Reality vs. Perception: The Big Lie Your Brain Keeps Telling You | Isaac Lidsky (Fan Fav)

Summary

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Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu: Reality vs. Perception — The Big Lie Your Brain Keeps Telling You

Guest: Isaac Lidsky | Date: April 5, 2025

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Episode Overview

Host Tom Bilyeu sits down with Isaac Lidsky—ex-actor, Supreme Court law clerk, CEO, and author of Eyes Wide Open—to explore the deep divide between reality and perception, and how our brains unwittingly construct the world around us. Lidsky shares profound lessons from losing his sight in adolescence and how it taught him that our realities are often self-created, not simply received. The episode is a rich, vulnerable conversation on fear, self-limiting beliefs, redefining success, the power of taking action, and ultimately, our ability and responsibility to create happiness and meaning.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Illusion of “Seeing is Believing”

[04:17–05:29]

• Isaac Lidsky: Losing his sight exposed how “objective” vision is actually a personal, constructed virtual reality shaped by memories, opinions, emotions, and expectations.
  • Quote:

    “Sight… far from objective truth or external reality. It’s this personal virtual reality we create for ourselves.” — Isaac Lidsky [04:19]

• Only ~10% of what you “see” comes from visual data—the rest is brain construction.
  • Quote:

    “The site itself is really only about 10% data from the eyes. And yet we walk around, or sighted folks walk around thinking that they know what the world looks like. The idea is crazy. It's nonsense.” — Isaac Lidsky [06:39]

2. The Role of Fear in Shaping Perception

[08:06–10:14]

• Fear fills in the unknown with worst-case scenarios—what psychologists call “awfulizing.”
  • Quote:

    “Fear is this mechanism that sort of fills in the unknown... we fill in really the worst case scenario, right? We awful... psychologists call it awfulizing.” — Isaac Lidsky [08:24]

• These fears become lived realities unless disrupted by awareness and perspective.
• His blindness led him to see how much of fear is self-created.

3. The Brain as Reality-Constructor (Beyond Sight)

[11:57–13:05]

• Understanding the constructed nature of perception goes beyond blindness, impacting identity, success, failure, luck, and self-worth.
• Intentionally choosing who you want to be is both possible and difficult—a daily practice.

4. Battling the Inner Critic and Embracing the Strongman

[14:04–21:01]

• Lidsky describes “the critic”—the negative inner voice obsessed with perfection and comparison—and “the strongman,” based on Teddy Roosevelt’s writings, who values striving and progress.
  • Quote:

    “The critic insists upon perfection, which essentially guarantees your failure through comparison... the strongman, on the other hand, is someone who has no use for perfection, only progress.” — Isaac Lidsky [17:32]

• The strongman "savors the first step" and finds victory in striving, not in outcome.
  • Quote:

    “The strong man savors the first step. He is impatient for it, craves it. As long as he strives valiantly with his first step, he has won.” — Tom Bilyeu quoting Lidsky's book [20:38]

5. Redefining Success

[22:11–24:31]

• There’s no universal definition of success—everyone must define it for themselves after deep introspection.
  • Quote:

    “Who am I to even BEGIN to contemplate what someone else should or should not aspire to do with their time or their lives? ...You should figure it out for yourself, because time’s gonna go by either way.” — Isaac Lidsky [22:28]

6. Leaving Safe Paths: Courage to Change Direction

[24:25–27:06]

• Lidsky left high-status, high-reward careers multiple times to pursue fulfillment and family; these choices, while seemingly irrational to others, were guided by his personal values.
• It's about weighing personal purpose over external momentum.

7. Happiness & Choice—Practical Philosophy

[27:09–29:18]

• Happiness is not dictated by circumstance; it’s a moment-to-moment choice—even in adversity.
  • Quote:

    “It is not the circumstances we confront that dictate the lives we experience. It just cannot be. ...So choose to be happy literally in every moment ... it is certainly a worthwhile endeavor.” — Isaac Lidsky [27:11]

8. Practical Tools: Disarming Fear and Creating Useful Realities

[29:53–31:35]

• When afraid or lost, ask: “What am I truly trying to accomplish?” and “What is my best next step?”
• Focus on immediate, actionable steps—not the overwhelming whole.

9. Turning “Blindness” into Practical Challenge

[32:16–34:27]

• Instead of dreading “Blindness, capital B,” see it as a collection of solvable challenges (“fire hydrants”).
  • Quote:

    “You can look at it as Blindness, capital B, this... amorphous force. Or you can look at it as nothing more than this constellation of discrete practical challenges.” — Isaac Lidsky [33:20]

10. Effort vs. Results: The Value of Striving

[34:27–35:38]

• Effort is what matters most, not outcomes, which are often dictated by luck and timing.

11. Self-worth, Worthiness, and the Self-Fulfilling Prophecy

[36:06–38:27]

• The narratives you repeat to yourself (e.g., unworthiness) become your lived reality.
• Introspection is the essential starting point for rewriting those scripts.
  • Quote:

    “Introspection I think is where it all begins. ... That's absolutely crazy. So introspection I think is where it all begins.” — Isaac Lidsky [37:32]

12. Communication: From Visual Cues to Honest Dialogue

[38:27–43:01]

• His blindness required company culture to verbalize thoughts, leading to much deeper discussions and real alignment.
  • Quote:

    “There were times when I stressed out a lot... I thought maybe my blindness was a burden on my team... There’s a practical solution here...” — Isaac Lidsky [40:37]

• “Let's go around the table and say yes or no”—revealed real disagreements and fostered true team growth.

