Good morning. In this chapter, we’re going to discuss the 10 dark years. The first thing is our brain is not adapted to think backwards. Number two, think about how the media portrays things. They only tell today’s story, never yesterdays. Number three, Bill Gates said. Number four, the timeline we expect to accomplish greatness needs to be realistic. Number five, the great philosophers of our time, Socrates, Plato, Aristotle believed you were not born with the knowledge of how to live. It is something which needs to be taught. Number six, time increases experience and experience increases wisdom. All right, let’s jump in.
Our Brain Is Not Adapted To Think Backwards
Especially about other people. Now, what does this mean? It means that it’s difficult for us to remember the struggle, or how other people like to call it, the journey. In all the pictures we see, in all the interviews, unless you’re really interested in somebody, you’re only seeing the end result. You’re not seeing the beginning. You’re not seeing the tough times, you’re seeing the mansion, but you’re not seeing the shack. Does that make sense? So, let’s use one of the most widely recognized figures in the world. Jesus, the picture of Him. Is He a young person or is He an old person? In the picture, He’s an old person, He’s not young. So, it’s very difficult for us to remember that in order for Him to be where He was, He had gone through a lot to get to that point.
We only like to take snippets out of people’s lives and then join it all together to create our own imagination, or our own perspective on how they got to where they are. Even when we look at Ben Franklin on the hundred dollar bill. How old is he? He’s old. So, it’s very difficult to remember that at one point in time, he was a young naive 18 year old or 20 year old. So, we forget the process. We think that it’s just like done, right there in the moment. That’s what our brain is not… It’s not adapted to think backwards. So, you have to almost train yourself to go and really study about people. That’s why biographies and autobiographies are so important. We get to learn the entire story. We don’t see the end result, we get to see the struggles. We understand how they went through and conquered challenges in their own lives.
Think About How The Media Portrays Things, They Only Tell Today’s Story Never Yesterday.
The media is selling something, consumer beware. They purposely show the end result to trick the consumer into thinking it is easy. If I told you it would take two years to become healthy and be in shape, I would not have any buyers. So, let’s think about this. It took Arnold Schwarzenegger years to become Mr. Olympia. Years. He trained for this every single day, day in and day out. However, if I told you I had a secret that the top movie stars and the top athletes use to transform something that logically is going to take two years minimum, but if I tell you I got the greatest secret in the world and I figured it out, and I can teach you how to do it in 90 days, then I’d have buyers. So, if I were to be honest with the consumer and tell them, “Look, in order for us to start this, it’s going to take us about two years to really get into like tip top shape.”
Nobody wants that. We’re in a society of instant gratification and partly because of the media. We only see the end result. All right, so now, let me paint the picture what the media will do. The media shows you a picture of Arnold Schwarzenegger winning Mr. Olympia, and then a picture of a scrawny Arnold or whatever, next to the picture of him winning Mr. Olympia. And then at the bottom, it will be a headline that says, “You can do this in 90 days too.” So, they’re telling you today’s story, they don’t tell you the truth that Arnold Schwarzenegger struggled working 16 hour days, or 24 hour days or whatever it is, in order to accomplish what he accomplished. They just show you, because they’re trying to sell you something. If the media does not get advertisers, then the media company goes bankrupt.
So, they have absolutely no incentive to be honest with you, really. They have every incentive to entice your imagination into thinking that it’s achievable in a short period of time. What does that mean? We all understand that now that we have telephones media coming out extremely fast, we have a short attention span. So when I’m telling you, it’s going to take you two years to do something, and then you have another product over here that tells you, they’re going to take 90 days. Which one are you going to do? Nine out of 10 take the 90 days, because it seems like, oh, I can accomplish my goal in an extremely short amount of time. But, what happens when you do that is you take the 90 day course, and then it’s so intense that you can’t do it.
Now, part of this, take the six strategies to conquer any challenge and you understand, that’s an innovative way to do things. You’re trying to shock yourself. You’ve never worked out before trying to shock yourself, but the media tells you that you can do it, because they don’t tell you the real story. You don’t make 90 days, you make 15 to three weeks. And then, you just throw it away. You’re like, “Man, I can’t do it.” So, whose fault is it that you couldn’t do it? Was it the fact that this 90 day program was a facade? Well, no. It was just too intense for you. But if you had taken that two year class and understood that, yeah, this a process, then I’d guarantee in two years, you’re going to be where you want to be.
