← Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Tom Bilyeu's Impact Theory
Find Your PURPOSE, Craft Your Identity and COMMIT to YOURSELF | Tom Bilyeu
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You watch how somebody moves through the world. You are witnessing the after effects of their identity. I'm just dumb enough to make a lot of mistakes, but just smart enough to fix some of them. The one rule you need do and believe. And believe only that which moves you towards your goal. Dying does not scare me. Putting myself out there, running the actual risk of hitting the point where I cannot generate enough ATP to continue to fucking breathe, that does not scare me. What scares me is not being the person that I want to be. I think that quote is super powerful. Don't make me extraordinary as a way to let yourself off the hook. So I was not the person that anybody expected to succeed. My mother didn't think I was going to succeed. My father in law certainly did not think I was going to succeed. And quite frankly, even I wasn't entirely sure because I didn't understand the game. I didn't understand what the process was to actually get better. Wherever you are in your life, however lost you may feel, there actually is a path that you can walk that is step by step where you're going to accumulate the beliefs, the rules, the identity and the process steps that you're going to need to walk to accumulate the skills that are going to let you actually execute on your dreams. I want to just stand up here and say like really sexy shit all the time. That sounds rad in a clip. But the fact is that'll get you hype and then you won't be able to do anything with it. And so one of the key things we're going to talk about today is identity. And I'm telling you right now, if you watch how somebody moves through the world, you are witnessing the after effects of their identity, whatever they've built for themselves. So right now, if you were at my house, if you guys think of the set that you're very used to seeing, if you were to turn the camera away from us and point at that wall over there, you would see a big painting of Michael Jordan. And people always come in and they ask, tom, you a fan? Michael Jordan The Bulls. I'm like, man, I don't know shit. Is he playing basketball? Is that what that is? Because I don't fucking know. All I know is the story of the flu game. How many people have heard of the flu game? All right, that's what I like to see. So I don't follow basketball at all. But I hear this story about Michael Jordan that cements in my mind him as a true legend. Not because of all the crazy stats and stuff that he put up, but because the night before, like game six of the finals, he either gets the flu or food poisoning. Probably food poisoning, maybe even intentional food poisoning. And he plays with 103 degree temperature. Now, if you've ever had a 103 degree temperature, you know how real that shit is. It is all you can do to remember your name, to stay focused. And for him to go in and not just play, but put up some of the best numbers of the tournament in that condition, that tells you about the man's identity. That does not tell you about his skill set. There are a lot of skillful players who in that moment, they don't play. It doesn't even occur to them to play because their identity allows for that moment of weakness and they take it. Or they may even think that the only smart thing to do is to sit this out. That he could really injure himself by going in and pushing at a time. I mean, look, if it's influenza, that shit actually kills people. So to push yourself, and that's the advice you're going to get. And right now, I will tell you, this is my flu game part three. So I did a double episode of Impact Theory with the flu. I had 102 degree temperature. It was fucking insane. You literally are like dipping out in and out of like reality. It is so fucking surreal. You guys know that feeling where it's like, yo, I am completely detached from what is going on. I see their lips are moving. I know they're saying some shit, but I don't know what the fuck that shit means. And I've got to say something interesting and like actually hold this shit together. It was crazy. Poor Jim Quick, who was my flu game, round one. Jim took one look at me and was like, yo, this motherfucker is going to die. You guys realize that, right? He's actually going to die right here in this fucking episode. And if you watch that again, literally I'm like, jim Quick, everybody. And then he just one run on Sense for a whole hour episode. He was so afraid to let Any of the attention come back to me. He was like, tom, I was afraid if I made you speak, you were going to break, like, right there. But I had told the team, I said, look, I will never let this team down. That's identity. I will never let this team down. That is who I am to the core of my being. This is what I mandate of myself now. I don't want to play with the flu. I don't ever want to get the flu. But if I get the flu, you better know that I'm gonna show up. So I go in, I do the two episodes. I do everything I can to make them a high level, intelligent episode worthy of the canon. We get through that. And I think, all right, I've got my flu game. That was really fucking hard. Like, the prep was actually more difficult because I was so sick that day. I had 103 when I was doing the prep, 102 when I actually did the talks. And I was really proud of myself. And I thought, okay, I've done it. I've earned that flu shot painting now that I've got hanging up, and hopefully I never have to do that shit again. And then I get sick over Christmas break. I think, okay, it's good timing, a little lame because my family's in town, but get it out of the way. Be all good. And it is. It's actually, I would say I get sick less than once a year. So when I get sick, I think, all right, we've got it out of the way now. I definitely don't have to worry about this until next year. And so you can imagine my surprise when, like, seven days later, I start coughing. I'm like, man, the fuck is this? And, you know, at first you're like, did I just swallow Funny. And then an hour later, you're still like, huh? And so I come home that night, and this is what Lisa and I do. This is what we do if one of us is sick. And she was like, hey, why you giving me the head? And I was like, yeah, you know, I've been coughing kind of funny. I don't know. I don't feel sick, but I am coughing. I don't want to get you sick, so let's just see how we roll. And then I woke up the next morning, and you know how you have those fever chills where, like, you're so uncomfortably warm, you have to get the covers off you, and then you get the covers off you, and all of a sudden you're fucking freezing to death in, like, 0.3 seconds. You're like, how the fuck did I. Body temperature can't adjust that fast. So how did I just go from sweating buckets to shaking uncontrollably? And so then I'm trying to move around the house and Because I'm not sleeping in the same room with her because I don't want to get her sick, I have to, like, do simple things, like get up to get a sweatshirt. And