Category: 10 Things I Learned Tai Lopez

Learning 9x faster; Find a professional in any field you’re interested in and study them, average people do not start listening until you tell them something nine times, think of it like this, learn things nine times faster by becoming a sponge, becoming stubborn is not a quality you want, and make your life optimal.

Find A Professional In Any Field That You’re Interested In And Study Them 

One of the main principles is to cut the learning curve. Just reverse engineer what works and cut the learning curve. So remember, we’re trying to learn nine times faster. So the fastest way that you can learn something is what, emulate it. Copy somebody. Go find something that worked and copy it. Just reverse engineer, exactly what they did, how they did it and emulate it. Do it exactly how they did it. That is the fastest, easiest way that you’re going to be able to get to success.

Or you can do it your own way. And run into the brick wall, keep running into the brick wall. And if you continuously do that, I have another chapter for you in 12 things I learned in hell. It’s called, Does it Hurt Yet? But if you don’t want to do that, you don’t want to run into the brick wall over and over and over again, then find the person who’s the absolute best in the field that you’re trying to get in, and study that person. See exactly what they did and how they did it. And then little by little, implement things that you’ve learned from that person into your life. You don’t have to know that person. You just have to study that person. Does that make sense? Study that person. How do they do what they do? Listen to what they’re saying.

Average People Do Not Start Listening Until You Tell Them Something Nine Times 

At first, I didn’t really believe this. I was like, there’s no way. I said nine times, that’s ridiculous. That’s how pathetic people are. But it’s true. And pay attention to it, because I was like, you know what? That’s impossible. And I started like, wait a minute. That is true. Because I started looking at my own life. I’ve taken classes on certain things, and I still haven’t listened to the simple things that they say. And it’s probably way more than nine times now.

And if you remember, in previous chapters, we talked about this. Gurus will sell you their secrets because they know the probability is very small that you’re going to listen to them 100%. It is human nature to fiddle with things. Have you ever heard the saying, “Don’t fix what’s not broken?” So if someone is telling you something, some grand advice, then why are you trying to fix something that’s not broken? And you’d be like, nah, that’s not me, man. That’s not me. I learn everything. The first time somebody tells me, is that true?

Because look at your finances, and your finances will tell you if that’s true or not, because there is no way in today’s world that there is no financial advice out there that could make you rich very fast. They show you exactly how to do it. Mind you, I’m not trying to say the snake salesman. I’m talking about there are paths to prosperity that are true paths that work. I’m not saying overnight success as in 24 hours, I’m saying overnight success of 10 years. But how many of us are going to listen to do something for 10 years? It might take us nine tries until we are finally like, you know what? I’m going to do this for the whole 10 years. And then guess what? That took us 19 years nine years longer.

Now, once you become aware of this and you start internalizing this, it should only take you maybe one or two times of someone telling you to do something before you at least investigate to see if it’s good for you or not. Remember, continuously test and test and test and test and test. 

You have to transform your thought process. You have to become a sponge.

Think Of It Like This 

If there are two people, one does listen, and the other, it takes nine times. Who is going to accomplish more in life? If they accomplish more, then they will be able to earn more. Remember that. So if you accomplish more in life, you’ll be able to earn more. If they listen and comprehend the first time, they will have a much happier life. So remember, we have two people. We have one person who listens to sound advice, once. Maybe they have to ask a question. So they have to hear it twice. They implement that. They learned how to analyze the information and implement that information into their life as fast and efficiently as possible. So day number two, they already started.

Then you have the second person, who day number two, he still didn’t listen to anything you said. Day number five, you’re telling him five times. He still is not getting the concept. Person number one, he’s been doing this for five days already. He’s five times advanced, further along than you are. Now on day number nine, the second person finally understands the concept. Probability is he will never catch the first person who got it the first day. Does that make sense?

I’ve explained this in a different way to somebody else. I said today, we’re even. If we were to start today as equals, tomorrow morning, we are no longer equals. And the reason is I already started and you did not. So if it takes you nine times to grasp a concept, and let’s say we start at equal nine times, nine months in a row, by the 10th month, there is no possible way you’re ever going to catch me. Even though on the 10th month, we started at the same place. Because every time that we started, you only got to your maximum capacity. And I would’ve got to mind, which is nine times further than you. So in those excess steps that you don’t know anything about, I’m knocking on the bigger door. I’m learning skills that you have no idea about, skills that could help me get from 10 to 20 at exponential speed. So on that 10th month, when there’s no barriers, by the time you even get to step five, I’m already on step 30. ‘Cause I’m nine times faster than you, well, literally 45, nine times five.

Learn things nine times faster by becoming a sponge 

Now, we talked about this a little bit. The greatest superpower in the world is to be able to learn nine times faster than the average person. And we just explained, I just showed you how I’m going to be way more advanced than you just by learning nine times faster, by listening and comprehending faster. And that’s the greatest superpower. Because if you can be a sponge and you can grasp a new concept and you can implement that concept and see if it works and if it doesn’t work, and you can, supersonic speed, change and implement and change and adapt, then in the time that it takes one person to test out one new strategy, you’ve tested nine. There is no possible way that anyone can compete with you. That’s how you become your own Iron Man. That’s how you become your own Superman by learning something the first time.

Art is long, but life is short. The amount of time we have to create a masterpiece is short. Don’t waste a minute because you have to be told something more than once. To have a great life takes time, but most people run out of time because they refuse to cut the learning curve. Now, remember, we’ve already discussed the learning curve to an extent. If you want to cut the learning curve, find the person who is at the top of your field and study that person and implement the things that that person does.

If this person wakes up at two in the morning, well then, wake up at two in the morning. If this person never has an excuse and always gets something done, well then never have an excuse and get things done. That’s how you complete their learning curve. Because if you want to be the best, you have to emulate the best. You can’t emulate the worst, expecting to be the best. If you want to be the best, you have to first emulate the best, and then you have to be better. You can’t be the best by being worse than the person that’s already the best. The only way you can be better than the best is to become better than the best. And the only way to do that is to emulate the best and be better.

The penalty for not cutting the learning curve is your own responsibility. You will be in the hell of your own making. So if you do not succeed at what you wanted to succeed it is directly your fault. If you are not the person that you wanted to be when you were younger… Now being a fairy, understand that there are certain things that you couldn’t be when you were younger. I’m talking about realistic dreams. Now, we all grow. Maybe certain things that you wanted to be aren’t probable. But if you are not living your dream, if you’re not living to your maximum potential, then understand that you’re probably taking more than one time to learn a concept. And you’re probably in the nine times concept. So you are nine times slower than someone who learns something the first time. And you are creating the hell of your own making, because everyone will pass you and you will not understand why. The reason is because you were taking too long, and you’re too closed off to grasp concepts at a fast and optimal pace.

