← Build with Leila Hormozi
Build with Leila Hormozi
Stop Playing Life on Hard Mode (My 6 Cheat Codes) | Spotify Video Exclusive
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Have you ever woken up and thought to yourself, why is my life so hard? You look around and you see all these people and you think to yourself, how are they so happy and free and joyful? God, I wish I felt that way. And that's why in this video, I'm going to give you the six tools that I have used to go from feeling burdened by my thoughts and feelings to being empowered by them. So the first tool is what we call thought diffusion. And essentially what that is is it's being able to observe our thoughts and detach from our thoughts rather than get caught up in the content of our thoughts. There's a lot of areas of my life that I have identified where I've gotten caught up in thoughts before. I would say the first area was when I was losing weight. The reason I was overweight was that anytime I had the thought, oh, I think I should eat. Oh, that looks good, I would eat it. And what I had to retrain myself was that I could have thoughts all day about wanting to eat food. It didn't mean I had to eat food. In fact, I could eat in accordance with my goals rather than in accordance with my thoughts. And when I was overweight, I was constantly eating in accordance with my thoughts and not with my goals. And it took time to be able to separate those things and realize that it's okay to feel hungry. It's okay to have the thought that I want to eat something. It's okay to go to a party and be annoyed that I can't eat the same thing that somebody else is eating. Right? Because I have different goals than that person. And a great way that you could practice this and that I would is that I would literally seek out situations where I was with people when they were eating food that was not in accordance with my goals. I remember there was this one restaurant, they would go on Tuesdays, taco Tuesdays, they would order nachos, and they would always get this crazy ice cream dessert. And what a big part of me wanted to do was say, I don't want to go out to eat with them, you know, because I'm trying to lose weight and I don't want to have the food there because what if I eat it? And then I realized that's avoidance. And so instead I said, I'm going to go and have fun with my friends, and I'm not going to eat the food as well. And that practice on its own was a huge unlock for me, because then in similar situations, when I was alone, when I Was with other people when I was at family events, when it was Thanksgiving, Christmas, I could apply the same skill that I learned in that situation. The second situation, which I felt like, in which I've used cognitive diffusion to help me, has been in business. When I first got into business, you know, I was only 23. I didn't have much experience at all in the beginning of my business career. Anytime that there was a threat to the business, someone threatens a lawsuit. Somebody tells me that they're unhappy with their job, a client expresses dissatisfaction, I would then have the thought, I must really suck at this and the business must also suck, and therefore I'm not even successful. The situation would lead to a thought which would lead to another thought and then another thought, and then eventually it would lead to, I'm terrible at business and my business sucks. I heard this term where they talked about overcompensation, which is essentially when you have a thought that something could be wrong. You have that thought, you let it lead to another thought and then another thought, and then you start to feed that one thought with more thoughts that are similar to it until it becomes like a full blown emotional disturbance where you're like freaking out and panicking. An exercise that really helped me, and it still helps me a lot, is I see my thoughts like, basically, fish in a pond, and I'm like, what's the fish that's poisoning the pond? And that fish is essentially the thought that is causing my adverse behavior. I literally picture to myself as I've got a harpoon and I see the fish and I'm like, bam. And I take it, I stake it, I pull it out of the pond, I look at it for what it is. I'm like, it is an unproductive thought and it's not true and I don't need to do anything about it. And there's such a sense of relief in that. Because what you realize is that you can have a thought, it can freak you out, it can disturb, disturb you, and you can do nothing. You can just pluck it out of the pond, throw it to the side, let it die. The second thing you can do is language has a very strong correlation with how strongly we feel our emotions. For example, if I say, I'm feeling super anxious, I think I'm going to fail. How does that feel when you hear it versus I'm having the thought that I might fail. And I'm starting to notice that it causes a feeling of anxiety within me. Which one gives you a sense of control versus which one feels out of control, feels chaotic, feels anxious. You're not equal to your thoughts. You can never be a thought, you can never be an emotion. They are outside of you. A lot of people again, when they say I feel like I'm going to fail, I'm feeling super anxious. I'm feeling they're not remembering that there's you and then there's your brain. And sometimes your brain might be running wild. Like I've got days where I've got. I'm like, hey, Georgia, call her that sometimes I'm like, Georgia's on the prowl today. She's looking for something. Like she's starting a mess. And even that alone, just labeling my brain as a different entity helps me get enough space to be like, oh my gosh, silly Georgia. I don't need to do anything about her today. I can just live my life doing what I was already doing. You might