13. Conquering Fear Through Information and Awareness

[43:01–44:08]

• Fill the unknown with information, not fear. Scrutinize what you really know versus what you just think you know.
• Introspection and honest inquiry dissipate fear’s power.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• “Sight… is this personal virtual reality we create for ourselves.” — Isaac Lidsky [04:19]
• “Fear is the mechanism that fills in the unknown.” — Isaac Lidsky [08:24]
• “There is no blindness with a capital B, only fire hydrants.” — Isaac Lidsky [33:20]
• “The strong man savors the first step… As long as he strives valiantly with his first step, he has won.” — Tom Bilyeu quoting Lidsky’s book [20:38]
• “Every moment of your life is a choice. How do you want to spend that moment? Who do you want to be?” — Isaac Lidsky [27:11]
• “Introspection is where it all begins. …We can know everything about everyone, but really have no idea what's going on with ourselves. That's crazy.” — Isaac Lidsky [37:32]
• On communication: “Once you get a yeah, well, that's not a yes, you know, well, let's talk about it. And you wind up having an hour long conversation that winds up being critical.” — Isaac Lidsky [41:11]

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Timestamps for Major Segments

• Introduction to Isaac Lidsky’s story: [01:00–03:42]
• Perception vs. Reality—The Virtual World of Sight: [04:17–07:11]
• Fear and the Brain as Reality Constructor: [08:06–13:05]
• The Critic vs. The Strongman – Internal Narratives: [14:04–21:01]
• Defining Success / Leaving High-Status Careers: [22:11–27:06]
• Choice & Happiness Philosophy: [27:09–29:18]
• Practical Tools to Overcome Fear/Uncertainty: [29:53–31:35]
• Blindness as Practical Problem Solving: [32:16–34:27]
• Effort vs. Result, Self-Fulfilling Prophecies: [34:27–38:27]
• Company Culture, Communication Without Sight: [38:27–43:01]
• Overcoming Fear with Knowledge & Introspection: [43:01–44:08]
• Isaac’s final advice and impact: [44:08–45:07]

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Isaac Lidsky’s Core Message

You create your reality—even your moments of fear and limitation. By practicing conscious introspection, focusing on meaningful effort rather than outcomes, and choosing your response to circumstances, you can reshape your life, happiness, and impact. The key is to strive valiantly, savor the first step, and never let your “blindness” become an unsolvable monster—break every challenge into solvable fire hydrants.

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Find Isaac Lidsky

• Website: lidsky.com — blog, podcast, book, TED Talk, and direct feedback.
• Book: Eyes Wide Open

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This episode offers a compelling roadmap for anyone feeling trapped by fear, self-doubt, or circumstance—reminding us that, above all, we are the creators of our own experience.

Transcript

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[Tom Bilyeu]

You're listening to the Impact Theory podcast, 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 Quest Nutrition, on a journey to unlock your potential and realize your vision of success. Welcome to Impact the Hey everybody. Welcome to Impact Theory. You're here, my friends, because you believe that human potential is nearly limitless. But you know that having potential is not the same as actually doing something with it. So our goal with this show and company is to introduce you to the people and ideas that will help you actually execute on your dreams. All right, today's guest has had one of the most staggeringly diverse and successful careers ever. He began acting in commercials when he was an infant, and then, after being cast in roughly 150 commercials. And he got his big break in Hollywood when, at the age of 13, he landed the role of Weasel Wiesel on Saved by the the New Class. Overnight, he was a teen celebrity. But the show did not last long, and it was over just as quickly as it had began. But rather than lament the death of his Hollywood dream, he skipped a few grades, graduated early and headed off to college, graduating from Harvard at the age of 19 and then Harvard Law shortly thereafter. He went on to clerk for Supreme Court Justices Sandra Day o' Connor and Ruth Bader Ginsburg, ultimately becoming a litigator for the U.S. just Justice Department, where he argued more than a dozen cases in federal court, never losing a single one somewhere in there. He also founded an Internet tech company that would later sell for over $230 million. After realizing that his high powered career in law wasn't for him, he finally left his high paying Manhattan based international law firm and bought a rapidly failing cement company in Orlando. A very unlikely choice that nearly cost him everything. But against the odds, he turned it around. And in just five short years, he established ODC Construction as one of the country's most successful construction companies, taking it from roughly $11 million in revenue to north of $150 million. And did I mention that he did all of this blind? Literally. At the age of 13, he was diagnosed with a rare degenerative eye disease that slowly robbed him of his sight. What he's accomplished in life puts him in rarefied company already.

[Isaac Lidsky]

But.

[Tom Bilyeu]

But doing it blind puts him in a class all of his own. So please help me in welcoming the New York Times bestselling author of Eyes Wide Open, the man whose Main Stage TED Talk received more than a million views in the first 20 days alone. The only blind law clerk ever to work for the Supreme Court, Isaac Lidsky.

[Isaac Lidsky]

That's pretty amazing.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Pretty amazing, dude. And writing that I was like, your career accomplishments are so crazy. Like, you don't need to lead with the fact that you're blind.

[Isaac Lidsky]

Thank you.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It would be easy to write that intro regardless of that. So the fact that you were able to build a mindset that allowed you to do all of that is really astonishing. Now, what set me on fire for you is this whole notion that we live in a virtual reality. Explain that. What was it about losing your sight that led you to that?

[Isaac Lidsky]

Sure.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And then we'll dive in.

[Isaac Lidsky]

So, you know, we have this experience that, you know, sight is truth, right? Seeing is believing, we say, and you know, you open your eyes, there's the world, it's immediate, it's passive, and it's reality. Well, the experience that I had sort of progressive, progressively losing my sight from about 13 to about age 25, really shattered that illusion for me. And I literally saw firsthand that sight, this magical experience of sight far from objective truth or external reality. It's this personal virtual reality we create for ourselves that implicates our memories, opinions, emotions, our conceptual understanding of the world, all sorts of things. And yet we experience it sort of passively as this direct representation of the world. And that really was, if you'll pardon the pun, an eye opening realization for me that led to this vision that I have. Because sight is really just one way, right? That we shape the realities we experience. We create our own worlds in many other ways, really in every way. And having the opportunity to literally see that firsthand as I lost my sight turned out to be really one of the best things that ever happened to me in my life.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That's really incredible that you're able to begin to frame it that way. And one of the things that was so fascinating reading your book is your breakdown of how much resources the brain sucks up with sight. Walk us through that. Like how much of the brain is allocated to sight and then what. How have you begun to sort of re engage with the world now that you don't have vision?