Being Stubborn Is Not A Quality That You Want 

Now, I’ve heard it and I’ve been one of these people before in my life. It’s not like I’m immune to being stubborn. And thinking my way is the only way,  being stubborn is the fastest way to lose everything that you have. Successful People are adaptable. If you’re not adaptable, then you’re stubborn. And if you’re stubborn, then someone could be telling you something that could be for your best interest. But if you’re too stubborn and you think your way is the highway, then you’re going to miss out on a marvelous opportunity because your “way’s the best”.

We talk more about this in the 12 Things I learned While in Hell. Does it hurt yet? If you need more detail, read that chapter. It’s a great chapter on being stubborn and not paying attention to the small little things in life. Like we talked about in earlier chapters, analyze every night. What concepts did you learn that day and analyze at nighttime, to see if you are implementing correctly or not? That’s why we analyze at nighttime, its a powerful tool. We want to make sure if it’s a new concept, we’re implementing it correctly. Or if it’s not working for us, we analyze that night, and cut it fast and onto the next one. That’s the importance of analyzing at nighttime, making your life optimal by being open, cutting the learning curve, following successful people before you, and being adaptable.

Now throughout these 10 chapters, I hope that one thing has become clear. The only way you’re going to be able to attain what you want is through yourself. Now, again, if you would like to read more, these are the 10 things, the 10 introductory concepts I learned from Tai Lopez. So live the optimal life. Since learning these 10 key concepts from Tai Lopez, it has changed my life. And so I want to further pay it forward. And hopefully, these 10 concepts have changed your life. Now below, there is also, depending on how you are consuming this information, there will be a link or a QR code so that you can further your education and move forward and proceed with more advanced lessons. This is an introduction. So if you want more, I can’t wait to see you on the other side and best of luck.

This is a follow-up to the previous book I wrote titled 10 things I learned from Tai Lopez – the notes.  Here you will get an in-depth analysis of all the things I learned. if you are skeptical on whether Tai Lopez is an authentic educator then this is the perfect book for you as the lessons he has taught me have been invaluable

Table Of Contents

1. Belt & Suspenders
2. 10 Dark Years
3. The Profit Motive
4. Forgetting Who’s In The Room
5. Mastering Your Daily Routine
6. Balanced Life
7. Simple Not Easy
8. Building Military Mental Discipline
9. Studying The Minds And Habits Of Others
10. Learning 9x Faster

Now I hope you guys have learned as much as I have from Tai Lopez. And by this point, you’re truly enjoying this book. Our next chapter is “studying the habits and minds of others”; don’t take vacations, learn how to adapt and be more persuasive towards people, build multiple sources of income, life is like chess, and habits.

Don’t Take Vacations

Do something you don’t need to take a vacation from. Now, what does that mean? I’ve told this story a couple of times in different publications, but it fits perfectly here. A few years ago, I was on a beautiful vacation and it was a vacation I thought I was going to be able to relax and do absolutely nothing. Well, a day and a half into it, I woke up and I just started having a panic attack. I had none of my work with me. I couldn’t do anything and I was panicking. Like the world was beating me (my competition was still working while I was not). Right. And I was behind. I couldn’t take it. Why is that? Because I enjoy what I do so much. My drive for competition, whatever it is, is so powerful that I don’t want to stop doing what I’m doing. Right. Now in the situation I am right now, I have a nice house. I got a nice pool. What? Five, four bedrooms, four baths, 3,200 square feet, whatever. Two acres of land. So it’s a nice property, but I’m tired of being here. I want to see different scenery.

So most people would want to take a vacation, but me, I don’t want to leave because I can’t take my work with me. And I have a pretty large project, right? I have a whole library I got to go through. So until I can move my library where I’m going, I’m not really trying to go anywhere. (In short, unless I am going to be more efficient in a different environment then it is advantageous for me to stay put) Or until I accomplish my goal. Once I accomplish my goal, then I can pack the necessary belongings and we can move forward. But I don’t have time for a vacation. I don’t understand them. Why do I want to leave my mission and take a break? Doesn’t make any sense. So if you are finding the need for a vacation, then you need to find a different mission. Because if you are in tune with what it is that you’re supposed to be doing, then you’re not going to want to leave your mission either.

You’re not going to be like, “oh yeah, I’ll just put off my mission in the middle of it. And let’s go sit on the beach and do nothing for three days or a week.” Some people, they like to go on vacation for like a whole entire month. No way. That is an eternity. So you mean I got to take an entire month to do nothing? That’s such a waste of time to me. I don’t want to go any further. I think I have beaten the dead horse, just don’t take vacations, but I hope you understand the mindset that you need to have. You need to have the mindset of, I don’t want to waste any time. And a vacation means that I’m not just wasting an hour or two hours. I’m wasting that week to two weeks. And that is unacceptable. If you are a goal oriented person, and if you have the correct missions and you’re living your life, we’ve talked about this in health, wealth, love, and happiness.

We’ve talked about it in goals, we’ve talked about it in creating value. We talked about it in every chapter. If you’re creating the correct value in your life, then you don’t have time for vacations. Your work follows you everywhere you go. So I might go somewhere. And when I’m done with this particular mission, I might go somewhere. Remember, bring a library with you. I might bring my partial library with me. I might be on the beach somewhere. But most important for you to understand, I’m not on a vacation. I just needed to change the scenery.

So that doesn’t mean that I’m not going to have fun because remember, we’ve already talked about this. I enjoy myself so much. I love what I do. I love it so much that I have all the energy that I have to accomplish the missions that I set out. Every day I’m trying to accomplish the impossible. So if I did not love what I did and I was not happy, I would not be doing that. So be very careful when you think I might be going on a vacation, no, I just needed a new scenery. I was tired of looking at the same thing all the time. I needed to go somewhere different. It might be an exotic place, but I’m bringing my library with me.

Learn How To Adapt And Be More Persuasive Towards People

Be likable. When people like you, they start to trust you. When they start to trust you, you start to gain influence. Another part of that is consistency. If you are a neurotic person, who’s this way one time and this way another time, okay, let me explain it a different way. If today we had a conversation and you are in a great mood and you’re very happy and we have a great conversation. And then we schedule a time to talk and it’s for tomorrow. And the next day, you’re in a different mood, not quite as how you were the day before. And then we scheduled to talk a third time. And this time you’re not like you were the first time or the second time. Is it easy for the other person to trust you? No! It’s very difficult to trust something that’s not consistent. It’s almost impossible. You have no constant. So it’s impossible for you to trust.