have a thought that if I don't do X, Y and Z, I'm going to fail and my business will suffer and I'll lose everything and then I'll not have money and then my husband will leave me and, and then I'll end up on my parents couch and then my parents won't love me either and then I'm going to be homeless. And then you could say, wow, that is quite the elaborate story you have told there. Thank you for sharing with me. I'm going to go ahead and make a sandwich now and you can just go on with your day. If you're able to talk about these things with a sense of humor, I promise you, your ability to separate yourself from your thoughts and emotions is going to be tenfold because you will realize that how ridiculous they sound and you'll be like, I can't believe that I'm letting that thought control everything I am doing. It's ridiculous. The best thing you can ask is will taking action on this thought make my life better or worse tomorrow? And if the answer is better, great, take action on it. But a lot of the times what you're going to find is that the answer is worse. It's not going to make my life better because I'm going to keep avoiding the thing I've been avoiding and I'm not going to make progress. I'm not going to get closer towards my goals. I took some time years ago to study different kinds of therapy and I came across act, which is acceptance, commitment, therapy. And I believe the originator of it or the founder of it, his name was Stephen Hayes and he had a Bunch of books and principles around what that kind of therapy was and where it stemmed from. And I remember reading the first book I read from him and feeling like it resonated so much for me, because the first thing that talked about was this dictator from within, right? And this dictator from within is this voice in our head that is telling us to do things and also signaling to us that negative thoughts and feelings are bad and that we must defeat them. One piece that was mentioned in the very beginning of one of his books was understand the difference between rigidity and flexibility, and specifically psychological rigidity versus psychological flexibility. So what psychological rigidity is, is it's essentially a cycle of avoidance. It's a cycle of behaviors, thoughts, and patterns that allow you to avoid the things that are causing negative emotions, but ultimately keep you stuck in this very rigid, narrow life. So, for example, if somebody is very scared of public speaking and they are psychologically rigid, then they will avoid speaking. They will rationalize why they avoid speaking, and they will do all the things in their power to make sure they never encounter a situation in which they will speak, which ultimately shrinks their life. Because think about all the things that speaking could do for them. It could elevate their career. It could give them more confidence. It could put them out there. It could, you know, build their brand. There's lots of things it could do for them. But they narrow their life and they become so rigid that it actually shrinks their life rather than expanding it. Now, on the other side, we have psychological flexibility. Flexibility doesn't mean the absence of negative emotions. What it means is your ability to feel and experience thoughts and emotions and stay in contact with the present moment and not act on those negative thoughts and emotions, but rather observe them and act in accordance with your values and goals instead. One thing that people don't realize is that the act of avoidance itself actually perpetuates fear and even enhances it. And so every time that you avoid something, what you actually are teaching your brain through your behavior is that it is dangerous. And so the first time that you avoid it, it might feel like, ooh, I was a little nervous about it. I avoided it. It went away. The second time, you actually might notice that you feel more nervous. And then the third time, you have a straight up phobia of this thing. And why is that? People wonder, why has my fear gotten greater over time? It's because the more time that you avoid it, the more that you have been conditioned to avoid it to remain safe, and that you've taught your brain that you should continue avoiding this thing because it's dangerous. Now, the cool part about this is that it only takes one time of doing that thing to break this cycle. But getting yourself to do it is what the hardest part is. And that's what leads us into the six pivots. And the six pivots are essentially the six tools that can help you go from being psychologically rigid to psychologically flexible. The second tool is called Self as Context. What it means is not being overly attached to an identity that you create for yourself. The because what a lot of us do is we prevent ourselves from moving forward past being overweight, past having bad relationships, past having failed businesses, because we're constantly referencing the past, which, guess what? Is normal? That's what humans are supposed to do. Because if it worked to avoid this thing in the past, or this thing was a threat in the past, then your brain is trying to protect you by saying, hey, don't do that again. Hey, remember, it didn't work last time. Hey, remember. But what it also does is it makes you think that every time you do this thing going forward, the past will repeat itself. And then what it does for most people is it prevents them from ever trying anything new, ever trying to make progress, and ever trying to achieve their goals. You are not the stories that your thoughts tell you. You are. If you can make that separation and realize that you don't have to define yourself to any of these thoughts and emotions or stories, then it gives you enough space to realize that you can take action despite having