Transcription
Have you ever looked at your life and thought to yourself, "Damn, I am so far from where I want to be right now"? Today, I want to teach you how I went from asking myself these exact same questions to reprogramming myself to succeed.
When I was 19, I didn't know how I was going to turn my life around. I felt like I had hit this dead end, and there was no way out. You see, 99% of people stay stuck in that dead end. It's the fact that we lack the insight to understand that those things are actually tools to help us succeed. The top 1% of people have the same negative circumstances. The difference is that they do not avoid those feelings, thoughts, or circumstances. They actually learn how to use them as fuel to make themselves succeed in life, and that is what I had to learn to turn my entire life around.
I was 19. I had gained almost 85 lbs. I was drinking all the time. I was a deadbeat by all measures. It wasn't until my sixth arrest, and in that moment, my disgust for where I currently was felt more painful than the potential pain of any change I could make. That day, and it was that day that changed my life because it set me on this journey to understand how to harness that negativity and use it to my advantage.
And with that, what I want to share with you are the top four principles that I have used to reprogram myself from being that 19-year-old to being the CEO of a $500 million portfolio and to having a life that I love.
The first principle that I used to reprogram my mind is called thought detachment. When I was in that spot, a lot of it was because I was very fearful of the thoughts in my head. I'll tell you the one that held me for many years, which was, "I don't want to end up like my mother." If I even glanced in the mirror and I saw a glimpse of her, it terrified me because I watched her ruin her own life, and I was fearful that I had any sort of relation to her. And so, what ended up happening is that my life became a series of actions to avoid my internal world. My external world was a series of behaviors and habits that were an attempt to avoid everything I was thinking inside.
Learning about thought detachment was understanding that thoughts are sentences in our minds. They're not the end-all-be-all ruler of the universe telling you something that you must do. And until I understood that, they always had a hold on me. But what I've learned is that every time I accept a thought, I create a more productive life rather than a destructive life.
So, how do we detach from our thoughts? The first one is that we want to label our thoughts for what they are. Most people treat thoughts as facts and reality. Thoughts are thoughts. They're sentences in your mind. And so, the first thing that we can do to create that space is to start off by saying, "I'm having a thought that..." or "I've noticed that I'm having a thought that I'm incredibly anxious today." Even just saying that versus "I am anxious" – it sounds very different and it feels different coming out.
So, I could have the thought, "Wow, what if you end up like your mother?" And I can say it in two different ways: "I'm really scared I'm going to end up like my mother," or I could say, "I've noticed that my brain is going a little wild today, and she decided to tell me today that she thinks I'm going to end up like my mom." Crazy [ __ ]. Notice the difference in how it creates separation between me and my thoughts.
And remember, our brains are not wired for success. They're wired to help us survive. And so, if we identify something as scary, like my mom or dad who were terrible my whole life and I don't want to end up like them, if we label that as a threat, then our brains see anything that relates to it as a threat, and they put a thought in our mind to get us to run from it, just like it would if there was a tiger trying to eat you. Our brains just don't know the difference between a tiger and my mother.
The second thing we want to do after we label them is we observe them. So, a lot of times, here's what happens: we have a thought, and then immediately we go into an action. Don't do anything. But the second favorite solution is we observe the thoughts. There's a visual that's always worked really well for me, which is I think of thoughts almost like fish in a pond. I see all these really pretty goldfish because I like goldfish, and then I see like one poisoned one, and that's the thought that I'm not too happy with. And what I look at is I just see that the fish are always moving and changing, which is similar to thoughts. And so, what this helps me do is it helps me recognize that thoughts can live inside of me, and it doesn't mean anything about me as a person.
And now, the third thing that helps me work through this, and my favorite of all, is I make fun of the thoughts. I use different tonalities. Most, most of the time, we get ourselves into a point where our life is a dead end. It's because you take yourself too [ __ ] seriously. This is something that I have dealt with my whole life, and I was miserable because I took myself too [ __ ] seriously. I thought, "I can't believe I'm having this thought. I'm just an anxious person. I'm so stressed. I'm so this. What if this happens? What if this person hates me?" So [ __ ], what if they do? Maybe you are a bad, crazy person. What I have learned is talking about my thoughts in those ways has helped me manage them.
