FOCUS ON YOU EVERY DAY

It's really hard to be truly happy

when you're not being yourself,

and most of us have no clue who we are.

We all have situations

that don't look like they're going to work out.

We don't see how we can get well,

how we can accomplish a dream,

how our family will be restored.

All the circumstances say

it's not going to happen.

How much of life do you feel like you control

or how much does life control you?

Do you tend to control more of

what's going on or events controlling you.

If you focus on what you can't control,

if you focus on the past,

if you focus on

what's missing from your life constantly,

that pattern of focus will make you

frustrated, overwhelmed, depressed.

It won't even matter if you're

taking antidepressants.

If you keep focusing on what you can't control,

what's missing from your life.

You're going to feel depressed

until you think as many antidepressants as you want

focus equals power.

Complaining.

Crying

Whining,

griping

a Bible word called murmuring

see, that'll ace your future

spend five minutes complaining

and you have wasted five

and you may have begun

what's known as economic cancer of the bone.

Surely they will soon haul you off

into a financial desert and there

let you choke on the dust of your own regret.

And not only is it important for you

to know it’s possible for you

to choose your future

but it’s necessary

that you work on yourself,

that you develop yourself.

It’s necessary

that you get the energy drainers out of your life,

people who don’t want anything,

people who are not striving,

people who are not challenging themselves,

people who aren’t growing,

people who have stopped dreaming.

It’s necessary that you align yourself

with people and attract people into your business

who are hungry,

people who are unstoppable and unreasonable,

people who are refusing to live life just as it is

and who want more.

My mother used to say

birds of a feather flock together.

If you run around with losers,

you will end up a loser.

It’s necessary

that you get the losers out of your life

if you want to live your dream.

The challenge of life

I have found is to build a resume

that doesn't simply tell a story

about what you want to be,

but it's a story about who you want to be.

It's a resume that doesn't just tell a story about

what you want to accomplish, but why?

a story that's not just a collection of

titles and positions, but a story

that's really about your purpose because

when you inevitably stumble

and find yourself stuck in a hole,

that is the story that will get you out.

What is your true calling?

What is your Dharma?

What is your purpose?

You can't connect the dots looking forward

You can only connect them looking backwards

So you have to trust that the dots

will somehow connect in your future.

You have to trust in something,

your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever,

because believing that the dots

will connect down the road

will give you the confidence to follow your heart,

even when it leads you off the well-worn path.

And that will make all the difference.

"just stand.

"You keep standing.

"You keep standing.

"No matter how rough the sea, you keep standing.

"And I'm not talking about just water.

"You keep standing.

"No matter what, you don't give up."

"It doesn't matter to me any longer how long I live.

"What matters to me most

"is how I live."

I ask you all one question,

a question that I was asked all my life

by a third grade dropout.

"How you livin'?

"How you livin'?"

Everyday ask yourself that question.

How you livin'?

Here's, here's what a cook would suggest

you to live, this way.

That you would not judge,

that you would show up early,

that you'd be kind,

that you'd make sure that that servant's towel

is huge and used,

that if you're gonna do something,

you do it the right way.

That cook would tell you this,

that it's never wrong to do the right thing,

that how you do anything

is how you do everything.

And in that way you will grow your influence

to make an impact.

In that way you will honor all those

who have gone before you,

who have invested in you.

Look in those unlikeliest places for wisdom.

Enhance your life every day by seeking that wisdom

and asking yourself every night,

"How am I living?"

One person can change the world

by giving people hope.

So if you want to change the world,

start each day with a task completed.

Find someone to help you through life.

Respect everyone.

Know that life is not fair,

and you will fail often.

But if you take some risks,

step up when the times are the toughest,

face down the bullies, lift up the downtrodden,

and never ever give up.

If you do these things,

the next generation

and the generations that follow

will live in a world far better

than the one we have today.

And what started here

will indeed have changed the world

for the better.

Let's look at this idea

of specificity for a minute.

Like a winter home in Hawaii.

Very nice

but if I say I will own

a two-bedroom beachfront villa

on the west coast of Maui Hawaii

by June 1st 2003

does that sound a little more clear?

