assumptions
about us
as black folk
the writing failed to search for
specificity
plus there was barely a glimpse of
positivity or talent in the character
barely a glimpse of hope
i would have to make something out of
nothing
i was conflicted
howard and instilled in me a certain
amount of pride and for my taste this
road didn't live up to those standards
it was just my luck that after filming
the first two episodes execs of the show
called me into their offices and told me
how happy they were with my performance
they wanted me to be around for a long
time they said
if there was anything that i needed just
let them know
that was my opening
i decided to ask them some simple
questions about the background of my
character questions that i felt were
pertinent to the plot
question number one
where's my father
the exact answer
well he left when you were younger
of course
okay
question number two
in this script it alluded to my mother
not being equipped to operate as a good
parent
so why exactly when my little brother
and i have to go into foster care
matter of factly he answered well of
course she's on heroin
that could be real i guess
but i didn't want to assume that's what
it was if we're around here assuming
that the black characters in the show
are criminals on drugs and dead pet
parents
then that would probably be
stereotypical wouldn't it
that word stereotypical lingers
one of the execs pulled out my resume
and began studying it
the other exec war smile trying to live
up to what they had promised me only a
few moments before
if there's anything you need just let us
know
she said as as you have seen things move
really fast around here
but we are more more than happy to
connect you with the writers if you have
suggestions yeah i said that that would
be great i said because i'm just trying
to do my homework on this i didn't i
didn't know if you guys had decided on
all the facts but maybe there's some
things we could come up with some talent
or gift that we can build maybe he's
really good at math or something he has
to be active i'm doing my best not to
play this his character like a victim
so you went to howard university huh the
exec holding my resume interrupted
peeking over the pages
yes i said proudly
he slid my resume back in his desk and
said thank you for your concerns
we'll be watching you
i left the office
i shot the episode i had come in to
shoot on that day probably the best one
i did out of the three because i got
what was bothering me off my chest
i was let go from that job
on the next day
phone call from my agent
they decided to go another way
the questions that i asked set the
producers on guard and perhaps pave the
way for a less stereotypical portrayal
for the black actor that stepped into
the role after me
as the scripture says i planted the seed
and apollos watered it
but god kept growing
god kept it growing
yet and still when you invest in a seed
watching it grow without you that is a
good appeal to swallow
a bitter pill
anybody that's ever been fired knows
what i'm talking about
even if you really don't want the job
when they let you go
it's like any breakup
you act like you don't care i didn't
need that damn job anyway
i didn't need them
but when you have those moments alone
you start to wonder if there was a
better way to handle it and if you could
have if you could have handled it better
maybe you could help your family and
then before you know it you're broke and
you find yourself scraping together
change just so you can ride the subway
so that you can get the next job and
maybe if you can book something else
that would eclipse the feeling of doubt
that's building but it seems like you
can't pay them to hire you now
my agents at the time told me it might
be a while before i got a job acting on
screen again
but that was fine because i never wanted
to act in the first place i and i
definitely didn't want to be caught dead
going after a fake hollywood pipe dream
i'm more of a writer director anyway so
forget their stories i can tell my own
stories
as conflicted as i was before i lost the
job as adamant as i i was about the need
to speak truth to power
i found myself even more conflicted
afterwards
sometimes you need to get knocked down
before you
can really figure out what your what
your fight is
and how you need to fight it
at some point my mom reverted back to my
experiences here
to the professors that challenged me and
struggled against me
finally i thought of ali
in the middle of the yard
it is elder years
drawing from his victories
and his losses
at that moment i realized something new
about this the greatness of ali and how
he carried his crown
i realized that he was transferring
something to me on that day
he was transferring the spirit
of the fighter to me
sometimes you need to feel the pain and
sting of defeat to activate the real
passion and purpose that god predestined
inside of you
god says in jeremiah i know the plans i
have for you
plans to prosper you and not to harm you
plans to give you hope and a future
hear me well on this day
when you have reached the hilltop and
you are deciding on on next jobs next
steps
careers further education
you would rather find purpose
than a job or career
purpose crosses disciplines
purpose is an essential element of you
it is the reason you are on the planet
at this particular time in history