So, I might have the thought, "What if I fail on stage and I do the speech and I have a panic attack?" And I might be like, "Well, that's their problem, not mine. Someone else going to have to clean up if I pee myself." You don't need to engage with the thought. You can actually make fun of the thought, or even make light of the thought. The difficulty is that a lot of people that might be watching this and resonating is you take yourself so seriously. Thoughts and feelings don't always make sense. And so, first, we label them: it's a thought, it's not me. Then we observe them. And then next, we make fun of them.
If I have one takeaway from you, don't buy into your thoughts.
The second principle is active acceptance. When I was spiraling and my whole life was going in the wrong direction, I was angry at the fact that I had to deal with all these emotions that somebody else had put upon me. And what it did was to create this tension in me. It was this tension with what I wanted my life to be and what my life was, and they were at odds. But I constantly felt that that wasn't fair, and I wanted my reality to be different.
Here's what I learned: focusing on my past doesn't help me. Accepting what happened, that is what helped me move through it. Acceptance is allowing thoughts, both positive and negative, to exist without trying to stop or control them. And it wasn't until I understood that I needed to accept what was, and accept that certain things had occurred, and also accept responsibility, that today I can do something about it. And also accept that in doing something about it, it doesn't mean that my life feels better tomorrow. It might mean that it's hard for two years or three years. Life changes, but it doesn't necessarily get better because life is always 50/50. With the good comes the bad.
And it wasn't until I understood that I didn't need to get rid of any of the negativity, I just needed to allow it and recognize, "I am all of these things. I can be stressed and also successful. I can feel depressed and also change my life. You can be a walking addiction. You can feel certain ways and you can act another." The price of the dreams you have for yourself tomorrow is your discomfort today in learning how to allow all the discomfort. Because anything that I've done in life, turning my life around then and keeping my life on track now, it costs discomfort today. But I can find joy in that if I know that it's normal and not something I have to stop.
So, how do you actually do this? The main thing that I learned with acceptance is you have to lean into the negative. If you want to teach your brain that these things are acceptable, then you cannot run from them. My thoughts were working against me, and so I had to develop these mantras for myself to remind myself to lean into the things that didn't feel good.
The first one I had was, "Do the opposite." I would have a thought come up: "If I go to the gym, everyone's going to think I'm fat and I look like [ __ ]. I should not go. I should just stay home. I could do it at home." Nope. Do the opposite. Your brain's not helping you right now because your brain's going to keep you in the shitty ass state until it's actually giving you those thoughts that are helping you succeed. Why the [ __ ] are you listening to it?
The second mantra that I gave myself was being able to stare my fears in the face. When I had a thought that I didn't like, and so I would imagine having this thought in a mirror, and I just stare at it, and I don't let myself leave until I feel at peace with that thought. Because what I realize is it's just a thought. It doesn't get to bully me. But if I run away from it, it kind of is bullying. And that helped me because then it meant that any time that I felt or thought something that wasn't conducive to my goals, I didn't run from it.
Acknowledging imperfection. And I think that a lot of us drive ourselves miserable because of these expectations that we have, both that we put on ourselves, that we put on our lives, that we put on others. And because of that, we're then at odds with what is because we think it should be perfect. And so, it's that I've accepted that I am valuable and I will make mistakes. That other people are valuable and will make mistakes. And if you can understand and accept the fact that you're not perfect, that life's not perfect, and that nobody is perfect, it helps you become more tolerant of frustrating situations.
And what I've recognized is that so much of my life that had gotten me into that dead end was me refusing to acknowledge the fact that I'm not perfect and I never will be, and being ashamed of the fact that I wasn't, being ashamed of the fact that I had thoughts and feelings that conflicted with the person I wanted to be. Who doesn't? I needed to accept the fact that I am not perfect, and that is life, and it's okay. When you really accept this, you can actually love yourself because you're not lying to yourself about who you are.
And so, if you're watching this and thinking about your life, what are all the things that you're doing to try and avoid the fact that you know you're not perfect, that you know you do things that are not conducive to your goals, and that you haven't accepted the fact that that's just part of being human?
And the last part of practicing acceptance that I've learned is that to actively accept something often means to let it be. So now, when I catch myself in a mode where I'm like, "Oh, I hate that thought. I hate that feeling." Rather than trying to fight it and trying to change it, I ask myself, "What could I do instead so that the likelihood I forget about this thought or this feeling in the next hour or two hours is low?" And so that might be working on a project that's important to me. It might be having a conversation with my family. But what I found is that it's much easier to accept something when you have other things to do.