Yeah and until you get specific like that

the creative part of your brain

won't jump in

and decide how to help you get there.

And that's why a lot of people

never get their dreams

because they don't make

them specific enough.

You got to get real nitty-gritty.

Break it down.

How much buy when?

I want a better relationship

with my husband.

What does that mean?

But if I say I want to

spend an hour a week

sitting opposite my husband

talking about real things that matter,

no TV on,

eye to eye communication,

well that we can measure.

Did you do it for an hour?

Want to have more fun.

What does that mean?

Well, what if I say I'm going to listen

to comedy albums twice a week

for a minimum of an hour.

You're probably going to have more fun.

So make it specific make it.

Make it real.

Some people say you know

I want our business to increase.

Well how much by when?

Want the reading scores

to go up in a school.

How much, by when?

Until you have that

you're not going to make progress

and so many people's dreams

never get completed

because they're not clear

about the specific number

of how much by when.

I told you earlier in the program.

We said we're going to sell a million

and a half books in a year and a half

and that directed our behavior.

Recently we just said

we're going to sell a

million books in one day.

We had 101 bookstores

involved in a book signing.

I'm going to try to be

in the Guinness Book of World Records

for the largest book signing ever done.

Now I don't think we sold a million books.

Maybe we sold

a couple hundred thousand

but by holding that question

and trying to figure out how to do it

it moved us toward that goal.

Now maybe it'll take us two years

to figure out how to sell a million books

in one day

but it gets the thinking

to expand out into that arena.

Is this making sense?

Okay so you want to have those goals.

Now the other thing you want to do

is break your goals down.

Many of you have big goals,

end hunger in the world.

That's a pretty big goal.

You know have world peace.

Achieve a certain level

of spiritual oneness

with God or life.

Big goals.

When you first look at

it's kind of overwhelming

but what if we were to break that down

into little steps

that says okay I want to go to college

and get a PhD.

Gosh I'm only a high school student

but the next step would be

finish the math class.

Get an A in this.

Write for a brochure from a college.

Get a catalog.

Pick one or five colleges

that I want to apply to.

You know just keep breaking it down

to little steps and then figure out

how to get all those steps done

and put a date by each step.

And then start doing the plan.

Someone said if you fail to plan

you're planning to fail.

Does that make sense?

Yeah absolutely.

Some of one of my friends

said success by the yard is hard

by the inch it's a cinch.

So we just break it

down into small pieces.

I had I was reading

the Guinness Book of World Records

cause we were thinking

about being in there

and this guy set a goal

to eat an entire bicycle.

Tires and all.

Now how do you do that?

right well it took him 17 days

but what he did is

he kept cutting the bicycle up

and then melting it down

into little swallowable pieces

and he ate them.

I don't know how much stayed in

but he ate them right?

But the point being

anything can be done

if you break it down small enough.

Make sense?

So don't let the bigness

of a goal overwhelm you.

I don't know if you'd

agree with me on this,

but in many ways, one of the key factors

to legendary success isn't

your natural ability.

It's not whether you

have the right product,

it's not whether you're

in the right field,

it's not whether you've

had a blessed background.

It's not whether you have the right IQ.

I want you to really think

about and deconstruct

and play with maybe later

tonight win your journal.

I want you to deconstruct

this idea of confidence

and it seems like a very simple

work but just think about

it in your own life.

When you have confidence or

we could even call it fire,

when you have that fire

within you, that confidence,

that interior bravery,

you almost have this power

to do whatever it takes

to get your brave vision done.

You see, in this world, it's

not about, in many ways,

your strategy and your

business or your ability

in your life, it's about

this thing called confidence

and we've all had these times

in our lives when we are

full of confidence and what

other people see as a problem,

we simply do see as an opportunity.

Other people see it as a

stumbling block or a wall

and we see it as a stepping

stone or this solution.

So confidence is simply

something that you really

want to wire in.

Confidence is something

you really want to develop,

confidence is a practice,

confidence is a muscle

and like any muscle,

the more you focus on it

and practice it and train it,

the stronger your confidence

is going to grow and I

just have to say it again.

