Transcription
What if I told you that thinking like the top 1% has nothing to do with being smarter? Here's the truth. I grew a multi-million dollar business from nothing but training my mind to think less, not more. I'm going to give you the six mental frameworks that separate the doers from the thinkers. But here's the catch. At the end, I'm going to test you to see whether you're actually ready to think like the top 1% or you're addicted to complexity and overthinking just like everybody else.
Here's the first framework that's going to piss off every productivity guru and person who worships them. Okay, most people they see the world in black and white. Success or failure, good or bad, quit or continue. Real life is messy, is nuance, is not perfect. The quickest way to think more clearly is to avoid binary thinking. Okay, this single mindset shift saved me years of wasted effort and honestly so much turmoil. The top 1%, they use and not or. Okay, they hold conflicting truths simultaneously. I'll give you some examples. This person screwed up and they've done good things. This plan is painful and it might still work. I'm scared and I can still do it. This launch flopped and it taught me what to fix and leaves room for nuance and prevents you from blowing up your life just because reality is messy. The hardest and that I've had to hold is I'm successful and I'm still figuring it out. For the longest time, I used to think to myself that if I did anything to conflict with the person I wanted to be, with being successful, with being perfect in somebody else's eyes, that I was a bad person. And so, a mantra that I started saying to myself was I would say, "I'm a good person and I do bad things sometimes." And it sounds silly and ridiculous, but it was probably one of the most relieving things I could have ever done for myself because I held myself to this unrealistically high standard. And it's just like created a a huge level of relief for me. It's also allowed me to have more clarity of thought. So what you want to do is you want to start using and statements in your hardest moments. I feel like giving up and I can take one more step. This is harder than I thought and I'm still learning and I will continue to learn. Thinking in ands builds mental flexibility. It can give you clarity and it also gives you emotional resilience because when we speak with ors, we also make ourselves feel worse than we already feel.
This next framework will make you realize why you're stuck in these mental loops. Inversion thinking. The top 1%, the people with the biggest businesses, the most money, the best in shape bodies, the strongest relationships, they don't focus on how to win. They actually focus on how to avoid failure. Most people believe that if they just think more that they're going to make better decisions, that they're going to make more money, that somehow their life is going to get better. As if there's some level of genius that you unlock through like overanalysis, like suddenly you're going to become like Warren Buffett overnight, right? like, okay, if I think enough each day, I'm going to unlock perfect solutions. I'm going to have the best life ever. I used to think this way. I used to think that planning and obsessing meant that I would be more prepared to take action. But actually, all that extra thinking actually makes you worse. And here's why. Okay. One, overthinking fuels overconfidence bias, making you believe that just because you've crafted this incredibly detailed, flawless plan that it's actually going to work and that it will work better because you thought about it more. That's That's not true at all. In fact, it just makes us feel better. It doesn't actually mean that we will do better. The second reason is it causes confirmation bias where you selectively gather reasons to justify what you already want to do. So, here's what the thought thinking productivity industry won't tell you. Overthinking is procrastination dressed up as productivity. My biggest breakthroughs came from asking one question, which was how could this go wrong? Inversion thinking flips the question from how do I succeed to what would guarantee failure? And so it's easier to spot failure patterns than to predict success. That's because avoiding the pitfalls increases your odds drastically. So let me give you an example of this. Okay, building a $100 million business. Instead, I say, what would guarantee that I fail at building a $100 million business? I would hire incompetent people. I would have no technology to support growth. I would treat people like those are all the things that I would have to do to fail. And so how do I succeed? I do the opposite of those things. And so that's why inversion thinking is such a great unlock because you essentially take the things that would create the failure and you turn them around which is what creates success. So you want to stop trying to think your way to success and start thinking your way around failure. The next time that you're planning something, ask yourself, what would guarantee that I fail at this? And how do I avoid those specific traps? If you're a chronic overthinker, the inversion framework is for you.
I have a somewhat controversial opinion which is I think that most people are addicted to their own suffering. Okay, sunk cost fallacy. This is when you stay committed to bad decisions because you've already invested time, money, or energy even though the thing no longer makes sense. Most people, they stay stuck with bad decisions, not because they're working, but because they don't want to waste what they've already put in. Okay? So, for example, I spent 2 years of my life building a product I knew wasn't working. I knew that the market didn't really want it, but I had already invested so much of my time into it. I didn't end it soon enough because I was protecting my ego rather than my future self. And I remember the day that I said like, I cannot do this anymore. This is not the right thing. Like, if I were to start from zero today, I just wouldn't build this. And it was the most freeing day of my life. And it was when everything changed for me. I said, if I can get rid of this business that I put 2 years of my freaking life into, I can get rid of anything because it doesn't matter. It's not for me anymore. And so if you're a top 1% thinker, you ask yourself this question. If I had nothing invested in this thing, would I still start this today? Would I still be with this person today? Would I still pursue this path today? Would I still make this decision today? If the answer is no, it's time to pivot or walk away. Another example I can give you, you might relate to this. When I was 23, right before I met Alex, I got a dog. Loved the little dog. Sweet little dog. I wanted a dog for so long. I love that dog. And then I started a business a year later. And all of a sudden, all the joy that that dog gave me was replaced by all the stress of having to travel and then having someone to take care of it and then him hating them away all the time. All these things. And I remember about 11 months in, I asked myself, if I didn't already have the dog, would I get a dog today? And the answer was no. So what did I do? I found him a family with kids and a yard and I gave him away to those people. Sometimes I make moves like that and they might look harsh to people on the outside, but it's because I ask myself that question. It's like, what's going to serve me today, not what served me yesterday? And the top 1% of people, they understand that sunk costs are the price of learning. There is no reason to keep suffering. There's no reason to keep all this baggage from the decisions that you made in the life that you had years ago. Sunk cost is not a valid reason to continue suffering or to continue with a decision that you know is no longer serving you.
