Adapt or Die: Stop Being Weak About Hard Things & Get Ahead Of 99% Of People | Tom Bilyeu PT 1

Summary

Impact Theory Podcast Summary

Episode: Adapt or Die: Stop Being Weak About Hard Things & Get Ahead Of 99% Of People | Tom Bilyeu PT 1

Date: June 29, 2023
Host: Tom Bilyeu

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Overview

This episode of Impact Theory centers on Tom Bilyeu's philosophy that facing difficulty head-on, relentless self-improvement, and radical self-honesty are the keys to fulfillment and elite performance. With raw honesty and intense energy, Tom deconstructs how successful people thrive in chaos, process negative emotions, disrupt distraction, and craft habits and value systems that drive both achievement and happiness. The conversation ranges from practical habit formation and time management, to deep discussions on relationships, depression, identity, and the physics of personal progress.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Embracing Difficulty & Building Resilience

• Adapt or Die Mentality:
  Tom highlights the necessity of pushing through pain and discomfort—physically, emotionally, and intellectually—to become stronger and stand out from the average crowd.
  • Quote:
    “You have to be a demon. You have to give your brain and body the impulse. Adapt or die, motherf***er. I will break you in half before I give up.”
    (01:22, Tom Bilyeu)
• Sitting With Emotion:
  Developing the skill of sitting in uncomfortable emotions instead of running from them builds resilience.
  • Quote:
    “Once I realized that, like, oh, I could just get better at sitting in this emotion, I don’t have to run from this emotion. Then you begin to get stronger.”
    (01:41, Tom Bilyeu)

Distraction: Use & Abuse

• Distraction as Self-Soothing:
  Tom reframes distraction not as a moral failing, but as the brain’s attempt to relieve stress when facing important, hard tasks.
  • Quote:
    “That’s why I think I’m right about what distraction really is. It’s your brain trying to soothe you.”
    (03:34, Tom Bilyeu)
• Intentional Time-Blocking:
  Distraction can be healthy and even useful when time-blocked and done with intention.
  • Quote:
    “Once it becomes intentional, you’re using it as a tool for a specific reason that you can articulate to yourself and it’s time-blocked, you’re good.”
    (06:02, Tom Bilyeu)

Obsession, Progress, and Managing Goals

• The Power of Obsession:
  Tom argues that being obsessed (in a healthy way) is essential for achievement.
  • Quote:
    “You’ll never get what you want out of life…unless you are obsessed. Obsession will hurt and it will be unhealthy unless you realize that you can get better.”
    (08:59, Tom Bilyeu)
• Value System: Effort Over Outcome:
  The key is to value effort and tenacity rather than outcome or innate talent.
  • Quote:
    “Value yourself for how hard you went after something, not for what you accomplished.”
    (09:50, Tom Bilyeu)

Goals, Purpose, and Alignment

• Defining Honorable Goals:
  An honorable goal is one that uplifts you and others. The focus should not be on societal judgment, but on personal alignment and contribution.
  • Quote:
    “An honorable goal is something that uplifts you and other people. That’s about as simple as I can make it.”
    (10:01, Tom Bilyeu)
• Turning Passion into Purpose:
  Tom believes it’s not only possible but necessary to connect passion (even video games or unconventional interests) with purpose and contribution for lasting fulfillment.
  • Quote:
    “I think all three can exist. But greatness makes demands.”
    (12:22, Tom Bilyeu)

The Physics of Fulfillment

• Hard Work + Purpose = Fulfillment:
  Fulfillment comes from working hard on something meaningful that contributes to a group.
  • Quote:
    “Fulfillment…is the only emotional state that is resilient to everything from anger, loss, and grief. Through all of that, you can be fulfilled…The good life is fulfillment.”
    (15:12, Tom Bilyeu)

Love, Relationships, and Life Choices

• The Biology of Love:
  Explains the neurochemical role of love and how it drives human connection, family, and resilience.

  • Quote:
    “All of the crazy things that nature does to do that are incredible. But nature only has two levers: pleasure and pain.”
    (18:42, Tom Bilyeu)

• Choosing Not to Have Kids:
  Tom candidly shares the reasoning and emotional complexity behind opting out of having children, despite nature’s “trick.”

  • Quote:
    “I really want kids…But I looked at my life from several different vantage points…if I had kids, I would feel a huge obligation…When I’m at work I would feel like I should be with my kids. When I’m with my kids…like I should be at work.”
    (20:21-21:30, Tom Bilyeu)

• Thoughtfulness in Life Phases:
  He emphasizes thinking through how priorities shift across life’s phases to avoid being blindsided by regret.

  • Quote:
    “I know when I get to 80 that I will be very grateful that I thought through how my frame of reference will change.”
    (25:07, Tom Bilyeu)

Relationship Advice

Tom Bilyeu’s relationship framework:

1. Don’t criticize, compliment:
   “Every time I have an impulse to criticize her, instead, I’m going to reach for a real compliment.” (26:46)
2. Have a lot of sex:
   “If you have a spouse and you have what they call bed death, that relationship is going to become dry and brittle.” (29:49)
3. High-level communication:
   “If you get that stack right, then all of a sudden, communication becomes very easy. But man, you’ve got to be emotionally naked.” (33:12)

Balancing Ambition & Relationships

• Continuous, Active Maintenance:
  Success in work and relationships isn’t about finding “balance,” but rather about persistent, honest communication, honoring each person’s role, and setting boundaries.
  • Quote:
    “My marriage is great because we work on it every single day…You have to know, like, I need to do this set of 32 things to make sure that my marriage is always thriving, and [they] don’t always mean the most time.”
    (37:11, Tom Bilyeu)
• Integrating Work & Marriage:
  “It is not a mistake that Lisa and I are building a company together. I would never be able to work as much as I do if we didn’t.”
  (38:31)

Dealing with Depression & Complexity of Change

• Body and Psychology:
  Cognitive and physiological (e.g., gut health) aspects of depression must be addressed for true recovery.

  • Quote:
    “Your gut controls many of your neurotransmitters and serotonin…if you’re not dealing with your gut now, you have a problem…”
    (39:50, Tom Bilyeu)

• The Only Belief That Matters:
  “If people don’t think, ‘Oh, I can control this,’ then they won’t keep going…It is 100% entirely a question of this path leads to one outcome, this path leads to a different outcome.”
  (42:34-43:34, Tom Bilyeu)

• Blind Faith and Grit in Hard Times:
  Tom and his wife Lisa’s five-year battle with her microbiome shows that faith, grit, and relentless problem-solving are crucial.

  • Quote:
    “Most people cannot do the first part, which is to believe that it's fing possible... you have to give your brain and body the impulse. Adapt or die, motherfer.”
    (47:12, Tom Bilyeu)

The Power of Clarity & Goal Execution

• Relentless Specificity:
  Goals must be concrete, actionable, and time-bound—not vague aspirations.
  • Quote:
    “You have to get so specific with your goal that you know what to do with the next 15 minutes of your life.”
    (50:56, Tom Bilyeu)
• Desire & Demand:
  You must want your goal “as badly as a drowning man wants their next breath.”
• The 92% Failure Rate:
  Only 8% of people stick with New Year’s resolutions—clarity and insane desire are the differentiators.
  • Quote:
    “The reason most people fail to achieve their goals is twofold. Number one, they don’t have a sufficient level of clarity. And number two, they don’t want it badly enough.”
    (50:19, Interviewer/Host)

Habits, Routines, and Rules for Success

• Time Structure:
  Tom describes in detail his daily schedule, emphasizing rules such as:
  • Awake hours Mon–Fri = working or working out.
  • Prioritizing marriage on weekends (“I’m not a businessman, I’m a family man.”)
  • No alarm—sleep quality comes first.
  • Cognitive “priming” in the morning: workout, meditation, thinkitation (structured creative thinking).
• Prioritization:
  “You must be completely unafraid to set priorities, to say this is more important than that.” (63:07)
• Habit Optimization:
  Rules, habits, and efficient routines replace motivation; the foundation of continual progress.

Progress & Failure

• The Physics of Progress:
  View personal development as a scientific process: hypothesize, act, measure, iterate. Failure is critical data, not defeat.
  • Quote:
    “Failure is the most information rich data stream on Planet Earth. But you have to learn from the failure. To learn from the failure, you have to be willing to admit that you made one.”
    (69:19, Tom Bilyeu)
• Why Most Break:
  Difficulty, boredom, and embarrassment break most people, but grittier, more honest self-evaluation facilitates growth.
  • Quote:
    “Most people, when they get to the point where they have to evaluate their results, they end up lying to themselves and making it somebody else’s fault.”
    (69:45, Tom Bilyeu)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On Facing Hard Things:
  “If something is terrifying me, I’m like, I’m in this. I’m not running from this. I’m dealing with this.” (02:56, Tom Bilyeu)

• On Time Management:
  “If I’m awake, I’m either working or working out.” (61:19, Tom Bilyeu)

• On Desire vs. Quitting:
  “Quitting is always an option. Quitting is the easiest answer. If you don’t want that to be you, then you’ve got to build desire and get a freakish amount of clarity.” (61:09, Tom Bilyeu)

• On Personal Evolution:
  “Consistency and follow through. You become what you repeat. The reason that anybody successful becomes successful is because, to quote Winston Churchill, they can go from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm.” (65:42, Tom Bilyeu)

• On The Power of Efficiency:
  “People mistake grinding around the clock and becoming less efficient because they’re tired with actually getting more done. What you want to do is make sure you have a very high output of achievement per waking hour.” (83:39, Tom Bilyeu)

• On Progress:
  "The reality is that you cannot do two things at one time. You may be able to very rapidly shift between different tasks, but you're always going to be doing one thing at a time." (63:54, Interviewer/Host)

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Timestamps for Important Segments

• Intro & "You are Average" Speech: 01:19
• How Tom Faces Hardship, Discomfort, & Contracts: 02:22–03:13
• Distraction, Time-Blocking for Dopamine: 03:34–06:42
• Habit Formation & Value Systems: 06:43–09:47
• Obsession, Progress, and Managing Goals: 09:55–12:22
• Fulfillment, Social Animals, and Love: 14:44–18:42
• Personal Decision Not to Have Kids: 20:21–26:38
• Relationship Rules & Advice: 26:46–33:41
• Work/Life Balance and Priorities: 34:10–38:31
• Depression, Complexity & Gut Health: 39:34–45:38
• How to Break Catastrophic Thinking: 47:12–50:08
• Goal Setting, Specificity & Execution: 50:19–63:07
• Daily Routine, Habits, Optimization: 83:39–94:52

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Summary Table: High-Impact Habits and Philosophies

| Area | Tom’s Practice & Philosophy | |-----------------|-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------| | Facing Hardship | Welcome discomfort, sit in negative emotion, "adapt or die" mentality | | Distraction | Use time-blocked healthy distraction intentionally, not as mindless avoidance | | Obsession | Get obsessed with goals, but focus on effort and progress, not innate superiority | | Fulfillment | Marry hard work to meaningful, group-uplifting purpose | | Relationships | Prioritize compliment > criticism, maintain sexual connection, communicate openly | | Depression | Address both body (gut, sleep, diet) and mind (therapy, beliefs, repetition) | | Goals | Make them hyper-specific, time-bound, "honorable," and exciting | | Habits | Structure daily routines for efficiency and alignment with values/goals | | Progress | Hypothesize, act, measure, iterate; treat failure as necessary data |

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Final Thoughts & Takeaways

Tom Bilyeu’s relentless message is that most people fail not because of the world’s cruelty or personal deficits, but due to lack of clarity, insufficient desire, and an unwillingness to endure the relentless discomfort of progress. With radical self-honesty, extreme specificity in goals, intentional time management, and unwavering commitment to personal values and relationships, success and fulfillment are within reach. The challenge is not complexity, but consistency—and the courage to adapt, endure, and iterate when most people choose comfort, distraction, or excuses.