I literally. My knees are knocking. I'm so cold. I'm like, fuck, man, this is going to be rough because I'm staring at a double episode again, of course. And so at that moment, I'm thinking, courtney, I hate you. I hate you and everything you stand for. Courtney. Because we're always trying to schedule two episodes at the same time. Now when I'm healthy, hey, that's great, because it saves money. When I have the flu, that's not so fun. So I tell the team, look, yep, I'm in a rock it. I will be there, but I'm going to hide upstairs. That way I'm not going to get anybody sick. So I'm just going to go upstairs between episodes. I'll do my thing, warn the guests, let them know that, you know, if I don't hug them or whatever, it's not because I don't care. It's that I actually care so much. I don't want to get them sick. So, like, cool. Awesome. Yep. No problem. I go in now. The problem is, if you guys have ever had, like, the property influenza. You guys know about the. The flu of 18, 1918. That shit killed, like 60 million people. That's real, by the way. Watch fucking Downton Abbey. They show. No, for real. They do a great job of cataloging. It's like, hey, World War I just killed a whole bunch of people. How crazy? Fuck. Now everyone is dying of the. More people killed by the flu than World War I. No one ever talks about this shit, but people legitimately die of the flu. So I'm like, all right, I need to take this seriously. I need to get my sleep. This one is kicking my ass. I need to be careful. Roll up. I do my episodes and I get them done. And I think, okay, cool. Now I should have plenty of time to rest. I've got a weekend between now and then. I'll rest up. I should be good. And then here we are. Literally, this is day eight of this shit. This is like Ebola at this point. I cannot shake this motherfucker. And so I wake up this morning and People have been asking me for days now, like, hey, how you feeling? How you feeling? You gonna be okay for this? How you feeling? You gonna be all right? We can always postpone. We can cancel it. Tom. Just let us know. We want to take care of you. And I'm like, look, motherfuckers, let me introduce you to Identity. You may have to wheel my ass out there with a fucking iv. That shit could be real. But I'm doing the fucking set. Thank you. That applause let me mask a really nasty cough. That was nice. Thank you. That's Identity. And the punchline of tonight. So we try to do a different event every time. So if you guys were to, like, deadhead with me and rock across the fucking world and do these live events with me, you're gonna see they're unscripted. I do them differently every night. They are based on a theme. Ideally something that's really relevant to the exact people that are in this room. In fact, in a second, we're gonna play a video that's gonna kind of set things up. And the theme. Now, obviously, January, it's a good time to talk about resolutions. But making resolutions is not very fucking interesting. Everybody makes resolutions. Everybody's got a dream. There are things that people want. I get it. You get it. But there was a recent study done that showed that 92% of all resolutions fail to stick. If that doesn't scare you, it should. 92%. I mean, that tells you something about the human animal that is like a judgment on our species. But there is a trick in there that you can leverage to make sure that you fall into the 8%. So I become obsessed. What the fuck is the 8% doing that the 92% are not doing? And that's my whole life. Everything in my life is a result of putting myself into that 8% group that see things through. That is not my natural state of being. It's not like growing up. That's what my parents taught me to do. Nothing like that. I had to claw my way to figuring out what it is exactly that you have to do to take something from an idea that you find interesting enough to jot it down in your line journal, which hopefully has the Impact Theory logo on it available out front. That's all the cheap shit. Where I'm going to make my bones, where I'm going to make a name for myself or disappear into obscurity, is this. This is me. This is what has made me useful to a room full of people. I'm just dumb enough to Make a lot of mistakes, but just smart enough to fix some of them. And I sit in this sweet spot. Like, I don't know if you guys feel this way, but every time I get instructions on how to put, like, an end table together, I think they need someone fucking dumber making these instructions. How the fuck you're skipping steps like, what the fuck are you talking about? These pieces do not go together. I do not know what you're talking about. Seriously, that shit really pisses me off to the point where I just. In my house, if something is getting put together, I can assure you it's done by a little Greeker woman. Because I'm just gonna get mad that the instructions were made poorly because you need dumber people making your instructions. So I'm that dumb guy that people set out into the world. You think I'm kidding, but I'm not. I legitimately am just dumb enough that I have to make a whole lot of really stupid mistakes, But I'm then just smart enough to go, okay, cool. There was a better way to do this. Oh, I see where I was blind. I see what I wasn't thinking of. And I can put that information together in what I think is the ultimate instruction manual on how to do just about anything. And getting my head around how to be in the 8% of people that see things through, that has been one of the first things that I've had to learn. It won't be the only thing that we talk about today, but the greatest pillar in that mix is going to be identity. One of the most beautiful things that has come into Lisa and I's life is this community. And this is. This is the beginning of something. And the only thing that would get Lisa and I to come out and travel and go around and spend this kind of time with people is the biggest benefit that will ever come out of impact theory. And I was telling the people that were at the dinner tonight. So originally, the employees wanted Lisa and I to name the company the Tom Bilyeu Show. Tom Bilyeu Studios. And I didn't want to do that. I didn't want it to be about me. I think I am a useful tool. I'm very verbal. Like I said, I'm dumb enough to make the mistakes, smart enough to figure out some of the solves. I knew that I could be useful at a certain phase of the company to come up here and explain this stuff. But ultimately, if this doesn't go beyond me, if it doesn't become your company, if you guys don't wear the logo with as much pride as I wear the logo, then the ideas themselves will never get out there. So what we're trying to do is create an idea virus. And we hold every idea to one criteria. Does it make the person's life better? So if you take an idea and implement it in your life and it makes your life better, then it's going to naturally get passed on to other people around you that want to know how your life is to going, getting better. And so that's what we want impact theory to be. And the people that we have attracted with the no bullshit approach of like, yo, this