Why? Because a two year course is telling you how to do something slowly, where a 90 day course is telling you how to do something fast, an unrealistic way. Now, to add onto that, let’s go on, we forget the true story. Tyler Perry, Madea, whatever, has an almost billion dollar empire, was homeless sleeping in his car before writing his plays. Bill Gates, we’re going to go over this a little bit in just a second on what Bill Gates said. Bill Gates spent 10 focus years building his company. Michael Jordan was cut from his varsity basketball team. We forget the pivotal points that made these people who they are. We forget that in order… As Michael Jordan even says, in order for him to have gotten there, he probably had to have been cut, because being cut motivated him to work extra hard.
Tyler Perry, the hunger, the starvation he was having forced him to not waste a second. We forget in order to get where these people are today, you have to read their backstory. You can’t just look at them today and be like, “God, wow, yeah, no, I can do that too.” Probably you can’t, because you’re forgetting these 10 dark years. Now on to the next one.
Bill Gates Said
“From age 20 to 30, I never took a day off, not even one,” 3,650 days, think about that. He was basically saying he would work on his computer, eat, sleep, work on his computer, eat, sleep, work on this computer, eat, sleep, work as computer, eat, sleep, work on his computer, eat, sleep, work on this computer for 10 years without doing anything else.
If you listen to Gary Vaynerchuk, I think that’s his name. He talks about working in his parents’ liquor store for around 10 years and doing nothing but social media, and didn’t have a life. If you talk about Elon Musk, slept in his office. He said, “Yeah, he tried to have a girlfriend, but it just didn’t really work.” That’s commitment. How did they get to where they are today? Sacrifice.
They sacrificed every bit of enjoyment for tomorrow’s enjoyment. Let me say that again. They sacrificed every amount of today’s enjoyment for tomorrow’s enjoyment. Now, when you say that you’re dedicated and you see the Arnold Schwarzenegger’s, and you see the Muhammad Ali’s and you see all these people, are you willing to sacrifice everything in order to achieve greatness? And, that’s what these 10 dark years are all about. Now Muhammad Ali, Arnold Schwarzenegger was talking about how a reporter asks Muhammad Ali, “How many sit-ups do you do?” He said, “He doesn’t start counting until it hurts.”
I would say that’s within the 10 dark years. He’s pushing himself to a limit that no one else will push themselves to. Now, it’s easy to just watch Muhammad Ali nowadays on TV, running his mouth, “I’m the greatest…” “I sting like or I float like a butterfly, and I sting like a bee.” All right. But, we forget how many hours did he put in while he wasn’t on camera. Now, I going to move into that. It moves us perfectly into the timeline we expect to accomplish greatness needs to be realistic, whether it’s 10,000 hours or the 10 dark years, this time is needed to fully develop ourselves. All right. So, let’s use a personal story in this a little bit. I started making videos when I was, what? 25. When I was maybe, about 23 maybe, before YouTube was even around. All right. I remember it was really difficult to upload things on YouTube.
However, the knowledge that I had and the life experiences. Yes, I had already experienced a lot, so I had a lot of knowledge to give, but it wasn’t refined knowledge. It was still very young and immature knowledge. Right. Because, I just hadn’t been through enough experiences. I was in my 20s, it was in my early 20s or mid 20s. 12, 13, 14 years later, I’ve been through a lot more life experiences, my 10 dark years or my 10,000 hours, so I’m looking at things differently. I have a lot of those videos, I never uploaded them. I kept them to myself as archives .and as I’m watching them, I can see my immaturity. I can listen to myself. And, I can understand that at the time, I was really sharp. I was really sharp for my age, but I just hadn’t had enough life experience.
I had been through a lot, so I was much more advanced than most. However, just enough time hadn’t passed. So, I hadn’t been able to see how my actions of doing this or doing that affected my future. So, that’s part of the time that’s needed to fully develop. You have to… And, I understand when I was young, I thought I knew everything too. And at the time, maybe I was a lot smarter than older people. However, what the missing key that I didn’t grasp when I was younger is I didn’t quite understand how important every decision that you make today affects your decisions or your reality tomorrow. And so, that’s why you need the 10 years or the 10,000 hours, so you can see the intricacies of every decision that you make.