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For further details and mastery, rewatch or revisit the highlighted timestamps and consider Tom’s challenge:

“Everything will relent to your superior will. Never forget that.”
(50:08, Tom Bilyeu)

Transcript

[Tom Bilyeu]

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[Interviewer/Host]

You're listening to the Impact Theory podcast,

[Tom Bilyeu]

your source of empowering ideas and actionable techniques from the world's highest achievers. Join host Tom Bilyeu, serial entrepreneur and co founder of the billion dollar brand

[Interviewer/Host]

Quest Nutrition, on a journey to unlock your potential and realize your vision of success.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Welcome to Impact Theory. Hey, you are average. Yes, stop being afraid of that. You're average. But you can get better. Go learn. But you have to be a demon. You have to give your brain and body the impulse. Adapt or die, mother. I will break you in half before I give up. Once I realized that, like, oh, I could just get better at sitting in this emotion, I don't have to run from this emotion. Then you begin to get stronger. You become more capable of facing things.

[Interviewer/Host]

Then.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Then if you have a value system that says, hey, Tom, don't be weak. That feeling of like, you want to run and hide, stop, man up, face it, sit in it, do not allow yourself. And then when I do it, I'm like, bro, this is why you are you. This is why you've accomplished what you've accomplished. Because in this moment, everybody else runs. In this moment, everybody else breaks. In this moment, everybody else becomes so insecure that they go chase distraction because. But you don't.

[Interviewer/Host]

You sit here.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Like, even when I go to the dentist and it hurts, I open my mouth wider and I'm like, get in there. I don't flinch.

[Interviewer/Host]

I don't try to pull back.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I'm like, yeah, baby. Like, get that drill in there. Like, go on, scrape it. Get down to the bone. Even though it hurts. And my every impulse is to pull away. If I'm dealing with something and it makes me anxious, I won't blade BLADING. Is where you turn sideways to something. When somebody does that to you, they're either intimidated by you, they're stressed, whatever. I will face that thing head on, literally and figuratively. If something is terrifying me, I'm like, I'm in this. I'm not running from this. I'm dealing with this. When I've got a hard thing that I don't want to do, which is almost always contracts, I'm like, here we go, we're going to do these contracts. I'm going to do this contract at three in the morning when everybody else, they wake up. Actually, they're sleeping. Who are we kidding?

[Interviewer/Host]

They're still asleep.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I'm up, I'm looking at a contract, and I am emotionally rewarding myself to the ends of the earth for doing that.

[Guest/Participant]

That's so cool. Like, so fascinating. Because like I said, the ironic thing is I'm only distracted when I'm trying to accomplish something meaningful and hard. But it's like challenging. I'm never distracted when I'm doing something easy and fun.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's why I think I'm right about what distraction really is. It's your brain trying to soothe you.

[Interviewer/Host]

It's grabbing a hold of all your

[Tom Bilyeu]

attention and saying, ah, don't worry about that. Put all your attention on this thing here and now you can feel better. And I'll be honest, there are times where I have been so stressed that the only thing that's going to allow me to decompress is doom scrolling. And it's awesome. Like, I am grateful that doom scrolling exists because I don't do things that aren't on my agenda. But sometimes my agenda is I need to allow myself to relax. Because there are times where even meditation is like, bro, I will get more out of this 20 minutes of meditation if I take five minutes to doom scroll to forget what to shift gears, right? Cause I'm obsessively thinking about this thing. Doom scroll some cats for five minutes. Ooh, cool. Now I've been distracted away from that thought. Now I can sink into a meditation. Now, that level of stress doesn't happen often, but when it does, I know what tool to reach for. But this goes back to self awareness. You have to distrust yourself, constantly be asking, I should not have this reaction, right? I shouldn't allow myself to be overwhelmed. You know me, I don't do overwhelm, but I don't do overwhelm because I have pattern interrupts. Doom scrolling cats. I limit it to a small amount of time. I follow it with meditation. And then I've got the value system of being hardcore, facing my challenges, so on and so forth. But it really takes that gestalt. And this is the part about helping people that I find really frustrating. It's all of those things. It is this incredibly complicated nest of rules. Time blocking value system, rewarding yourself, punishing yourself, on and on and on.

[Guest/Participant]

Is there a way to make those distractions, like, knowing, like, I'm aware of them, I'm aware that I'm easily distracted. Is there a way to make it a healthy distraction, to make it use for your benefit, time block it?

[Tom Bilyeu]

So if you want to take something like distraction and make it healthy, you need to have parameters. So you're going to time block. You're going to have it be a known tool, so you're not going to, like I catch myself doing sometimes, blindly reach for your phone. If you find yourself picking up your

[Interviewer/Host]

phone, you've got to be like, why

[Tom Bilyeu]

am I doing this? Does this fit into my rules? Did I say, hey, I'm now going to look at cats for 5 minutes,

[Interviewer/Host]

10 minutes, an hour, whatever.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But like, that is the amount of time that I'm going to do that I'm going to confine it to that. And then it's like, hey, if you want to spend 10 hours a day looking at cats, I'm not judging. Like, if your life is rad and you're stoked spending 10 hours a day looking at cats, just don't trick yourself into thinking, oh, I want to go, you know, build a huge charity and help millions of people and doom scroll cats for 10 hours. Like, those two things are mutually incompatible. So it's only the unintentional use of that, the unrestrained use of that. So once it becomes intentional, you're using it as a tool for a specific reason that you can articulate to yourself and it's time blocked, you're good.

[Interviewer/Host]

So for those people who do, maybe they aren't aware or they understand but have so much dopamine and just like

[Guest/Participant]

habitual of just going to TikTok, Instagram,

[Interviewer/Host]

Twitter, just scrolling for days to pass

[Guest/Participant]

the time to do whatever. How do you go about changing that behavior if you're already so entrenched in it?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I come down to one thing, George. Like, you're young, so I really want you to hear me. Your life is a confusing mess right now and that will manifest as negative emotion. It's all gonna pass. I've glimpsed your future. It all works out. It's amazing. Your life becomes wonderful. Because as you get older, you're gonna gain control of your emotions. As you gain control of your emotions, you're going to gain control of your time. As you gain control of your time, you're going to acquire skills. As you acquire skills, you're going to be able to do things that other people can't do. Like that really is the loop. And so as people get older, the reason that they tend to be happier and more self assured is they realize the rules of the game, that you can just really get better at this stuff and you can get good. And so I want people to hear that. But my thing is like, dude, you've really got to be obsessed with what you want to accomplish. And so if I could get you to understand, bro, all your dreams, that maybe the scale will be off. Maybe you want to be the greatest and you become, you know, 1,142. But at a 7.4 billion, that's really pretty cool. And so that's going to be the ride of your life. But you have to get obsessed. And the only reason that obsession is fun is because you actually know you're going to make progress. It's when you're obsessed and things aren't going well and you don't realize it's just a matter of time. And so like right now, dude, I am really emotionally worried for people that don't understand. The economy's going to turn back around, wars end, like, they're devastating. I don't wish it on anybody. But this too shall pass. It's like the great Buddhist phrase of all time, this too shall pass. If you knew that, yeah, the next three years are going to suck. But after that, it's going to be dope, man. And there's going to be a stretch of seven years that are nothing but awesomeness. But then you're going to go through an 18 month period. You're, you know, one of your loved ones is going to pass away and that's going to be brutal. But then you're going to have a stretch of six years. It's going to be awesome. Then you're going to have four years of just total suck. But through it all, you're going to be getting better and better at managing your emotions. So through it all, you know, all is going to be well. That's the joy, man. And so the thing I'm always trying to get people to understand, you'll never get what you want out of life. You're never going to accomplish the things that you want unless you are obsessed. Obsession will hurt and it will be unhealthy unless you realize that you can get better. And if you value yourself for already being good, right? Better, faster, stronger. Life will be a misery no matter what. And so far, better to focus on. Did I leave it all out on the field today? Right. So value yourself for how hard you went after something, not for what you accomplished. And then let yourself get obsessed with something because you'll get better over time.

[Interviewer/Host]

And then with that obsession, what if

[Guest/Participant]

it's an obsession with something that's not productive or unhealthy? Like video games, for example?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Who said that's not productive? And who said it's unhealthy? So there's only that which moves me towards my goals and that which moves me away from my goals. Now, I'll make one caveat. Your goals should be honorable. I'll define honorable. An honorable goal is something that uplifts you and other people. That's about as simple as I can make it. So if you have a goal that uplifts you and other people, then why not go just absolutely bonkers to make it come true? If you want to be a professional gamer, then that's going to be playing a lot of video games. And I actually, I never would have believed this is true. But I enjoy watching other people play video games. It's fun. And so if that's the way that you want to contribute that for people that want to watch you play, they can. Amazing. So now it's uplifting. You and other people, you'll be able to get into the passion Loop so that you're both the shout and the echo. The shout being you playing, the echo being people enjoying watching you play. Or maybe you're like playing video games so you can help build video games, right? So there's many ways that you can do something like that. So I just want people to have an honorable goal and then ask themselves of everything you do, did this move you towards your goal? Yes or no? If yes, keep doing it. If no, stop doing it. And that's it. And that literally is the easiest way to steer. But people let things complicate that because their parents tell them that they should be doing something that maybe they do or don't want to do. They think that they should be making a ton of money, and the thing that they love doesn't make them a lot of money. They want to be the best, and they trick themselves into thinking this is only fun. If I'm the greatest of all time, I will tell you right now I play the video game Destiny 2. And I would laugh, I'm sure, if I saw the people that are spanking me, I mean, just embarrassing me. But I still love it. And so I try to remind myself that it's about getting better when I play because I love to improve. And it's just video games are designed to squeeze the brain centers that evolution has given you for progression and goal acquisition and all that stuff. So it is a very fun microcosm. So I think people have to be very careful casting aspersions, moral judgments on any goal that is uplifting you and other people.

