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If you're staying comfortable, you are staying stuck. Believe me when I say comfort is what kills your dreams. Twelve years ago, I was 100 pounds overweight. I was getting fucked up all the time, and I was stuck. Today, I get to live the life of my dreams. And it's really due to me solving these three common problems that I want to share with you today. And by the end of this video, you will have the solution to all three problems so you can get unstuck and actually achieve your goals. The first problem was allowing the fear of being judged or disliked to actually dictate my action. People are afraid of being disliked. They're afraid of being misunderstood. And so because of that, they are unable to grow because they won't take action out of the fear that other people are going to judge them for the action they take. If you are unwilling to be misunderstood, you're also, by consequence, unwilling to grow. If being liked and being understood is more important to you than achieving your goals, you won't achieve your goals. And I think the reason that this happens is because we have this weird fear of standing out from the crowd. We are wired to be in a community. We're wired to have a crowd that we're surrounded with. We're wired to be with people. But it doesn't help when the crowd that you stand with is mediocre. And this is what's happened to me multiple times in my life, which is I've realized that the people whose judgment I feared, who I felt would stop liking me, they weren't people I wanted to be like. And so it was actually a good thing, but it didn't feel good at the time. And what I recognized through that realization was that you shouldn't surround yourself with people that don't inspire you, because whether you want to or not, you are going to assimilate and take pieces from all the people that are around you, whether it be family, friends, coworkers, boss like, you will assimilate pieces of them. And so you have to be very particular about the people that you surround yourself with. And I know it's like the harsh truth, but as nice as your cousins may be, as long as you may have had those friends, like, do you look up to them, do they inspire you? Or are you just bullshitting yourself because you want to stay comfortable? Those are the questions I had to ask myself because I realized that I was not living my life. Not because I didn't want to and I didn't have a desire, but my desire to be liked and understood was higher. So the reality is this. You will be disliked and you will be misunderstood and you will be judged by people who maybe you love and who you've been close with. And if anything, let that tell you that you are on the path to success if those are not people that you aspire to be like. And so you want to trust the process and ignore advice from people who don't have lives that you desire. All great entrepreneurs are willing to be misunderstood. I can tell you this because I speak with thousands of entrepreneurs each week. I am an entrepreneur. I know some of the greatest of our time. They are willing to be misunderstood and they are not concerned with being liked. They're concerned with achieving their goals. One of my heroes and somebody that I look up to and I admire a lot is Elon Musk. I know a lot of people would say he's the greatest entrepreneur of our generation. Well, look at what people used to tell him. Everyone said that Tesla was going to fail. When he started Tesla Space X, people said, no way that you can make this happen. Rockets can't land themselves. And nobody believed that Twitter was going to last past three months of him taking it over. And look where he is at today. He has all these successful, fast growing billion dollar companies. He is over all of them and they are all growing. If you look at Elon Musk, he is now one like the richest person on the planet. And what do most people say about him? In fact, a lot of people don't talk about how successful his companies are. Instead they talk about how he's not like us, how he's weird, how he seems autistic, how he talks like an alien, how he's not a normal person. They dehumanize him. He definitely doesn't care what people think. He's not concerned with being liked. He's said that publicly before. He's not concerned with that. He's concerned with results. He's concerned with sustainable energy. He's concerned with getting us to Mars, and he's concerned with free speech. He doesn't give a shit if you like him along the way. He gives a shit that he gets those things for humanity. And so I think people like that are very inspiring and they're a fantastic representation of what it looks like to take action despite people judging you and not liking you. If I look at my personality, what I have natural proclivities towards, I would say that I definitely come from a family where I was taught that to be liked is a good thing. And when I first Started going against the grain. I remember just anchoring myself in all this content that I saw from, like, Tony Robbins and Jim Rohn, Elon Musk. Just all these people are doing great things who clearly went against the grain and stood out from the crowd. And each time I felt myself at a sticking point where I wasn't sure what decision to make, I had to reference back to those people as anchors for me. Because what I realized for myself is a lot of the reason that I wasn't able to move forward with decisions quickly wasn't because I didn't know what decision to make. It was because I was fearful of what people were going to say and how people were going to judge me. I was so fearful that I remember I actually met a stylist. This person dressed entrepreneurs. And that person took me shopping. You know, I dressed feminine and like, a woman would. And that person told me, he said, nobody is going to take you seriously if you dress like this and if you show any skin. And I was like, well, I don't like when people look like they're nuns at, you know, work or whatever. They're, like, incredibly conservative. But at the same time, I felt like, well, I don't want to be judged by all these people. So I was so scared of the potential that people could judge me. I completely changed how I dressed. I was wearing turtlenecks. I was covering my legs. I remember just feeling even uncomfortable to the degree that I didn't even want to film content when I started three and a half years ago without sleeves. Sleeves. It's