your very existence is wrapped up in the
things you are here to fulfill
whatever you choose for a career path
remember the struggles along the way are
only meant to shape you for your purpose
when i dared to challenge the system
that would relegate us to victims and
stereotypes with no clear historical
backgrounds no hopes or talents when i
questioned that method of betrayal a
different path
opened up for me
the path to my destiny
when god has something for you it
doesn't matter who stands against it
[Music]
god will move someone is holding you
back away from a door
and put someone there who will open it
for you
if it's meant for you
i don't know what your future is
but if you're willing to take the harder
way
the more complicated one the one with
more failures at first their successes
the one that has ultimately proven to
have more meaning more victory
more glory then you will not regret it
now
this is your time
[Laughter]
[Applause]
the light of new realization shines on
you today how his legacy is not wrapped
up in the money that you will make but
the challenges that you choose to
confront
as you commence to your past press on
with pride
and pressure on with purpose
god bless you
i love you howard
power forever
i mean the technology is great you know
it's lots of fun very helpful makes a
lot of things easy um
but like anything in the world there's
there is too much of a good thing you
know
um
and i think one of the things we don't
talk about is what is the balance of
technology in our lives and i would
argue that for many of us it's out of
balance
we know
that the chemical dopamine is released
whenever we get a bing buzz flasher beep
from our phone or email right so
dopamine is the exact same chemical
that's released in alcohol nicotine and
gambling
right
in other words
it can be addictive if left unbalanced a
little alcohol is great
too much alcohol not so great gambling
is fun
too much gambling really bad right
technology is wonderful too much
technology can be very destructive and
destroy
our relationships like all addictions
destroy our relationships right
um and so what the one thing we're not
considering is what is the right balance
if you wake up in the morning and you
check your phone before you say good
morning to your spouse
that's a problem
right
if you have phantom beeps
that's a problem that comes from
something
right
if you find yourself incapable of
getting through a day without
needing to check that's a problem right
now where it gets really dangerous
is with
kids
millennials
some of them aren't kids anymore right
so
almost all alcoholics on the planet
discovered alcohol when they were
children
when we're very very young the only
thing we need is the approval of our
parents
right when we go through adolescence we
now need approval from our peers
frustrating for our parents very
important for us because it allows us to
acculturate outside of our immediate
families into the larger group right
very stressful time and we're supposed
to learn in this time of anxiety to rely
on our friends to reach out to our
friends for help that's we're supposed
to learn
some people quiet by accident discover
alcohol
and they learn the numbing effects of
dopamine actually help them get through
the stress of adolescence this
connection unfortunately becomes
hardwired
and so for the rest of their lives
when they face any kind of financial
career or social stress they don't turn
to a person they turn
to the bottle
right now we have age restrictions on
alcohol
cigarettes and gambling
because we know that an immature mind is
not yet strong enough or mature enough
to deal with
the powers of these addicting
chemicals these addictive chemicals
right so we put an age limit we have no
such age limit or age restriction on
social media or cell phones
right
so ostensibly what we've done is we've
thrown open the liquor cabinet and we've
said to our adolescents hey i know this
whole adolescent thing is really
stressful so here's the vodka take as
much as you need that's basically what
we've done and so what we have is an
entire generation that's growing up
addicted
and like all addicts they haven't
learned the skill set of when they
suffer stress to turn to a person
what they do is they turn to the device
and what that only does is increase
senses of isolation and loneliness and
can actually destroy relationships we've
all had the experience where you're with
somebody walking down the street in a
meeting out for dinner whatever and they
pull out their phone and you feel like
an idiot right or when you're talking to
them and they're going uh-huh
uh-huh
you sort of like what am i what's the
point of this now take an entire
generation
that has no memory of a time before the
device we at least can reference times
before
cell phones and internet and social
media we at least have a point of
reference they don't
so this is their normal that that's how
they feel so you have an entire
generation growing up with addiction
and an increased
sense of loneliness and isolation we're
already seeing the results we're seeing
increased rates of suicide amongst this
generation we're seeing increased rates
of accidental death due to overdoses
amongst this generation we're seeing
increased numbers of mass homicides
largely performed by this generation
school shootings yeah over 70
perpetrated by kids born after the year
1984.
