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I used to think that being mean to myself was discipline. But here's what I discovered after building a multimillion dollar company. The difference between successful people and everybody else is not that they don't mess up, it's that they have a system for bouncing back in minutes, not months. So today I'm going to share with you the exact five step mental framework that turned my biggest failures into my biggest breakthroughs. Number one, self punishment is not discipline. Let's destroy the biggest lie that high achievers tell themselves. You think beating yourself up is discipline? It is actually the enemy of discipline. Champions don't punish themselves longer, they recover faster. This might be hard to picture, but imagine this. I, six years ago, remember the moment that I was pacing around my condo at 3am Like a freaking caged tiger, okay? And the reason was I had just lost an enormous deal because I had gotten defensive in a meeting. So instead of calling that person the next morning, I remember I spent three days just like beating the crap out of myself for what happened. And then I remember something that changed everything. I went to dinner with my friend on the third night and I remember arriving at dinner and I had that feeling of just like anxiety in my stomach where like I didn't even want to eat. I didn't want to be there. I just was going to the dinner because it had been scheduled. And I'm explaining to her what I did, how I messed up in the situation, how I felt ridiculous because I'd lost this $30 million deal and I felt terrible for screwing up and I felt like I deserved to because I knew better. And I remember, I'll never forget, she stopped mid bite and she goes, so you're telling me that instead of spending the last 72 hours winning that partner back, you decided to sulk and feel sorry for yourself? In that moment I was like, it just tore me out of whatever mental loop I was in. Because she wasn't wrong. She was right. And this is the actual truth, is that self punishment is the most selfish thing that you can do. While you are busy having a pity party, the people who needed you to show up and your team, your clients, your partners, your family are still waiting. High standards are good, but mental self harm, it's absolutely useless. It's not going to drive you forward. It's not gonna fix anything. And so the next time that you mess up, ask yourself this. Do I want to feel better about this or do I want to get better at this? Feeling better and getting better are not two in the same number Two, shame is not equivalent to accountability. This brings me to the second framework, which is learning to speak two completely different languages. Okay, let me explain. Shame says I'm broken. Accountability says this is broken. Let me fix it. Same situation, completely different outcomes. I'll give you guys an example of this. Last month, I completely forgot about a very important call with one of my portfolio companies. Like, very important, not delayed, not like, oh, I was late. Just completely forgot. Never sent it to my assistant, never added it to the calendar. Gone like radio silence. Five people were sitting on a zoom meeting waiting for me to come. I never came. Old me would have spent a week in the shame spiral. I'm such an idiot. I can't handle success. I can't do anything right. They probably all hate me. Everyone's going to think I'm a loser. They're going to think I'm such an a hole, like, whatever. But new me, after understanding these principle, I immediately shifted into what I call scientist mode. Okay, what system failed? Did my calendar not sync? Why did I not send it to my assistant? Was I overbooked? Was it because they texted instead of emailed? Like, how do I prevent this next time? And so 20 minutes later, I had a new system. What is my new system? All important calls, they get triple confirmed 24 hours prior. And then I block 30 minutes before every meeting to make sure I prep. Now, the CEO of that company who was waiting for me then I never came. I told him what happened, and he actually really appreciated my honesty. And we did not miss a beat. After that, we rescheduled the call. He said, I completely understand. Every once in a while, it happens like, you are human too. Shame keeps you focused on who you are and attaching yourself to the negative consequences of whatever occurred. Accountability keeps you focused on what you do. And so identity, saying it's about me feels very permanent. Whereas actions, saying it's about what I did feels like it's something I can change. So the next time you screw up on something, listen to your internal voice. If it sounds like a prosecutor, then you need to say, hey, maybe I should switch to scientist mode. Ask what, How? Why am I doing this? What occurred? What caused the situation? Rather than, you suck, you're awful, You're. You're terrible. You should be punished. And so that's a great mental switch that I use is I say, am I being a prosecutor or am I being a scientist? And if I'm being a prosecutor, I'm like, gotta switch into scientist mode. And sometimes what I do that helps me is I'll actually even write it down. I start writing down what happened. Helps me get out of my head and helps me see things objectively. The third is the four A's. Okay, here's the exact four step system I use every time something goes sideways. Instead of emotional chaos, you