like, we're in 2024. What the fuck? Until my friend Brooke Castillo, I love her, she took me shopping and she said, what are you doing? And I was like, what do you mean? Like, you don't dress feminine. You just wear frumpy clothes. You cover everything. I don't understand. You've got a great body. And I was like, I don't want people to judge me for, you know, dressing a certain way, like, looking too sexual or looking too this or too that. And she was like, yeah, I think that's stupid, and it's so funny. But it just took somebody else in that moment being like, why are you doing things out of fear? And I remember in that moment, it wasn't even like, oh, I want to dress a certain way. It was truly, I don't want my actions to be dictated by fear of judgment in whatever direction that is. And so what do I want to wear? What do I feel best in? I'm not worried what People are going to say about me, and I don't need everybody to like and understand me for me to achieve my goals. So what's the solve for this? This is actually a mental switch that I've had to make, which is chase judgment and misunderstanding rather than trying to run away from them. You have to accept that not everybody will accept and support your journey. It is not a need to have support to achieve your dreams. Lots of people say, well, I need support from my spouse, I need support from my friends. I need. No, you don't. You need support from yourself. Nobody can support you more than you support yourself. And so first and foremost, fuck what everybody else is saying about you and how they're judging you. Focus on how do I support myself and do I like who I am? Do I think that my actions align with my goals? How do I judge myself? That's what matters. And you have to learn to put those things first. And you have to stop second guessing your own judgment and relying on other people's who you don't even want to be like them. It's always a trade off, which is like, you can have growth or you can have comfort. You cannot have both at the same time. What I want to give to you is the internal dialogue that I have had to assimilate in order to make these changes. Because you have to cue yourself in order to take the action. And so the cue is this. When you recognize that somebody is judging you or they don't like you, ask yourself this question, is this person living the life that I want? And if the answer is no, probably a good thing that they don't like you or that they're misunderstanding you. The second cue is tell yourself this, Let me be misunderstood right now. You've told yourself that being disliked and being misunderstood are bad things. So you've trained your brain that those are things to be anxious about. You need to untrain this. And the first way that starts is just by repeating things. I like to say I'm not for everyone. Oh, yeah, don't think they like me. Yeah, definitely came off like a bitch there because there's nothing wrong with it. And I want to make it normal for myself. And so the more that I say it out loud, the more I repeat it in my head, the easier it is sometimes. And one of my favorite frames to take is I call the I am bad frame. Oftentimes when I feel like people are judging me, it's because they're judging me that I'm a bad leader. I'm a Bad entrepreneur. I'm a bad wife. I'm a bad friend. Rather than run away from all of those thoughts and feelings, what I do is I actually try to really lean into them. Maybe I am a bad leader. Maybe I am a bad wife. Maybe I am a bad friend. Fuck it, I am. And so what? That frame has helped me a ton because it's helped me lean into being disliked, being misunderstood, and take action even when I'm recognizing that people maybe don't like me or understand me. It's actually like, I am bad. Maybe I was a bad boss that day. Maybe I was a bad wife that day. And so what? Are humans perfect? No, what you want to do is, I want you to repeat this to yourself. I want to be judged. I want to be disliked. If you're not being hated for something, then you're probably not standing for anything. If people don't dislike you, you're probably not actually telling people who you really are. Because most people, if they are the truest version of themselves, rub a lot of people the wrong way. And so the fuck what? You're not going to die. If you are unwilling to be judged, you're also unwilling to grow by consequence. And it's not about getting everyone's approval. It's about having the courage to act when you don't have everyone's approval. And I'll leave you with this final quote, which is from Jeff Bezos, who I think is actually a really fantastic leader. And this quote is, if you can't tolerate critics, don't do anything new or interesting. The second problem is wanting the goal more than you want the work to achieve the goal. A lot of people claim that they want success, but their actions do not back it up. This is something that happens to me all the time, especially when I'm interviewing people to work at my company or one of my portfolio companies. People say, like, I would do anything to work at your company. And then I'm like, great, move to Las Vegas, and you can work here. And they're like, oh, yeah, anything but that. And I'm like, you. You lied. Because if you really wanted it that bad, you would do what it took. They're unwilling to be inconvenienced or uncomfortable to achieve their goals. And here's the truth. You are not what you want. You are what you do. And so if you don't show up and put in the work, then you don't actually want it. You say you do, but you lie to yourself and therefore lie to others. And this is Something that I've had to call myself on, on BS many times in my life. If I don't have the result, I don't want it bad enough. Like my example, if somebody says, I would do anything to work for you. I want the job. I want the job. And I say, great, you can have the job. You have to just live here. And then they're like, no, I don't. Well, then you want to stay at home and live there more than you want this job more than you want the success more than you want the career. That's okay. Just don't BS yourself. I'll give you an example of this. I had a portfolio company, and this person said, I want to build $100 million business. So much so that they actually turned down an offer to have their business bought for tens of millions of dollars. In that moment, I said, if you're turning it down, I want to make sure you're committed to what it's going to take