we um schools universities are now
dealing with numbers they've never dealt
with before
of kids requesting leaves of absence due
to depression
we're already seeing it
right
we're seeing the effects of loneliness
and isolation we're seeing it and yet
we're not reacting to it we're not doing
anything about it
right
and parents are a lot to blame for this
because parents there are some schools
who want to restrict phones in the
schools and it's the parents who demand
that they keep their phones in case of
emergencies
seriously seriously when was the last
time the cell phone was used for an
emergency what time are you coming home
what time should we pick you up and if
there is an emergency you call the
office and they know what classroom the
kids in and in five minutes they'll
bring the kid to talk to you on the
phone like the old way worked just fine
remember we talked before about
innovation it has to solve a real human
problem what human problem exactly did
we solve by compressing the five minute
time frame we added the problem we
didn't solve it so that's one huge
problem so combine that with the facts
you have a an addicted generation that
doesn't have the the skill set to ask
for help
combined with the fact that they're so
good at facebook and instagram they're
good at putting filters on everything so
they're good at showing you how smart
and strong they are these kids who
commit suicide you go look at their
instagrams you would have no clue that
they were depressed because they're
happy and they're star athletes right
you'd have no clue because they're
really good so when we say silly things
like
my door is always open you're assuming
they have the courage to come in
combined with the fact that they're
subject largely not all but too many to
a failed parenting strategy because
their parents told them they were
special
they could have anything they wanted
they can be anything they want they got
medals for coming in last which by the
way we know doesn't work it devalues the
medal for the one who comes in first and
the one who came in last it makes them
feel stupid because they know they
didn't deserve it
right
the kids got into honors classes not
because they deserved it but because the
parents complained and some of them got
good grades not because they earned them
but because the teachers didn't want to
deal with the parents
and then the kids graduate college and
they get a job and in an instant they
find out they're not special
they don't get anything for coming in
last their parents can't get them a
promotion and you can't have whatever
you want just because you want it
and in an instant their entire
self-image is shattered
and so you have an entire generation
growing up with lower self-confidence
than previous generations
so you have lower self-confidence than
previous generations combined with an
inability to ask for help with
things that are you're struggling with
and you turn to social media or device
you keep checking you keep checking you
count your likes you count your likes
you count you follow your count your
followers if somebody unfriends you oh
my god it's trauma
right
the way they break up with each other is
they just ghost each other just cut each
other out and stop returning to text
returning text and returning phone calls
because they don't have the skill set to
say hey it's not working out it's not me
it's you
right there's no closure on things right
combined with the fact there's an
institutionalized impatience
so they've grown up in a world of
instant gratification you want to buy
something you go on amazon it shows up
the next day
you want to get in touch with someone
you don't leave a message on their
machine and wait four hours for them to
get the message you just text them and
they get back to you immediately you
want to watch a movie you just log on
and watch it you don't have to check
movie times right everything happens you
want to get a date swipe right you don't
even have to muster up the courage to go
like hey
you know you don't have to
there you go got a date right
and so the problem is they're accused of
being entitled i don't think they're
entitled at all not at all i think
they're impatient i keep meeting these
fantastic smart driven ambitious
idealistic fantastic kids who graduated
school they got a job
they want to make an impact in the world
and i go up to them and say how is it
going and they say
i think i'm gonna quit
i'm like why
they're like
i'm not making an impact i'm like you've
been here eight months
and it's as if it's as if they see the
summit of a mountain
as if they're standing at the foot of a
mountain they can see the summit they
can see the thing they want i want to
make an impact what they don't see is
the mountain
this large immovable object you can go
up fast you can go up slow i don't care
but there's still a mountain what they
don't understand is that life
that relationships and career
fulfillment are a journey
there's no app for that
i got nothing you gotta go through the
slow plotting
annoying
meandering process
called career and life
but if they don't get it in eight months
they go look for it somewhere else and
they don't get it they go look for it's
impatience and because they don't have
the skill set to ask for help and
because they feel lonely it compounds
and compounds so then we dump them in
office environments that are built on
theories from the 80s and 90s
that prioritizes a number before a
person and no one really cares about
their confidence and their personal
growth they're just numbers on a
spreadsheet
and so they enter
work cultures that don't help them and
the problem is they're entering the
workforce at a deficit i hear from kids
they tell me that they struggle to form
deep meaningful relationships and the
companies don't care
and so it's destructive to them as
individuals but ultimately it'll hurt
the companies because more and more
millennials are entering the workforce
