First topic we’re going to discuss is belt and suspenders. Now within belt and suspenders, we have set the expectation that you will not fail, belt and suspenders(expect the unexpected), create a fail resistance program. Keep your finger on the pulse, always travel with a library, think about how much better quality of life you could have if you could cut your mistakes in half or in a third, Richard Dawkins, The Penalty of Making Mistakes and six Sigma perfection creating perfect systems. Exciting, right? Let’s get into it.
Set Expectations That You Will Not Fail.
The expectations of failure only help to accomplish failure, right? So let’s break into that just a little bit. When you are expecting to fail, it’s almost like a self fulfilling prophecy. Your mind is working on ways to fail, opposed to working on ways to succeed. Does that make sense? So if your mind is focusing on success at all costs, then you’re telling your mind to succeed at all costs. But the expectations of failure only will accomplish failure.
Now. Sure. You’ll have speed bumps those are normal and good, right? So how are speed bumps good? Most people complain about speed bumps, most of the time I don’t. Of course I get frustrated in the moment, but when I look back, the speed bumps were the times that I had to become creative and innovative every time I fail at something or something is supposed to go smooth and it doesn’t, there’s a bump in the road. Well, that forces me to test my system and allows me to tweak things that no longer work, you had a perfect plan, you set it up perfectly, but then it doesn’t go as planned. That forces you to create resilience to problems and it forces you to become creative to solve said problems. So yes, it’s all about adjusting for the future. So the better you are at being able to have a system and adapt when you get into speed bumps, the better you are adjusting for the future, right? The more fluid you are.
Have the mindset you will fail 10 times less than your peers and your competitors. In today’s world, the majority of the people, I mean, we live in a pessimistic world. What that means is that most of the people have already figured in their mind they’re going to lose, right? So if you’ve already lost, you’ve already come up with excuse why you can’t do this, you’ve already come up with an excuse how the cloud is only over you and it’s raining only on you, what are those? Those are expectations that you are going to fail, right?
So when you have that, it’s over you already lost. Opposed to somebody with a mindset like this, that I will not fail, that I’m going to succeed at all costs. Look at how much of an advantage I have than that other person if we’re both starting at the same point. The other person, any little thing that becomes difficult, they’re going to blame every other problem and they are going to become the victim. Me on the other hand, I see that I’m excited because I get to test my skills, I get to test myself, I get to become intuitive. I get to think of different ways of accomplishing goals and overcoming challenges.
Belt And Suspenders (Expect The Unexpected)
You need to know that things are going to go wrong. Prepare for the worst while hoping for the best, having only one set of keys for your car is fine until you are late and cannot find your keys. Keeping a separate set for emergencies is belt and suspenders. All right, let’s go over that just a little bit. Prepare for the worst while hoping for the best. I got this from I think it was Cascade or Mexico, the prepare for the worst while hoping for the best. However, it’s belt and suspenders as well, which is a lesson I’m getting from Tai Lopez. Why would you have a belt and suspenders? They both do the same thing: they hold your pants up. However, what happens when you’re in the middle of the forest and you need one, you fall down and you cut your leg, right? So now you’ve got to use your belt to tie off your leg. Well, in order to move and to move fast because you’re in a jungle, you got people coming after you. Well, how are you going to move if your pants are falling down, because usually you use your belt so those suspenders are holding yourself up right? They’re your separate set for emergencies, right? I’m terrible at this. Having one set of keys. Now I have my belt, but then I don’t have my suspenders because if I lose that set of keys, which I did. And I lost a set of keys and I lost them for two weeks. Without my suspenders I was stuck at the house. Now I eventually found the keys, so I didn’t have to spend more money, but when you don’t have your belt and suspenders, it’s going to cost you more money because if one breaks, it’s going to be at the absolute worst time, right? And this is where we go with Murphy’s law. What can go wrong will go wrong, And they tend to happen at the exact worst time that it could happen. Now I jumped around a little bit, I apologize. Create redundancies in your life, big and small. Always have more than one in case one does not work, which we discussed a little bit. Having a great memory is a great thing but prone to forget the most important things, keep a notepad.
Now, I don’t have a small notepad because I’m more of a visual learner so, for other people the whole idea of having a little journal never really amused me. It didn’t stimulate my mind, but I have a large journal, I have one of those huge pieces of paper where I look at every time I sit down, it’s staring right at me. Every time I have an idea, I immediately write it down.
Why do I do that? I have one of the best memories, I remember a lot. However, I will go down a rabbit hole of a great memory and a great idea, And then I’ll forget. It will never be as intense as it was when I first thought of it. So what I’ve done now with technology belt and suspenders.