[Guest/Participant]

Do you think that there is a way to incorporate your passion, which could be video games, into purpose and also providing service and have that work for you? Or do you think you have to sacrifice one or like, you know, focus on a certain thing first? Like, is there a perfect world where all three can exist?

[Tom Bilyeu]

I think all three can exist. But greatness makes demands. So hiding in that meaning and purpose will all but break you because the world is constantly moving towards entropy. So from the moment of the big bang, everything is moving towards chaos. Now, when you introduce humans, Jesus, you magnify the amount of chaos 10,000 fold. I mean, it's just absolutely insane. We ourselves are complicated, bumping into all people that are complicated as well. And so to achieve something great, you are really going to fail a lot. You are going to run into more obstacles than you can count. But the problem is that fulfillment requires that you work hard. Partly because that for humans to become the most dominant predator the world has ever seen, we had to be very good at ordering the world. To order the world, you have to pour a tremendous amount of energy to stop the chaos and move it towards order. Because that's the other part of that equation. To bring order to a system, you must pour energy into it, literal energy. And so that's the battle that all of us are fighting against. And so if we know that meaning and purpose is the only thing that will ever serve you long term, that is how you get to fulfillment. And to do meaning and purpose, we know it's going to be brutally difficult, then the very thing that makes life worth living is going to be very hard. It will bring you to your knees. I have literally been brought to my knees. But as you get back up, which I encourage everyone to do, because we're all going to get brought to our knees, but not everybody's going to get back up. So if you get brought to your knees, don't worry about that. Doesn't make you a loser, but it does mean that you're on your knees, and it does mean you owe yourself getting back up. Now, when you get back up, that's going to make you feel some kind of way about yourself. You'd be like, yo, that didn't break me. That's incredible. So having meaning and purpose means, by definition, you are going to be brought to your knees at some point. You are going to fail to have the impact that you want to have in the world. And if you're ever going to have that and feel the way you want to feel, you have to get back up and keep going.

[Guest/Participant]

We've been talking a lot about, like, ambition and drive and getting your goals. I know another big part of your life is your relationship. So how does your relationship fit into your good life with your ambition and. Yeah, how does that all cocktail work in your life?

[Tom Bilyeu]

The good life, how to live it? Step one, you're having a biological experience. What does that mean? You are an animal that's been shaped by evolution. The more you understand the organ of the brain, really the whole body, the microbes in it, all of it, the more you understand that biological system, the more you're going to be able to predict the outcome of your thoughts and actions. And so if you're trying to have a good life, one, you're going to want to define it, which I will say. The good life is fulfillment. It's the only emotional state that is resilient to everything from anger, loss, and grief. Through all of that, you can be fulfilled. You may be devastated when you lose a loved one. It's devastating. It sucks. There's nothing fun about it. That doesn't mean that I'm not fulfilled as a human. It just means that I'm a fulfilled human going through something brutal. Conversely, if I'm momentarily happy but nothing is going right in my life, I'm not contributing in any meaningful way. I can laugh for five minutes and still be depressed. So fulfillment, I would say, is the only thing that's resilient. You're not gonna be depressed and fulfilled

[Interviewer/Host]

at the same time.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's just not. Now that we have a definition for what the good life is, now we can actually begin moving towards it. Now, the reason I say that step one is recognizing that you're having a biological experience is I understand the things that are gonna lead to fulfillment. One of them is working really hard. Another one is following or developing a passion that lets you contribute. That's number three to the group and to yourself. So if those are the rough ingredients that make up this cocktail of fulfillment, we have to figure out this idea of contributing to the group. What's that all about? That's about being a social animal. Now, what's the ultimate iteration of being a social animal?

[Interviewer/Host]

It is love.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Now, why is love so potent? Because nature has one aim and one aim only. The reason you are a social animal is because of this one reason. The reason that you have drive and ambition is because of this one reason. Nature's only goal. This is it. This is the punchline of everything, every. Your motivation for sitting here right now, my motivation for answering these questions, the reason that we put these cameras together, built this channel, all of it, is for one thing, because nature wants to make sure that you have kids, that have kids.

[Interviewer/Host]

That's it.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And now everything in your brain is nature pulling levers to make sure that you live long enough to have kids, to have kids, and that you actually have kids. So love, which I will say is a neurochemical state, is nature's way of going, yo, I want to make sure you do this thing. So it's this incredible cocktail of. I mean, obviously there's different kinds of love. I will assume you mean romantic love, since you referenced my relationship. So romantic love is like the thing. It is the thing that when you think about how people want to feel, in fact, when they have people describe how they want to feel and they look at that neurochemistry, you know what it most closely matches? Even though this isn't the word that people put to it. Do you have a guess?

[Guest/Participant]

Like, looks like you're on drugs or something.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's an orgasm. And so it makes sense that if nature's job is to make sure that you stay alive long enough to have kids that have kids, that the neurochemical cocktail of an orgasm be pretty high on people's list. So as people are describing it, they're like, oh, yeah, that's the neurochemical you feel right after an orgasm. So technically it isn't the orgasm itself, but it's that cocktail afterwards. All the bonding hormones are secreted after that. You can actually predict. I don't know with what degree of accuracy, but I'm going to guess it is extraordinarily high that you can predict who will stay married by the number of receptors that they have for. I think it's vasopressin, which is one of the bonding hormones. So there's oxytocin and vasopressin are the two biggest. The ones where you're it's like the cuddle hormones. So that's the kind of feeling over time that you want to have for somebody.

[Interviewer/Host]

Why?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Because then you're more likely to have kids. And then you're likely to raise them long enough that they have kids. Because it's not just having kids, it's having kids that have kids. So you have to keep them alive. And all of the crazy things that nature does to do that are incredible. But nature only has two levers. Pleasure and pain. And one of those tremendous pleasures that nature will give you that is extraordinarily resilient to suffering and loss and sadness and all that is that really deep love. Not the early lusty stuff that's super fun, but like that really deep. I have shared a life, I don't know who I am without this person. Love that you can have with another person. If you're leveraging all of that neurochemical cocktail of soaking in the bonding so that over time, that sense of love is like nothing can touch it. Nothing can give me that. Right? I've made a lot of money in a single day, right? Nine figures in a single day. I'll let people go put in a calculator nine figures to see just how much that is in a single day. Okay, It's a dope feeling, but it's not love. Love trumps everything I've ever been through in my life when it's sustained. And so I put a lot of energy into it, a lot of energy, because it gives me back more than anything else in my life.

[Guest/Participant]

So you mentioned how nature is programmed you to have kids who have kids, and you made a personal decision not to do that. Why did you opt out of what nature wants?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Why I opted out of it, we'll get to in a second. But the fact that we can all opt out is fun because I'm like, ha. I got you, bitch. It's like nature thought she had me, but, you know, I'm not playing that game. So here's the thing. I really want kids. To this day, I really want kids. There are still moments where I'll see that thing that's like, oh, man, it triggers all of my desire to have kids. And I'm like, man, I am very sad that I can't both have the life that I'm living and have the life where I have kids. But I looked at my life from several different vantage points. What my wife calls the average Wednesday. So what would an average Wednesday look like if I had kids? And I know myself and I feel a tremendous amount of obligation. In fact, part of the reason that

[Interviewer/Host]

I work as hard as I do

[Tom Bilyeu]

at Impact Theory is I feel an obligation to you guys. I feel an obligation to the team. And I really, I take that seriously in ways that I think most people would be distressed by. And so for me it's like, okay, I really need to think about that. If I had kids, I would feel a huge obligation to them to come home. And so one thing that I like about work is that I don't feel conflicted. Lisa and I are building it together. So as I put energy into this, I'm putting energy into something that I'm doing with my wife. So that doesn't feel like it's fragmented energy. It feels like it's coming together. That was obviously on purpose. I'm building a company that brings many of my passions, not all of them, but many of my passions together. So even as I pursue things that I would do no matter what, I'm also building the business. And I do that because I know I'm going to feel that sense of obligation. So let me make sure that I'm doing things that I love to satisfy the obligation. If I had kids now, when I'm at work, I would feel like I should be with my kids. When I'm with my kids, I should feel like I. I would feel like I should be at work. I just know that about myself. So I wanted to be really honest. And then you don't miss what you don't have. So it's not like I had a seven year old and they died. Just never had kids, right? So kids are thought so I can think and I'll have those moments sometimes really intense, like, oh, dude. Like, you see that moment? Like, have you guys seen that TikTok trend where it's like they record, they do like the little. There's a song and they like propose to their daughter and they have the daughter recording. She doesn't realize she's recording herself. And she's like looking at them with like awe and joy.

[Interviewer/Host]

I'm like, oh God.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Like that hits me right in the

[Interviewer/Host]

feels and I'm like, oh man, I wanna have a daughter.

[Guest/Participant]

Or like the Jordan Peterson one. You know that one. When they like, kids will not always be kids, they'll grow up and they haven't seen it. And it's just like people videoing their kids going up from like a kid to like 5 years old.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Even hearing about that kicks me in the feels.

[Guest/Participant]

Yeah, yeah, you just mix a somersault like Lisa says yes.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. My, my, Suddenly I have a uterus as well. Yeah, exactly it, that kind of thing. Like, they really, really hit me. So. But anyway, I can set that aside because I'm like, my marriage is amazing. I fully understand nature's trick, which is when you have a kid, the child will be your number one priority. And right now Lisa is my number one priority. I don't know that this is a stat, but I'd be willing to bet that relationships are more likely to break up or be dysfunctional. That's a better way to say it. Relationships are more likely to be dysfunctional if you have kids. So even people that stay together, I think it's a higher likelihood that that stop being a very thriving emotional and sexual relationship if you have kids. So I'm super thoughtful about that. And then again, average Wednesday don't really like, I hate, like doing things that kids want to do and stuff like that. I have so little time. It's like I want to do the things I want to do. And then when I look back on my life and walk through all the different moments, because all of our lives are broken into phases, I look at the different phases. It's not until I'm in my 60s that I start to go, ooh. I think that having kids will be pretty important to me. And by the time I'm 80, I will regret it. There's no doubt about that. But because I've thought through it, I'll know how to deal with that frame of reference when I get there so that I don't get destroyed by it. Because it's when people are caught off guard by a frame of reference. And explaining a frame of reference is beyond the scope of this conversation. But when you get to that frame of reference, you see life through that. And when you get caught off guard, like by having a kid and you didn't think through that well, or not having kids and you didn't think through that well, at last check. The most unhappy people in America are mid-30s female lawyers because they've chosen career over children. And they are now at that moment where it's like, whoa, is this really what I want for my life? Now, maybe other occupations, they love it and it's not a problem. But for whatever reason, 35 year old women attorneys, it's emotional implosion time. So that's somebody who did not think through what are the different phases of my life. Like, it's dope in my early 20s where I'm like, yo, I'm proving I could do anything I set my mind to. I'm grinding, I'm making a ton of money. This is rad. And then you realize, oh, wait a second, maybe there are other things that I didn't think through. But if you think through that and you're like, oh, in my mid-30s, I may want kids, but you know what? I'd actually rather play my career out now. At least you're not taken by surprise, so you can plan around, okay, I better have a career that gives me those things. Thinking through that, I think is very important. I know when I get to 80 that I will be very grateful that I thought through, how my frame of reference will change. And so I will make plans to be able to mentor people, to have. In fact, I'm starting to do that now, even just in the way that I shift my own thinking, thinking about myself more as like a father trying to like, hey, I've suffered in my life. I want other people to learn easily what I have learned through great suffering, which is of course, what one of the things that makes being a parent cool. It's like, hey, I can help you hopefully make your life a little bit better. And so that part of being a parent I can express in a lesser way. I'm very well aware of that through the people in the company, through the people that watch the content. So being aware of the how the frames of reference shift is important. But anyway, that's how I have the way. I've thought about pulling a fast one on mother Nature to the extent that you can, but it's a trade off.