i believe to your point about solution
that now the responsibility on companies
is even greater than it's ever been
before to take care of its people
because if the environment in which
we're asking our youngest workers to
work in
isn't built to help them
i can't even imagine what the suicide
and and homicide and just the rates of
depression
you know an accidental death due to
overdose are going to look like in the
future
it's going to reach epidemic proportions
it's already the the statistics are
already alarming and yet nobody's
sounding any alarm bells
parents have to intervene we have to
stop giving our kids free access to
social media and phones at young ages
they are not ready for it their minds
cannot cope with the dopamine balance is
fine you can give a kid a phone but they
can't use it in their bedroom they can't
have it at the dinner table they can't
take it to school
they can only have it up to a certain
hour and you take it away their children
you can take the phone away
we've got to intervene as parents but as
companies we now have to deal with the
influx of kids that are coming into our
companies with addiction
watch i see it all the time walk through
any office
you'll see the older employees have
their phones on the sides of their
computers as they're working you'll see
the youngest employees have their phones
face up in front of their keyboards
between their arms as they're working
and this is how they work and this is
the science is alarming they did
experiments on mice
where they did the multitasking they put
flashing lights to mimic going from the
computer to the cell phone the computer
to the cell phone to the tv
the mice that were exposed to the
changing lights it took them three times
longer
to solve a maze than the mice that
weren't and the damage was permanent
it didn't improve when they stopped the
lights and leadership now is even more
important yeah and the leaders now are
even more irresponsible
you are responsible for the lives of
human beings and some of these human
beings are your children so okay you bad
ceo who thinks all the stuff that i talk
about is craziness and you don't have
time to make these changes this is i
hear we don't have time it's a war out
there i've actually heard
executives tell me that it's a war out
there i don't have time for this
leadership stuff
i know guys who go to war and i'll tell
ya it's not a war what you're going
through you know you tinker with money
it's not a war you do have time for this
and if it's really that way then what
were you doing when it wasn't a war it's
even more it's what an indictment that
in peaceful times when times were good
that you weren't focusing on this stuff
right but my point is is a lot of these
executives have children
of this age
working at other companies
and my question is would you like those
other companies would you like those
other executives to care about the
growth of your child
the confidence of your child the career
success of your child
would you like those other companies to
help your kids learn the skills of
social interaction the ability to ask
for and receive help would you like
their jobs to give that to them
set the example
do it for other people's children every
single employee 100 is someone someone
someone's daughter
a hundred percent
and if you want someone to take
responsibility for the life of your
children in their company then why don't
we start taking responsibility for the
lives of the children in our companies
when you realize that your name your
form and everything you see
is provisional
two things happen to some people
they have immediate
what we could only metaphorically call
the dark knight of the soul they go into
a deep depression
because everything they thought was real
is no longer real including their own
name form body and mind
some people get so scared that they have
a bad trip
some people cross that threshold and
discover nirvana
or enlightenment and they say wow i
thought i was
i was squeezed into the volume of a body
in the span of a lifetime but i am a
timeless being that can morph myself
into any experience including the human
experience which is
amazing
but the human experience is also that
which causes existential depression so
the causes of human suffering since you
brought it up are brought up in eastern
wesleyan traditions as
number one
you suffer because you don't know who
you are you confuse yourself with your
body-mind experience number two you
grasp and cling
at experiences which are evanescent and
transitory and dreamlike
you say what happened to your childhood
it's over what happened to yesterday
it's over what happened to five minutes
ago it's over what happens to these
words by the time you hear them they
don't exist so you know wittgenstein the
german philosopher said
we are asleep our life is a dream but
once in a while we wake up enough to
know that we are dreaming so what do you
wake up to when you cross this threshold
you wake up to your true self which
is
not body of mind but the awareness in
which that experience is happening so
grasping and clinging at a dream is the
second cause of human suffering the
third is
being afraid
of anything that's unpleasant pain
abandonment being treated by someone
not respectfully so that's you know
there's aversion to certain experiences
third cause of suffering
fourth is identifying which is related
to it with your ego identity
and fifth is the fear of death
now they're all connected
they're all the same
fear
and they are not knowing who you are
this is the biggest question everybody
should be asking who am i what am i am i
the changing experience of this body
which is a perceptual activity
am i the experience of the changing mind
or the changing personality because you
don't have the same personality when you
were a kid or maybe even 10 years ago
what is it at the basis of this when you
start that reflective self-inquiry