works and I'll never back down from something that works. And because Lisa and I did not get famous for being famous, we've built companies, we had our head down for decades, literally decades, with no sense that there would ever be a camera attached to it. Just trying to build things of value that touch people's lives. And that was our obsession. So that's what we got good at. So for us, the attention, the notoriety is all just a tool to get that idea virus out there and spreading. And so when we get a chance to be with you guys face to face to meet the people that are ultimately going to bring the most value to each other, like that's the juice for us. So understand that the people that you're sitting around today that are to your left and to your right, behind you, next to you, those are going to be the people you're going to make connections with that are going to help you actually elevate yourself. Look, it's not a joke. There's a reason that people say that you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with. And one of the most frequently asked questions I get is where do I find like minded people? So that's precisely what we're trying to put together, is a group, an ever growing group of people that hold themselves to a very simple standard. And that standard is, does it work? Not, does it sound cool on a fucking T shirt? Does it actually work? Not, was it an uplifting thing to write in your journal? Did it fucking work? Like, are you actually moving towards your goal or not? And that is our obsession. I really, really believe that if people listen, there are simple rules, procedures, steps, beliefs that you can put in place in your life. And simply adhering to those things in a certain sequence will change your life forever. And the number one thing that we're going to be talking about, at least in this context, is identity. Now here's the thing about identity. You get to decide who you're trying to be. And I'll say it like that, because in the beginning, anything fucking interesting is going to be I'm trying to be. It's not going to be who you are. Now I'm going to throw out some really fucking simple ones that will give you an immediate sense of just how much definition comes crashing down on you with these words. If I say to you, my identity is that of the warrior, what does that make you think? I hear savage. I get down with that. No excuses. Beast Goggins. That's got its own whole set of baggage. So you guys see how quickly that one identity has, like all this weight to it. It has dimensionality. It brings a lot of thought. So if I say I'm a warrior and you mentally just fill that in with David Goggins and you're telling people I'm a warrior, then to be congruent, it's this thing. This is an innate thing in the human animal. For whatever weird fucking reason humans want to be congruent. So if you tell somebody you are something, then you want to act in congruence with that. Otherwise it does not feel good. And if you say you're going to do something and you do it, then it does feel good. So if you say I am a warrior or I'm becoming a warrior, whatever way feels good to you, might I suggest just saying you are, I am a warrior. It's going to get you acting a lot more. Because here's what you need. One of the most important things to seeing a resolution or a goal across the finish line is not fun, it's not fluffy. This is the shit that leaves people in the 92% because no one kicks them in the fucking ass and says, hey, motherfucker, you said you were going to do this and you're not doing it. And let me tell you, that's not okay. Welcome to the first couple years of my marriage. That's fucking true, by the way. That is some real shit. Let me tell you. This motherfucker is not for play. I know she looks cute. She looks real fucking cute. And she hides behind that 5:1 bullshit. But let me tell you, this bitch is not for play. Is that a L? And I am so grateful for that because I said one thing and I was acting another way. And look, she wasn't gifted at that moment of knowing exactly what and how to say and all that. So we were clumsy through all of this. So some of it, I'm Going to repackage for you. But the real thing was I wasn't being congruent and she called me on that shit. The reason that people don't see their goals through is because it is fucking hard to, to kick yourself in the ass. It's even harder to invite people into your life who will kick you in the ass and hold you to a standard, because it's going to fucking hurt. You're going to feel judged. Even if you have asked them to deliver that role, even if that is what you want from them, it still hurts and it's still going to make you push back. And it is still the realest shit ever. It is exactly what you need. And without it, you will languish in, in the 92%, I fucking guarantee it. It is the truth of the human condition. Consistency is what puts you in the 6%. 8. I have the flu. Bear with me. Plus, I never claimed to be good at math. If you want to get into that rare group that actually sees it through, it really is a game of consistency. And I remember when I first got into business and I began changing my identity, I used to say to Lisa a lot, I just need to hang on long enough to figure this out. I had just like an intuitive sense that some of the battle was surviving the attrition because it just wears on you. And if you guys have ever watched Navy Seals go through their training buds and Hell week and all of that, it's really a game of where is your breaking point? Now everybody has a breaking point. You need read no further than the Gulag Archipelago if you want to see everybody has a breaking point. But the question is, how far back can you push your breaking point? How far out? So if David Goggin says when you think that you're 40% of the way there, or when you think you're all the way there, you're really only 40% of the way there. And I actually told myself that today because I was like fucking now when I woke up this morning. Like, I know enough about how energy is actually created in the body at a cellular level. So I know that while there is a certain amount of how you feel is make believe, there's also a certain amount if you don't generate ATP, you actually do die. No matter how hype you are, you could be the most hype. And if you have no more mitochondria making ATP, you did. You're the most hype dead motherfucker ever. But you still dead. So I was like, fuck, man, am I Going to be able to generate this energy, like at an ATP level? Am I for real? Going to be able to? Because I know that I'll dig deep. I know that I'll show up. I'm not going to cancel no matter how tired I am. That is outside of my identity. So I know all of that's off the table, but is there. Am I going to encounter that moment today where I'm like, I reach for the energy and the energy simply is not there? And then I remembered Goggin saying, man, when you think you're spent, you're really only 40% of the way there. And I thought, all right, we're good. And it's true. And that's where getting into that consistency of all the times you don't want to do it, and then recognizing, depending