If you can’t trust a person, are you going to listen to this person? No! That person’s not going to gain influence over you if you can’t trust that person. That’s why they also say, be consistent if you want to start a YouTube channel, and be consistent if you want to do anything. We have gone over it so many times in the book, but I’m going to say it again because, if you want to gain influence over people, you have to be consistent. So again, on day number one of you punching that bag, no one cares. 500 consecutive days of you punching that bag, you’re going to start having some influence over some people. Why? Because you have done it for 500 consecutive days.

Now on day 1000, you’re going to have loyal fans. Why? Because they can trust that you’re going to punch that bag 1001 times. They have faith. They can depend on you. So if you are a different character every time, no one can depend on you. You’re not going to gain influence. In order to gain influence, you have to be consistent. And you have to be likable and well, not even really likable. People don’t have to like you to be influenced by you. But you have to be consistent.

Let’s put it like this. We’ll break it into simpler terms. A movie star. He is typecast as an action star. Every movie, 10 movies, are blockbusters. Every one of them, action hero. Then in the next movie he’s in a romantic comedy. It just doesn’t quite fit. It’s kind of like, what are you doing in this movie? Right. Your loyal fans will still watch you. But if you keep making movies that are the complete opposite of what you were doing before, you’re going to lose a lot of those loyal fans because you are not consistently doing what they’re loyal to you for. Now you might gain other fans, but you’re going to be losing them as well. You gotta throw in another action movie, right? For every romantic comedy, do another action. Keep everybody happy. Build your influence.

Build Multiple Sources Of Income 

With only one source, no matter how large it is, you are a servant to that one source of income. Be like a rainbow with multiple colors. So what do I mean? You’re making $8 billion, but it’s only one source of income. Tomorrow comes and the whole world changes. The $8 billion turns into nothing. And you’re going to be like, well, Erik, I’m fine. I got $8 Billion. Okay. Well how much do you owe? Seven billion 999 million. Okay. Well you might not be as well as you thought you were. Right? So make sure that you’re diversified and have multiple sources of income.

After 2008, the government made banks have something they called a stress test. To make sure that what happened in 2008 would never happen again. Right? So gauge your own vulnerability by taking a personal stress test. How long could you survive with just your passive income? And if you can’t survive for very long, then you understand that you did not pass your personal stress test. So you need to do things that are going to help you pass your personal stress test.

So just like the Corona virus came out of absolutely nowhere, right? There are multiple things that can go wrong. So I say your passive income, not your earned income. Because your passive income is what you are making no matter if it’s shining. Whether you have an emergency or choose to travel, your passive income is what’s going to consistently be there. So if you don’t have any passive income right now, and you didn’t pass your personal stress test, then you need to be looking at different avenues to build your passive income, right? And you can Google it. There’s millions of different ways that you can build passive income. But remember the main thing is to have multiple sources of income, not just one. Don’t rely on one.

Life Is Like Chess 

It’s not checkers, Checkers you’re trying to get kinged. And once you become king, you can move backwards and forwards. But with chess, there’s multiple pieces to the puzzle. And each piece has a well-defined movement. Life is like that. When you make a move, the world makes a move back. You have to always plan for the unexpected attack. You have to plan for things that you’re not paying attention to. Expect the unexpected.

Habits 

If you don’t like your income or life, the basis of your problem could be your habits. Create habits which give you the opportunity to achieve your goals. Now, through this entire book, we have gone through this intensely on different avenues, different ways to do it. But this is studying the habits of others, studying the minds and the habits of others. What do you do? What are the habits of people that have done it before? Now, through most of it, we’ve talked about how Einstein needed 10 hours, but Arnold Schwarzenegger said he needs six to eight hours of sleep. So figure out what’s best for you. Elon Musk, we talked about the other greats, how they had the 10 dark years. So figure out the habits and what they learned in those dark years and emulate those habits, because those are the habits that created the success that they have now. Does that make sense?
One of the most influential snippets on habits I learned, I was reading the book by John Paul Getty, How To Be Rich. And he was talking, his first couple of million dollars, he moved to LA and he was being a playboy, having a good time. And his parents basically shunned him. And then he came out of retirement and then he never wanted to party and go out again. He didn’t see the point. When I was reading that, around the same time I was doing the same thing, going out, partying, whatever. But then I put myself in his shoes and I looked at it from the outward looking in like, what am I doing? Why am I wasting all this time? I’m not even really enjoying myself. I wake up with a headache every morning. I’m not getting anything accomplished. So reading that and emulating the habits that he had, where instead of going out, work. And through that, I’m having more success. I’m happier. And I’m achieving the four pillars.

Table Of Contents

1. Belt & Suspenders
2. 10 Dark Years
3. The Profit Motive
4. Forgetting Who’s In The Room
5. Mastering Your Daily Routine
6. Balanced Life
7. Simple Not Easy
8. Building Military Mental Discipline
9. Studying The Minds And Habits Of Others
10. Learning 9x Faster

Building military mental discipline. There’s three parts to this, and it’s how much money should you save? The easiest way to achieve this, And the main purpose to do it this way is to forget about your savings account.

How Much Money Should You Save? 

You have to be realistic. Then stick to your decision with military discipline for at least two months, then adjust accordingly. It’s better to save a consistent amount, opposed to saving random amounts. Now, why is that? Remember the saying? We’ve said it in two other chapters, so we might as well say it again. I don’t fear a man who can punch the bag a thousand times in a day. I fear the man that can punch the bag once a day for a thousand days. That’s the basis of consistency, right? By doing that, you’re building a habit. If one week, you’re saving $10, the next week you’re saving $20, and the next week you’re saving five and 30 and 40, you’re not building a discipline. Right? Find the average of all of those numbers I just said, and save that much every week consistently. Do not deviate.

Why are you doing that? You’re just building successful habits. Right? You’re sticking to something. You came up with a plan, and you’re sticking to it. That’s why we’re saying do it for a month or two. Do it for a few months, maybe six months. It all depends on how long you need to ingrain something into your head. And then adjust accordingly. Was it strenuous on your life? Were you saving too much? Was it not enough? Was it too easy for you to save? Because what we’re doing is we’re building disposable income. Right? And with that disposable income, you can use that money for investments.

All right. That’s why we need to save a consistent amount, to build a discipline upon it. If you’re struggling and you can not see any way you can save anything, right … And I know a lot of people are like, “There’s no way I can save anything.” I made a video. Well, 14 years ago, 14 years ago about quarters. And it was talking about how much money you can save just by saving your quarters. And at the time, I know this was before plastic was really as prominent as it is today. But by Wednesday, starting the week on Monday, by Wednesday, I had $3 worth of quarters. If you were to just stick those $3 away, hide them from yourself, and do it every day for a month and then take that money and put it into dollars and figure out what you have, then guesstimate that’s how much you’re going to save.