The Great Philosophers Of Our Time Believed You Were Not Born With The Knowledge Of How To Live. It Was Something Which Needed To Be Taught.
Now, this comes from the greats, Socrates, Plato and Aristotle. Let’s talk about that just this quick second. You were not born with the knowledge on how to live. It’s something which you needed to be taught. If you think about that, it’s one of the truest statements you can think of. Just think about it, you’re not born with any knowledge to live. It’s something that has to be taught. Every single thing that you’ve ever done in your life, somebody has taught you how to do it.
Talk, someone taught you how to do it. You might have got it from other things, but you acquire the information from somebody else. So, you might have mimicked somebody else, but you did not out of the blue learn how to speak English. Because if that was the case, then every kid in the world would speak English. Or every kid in the world would speak Chinese, if it was a natural thing that you didn’t have to be taught. You had to learn how to walk. Have you ever seen a baby just like a lump of meat. But then, over an amount of time they develop and crawl a little. They’re able to do things, by emulating and seeing what others do.
So we say it again, you were not born with the knowledge of how to live, it is something which you needed to be taught. So, we broke it down to the beginning stages of everything, all the way down to a baby. Now, let’s jump into the next part before I go too far. There are two types of people in the world. One that conquers fear, and the other ones that succumb to fear, suffer and die from fear having a stagnant life, now just like the baby. All right.
Well, let’s go back to when you were born, you were not born with a knowledge of how to live. It was something that you were taught. Okay.You were not born with the knowledge of fear. It is something which needs to be taught. Have you ever seen a baby, a little one who has yet to bump their head? They are fearless. They have absolutely no fear. They’re ready to go, man. I was five trying to learn how to ski behind a boat, like a ski boat. I was five. Got drowned a little bit, but I still did it. I had zero fear, none at all. You know what made me scared of snakes? It wasn’t the snake that made me fearful. It was the way my dad interacted with snakes. Now, he was terrified of snakes. I remember the interaction perfectly. We had a lot of the straw, pine needles to put on your gardens and things. My dad liked that. Instead of the mulch, he liked the pine needles and there was a snake in one of the bundles. And he jumped and it scared him half to death, and he took a Pitchfork and killed it. in front of me and my neighbor, my best friend. Before then, if my dad had not been scared of that snake, and instead played with the snake and showed us the snake, I wouldn’t be scared of snakes. But, I learned just like it says, you were not born with the knowledge to live, you were not born with the knowledge of fear, it’s something that was taught to you. I became fearful of snakes, because I learned to be fearful of snakes from my father.
One that conquers fear. Now, I used to be scared of spiders too. But then, I got older and I started just paying attention to spiders. I was living in Aspen and Cascade, and there were spiders everywhere. I had to get over my fear of spiders. At first, it was daunting. But then, I was watching them, they were minding their own business in their own little world, weren’t even worried about me, weren’t even thinking about me. So then, my fear over a spider ceased. They don’t really bother me anymore. Now the big monsters, don’t get me wrong, I still don’t love spiders. I’m not going to be like, “Oh, spider, come on in.” I still don’t want you there, but I’m not petrified of them as I used to be when I was younger. They used to scare me. But here’s the different thing, the snakes, the one that conquers fear with two different types of people, two different situations. Now the spiders, a little bit, daddy long legs. When I was younger, I’ve never been scared of a daddy long legs. Never. I never considered it a spider either, but I’ve never been scared of them and this is the reason, how my dad was scared of snakes. My mom, on the other hand, used to tell us stories of what they used to do to the daddy long legs, she used to show us. What she would do, she’d pick them up. And then one by one, she’d rip off the legs. Gruesome? maybe. But I never feared a daddy long leg after that. She taught me that they are absolutely harmless, so there might be a daddy long leg in the shower, leave him alone. Why? To me, I have absolutely no fear from it. Why? Because, it was what was taught to me. I was taught never to fear a daddy long leg, just grab them and rip them apart. Again, I’m not saying go rip everything apart, however, it’s what was instilled in my mind, never to be scared of a daddy long leg, as opposed to a snake how my dad was.So, you were not born with the knowledge of fear or how to live. It’s something that was taught to you.
The things that you did not learn young, you are doomed to learn at some point or never at all. So we talked about two different situations, about insects and reptiles with my parents before they died. However, I’m hoping that gives you a good basis of the definition or what we’re discussing about how knowledge needs to be taught to you. Now, when you get older, it becomes a responsibility of yourself to teach yourself. Now, when you’re younger, it’s fine. There’s a lot that comes from your parents and other people, older sisters, uncle, grandparents, your intermediate family.