to become $100 million business. This person verbally committed. And then they didn't show up. Instead of building the company, they let their hobbies take up pretty much all their time. They didn't show up to team meetings. They didn't hire and fire the right way. They didn't put the effort in to build a culture. They spent all their time doing other things that were not building $100 million company. I have zero issue with somebody who doesn't want $100 million company. Plenty of you that watch this probably just want to be able to replace your income. You probably just want to have a company that allows you freedom to be with your family and travel the world. That's fucking amazing. Just don't lie. And he continued to say, I really want this. I want $100 million company. I was like, but you don't. Because actions speak louder than words. Show me, don't tell me, demonstrate what you want, don't tell me what you want. And so most of the time, what it is is that we have a goal that we really want, or we think we do, but we actually want comfort more. And so that's why it's such a big advocate of disobeying comfort. Comfort kills most of our dreams because most of our dreams have an inconvenience to get them. And the question is, are we willing to experience that inconvenience? Are we willing to tolerate that discomfort in order to get our dreams? Most dreams require that. You know, the same goes for I have lots of friends who are single and you know, they tell me, they're like, I really want to get married. And I'm like, okay, well, no you don't. And they're like, well, why would you say that? What do you mean? I just said I want to get married. And I'm like, how do you meet somebody if you're at home every day? If you just go home, go to the gym, go home and eat, like, where the fuck are you going to meet your husband? They're just all fall out of the sky. Like, if you want to get married, commit to dating. Because dating, meeting people, trying new things, that's how you're going to meet somebody to actually get married. Because I actually went on dates for 18 months before I met the person that I wanted to marry. And it was awful and it was terrible. But I was willing to tolerate the discomfort of dating and being in those situations in order to find somebody that could be a partner for the rest of my life. So what's the solution to this? What I had to learn is that I had to learn how to reward myself for following a process rather than getting an outcome. So if you learn to follow and reward yourself for a process rather than the outcome, you will learn to love the process. And then by consequence, you're more likely to get that outcome plus more. So a question that I like to ask myself most of the time when I'm confronted with these situations is say I want a goal. Say it's like I want to lose 10 pounds. What am I willing to sacrifice to lose 10 pounds? Am I willing to sacrifice wine night with the girls? Am I willing to sacrifice my sleeping in every morning because I got to go to the gym? What are you willing to sacrifice to give your goals? If we picked what we're willing to sacrifice rather than what we would like to get, then we're more likely to achieve our goals. Because once you see your goals through the lens of sacrifice, you understand that in order to get anything, you must give up something. It's just a trade off for me to build the company I build. What do I sacrifice? I actually do sacrifice a lot of my autonomy of time. My time is constantly being pulled by many different people. I don't have the luxury of just canceling a day when I wake up in the morning because I don't feel like it. Even if I don't feel good, I don't feel like I've got the luxury of canceling a day because guess What, I've got 15 other people that have scheduled their day around me and so everything that you want, you have to give up something to get. The biggest mental switch I've had to make is choosing my goals in accordance with what I'm willing to give up. For example, in building acquisition.com I looked at what is it going to take to build this company? Okay, well, I think it's going to take an in person headquarters. I think it's going to take having a hybrid team where it's like we have people in person, we have people remote. I think it's going to take going back into a season where I don't really get to travel as much, I don't really get to do as much stuff in my free time, I don't really get to see my friends as much. And all of those things have occurred. And so what I recognize is that in order to achieve my dreams, I'm going to go through a period where there's things that I do like, but I've chosen to give those things up for this greater goal. Now is that forever? No, but it is for a period of time. And I'm committed to doing that and to seeing it through. So if you think about commitment, commitment is cutting off alternatives. So if I commit to something, it means that I've made it very hard to do anything else. So if you commit to a spouse, getting married makes it very difficult to date other people. That's why it's the ultimate commitment. If you move for a job, I would say that says that you're committed because you've committed to relocating for a job. That's a commitment. And so your actions and what you're willing to cut off are proof of your commitment. Instead of picking your goals by what you want to gain, pick your goals by what you're willing to give up. So here's what I want you to do. Think about the goal you have in mind and I want you to write down that goal. And then I want you to ask yourself this question. I want you to write this down, what do I have to give up that I currently have or do to reach that goal? And then ask yourself, am I actually willing to give those things up? And if you're not, that's okay. The goal is not for you. If you're not willing to sacrifice, then you are prioritizing comfort over your dreams and goals. The third problem is when you allow lack of confidence to be a reason that you don't take action. A lot of people think that they need to feel confident in order to take action. And that's actually just Fucking wrong. You gain confidence through taking action when you feel afraid, uncertain, frustrated, sad, or lack confidence in yourself. Every time that I've ever done anything worth doing and I've been able to gain confidence, I've gained confidence because I did something that I wasn't sure I could do. I gained confidence