I try to remember every great deal or great idea and write it down on my big note pad. However, what I’ve been getting even better at doing is when I start thinking of an idea and going down the rabbit hole, I immediately take out my phone and record myself. And I talk right into the camera about my idea. Now, I’m not the best at it because it’s new. And so when I do that, I alter what my mind is because when I’m talking to the camera it is a little bit different than when I’m just brainstorming in my mind, but I capture the main topic of the idea I am talking about, belt and suspenders.
When I was younger, when I was living in the East Palo Alto area, we used to call it being double breasted. So when you went outside you wanted to not just have one product to sell, you wanted to have two products to sell. Because if you only had one product that was your belt. Well, what if a customer came up to you and wanted a different product? Well then you lost out on that sale, right? So we called it being double breasted. Sometimes it became triple breasted right? I Will not go too much into that and what products we were selling, but it’s the same concept. If you’re only selling one product, well what if your customer comes up and wants a different product, belt and suspenders.
Need to create a fail resistant program
As time is very important, there’s one thing more important, energy. Be careful with energy, if you use up most of your energy doing the wrong thing, you will not have energy to do the correct thing. Do the hard things early, your body will run out of glycogen.
If you follow my content, it’s basically based off creating more energy in the day for myself. Because this is one of the truest things in the world. Be careful with your energy. It’s what? 2:10 in the morning, right now. Do the hard things early. Why am I doing it right now? Why in the world would I wake up so early to do the hard things. Need to create a fail resistance program. Okay.
Do we all know there’s more distractions in the middle of the day? That’s one reason why I’m up early. We all know when it’s really hot or when it’s really cold it takes up a lot of energy. That’s another reason, in the summertime it’s much cooler at one o’clock in the morning than it is in the middle of the day. In the middle of the day doing the same project is going to take up more energy just because it’s going to be so much harder. Right?
For me, what is it 2:00 am and I have been up since 1:00 am, I got a good 14 hours of mental workability. After about 14 hours, I can brainstorm. But it is harder and harder every hour to go on, to convince myself not to procrastinate. And that’s my energy levels going down. So if you’ve noticed and if you’ve taken other classes with me, if you’ve read other books, you’ll notice that I ride my bike in the morning. I ride 20 miles, so when I’m done doing this, I’m going to go ride 20 miles why? To create more energy. The law of inertia. Then I’m going to work some more. I’m going to work until I get tired, then what do I do? I go running, why? The law of inertia. What’s in motion will tend to stay in motion. What’s at rest will tend to stay at rest.
So after my bike ride, if I just work for the rest of the day and I sit still, I do nothing. Then I’m done, my Energy will be depleted. Be careful with it if you use up most of your energy doing the wrong thing, you will not have it to do the correct thing. When I’m sitting down and let’s say, I talk on the telephone, if you’ve ever talked on the phone for a few hours, it is exhausting, And I’ve noticed this, any day that I’m on the phone for three, four hours, my energy levels depletes, and I’m exhausted. I can’t do anything else, that’s using my energy the wrong way. But in the middle of the day when I go on my run, I’m creating more energy. I was thinking, okay I need to create even more energy. And so that’s why I’m implementing the row machine before I go to bed, to create more glycogen. And to keep the stimulation going, to try to give myself that little bit more time of the day at optimal levels.
create a fail resistance program, you just heard my fail resistant program. Does it work all the time? Not necessarily. I’m human, I’m not a machine, I still get tired. But if you were to look back and look at how much by creating a fail resistant program I’m able to accomplish over the next person, it’s like the expectation that you will not fail. By having a fail resistant program and setting high expectations by setting the expectation I’m going to succeed gives me that advantage over other people. I hope that makes sense.
Keep Your Finger On The Pulse.
Keeping your eyes on things, expect things to go wrong so be prepared for the first small sign. The things you are expecting to go wrong never do because your keeping your eye for the smallest inconsistency.
The military has a great approach to this, the F22 exercise. Always plan for three scenarios. When you make the plans make sure you envision every small detail. Best case scenario, everything works out perfect. What is your plan if everything works perfect? Think about the most probable, make a plan for that as well. And then also in the worst case scenario, everything goes wrong, you lose everything in your life. What is your plan? How are you going to rebuild? So keeping your finger on the pulse. Things are going to go wrong, The things you are expecting to go wrong never do because you’re keeping your eye on the smallest inconsistencies, right?
