YOU BECOME UNSTOPPABLE WHEN YOU FACE EVERYTHING: How to Conquer Your Fears

0:00We repeat what we don't understand. So long as we're unaware of the stories that we've grown up with, we will enact them in our adult lives. I think a lot of us have a desire to give the stories of our childhood a different ending. Our father might have been a distant and mean spiritist creature, but also had some good qualities. The dream is to find somebody a bit like that, but to make sure the story has a good resolution. But it's not merely a desire to repeat, it's a desire to repeat and give a better ending, but frequently we don't get there. We see all around us people doing so-called crazy things. And we think we can step back and go, why are they doing that stuff? What's going on? Now one way to look at it. And it's a kind of compassionate way to look at it. A lot of the stuff that looks crazy now once made a lot of sense. It was once, probably, a really clever thing to do. If you were growing up, let's say, in an environment in which parent was suicidal, and you shut

1:02down your emotions totally and decided you would never trust anyone. That's a fantastically clever thing to do when you're five years old and you've got a suicidal parent, right? Because that will get you through to the next stage of life. Wish you think this more important, more positive thinking, or less negative thing, and the studies are unequivocal. That's less negative thing. Really? About 70% of our negative thinking goes unperceived by us. It is so embedded in our day-to-day behavior. We're not even aware of it. We're not even aware of it. Positive thinking is important. You keep it up. Keep it high. But if you want to get your real knowledge, just cut down on the negative thinking. Cut it down, cut it down, cut it down. That's the villain voice. That's the critic in your head. That's the demotivator. That's the discounter. That's the one that raises the doubts. And you can shut it up.

2:07What I found was this is that the existence of just one negative emotion that you will not let go of for whatever reason. And the reason is always an ego reason. The reason is always has to do with your own ego. So it causes you to stay in the same place and spin your wheels and go in circles for the rest of your life. That you all know people who are talented, who have opportunities, good education, and so on and so forth. And the life just goes around in circles. They just seem to be spinning. They've got everything going for them and they just continually have problems. Why is it? Almost invariably, and this is what all psychoanalysis does, all psychotherapy is they've got one negative emotion locked on and the negative emotion they have locked on is blame. There is somebody that they are still blaming for something. There's somebody that they are not going to let off the hook because that son of a gun did something to them. You know what I'm talking about? You know what I'm talking about, because we're all in the same boat. We're all human beings. The reason this makes sense to you and I is because we do have a tendency to fall in love with our suffering.

3:07We do have a tendency to gunny sack and to think that part of our humanity is all these negative emotions. We do have a tendency to see that other people are responsible. Other people have heard us. They did cost us money. They did hurt us in a relationship, but the key to peak performance, the key to happiness, the key to success is to use the law of substitution and knock those negative emotions out of the box by the very first time you think of anything that causes you any stress. You say, I am responsible. Wait a minute, I am responsible. I am responsible. I am responsible. I like myself and I am responsible. I like myself and I am responsible. Nothing outside of me is going to disrupt my peace of mind. I am in charge of my emotional life. I am responsible. You are responsible. The reason why a lot of people won't become who they want is because they're too attached

4:08to who they've been. And you hear it all the time when people say, I've always been this way. Okay, well if that's working for you, keep doing that. I knew it wasn't working for me any longer. I had hit my version of rock bottom. So I was willing to let go of everything and everybody. Another reason why people won't get there is because the doorway is for you to fit through. You try to carry everybody else through and you got to rescue you first. I am much more valuable to my family and to my community because I was willing to let them go. Go through the door. Myself, teach myself, learn myself, condition myself and then come back and get them. I'm much more valuable to them now. You know, stoicism obviously places a lot of emphasis on differentiating between these

5:09two things. Letting go of what's not ours and really cultivating and strengthening what is. And there's plenty of iterations. One of my favorites and one of the most common, most well known is serenity prayer. God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things that I can and the wisdom to know the difference. It's that idea that you have within you a superpower, but you have to stop looking outside and pointing at the sky for stuff that's just not yours. People change in four different seasons. People change when they hurt enough they have to. When they see enough they're inspired to. When they learn enough that they want to and when they receive enough that they're able