them. For example, I have a friend who constantly says, I'm just super anxious. She's constantly telling herself this story. And so then what happens is that in a situation where anxiety is provoked, she acts like somebody who was an anxious person would act. But if you can rewrite your story, which I asked her to do, I said, in this situation, do you think that there's a possibility that you could feel anxious on the inside, that you could have anxious thoughts, but you could act like somebody who is not anxious at all? And she was like, I think I could. And I was like, great. So today, what I'm challenging you to do, act like somebody who's not anxious. Most of the time, what happens is that we see other people in how they live their lives, and we assume that they don't have the same thoughts and emotions that we have. But the reality is, is that many people just have the skill of having those thoughts and emotions and acting despite them. And so you see what's happening on the outside. But what you don't see is how many things they've learned to manage on the inside. And you can do the same. And once I realized I could do the same, it was very freeing for me because I realized, oh, my gosh, I can have all these very uncomfortable thoughts and emotions, and I can still be the person I want to be. I can still achieve my goals. I can still live in accordance with my values, even if it's uncomfortable, because on the other side of that is freedom. Another situation where I know that I was really stuck in this was when I was trying to lose weight. I kept believing the thoughts that I can't stop eating. I can't stop drinking. I can't stop myself from overeating. I can't go on a diet. I can't stick with a diet. And it wasn't until I told myself this. I'm sick of this. I'm no longer telling myself this story. As of today, I have a new identity. That identity is whatever I need to be to achieve my goals, I will do that, and I will be that person. And I don't care how uncomfortable it feels. The reality is, is that is available to anybody. You watching this on YouTube right now. You can change your entire life today. The only reason you are not is because you're subscribing to these thoughts and emotions that aren't even real. And the last tool that I will give you that goes along with achieving self as context is being able to hold space for your thoughts and emotions. You know, I actually had a friend that I was on the phone with this morning, and she said, layla, I am so sad. I'm going through this breakup. I feel heartbroken. And we were talking about what she needed to do to make her life better and essentially, like, the pivot she needed to make to act in accordance with the values that she had. And I said, I hear you. It is okay to be sad. It's okay to feel frustrated. It's okay to feel negative and awful. I was like, but you know what? You can feel awful and still do what you know you need to do to make your life better. And she called me and she was like, you're so right. I can feel awful and do it anyways. And I gave her this visualization which is, whenever I'm feeling anxious, I'm feeling awful, I'm feeling frustrated. I just imagine having a purse and carrying those emotions and those thoughts in my purse. And I'm not trying to get rid of it. I'm not trying to throw the purse out the window, But I carry it with me all day. And I say, you know what? I'm gonna hold a little space for you guys. It's not gonna be up in here. I'm not gonna act upon it, But y' all can hang out in my purse. You can come with me. We're gonna go to the grocery store, we're gonna go to dinner, we're gonna go to work. We're gonna do everything we're gonna do to achieve our goals. And. And you can hang out in here. And I know it sounds ridiculous, but being able to understand that we don't have to get rid of a thought or emotion to live in accordance with our values, we can hold space for them, we can have them, we can experience them, and we can live anyways. The third tool is acceptance. What acceptance is, is really learning to have a new relationship with your thoughts and emotions. I remember that there was a time in my life, it was about four and a half years ago, and I had a lot of stuff going on and I was feeling very anxious and I went to bed and tossing and I was turning and then suddenly felt like my tongue swelling up and I couldn't breathe and my hands got swollen. And then I had a full blown anxiety attack. It really with me because I rejected it. I did not want to one accept that I had an anxiety attack because I'm like, I run a business, I can't have an anxiety attack. I spent probably the next six weeks just trying to avoid any situation that reminded me I didn't even want to work out because I was so afraid for my heart rate to elevate like it did at that point when I had the anxiety attack. And it wasn't until I started studying this kind of therapy when I heard the acceptance. And what really did it for me was understanding that the feelings I'm having are awful. The worst thing that happens, I continue to feel this way. The best thing that could happen is that I learned to feel okay feeling this way instead of trying to leave the situation. I told myself I was safe and I could stay in the situation. If we accept our emotions and accept our thoughts and say, I'm willing to feel the pain. The irony of it is that it tends to dissipate. So a great analogy for acceptance is getting stuck in quicksand. Which the irony of it is that some. Somebody gets stuck and there's one leg in. And what they do is they try to use their other limbs to get themselves out. But what they find Is they only get pulled in deeper. And the actual way to get out of quicksand is to almost lay flat and swim out. And so often what we find is that