When you are at a place in your life,

when there is ongoing,

steady stream of confidence

moving through your mindset,

moving though your heartset,

you do the heroic in your business

and you achieve the

remarkable in your life.

the Brawn shows up

This dude comes in 15 minutes before practice

and LeBrons Gibson that look

like hey, dude, what's going on here?

He's like, what do you mean?

I'm 15 minutes early.

He's like should have

been here an hour ago

and when he says that to this, dude

the guy knows

LeBron's been there for two hours

So all I ask you to do is like here's a guy

Probably the best that's ever

walked out on a basketball court

short of Michael Jordan

But both of them have one

thing in common they worked

okay wasn't about their just their talent

It was about their work ethic

people knew them for their work ethic

So just ask yourself this week

do people know you for your work ethic?

For people are people like

me and you work hard

or people actually commenting about you

showing up early and staying

late because if they're not

Then you're just you're just

blending in with everybody else's work ethic

at the end of the day talent

will not win the game

It is work ethic that will win the game, so

When I saw this, I'm like here's a

guy top of his games got all the money

You could possibly he could

never spend all his money

Impossible. He'll be a billionaire

and he's showing up two hours early

to make sure he plays the game

to make sure he's in physical condition

to make sure that He can stay in the game

long past. He doesn't even need it.

He's got all his rings

I got to tell you I was so inspired

by because I got a bunch of partners

I got guys that I do business

with I got one of them

in particular that I'm having

some problems with

He told me man if I had

your money, dude, I would retire

He said it to me over and over

and I hadn't been listening to it enough

to understand he wants to go lay down

Okay, you cannot run?

What's that thing called You did

I can't do an Ironman with that attitude

don't know why you'd

want to do an Ironman

But I tell you what if you could do an Ironman

and then take that and add it to your to your

to your career to the

Longevity of your career,

you know because look

it's gonna be five years from now

ten years from now

It's gonna be 20 years

You're gonna look back and say

and the marketplace is gonna

reward whatever you do every day

It's easy to discard,

say, 10 terrible ideas

and go after the one good idea,

but when you start to get

a little bit of momentum

you can drown yourself

in good opportunities

that aren't great opportunities.

And if you scatter your

focus, you try to do

17 different product lines,

you can kill your business

really easily, particularly

when you have a small team.

So I think asking yourself

repeatedly, what is the one

project, the one initiative,

the one campaign that

if successful will render

the rest of these things

either unnecessary or much, much easier,

what is that one step?

And I've called it this

dead domino before,

but what is the one thing on

this list of seven different

campaigns that will

make all the other ones

irrelevant or much easier?

- How do you, I mean, that's

a tough answer, isn't it?

Because they all sound good.

- Yeah, I think they can,

and I think that what it

comes down to often times is,

it returns back to

measurements, so how are we

defining success, like if

we want to grow the company,

let's just say, what does that mean,

in three months, six months,

what are we measuring,

why are we measuring those things,

and what is a, sort of a comfort goal,

meaning like, okay, we think

we can easily hit this number,

what is a stretch, and what is like,

hallelujah, we threaded our needle,

and then come up with a really

concrete number to tackle,

and once you have that

number then you can look

at those five and say,

alright, which of those

are going to serve us right now.

And I'm dealing with that increasingly so

because out of all these

different branches of content,

and activities, and angel

investing, and so on,

it's very easy for me to get scattered,

it's never been easier,

so I have to continually

ask that type of question.

- What's your main focus now,

if you had to boil it down to one?

- My main focus right now is

building my podcast, Tim Ferriss

Show, up to a point where

it's consistently in the top

10 to 15 on iTunes so that

I can establish a presence

and name recognition

in Hollywood and entertainment,

which I can leverage then

for the TV show and film

projects that I'll be

expanding into in the

next three to nine months.

And specifically what that

means is targeted advertising,

for the podcast, specifically

towards people who are

producers, agents, actors, directors,

in Hollywood and New York City,

all of that can be quantified.