ask yourself who am i what do i want
what is my purpose what am i grateful
for
going to the stillness of meditation you
have
what wisdom traditions have called
revelation
revealed truth
now you know that sounds very grand i
would say just call it insight
you know meditation mindfulness
awareness of body awareness of mind
awareness of mental space awareness of
the web of relationship awareness with
that which we call the universe
it leads you ultimately to the awareness
of awareness
and when you discover that
that's nirvana now everyday experience
is modified consciousness so right now
what you're experiencing is what we call
the waking state of consciousness so
awareness is modifying itself
every time you open your eyes into this
experience right and you call it the
physical world
now if you close your eyes
you have another state of consciousness
where you don't actually experience the
physical world
you experience sensations images
thoughts emotions
stories
it's like a dream as soon as you close
your eyes
you're experiencing you might call it
daydreaming but there's no difference
between a dream and what you dream at
night the physical world has disappeared
there's only a mental world
then you go deeper at night
even the mental world disappears in what
we call deep deep sleep
now that is the highest intelligence by
the way because in deep sleep there's
unconscious processing going on there's
creativity going on there are
correlations being made their toxins
being removed there's a whole resetting
of your
memories and consolidation of that so in
deep sleep even though there is no
experience of a physical or a mental
world
it's a very intelligent
highly
highly correlated state
in which
unconscious processing is occurring
memories are being consolidated
imagination is being refined etc even
though you have no conscious experience
so think of these three states
metaphorically like you would think of
water
becoming ice
as the physical world
water as
water
fluid
dreamy
water as
vapor even more dreamy and fluctuating
and ambiguous
and
contradictory
and
difficult to grasp
but if you want little bit beyond that
i'm speaking metaphorically you'd end up
with what is called the quantum vacuum
which is the fundamental ground of
existence according to science
but you can do that subjectively you can
move from the physical world to the
dream world to the sleep world
and beyond to what is called fundamental
consciousness
which is the source of all knowing all
experience
in wisdom traditions it's called
undifferentiated consciousness so what
is reality what we call reality what
today's science calls reality
comes under the heading of naive realism
einstein was a naive realist
and i'm not saying this in a derogatory
fashion it's it's it's a word in the
science of philosophy naive realism
means
that the physical world exists exactly
as perceived by the five human senses
now obviously that's not true other
species
experience the world
through different modes of sensory
perception
the second aspect of naive realism
is that the physical world as perceived
by the five human senses
would exist even if no one was observing
it well how do you prove that and
firstly it's naive because we know
that the world is more than
what is perceived by the five human
senses
so this leads us to a solution actually
of the heart problem of consciousness
which is
get rid of the idea that the world is
physical
what we call of the world as physical
even your physical body is a perceptual
activity
and that perceptual activity for you and
me is a human perceptual activity
through human consciousness not through
bad consciousness not through mosquito
consciousness not through plant
consciousness but non-dualism says
go beyond that
there is only one consciousness
that is differentiating you know
undifferentiated consciousness
differentiating into these different
species of consciousness
that form a matrix
of conscious beings that are
collectively projecting this universe i
don't think
consciousness
being
formless
and infinite is subject to either birth
or death this is a vacation we are
having on planet earth right now
and so might as well enjoy it
but death is not the end of
consciousness is the end of a certain
storyline in consciousness
a certain interpretation
of perceptions images feelings and
thoughts it's not that i don't think
about death i ask myself what is beyond
my provisional identity
and i dwell in that and that has a very
interesting
outcome
which is the outcome in every spiritual
tradition there are only three things
that happen by the way in a religious
or traditional experience one is
transcendence you know
that you are not
an entity in space and time
that your true self is formless infinite
unbounded
borderless unfettered free
consciousness number one number two you
have the emergence of what
usually are referred to as platonic
truths
goodness beauty harmony love compassion
joy equanimity
and number three loss of the fear of
death there's nothing more important
than having those three experiences and
they've been part of every wisdom
tradition for thousands of years love is
not a sentiment
love is not an emotion love is the
ultimate truth
at the heart of creation
which is unity consciousness one
consciousness differentiating into
infinite modes of experience infinite
noise infinite modes of knowing
infinite phenomena known all generated
within the oneself just like when you
were just a fertilized ovum you were one
step cell
stem cell pluripotential cell it became
eyes it became nose it became
fingernails it became
heart it became brain so that one cell
differentiated into all these
different cells each with its own
modality of experience
like that the one mind the one
consciousness differentiates itself
into what we call the universe with
every species of consciousness knowing
the universe in its own unique way
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