Why do so many people that drank and did drugs pick up smoking? Well, because they're trying to find something to do instead. And you know what? Being somebody who comes from families of alcoholics and drug addicts and also has a history myself, I think that's better than the opposite. And so I use that like as an extreme, but it counts for so many situations, which is we're not trying to avoid it, but we do want to do something else instead because we also don't want to dwell on it. Go do something [ __ ] productive. You need to get bigger problems to solve. What is something that's aligned with your values that you could do? Not aligned with your negative thoughts, not aligned with your negative feelings, but something that's aligned with your values and where you want to go in life that you could do instead.
And so, every time that I recognize I need to accept something, I then ask myself, "What is an actual action I could take that is me committing to the person I want to be and acting in accordance with my values in this moment?"
The third principle is belief swapping. How many of you can relate to beliefs like this: "I can't lose weight no matter what I do." "I think I was just born an anxious person." "I don't know why, but I can't grow my business past a million dollars. It's just must be the market." We all have these irrational beliefs we hold onto that don't serve us. They're not helpful. And I had a lot of those irrational beliefs when I was trying to turn around my life. I didn't think I could lose weight. I didn't think that I could be successful because I felt like I was too far down the wrong direction. You see, I had all these irrational beliefs that made me feel worse about myself, not better.
Now, what's an irrational belief? It's usually unrealistic. It's rigid, like there's not much flexibility at all. It's illogical. There's nothing to support it, and it has no evidence. There's nothing in the real world that tells you this is true. And once I learned what types they were, it was easier for me to identify them when they popped up, so I could catch it and say, "That belief is not helping."
The first one is that we have catastrophizing beliefs, which is you believe that if you do this thing, the worst-case scenario ever will happen. The second type of irrational belief is usually demandingness, which is, "I must perform perfectly, as should others perform perfectly, or else." And so, it's this pressure that we put on ourselves, and we put on others. This is also irrational because, again, we are all valuable humans. We make mistakes, as do other people. And so, again, irrational belief.
The third type of irrational belief usually comes from low frustration tolerance. Frustration tolerance is your ability to remain frustrated for a period of time. And people who have a low frustration tolerance say, "I just can't." That's the main word they use. "I can't do that." Because the amount of times I've had people tell me, "I can't fire people because I get too anxious." I'm pretty sure you can fire people, and you will not die. The anxiety will not kill you. You might sweat. You might be uncomfortable. You might not sleep well the night before, but you won't die.
And so, I recognize that I had a lot of instances where I had low frustration tolerance. I didn't even want to step into a gym because I was so worried about what people were going to say about me, and I was so nervous that when I stepped into a gym that I was going to feel so overwhelmed and so anxious that my workout was going to suck.
And so, to understand how irrational beliefs are formed, I want to walk you through a model that I've learned from Albert Ellis, which is called the ABC model. A is the activating event. That means that something happened. B is the belief, which is a person makes a judgment about the event, and that judgment turns into a belief. And then C, which is the consequence of that belief. So, that belief leads to thoughts, feelings, and behaviors.
For example, I walk in the gym, and somebody stares at me funny. I might then do B, belief: "That person stared at me because I'm fat, and I shouldn't be in the gym." Which then leads to C, the consequence of having more stress and more anxiety of walking in the gym, and also thinking that people are going to stare at me the whole time. How likely is it that that's true? A lot of times, the beliefs that we create are based on preconceived judgments that we have about ourselves, about the world, and about situations, which are not always correct.
So, what I have had to learn to do is to constantly argue with my irrational beliefs. And this is how I swap beliefs: by first understanding what is an irrational belief, and then how do I dispute it, so then I can trade it for a better one.
The first piece that I've realized is that anywhere where I have an irrational belief, it's usually somewhere where there's an intense emotion that's provoked in me. Someone says something, and I feel a pang of anxiety. Most of those situations, I've learned for myself, are because I hold irrational beliefs in certain areas. And so now, what I've trained myself to is anytime I have an intense pang of anxiety, I ask myself, "What's the thought that popped up into my head?" So, the reason you're having that thought is because the last time a situation was similar to this, here's what happened, and here's what you told yourself about it. Does that mean it needs to be true in every situation? No, because this situation is different from that situation.