need a reliable process that you can use in the moments where you feel like things are emotionally heightened. Okay, think about it like this is your mental emergency protocol. And so the 4A stands for acknowledge, analyze, adjust and advance. So the first thing we want to do when we mess up, when something goes sideways, is we acknowledge I messed up. Not I always mess up or it wasn't that bad. We're not going to try and play it up or play it down. Just the facts, guys, there's nothing wrong with you for messing up. You're a human. You mess up, I mess up. We all mess up. Don't try to make it feel worse. Don't try to make it feel better. We just want to admit exactly what happened. The second piece, analyze what specifically went wrong. Was it a lack of preparation? Was it the wrong expectations? Was it bad timing? You want to get very specific with your diagnosis. For example, I was speaking with somebody the other day who was having a contentious relationship with their partner and they came to me and they're like, I'm having a hard time understanding what did I do wrong. And when we analyze the situation, looking at the argument they were having, I said, I don't think you've actually handled anything wrong throughout the entire relationship. I actually think that the expectations set in the beginning of the relationship were what weren't done properly. And so it's like you can do a thousand things right, but there might be one thing, just one step that you didn't do the right way, and that's what's causing the issue. And so we want to be really precise because sometimes what people do is they think, oh, it's all of it. It's all of me. I'm a terrible, I'm a failure. Everything's wrong. You might have just said one wrong thing. You might have just done one wrong thing. Might have been one small mistake that led to this. That's why we want to be specific and analyze it so we to make sure that we don't overhaul your entire life for one tiny little decision you made that was probably not the best one. Which brings me to the next piece, which is adjust. This is my favorite question to ask for this. What is the minimum viable change? Like I said, we don't need to rebuild your whole life. We probably don't need to rebuild your whole business, your whole system, your whole anything. We. We just need to patch the leak. For example, seven years ago, if my husband were to say, you know, I really don't like when you do that, I'd be like, I suck. I need to change my. I need to change my whole personality. I'm a terrible. I'm. I'm a bad partner. And now I'm like, I shouldn't say this again. You don't like it when I use that word. Okay, I understood. I won't use that word going forward. I'll use a different one. And so remember, making it into something bigger than it is doesn't help you any more than minimizing what happened. Brings me to the last point, which is advance. Now what, what are we going to do moving forward? What are we going to do with this information? Now that we understand exactly, precisely what went wrong, how do we move forward? Now what, what do we do now? What that does is it pulls you out of where a lot of you go and where I used to go, which is like dwelling on the past. Like, if I had only done this. If I had just had this happen. If I. Guys, the past is not going to change the future. And also the past does not need to dictate the future. So let's just ask ourselves, what are we going to do next? And that's going to get your brain looking forward, which is going to get you out of that, like, self indulgent, negative spiral. So a good example of this would be I hired somebody who turned out to be completely wrong for a role about six months ago. And I could have been like, oh, my God, our recruiting process is broken. The company's broken the culture. Everyone who emailed, it's all right, I could do that, which is probably what I would have done 10 years ago. But instead I acknowledged that it happened. I said, okay, we rushed the culture, fit the people that were going through it. We skipped a step, and then we adjusted by adding a team to interview in the next round and then advance to the next hire. And that next person that we use that new process on actually became one of our best employees. What I like about the four A's is it forces you to hit the sweet spot. Like, you have enough reflection that you can learn. So the next time something goes wrong, what I want you guys to do is use this method. Use the four A's. The fourth piece is the 24 hour rule. Okay, now let us talk about a skill that separates good from great. And I really mean this, guys. Like, I wish I had understood this 10 years ago. Okay? Elite performers are not better because they fail less. They're better because they recover faster. So while you're still processing yesterday's mistake, they are already three plays ahead of you. They're already moved on to the next thing. I used to think that dwelling on mistakes was noble, and it meant I was a good person. Like, I was, like, really learning the lesson. And all these people who moved on were just assholes and didn't care, and they didn't really feel bad for what they did. And, like, I made up all these crazy stories in my head. And then I started watching how high performers, the highest performers in my network, handled setbacks. I remember this. My first mentor, he missed a huge opportunity using real estate because he miscalculated market timing. And