because I did something despite how I was feeling. I gained confidence because I didn't have confidence before. We don't gain confidence by doing things we're confident doing. The reality is action creates experience. Experience builds competence, and then competence leads to confidence. But it starts with taking action. Inputs, outputs. The inputs are action. The output is confidence. The more action you can take in your life, the more confident you will become through that entire process. People always tell me, like, I just don't feel ready. Listen, that's bullshit. It's your brain trying to keep you safe. Nobody ever feels ready to do anything worth doing because there's the unknown. Unknown, right? And you're not going to know until you try. And so the reality is, taking action even when you don't believe in yourself, is what leads to growth and it's what leads to confidence. And if anything, even if you take action when you're not feeling confident and it doesn't go exactly how you want it to go, you're going to feel more confident because you are confident in your ability to just take the first step and take action. And so even if you fail at the task itself or at the thing, you're still going to feel more confident than if you hadn't tried because you've at least taught yourself that you have the ability to take the first step. You know, I remember when I was talking to Alex about shutting down my personal training business to start gym launch with him. And I had one friend who I really respect at the time. I remember we went on a hike and I said, you know, I just don't know if I'm ready to do this right now. What do you think? And he said, dude, just fucking do it. Who cares? You know, it was the advice I needed to hear because at that time I was being so cautious. I was so afraid of making the wrong decision. I was so afraid that I didn't know things, which I didn't. I didn't know jack shit. I figured it all out. That gave me so much confidence to be able to take a leap of faith like that and just realize I have the ability to figure it the fuck out even when I don't know what's going on. You know, the other time, even More recently that I took a risk was, you know, we started acquisition.com, which many could say is a risk. Putting millions of dollars into a business and not knowing if it's going to work out, that was a risk. That was something that I did not feel confident in at all. I felt like I had no idea what I was doing. Despite having all this experience in business, information is not actually what's going to build confidence. It's taking action and having the experience. Someone like me, I have all the resources in the world. It doesn't matter how much I know about investing. And until I do it, and I do my first deal, I don't actually feel confident. I don't feel ready. I don't feel like I have enough information. So the solution that I've recognized for this problem is learning to take uncertain action. You have to learn to take action. When you don't know all the steps, perfect conditions do not exist. Having all the information is a facade. Neither of these things will ever happen. If you are waiting for those things to occur, you'll be waiting until the end of time. You need to take action before or you feel confident. And when you ignore these challenges, you actually sacrifice your future success. The irony of success is that in order to have more success, you have to have more failure. And you don't have more failure until you take more action. You don't have more action until you're willing to take action when you're not feeling sure, when you're not feeling certain, and when you feel like you don't know what the fuck you're doing. It's not about perfection. It's about learning from your failures. Actually, if you want to learn from more of your failures, you can check out my video here, where I talk about pretty productive failure. Here's the thing. You're probably watching this and you're thinking to yourself, man, but if Leila knew how bad I really was, or Layla knew how uncertain I really was, or Layla knew how nervous I really was, she would think I should wait until I had more information or was more certain. That's your brain telling you that you're special. And I promise you, that is how all of our brains work. They all think that we are the exception to the rule. You are not the exception to the rule. I promise you, you have enough information. You just need to take on uncertain action. So here's what I ask myself. What imperfect action do I need to take? So sometimes I will even think, how do I do something that I consider imperfect? Because what it helps me do is it helps my brain not try to play by the rules. And that helps me get way more shit done. I get way more experience, I take way more action. And so I see way more results that will create a positive feedback loop that will actually accelerate your growth. Because what happens is you will take imperfect action. You will see that you got results. Maybe they're not perfect, but they're better than where you were. And then you're like, shit, I'll take more imperfect action and I'll get more results. And then eventually you iterate enough times. It's a process that you will get the result. But what you have to understand too is that like change achieving your goals, it's a process. It's not a one time event. You don't like fail once and then never succeed. You also don't succeed once and then succeed forever. It's a process where you have to continuously get feedback from the environment, from others, from yourself to see if you're on track or not to hitting your goals. But the only way to get there is by taking the first step. Imperfectly. Competence breeds confidence. So start small, take imperfect action, and eventually you will gain confidence. Confidence in public comes from discipline in private. It's the discipline to take imperfect action. It's the discipline to not listen to every thought and emotion you have. It's the discipline to listen and trust the process rather than your animalistic brain that's telling you otherwise. Here's what I want to leave you with. If you want to succeed, stop waiting and hoping for the approval from others. Success is about taking action without everyone's approval, showing up with consistent effort and building competence until finally the confidence follows. That is how you succeed. And remember, your actions are what define you, not your desires.