[Interviewer/Host]

What are like three behaviors that you

[Guest/Participant]

do to reinforce your love for Lisa that other people can put into their relationships?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Okay, so this is huge. One, don't criticize, compliment. So when I was young and you get together and you're in that relationship and everything is great, but then you start living together and like that super drug, like early days starts to wear off. And all of a sudden it's all the things that they do that drive you crazy. And you're like, hey, could you not do that? You know, when you do that, it really bugs me.

[Interviewer/Host]

Hey, oh, God, stop.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Why are you doing it like that? And I was like, wow, when she does it to me, that drives me crazy. So I was like, you know what? Every time I have an impulse to criticize her, instead, I'm going to reach for a real compliment. I'm never going to lie. I'm not going to bs, but I'm going to reach For a real compliment, what that does is it pattern interrupts in my own brain. So I'm not reinforcing the negative thing because it really is negative. Like the person really is doing something that drives you crazy. And it probably really is a dumb thing that if you could wave a wand to make go away, you would. And so it's not even like I'm saying that annoying thing isn't actually annoying, it is, but if I obsess over it, all I'm going to see is the annoying thing. Whereas that positive thing is also real. So I want to make sure I'm spending my time thinking about the positive thing. So don't criticize compliment, always make it real. But spend your time in the compliment. Have a lot of sex, just real. Like even now in my 40s, it is so funny. In my late 40s I can think back to what I was like in my early 20s, my poor wife and like going through that and thinking, oh, it's going to be like this forever. It's not like as your hormones change and I know that I'm only one testosterone injection from being right back there, but it feels more manageable. Whereas before I felt like a drug addict who couldn't focus, it's like now

[Interviewer/Host]

I feel like, hey, I have a

[Tom Bilyeu]

healthy relationship with this drug, I'm a recreational user now instead of an addict, which is way better. And so being in that space though, I've realized it's so critically important. It is a thing that is unlike anything else in your life. It's the only person that you have that relationship with if you're monogamous. And that's not an over vote for monogamy, but monogamy has a really potent upside. And so being in a monogamous relationship and knowing that that's my one outlet for that, it you realize that sex is this fascinating thing that is a mode that we all go into and going back to nature wants to make sure that you have kids that have kids. It's like nature made sure that that was an awesome thing that is unlike anything else. And so I'm legitimately freaked out by how much less sex young people are having now because they're missing out on something incredibly potent. Now I'm only vouching for sex with connection. I won't say that it has to be a marriage because I've had my share of non marital sex and it was awesome and I'm not denigrating that at all, but I've always found that it's way more enjoyable if it's somebody that you have a real connection with. But thinking about it like that, it is this mode that you don't get anywhere else. If you have a spouse and you have what they call bed death, that relationship is going to become dry and brittle. That's metaphoric obviously, but that you'll get

[Interviewer/Host]

the right idea in your head.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Whereas if you maintain a sexual relationship, you're constantly crossing this weird boundary into like this, this completely unique space that you only have with that person. And nature is squeezing this neurochemistry that constantly bonds you, brings you back together. So that's hugely important. I cannot stress that enough. And then number three, you have to be a high level communicator. You've got to invest in saying things that you don't want to say. There's nothing like my American Express Platinum card. I love that I can earn hotel credits when I travel. I can also earn resi credits.

[Interviewer/Host]

So you know, I'm hitting the restaurants everyone's talking about. Plus with the digital entertainment credit, I'm even more excited to catch my favorite shows.

[Tom Bilyeu]

All in all, I can access over three $500 in annual value with benefits

[Interviewer/Host]

and eligible purchases across travel, entertainment and more. Learn [e-mail] Explore Platinum Enrollment Requirements monthly and other limits in terms apply when

[Tom Bilyeu]

you manage procurement for multiple facilities, every order matters. But when it's for a hospital system, they matter even more. Grainger gets it and knows there's no time for managing multiple suppliers and no room for shipping delays. That's why Grainger offers millions of products in fast, dependable delivery. So you can keep your facility stocked, safe and running smoothly. Call 1-800-GRAINGER click granger.com or just stop by Granger for the ones who get it done. And I think one of the biggest breakthroughs in my marriage was when I finally realized that I had to say out loud anytime insecurity was driving me. Because then my wife could help me. And as long as she never weaponized the insecurity against me, now it's not my wife's problem to solve. Now hopefully she can help me overcome that. That would be amazing. But it's not. She doesn't need to solve that problem. That's my problem to solve. But she can't weaponize my insecurities against me. And by me articulating them now, we know what's actually going on. So we're not arguing about a surface level thing. We get to the real issue that's driving it. We can both process through that together. And so now you have stupid fights that last forever. You're getting to the root cause of the issue. I mean, this is exactly like in medicine. Don't treat the symptom, find the underlying cause. But when you are arguing, you have friction in your marriage. You have to figure out the underlying cause. And I promise you, it's either a collision of values. So you just, you both understand each other. You just disagree that that's how the world should be. It's misaligned base assumptions. So you are viewing the world in a way that you don't even realize you're doing it. So people don't realize what their base assumption is. It's just, it's what they call an axiom. You just live by it. Like, oh, I assume that that emotion is very distressful for you, so why wouldn't you want to solve the problem? You assume that I know that it's not uncomfortable to sit in a negative emotion. Those are base assumptions. But in reality, my base assumption is, you're in so much pain right now from this emotion, the only thing that makes sense is for us to solve that problem. And your base assumption is, dude, how can I solve a problem if I haven't had a chance to sit in it yet? But if we don't say that I'm trying to solve the problem, you're like, asshole, just listen. Right? And so when two smart people are colliding, they need to check their base assumptions first. Like, what's your base assumption? That I need to sit with this emotion before I can problem solve. I need to problem solve to even think straight. Cool. Now we can begin to understand each other. So it's either values, it's misaligned base assumptions, or you've got an insecurity that's driving you and you either aren't aware of it or you're not being honest about it. And so if you get that stack right, then all of a sudden, communication becomes very easy. But man, you've got to be emotionally naked. And that is very, very difficult. But it is hyper rewarding if you have a partner that doesn't use it against you.

[Guest/Participant]

So everybody sees how strong your relationship is with Lisa, how amazing it is, how deep. But then also people see how amazing your, the career side of it is. Like your business impact theory is growing, it's thriving. And I just want to know how you balance that to keep both of them leveled up so evenly, to keep them both growing. And what your advice would be to people who don't know how to balance their relationship and their business or their work.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So if you want to balance things, you have to know thyself. So just a few days ago, I sent Lisa a text that hurt her feelings, and I didn't mean it to. I said, hey, would you mind if we did this business thing on a day that was special for her and I. And I even said, you're probably going to hate this idea, but because, remember, I feel a tremendous obligation to work for you guys and to make sure that the company thrives and all that. So I'm always thinking like, hey, this would be really good for the team. Now, Lisa's role, stated role, it's not like she would be confused if she heard me say this. She'd be like, yeah, it's my role. Her stated role is to be the early warning system, because I don't see the problem coming in the relationship as quickly as she does. So we refer to it as being disconnected. Where I work so much that we start to feel disconnected. So thank you for saying that. People see my relationship is thriving, and I would say that it is, but it's because we have these bumpers and I'll bump up against it, as I did just a few days ago. And I sent that thing and said, hey, let's do this business. I know this is that really special day for us. We. But let's do this because I think it'd be good for the team. And she said, hey, that hurts my feelings that you would even ask because it makes me feel not heard and not understood, because 2022 was the hardest year of my business life. And for eight months, she let me work 120 hours a week. That's not even getting a full night's sleep. That's working around the clock seven days a week. I mean, it's pandemonium, and I do not recommend it. I'm not proud of myself for doing it. It was actually a result of mistakes. Do I think I'm a badass for doing it? Yes. But do I think it was a problem of my own making? Very much so. So my wife was very understanding through that. Now I promised her that I would find my way back to her, which I did. And so. But now she's very gun shy of like, hey, I gave you grace and latitude for eight months, and now you want to do a work thing on our special day? That makes me feel very unheard. Now, if either thing happens poorly in that moment, we have a problem. But Lisa and I do that movement. Well, she speaks up and says, hey, it bothered me that you even asked. And I'm like, oh, damn. Like, I don't like that it bothers you that I ask because your role is to play that person where I

[Interviewer/Host]

can say, hey, let's do this.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And you say, early warning. Don't do that. So she had to be graceful in that moment and say, cool, I'm not going to double down. I'm not going to be angry. Let's not do that. As the early warning system. I'm telling you, we can't do it. And then if in that moment, I'm

[Interviewer/Host]

like, yo, what the fuck?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Like, come on, this will be better for the business. I thought we were in this together. Then she's going to feel abandoned in the marriage. So I'm like, hey, your stated role is to be the one to say, nope, that will lead to us feeling disconnected. And so when you say it, even though I have an impulse to go in the opposite direction and I'm not feeling disconnected, and that feels like a really small thing to me. That's your role word. So I'm going to immediately back off totally. I'm actually sorry that I asked because I didn't mean to upset you. And I totally get where you're coming from.

[Interviewer/Host]

I hear you.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Like, we're on it. And so now we just. We move on. I'm more thoughtful about, okay, fair. Like, the eight months is pretty intense. I totally get why she's saying that. Next time I'm going to try to catch myself before I ask, but if I do, she's not going to be upset, but she is going to check it and say, you can't do that. So it's one understanding. It takes constant maintenance. There is no such thing as, oh, my marriage is great, and it will remain great forever. My marriage is great because we work on it every single day now, balancing the business in that. It doesn't mean that I give more, more time to my marriage, because I don't. I give more time to the business, but it does mean that I prioritize my marriage. So if my wife says, hey, we can't do that thing, then we're not going to do it. Like, I will just tell you, the CFO pulled Lisa and I aside, was like, yo, two weeks of Christmas, crazy town, can't do it. And I was like, I'm just telling you right now, two weeks of Christmas every year from now until the end of time, because like the rest of my life, I make it about my business for two weeks. I'M not a businessman. I'm a family man. It is what it is. And he was like, okay, cool. Like, totally on board. I get it. But that's one of those. You have to know, like, I need to do this set of 32 things to make sure that my marriage is always thriving, and they don't always mean the most time. Now, it's not an accident that Lisa and I build the company together. I would never be able to work as much as I do if we didn't. And I know this because the first company that when I got into entrepreneurship for eight years, she wasn't. And it was a nightmare. And even though I worked less, it was harder on the marriage than when I'm working more now because we're in it together and we share the same stories and the same people and wants and all that good stuff.