6:13to, those are the four times that people change. Well if you took on all the responsibility you couldn't take on and you faced everything that you needed to face, what would you be like? Who would you be? And how would the world transform around you? If the partial answer is well if I do that a little bit things get a fair bit better then the next question might be well what if you did that completely? It isn't obvious to me what the upper limit of that is and when you see people bear their suffering nobly there's nothing in that but good. That's something and then when you see people take on more responsibility and decide that they're going to aim up and confront their suffering honestly and forthrightly that their lives get better and the lives of people around them get better too. The pathway to less suffering is through suffering. It's like well they're suffering. How do you make it worse? Run away. How do you make it better? Confront it. Yeah but it's suffering. It's like yeah but it's there. It's a precondition for existence or something like that and it's like you have something

7:15important to do as well and you confront it and that's the pathway to transcending it. The man who refuses to surrender begins to see that defeat is only a form of transformation. Every pain that tried to break him was not his enemy. It was the sculptor. Every betrayal, every failure, every humiliation was carving away the parts of him that were never real. He thought the world was taking from him. And in truth it was giving him form. Most men live as if they are holding their breath terrified of the collapse. They build their lives on comfort, on validation, on the illusion of control. But the one who refuses to give up has already lost all of that. He has nothing left to protect and that is precisely why he becomes powerful.

8:19The man who is not afraid to be broken can never truly be defeated. The only thing you have in a complex situation is the truth. That's all you have. That's why you have to abide by the truth. You know because when things get complex around you, how do I deal with this politically? How do I deal with this personally? How do I say in this terribly complex situation? All you have there that solid ground is the truth. And one of the things to reflect upon in relationship to that is that's also why you have to live honestly. You know because it's very hard to tell the truth if you're simultaneously worried that the evidence of your past misbehavior, your past deceitful misbehavior is going to come to light. And so the reason you abide by the truth is so that you can say what you have to say about what you've done and who you are. And you can do that under impossibly difficult circumstances and possibly that will sustain

9:24you through that. And you know in circumstances, where if that's not possible, you're just going to get crushed. There's nothing that makes you more formidable than verbal competence and being able to articulate, be able to think to marshal your arguments, right? Some battlefield metaphor, get everything in order. All your information, straight to marshal your forces. You go to war with words. That's what young men should be taught. There you go. But a fury. Here's what most people miss. What is stronger than willpower? You could be motivated, disciplined and driven, but if you constantly surround yourself with people who are lazy, negative and small-minded, they will eventually pull you down. Their doubts will become your doubts. Their limits will become your limits.

10:24Their vision will shrink your vision. Mediocrity is contagious. But so is excellence. When you walk with people who live with discipline, who think bigger, who act bolder, their energy rubs off on you, their habits shape you, their mindset elevates yours. Spend enough time with people who are growing and growth becomes natural. Spend enough time with people who are stagnant and stagnation becomes normal. I learned this lesson the hard way. Early in my life, I spent too much time with those who had no hunger, no vision, no commitment. And you know what happened? I picked up their habit. I was able to witness you live your life that way. And I think I'm starting to grasp the letting go. So you connect the dots now for yourself. And it's a butterfly effect, right? There's so many versions of ourselves. So there's a version of me depressed living my parents' basement in my 20s.

11:29And I probably go in a wrong path and end it up somewhere else in my life. There's a version of me where I didn't take my relationship seriously. I didn't drive all the way to Montreal to visit my wife, wife now, but go for a time. And never put that into my reality. And maybe I said, oh, it's too far. It's not worth it. So now that version of me is doing something else. A version of me is like, I don't want to get into this industry. It's too hard. It's hard work. I don't want to do a video production. And so there's a version of me doing something else. So the point where I'm trying to say is, I stuck to my lane. I stuck to what my vision was. And it was clear enough for me where things start appearing for me to take action. It still had to take action, right? Things didn't just land in my lab. You still have to meet something halfway for it to come towards you as well, right? You have to take the steps towards something that you're pursuing. And every day we wake up, we have a chance to choose which direction we're going to go. But I chose the one that felt more comfortable for me. Or it was like in my decision making. So I stuck to that.

12:31The first million is hard, but the second million is inevitable. The reason for that is this. It's not, as Jim Rollne used to say, he said, it's not becoming a millionaire that's important. It's the person that you must become in order to become a millionaire. Yeah. You have to become a completely different person. You have to develop character beyond 99% of the people in the world. You have to develop honesty and discipline and quality relationships and the willingness and the ability to work and set priorities and all kinds of stuff. Because without that nothing is possible. The most successful people have developed an attitude of confidently expecting good

13:32things to happen. It's called the attitude of positive self-expectancy. It is the attitude of the winner. The winner looks for good things to happen. The winner expects to win in advance and lo and behold, whatever you expect with confidence tends to come true even if the information upon which your expectations is based is totally false.