on what your identity is, that your identity mandates that you keep going even when it sucks. And there's. There is some. In fact, I'm going to give you the gift of a visualization. And this is the visualization. You have the flu. You have a temperature. It's a shitty flu, too. It's that shivery stuff. It's shivery one minute, baking the next. Nothing tastes good. It's all horrible. Your hound is. Your head is pounding, and you've got something that you have to do that day. Can you all imagine that? That feeling of like, there is no staying in bed today. It's what I should do, it's what I want to do, but it's not an option. And in this moment, I'm going to change your life with this shit. And I really do mean the following sentence. Tonight will change you if you let it. If you let what I'm about to say become your default answer, the rest of your life will be different. I am not kidding. So it's in that moment, whatever it is. Maybe it's a funeral, a death in your family, so you know you have to go. Or maybe this is your last chance to see someone before they die. Or maybe this is your child's graduation. Whatever is that level of importance to you. And you feel like 10 pounds of ass and you don't know if you can get out of bed. And in that moment, you're going to know to the core of your being. There's nothing in this fucking world that will stop me from going to that certainty. There's nothing, there is nothing more intoxicating than certainty. When you know about yourself, let me tell you, I will fucking show up. I give my wife the look sometimes because she's worried about my health. She's worried about my longevity. And I'm worried about one fucking thing, and this is the truth. And I invite you into my madness because this madness will take you to places you cannot fucking imagine. And they are all glorious, my friends. And my madness is this. I know who the fuck I am. And if I have to face down death to be who the fuck I am, then I will face that down. And that does not scare me. Dying does not scare me. Putting myself out there, running the actual risk of hitting the point where I cannot generate enough ATP to continue to fucking breathe, that does not scare me. What scares me is not being the person that I want to be. And you need that kind of pressure. So you want to see your goals in 2020 come to fruition. People better be fucking worried about you. You better act like a goddamn psycho. And when my wife comes to me and tells me, hey, maybe you shouldn't come. Maybe you should just relax, I don't even say a word. I just do this. And she knows, all right, all right, all right, fine. And then usually says something like, it's your ass. If you want to be tired, you be tired. Just go be sick in a different bedroom. Now, my wife is crazy supportive. She does make me give her the look sometimes. But there are ride or die people in this world, and she is definitely one of those. I will give her that. I will give her that almost more than the words that I'm saying. I want you guys to pay attention to the amplitude with which I say them. So, first of all, there's a really weird thing in your brain where your brain is retroactively justifying the amplitude of your expression. So if you freak out that someone cut in front of you in line, then your brain's like, yeah, that shit is fucking crazy, man. That's practically genocide, homie. Be careful with that, because actually, that is what your mind does. It's like, fuck, well, Jesus, we just reacted really big. That must be some crazy shit. So make sure that it actually is some crazy shit, because I see people flip the fuck out over some really stupid shit. Conversely, if you don't want something to be a big deal, this actually works, then just don't react big to it. Just be chill about it. Like, shit, Tom, your leg, it's fucking off. Yeah, that's gonna take some stitches. It's all good, though. I've got two. If you have that kind of chill response, like, you will be shocked. The things you can get through in my company, which I get, hey, apparently, you guys know impact theory. In impact theory, we take these tests and it tells you about your personality and you get a score. And one of the things you score on is like, a calmness reading. Now, by nature, I will not say that I'm a calm person by nature, I will say that I'm afraid. That's how I came up. But I have chosen a new identity that does not allow me to react with fear. I understand the mechanisms of the human animal. I believe in them. I don't see any reason to try to pretend that they're not real. So I know it is a truism that my brain will retroactively try to justify whatever level my reaction is. So if I give a big reaction, it must have been that important. And if I give a chill reaction, then it must not be that big of a deal. And I have found in the moment where you most want to panic, downshift that bitch, and literally just click into another gear, slow down. Normally, nine times out of 10 when I'm doing something, I'm trying to speed my brain up, and I can feel that shit happen. I can feel it go into another gear. And I know if I start talking right now, I will be able to talk much faster than I could maybe even 30 seconds ago, because I'm giving my brain that command to speed up. But in those moments, I slow that shit down. I talk slower, I move slower. I use a different register in my voice, a different level of intensity. I'm not pushing my words out. I'm even doing different shit with my face. And then my brain is reading it as, oh, this isn't that big of a deal. And you start doing that enough. And that emotional control that Lisa talked about that I didn't have at the beginning of our relationship, you begin to realize just how malleable all of this stuff is. That's how you begin to piece together the truth behind owning. I'm a warrior. Now, you don't have to use that word. You want to pick something that matters to you, but let me tell you, warrior was good for me in the beginning because I felt like I was anything but. But I had just gotten married, and I felt an overwhelming sense of obligation to be able to physically protect my wife. Hey, you say it's some old school bullshit if you want, but that mattered to me tremendously. And so I started hitting the gym. I started hitting the gym with one thing in mind, which is if somebody came and was trying to do something to my wife that I would Be able to stop it. And so I started telling myself, I am a warrior. I am here to protect you no matter what. I would lay my life down for you. I don't think there's anything. This is not a joke. I don't think there's anything I have rehearsed more times than getting myself in a situation where I kill some motherfuckers trying to get to my wife. Because don't rehearse dying for her. That's. That's not the one you want to be good at. What do you do when surrounded by 200 enemy soldiers and you're all alone? You kill them all. Don't even understand the question. And so I would practice that in my mind over and over and over and over and over. And the more you rehearse something in your mind, the more it begins to entrench. Your brain is literally going