[Isaac Lidsky]

Sure. So sights obviously very important evolutionarily and biologically, but it's not everything and it's certainly not infallible. And in some respects, I think, you know, as I was saying, I think there's an interesting metaphor to be made, are interesting lessons to draw from the way in which we experience sight as this all consuming passive reality versus what's sort of really going on in the world and what's really going on in our minds. And sight's a crazy thing. I apologize if I'm rambling, but. So some electromagnetic light hits the back of our eyes. Our retinas, photoreceptor cells in the back of the eye respond to that light, send a signal to the brain. We call the part of the electromagnetic spectrum that our eyes respond to, the visible spectrum. Right. Well, that spectrum of light, of electromagnetic radiation is 1/10 trillionth of the total spectrum of electromagnetic radiation that's out there. So, you know, we got this back of the eye that responds to 1/10 trillionth of electromagnetic, the electromagnetic radiation in our world. From that, you know, we create this abstracted, unique, personal virtual world that involves, like I said, all sorts of things that have nothing to do with data from the eyes. The site itself is really only about 10% data from the eyes. And yet we walk around, or sighted folks walk around thinking that they know what the world looks like. The idea is crazy. It's nonsense.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That, to me is one of the most powerful things about your book. And in fact, the reason that you've said you wrote the book wasn't for people with disabilities or blindness specifically. Certainly that you wanted your kids to read it one day so that they would have that frame of reference, so that they would understand that basically you're living in this virtual representation. Like you said, it gave me the chills that only 10% of vision is created from the data that's coming from your eyes. And so the rest is being constructed. It's being constructed by what? Right. So Once you realize that your brain is constructing the world around you and it doesn't necessarily always serve you, then it empowers you to start making choices about not only what to believe, but perspective, how to see things. And so taking that perspective shift, you've talked a lot about fear, very powerfully. What is it? What is fear? Why is it such a potent force in our life? And with new perspective, what can we do to it?

[Isaac Lidsky]

Sure. So you know, real world experience. Have you ever had, you know, the experience where you spot someone across the room, you walk over, tap them on the shoulder, and it's a complete stranger? Turns out, right? So, you know, we say very quickly, we say, oh, we thought it was our friend, or we thought it was our colleague, and that's just not true. We knew it. And you're in your world, in your reality, your friend was there, and then it turned out they weren't. So fear, we, if we're not careful, we can experience much the same way. Fear is this natural response. It serves an evolutionary purpose. To be sure, it's very helpful in a lot of ways, but it's also powerfully destructive. So fear is this mechanism that sort of fills in the unknown, right? When we confront times of change, times of crisis, you know, when we're uncertain, you know, our fears kick in and we fill in really the worst case scenario, right? We awful psychologists call it awfulizing, which I think is a great term. You know, we fill in the, you know, the worst case scenario and we have all these dark imaginings and these are things that we tell ourselves. They're machinations of our own mind. But much like that friend at that party, these aren't things that we think. We experience them as things that we know, right? If we're not careful. When I was first diagnosed with my blinding disease, I knew that blindness was going to ruin my life, right? It meant I was going to live a wholly unremarkable life, small and sad. It would be the end of achievement for me. I thought I'd never have a family because I wasn't even going to love or respect myself. How could I expect someone else to love or respect me? And on and on and on. And these were lies born of my fears, born of ignorance. But for some time, I knew them to be true. And I think had I not had the blessing of this sort of shattering of the illusion of sight itself that I speak of, this sort of peek behind the curtains into sort of the way the mind works, the wizard mind behind the curtains, right? If I hadn't learned to see through those fears eyes wide open. I would have. I mean, that's the world I would have lived. That would have been my life. And the only difference is perspective. It's in here. It's nothing out there in the world. So, you know, like I said, this journey of mine, losing my sight and gaining this vision has been immeasurably rewarding for me and fulfilling. And it's been one of the best things that happened.

[Tom Bilyeu]

That makes so much sense to me when I think about the man behind the curtain or the, you know, the wizard of Oz. Once you realize that they're there. That's been really potent in my life as well. So when I first started on my entrepreneurial journey, I was a total mess. And I had no idea how to make the things happen that I wanted to make happen. And I found that my own ego was getting in my way and that once I realized that my ego was based on something and I could change what that was, that I could flip that around, then all of a sudden I could value myself based on being a learner, being willing to admit that I was wrong instead of trying to be smart, right, or whatever. And that was really transformative. And being able to visualize the structures of the brain, being able to understand from an evolutionary perspective why I was set up to.

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[Tom Bilyeu]

To be fearful or whatever was incredibly powerful. Do you find that being able to becoming aware of the visual tricks because you've said that things would morph right before your eyes as you were losing your sight. I think one time you said you went to wash your hands and realized you were actually touching a urinal, but it looked like a sink until you finally realized it was a urinal. Does being able to visualize the physical machinations of the brain help you with things other than sight?