[Guest/Participant]

I read Feeling Great. You mentioned it earlier, and I might inflame the comment section by saying this, but I feel like if that book exists, then why do people who read it don't suddenly like, oh, now I'm no longer depressed or no longer feeling anxious in that sense, because he lays out all the steps very clearly. So what do you think is the thing that causes people to just not be, like, transformed from reading a book? Is it the. The number three thing that you said early in the beginning? Like, just not enough repetition. It just hurts the first time that they do it, so they don't follow through. Like, what is the thing that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, that's a big reason that people struggle to get out of depression. Even if they've read a book like Feeling Great, is that one.

[Interviewer/Host]

They aren't.

[Tom Bilyeu]

They don't believe the following very inflammatory statement, that you can get control of your neurochemistry. And they think that it's all in the mind. And they don't realize that it's a far more complicated beast than that. But because they don't believe that they can completely get control of it, they will try a few things early on and stop. Now, if you have depression and you are not dealing with the body, your microbiome, very specifically, then the odds of you getting out of that depression are virtually zero. And so even a book as extraordinary as Feeling Great is only dealing with the psychological component of depression, and it is far deeper than that. So your gut controls many of your neurotransmitters and serotonin. So SSRIs are selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, meaning they keep more serotonin floating in your body. Now, 70% of the serotonin in your body is produced and stored in the gut. So if the very chemical that they use to combat depression is in your gut and you're not dealing with your gut now, you have a problem. But it goes back to what I call the only belief that matters. If people don't think, oh, I can control this, then they won't keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going, keep going until they find that root cause. So they think that this is. Oh, this is that thing that happened to me, a tragedy befell me, and therefore I'm never gonna be able to get out of this. This is because of the trauma that I went through in childhood.

[Interviewer/Host]

Yes, partly.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But you can get out of that. You can unwind that stuff. And I am not in any way, shape, or form saying this to be flippant. I am not trying to diminish the terrifying grip that is depression. I'm just saying you have to believe that you can get your way out of it. And yes, it is hyper complicated. And having watched Lisa go through an extraordinary battle with her microbiome and seeing how complicated it is to undo all that, the psychological side's already bad enough, especially if it's a result of trauma, abuse, where that gets hardwired in. I mean, that's in your nervous system in a deep way. That is gonna be very complex to unwind. But it starts with believing that you can unwind it and then doing something like cognitive behavioral therapy, where you go through. I forget how many. Like, it's like 13 steps, and one of the steps is like the 15 cognitive distortions. I mean, it's crazy. So it is already a very complex book. Just cognitively, psychologically, that takes a lot of repetition, which requires you to believe that it's going to work. But then it's also the very difficult part of getting your body right. Sleep, exercise, diet. Diet. You want to talk about. Hey, let's really light the comment fire on the comment section. On fire. Remind people that what they eat is going to influence their microbiome, is going to influence their production of serotonin, is going to influence their sleep, is going to influence depression, anxiety, all of just is. And if you're eating junk food, you are making everything worse. Not a moral judgment. It's just a biological reality. Now, if you can strip away the moral judgment and realize you're not a bad person if you eat junk food, but you are a person that's creating obstacles for feeling good. So all I'm saying is remove the obstacles now, there are people in my life that I love that put every food obstacle in their way humanly possible. They are actively in pain, and they actively tell me how much they're suffering, and they actively ask me what they should do to stop suffering. And they keep doing it. Does that mean that I think they are a worse person? Not in the slightest. I love them just as much. I think they're just as valuable as a human being. And I really wish that they would remove the moral judgment from themselves, because it is not a moral question. It is 100% entirely a question of this path leads to one outcome, this path leads to a different outcome. Pick the path where you like the outcome and then walk that path. And so people have to recognize, I can do that. That there are. It is cause and effect. There's nothing mythological about this. It's cause and effect, but it is hyper complicated. It is both psychology and physiology unwinding that will almost certainly require that you get help from professionals and other people. And so the shortest answer in the world to your question is, it's complicated.

[Guest/Participant]

Rewatch this episode.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But even that, like, now, how do you go in and do like. Lisa had me by her side, and it still took five years to get back to baseline with her microbiome. And man, when you're in the thick of it the whole time, you're asking, is this actually going to work? Because some days it doesn't feel like it. Some days it feels like this is going to be forever. And it's not until you look back a year and go, yeah, wow, that's right. I actually have 17 more foods that I can eat now that I couldn't eat before. But I still, three days a week, have just absolute agony in my gut. And so it's still. This still sucks. Then two years, you look back and you're like, oh, wow, I'm only having that two days a week. Four years in, you're like, oh, that's right. I only have it occasionally. And then five years in, you're like, God, this took a very long time. There's a lot of dark days for somebody struggling with depression. But if you don't believe that you can unwind it, if you don't believe that you're in control even though it's very complicated, then you'll never do it. And having been a victim of something would be horrible, but you now have to take control and say, okay, this sucks. I can't undo the past, but I always can control how I react to that thing. Don't take my word for it. Read man. Search for meaning. That is the ultimate form of abuse. He was in a concentration camp, so, like, nobody's got a trump card to play on him, right? And his punchline is, it's all about how you process it emotionally.

[Guest/Participant]

So if, if you can share whether in that five years were there days that Lisa just did not believe?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Oh, yeah, well, they were the darkest days of my marriage. They were depression. They were me being afraid she was going to die because she was so sick. There was her being so fed up. I don't even want to try anymore. Why try? Why bother? There's no point. It's like, wow, that's hard. There were times where she would respond to love with just rejection and anger. It was like, what is happening? And so it was brutal. And we didn't know. I mean, you had to have blind faith that it was going to work. But did I know it was going to work? No. And there were times where even I was like, I have to act as if this is going to work. But I've never been through this before. And this is early, man. We as like, mainstream society have only known about the microbiome for like 10 years. Like, a year before Lisa got sick, I'd never even heard of the microbiome. So it's like, dude, this stuff is so complex that it, it does feel like a big question mark. But I will just say there is a solution to every problem.

[Guest/Participant]

Those are just that you guys just sleep it off and tomorrow you will feel better again. Or like, what is like that thing to get back to. To. To base, baseline and not that. What do you call it? Like, not exaggeration, but like magnification of the problem.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Catastrophic thinking.

[Guest/Participant]

Yeah, Catastrophizing it.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So the only way to stop catastrophizing is to pattern interrupt that. Not allow yourself to wallow in that cognitive distortion to say, I'm going to base things on fact and then have a growth mindset. When you have a growth mindset, you have the only belief that matters, which is that if I put time and energy into getting better at this thing, I will actually, actually get better at this thing. So if I put time and energy into learning about the microbiome, I will learn about the microbiome. So when I went into it, I said to Lisa, look, I'm going to go learn about the microbiome. And I would wake up every morning and the first thing I would do is I would spend a couple of hours researching the microbiome. And I just thought, cool, let's say that there's no doctor in the world that can solve her problem. I'm going to learn enough about it to do it myself. And so when you go into it with the arrogance of belief and it's like, cool, I don't need somebody else to know this, I will put all the pieces together. Now, thankfully it didn't end up needing to be that, but because I approached it like that, that I'll read the studies, I will learn all of these things, I'll do research if I have to, I will buy a microscope and start doing laboratory tests. But when you approach something like that, which is how I approach all of life, you realize, oh, I get it, other people don't succeed at whatever because they're not willing to be absurd. They're not willing to say, I'll become a Nobel Prize winning scientist to solve my wife's problem. If you're willing to say that and actually act in accordance, it's unreal what you can accomplish. Now, obviously we solved the problem long before I had to become a Nobel Prize winning scientist. But the fact that I was willing to move like one, the fact that I was willing to go, yeah, I can do this, I can become that. I'm not yet I'm going to have to learn a lot. I'm going to have to figure out how to read abstracts and do research and ah, fine, I'm not going to let my wife die. My number one priority is making sure that we get her back on track. And then you go at it like a freak of nature. But most people cannot do the first part, which is to believe that it's fucking possible. And this is what I want to scream to people is like, hey, fuckhead, you are average. Yes, stop being afraid of that. You're average. But you can get better. Go fucking learn. But you have to be a demon. You have to give your brain and body the impulse. Adapt or die, motherfucker. I will break you in half before I give up. When I put on the muscle mass, because boy, did I used to be a lot smaller. When I would show up to the gym every day, I had to say, adapt or die. And I would just tell myself, adapt or die, motherfucker, I will. Meaning my body, I'm going to keep pushing you scream and cry all you want, we're doing this. And I would lift to the point. I remember one time, this is when I was broke, I couldn't even unlock my car from the door. I had to lean across so open the passenger side to lean across to the driver's side.

[Interviewer/Host]

And I had worked out so hard

[Tom Bilyeu]

that I couldn't hold up my own weight, and I put my arm in the seat to reach across, and my arm gave out and I literally just poof. Face planted into the seat. But you have to attack everything you do like that. And when you go that hard, you

[Interviewer/Host]

will be shocked at.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Everything will relent to your superior will. Everything will relent to your superior will. Never forget that.