through a myelination process. It is connecting pieces of your brain, because what your brain. Your brain is like this weird sketch thing that's constantly shifting back and forth between being an active species, going out and exploring and gaining mastery over your environment, and then, on the other hand, chilling on the couch and eating a bag of chips. You guys with me? That's because your brain sucks up a lot of calories. It is crazy. It eats up something like 20% of your calories, but it's like 3% of your body mass. So the brain is calorically very expensive. So you have genes that both propel you to go and pull you back to stop. Because in ancient times, you were not going to come across as many calories as you needed to keep things going at all times. So you have this constant interplay of go and stop. So that's why I will just tell you, by nature, I am super fucking lazy. For sure, 100%. Not like, oh, laziness is in my past. Like, that shit is a Flavor Flav style clock I wear around my neck at all fucking times. That is just true. I wish that it was not. That would make life a lot more fun. But the fact is that I'm super fucking lazy. So I have to recognize, okay, there's a reason for that laziness. Understand how it works for and against me. And one of the ways that it works for you is your mind is always trying to decrease the cost of things that you think with frequency. So be very careful, my friends. Whatever you think repeatedly will hardwire. So it becomes more energetically efficient to think that thought. Now, the brain, when in neutral, will do what think you ever once sat and just found yourself an hour later going, well shit, I didn't think about anything for an hour. Isn't that meditation? No. You're like, I have to fucking grocery shop. I have to. I gotta go get the kids. I think I'm getting a little fat. Like this is. That's the real. So in neutral, your brain will cough up thoughts at an alarming rate. Non stop violence, but it's gonna go to the least energetically expensive thoughts it has. Which is why you loop around the same shit. That dumb person, that dumbchu. When you were 14 and you're 46 and, and you're still fucking on that shit, it's like, why the fuck am I still. This is crazy. They're in an old folks home now. The fuck do I care? But you care because that became the easy shit to think back when you were 14 and really gave a fuck. And so now it's just there because you've hardwired it and you keep looping on that shit. And you don't do what's called pattern interrupt. You gotta pattern interrupt that shit. And you've gotta not only break up the old pattern, you've gotta give it a new pattern. That new pattern should be something around your new identity. So. So you're going to start repeating that shit to yourself. So if you want to know what identity you need to take on, it better be something that's going to help you with your 2020 resolutions. Whatever your fucking goals are. Who do you need to be to make that shit real? And now imagine this. This is the fucking greatest news I'm going to have for you all night. This is the greatest news anyone is ever going to have for you. Whoever you can imagine. Whoever you can imagine. And I used to imagine Bruce Wayne. Whoever you can imagine you can become. What? Step one for Bruce Wayne, get rich. What was the entire first arc of my life about getting rich? The only difference was I actually believed I could do it. And so I put all of my time and energy into making that real. And because that was the thing I was focused on, it was the identity that I had. I used to think about him, read the comics, see, obsessed with Batman. Lisa and I's first dog was named Batman. Fucking obsessed, man. I wanted to be that shit. Now I picked him, obviously, because he had only real human abilities. It seemed far more attainable than trying to like figure out a fly and shit like that. Which I'm not ruling out, by the way. Hey, let me tell you, put Elon Musk on that shit long enough. Something tells me but you have this vision of who you want to become and you can actually become that person. It is the systematic acquisition of the beliefs, the rules, which we probably won't have much time to talk about tonight. But the belief there's sadness over the rules, not, not the one that I expected the sadness over. Well, we'll have to do some rules at some point. You have to know what you do and don't do, what you do, allow and don't allow. And one of the things that I know a lot of people struggle with is self doubt. So if you guys look at the 25 point bullet belief system, the impact theory belief system, I use those a lot of times as rules. So some of them are like the perfect rules. We only do and believe that which moves us towards our goals. Now if you adopt that one right now, in fact, for tonight, the one rule you need, because this shit will get you where you want to go. The one rule you need, do and believe. And believe only that which moves you towards your goal. So if you find yourself looping around what a piece of shit you are, how stupid you are, how much worse than everybody else you are, how everybody else does things more easily than you, if you find yourself in that loop one, remember, the more you repeat it, the easier it becomes to think. Which means you're going to think it more often because your brain in idle is going to kick up a lot of thoughts and it's going to go to the ones that are most energetically efficient, which will be whatever the fuck you've been thinking about for the last 10 years, nonstop. So that negative loop is real fucking easy to play. It's like a DJ that only has one fucking track. But that shit gets real easy to play. So it's going to be looping around that and you're going to have to ask yourself one simple question. Does believing that I'm a dumbass move me towards my goals? If it does, then I'm going to do it because I have a rule about that shit and I do and believe anything that moves me towards my goals. If on the other hand, and if I had to hazard a guess, I'm going to guess that it does not serve you to believe that you're a dumbass and that everybody is better than you. That just seems like a shot in the dark. Now occasionally you may want to use a little bit of that pain to get you going. That's some advanced class shit. We're going to set that aside For a second. For right now, I think we can all agree that it would far better behoove you to say, I can learn anything I set my mind to. I'm not going to waste time worrying about whether I'm a dumbass right now, because I know this. I do not have to stay a dumbass. And I can learn whatever the fuck I need to learn in order to get to my goals. So that is one of the rules that will come to your aid all the time. That will pattern interrupt that negative thought that you're having. That will stop it from being the easiest thought to think because it stops being the most frequent thought that you think. Now, building your ultimate sort of version of yourself is a very complicated endeavor. But if you get the identity right, you're probably 60% of the way there. So figuring out exactly who you want to become and then believing that you can actually become that person. And by all means, pick somebody who's real. You don't have to pick a fictional character. Hey, be Tom. Be. I love that. So here's the thing. Now you want to identify what are the things that make Tom Tom? Okay, Number one, fucking tenacity. Okay? This guy, he's like a dog with a fucking bone. I don't know what this. What is with this guy? You're already rich. Sit the fuck down. Why are you doing all this? Right, so I am inhumanly driven. I have a psychotic need to matter. Why? Like, what's that all about, dude? It's like a sickness. Get a fucking therapist.