accepting the discomfort and doing the thing that feels scary is often the way out of the situation. The fourth tool in terms of building psychological flexibility is presence. What we find is that most of the times we're not actually in the present. We are reenacting the past or anticipating the future. And both of those tend to cause stress, anxiety, sadness. The present tends to be pretty peaceful. It's my brain telling me stories about what the present means. That tends to be what causes upsetness. What I like to do actually is, you know, I think meditation is great. I think that's a great tool. I have actually found that going on walks, and when I go on walks, I do two things, which is one, I observe all of my surroundings, and I'm pointing out things in my surroundings to myself. And then the second thing I'm doing is I'm allowing myself to notice the thoughts that come up while I am doing them. Because the reality is, is that if I'm trying to be present, what you'll probably notice is that you're also thinking about other things. Things are preoccupying you, Thoughts that might be disturbing you, et cetera. But that practice alone, what it does is it puts me in a state of observation which ultimately actually allows me to be present rather than experiencing the thoughts from the past or the future, because I start to notice them rather than be engulfed by them or get caught up in them. There's similar practices. A lot of people, I would say, try whatever works for you. I know meditation is a form of this, being able to observe the sensations in your body, the thoughts in your mind, the feelings that go throughout you. Now, the thing about practices that help you become present is they're very useful. At the same time, it's like a lot of people, especially nowadays, I think they tend to become avoidance practices, which is we do these things in hopes that if I meditate enough, if I walk enough, if I work out enough, if I read enough, if I cold plunge enough, if I sauna enough, I won't have these thoughts and feelings, emotions. I have fallen prey to this, where I used to have a very rigid routine, similar to how athletes have, like, a night before the game ritual that often they stick to, and they're, like, superstitious about, and they got to wear the right socks and everything when I was putting so much pressure on myself. I've seen this with a lot of people in business, I felt like every day was game day. And so it was like every day I had to follow very rigid routine to make sure that I was set up to feel my absolute best the next day. Because I had so much going on, there were so many stakes. And what I realized over time was that I didn't have a routine. A routine had me. The routine that used to alleviate stress in my life actually started to cause stress because I would look at my day and think, how do I fit all of this in? And what if I can't get to my workout? And what if I can't get to the meditation? What if I don't read my X amount of my book? And then I would have more stress around the routine than not. And so one thing that I do for myself is every couple of months, I actually change up what I do. I don't want to get stuck in doing the same things every day at the same times with the same people. Because what you see is that your brain makes up stories that that's the only way that you're going to be safe, productive. Well, if you're somebody who tends to fall prey to the routine, then challenge yourself every few weeks to change something about it. And what you'll find is that it is a lot more enjoyable to have a routine when you allow yourself some flexibility. The fifth tool is values. Our values are the filters in which we run decisions through and say, is this decision aligned with my values? More often than not, our brains will try to trick us into staying the same. And so it's really great to have values that pull you towards that enticing future so that you have something to anchor towards in the moments where you're not sure what to do. So what most people make the mistake of when they're trying to change is they think about what they don't want, but they don't create what they do want. Values is the first step in creating what do I want my life to look like? And who do I want to be? Not who don't I. Now, how I've gone through and figured out what are the values I want to live by. Two things. One is I think of the people who I admire most in life. These can be people who are dead, alive. I can know them. I cannot know them. But I think about those people and I write those names down. Who are the people I admire most? And then I ask myself, why do I admire them most? And then when I ask myself why I admire the most What I can do is I can extrapolate out the values that they live their life according to. For example, one person Alex really admires is Warren Buffett. Why do I think that Alex admires Warren Buffett? I think that he admires Warren Buffett because Warren Buffett is patient. And I think that he strives to be patient like Warren Buffett. And then the second piece is ask yourself, what are values that I hold today that I would like to continue holding, that I like about myself? Because though we have things we want to change about ourselves, we also have things that we do like about ourselves. And if you really think about it, there's probably things you're doing today that have worked for you in many ways. I think it's really hard if you've got like 10 values to live by. My rule of thumb has always been, I'm going to get as many out as I can and I'm going to try and consolidate it to three. I can remember three values and I can think about it on a daily basis, and I can use those values to make decisions. More than three becomes like, okay, I need a checklist for this. And so I think