[Isaac Lidsky]

Oh, sure, absolutely. And as you said, the value in this eyes wide open vision that I speak of is it's not about sight, it's not about blindness. It's about the lessons we can take in really taking control over the reality we want for ourselves. Literally choosing who you want to be and how you want to live your life in any moment. Right? So yes, we do this with sight, but we do it with the self limiting assumptions we make about ourselves. You know, we do it with the way we misperceive success and weakness and failure and strength in life. With the way that we, I think, really misperceive luck, the force of luck in life. Our insecurities, our vanities, our seeming struggle to listen to each other, let alone to our own hearts. And on and on and on. So this really is, for me, it's my daily philosophy, right? It takes effort. There was no aha moment right up on some hill where it all, you know, flipped, you know, switch flipped and it all became perfect for me. I struggle with it every day. Some days I'm not so good at it, but it is my aspiration. And it's certainly worthwhile, I think, on

[Tom Bilyeu]

the days where you're not so good at it, what actually is happening.

[Isaac Lidsky]

You know, there are times still when I, you know, have, have fears, when I fear failure, right? When I wrestle with that critic in my mind telling me all sorts of awful things. When I, you know, I'm uncareful and find that I'm projecting onto others insecurities or vanities that are really all my own. And step one is being conscious of it and being aware of it. But that, that doesn't always mean it's super easy to overcome it. But I try again, you know, to. I hold myself accountable above all else for my role in shaping, you know, the reality that I experience in every moment. So I do try to, you know, talk to my. I do talk to myself often and say, listen, you're feeling lousy, you're worried about this, you're scared about that, you're upset about this and you know, it's okay, you're human. But let's, let's pull it apart and, you know, let's go through the strategies that I've developed over the years to, you know, overcome those things.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So I want to get into some of those strategies. In the book, one of the most incredible parts was when you buy the cement company in Orlando, which, by the way, when you look back on it and becomes insanely successful, like there's a safety net to that. We've all already landed. We know it works out, right? But you didn't know that it was going to work out. You've got your business partners like telling you, hey, it took me 20 years to, you know, save up and protect my family financially. You ruined it. In three months, your mom is having to offer you money for you to keep the company going. You've already had to tell your wife that gonna have to declare a personal bankruptcy, move in with their parents. Right. Just to really make it fun. And in the book, you actually walk through, like, step by step, what your brain was telling you. The critic, so you differentiate between the critic and the strongman, which I wanna hear more about. And then you really walk through, like, super raw and vulnerable, those steps. What was that like for you, going through that? And how. What were the mechanisms or just the dialogue in your brain that you used to silence the critic?

[Isaac Lidsky]

Sure. So, you know, it's. I wanted so badly to surrender gracefully. The company we bought was toxic. It was hemorrhaging money, and it looked like, you know, we had lost everything. And then I had this. This lifeline from. From my mom, this offer of essentially her life savings to try to save my business. And that was. It was almost an unwanted offer. Right. I wanted so desperately, like I said, to just kind of give up, but again, sort of putting my money where my mouth is on this sort of philosophy and taking a step back to really hold myself accountable for the choices I was going to make and what I wanted in life. On the inside of the business, we were even more excited about the vision. We were super excited about our team. We felt we could bring technology and professionalism to a very unsophisticated industry. And so logically, rationally, with some money, with some time, we could turn the ship around. And that was certainly a better approach than giving up, right? So, you know, when you're honest with yourself and you know the right step you gotta make and, you know you gotta do it, and you gotta get yourself there.

[Tom Bilyeu]

What I love is looking at your life, it'd be really easy to dismiss you as just being unnaturally smart and just saying, like, look, this guy's a fucking genius. Like, it is what it is. I could never do what he does. And what I found so empowering about your book, what I think is so cool about what you're doing in this phase of your life, is in the book, you walk people through where you're saying you're putting this map together of these incredible entrepreneurs that have come before you, that have been bold, but you're not that good. Like, you're never going to live up to that. And I was just like, whoa, whoa, wait a second. The guy who it would be tempting for me to just dismiss as being unnaturally smart is saying it's easy for him to. To, like, dismiss other people as being unnaturally smart. And it is this so natural thing for everybody to have that voice in their head that says that they can't do it. And then the punchline is that it was basic execution that ended up pulling you out of that. So talk to me. What is the strongman? What is that whole concept?

[Isaac Lidsky]

Yeah, so, you know, this critic, in our minds, you know, it's that nasty voice that is quick to pass judgment, to tell us what we can't do, to keep us off the field, to tell us what others are thinking and saying about us. And the way this sort of critic can be so effective, so powerful in kind of dominating our lives, in my experience, is by. Through an insistence on perfection, which is impossible. The critic insists upon perfection, which essentially guarantees your failure through comparison. Relative merit. That critic will compare you to anybody, right? Real or imagine, from any era, Especially when you compare unfavorably, you know, and the critic will swap out, you know, different definitions of success or value or purpose or, you know, for your own. And, you know, you won't even notice it. So, you know, the critic. And of course, this comes from Teddy Roosevelt's, you know, brilliant remarks about the critic and the strongman. The critic, for me really is sort of that embodiment of, you know, again, our fear of failure, you know, our own worst enemy in our minds. Roosevelt Strongman, on the other hand, is someone who has no use for perfection, only progress. Someone who values effort and growth, whose focus is momentum, the next step, not this overarching enterprise, this overwhelming endeavor, but what is my next step? And for the strongman, success lies in striving and actually striving towards a noble pursuit, which at the end of the day is the only thing we can control, right? Whether or not we are striving to our best toward a noble pursuit and the outcome is less important. It's funny you mentioned that at the time that I was going through it, I obviously did not know that we were going to turn around ODC construction and it would be a great success. You make a big decision and later it either works out phenomenally well or is a catastrophic failure. Well, it's so tempting in the face of the catastrophic failure, to go back and beat yourself up and say, oh, this was the worst decision and I'm an idiot, and this was terrible. And likewise, in the face of great success, it's very easy for people to tell themselves, well, man, I must have been a genius, right? I'm the smartest guy there is. And just as a law of physics, right, as a proposition of logic, that can't be true. It cannot be that subsequent Events determine the quality of actions you make, decisions you make, conversations you have, behaviors you exhibit. You have to assess those things from the perspective of the time in which they take place. So how does that pan out? In my experience? Was I a visionary genius to buy this struggling construction company? When we did? No. I mean, it was a disaster. We thought we were buying a humble company, but a going concern, and we bought a company that was sinking like a stone. Did it work out well? Yeah, of course. And it worked out phenomenally well. I'm blessed beyond contemplation. You know, again, I credit the team with that and the timing and the vision and luck and all those things. But I'm not going to go back and say it was, you know, a great decision. And likewise, this is the harder part. Likewise. You know, I think it's really important that we don't, you know, we don't read our own press, right? We don't get too excited about great outcomes where maybe the decisions that led to them or the journey along the way was, you know, was less than worthy.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Now, that makes a lot of sense. There's a quote in your book about the strongman that echoes what you just said, which I thought was so powerful. I want to read it exactly as it is. The strong man savors the first step. He is impatient for it, craves it. As long as he strives valiantly with his first step, he has won. What do you mean by that?