And so, what I have learned to do is to argue with those beliefs. And so, for me, that starts with one: look at how different the situations are. And so, I start to show myself that these things are not the same event. And so, what I usually do is I make a little chart, and it just has evidence true, evidence false, and I just write down all the reasons why this would be true and why this would be false. The number one way to dismantle an irrational belief is to look at the evidence. And then you see logically, your brain looks at it and says, "Oh, wow, there's like two reasons why I believe this thing, but there's like 15 reasons why I don't believe this thing."
And then the next question I ask myself is, "Is it helping me or hurting me in terms of reaching my goals in life?" And if the belief is hindering me from achieving my goals, then I'm going to continue to try and over-index on acquiring more evidence as to why that belief is irrational. I need to dispute it.
And so, once I've basically dismantled the irrational belief, you've got to replace it. I'm not the type of person that replaces it with the complete opposite. Listen, when I was 85 lbs overweight, the last thing I'm going to be saying is like, "I'm going to be a Victoria's Secret supermodel." Like, there was no [ __ ] way my brain would believe that. So instead, here's the actual goal: we want to replace an irrational belief with a believable one.
If I believed that when I walked into the gym, everyone stared at me because I was fat and overweight, and we've disputed that belief and understand that people stare at you for all sorts of reasons, maybe you have nice teeth, maybe your hair was weird. Once we've done that, then we say, "What's the belief that I would want to trade with that that's actually believable?" Might be, "Sometimes when I walk into the gym, people stare at me, and they stare at me for a variety of reasons. Sometimes it's because they think that I'm overweight and they're excited to see that I'm in the gym. Sometimes it's because they like my clothing." Either way, I'm going to go to the gym. Because guess what? Irrational beliefs are rigid. There's no room for flexibility, whereas rational beliefs have hold a lot of flexibility within the belief itself.
And what you'll see is that once you write down your new rational belief, it's actually a lot more believable than the irrational one. And when you look at them written on paper, you're kind of like, "Oh [ __ ], yeah, that made no sense."
So, when we're developing that new rational belief, there's three filters I put it through: Is there evidence to support it? Is it flexible? And is it helpful? And if it does not pass those three filters, then I don't want to believe it. If it's not based in logic and there's no evidence to support it, then why am I going to let it rule my life?
The second piece is that thoughts need to be flexible, just as things are in the world. And so, if I have a belief that is rigid and has no contingencies, no exceptions, and changes not at all based on circumstance, then that's not helpful either. A helpful belief holds a lot of flexibility. And the last place is, is it helpful? Because again, if we get to choose what we want to believe, and these beliefs help us take action towards our goals and align with our values, then we want to pick ones that are helpful.
Let's take an irrational belief: "I must be liked by everybody to be happy." A lot of people that have this belief might consider themselves people-pleasers. How do we dispute this belief? Well, is it realistic that everyone must like me? Is there evidence to support that if one person in the world doesn't like me, I will be unhappy forever? So, obviously, the answer is no.
So now, let's swap it for a rational belief. A rational belief would be: "I prefer when people like me, but I don't need everyone to like me to be happy. I can still be happy despite some people not liking me."
Let's take another: "If I fail at this, then I am a complete failure." If you fail at one task, does that mean that you've never succeeded at anything else in your life? You are not a failure. You can never be equivalent to a word. And so, you might as well use that in your favor, which means just because something happens one time doesn't mean it will happen forever and indefinitely into the future.
So, what's a more helpful belief we can replace that one with? "Failing at a task might mean that I need to acquire more skills in a specific area, but it doesn't mean anything about me as a person. And if I fail and acquire more skills, then it's likely I will succeed next time."
When you're swapping beliefs, you're really trying to align yourself with reality. Our thoughts and the automatic thoughts that pop up into our heads, and the feelings that come up in our guts, are not often indicative of reality. And so, we have to work on creating beliefs that are. And that's something that I had to do for myself, is I had to understand that using absolute statements didn't help me in life. It actually kept me stuck.
And now, the fourth principle is practicing belief. You don't believe something until you take action on it. So, if you want to prove to me that you believe something, you take committed action towards that thing. Maybe there's been a time in your life that you can recall where you did not believe you could do something. Maybe it was like, you couldn't believe that you could lose weight, but then you closed your eyes, trusted a process that somebody taught you, and then one day woke up and were like, "Holy crap, my whole world has changed. I lost 20 lbs." And suddenly you believe that it's possible.