But here is where 90% of entrepreneurs waste their time. Most people they try to improve everything at the same time and then what happens is that you dilute your focus, you slow down results and you don't actually able to break through on any one thing because you don't have enough attention towards any one thing and that is the opposite of clear thinking. So many people waste hours overthinking simply because they do not know how to identify a bottleneck. A bottleneck is the one limiting factor that constricts all of your growth. Okay? And so what happens is like most people waste their time optimizing parts that aren't the constraint. Either because they're good at them, because they like them, because they want to avoid the thing that's the real constraint. It's kind of like when people go on a diet. I saw a girl the other day. She literally was like, "I'm doing 90 minutes of fasted cardio a day. I'm hitting the gym in the afternoon. My trainer, I'm doing this, I'm doing that." And I was like, "So are you losing weight?" And she was like, "Well, no, because like I tend to like binge at night." I'm like, "Girl, what the hell? If you just stop binging at night, you wouldn't even need to do fasted cardio or go to the gym. You would just lose weight immediately." And so it's in business the same way. Hey, I see a lot of people, they're like, I'm optimizing my customer service. I'm optimizing my finance function. I built this new spreadsheet. I have this IT. And I'm like, okay, but your real constraint is that you don't know how to sell your product. So, why the hell are we not going all in on understanding sales? At acquisition.com about 18 months ago, I realized our constraint was not our brand. It was not our sales. It was not our product. Our constraint was finding the right talent to find the right people to fill the roles we needed to scale. So, once I realized this, I stopped obsessing over everything else in the business. In fact, I told my whole team the next two months, all I'm going to do is focus on recruiting. And so, all I did, I cleared my calendar. It reflected my priorities. I focused entirely on recruiting. Everything else was a distraction to me. And so, constraint thinking is how you create breakthroughs instead of incremental improvements in your business. I use this same theory with myself. If I'm trying to improve my health, my happiness, my relationships, I think to myself, what's the constraint? And it usually means that you want to get rid of something or change something drastically rather than optimize all these little parts around it. So, for example, if you're thinking about a relationship, you can find the constraint in a relationship for sure. I remember at one point in my relationship with Alex, it was easy for me to identify the constraint because everything would be really good until he would do something that I didn't like and then I would cold shoulder him and then that would create like anywhere from a couple days to maybe like a week of tension. This was like a decade ago. And then I realized that looking at our relationship, the only times that I really felt like it was not a good relationship were in those times where I was cold shouldering him. So I said, "Okay, well, what would it take for me not to cold shoulder and to open up and to do all these things?" And I tackled that. I didn't try and like, "Oh, can I make him dinner and can we do this and can I give up?" No. All I needed to do was just like stop acting like a child in those moments. And that will probably make the relationship a lot better. And improving things doesn't actually come from doing more. It comes from doing the right thing in the right sequence. So you want to ask yourself this, what is the one constraint holding everything else back for you? The one thing that if you change will give you the most leverage. What is that real bottleneck? And I'm going to tell you this, it's probably the thing you're avoiding. It's probably the thing you're avoiding because it would be the hardest thing. But the hardest way is also, ironically, the easiest way to change. And most people avoid their real constraints because they are the hardest problems to solve.