But if you have a problem saving, then just save anything. Right? Start with a dollar a month or even a penny a day. The important thing is you start building the discipline of saving, opposed to spending. The skill you’re developing to save robotically will change your life. Right? Again, the fact, the whole point of doing this, the whole reason you’re building a discipline to save is you’re building a discipline. Right? The more disciplined you become, the more military minded or military mental discipline that you have, the better it will serve you later in life.

If you’re not disciplined enough to manage a dollar, then there’s no way you’re disciplined enough to manage a thousand. Right? And we can go up the scale. You’re only going to be able to manage to your discipline level. Does that make sense? If you’re having a problem saving a dollar a day, then it makes sense why you don’t have a hundred dollars in your savings. Does that make sense? If you’re having problems saving a thousand dollars, right? Adding up and stacking a thousand dollars. It would make sense why you don’t have a thousand dollars in your bank account. Right?

It’s hard for us to perceive a number that we do not have. If you have a million dollars in the bank account, then $1 doesn’t mean too much. You’re used to it. You have a discipline of a million dollars. But if all you have is $10 in your bank account, then you have a discipline of what? Ten dollars. By saving robotically, changing our lives by creating a new discipline in our lives.

The Easiest Way To Achieve This

I spoke of one very easy way, which was saving quarters. Right? If that is not easy enough for you and you need a different way, then you can open the additional bank account. Just the account. Do not have a check. Even though you might not even know what checks are. Don’t have an ATM card, and do not have any way to access this money. Right? Then automatically withdraw your predetermined amount the same day you deposit your paycheck or other source of income. You want to withdraw it at the same time so your brain does not miss it. And if you notice, you’re most lenient with your money the day that you are paid.

What you’re doing is you’re taking the money out before you even see it, before you have that euphoric attitude about yourself, where you’re just like, “Ah! I just got paid! It’s payday! And I can go party!” Right? You’re automatically taking the money out, so when you go to the party, you’re kind of like, “Well, I’m missing some money.” In a positive way though, so now you can’t party and celebrate quite as much as you used to. Is that a problem? No, you can still do what you want to do, but this time, 10 weeks down the road, you’re going to have a nice little nest egg.

And maybe you can take that money and invest in something else. That’s why we say the easiest way to do this is to open up an account that you don’t have access to, and automatically, before you even look at your bank account, let it be taken out. Just how the government takes money out of your check before you even get to touch it. Well, pay yourself just like you have to pay the government. Before you even get to touch it, pay yourself.

The Main Purpose To Do This This Way Is To Forget About The Savings Account 

Right? We kind of went into that. Let’s go into it a little bit more. The best way to save something is to not think about it or focus on it. The best way to save it and the best way to not think about it is to not have access to it. Because if you give yourself an out, right? Then you might succumb to it and take that out. That’s why saving money under the mattress isn’t the best place. One, the bank’s not going to give you much interest either. On that, they’re about even on making money. However, you’re just tempting yourself. Right? Unless you have supreme military discipline not to ever touch your money underneath the pillow, then go ahead.

I understand. You’re going to be like, “Well, Erik, I’m making money, man. I save my money under my pillow.” And I’m fine with that, But what happens on a rainy day when you stop making money? Then you’re going to be susceptible to go into your stash until there’s no stash anymore. This is the whole purpose why we want to make it to where we do not have access to it. We want to give ourselves kind of a three dayer, right? I have a couple of accounts where it takes me three days to get access to the money. And that means that it’s weekdays, too. Banks close on weekends. If I want the money, I have to think about it Monday, Tuesday. And then Thursday, Friday, I’ll have it.

What I’ve noticed the majority of the time, by Thursday or Friday, I don’t even want it anymore. So I save the money. If your own discipline isn’t as mature as that, then do not give yourself any way to touch that money until you’ve built the necessary disciplines to be able to have access to your money because you know that you’re going to put your money in a more profitable situation. Because, again, what we’re doing is we’re creating disciplines to be able to make more money. Right?
But if we don’t have the discipline because it’s really easy and you hear on YouTube, you hear all over the place, it’s like, “Yeah, you need a lot of money,” and all this other stuff, and they’re talking up all this big money and everything, and you’re like, “Man, I can’t even save $10.” Well, I’ve been there, too. And so part of the reason why I’m saying that and why I’m trying to start from this beginning is, part of it is the discipline in your mind. Right? We talked about this earlier as well, in earlier chapters. Change the way you think, and it will change what you do. Change the things you do, and it will change the way you think. If you start doing this, then it’s going to change the way you think about money. It’s going to change your values because you’re going to start thinking about, yeah, maybe I don’t want those $200 pair of Jordans. I have something better to do. Right? Buy Nike stock.

Table Of Contents

1. Belt & Suspenders
2. 10 Dark Years
3. The Profit Motive
4. Forgetting Who’s In The Room
5. Mastering Your Daily Routine
6. Balanced Life
7. Simple Not Easy
8. Building Military Mental Discipline
9. Studying The Minds And Habits Of Others
10. Learning 9x Faster

In today’s chapter, we’re going to discuss Simple Not Easy. The three parts to this are: it is simple to make more money, but it’s not easy. Number two, in life. And number three, you must be in the middle, the realist.

It Is Simple, But Not Easy

All right, but what does all that mean? That was not very descriptive at all, so let’s dive into it. It’s simple to make more money, but it’s not easy. You’re going to meet people who tell you it’s impossible to do X, “just get a job and find security”. Your pessimists. You’re going to meet people who try to sell you the dream that you can accomplish anything overnight in three easy steps. Your snake oil salesman. And then, you’re also going to meet people who tell you everything in life is possible if you put in the effort and the work for it, and that’s your realist.

Now, when it comes to simple, not easy, your pessimistic person is never going to see it. They will never see it. They’re always going to tell you it’s impossible. You’ll never be able to do that. It’s too hard. They are always going to have an excuse why it can’t be done. Your snake oil salesman, and I know each and every one of us have seen this: 30-minute abs. 30-minute abs. Sounds good. It’s the snake oil salesman. “It’s easy. All you have to do… You can accomplish anything you want in life. It’s easy. Just do this, this, and this. And buy my program.” They’ve been around since the olden days, that’s why we call them snake oil salesmen. They will sell you whatever little potion they have and it’s going to fix any problem you have, but we know it’s not true.