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I hold myself to a crazy high standard. I do, and believe that which moves me towards my goals. I have the identity of a learner, so I have a whole obsession around being antifragile. You could do a lot worse. Like I will say, as an archetype of an identity, I've cobbled together some really useful shit. So I'm all for that one. But it certainly does not need to be that. It can be also a class, like warrior. Instead of someone very specific, it can be a class that's a known name but you give it very different specifications of what you expect from that person. But you need to have a clear sense of what that person does and doesn't do. Because this is meant to be a filter for your behavior. This is meant to be the thing that's going to come to your rescue. When you have 103 degree temperature, but you still have something that you need to do, it is going to be your identity. So your identity has to give you these huge rewards. In fact, if you look up the word discipline. Discipline comes from an old French word. Discipline, huh, Jeremy? How'd I do? It's actually true. It comes from that word. And it's all about basically developing enough self control through punishment. Can look this shit up that you build enough self control through punishment that you can follow a set of rules. That's literally what discipline is all about. Discipline has like a more militaristic connotation, but it is really about punishing something until it falls in line. Punishing something until it falls in line. And humans are really fucking bad at this. People get all up in arms when I talk about punishment. I. But until you learn to punish yourself, you're going to be in the 92% of people that never see shit through because you're not putting enough fucking pressure on yourself. You don't want this shit badly enough. There aren't big enough consequences on the other side. And until this is like a fucking must have, why would you do it? It's fucking hard. And you have a voice in your head screaming at you to sit on the couch and eat potatoes. That's the fucking thing you're up against that shit. So this is about building this like intense must have in this shit. And like, if you're gonna model yourself after me, let me tell you, the ability to build desire. That shit is my like secret fucking weapon, man. I can go from not caring about something to it's my fucking life. I'm not kidding in like 45 minutes because I know the mechanisms. I know the mechanisms of the way that the human mind works. I understand what I call the physiological hooks that you can reach in there and alter your physiology. If you've never done this before, fucking meditate for the love of God. Because the simple act of breathing through your fucking diaphragm will move you out of the sympathetic nervous system and take you into the parasympathetic nervous system. It is a fucking seesaw. You cannot be both fucking amped up to the high heavens in fight or flight. And at the same time Be, rest and digest. It doesn't happen. You're one or the other. It is the way nature has designed the fucking system. So you are either going to be in fight or flight, or you're going to be in rest and digest. And by breathing through your diaphragm, you can change it. That is so fucking weird. I can't believe that that is true. And for years, I didn't meditate because I thought it was too feminine. And finally, Mark Divine, a Navy seal, pulled me aside and said, tom, stop being a dumbass. I literally kill people for a living. And I'm telling you, meditation is the shit. All right, all right, I'll stop being a dumbass. And I sat down and literally, from the first diaphragm breath that I'd ever taken intentionally, I could feel. I could feel myself in real time moving into that relaxed state. And I was like, fuck, man, is somebody dealing with anxiety? I just could not believe how it was pulling me in this new direction just by breathing from my diaphragm. And warriors say that the abdomen is the soul of the warrior. And I suddenly understood why that was true. It is the place that lets you center yourself. It's the place that lets you find calm in the midst of a storm. That is a physiological hook. That is. Now, there are physiological hooks that go the other way that make you feel more aggressive, right? I could fucking draw them up here as, like, cartoon characters, right? You can look at somebody's posture, somebody sitting back in a chair all relaxed, right? That person's not about to get up and attack. And then if I do this, this is mine, man. If I'm sitting at a table and I need to get real fucking into. I'm actually about to break this microphone. I start tensing my muscles. If I bring my chin down in your presence and I start looking up, then, no, I've moved into a different zone. I'm ready to fucking attack. I'm ready to do this, whatever this thing is. Let's get after this motherfucker. And just doing that and just tilting my chin down, putting my forehead out a little bit, gritting my teeth, gripping my hands, making a fist, leaning forward, projecting my voice, speaking from my diaphragm, all of that stuff begins to transform how I fucking feel. It isn't just how I'm acting. It is this weird reciprocal loop that the more that I act like that, the more my brain's like, fuck yeah, let's go, motherfucker. We got this. You get into that zone, you can actually Feel yourself changing from a neurochemical place. And this is this. Oh, man. I really want you guys to hear this. You've got to fucking puppeteer yourself. You've got to puppeteer yourself. And when you start doing that, you will step into this whole new world of realizing that your body does not have to control you. You can leverage your body. I won't even say control it. You can leverage your body to get into useful neurophysiological states. From those useful neurophysiological states, you can then attack certain problems. I'm going to ask you guys a question. Who here, in the span of a single day, has ever thought I'm the fucking man or woman, and then in that same day thought, nah, I'm a fucking moron. I was wrong earlier. I'm fucking dumb, all right? Who's ever gone through that cycle in a single shower? I have, like a fucking thousand times. It's crazy. Now, the thing that I noticed is if I were to act when I'm feeling like a moron who. I'm timid. I'm far less willing to take a big risk. Bold ideas don't even come. I'm not going there. I can feel there's a contraction in your mind. It's