Okay, I want you to stop right now. Stop the video if you need to. I want you to take a breath and I want you to notice how you're feeling because this next part is only going to work if you watching this are feeling emotionally regulated. I used to make decisions when I was emotional till I realized this. When your emotions spike, so do all the errors in your decision-making. Emotions are the top reason that we cannot think clearly. Especially when stress, fear, urgency, they all cloud our judgment. What emotions do our thinking right? One, when we're in a state of fear, it amplifies loss aversion. So, you usually do twice as much to avoid losing than you will to try and win. Right? So, if you're growing a business, but you're really scared, I always tell people, I'm like, are you playing to win or playing not to lose? Cuz like if you're playing not to lose, you're probably not going to win as big as you really want to. Another one is stress. What does stress do to us? Right? When we're stressed, when we're anxious, when we feel wound up, it makes us shortsighted. We essentially will sabotage whatever we want in the long term to get that short-term relief. It's kind of like if you go on a diet, but you've been like you stress eat and then it's like, "Oh, I really want to eat that piece of cake, but I really want to like lose weight." It's like you'll eat the cake because it immediately relieves your stress rather than you having that body that you've always wanted. And the last one is anger. Now, what does anger do? Anger makes us react, right? So, we will do things really fast that we usually regret later. So, there's a rule that I've made for myself, and I want to give this rule to you guys. If I feel emotional, I do not make a decision. And I say this to myself, I say it to others. I only make decisions when I feel content. If I'm angry about something in my business, don't make a decision. If I'm angry with a person, don't make a decision. If I'm angry with myself, don't make a it doesn't matter. When I'm anxious, when I'm stressed, like all the emotions, I would just will not do it. So, I only decide when I'm content. Content means I don't feel urgency. I'm not in a state of fear. I'm not feeling wound up or anxious. And I'm not feeling stressed. Now, I know what a lot of people say, which is like, "Well, Ila, I've got this feeling or intuition or fear or something. It's quiet. It's persistent. It's day after day. Okay, that may mean that your brain is signaling something to you like, "Hey, I'm trying to show you this thing because we've had past experiences where something like this has occurred and I want you to remember so you can avoid it again." Sometimes that's what happens, right? But if it's sudden and it's overwhelming, panic, fear, anger, that is just an emotion that you want to let go through your body and come out of your body until you're called. Okay? Okay. So, I can give you an example, which is we had a business and they really wanted to do a deal with us and they essentially said if we got the deal done in the next couple weeks that they would give us the deal for $5 million less. And I remember someone in the company called me. They told me this and I immediately I felt panicked. Now, why did I feel panicked in the moment? And I said, "Okay, I can't make this decision today." They're like, "Well, we we're on a timer. They said we could save it's $5 million we would save. That's a lot of money." And I was like, "Yeah, hurt, but I feel really not good right now." And I don't know why. So I said, I need to sleep on it. So I slept on it. I woke up the next morning and I realized why. I was like, I'm not aligned with the founder. I actually don't want to do this deal. This founder reminds me of this guy who tanked his business. And you know what's funny is that it was the best deal that I ever didn't do because that guy burned his business to the ground. Which I found out 2 years later. And if I had in the moment been like, "Oh my god, I feel panicked. Like I need to do this deal." And I had done it. It could have led me, you know, going down with that guy. It took me saying, "Okay, I'm panicked. Wait a day." But now that the panic has subsided, I can tell, oh, there's something here. It's not just me in stress and panic. And then I can ask myself, okay, what do I want to do with this information? So the next time that you're feeling emotional, you want to tell yourself, if I feel emotional, I don't decide. And if somebody asks you to make a decision and you feel rushed, you feel panicked, you feel stressed, you feel angry, you just tell them, I don't make decisions quickly. Sometimes we just make decisions cuz we're like, I just want to get it over with. That's not a good reason to make a decision. We don't want to just get it over with. The emotions are going to subside no matter what. And so we want to make sure that we wait for the clarity, not for the emotion.
Okay, so here is the final framework that separates the top 1% from everybody else. This is time horizon anchoring. Okay, here's the brutal truth of why most people fail. If you want to win, you need to think on a time horizon longer than anybody else. Your brain will panic the moment that progress slows or something goes wrong, and you need to not listen. The top 1%, they win not because of how hard they play, but because of how long they play. 99% of people lose because they cannot stick with the plan long enough for it to freaking work. Okay? Your brain, it has recency bias. So, it overweighs whatever just happened. So, the moment that the plan feels hard or boring or something really bad happens, your brain says, "Maybe things have changed. You know, it's looking pretty rough right now. Maybe I do need a new plan. You know what? This business, why am I even doing this anyways?" Right? Maybe this doesn't work anymore. You know, I can get a guy better than him. Maybe this was never even that good in the first place. Look at all this I got to deal with. Nine out of 10 times. Nothing has changed. It just got really hard for a minute. The real advantage of the top 1% isn't thinking of better plans. It is sticking with the current one long enough for it to work. And so you want to override that recency bias with one simple rule. The plan works until the data proves it doesn't. No feelings. No like I'm bored. No, I'm it's hard. No, it's difficulty. Just data. Follow the evidence, not your feelings. Thinking does not equal progress.
So, here's your challenge. For the next 7 days, every time you catch yourself overthinking, ask yourself one of these questions instead. How could this fail? Can I use and instead of or? Would I start this today? What's my real constraint? Am I emotional right now? Is my timeline realistic? The difference between the top 1% everyone else is not intelligence. It is the discipline to think less with better frameworks and act more. So, if you like this video, you can subscribe to my channel and check out my next.