So the things that you micromanage in theory, those are the things that never go wrong because you’re constantly babysitting them. You’re constantly watching over it. It’s the things that you’re not paying attention to, is what goes wrong. And a lot of times it’s the little itty bitty things. The things you are not thinking about are very important, So let’s think of something like this, all right. You’re building a car, you’re building one of your parts or whatever for a toy or whatever, it doesn’t matter. And you don’t put a washer in, like one of those little things before you screw. It’s not that big of a thing, you’re keeping your eye on all the other bigger parts, but that one little washer, you’re not keeping your eye on because you’re like it’s not important, but that one washer could have a drastic consequence in the future.
So there’s six different scenarios that can happen with the stock market for every stock. It can go up fast, it can go up. It can stay the same well, it can stay the same slowly. It can stay the same violently. It can go down slow or it can go down fast. Now with those six different scenarios, we can bring it back into our own life. So over here we have three, which makes a lot of sense because, You don’t need six different things in your life but it also goes for your life as well with six different things. Because best case scenario, well you can break that best case scenario down as many times as you want. You can go down the rabbit hole as much as you want. So it could be three or four different things but your three most basic are best case scenario, worst case scenario and in the middle.
So the same as the stock market up, middle, down. Right? Like again with the six is the same with the three. Always have plans, belts and suspenders. So if you only have one of your best case scenario then you’re only worried about having your belt. Well, what happens if it happens this way but not all the way. Will you want your suspenders?
Your worst case scenario. Okay you planned it all the way on the worst case scenario, but you plan the wrong worst case scenario. You might want to plan it out more than just once, right? So having the worst, everything goes wrong, you lose everything in your life. Okay that’s great but what if you don’t lose everything in your life and you lose a key point over here. What’s your plan to rebuild over there? Okay let’s say you’re driving a car, right? What if your brakes go out? If your brakes go out but you planned that you had a flat tire, the worst case scenario of having a flat tire was worthless. All that planning you did for that was worthless because now you don’t have brakes. So that’s what I mean by the six different things.
Yes. Best case scenario, worst case scenario, most probable scenario, but really focus on breaking each of those down. So in your best case scenario, everything works out perfectly. What is your plan if everything works out perfectly? Really define, everything works out perfectly, what am I going to do? Because anything that you leave up for chance will go to chance, right? Think about the most probable plan. When you go into anything, what’s the plan that you think is the most probable. Now the best case scenario, that’s obviously the best case scenario. But the most probable is different because the best case scenario is that, yeah “I’m going to make a million dollars the day that this book comes out”. The most probable is it’s going to have a little bit of a buzz and I’m going to have to work really hard.The worst case scenario is 10 years from now, nobody has seen this for two reasons, right? If it’s just one worst case scenario, it could be because it was just terrible and nobody wanted to read it or listen to it. The other one could be that I never released it. Worst case scenario but completely different scenarios.
Always Travel With A Library
Life is short, but we act like we have all the time in the world. Always travel with the library. It’s very important. The reason you want to travel with a library is because, then you control what you’re putting into your mind, when you’re on vacation and you’re in different places, there’s a lot of different stimuli, right? But when you have a library, when I’m planning a trip to Thailand and soon whenever Corona allows it. And the only thing that I’m really thinking about is my library.
Which books am I going to bring? Which books am I going to enhance my brain with? Always traveling with a library means that you’re always traveling with education. Always traveling with knowledge. You’re always traveling with references and resources. And you’re giving yourself the ability to constantly stimulate your brain in a positive manner. Right?
When you’re bored, let’s say you’re traveling and you’re in the airport. You can do two things. You can be on your phone or you could have your nose in the book with your library, learning something that’s going to progress you. An airplane flight over to Thailand right now would be like 13, maybe 18 hours. That’s a lot of time that if I don’t have a library, if I didn’t have this concept of always traveling with a library, that’s a lot of time to waste. Doing what? Watching movies or bettering yourself. Which one sounds better? Which one’s more entertaining? Probably watching the movies but which one is more productive? Bringing a library.
Think About How Much Better Quality Of Life You Could Have If You Could Cut Your Mistakes In Half Or A Third
Mistakes are costly, forgetting birthdays, doing your accounting incorrectly, forgetting a marketing idea. Now, I already explained to you earlier about why I have my phone and every time I have an idea, I immediately make a video. I have my big note pad because I don’t want to forget a marketing an idea. I don’t want to forget something that was such an amazing idea at the time, but then 20 minutes later I forgot. And I never wrote it down and it’s gone forever. Not a good idea.
Accounting wrong, if you don’t do your math correctly, those could be extremely costly mistakes. Now we’re going over some costly mistakes obviously, but if you could cut all your mistakes, okay? With your waking up late, if you could reduce the times that you wake up late and you go to bed late, which is forcing you to wake up late. If you were to be able to reverse that, go to bed early, wake up early, you’re going to reduce your stress.