probably not literal, but. But it does feel literal. It feels like things are shutting down. Your shoulders come forward, you just feel smaller. The neurochemistry changes in your mind. You're probably not thinking as fast. Do you guys feel that? As really as I do. There is a real consequence when my mind slips into that zone. Now flip it. I have made a living out of finding ways to get myself into that power mode where I feel like, yo, I'm a fucking badass. I got this. And largely, by the way, through rules like being decisive, I have simply demanded that I be decisive. Now, I've made decisive decisions that cost me hundreds of millions of dollars. Okay? So I'm not saying it's all upside, but I am saying that I would never have been in a position to lose hundreds of millions of dollars if I had been afraid to make decisions. So you've got to understand how to get in there, how to puppeteer yourself so that you're not at the whims of why one moment you feel like a stud, and then the next minute you feel totally weak and incapable. Because I'm telling you, you get a mood swing. Through it all, sometimes you're going to be up, sometimes you're going to be down. And you've got to find a way not to just be along for the ride. You've got to find a way, whether it's a fucking song or which. Man, I don't know about you guys, but there are just some songs that do it. I just can't feel like a loser with certain songs. You should have seen this woman getting herself hyped to come up here and do this intro. Literally, like 20 minutes of, like, a jazzercise class. It was fucking crazy. I was impressed. Everybody's got a song that gets them to the place that they need to be. Or if it's not a song, whatever it is for you. Bench pressing, drawing, skipping rope with your puppies. I don't know, Rob, but whatever your thing is, you've got to find it. You've got to find that thing that makes you powerful. You've got to be on the lookout for it, because you've got to be at will to be able to step into that if you want to see your goals through. That's the fucking truth. The reason that people don't see their goals through is so multifaceted. There are so many things that are coming at you. You're going to get bored. Your goal isn't going to seem cool anymore. You're going to kind of forget that you had it. It's like, oh, fuck, yeah, I was going to do that. The kids are going to get sick. You're going to have too many business trips all at once. You're going to be fighting with your spouse. The car breaks down, you can't afford to get it repaired. Like, just on and on and on and on and on. There will be this onslaught of reasons not to do the thing that you want to do. And it's so easy to put off because you didn't take the time to tell other motherfuckers what your new identity is. So you can imagine when Tom decided he was a warrior and. And that he was going to start lifting weights. If my body wasn't changing, that would have been a pretty obvious thing. So I remember in the beginning, yo, do I really tell people? Because if I don't tell, they don't know. And then I can just say scrawny. And then I remember thinking, fuck, I want Lisa to see me naked. And she'll know. All right, so I guess we'll hit the gym, start doing our thing. And so I started telling everybody that would listen, like, to an embarrassing level. Anybody that would listen, yo, I'm gonna look like Hugh Jackman in X Men. This is gonna be the shit. This. This Sort of dates when this all happened. But I was like, I'm gonna look like Hugh Jackman. Oh, shit, look at that. There it is. The rage that you see on my face, by the way. You're gonna think I'm kidding, but I'm not, I would imagine, exclusively. I. My wife being attacked. That was quite literally. I hate working out more than you can imagine. So I had to find some way to connect to it. So I used to stare at her with, like, all this fury and rage. And she would catch me from across the gym, like, hi, I know what you're doing. It's nice. And then just go fucking at it. But it worked. It worked. And that. That is how you stay consistent. There it is. Well, thank you. Funny story. Just to really derail for a minute. So the photo on the right, your left. I did not ever expect that to be the before photo. So I had been lifting really hard and getting big. I was on what they call a seafood diet. If I saw food I ate was actually horrible, that sounds like it would be fun. It is not fun, I assure you. If anyone's ever had the meat sweats, you know what I'm talking about. And went to see a friend that I hadn't seen in years. Literally years. So I go from like a buck 55, a buck 60, maybe, to £230. Wear my tightest T shirt. I expect her to be like, oh, my God, he put so much muscle. This is fucking crazy. I can't believe it. And she says nothing. Not a word. From 160 to 230. Not a word. That's £70, motherfucker. I was like, what? And so I say to my wife when we're leaving, I'm like, man, that's crazy, right? She didn't say anything about it. And Lisa goes, oh, maybe it's just because she thought you got fat. I was like, bitch, are you for real? Why didn't you tell me? Fat, you mean? So I was like, all right, take the fucking before photos and don't ever let it get this far again. So then began the hateful part of transforming, which is getting lean. Yeah. Anybody here have a weight loss goal for 2020? Nice. It's probably the most popular goal. And weight loss is. Is brutal if you do it wrong and magically delicious if you do it right. So I did it wrong. Hey, remember staying true to my Persona here, Being just dumb enough to have to do everything the hard way. So I did what they call rabbit starvation. So for two years, I ate Literally nothing but protein. So I had boiled chicken breasts and steamed broccoli. Now I have crazy discipline that I will give myself once I set my sights on something, using identity and some of the other things we've talked about, I'm going to see that shit through. So I knew I was going to get lean. I'd always wanted six pack abs, so I boiled chicken breast, steamed broccoli with basically no cheating. I won't say never, but man, it was rare. It took me two years to do it. And my wife finally pulled me aside once early in our marriage. She said, hey, you're now working so much that you're damaging the marriage. And then she pulled me aside again and said, bs, you no longer have a personality. And I was like, oh, God, I can't take any criticism because I'm so hungry. So after talking me down crying in a, like, huddle in the corner, I finally was like, all right, this is probably true. And my joints hurt so badly, which rapid starvation is terrible for literally everything except your abs. That shit. I will give it very good for your abs. Murderous. But there are far cooler ways. I won't go into that, but I will say that if you're going on a weight loss journey, the only thing I'm going to remove from you entirely 100% is excuses. Okay, people on a weight loss journey, the number of excuses that your mind will kick up because it does not want to go through this change, which will be hard. It is as hard as you think it is. It's just not