They’re on two ends of the pendulum. We have the pessimists that nothing is possible, and then you have the snake oil salesman that there’s a magic pill and all you have to do is take this magic pill and everything’s going to be perfect and it’s going to happen overnight. Now, the realist, the realist knows it’s possible. He might not know it’s possible in the beginning. He has faith that it’s possible. We talked about that earlier, to have faith. And he trusts the process that if he does something every day, then eventually, it’s going to become routine, and eventually, it’s going to become easier to do.

So if you are extremely overweight, you might not see that being in shape is a probable possibility for you, but you know it’s possible because you see people that are in shape so it’s a possible thing. But, you have to have faith and trust the process. That if you walk every day, then eventually, it’s going to get easier. At first, it’s going to be miserable. Nothing that you start is ever easy, unless you’ve already done it before. If something’s brand new, you’ve never done it before, unless you’re a natural. Nothing’s easy.

In life, you hear the pessimists, ignore them. At all costs, ignore them. When you hear the snake oil salesman telling you or selling you a lottery ticket, ignore them as well. You have to be in the middle with all of this. You have to be in the middle. Nothing is going to be easy. It’s very simple, right? I can tell you, if you want to lose weight, eat less calories than you burn. Very simple, but there’s a lot more to it than just that. And it’s not easy.

The basis of cooking. What is cooking? Taking something that’s uncooked, and making it cooked. That’s it. Very simple, not necessarily easy. If you want to make it good and you want to be the best, it takes a lot of work, right? But, the basis of it is very simple. It’s just not easy. Becoming a billionaire. Simple. The math is simple. If you have a product selling for X and you sell it X amount of times, as long as those numbers equal a billion, you can make a billion. Very simple numbers, not easy.

Let’s look at Amazon. The concept of Amazon is very simple. You have the people over here that have products to sell. You have your customers over here… You have the customers on your right that have a product to sell, you have your people on the left are the consumers that are wanting to buy it. All Amazon did was become the middleman. He organized all the transactions so it makes it easier for the customer to buy the products that the company has to sell. That’s it, no more, it’s very simple. But in order to build that, it’s not easy. In order to build all the structures and all the distribution networks, it is very difficult. So simple, but not easy.

You Must Be In The Middle

The realist: it is simple, but not easy. The hardest part is consistency. Again, we went over this before in a different chapter, but it works in this chapter as well it’s perfect. “I don’t fear the man who can punch a bag a thousand times in one day. I fear the man who can punch the bag once a day for a thousand days.” Now, that is not easy, but it’s very simple. “Look, man, Erik just punch this bag once a day for 1000 days. I can do that.” Can you? Do you know how many days a thousand days is? We’re talking about almost three years consistently punching the bag once. Think about that. Simple, not easy. Write two books or complete two classes in 10 days. Simple, I got the process down, I know exactly what to do, but It’s not easy.

In life, you have to understand it’s not going to be easy. Now, the snake oil salesman is always trying to cut the corners. He’s going to give you some magic elixir that’s going to solve all your problems, like a depression pill. But the problem with that, it doesn’t solve your problem. It just puts a bandaid on it. So if you ever stop that magic elixir, then what happens? Your problem comes back, right? You’re depressed again. Well, it’s not that you were depressed again. You were never not depressed. You were just taking something to hide the depression. You’re taking a feel-good pill, which does not work. Why? Because, it’s not real. It’s the snake oil salesman selling you something, making you addicted to something to make sure that you feel good. If you have to be addicted to something to feel good, addicted to a substance to feel good, there’s nothing different than any other drug. You might think it’s different, but it’s not. It’s the same. In order for you to feel happy, you need a happy pill.

So, be careful with the snake oil salesmen. Because if you can do something really, really fast, are you really doing it fast? Because if you stop whatever that you’re doing, are you going to be able to maintain it? Because if you can’t maintain it, then you’re trying to take the easy way out, but that never works. Simple, but easy. It doesn’t go that way. It’s simple, but it’s hard. Does that make sense? So in everything that you do in life, learning a new language, very simple, but it’s not easy. But once you start doing it and you get into it, it can become easier. So in the beginning, trying to write a 20-page paper, very difficult in the beginning. But if you do it 10 times, that 11th time is much easier. Does that make sense?

Everything can become easy and simple. It can become that, but it does not originate like that. So, you have to be very careful when you see somebody be able to do something easy, because don’t forget, like we’ve talked about this before, we forget the story. So if you see that I’m able to do something that you’re like, “Oh man, that’s crazy. That’s amazing,” well, there’s a story behind it. I’ve been trained to be able to do certain things since what? 25, 26 years now. I’ve been trained a certain way. So, you need to remember, don’t forget the entire story. Listen to the realist. Don’t listen to the pessimists. Don’t listen to the snake oil salesman. Listen to the realist. It’s simple, it’s just not easy. But after a thousand days of practice, it becomes easy.

Table Of Contents

1. Belt & Suspenders
2. 10 Dark Years
3. The Profit Motive
4. Forgetting Who’s In The Room
5. Mastering Your Daily Routine
6. Balanced Life
7. Simple Not Easy
8. Building Military Mental Discipline
9. Studying The Minds And Habits Of Others
10. Learning 9x Faster

The Balanced Life. In this chapter, we’re going to be discussing health, love, wealth, and happiness. In order to have a balanced life, you must have all four pillars. Your job is to find an equilibrium between the four pillars, learning how to balance all four, is what makes things difficult. Now through that, we have four different topics. We have school’s attempt. We have The balanced day. What does it look like? Depression is a good gauge for living a good life. happiness must approach you.

Schools Attempt

Through their curriculum, they teach us the basics, history, math, science, physical training. The problem with that is, it’s an academic balance, but it’s not a balance for life. Right? So what’s the problem with that? Nothing really. If you want to have a good conversation, having known a little bit of history, knowing a little math, knowing a little science, keeping yourself in a little bit of nutrition, which is physical training, is good, you’re an all around person.

But that doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re an all around person with your life. Right? You could still know all of that, be a great person to have a conversation with, but be deeply depressed and be a miserable person on the inside. You’re well balanced in the academic life, but when it comes to your own personal life, it’s in disarray, it’s in shambles. Right? So schools attempt in keeping us balanced, it does a very, very successful job at keeping us balanced on subjects. Right? At least the curriculum in theory does. Now in practice, you can argue that, but that’s not the topic of discussion.

What Does A Balanced Day Look Like?