he lost, like, $2 million in cash within, like, two days. I remember getting on the phone with him, and I was expecting that he was gonna be devastated. I mean, that is not a small amount of money for anybody. He told me, he's like, I'm going to spend 24 hours processing it, figuring out what I did wrong, and then I will move on. And he moved on. And a month later, he did the next deal. He wasn't beating himself up. He wasn't saying, oh, I shouldn't do deals. He did the next deal, and he made $40 million. And he taught me this. Every hour that you spend reliving yesterday is an hour you're not building tomorrow. I remember it stuck with me because I was like, man, I spend too much time reliving yesterday. I really do. And it makes me feel bad about myself. And I think it's because a lot of us, we've been conditioned to think that suffering equates to learning. But the reality is, is that prolonged suffering actually impairs learning by keeping your brain in stress mode and peak performance. People who are always at their highest, they require peak recovery. And you can't do that if you're always mentally beating yourself up. So this is something that I actually really like to do, which is the next time that you feel bad about something, take this from me, set a timer on your phone. For real. Like, set a timer. Me and Alex actually both do this, and I want you to set a 24 hour timer. You get 24 hours to feel bad about that mistake. I don't care how big it is. I don't care if it's like, now you're getting divorced. I don't care if it's you lost your job. I don't care if it's you get kicked out of your house. 24 freaking hours. Process it. Learn from it. Move the on. Your future self will thank you for this. And the cool part is that I tell you 24 hours, but what I've learned about myself is that it doesn't even take 24 hours anymore. Some huge things that will happen might only take me 60 minutes to process. Two years ago, I remember a lawsuit got served on my desk, and I was like, oh, my gosh. And it was from somebody that I trusted. And it was. The whole thing just felt terrible. And I made a decision right there. I said, all right, you have 24 hours. And I remember thinking to myself, I was like, I don't need 24 hours. I know what I need to learn from this, and I want to move on. I want to figure out what to do next. The fifth is what I call the emotional weather check. Let's talk about the timing of your decisions. When you're emotional, you are essentially the drunk on feelings. Okay? Like, that's actually how it is for your brain. You would not make major life decisions while you're intoxicated, right? At least I hope not. So why would you do it? When you're angry, when you're scared, when you're desperate, when you're frustrated, I like to say this. Hot emotions make cold decisions. For example, it was about seven years ago, and it was after a very hard week. I had had a three day client event and then a three day team event. And I was so exhausted and so mentally drained. I remember sitting. Some drama had occurred on my team, and I was ready to fire half the team and pivot the business. I was so fed up. Everything felt wrong, everything felt broken. Everything felt impossible. But I remembered that one of my mentors had told me, he said, no major decisions unless you're content. And so I waited. I was like, okay, I feel like I'm gonna feel the same in a couple days, but it's my rule, so I'm gonna wait. So I waited 24 hours. I took the weekend off. What do you know? I got some sleep, I ate some food, I disconnected, connected. I wasn't so stressed. I came back Monday morning and I realized the real problem was not my entire team, and it wasn't my business. It was that I had been working 80, 90 hours a week and carrying the load for half my leadership team. And I had realized that when I had been with them all over those few days. And so instead of blowing up my company, I said, I think I need a new assistant, two new leaders. That's all. I just am missing three people in the company, and that is the best decision I could have made. I didn't need to change my whole business. I didn't need to fire everybody there. I just needed three new people. You see, I. Urgency is usually an illusion. That's how you know it's really emotional, is because it feels like it needs to be happening right now. You need to do it right now. If you feel urgency, stop. Rushed decisions always lead to mistakes. If you feel calm, if you feel content, those are signals that you are probably in a good space to make decisions. And so before you make a big decision, you want to ask yourself, am I calm or am I reacting? If you're reacting, if you feel stressed, if you feel. If you feel tension in your body, if your jaw is tight, if you're holding, if you're clenching weight, the right decision will still be the right decision in 24 to 48 hours, but you will see it more clearly and you will definitely not make the wrong one. So here's the truth, and I know you don't want to hear this, but you're going to mess up again. Probably today, probably tomorrow. The question isn't whether you're going to fail. It's whether you'll recover like a champion or suffer like everybody else does. These five frameworks have helped me turn my biggest disasters, my biggest negative thoughts, negative feelings, into my greatest comebacks. And if you want more strategies like this, you can hit subscribe and check out my next video.