Now, did the belief come before the action, or did trust in the process come before the belief? If we want to ingrain a new belief in our minds, we have to create evidence for it in the real world. Our brains are going to follow the evidence. And so, the more evidence that you create in your life that this belief is true, the more that you're going to actually believe it and continue to take action on it.
And so, there was a time many years ago where I was super stressed, and I wasn't doing all the things to take care of myself during this point in time with my career. And so, it kept compiling, compiling, until one day I had a full-blown panic attack. And what happened after I had that panic attack is I was terrified of having another one. In fact, I would say that it felt like a traumatic event for me because I didn't believe that Lila could have a panic attack. I thought that Lila 15 years ago would, but I didn't think Lila who has this business and has this husband and has this house and has all these things would have a panic attack. Suddenly, these absolute beliefs that I had about myself, and how I was perfect, and how I was controlled, and how I had everything under control at all times, were shattered.
And what happened was that I was terrified of it happening again. And so, I found myself trying to avoid situations that reminded me of the circumstances that occurred and were happening when I had that panic attack. And so, I did what I always do, which I said, "Okay, let's go back to the principles that have always helped me succeed in life. How am I going to practice a new belief?" And I walked myself through these three steps that I did.
The first one is, I approached everything as a test. So, there were a lot of things I was nervous to try and do because they reminded me of the feeling I had when I had a panic attack. And so, rather than saying, "I'm going to do something," I said, "Let's test this. And if it sucks and it's terrifying, then now we know. But if it's not, then that's great, and now I know I have more freedom in this area."
The second piece to practice new beliefs is to constantly expose yourself in small ways to those new beliefs. So, for example, if you're trying to lose weight, and you're like, terrified of going to the gym, you're terrified of eating vegetables. We want to gradually expose ourselves to the new beliefs, like, "I can lose weight." So, how would we do that? We would say, "What's something small that if I did today would give me evidence tomorrow that this was possible?" Maybe it's that you don't go to McDonald's today. You don't need to do all or nothing.
The thing is, is that the most lasting change you can ever create in your life, especially when you want to adhere to new beliefs, is when you decide on the belief you want, and then you gradually expose yourself to it over time. So, it's not like today you're here, and tomorrow you're there. It's like, it might take two weeks, it might take three weeks. And so, what you want to understand is that it's not like tomorrow you're going to walk out, and you're going to watch this video, and suddenly you're like, "I wrote down all my irrational beliefs, and now I've swapped them, and now I'm practicing them." And so, it's just going to be black and white, tomorrow I'm a new person. Like, it takes time. Time. Change is a process, not an event. Treat it as such. You work on it every day.
What is something small you can do every day? Something I do with myself when I'm trying to change something about myself is I, in the mornings, write down what are those few things that I can do today that might seem tiny and so small, but what I know is that they're achievable, and so they give me evidence tomorrow that I can tackle an even bigger task. And so, for you, it might be just putting on your tennis shoes and going for a walk. If you take a tiny little baby step every day, within two weeks, three weeks, four weeks, you'd be shocked at the amount of belief that you have on that new belief that you actually want, and how you've disputed all the irrational ones.
And so, we want to one, test out our new beliefs. We're not saying that we're committed to them for life. We're not married to them. We're going to test them out. Once we decide we're going to test them out, we're going to gradually expose ourselves to them. We're not going to go all or nothing. And then the last piece is, you want to reinforce this in every situation possible, every day. You want to focus on progress, not perfection. Baby steps, not giant leaps. I don't set my expectations super high. In fact, I set them super reasonable and logical, which is, "What is something I can do today that is tolerable?"
I think a lot of times the difficulty is that we're impatient. You're in pain, and you don't want to be in pain tomorrow. Here's the thing: you're going to be in pain in six months still, and that's just the reality of life. There's nothing wrong with taking more time to change and to adhere to those new beliefs. But if you put a ton of undue pressure on yourself, the likelihood you succeed is low.
Listen, if you found this video helpful, if you feel like I have completely reprogrammed your mind in the last however many minutes this video was, I have another video called "How I Brainwashed Myself to Be Rich." So, if you want to get rich and get a ton of money, just joking. You can go to that video.