But when you get older, if that’s all you learn, then you’re doomed in the future. So if you never learned a foreign language, then you’re doomed in the future. If you’ve read my story, I never had to learn a foreign language, almost like never. I got taken out of it when I was in sixth grade till eighth grade. Then in high school you only had to take three years of high school. I did my three years and I’ve never thought about Spanish again. However, 12 years later or whatever it was, I started going to Columbia, South America. Now all that time I had to learn a foreign language, which I didn’t do when I was younger, because it didn’t seem important to me.
Now my Spanish is not perfect, but I had to learn later. Math or science, same type of thing. Even with your finances, if you do not learn your finances when you are younger, then you are doomed in the future. If you do not learn your finances when you get a little older, then guess what? You are doomed for your future. If you don’t learn your finances when you are what? 50, 60. Guess what? You were doomed for your future. There becomes a point in time where you’re just getting a little bit too old and you’re doomed to not learn it at all. If that’s the case, you don’t learn your finances. You don’t learn personal growth. You don’t learn the necessary things to get you what you want in life, then you’re doomed to have whatever life that happens to you, because you didn’t prepare yourself. You didn’t do the things you needed to do. You didn’t learn the things you were supposed to learn. So, you’re doomed to suffer the consequences.
Time increases experience and experience increases wisdom.
It takes time for muscle memory. It takes time to develop new skills. All right. Now, let’s think about that. Let’s go back to the exercising example of Mr. Olympian, Arnold Schwarzenegger and the 90 days. Now I have the class, change your life in 10 minutes. The reason I’m talking about this is because the approach I took when I was creating this class. When I was creating this class, I had my biological brother, grandmother, grandfather, my brother-in-law in mind. I’ve been going to the gym and I’ve been working out since I was five. I’ve always been active. I think it was probably five or six when my sister told me that I was chubby. And since that point in time, I’ve never wanted to be chubby.
I remember exactly where we were too, it was at Crystal Lake on vacation on the little beach we had, because we had a little compound when I was younger. She poked my stomach like Pillsbury Doughboy and told me I was fat. Since that point in time, I’ve been in shape and this was when I was a kid.
However, in 90 days, if I go to the gym, my body will look pristine, because of muscle memory. But, I understand I’m developing new skills for other people. So in order to do that, that takes time. You can’t just do it in 90 days. My brother-in-law, my brother, my grandmother, my grandfather, they can’t do that. They haven’t been active since they were two years old. They’ve lived a different lifestyle, more of a lethargic lifestyle than I have. So, in order for me to teach them and to reach them the most efficiently, I have to slow it down to their level and do something that they can feel comfortable doing. It takes time to develop new skills. I don’t fear a man who can punch a bag a thousand times in one day, I fear the man who can punch that same bag once a day for a thousand days, consistency.
That’s why the book was titled 10 minutes to change your life. Right? So it’s impossible for somebody who’s not very disciplined and has never shown consistency in anything to just start doing something and do it every single day. It’s almost impossible. However, when you can break something down to its smallest minute detail and just get it to let me just do one thing every single day, right? If it’s lifting a pen, right, then lift that pen 10 times every single day, no matter what. Now, after that lifting it 10 times every day becomes easy, then upgrade yourself. And that’s the basis of how you can change and develop new skills is you have to take something that’s large and make it extremely small and do it consistently every single day. I’ve said this too many times where it’s almost annoying to say it now, but I have to use it as the point.
I started January 5th at 10 minutes a day. It was not a very easy thing to do, exercising for 10 minutes on a treadmill. I’d been away from exercising for about two years, so it was a very difficult task for me to do and difficult for me to stay consistent. However, it’s May 29th, so for months, every single day without stopping, I have run on the treadmill. I started at 10 minutes and now I’m at 40 minutes. I don’t fear the man who can punch a bag a thousand times in a day, I fear the man who can punch the bag once a day for a thousand days. Through these 10 dark years, your mission, your overall objective is to be consistent. It might take you longer than 10 years, which you have to be consistent. The more consistent that you are on doing things, the more discipline, the more integrity you have with yourself, the larger chance you give yourself for success. Let’s move on to the next one.