[Isaac Lidsky]

We are so often our own worst enemies. We keep ourselves, you know, off the stage for fear of bad reviews and don't even realize that, you know, in the process, that first step of the strongman, to me kind of conveys, encompasses, you know, sort of victory over that critic, Right? That's where you've said, look, maybe this is crazy, maybe it's not. Maybe everybody thinks I'm, you know, way off base here, whatever, all the what ifs. Although, you know, why should. Why should whatever. I've put all that aside and I have committed to, you know, enter the arena. And that is the defining moment, I think, for the strongman. And I think when we're honest with ourselves and when we start to recognize significance in moments like that in our lives, when we start to say, well, if I did this, it would be. It's a big move, right? And it doesn't have to be a huge move financially or economically or even, you know, it doesn't have to make sense to anyone else why it's a big move. It's a big move for you. It's important to pay attention to those feelings because often that's the strong man inside trying to tell you, we can do this, let's get over this, our fears, let's get over our self doubt, and let's do this.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You talked earlier about how people misperceive things, they misperceive success, and that the critic will even change the definition of success. What is an anchor point, a vision of success? Is there something that's universal that you think applies to everybody? Or is there a process to defining success in a way that will resonate?

[Isaac Lidsky]

I don't think so. Personally. I think who am I to even begin to contemplate what someone else should or should not aspire to do with their time or their lives or whatever, right? We're all masters of our own universes, right? Alone in our own worlds. And I don't purport to tell anyone how they should behave or what they should aspire to or what success should be. However, I certainly think everybody should figure it out. You should figure it out for yourself. Because time's gonna go by either way. And you know, you can live a life of happenstance, of reaction, you know, or you can take some time to figure out how you want to spend your time, who you want to be, who you want to be at work, you know, who you want to be as a parent, who you want to be as a spouse, and on and on and on. And you know, you can, you can try to be that person and you can try to live that life. So that's what I have in mind when I say, you know, you, you really should define your success, your purpose and labor towards it, no matter how important something is to you in your life. I mean, eventually, if you're, if you're going to run yourself down, if you're going to cause problems for yourself, if you're living an unsustainable path towards the worthiest of goals, it's not going to work out for you too well.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Well, let's get really specific then. So you've had such a diverse life. 1. I'll just walk through a few. Why not? You have success in Hollywood, but you immediately stop. You then have success at law that is just on another planet, and you stop. Obviously, the tech firm ended up doing very well, but as far as I know, you moved out of that fairly rapidly. So all of these things, like you've been able to break free of the trap that most people get into, which is there's momentum in their life, they're succeeding. Everyone Says they're crazy when they go to leave. But you've done that over and over and over. So you obviously are way in touch with your balance sheet. So walk us through one or two of those and really say leaving law, I'm gonna guess, was the hardest one. You're.

[Isaac Lidsky]

So that was a tough one.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Invested, like, how. What did you walk through? What were the. I've got this going, but not this.

[Isaac Lidsky]

So that was a tough one, you know, unless and until I actually thought about it rationally and logically. Right. And then it. Then it was pretty obvious those are often the hardest decisions to make. Right. But so, you know, here I was. I had been blessed to have phenomenal experiences in law in the public sector. Right. Working for the Justice Department, clerking for a couple U.S. supreme Court justices. Love that. And then I sort of took the easy path, the direct path, you know, accepted a phenomenal, cushy job at a very fancy, elite law firm, international law firm. And parents were very, very proud. I had gorgeous business cards in a skyscraper office and all that. But, you know, I was expected to, you know, to work, to bill 60, 70, 80 crazy hours every week. And I was involved in kind of litigation as warfare with a constant view towards the billings of the law firm. And it just wasn't the way I wanted to practice law. A lot of people weren't people I wanted to practice law with, certainly didn't want to spend 100 hours a week doing it. Just none of that made any sense. So everybody thought I was completely nuts. And maybe they're right. But the more I thought about it, the more I said, look, nothing is permanent in life. There's nothing that says if I ever want to practice law again, I can't go back to it or in some other capacity or, you know, some other city or whatever. But, you know, for now, what's important to me and what am I looking to accomplish in my life going back to that balance sheet. And at that point in my life, really, by far above all else, you know, it was. It was really quality of life and time with my family. Got to talking to my roommate, Zach, as you mentioned, and, you know, we thought, hey, let's buy a small business together. And he would help me. You know, he'd pay for most of it, but he would keep his fancy day job, and I'd leave behind my fancy day job and run it and, you know, what could possibly go wrong? So that was the thesis, I guess you would say, that brought us to Orlando and that, you know, sort of Took me to take the helm as the first chief executive officer of our residential construction subcontractor. And of course, you know, they say man plans, God laughs. It didn't turn out quite that way. But that was a good decision at the time to leave law. That was the right decision for me and my family.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So then the construction company blows up. You make a lot of right decisions. I'm sure you'd attribute it a lot, obviously, to the team, but to luck as well. But now things are going well, and instead of just continuing to scale it and grow it, you decide that you want to back off again, a pretty atypical choice.