[Interviewer/Host]

The reason most people fail to achieve their goals is twofold. Number one, they don't have a sufficient level of clarity. And number two, they don't want it badly enough. The statistic is that 92% of all people that set a New Year's resolution fail to stick with it. The way that you go from being in the 92% to being in the 8% is by having a freakish level of clarity and building so much desire in your life that nothing could stop you even if it tried. This is what you need to do. The clarity piece is really the most important thing that you can have in your life. And most people have a really vague sense of clarity, but because they can say in a sentence something like, I'm going to win a gold medal, they think they have the clarity that they need. But the question I would ask somebody that told me that they wanted to win a gold medal is a gold medal in what? The Olympics? Yes, Tom, I want to win a gold medal in the Olympics. Amazing. Which event? Swimming or tennis? Swimming. Fantastic. The breaststroke, the freestyle medley? What's it going to be? You have to get so specific with your goal that you know what to do with the next 15 minutes of your life. Ultimately, success, accomplishing a goal, seeing things through, all come down to what you're doing with your time and what part of your potential you're turning into actual, usable skill set. The only way to know how to spend your time transferring your potential into skill set is to have a truly granular level of clarity. You cannot stop at the high level, and you can't do what a lot of people do, which is they, as the Brits say, they waffle. So when they're describing their goal, they either say something like, I want to win a gold medal, which we just covered is hopelessly vague, or they say something that's even worse, which is, you know, I really want to do something great with my life. I know that I'm capable. You know, I was really athletic when I was a kid, and I know that if I Applied myself, I could probably really, you know, recapture what I was doing. That's how most people describe what they want to do in life. It is terrifying. You need to be able to state what your goal is in a single sentence with no commas. Parentheticals run ons. It needs to be a very simple and direct goal. Something like, I'm going to win a gold medal in the Summer Olympics freestyle medley swimming event by 2028. Whatever. Once you have a goal that is that specific, that contains the what you're going to do, the by when and the how much, then you know that you actually have a real goal and not a hope, not a vague idea, but you have something very concrete and specific that you can execute against. Now remember, the goal is to translate that into what you're going to do with the next 15 minutes of your life. Always and forever, on and on and on. When you have something so specific that you know how to break it down into those incremental steps, you can really begin to make progress. If you've ever heard the idea of the 10,000 hour principle, it's talking about how we go about actually achieving mastery in something. And the punchline is that you spend 10,000 hours applying yourself in a disciplined fashion towards your goal. The disciplined fashion is born out of the clarity. It's born out of the clarity of knowing precisely what you're trying to achieve and by when and knowing how to take advantage of. I've tried something, it didn't quite work. I need to get a little bit better or this part of my game is weak. I need to focus on getting better at that thing. But again, all of that is born from clarity and being able to break down that clarity into action items, which is absolutely critical because action items are how we're going to turn our potential into skill set. And that is the critical chain that you have to walk. And then from there it's about developing the self awareness that you need to know what part of you is improving and what part of you is not improving. So that brings us to the second thing. They don't want it badly enough. The reality is that most people, even if they can get the clarity that they want in their life, they really just don't want it that badly. Most people, myself, you, all of us, the things that we really want, the things that we want as badly as a drowning man wants their next breath of air. Those things, those you're going to get the things where it's like, yeah, I want it. Yeah, that would be cool. I Promise you it's going to get way too hard and you're not going to be able to achieve that. And the reason is that the second law of thermodynamics is that everything moves towards chaos. So everything is hard. That's the really simple way of saying it. And if we know that everything is going to be hard, then we have to have a reason that we're going to overcome that difficulty. We have to have a reason to keep fighting through the inevitable boredom that comes from trying to clock our 10,000 hours into actually getting good at something. Or even if your goal is more modest than truly mastering something, no matter what it is, even if it's trying to read a book a week or something like that, inevitably life gets in the way. Inevitably we get sick, we get tired, other things pop up. Other a goal cannot be the thing that you hope life doesn't get in the way of a goal. If you want to be in that 8%. If you want to see things through, a goal has to be the thing that you absolutely demand of yourself that you achieve. And there unfortunately is no way around that. If you want to be successful, you have got to be willing to give it your everything. And that is really where we begin to separate people out. I have seen people far smarter than me, with more natural talent than me, achieve nothing compared to what I've achieved, because they don't have the willingness to push through the boredom that goals demand. So again, let me restate it. You are only going to get what you absolutely demand of yourself. So you are going to have to put rules into your life. You are going to have to have an identity about yourself that does not allow you to give up, does not allow you to slow down or quit. And I'm talking whether you're sick or not. For years, I had hanging above my fireplace the painting of Michael Jordan in the infamous flu game where the greatest player of all time, even though he had, I believe, 102 or 103 degree temperature, continued playing in the finals of that series. They end up winning. Taking on the championship ring is absolutely incredible. But it never would have been if he had had the kind of goal where, well, yeah, I'm sick, so I'm not going to show up. And look, I get it. A lot of people think that I'm crazy for pushing people too hard. But I'm telling you right now, this is how you accomplish it. So if you don't want your goal, fair enough. I don't make a moral judgment on people that don't want to achieve big aggressive goals, I completely understand if you would rather lay back and have a stress free life, that's a completely fine, moral, righteous way to live your life. Just be very clear about what you want. That goes back to point number one. Once you know what your goal is, that goal then makes demands. And you either live up to those demands or you don't. And the reality is that most people don't. So even when they have the clarity and they get into it and their kids wake them up in the middle of the night and then they're really tired the next day, they wake up late, they're rushing out of the door to get to work, they go, their boss is addict to them, they come home, they're super stressed out. Through all of that, their goal suddenly becomes unimportant. And unfortunately, because life is hard and life is going to punch us in the face constantly, over and over. The only way that you're going to achieve your goals is if in that moment you get more aggressive, that you have those rules in your life that are like, I am doing this every day. I know that I'm trying to read X number of books, lose X number of pounds by this date. And that means by the end of this week, I need to have lost a pound or two pounds, or by the end of the month I need to have lost five pounds, or whatever your goal demands. Your goal ultimately will be translated into math. So it is very simple. What do you need to do on this day to achieve your goal? Do you do it or not? It really is that cut and dry. And if you're looking over your shoulder for somebody to save you, I can tell you right now, they are not coming. No one is coming to help you. This is something that you have to do for yourself. And I hope in hearing all of this, you realize why 92% of people fall into the category of I gave up, I quit, I knew what my goal was, or I didn't have enough clarity, but I didn't do the things that I needed to do in order to cross the finish line. It really is that simple. Now the great news is it really is that simple. If you just draw those bright lines in your life, if you make those demands of yourself, if you say, I simply must do this to be the person that I want to be, and therefore I am going to do it even when it's hard, even even when it sucks, even when it's boring, I'm going to keep doing this. And let me tell you right now, Even though what I'm talking about is achieving goals, I promise you one thing. If you set a goal and you achieve it, you will gain respect for yourself. And there is nothing that matters more, and I mean nothing. There is nothing that matters more than how you feel about yourself when you're by yourself. So if you structure your life in a way where you set a goal, that is two things. Exciting and honorable. Exciting to you, you just want to do it. Other people don't have to tell you to do it. You just want to do it. Right Goes back to the whole thing. You've got to want it badly enough. And if you want it badly enough, then you're going to stick with it. And if you don't, then you won't. If it's exciting, then the second thing is that it has to be honorable. And by honorable, I simply mean that it uplifts both you and those around you. That's incredibly important. Because once you have that, you can give yourself over to it completely. You can build that desire in your life, and so that it is a raging inferno inside of you that your identity does not allow you to deviate from. The rules in your life do not allow you to deviate from. And the sheer fact of how badly you want it doesn't allow you to deviate from. But you've got to go in and put in the time and energy to build that desire. And the way that you build desire is by telling yourself that you want it, telling other people that you want it, and embodying the emotion that you want to feel in order to cement that feeling inside your mind. Because if it isn't visceral, when you're bored, when you're tired, when life is hard, if. When you say to yourself, I really want this goal, if you don't actually feel something positive, if you don't actually want it, you will quit. If people ever tell you that quitting isn't an answer, you need to point to them and remind them that they are a liar.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Because quitting is always an option.

[Interviewer/Host]

Quitting is the easiest answer. It is the answer that 92% of people take whenever they're setting a goal. If you don't want that to be you, then you've got to build desire and get a freakish amount of clarity.

[Tom Bilyeu]

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[Interviewer/Host]