Spending time exercising every day, that’s your health, right? If you want to be healthy, or if you want to be happy, you need to be healthy. The healthy you are, the happier you are, the more energy you have, the more time in the day you have. Why? Because you have more energy, the less struggle you’re having because it doesn’t take you as much energy to walk up and down stairs or get in and out of your car. The more time you’re happy with your kids. Why? Because you have more energy. Right? So spending time exercising every day is very important.

Spend time, improving relationships with loved ones. And if you don’t love anyone and there’s no one that loves you, then spend time improving a relationship with yourself. Right? Now, in The 12 Things I’ve Learned, we discussed this. It’s impossible to love something else, if at first, you don’t love yourself. So through this health, love, wealth and happiness, it’s okay if you don’t have another person, because you can love yourself and be self-sufficient and be perfectly fine, you don’t have to have a whole bunch of people. I go over it more in that book. So please go read that book.

But I’m going to briefly touch on it here: you have to look inside for love, not outside. True love comes from within, not from outside. Spend time working on your finances, which is wealth. If you don’t look at your wallet every day, and when I mean wallet, I’m talking about your bank account and your budget, your finances. If you don’t look at it every day, then of course, it’s going to go disarray. You have to be focused on your finances. You have to look at them. You have to pay attention to them. You have to see what’s going on. You have to micromanage them, in the beginning, right?

Once you set up a system and you have it going, then you know what you’re doing, you can’t have the balanced life, if you don’t pay attention to the things that matter. Now, I understand, money doesn’t buy you happiness and all this other stuff, at least that’s what they tell you. I don’t know, I think money can buy you happiness because I want an airplane. I’ll be happy if I have an airplane. I can’t buy it with goodwill. I got to buy it with money. So I’m pretty sure money does buy me happiness.

However, not to sound too cliche, then if you don’t want to be stressed, you have to have your finances in order, in order to have your finances in order, you have to tend to your finances. Just like they say, “Tend to your garden or tend to your business.” You have to tend to your finances, if you want your garden or your finances to reap the benefits. To reap rewards, you have to tend to it. Now, spend time for yourself, this is different from loving yourself. Loving yourself is finding the internal love for yourself, being able to accept yourself for who you are.

Now this is, spend time for yourself. 

Spend Time Doing What Makes You Happy, Not What Other People Perceive As Happiness, But What Makes You Happy. 

If going outside and looking for bugs makes you happy, then go outside and look for some bugs. Who cares what other people think? It doesn’t matter. If you were to tell me that going outside to look for bugs is what you like to do, I’d probably look at you like, have fun. I’m not going to join you because that’s not fun to me. However, what’s fun to me, what happiness is to myself, is accomplishing goals, finding a task that seems impossible and figuring out a way how to do it. That to me is extremely fun. I like it. But to most people, they look at me like I’m crazy. So find out what it is that makes you happy and go do that. That’s the happiness part of it. All right.

Depression Is A Good Gauge For Living The Good Life 

If you’re depressed, find the root problem. Is it because you are lonely and don’t have friends? Then this is what you do, work on the relationships that you do have, and build your social skills. If you don’t have any money, always struggling, look at the people around you, if they’re also struggling, find different people. Find a different social group because you are the people who you are around. So if everybody around you is poor and broke, then it’s better to be alone.

If not being alone is what you can do, then find a social group online. That has to do with making money, follow Ray Dalio, follow Elon Musk, follow the people that are making money. Maybe not follow the celebrities, but find out who is making the money in whatever you’re interested in and follow those people. Don’t be worried about what Gilly Jolly said yesterday to entice a fight, who cares? It doesn’t matter. Trust me, when you have your own private jet, you can fly away from all of it. 

If you don’t have any energy, or are overweight, then read a book on healthy food and exercise. Right? It’s that simple. You don’t have to be told by all the gurus, what’s best for you. You have to figure out what’s best for you by yourself. That’s what’s best for you, right? It’s not what’s best for Erik, it’s what’s best for you. What’s best for Erik is most definitely, not best for you. No, it’s not. You can try it, but it’s probably not the best for you, unless you’ve been through everything I’ve been through and lived my life exactly how I lived mine. Then it’s probably not the best for you. And whatever’s best for you is most likely not the best for Erik.

So you have to figure out what’s best for you. You’re an individual in this world and depression is a great gauge. Right? If you’re just overall, not happy, explore things that make you happy, try new things until you find happiness. Right? It took me a while to realize, I’m most happy when I’m in the middle of a project. I’ve been on vacations, I’ve traveled, I’ve done everything. But I am at peace in the middle of a project. I love it. It’s what turns my mouse in my little hamster wheel, working. I enjoy it. So I don’t need a vacation from what I’m doing, because I’m not depressed. I’m doing exactly what I’m doing, what I like to do. Dr. David Buss, evolutionary psychologist says, “Some depression is purely chemical, like you have a malfunction in your brain. But for the most part, depression is a trigger that is telling you something is wrong in your life.”

So if you don’t find what… We’ll revert back to another chapter, creating your value. If you don’t know what your value to this world is, it can cause you to be depressed, because something’s wrong. Because we all know we’re here for something, we didn’t just drop on this planet for nothing. What are we here for? We’re all here for something. But if you don’t feel like you’re living to your full potential, then you can be depressed. And part of that is because you know that you should be doing more, but you’re not. So remember the steps that we learned in creating value and start creating value for yourself. The faster you start creating value for yourself, the faster you’re going to be able to combat that depression. Does that make sense?

Again, I talked about it a little bit before, previously in this chapter, you have to love yourself. Right? If you don’t love yourself, then you’re going to be depressed. It’s the easiest thing to do, to be depressed about love. “Oh, this person is not giving me the love that I need. This person broke my heart. My mommy didn’t love me right. My daddy didn’t love me right. My sister didn’t love me right.” You see how It’s all external. Why don’t you look in the mirror and be like, “I didn’t love me.” And then figure out why, or better yet, figure out how to start loving yourself? Because once you have the love for herself, what do you need the love of mommy? Why do you need the love of daddy? It doesn’t matter if they hugged you when you were a little, it doesn’t matter. You can hug yourself.

Happiness Must Approach You

Once you build all the other pillars, first, when you have your health, right? When you’re exercising every day, this is why I’m talking about loving yourself, when you have your love. All right? When you’re healthy, you’re exercising, you’re feeling good, you’re breaking a sweat. You’re getting nice and you’re enjoying yourself. You can walk around, you have more energy, when you’re feeling good about yourself. And then you can look in that mirror and you can just name all the things that you love about yourself.