[Isaac Lidsky]

Well, so look, you know, again, my goal was quality of life for my family.

[Tom Bilyeu]

You've said that happiness is a choice.

[Isaac Lidsky]

Sure.

[Tom Bilyeu]

In what way? How do we choose to be happy?

[Isaac Lidsky]

Everything's a choice. Every moment of your life is a choice. How do you want to spend that moment? Who do you want to be? It is not the circumstances we confront that dictate the lives we experience. It just cannot be. There are counterexamples all over the place. I'm just a blind guy. Like, that's no big deal. But you think about prisoners of war who endure the most unspeakable of human atrocities, Nazi concentration camp survivors, and on and on, and you find examples of remarkable people who, despite these circumstances, make a choice to find purpose in life, to find joy, to be a source of strength for others in their lives. And, you know, these shining folks, you know, again, to my mind, prove categorically it's not the circumstances we confront that dictate how we, you know, the lives we experience. So choose to be happy literally in every moment. And I'm not saying it's easy. Again. And I'm not, you know, I'm not saying it's always easy for me, but it's certainly a worthwhile endeavor. I mean, you know, you spill on yourself or you knock something over, or, you know, you're late for a meeting, or, you know, it can derail you. It can be, you know, something quote, unquote, awful. You know, meanwhile, most of the world is worried about, you know, health care and food and clothing, but, you know, or you can choose to laugh about it, you can choose to have fun with it, you can choose to let it go. And again, every. I think every moment is, you know, an amalgam of precisely those choices. And I think it behooves us to spend some time thinking about our answers.

[Tom Bilyeu]

And do you have a process or a mantra? Or is it as simple as choosing to laugh when you want to do anything else to actually manifest that happiness.

[Isaac Lidsky]

It's not simple. I don't think there's much in life that's simple. Everything's nuanced. It really sort of. It depends on the context. Fear in times of crisis is a little different than fear of failure and other sorts of things. So there's some nuances there. And then some other strategies I think we can bring to bear to look at things like luck in our lives. And the fundamental idea, like I said, is you're the master of your reality. Once you buy that, once you're willing to take responsibility for the fact that you are literally creating the life you are experiencing, your reality is your creation. Again, the rest is details, getting into

[Tom Bilyeu]

some of those details, at least, of that process. We're living in a reality that we create, which I buy into more deeply than you can imagine. Literally, my entire company is predicated on that notion. The success I've had in life is as a result of realizing that in the same way that you have, what are the processes of making that subconscious process. Right. Because we're not consciously creating this virtual reality. It's happening subconsciously. So how do we take conscious control of that? Or what are the insertion points to grab onto something like that so that we can begin to construct a reality that's more useful?

[Isaac Lidsky]

Sure. So you know how to strip away some of the noise, some of the chaos. Now, let's take again this notion of the critic and this notion of the way we can keep ourselves off the stage. We can be our own worst enemies in terms of our fear of failure. At several key moments in my life, there were two really simple questions that I've used to try to take back control of my reality in those situations. One being, what is it truly that I aim to accomplish? I think very often when we find ourselves debilitated by fear of failure, that, you know, that critic anxiety, you know, whatever, it can be a relief to say, whoa, whoa, whoa, wait a minute. I am loading so much junk onto this, onto what's going on here, onto what's at stake. Let me just take a step back and remind myself, what am I in this for? Right. What am I trying to accomplish? What is my endeavor here? What's my purpose? And oftentimes, in my experience, once when you do that, there's kind of a big sigh of relief. Oh, yeah, this really isn't all that big a deal. This isn't so bad. And the second one really is, what's my Best next step. Let's focus on today, this moment right now. In truth, that's all there ever is. We spend a lot of time on doom and gloom, future foreboding, awfulizing, and not enough time on this moment right now. What is my best next step? What can I do right now to make progress? And the truth of the matter is the world changes a million times a day. You're going to change a million times a day. Who knows what's going to happen on the journey from A to Z? Just focus on getting from A to B and get that done and we'll worry about C to Z later.

[Tom Bilyeu]

I love that notion of taking action and strength. And you in the book, you have an amazing quote about that that I want to read, which is strength, unexercised, will atrophy, inaction makes us weaker. So flipping that and thinking about something else you said in the book, which is there is no blindness with a capital B, only fire hydrants, which I thought was so amazing. Like, how do you use those concepts of encouraging yourself to be strong, to take action with that notion of. And in fact define, what does it mean when you say there's no capital B blindness, only fire hydrant?

[Isaac Lidsky]

So I was diagnosed with my blinding disease when I was 13, before I was aware of any symptoms. So you know those awful lies I spoke of earlier, that, you know, that awful sort of narrative I told myself about how it would be the, you know, the ruin of my life. You know, I spent three, four years really, really feeling that. And those were some, some awful years there. It was easy to have this perspective or without even knowing it. I had this sort of perspective of blindness, capital B to your point, this amorphous force, this sort of. You can't describe it. It's this foreboding, it's this awful future. It's this monster that's going to track me down and destroy my life. And that's not a very productive way to think about a challenge. That is not a construct that's susceptible to much by way of progress, concrete progress. You mentioned the fire hydrants. I went to meet with an occupational therapist at one point when I still had a great deal of useful sight, but well before I had ever started using a cane and I was prepared to talk about blindness, capital B. I assumed she was the expert on low vision and going blind and we were going to be talking about tomorrow in the future and this awful fate. She dove in and said, well, do you use a cane? And I said no. And she said, well, do you ever hurt yourself? I said, of course I hurt myself. Right. I walked into a fire hydrant a couple days ago and this and that. And, you know, it wasn't until she had to literally spell it out for me, like, do you realize that if you did learn to use a cane, you wouldn't bump into things and hurt yourself? That it just kind of clicked for me. And I was like, God, that's really all this boils down to. It's. It's a million small details like that which aren't so bad. And they're straightforward, and they're certainly susceptible to some type of progress. But you can look at it as blindness, capital B, this again, amorphous force. Or you can look at it as nothing more than this constellation of discrete practical challenges. And the fact is, every single human being, every human, faces their own discrete constellation of challenges. It's part of the human condition. There's nothing special or unique in facing these big challenges or obstacles, but how we handle them and how we choose to look at them, that makes all the difference in the world.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Talk to me about the difference between effort and results. What's the difference? Which one matters?