impossible like most people will be tempted to believe at one point or another. I certainly did. I became convinced that I just, hey, look, my whole family's morbidly obese, baby. It's just never going to happen for me. I'm just not built like that. And I used to get so mad at her. This bitch, she can eat like cold stone ice cream. And she'll get hot. She will get hot, but she doesn't gain fat. And I was like, I'm getting fat so fast. You can hear me getting fat over the fucking tv. I was like, this is crazy. How can we. She's half my size. How can she eat the same calories and not get fat? That's crazy. So different things will work for different people. I will just tell you that is real. So make sure that you try things for yourself. Don't take people's word for it. It's going to be a lot of fad this, fad that, whatever. But something will work for you. 100%, I guarantee it. It's about consistency. And 90, 95% of the battle is what you do not put in your mouth. This has got to be something that you believe in. It should be something that you're so fucking excited about. Like the most exciting thing hopefully that you heard tonight because you let it change you, is that you really can become whoever you want to become. I don't care if you're 65. Like, you still have all the time in the world to become whoever you want to become. So whoever it is that you want to be, no matter how many times you may have failed at attempting to become that person leading up to this point, you can still become that person. You're going to decide who that is, whether it's a category like warrior or whether it's a specific person that you want to emulate. You're going to break their world down into do's and don'ts, how they would react to certain situations. You're going to hold that ideal in your mind and you're going to force yourself to act in accordance. You are going to tell people what you're up to. And if you really have some balls, you're going to tell people that want you to fail. Because that, believe it or not, that's who's going to come to your rescue in your darkest hours of wanting to give up. It's going to be remembering that out there is someone who's laughing at you, who wants you to fail, that's talking behind your back about how you're never going to achieve it. Then imagine how fucking rad it will be when you actually do achieve it. There is the darkness and the light, my friends, and you have to play in both. You've got to know 80% of your time in the light. Focus on the beautiful things you want to create and what you want to do with your life and all of that. There's 20%, some straight Darth Vader shit. Like, you've really got to lean into that. There is real power in anger, frustration, in not wanting somebody to get one over on you, on winning against all odds, all of that stuff. It is really powerful. And this is one of those things that I find a lot of times people are willing to lean on one tactic but not the other. This set aside all your judgments about the tactics. The human animal is designed a certain way. Anger exists for a reason. Pressure exists for a reason. I always tell people, if you want to make real change, the number one thing missing from your equation, I promise you, is Massive pressure. There has to be massive pressure. There also has to be massive desire. You've got to really want it. There has to be massive pressure. There's got to be a cost to not doing it. Congruence is one part of that. You've told people, so you want to be congruent with that. But you also just have to hold yourself accountable. I am a warrior. I fucking show up at the gym, I fight for my wife. I roll up when the team is counting on me. And keep in mind, for a year leading up to my initial flu game, I was telling the team, let me tell you right now, in fact, where's the team? I want to hear from you. Wow, that was some weak ass shit. That was weak. Weak as fuck. These are the people you guys are counting to build this community, by the way. Impact theory. Would you motherfuckers like to try that again? Where's my team? There we go. All right. Did I not lay myself on the line and say, I will fucking show up for you. I will never fail you. If you ever need me, I will fucking be there. Morning, noon, night, sick, health, doesn't matter. I will show up and I will play. Yes or no. And have I ever let you down? All right. That was still weak as shit. I won't lie in my mind, that was like, yes. No, duh. Like, literally freaking out, tears, like, oh, God, Lisa, like, wailing on her chest, you know, like the whole night. That's how it played in my mind. But I'm not afraid to make mistakes. You try some, sometimes you win, sometimes you learn. So there we go. Don't rely on team for big enthusiasm. Noted. All right. But I told these people whom I love dearly that I would show up for them, that it was important to me that they knew that they could count on me at all times. Now, I had said it so many fucking times the day that I woke up with the flu, I didn't want to go in. I wanted them to be like, no, no, man, you're good. You're good. We already canceled it, man. Go home. But because I had been saying it for so long, I was like, there is no universe in which I do not show up. So of course, my wife was like, hey, look, you don't need to do this. You work so hard. Everybody knows how hard you work. And I was like, over my dead body. I will go. I will do this because it's important to me. And when you get to that, where nobody needs to be looking, you're doing it because that's who you want to be, then you will have won. And that is the secret to identity. I'll woo that. It's you have a vision of who you could become for real in real life, and then you act in accordance with that. You guys, there is no greater feeling. Generating wealth is awesome. Not gonna lie. It's rad. And I hope everybody gets the chance to do that. But it is not better than saying you were going to become a certain kind of person, the kind of person that is hard to be. A kind of person where you have to really show up and play. And when you do that, when you show up and play and the stakes were high and they mattered and it was really hard, but you did it anyway. And you do it time after time after time, and you're consistent and people can rely on you to the point of taking it for granted. That shit feels so good. That feels so good, man. This is the kind of stuff that nobody can take away from you. This is the kind of thing that allows you to take big risks. They say that the people that take the biggest risks have the strongest home life because you have an anchor. You have that port. You have somewhere to go back to. You can be that for yourself through your identity. Be someone that you would look up to. It was right out of the video in the beginning, 2020, I want to become somebody that I can look up to. That's a fucking awesome goal. And I hope each and every one of you will set that goal and stick to it. Because if you do, if you act in accordance with somebody that is worth your admiration, your life will never be the same. All right, thank you guys for coming out. I'm gonna answer question. Sa.