that it makes it easy to act upon them when they're concise and there's not too many of them. The sixth tool is committed actions. So this is taking action in accordance with our values rather than away from fear. We want to make it as easy as possible for us to take actions in accordance with our goals. Life is already going to be hard. Business is going to be hard, losing weight's going to be hard. It's going to be all hard enough. We want to try and make it as easy as possible. So there's a few ways you can do that. First one is building new habits that take you towards your goals into existing routines. For example, when I was a personal trainer, something I used to do is that if somebody was supposed to take vitamins every day, I would say, well, what's something you do every morning? They would say, I brush my teeth. Okay, amazing. What we're gonna do is you're gonna put your vitamins right next to your toothbrush. Every time you brush your teeth, I want you to take your vitamins. What happens is that they link the taking of vitamins with the brushing of the teeth. And then very quickly, they will start taking their vitamins every day just like they brush their teeth. The same goes for switching behaviors. For example, if you find yourself every day around, let's say, mid morning, 10 o', clock, you find Yourself snacking on something. What I would suggest you do, and this is another one I used when it was people losing weight, is I would say, cool, I want you to put a pack of gum right next to the snack. I want you to put it in front of the snack. And every time you go to take the snack instead, I want you to take a piece of gum and chew it and just chew it for five minutes and then tell me if you want the snack. What happens after that? What people find is that most of the time, they're not actually hungry when they're going for that snack. And so then eventually what happens is they swap the eating a snack with the chewing gum behavior, right? And then the chewing gum behavior leads them to losing weight, which is in accordance with their goals. And the third thing that I do in terms of taking committed action, is I call it just play it out. I want you to play out that everything today doesn't go according to plan, that you don't do everything perfectly. You don't take every action as well as you wanted to. Maybe you don't do one. Maybe you fall back into old behaviors. And I want you to play out how that feels and how the day turns out. Most people, they let the bump in the road become the pothole they get stuck in, they go to change, and then, because maybe one day they didn't stick to something they said they were going to do, they say it, they throw in the towel, and they allow themselves to get stuck there, and they remain in that cycle. What I want you to remember is that change is not linear. It's a process, and it takes time. The only thing that's going to stop you is if you expect it to be perfect, and you expect yourself to be perfect and perfectly adhere to change, which is not feasible at all. It's going to look like this. But over a long enough time horizon, you will change. And now what you want to make sure is that you don't fall into old habits and beat yourself up when you don't do things perfectly. Now, what happens when people don't take committed action is most of the time, it is a very intense feeling of stuckness. Feeling stuck in losing weight or achieving a goal with your body, Feeling stuck, stuck in a relationship, feeling stuck in a job, feeling stuck in a business, feeling stuck in a decision. It's because more often than not, they have conflicting feedback. There's a lot of stuff going really poorly, There's a lot of stuff going well, but they have no plan of action or directives having thoughts, having plans, having knowledge is one thing, but having a plan to apply the knowledge, actually doing something with the education you receive, that is the definition of learning. And so until you have actually taken the committed action, you have not taught your brain the lesson. So I want you to remember this as you're watching this video, because I didn't understand this, because I used to be the kind of person, I would read all these books, I would listen all this, and then I'd be like, oh, amazing, I'm never going to do it. And what I realized is that I am robbing myself of the lesson. And if you want to actually learn and teach your brain what you are watching here on this YouTube video, then you will go out and you will take the committed action. And then it becomes a learning. You just need to take the first one to two small steps and you will start to feel a sense of confidence and a sense of momentum. Because right now, most likely, if you're watching this video, you have a sense of momentum in the wrong direction. And so the best thing that you can do for yourself is created create a plan that is doable and it is not perfect. So you've been sitting here and you've been watching this video, and I can imagine the thoughts that are probably popping up right now, which are like, this is a great video. I'm gonna, like, act on it tomorrow. If you're going to do it eventually, you might as well do it now. And if you're going to do it in imperfect conditions, eventually, you might as well start off in imperfect conditions and make it easier when conditions are perfect. What I want you to understand is that right now your brain is probably freaking out telling you all the reasons why I am stupid and wrong and you shouldn't listen to this video. Maybe they're right, but maybe they're not. One way makes your life better, one way makes it worse. And so ask yourself, does making a committed action plan today make my life better or worse tomorrow? If the answer is better, then go do it now.