Now I’m not saying, gloat about yourself because I am one of the hardest people in the world on myself. I always find fault because I love challenges. I love to challenge myself. So I want to be perfect. So when I look in the mirror, I love myself. I love critiquing myself. Why? Because I want to be perfect. Right? That’s what I like to do and not everybody likes to critique themselves and be honest with themselves all the time. So I’m not asking you to be honest with yourself all the time or critique everything, because I mean, that’s a little too much.

But it’s also the love that was shown to me when I was younger, I always critiqued, to make sure that I was the perfect this or the perfect that, so I was always critiqued, like on a basketball court or on a football field or in the classroom or articulating my speech or whatever it was, didn’t matter. It was always critiquing, constructive criticism as they like to call it. 

Wealth

when you master your impulses, because most of the time it’s impulse, that’s our problem. Why did you buy those pairs of shoes? Because it was impulsive. Why’d you get drunk and spend all that money? It was impulsive. You weren’t thinking about it. Sounded like a good idea at the time. So once you reign that all in and you get your health in order, you start loving yourself and you get your finances in order, you get your wealth, right? You get it all working together, then happiness is the consequence you receive for having all of that. Does that make sense?

So the sooner you master the four pillars, the sooner or the faster you will achieve the good life; health, love, wealth, to happiness. So first, work on your health, then work on loving yourself, which is with health, then work on your wealth. And in turn, if you do all that, you have a balanced life and the consequence will be happiness.

Table Of Contents

1. Belt & Suspenders
2. 10 Dark Years
3. The Profit Motive
4. Forgetting Who’s In The Room
5. Mastering Your Daily Routine
6. Balanced Life
7. Simple Not Easy
8. Building Military Mental Discipline
9. Studying The Minds And Habits Of Others
10. Learning 9x Faster

This chapter, we’re going to discuss mastering your daily routine. First topic mastering one’s time. Two, types of management. Three, chunking. Four, chores versus progress. Have a broad idea every day what are your chores and what is your progress for that day. Number five, analyze your day. Number six, the most important part of your daily routine. Number seven, you need to find sleep equilibrium. And number eight, the learning machine mentality.

Managing One’s Time

What separates the great from the average is time management. Everyone has the same 24 hours. So if you were to sleep eight hours, work 10 hours, have family time for four hours, you still have two hours in a day. Manage your time better than the average person and you will have an above average life.

Now, numerous people talk about time. Arnold Schwarzenegger in one of his most famous viral videos, he discusses time a lot. He discusses how, when he was working to become Mr. Olympia, as we have discussed in previous chapters, his time management was impeccable. He was working a full-time job in construction, he was working out five hours a day in the gym, and then also going to acting classes. So he was able to accomplish all of this and become Mr. Olympia and then on to star in action movies and become governor of California. So how do you be able to become above average? Do above average things.

Now in numerous of my writings, I always talk about trying to create two days in one. So if your overachiever only has one day and he feels that he is a complete overachiever, well, to me, he’s only half of my day because I’m trying to overachieve in more than one day. Now, managing one’s time, this is not the place where I’m going to go into multiple details because that could be a book in and of itself. You need to understand yourself first and foremost. If you do not understand yourself, what you can and cannot do, you will never understand your time. You need to understand how long you can focus to begin with.

Everything begins at the beginning. I can focus much longer now than before, guaranteed, much more than I was before. But at this point in time, I can focus for hours and work for hours upon hours upon hours. But that took a lot of time. But first I had to recognize where I started from, because if you don’t know where you’re starting from, you’ll never know where you’re going.

Types Of Management

When we dive deeper into our time management, let’s jump into the three different types of management that you have. You have a strict military every second of your day is planned. You have the structured. You have a very basic structure for the day, but also a degree of spontaneity, no schedule on the fridge. And then you have the free person, no structure, no purpose, just free willy-nilly, wakes up whenever you want to, doesn’t really have a plan, more sporadic. If someone gives them a call, and is like, “Hey, let’s go do this.” And they’re like, “Yeah. Why not?” Because they have no structure, no purpose. They’re free, of course. It’s always good to have a friend like that if you want someone to join you doing something. It’s great to have a friend who’s free and has no structure and has no purpose in life because they’re always willing to do anything.

The Structured

Structured is where most of your overachievers are. Your overachievers are more in the structured environment. Why do I say that? They have some spontaneity. They write their goals out. They accomplish their goals. They have a schedule that everything’s very structured, but it’s not rigid like the military, like military discipline. So that’s why it’s structured, but they’re just the overachiever. They’re above average. Remember, all you need to be to be an overachiever is be 1% better than the average and you’re over average. That means you’re an overachiever. But if you want to be in the top 1%, then you have to have a strict military every second of your day planned.

Strict Military

I’m not there yet either. It is extremely difficult, this means every second of your day, you’re doing something productive. Now, if you follow me and you dive into my life, you might be like, “He has a strict military mindset. He’s always structured or has a very strict structure.” But in my mind, I can recall every minute of the day where I was not being efficient.

Every day I go over the list and I’m like, “Okay, could have been more efficient here, could have been more efficient there.” That’s the military every second of the day is planned. It’s from structured into strict, because I’m not all the way strict. I still have times where I’m unfocused. But at nighttime, at the end of the day, I review the times and see if I can become more efficient.

Chunking doing the big picture

Separating the day into chunks. First thing in the morning, you have the most energy. So do the things that require the most amount of energy. So today … Oh, my neck is killing me. However, today, creating these chapters requires the most amount of energy. So I had to start the day off early. We talked about this in earlier chapters. Your energy level depletes throughout the day. So if you want to be most optimal, you have to do the hardest thing first thing in the morning, and then easier and easier and easier. That’s why by the end of the day, I’m more into strategy sessions. It’s complex. It’s a lot of mind work, but it’s fun. It’s just strategizing. It’s not stressful. It’s not difficult. It’s just brainstorming.

Then administrative work. After you get all your errands done, do administrative work, check email, do the things that you need to do like that. Something a little less strenuous than the first. Then in the afternoon, do your daily rundown, check the news, the markets, do your personal phone calls, do the dishes, whatever you didn’t do. If you have to go grocery shopping, do that. If you have to go pay the bills, do that. If you’ve got to go talk to the accountant, do that, during administrative work. That starts when the business day starts around eight. Then in the afternoon, around like one or two, then come around the house, check the news, check your emails, make sure everything’s good, do the last little bit of personal phone calls, business phone calls. Then in the evening, develop your new ideas, learn new things, and play a strategy game.

During this period of time at the moment, I can’t play because I’m consumed with analyzing and strategizing to complete a lot of projects. However, the game that I would recommend everyone to play is the game called Civilizations. The only reason I say this is because you have to manage so many things at once. You have so many variables.