[Isaac Lidsky]

Oh, effort, Absolutely. Effort matters a lot more than results. Results are the factor of a lot more things. Luck being a big one, timing, circumstance, who knows? Like we were saying earlier, you know, there are, you know, there's. There's stories of countless entrepreneurs who, great vision, great drive, worked hard, you know, tried to make it happen, and it just. It didn't work out. It's the nature of the beast. Well, do you say those people, you know, wasted their time? You say their failures? No. They worked hard. They strove towards a worthy pursuit. Right. They may maybe found fulfillment in who they are. Expression of their best self. Okay, it didn't work out. You know, that's. Such is life. And again, the opposite is true, too. There are a lot of terrible people in this world who seem to achieve what we loosely call success, whatever that means, financial success, popularity, celebrity, whatever you want to call it. And there are terrible people who, without much by way of effort or character, arrive at these outcomes. So what?

[Tom Bilyeu]

One thing that you've had to go through that I think would be really hard for most people, and not necessarily that exact thing, but when you're losing something, or if you're overweight or if you're living with your mom, like, whatever your thing is where you feel unworthy, and you had said that you didn't think you would ever get married, you didn't think you would Ever have kids because you weren't worthy of love? You didn't think you would ever love and respect yourself, so how could somebody else love and respect you? So how'd you get over that?

[Isaac Lidsky]

You know, really sort of in that moment of epiphany when I met with that occupational therapist, Chris, and I started to think more about the cane and less about, you know, blindness, capital B. It was, it was a liberating experience, it was an empowering experience. Started to talk about all sorts of practical solutions I could employ to make my life a little easier, a little better. And that's when it really hit me. Well, first and foremost, that everything I thought I knew about going blind or being blind was these awful lies. So when I was able to make that connection between this experience of sight we have this virtual reality that we experience as truth. And I said, well, wait a minute, isn't that exactly what I did with my fears? And there, shortly thereafter, kind of in that realization, I guess, was this idea that life is choice. And I said, if you tell yourself you're going to live this small and remarkable pathetic life and you're not going to love or respect yourself and you're not going to find a mate, you can make that happen for yourself or you can choose to have a different

[Tom Bilyeu]

life that is so powerful and when people understand that you're going to become what you believe about yourself. You talked a lot about that in the book, the Self Fulfilling Prophecy.

[Isaac Lidsky]

Absolutely.

[Tom Bilyeu]

How is it that like, what are you going to teach your kids about self fulfilling prophecies? What should they be telling themselves? How should they be thinking? Like, if somebody watching this wants to empower themselves, are there things that are like, you could just plug and play this belief, that thing you repeat, whatever, sure.

[Isaac Lidsky]

So, you know, again, throughout the book I talk about this idea in different sort of contexts or concepts. So, you know, struggling with insecurity, struggling with how we perceive ourselves now others perceive us. For example, you know, we talked a little bit about luck, we talked about fear. And in different contexts, sort of the specifics vary. You know, that said, at the core really is a commitment to introspection. Right. Introspection, I think is a lost art. We can know everything that's going on with everybody. Every single one of our quote unquote friends and secondary friends and tertiary friends through Facebook and LinkedIn and, you know, but really have no idea what's going on with ourselves in our own minds and hearts. And that's crazy to me. That's absolutely crazy. So introspection I think is where it all begins. A commitment to talk to yourself, to figure out where you're at, what you're thinking, what you're telling yourself, what decisions you're making and why. And the rest really flows from that.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Let's talk about communication.

[Isaac Lidsky]

Sure.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So what you've done with your company culture is pretty staggering. And you obviously have, and I've been very aware of it in this interview as well. Which total side note here for a second, then I'll get to that question.

[Isaac Lidsky]

Sure.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Do you intentionally communicate with me with your eyes?

[Isaac Lidsky]

Well, yes, I guess is the short

[Tom Bilyeu]

answer, because you look me dead in my fucking eye, and literally through this whole interview, I have to keep going, fuck, he's blind. He's not seeing you nod. And I find myself giving you those micro expressions that we would normally communicate with because it is so convincing when you look me in my eye, like,

[Isaac Lidsky]

is this guy fucking with me?

[Tom Bilyeu]

Is he for real, Brian?

[Isaac Lidsky]

Like, somebody test this guy. Because I've had people insist that I could see, and then I was pretending to be blind.

[Tom Bilyeu]

It's compelling, man.

[Isaac Lidsky]

It's awesome. Because I'm like, you are? You got me. Let me tell you all the advantages to pretending to be blind. I mean, there's no end to how convenient my day is if I live as a blind man. It's just great. No. So I grew up with sight, and I grew up, you know, acting as well. And so I'm expressive, and I haven't lost that with my sight. With the loss of my sight. So I do look at people. I know where you are because I hear where you know, where your voice is coming from. It's amazing what you pick up from. From your ears if you. If you pay attention. My kids know that I know when they're looking at me and when they're not.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Wow.