If you want to become a better person in one year, there are two things you're going to need to do. Change your habits and define what you mean by better person. So this goes back to the idea that the most important thing anyone can have in their life is clarity. And so who is it that you're actually trying to become? The important thing is to make sure that you know what your value system is. You know what you value, then we know what you're actually striving towards. Once you have a goal, that goal makes demands. So if you're trying to be the kind of person that gets up early so that you can see your kids before you send them off to school, then you need to be the kind of person that either deals with fatigue all the time, which I think is a terrible idea and I do not recommend, or you need to be the kind of person that goes to bed early. That's one of the myriad ways that your goal is going to mandate your behavior. So whatever it is that you value, write that down. Figure out what your values are. Then we're going to build in habits that are going to help us actually become the kind of person that we want to become. So the reality is that you are a mixture of beliefs, habits, rules, and values. And once you get those things all put together, then you are doing the things that you want to do. And when you're doing the things that the person you want to be would do, you are the person you want to be. It's one of those things that it's easier said than done, but it really is that simple. So we want to map all of that out. We want to make sure that we have clarity. We want to write down what our values are. We want to write down, is there somebody that is like the kind of person you want to be, at least as you perceive them? If there is, what are the behaviors that they do that makes you feel they're the kind of person that you want to be? Are they the kind of person that goes to bed early? Are they the kind of person that gets up early? Are they the kind of person that takes their kids to school? Are they the kind of person that's striving to achieve their goals? Are they the kind of person that's driven, loving, kind, compassionate, whatever those Things are you want to map them out into a set of behaviors. What once you have them mapped out into a set of behaviors, now we're going to begin putting routines and habits in place that are going to make sure that we're doing those things. So going down that list, if we want to get up early, we need to go to bed early. If we want to go to bed early, then we need to make sure that we have everything laid out that's going to allow us to do that. So this is something that I have worked my ass off in my own life to make sure that all I have to do on a daily basis are follow my rules and and my habits. So I'll walk you through what my routine looks like on a daily basis. So first of all, I have a rule in my life based on my goals. Goals make demands. So my goal is that I'm trying to build the next Disney. To build the next Disney is going to take a Herculean effort. It's going to require us to generate a lot of revenue, to build out a lot of ip. All of that stuff then makes demands on me. So to meet the needs of what I'm trying to build Monday through Friday, if I'm awake, I'm either working or working out. Now, because my marriage is actually my highest value, which I've mapped out since my marriage is my highest value on the weekends, then I'm going to spend my primary time being a husband. That's incredibly important for me to remember what my value system is. So when those two things are colliding, I know which is a priority. Now, I have three big priorities you can think of. Number one is my marriage. Number two is my purpose, which is work. And then number three is my family. They're in that order, and I execute against them in that way. It is not a mistake that my wife and I are building a company together. It was a way for me to integrate my wife into my purpose, to make sure that when I was pursuing one, I was not pulling away from the other. So again, my goal made demands, and I'm building habits around that. So habit number one is that from the moment I wake up until the moment I go to bed Monday through Friday, I'm either working or working out. So I've got all of that laid out. So right next to my bed are my workout clothes. So that as soon as I wake up, I'm putting on my workout clothes. So there's not another step that's going to be required for me going and Getting that workout in more or less the first thing that I do is I go and work out. So I get dressed, I head into the gym, I get my workout in that way, the day is not going to get carried away because I found if I had a habit of trying to work out later, that the day had a habit of getting in the way and making that very difficult. And now I was competing with being tired at the end of the day and still trying to stick with the gym. So I'm being honest with myself about what I'm like. And since I know that I'm likely to get fatigued as the day wears on, I created that habit of making sure that I got to work out first thing in the morning. Once I finish my workout, I have a whole thing around cognitive optimization. I'm not going to walk you through every detail, but I do the things that I need to do to be cognitively optimized, including meditation, fasting and things like that. But very quickly after I'm done working out, I'm going to get to work and I have the things that I get to work. I have another habit around that that I use that I call my important things list. I want to be in the habit of knowing what I'm going to be doing next. I don't want to be in a position where I'm having to think about what I should be doing next, because when you're in that position, you're wasting time. So I spend some of my cognitive optim time in meditation, which allows me to do something I call thinkitation, which is basically where I'm letting my mind wander across a very specific problem that I have set for myself. And then I take notes on that. Part of that note taking often is making sure that my priorities are in the right order. And then when I'm done with that, I'm just executing, I'm going down that important things list which are listed in order that they should be executed on. That is one of the most important habits you can build into your life is to not be afraid to prioritize, to keep that list in priority order. And so many people are afraid to say this is number one, this is number two, and this is number three. So they start doing things like I have a three way tie for the number one position. That is total bs. It absolutely does not work. I'm telling you right now. You must be completely unafraid to set priorities, to say this is more important than that. Until you can do that, you are going to struggle in your life to make progress. Because the reality is that you cannot do two things at one time. You may be able to very rapidly shift between different tasks, but you're always going to be doing one thing at a time. And so you want to make sure that you're doing them in the right order. That again, is one of the most important habits that you can get to. A big part of the success that I've had is because I am hyper efficient with my time. In fact, it is very fair to say that I am obsessed with efficiency that I am constantly looking at, am I doing things in the right order? If I do this thing, will it make thing number two and thing number three easier? That's often how I judge what should go in the number one position. But make sure that you were in the habit of breaking things down in priority order and then executing relentlessly against those and not allowing yourself to get distracted. This is exactly why I have that rule in my life where if I'm awake, I'm either working or working out. It creates a very bright line for me so that I know if I'm in accordance with what I should be doing or I'm not. And I'm never sitting there thinking of what I should be doing in those prime hours. Of course, at some point you have to think about it, but I save those early hours for execution. I do not want to be trying to come up with a list of things to do. I. I want to be just boom, right into execution mode. So that is one of the most useful things that you can begin to put in your life. After that, you need to have an hour at which you allow the outside world to begin to come into your world. So I don't take my first meeting until 8:30am I used to have it even later than that. But we've gotten into a period now at the company where there's just too many things to do. And so I have let it encroach a little bit. But having said that, I'm up usually around 3:30-4:30am So I have four to five hours sometimes before I have my first meeting. And most days I actually don't take my first meeting until 9 or 10 o'. Clock. So I push that as late as I can. The reason that I do that and the reason that I think that this is one of the most important habits that you could put in your life if you're trying to improve yourself is because the odds of somebody other than you knowing what you should be doing with your time to achieve your custom made goals is effectively zero. So if the first thing that you do is pick up your phone and check your email, you're saying, hey, I don't know what I should be doing with my time, so let me see what somebody else thinks I should be doing with my time. Or if you pick up your phone and you start doom scrolling right away, you're letting people take up your cognitive real estate Using social media can be insanely powerful. I myself use it. I'm probably on social media at least an hour a day, but I have very specific moments when I allow myself to use it and I have very specific tasks that I go on there to do either to learn something or to broadcast something. So you want to make sure that you are being very thoughtful about once you let other people into your space, into your either your mind or onto your to do list, that it is at that point the right moment to do that. Because you've already moved your most important things through. You've already got your agenda moving as fast as it can and then you're opening yourself up to the outside feedback. Now, depending on what you're trying to do in your life, that may not be at 8:30 or 9 or 10 in the morning, that might be at 4 or 5pm Now I understand that most people, given the nature of your job, that's not going to be possible. But I just want to make sure that whatever you're trying to do, that you carve out time in the very beginning to be executing, those are going to be your prime cognitive hours. You want to make sure that you get something done. Now food is a huge part of this equation. It's beyond the scope of this answer to really go deeply into that. But I will say any habit that cognitively optimizes you is going to be absolutely critical. So you want to make sure that you're getting sleep, you want to make sure that you're eating healthy and just I'll round that to whole food whenever humanly possible and do not eat sugar. Minimize that as much as humanly possible and then meditate, exercise and workout. If you're doing that basket of things, you are going to be able to be at your best cognitively. Now, for whatever reason. It's become so bizarre in society where we are celebrating people that are not pushing their physical limits. And I'm just telling you right now, I don't pass any moral judgment on anybody that decides that they don't want to do that. But I will tell you 1000% you are holding your life back. You will not be able to think clearly, you will not be able to perform efficiently. You won't even be able to be pain free, which is going to be its own level of hell and distraction. And so while I don't think you're a better person if you work out, and I certainly don't think you're a worse person if you don't, you are certainly not going to achieve all that you could achieve if you don't make massive demands of your body. You are having a biological experience that is simply the truth of the matter. And I know that this bothers a lot of people, but that's just the reality. You're not going to get around it. And so if you ignore the biological reality of what you eat, how you exercise, how you sleep, taking care of your mental health through meditation and eating well, which is arguably the most detrimental thing you can do to your mental health is eat poorly, I mean that from a depression standpoint. I mean that from an anxiety standpoint. I used to have profound debilitating anxiety. I thought it was going to be something that was happening in terms of the way I was thinking. As it turns out, it was from something I was drinking. So not alcohol, just diet. Energy drinks were the bane of my existence and I had no idea until I finally stopped drinking them and realized, oh my God, that was the root of 70 plus percent of my anxiety. And simply eliminating that from my diet had a profound impact on my performance. So be very thoughtful about habits around that. So ultimately it boils down to defining exactly who you want to be. What are the behaviors that the person who is like who you want to be would do and then do those things. And the way to do that is to put rules and habits in your life to make sure that you execute against those I gave you the ones that I use in my life. The last thing I will say is that I go to bed early and I don't use an alarm. So those are the things that roughly get you there. And then I will just say as a very oblique parting reference, that don't fail to have people in your life that you love and that love you back. There is nothing sweeter despite all of my intensity around goals. And I think it's so amazing. There is a reason that my marriage is my number one priority and not even my purpose and accomplishment. So be very thoughtful about who you emulate. Be very thoughtful about what you decide to make a habit, because the things you repeat really will become who you are. Once you get initially started in the pursuit of your goal of trying to improve yourself and become something more, something better. The key is consistency and follow through. Consistency and follow through. You become what you repeat. The reason that anybody successful becomes successful is because, to quote Winston Churchill, they can go from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. The problem is the human animal has chosen a tactic of using culture in order to have generational progress. So a horse will come out doing all the things that a horse can do in 20 minutes. But horse culture doesn't progress because they come hardwired with everything and they have for thousands of years and they make no progress. Whereas humans, a generation, 10,000 years ago, invented the wheel and we're all still using it now. But in taking that strategy, what ends up happening is that you really do become the thing that you repeat, the thing that you do consistently. And if you begin slacking off of that, then you don't end up making that progress. You certainly can't maintain that progress. So you have to be very, very thoughtful about what you repeat because it is going to have a profound impact on your life. Now, the vast majority of people end up just breaking, they end up quitting. The reason that I've had the kind of success that I've had in my life is simply because I understand that iteration is how we make cultural progress. It's what I call the physics of progress. Most people, when they're running the physics of progress, when they get to the point where they have to evaluate their results, they end up lying to themselves and making it somebody else's fault. Now, the physics of progress are really simple. It's the scientific method recontextualized for whatever goal you're trying to achieve. And it goes like this. You come up with a hypothesis. If you have information that can inform that hypothesis, that is much better. But if you don't, when you're beginning, call it your best guess. You're taking your best guess as how you go from where you are to achieving your goal. There is inevitably going to be an obstacle in your way. And your best guess is about what do I need to do to overcome that obstacle to make meaningful progress towards my goal. Then you're going to turn that hypothesis into something that you can actually do. Then you're going to turn that, you're going to actually go do that thing, and then you're going to get a result from that thing. It is almost certainly going to fail to some extent, which is fine, because failure is the most information rich data stream on Planet Earth. But you have to learn from the failure. To learn from the failure. You have to be willing to admit that you made one. Most people will not admit that they made a mistake. And so they get stuck at that level, and in that moment, they say it was the world. It's because I was born in the wrong time. My parents were dumb. The world doesn't want somebody who looks like me to succeed. Whatever excuse they use to make it somebody else's fault. Now, remember, the most terrifying thing about excuses is that they are valid. I'm not saying that those things aren't real. I'm not saying that the world isn't trying to hold some people back. I'm just saying it doesn't matter. You have to overcome it no matter what. So in the moment where you tried this thing and it didn't work, don't spend your time and energy focusing on how something else stopped you. Even though I will grant you it's true. The world is trying to stop everybody from doing everything. It just is the reality. Accomplishing something meaningful is freakishly difficult. So don't focus on that. It's more difficult for you. It just doesn't matter. You're just going to have to work harder. You either want to accomplish that thing in your life or you don't, and you're going to give up. That's the reality. The people that get what they want are the people that absolutely demand that they're going to keep going until they get that thing. So in that moment, when you're very tempted to focus on how other things have stopped you, you're not going to. What you need to do is be consistent. So in that moment, you're going to say, what could I have done differently to get a better result? And that's when the physics of progress loops. Now you come up with a more informed hypothesis. You learned your lesson. You figure out what you need to do that's going to be a little bit better than last time. You turn that into a thing that you can do. You do that thing, it will fail to some extent. You stare nakedly at your inadequacies, figure out what you need to do to make it a little bit better, and the process begins again. That is why you have to be consistent. But the reality is that most people break. Most people cannot go from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm. They end up breaking. They end up thinking that either there's something wrong with them or that the world is against them and because they don't want to deal with the pain and suffering of having to face their own inadequacies. Or, or they give up because they just think that the world is against them. They don't make progress because you have to be able to fail a lot to learn from those failures. If I'm right that humans as a species have chosen culture as the learning mechanism, then you have to run the loop that culture demands, which is to try something. It fails, you iterate and you get better. That works at the societal level over millennia, and it works at the individual level in an acute thing where you just have to figure out, why didn't that work and keep going. But the truth is difficulty, boredom, struggle, pain breaks almost everyone that it touches. And I will remind us all, 92% of people fail to achieve the goal they set for themselves. And the reason is that all of that difficulty just stops people because they don't have the right mindset. They don't realize that they need to fail. They don't realize that failure does not make them a failure. So you're going to have a ton of failure in your life. You have to contextualize it as the most advantageous thing that could happen to you. So when I fail, it stings, it sucks, I hate it. I want everything that I do to work the first time, and I want to make maximum progress as fast as humanly possible. But once I realized that just isn't the way that things work. And even people like Elon Musk, who I think are abnormally intelligent, they realize, oh, I have to fail a lot. I have to try things and see what works and what didn't. There is no way around being in the messy middle. There's no way to think or hypothesize your way to what's going to work the best. You have to get in there and try things. Even somebody that's thinking philosophically has to be able to get in there and battle their ideas and take their ideas out to other people. Even Einstein went out and made sure that his ideas were battle tested, not only through experimental physicists, but also just his friends that were other people that were able to beat up his ideas and poke holes in them. And if you're not willing to put your ideas to the test, if you're not willing to try things and see what fails, then you, you will forever be stuck thinking and not making any progress. You really want to be doing, be a doing machine, somebody that's out there trying. But that means you have to risk embarrassment. And embarrassment is one of the things that destroys so many goals because people don't want to admit that they were struggling. People don't want to admit that they were having a hard time. And so they either don't tell people about the goal, which is a huge mistake. You want to tell as many people as you can. It's part of the process of building desire. You want to tell people, I'm going to do this thing and it really matters to me and I'm going to accomplish it by this date. Now all eyes are on you. But that's one of the ways you're going to stick to what you're doing. And if the whole point is that you have to repeat, repeat, repeat, be resilient, be gritty, stick with it. Try fail, try fail over and over and over. As you get better at overcoming those obstacles, then you have to be willing to push through all of that difficulty to know why you're doing the things you're doing and to understand that that's just the process. So, guys, I'm telling you, if you really want to achieve something absolutely powerful in your life, you've got to be persistent. If you haven't already, be sure to read the book Grit by Angela Duckworth. It's an amazing expose on how to be gritty if you're not already. The process that I use for achieving my goals is really simple. First and foremost, you want to make sure that you cognitively optimize. I cannot stress that enough. So much of my life is about doing things to make sure that my brain is working well. They look like this. Number one, get sleep. Do not use an alarm. Most people set an alarm.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Stop.