Imagine how much better your quality of life you could have if you cut your mistakes. Every time you make a mistake, every time you spend money when you’re not supposed to, every time you break your integrity, the most important part of this is when you break your integrity, which is breaking a promise to yourself, right? Your quality of life deplenishes. And slowly but surely, your depression is going to sink in because you keep lying to yourself and you can’t hold yourself accountable, you keep making mistakes, you know what is right and wrong but you continuously make a mistake. And you could be like, Erik what does that mean? I’m talking about eating popcorn when you know you’re not supposed to. Snacking before a meal when you know you’re not supposed to. Smoking a cigarette when you promised your significant other that you quit. Better quality of life, if you keep to your integrity and you cut your mistakes in half or even a third.
The Richard Dawkins The Penalty of Making Mistakes, trial and error
Trial takes lots of time, so many years, weeks, wasted. Error. Yes in order to learn there must be an error but does not have to be your error, learn from other’s mistakes. Just don’t make mistakes. It’s easier to cut down on your mistakes than to even learn from other people, right? So trial, my twenties I tried everything and in the end of it, it was exhausting. It was literally exhausting. I don’t have any gray hair and I don’t look like I’m 37 however I am 37 and I’ve tried a lot and it was an exhausting time. Now I would suggest to each of you to learn from my mistakes, learn from my errors so that you don’t have to create them yourself. I think it was Warren Buffet who said this. “You’re going to make mistakes, but they don’t have to be your mistakes.” So pay attention to other people, that’s why reading, carrying a library with you at all times is very important. If you have a library and you’re constantly learning, then you’re constantly learning what to avoid.
You’re constantly learning what to avoid, not really what to do. Because everybody can do their own thing, everybody is very creative in their own way. It’s more or less what to avoid and what to avoid is much more important than what to do. Because whatever business you’re starting, that’s great, your idea could be different than somebody else’s, but the things to avoid are what’s going to save you many of years of trials errors and headaches. So again, it’s okay to make mistakes, but they don’t have to be your mistakes, they can be someone else’s.
The Six Sigma Perfection Creating Perfect Systems
The Sigma perfection creating perfect systems. Approach to things, for every million times you do something only 3.4 mistakes. What would your life look like if you achieved Sigma six?
So, with airplanes, Right? The air traffic control people, they’re trying to achieve this six Sigma perfection. So for every million flights they’re only trying to have three mistakes. If you can get Down to that level, right? So every million days you only make three mistakes, which a million days is like your lifetime, right? If you only make three mistakes then your great. But just think about that, break that million days into seconds, every million seconds if you only make three mistakes, how much better off you will be than everybody else, right?
I talk about this a lot in different places. At night time I go over my days. And I plan the next day. I have a plan for today and I created it last night. What I do is I look over, I see where I make mistakes? Where did I waste time? Where can I better myself tomorrow? I am slowly but surely creating the Sigma six system for myself. Because I don’t like having to do things twice. Does that make sense? I hate having to redo something when I’ve already done it, so my number one priority is to do something correctly the first time, not perfect but correct. And there’s a big difference.
Perfect is the after product. Doing it correctly means that one take and I’m done, not a thousand takes and wasting time. Now, is it a perfect product? No, but is it a correct product? Yes. I’m not trying to be perfect, I’m striving for perfection, but I also understand there’s nothing that’s perfect you can tweak everything. However, I want to do things correctly. So if I’m roofing the house, I don’t want to do it incorrectly and have to redo it. All right? No, I want to do it right the first time.
When you go over your life and analyze the things you do and analyze your day, you’re giving yourself the ability to correct the errors that you might be making that you’re not even thinking about you’re making subconsciously. So there we go, this is belt and suspenders. The way to maximize yourself is to have two, don’t just have your belt, also have your suspenders and attempt to achieve the six Sigma perfection system, where every day you’re reducing your mistakes and increasing your productivity. Does that make sense? So every day and every night, you live your life, live your day but at night go over everything, look through, find the small minute things that no one’s paying attention to and start rectifying those. And through that, you’re going to create the perfect system. You’re going to reduce your errors, you’re going to have a better quality of life because you’re going to have less errors. You’re going to travel with a library because you’re constantly learning new things. You’re going to keep your finger on the pulse, eye on the prize baby, eye on the prize.
You’re going to create a fail resistant program to create more energy throughout the day, so you don’t die out and run out of glycogen. You’re going to use a belt and suspenders, you’re going to have two different systems in case your belt runs out or you break your belt you have your suspenders to hold your pants up. Set the expectations you will not fail, you will stop telling yourself that something is impossible. Opposed to using words like this is impossible, start using words like this is possible, how do I do it? All right. Have a great one. And I’ll see you in the next chapter.