[Isaac Lidsky]

So I'll say, you know, one of my signs in particular, I love it when he's not looking at me when I'm talking to him. I'll say, like, are you looking at me? And then he'll look at me and I'll go, yeah, yeah, dad, I'm looking at you. I'm like, okay, were you looking at me? No, I wasn't. It's like they answer literally the question. Yeah, but. But. So I do probably get more information about what's going on with you than you would think.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, it's. It's really impressive, quite frankly. And it made me think about what you're doing in your company and how you'll be talking to them and have to remind them, hey, I can't see if you're nodding. And that, that ended up becoming this incredibly advantageous thing because people had to really put words to how they felt.

[Isaac Lidsky]

I really, there were times when I stressed out a lot. I was anxious about the fact that, you know, I thought maybe my blindness was a burden on my team and a burden on my company because, you know, we get in these meetings and someone makes a point and you know, and then silence. I don't hear a thing. I'm like, well, what do we think? Silence again. So then I gotta be, well guys, are you nodding? You know, oh yeah, sorry, we're nodding. You know, we forget that you can't see. It's like, haha, yeah, still can't see. That hasn't changed. But you know, and it was again, it was awkward, but I thought again, eyes wide open, hold yourself accountable. Well, maybe it is awkward. Maybe you're insecure about it, maybe you're projecting. Let's go through the steps here. Well, there's a practical solution here. Is it pretty important that you communicate with your team and you understand what they're saying? Yeah, that's pretty important. Is it worth the effort to communicate orally? Yeah, it's worth that effort. So, okay, next time this happens, note to self, next time they're all nodding or whatever, I'm going to say, okay, you know what, guys, let's go around the table. I'm going to ask each of you one at a time to say yes or no. And that was the aha moment. Because of course, first time I did it, you agree or disagree, everyone nods. Well folks, I can't see you. Let's go around the table. You assume if everybody nodded, everybody's going to say yes, right? Never happened. Once you get a yeah, well that's not a yes, you know, well, let's talk about it. And you wind up having an hour long conversation that winds up being critical to the development of the team, the growth of the business, whatever, that you might have skipped entirely if you had just left it at a nine. So ultimately I came to learn that the anxiety, the awkwardness, the tension was not born of my blindness, but was kind of a necessary byproduct of true meaningful communication. Particularly in the workplace context, right, where everyone wants to succeed, be valued, you know, your livelihood's at stake and so it's not a natural thing. Again, you know, sometimes we're our own worst enemies. Sometimes, you know, true and meaningful communication is not, is not the default. It's not the natural thing. But if you can inspire a team, encourage a team, show a team how to relate, at that level, there's nothing you can't do. And I know you say one of your principles is that that's a lie, but you got to tell yourself that. Which I agree with.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Yeah, you got your finger on that one. It's so powerful. You've said that fear rushes into the unknown. How do we get rid of the unknown if it isn't by filling it with fear?

[Isaac Lidsky]

Well, information helps. Fear, again, is this evolutionary response. There are some helpful reasons to freak out. Like, for example, if it's a vicious animal that's about to eat you and you're a caveman or whatever, even if you've never seen this thing before, it's probably a good idea to say, I should get running. But so how do you overcome that? Well, step one, again, introspection, awareness. Realize that, one, you're afraid. And two, do a careful dissection. What do you know? What do you not know? And then the most critical bucket is, what do you think you know? Because that's where we get ourselves into a ton of trouble. The things we think we know that we really don't. So it's a shame that fear often, you know, just at that moment when we face the greatest need to take in new information, right? To thrive, to transcend. You know, that's really when fear will beat a retreat deep inside our minds. But that's when you know, again, it's your choice to succumb or to overcome.

[Tom Bilyeu]

All right, before I ask my last question, where can these guys find you online?

[Isaac Lidsky]

The easiest place to find me is just my website, lidsky.com, which is my last name, l I-s k-y.com. i've got a blog there, a podcast. You can find my book, my TED Talk. But the one thing that I ask folks is if any of this means anything to you and. Or you learn more or read the book and any of that means anything to you, please let me know what you think. You can provide feedback directly on the website. I read every single submission, and that's why I do this. So please let me know what you think. That's incredible.

[Tom Bilyeu]

All right, my last question is, what is the impact that you want to have on the world?

[Isaac Lidsky]

Well, first and foremost, I guess the impact that I have is I want to leave this world with four happy, thriving children. I want that desperately. Beyond that, you know, I feel that I was. I've been blessed with this vision. I have born of blindness. And the more people I can share it with and the more impact it can have in their lives in helping them to choose who they want to be. That's a real gift, too.

[Tom Bilyeu]

Isaac, thank you so much for coming on show, man. Thank you.

[Isaac Lidsky]

That was incredible.

[Tom Bilyeu]

So, guys, I'm telling you right now, his book, Eyes Wide Open, you're going to want to read it. It is absolutely incredible. It really is a life philosophy about not letting the unknown be filled with fear, about really facing the truth and asking yourself, like he said, what is the most optimal decision that I can make, action that I could take right now in order to move myself forward. It is absolutely incredible. The amount of vulnerability that he shows in the book, the way that his mind works, understanding that we live in this virtual reality and that means that you have control. And my favorite, that everything is a choice. I hope you guys heard that. I hope you heard that you can choose even happiness, that there are steps. It is not easy, but it is a process that you can follow in order to actually embody that and experience that in your life. Read his book. It's literally an instruction manual on how to figure these things out. It's absolutely incredible. It really is an insanely powerful book. I cannot recommend it highly enough. All right, guys, if you haven't already, be sure to subscribe. And until next time, my friends, be legendary. Take care. Hey everybody. Thank you so much for watching and being a part of this community. If you haven't already, be sure be sure to subscribe. You're going to get weekly videos on building a growth mindset, cultivating grit, and unlocking your full potential.

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