[Interviewer/Host]

I built three multimillion dollar companies, one of those being a billion dollar company, all without setting an alarm. Do I occasionally set an emergency alarm for something like a 4am flight? Yes. But for the most part, I don't use an alarm. I'm talking like 99% of my days I do not set an alarm. I want to make sure that I get all of the sleep that my body needs. Why? Because I'm able to be more efficient. People mistake grinding around the clock and becoming less efficient because they're tired with actually getting more done. What you want to do is make sure that you have a very high output of achievement per waking hour. So I check in with myself about every three hours to make sure that I'm being productive. If you're not being productive, nothing else matters. So go to bed early. I go to bed at 9pm I don't use an alarm. I typically sleep six to seven hours. That's changed if you've heard other content where I say five to six hours. Right now I'm in a cycle where I'm sleeping. Closer to my average is probably just under seven hours. So I never know what that's going to be. It tends to be regulated by the amount of stress in my life. So I'm getting roughly seven hours of sleep. So that means that if I go to bed at 9pm, I'm up at 4am I have a rule in my life that if I'm awake Monday through Friday, I'm either working or working out. I give myself only 10 minutes to get out of bed. Why? Because I struggle to get out of bed just is a thing. It's always been a thing for me. From the time I was a kid, my dad would have to drag me out of bed in the morning to there was a period in my early to mid-20s where I was laying in bed four to five hours a day and just could not bear to get out of bed. It's absolutely ridiculous. Even I am completely scandalized by the reality that to this day, despite all of the things that I've accomplished, I have to fight myself just to get out of bed. So that's a reality. I accept that. So I gave myself a rule that I had to be out of bed in 10 minutes or less. Right next to my bed, I keep headphones. So I put my headphones on. I begin researching the second I wake up. So I'm researching. Technically, this gets into a long thing. Right now I'm in a phase where I actually read while I sleep. Long story, I don't think you get things subliminally. That's not that. But I do find that it helps me stay asleep. I don't necessarily recommend that for everybody, but just by way of being completely transparent in terms of what my routine looks like for achieving my goals. From the second I wake up, I am researching something that matters to me. I immediately put on my gym clothes. I head to the gym right away. I work out. I then meditate. After I meditate, I do something I called thinkitating. The reason that I do these two things, one, meditation is a good way to get your stress and your anxiety down to zero. The reason you want to do this is cognitive optimization. If you are feeling frantic, if you are constantly in fight or flight, your brain is not going to function as well as it could. What is happening when you go into fight or flight is the blood is literally leaving your prefrontal cortex. The prefrontal cortex is the seat of higher level cognition. It's where you future plan. It's where you maintain your discipline. And so when you're in that fight or flight stage, you don't have the blood in the prefrontal cortex in the way that you need to, which is why people end up cheating on their diet. It's why they end up not sticking with their goals and persevering. So you want to make sure that you're taking the time to meditate, to lower your stress, lower your anxiety. And then there's a hidden benefit to meditation, which is why I follow that sort of almost seamlessly into thinkitation, which is where I stay in that meditative posture. I keep my meditative breathing going. I'm staying in that cognitive space. Because when you are meditating, if you're just coming back to the breath, very simple practice. My meditation practice is dead simple. It's literally what I call just breathe. So as my mind wanders, I remind myself to come back to the breath, to just breathe. My mind wanders again, back to the breath, wanders back to the breath, wanders back to the breath. It's tragic how rapidly my brain begins to wander, but I just keep bringing it back. Now, when I do that enough, I get into a calm and creative state. When I'm in a calm and creative state, unique areas of my brain begin to talk to each other. And so I will come up with very interesting solutions to problems that I won't get when I'm not in that state. So this is why people will often say, I need to sleep on that problem, because your brain goes through that cycle that's very much like a meditative state. As you're falling asleep and then waking up again, you pass through a very similar state. So I will call that calm and creative. So once I'm in that calm and creative state now I begin to get these. I give myself a problem to solve before I sit down to meditate, so I know what I'm working on. It's tied to my important things, which we'll get to in a minute. But I sit there and I know what the problem is going to be that I'm going to start working on when I'm in that calm and creative state. And then I'll allow myself to take notes as interesting ideas come up. I'm going to journal on that, which I would not do during the meditative part, where I'm just coming back to the breath. Back to the breath, back to the Breath. And I do that for as long as I need to to get to zero stress, zero anxiety, calm, creative. Once I'm there, maybe five minutes, maybe 20 minutes, maybe 45 minutes if I'm really stressed out. But once I'm there, then I move over into thinkitation and I begin noodling on those hard problems. Once I finish that, then I'm going to go into my important things. Now, how do I know when to stop, think a tating and move on to important things? I have found that at some point I begin running out of really fruitful novel ideas. And once I feel like I'm kind of trying to force it, then I'm like, all right, let's just now move into executing on my important things. So now that I'm in my important things, which is a list that I keep constantly maintained so I know what the top things are that I should be working on. So I'm not spending that time thinking about what I should be doing. I just go straight into execution mode. So then I start going down the list, doing them in order. Now, the way to execute on something is very much in order. So first thing, you're going to do everything on that thing that you can do until you've pushed it as far as you can go and now you're waiting on other people, and then you're going to move on to the next thing. You're going to do everything that you can on that until you're waiting on other people, and then you're going to push it off, so on and so forth down your list. Now, my important things list is predicated on my goals. So the very important thing to understand about the nature of goals is that they make demands. If you want to win a championship in swimming, then you need to do the things that a swimmer trying to win a gold medal by a certain date would need to do. It's going to dictate how you eat, how you sleep, how you train, who you talk to, how you think, all of that stuff. And so you have to, one, get good at identifying what your goals demand. And then two, you have to be good at actually sticking to the things your goals demand, which this is where

[Tom Bilyeu]

most people fall down because it gets

[Interviewer/Host]

boring, it gets difficult. So you've gotta be able to push through. All right, so I work my way down my important things list. Once I finish doing that, then I. Because I'm the CEO of a company, at that point, then I'm gonna begin to engage with my team. I'm usually working for about four to five hours on the things that I know that I should be doing to have the highest, most efficient impact on the company. And then because I know a big part of my job is orchestrating people, making sure that they're focused on the things that, that they should be answering questions and the like, then I go and I engage with the company and then I take meetings based on what's important and how time aligns. It just is what it is. I take meetings until 6pm I try to cut off. There's one meeting that I have a week because we're dealing with a company in China that goes until 7:30. At 7:30 it's only one day a week that I do that. Most of the time my last meeting ends at 6. And then for the rest of the time, for the next three hours, I go back into my mode of controlling my time. Making sure that I'm working on things that I need to do, including making sure that my important things list is up to date and that I'm working on all the loose ends for the day to make sure that everybody has what they need to start the next day, all that good stuff. Which gives me the ability in the morning to take advantage of my peak cognitive ability. Now, one of the reasons that I've ended up structuring my day like that is, is because I found that in the morning I'm super sharp. I've got these creative ideas. I'm able to really make progress, create space for myself. Whereas in the evenings I'm a little bit slower. I'm not quite as efficient as I am early in the day. And so it remains easy for me to be reactive, but it's much harder for me to be proactive. That's just me. Maybe you're the complete opposite. Structure your day around you. So in the evenings I can remain very useful as I respond to people's questions and things like that. As I comb over my important things list, all of those things I find much easier to do in the evenings and then the last hour before I go to bed whenever I can. And this unfortunately breaks apart sometimes, but whenever I can, I want that last hour to be work, but to be something I'm really excited about. Now, you want to be very thoughtful about how you structure your life because you should love what you're working on. Now, I know that that can be very difficult. As somebody who has, at periods in my life, absolutely hated my job, I completely understand. But you want to push yourself to get to the point where you at least have a part of your job that you absolutely love. So that's how I spend that last hour of my day is only working on when I can, something that I'm really excited about. And that helps combat fatigue. And it also helps me get ready for bed because you don't want to be dealing with something super stressful as you're getting ready for bed. And another thing that I do just by way of sleep hygiene is that I make sure that I am not getting blue light into my eyes towards the evenings. I think that's very important. So starting three hours before I go to bed, I'm wearing blue blocking glasses. My computer is set to go into night mode. So at sun rise, the blue light comes back on and at sunset the blue light turns off. I think that kind of thing can be very advantageous. As for my diet, which is another key part of cognitively optimizing, I do intermittent fasting seven days a week, 365 days a year, including Christmas Day. And I do that because it makes me feel better. So it's not even for vanity or to be cool. It's just I feel better when I do that. So I do. I average. I track this for about 18 months every day, and it averaged 17 hours, including weekends, holidays and all that. So there are of course times where that window is more narrow. But the least, man, the least I knowingly go to is 14 hours. So that's the least amount of time that I'll go between my last meal and my first meal the next day. Like I said, even on a Christmas day or something like that, I'm gonna have at least a 14 hour window again just to protect my stomach and make sure that I feel great. And that will on the weekdays mean that I'll go sometimes 18, 19, sometimes 20 hours without a meal before I eat. And I eat my last meal at about 2pm, sometimes a little before, sometimes a little after, but that's roughly there. And then I don't have my next meal till 8, 9, sometimes 10, 11 o'.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Clock.

[Interviewer/Host]

So that is my process. And I think that there's a lot of things that virtually everybody could use from that to build a very effective process.