How I can manage things in life and I can manage a lot of things comes from playing that game. If you forget one thing, then it can destroy your entire civilization. So that game is the best game to show you that every action that you do has a consequence, whether it’s negative or it’s a positive, it’s still a consequence, and then prepare for the next day and then go to sleep.

Here’s a little hint that I do, that I don’t think very many people do this. Actually I’m positive, a majority of the people don’t do this. And this is why I can accomplish way more than the majority of people. I sleep when I have accomplished my goals for the day or when I can tell that my brain is slowing down and not processing information as fast as it was when it’s fresh. I don’t stay awake longer than I need to be. When it’s time to go to sleep, and my brain is done for the day, I’ve planned everything, I’ve accomplished all my list for the day. Not every day do I accomplish my list because if I accomplish my list every single day, then I’m not challenging myself.

So a good amount of days, I don’t accomplish the list. On those days I work until my brain is like “Battery dying, battery dying. Abort.” At that point in time, it’s bad. I need to recharge, no matter what. I don’t waste my time watching TV or wasting time before I go to sleep. Before people go to sleep is probably the most wasteful time that every human has. I’ve learned this. And so I figured I don’t understand once you’re done with your mission, what else is there to do for the day? Nothing. So I’m ready to start tomorrow so I go to sleep.

Chores Versus Progress 

Have a broad idea every day what your chores are and what your progress is for that day. You need about a ratio of one to three. For every unit of time spent on chores, you need three units of time on progress. So your chores would be your maintenance. If you don’t have a little maintenance daily, your stuff will deteriorate. Something small that you can maintain with a little amount of time will deter a huge problem. Your chores are to keep up the maintenance, wash the dishes, take a shower, file your nails, clean your computer, organize your files, do stuff like that. If you have too much maintenance, then you’ll never progress and burn out.

The problem is that if all you’re doing is cleaning and maintaining everything, you’re never going to move forward. I’ll use this as a perfect example. I have close to 500 videos that need to be uploaded to YouTube and processed onto the website. That is a lot of maintenance. It will take me forever to edit the videos and edit the papers numerous amounts of time. But if all I did was that, I would never be able to create a video. So what I’m doing is progressing every day. Every day I have to progress. Do a little everyday. I’m still organizing, taking a little bit of time out, one third of my time to organize my videos and put them in the right slots, so it’s organized. So I’m just not doing the complete maintenance, I’m not doing a system update, but I am consistently organizing, then I know that all I need to do is about a three day to four day system update and sit there and just do straight maintenance and I’ll catch myself all the way up, and then I can start progressing again. Does that make sense?

Analyze your day. We talked about this just a second ago, how at the end of the day I analyze what I’ve done. I sit down, I discuss with myself on where I was efficient, where I wasn’t efficient. So you have to analyze your day. What things do you consider chores and what do you consider progress? What is your maintenance? What is your progression? Without knowing the difference you might confuse the two. Have you ever seen a dog chasing its tail? If you have not defined the difference between your progression and your maintenance, then you will be the dog that’s running around in circles, trying to chase his tail. You won’t know because you’ll think that you’re doing a lot, but at the end of the day, you’re actually not getting anything done. So you need to be very careful, and that’s when analyzing your day comes in. I mean, it’s almost one of the most important things that you can do, analyze your day every day, because if you do not analyze…

Let’s say you analyze once a month, then you have one entire month of doing something that might not be working, that might not be progressing you at all. So that’s a whole entire wasted month. But if you had analyzed once a week, then you would have caught that inefficiency the first week “I’m doing this a lot, but it’s not progressing me any further”, then you will be able to stop it immediately. But imagine if you did that every day, then every day you can test something, you can see how it feels, you can try out a new pair of shoes, test drive the car, do whatever it is that you need to do. And then if you don’t like it, you can switch it fast.

There are a million things that you can do to become more efficient. So don’t waste your time on something that’s not helping you become more efficient. Don’t waste your time with busy work, running around in a circle. Stay forward, stay progressive.

The Most Important Part Of Your Daily Routine, Becoming A Learning Machine 

Sleep is a very important part of the day. Einstein proclaimed he needed 10 hours a night. Arnold Schwarzenegger swears by four to six hours. For me, it varies. When I took these notes, my alarm went off at 2:27. I was not creating enough time in the day for myself. So now my alarm goes off at 1:45 in the morning. And by 2:30 in the morning, I am already awake. I’ve already been moving around.

Summers I sleep less because there’s more day. I mean, in the wintertime, it’s dark at five. So it’s easy to go to bed at seven o’clock at nighttime, because it’s dark outside. There’s nothing else to do. But at summertime it doesn’t get dark until nine o’clock. So it expands my day. So I’m able to accomplish more. In winters, I’m more like a bear and my environment shrinks. I sleep more because it’s dark. I get tired when it gets dark outside. So I tend to go to bed. But I also wake up a lot earlier in the winter as well. And it’s cold, so I’m usually trying to warm up and work. The more active you are, the warmer that you are or the more your blood’s warming up. So you have to look out for yourself. But again, this goes with analyzing every single day. How do you know you need eight hours? Have you tried 10 hours? Have you tried six hours? Have you tried four hours? Or are you just saying you need eight hours because you’re lazy and that sounds like a good number? I understand for me, it varies on how many hours I need. Like I said, the summer and the winter, it varies. But then it also depends on the work that I’m doing. If I’m doing a lot of mental work, where I do a lot of calculations and things, I might need a little bit more sleep, or I might nap throughout the day because my brain’s tired. But if I’m doing a lot of outdoor work, maybe I need to sleep a little less, depending on the temperature outside. If it’s really, really hot, I might need to sleep a little bit more.

You see how there’s so many variables that come with sleep and your daily routine. So you have to test it, and you have to go over it every single night and analyze, strategize. That’s the way to survive. You have to analyze and strategize every single night on which is best for you, which is most optimal for you.

Needing To Find Sleep Equilibrium 

How much sleep do you need to maintain maximum efficiency the next day? You need to find, depending on the assignment, the next day, you need different amounts of sleep. And I just went over that, but we’ll go over just a little bit more.

You need to test yourself because you will find out that even with what you’re eating … So if you have a large day ahead of you tomorrow, figure out maybe if you eat some meat and you sleep four hours, then tomorrow you’re more optimal. Well, maybe if you eat pasta and sleep eight hours you’re most optimal. I’m not quite sure. But you need to figure that out and then follow accordingly, do what you’re supposed to do. And then here’s another one. This is part of the reason I talked about. Sometimes I take a nap, but part of the reason why I can wake up at one o’clock in the morning, 1:45, is my first alarm, but I don’t always wake up at 1:45. I’m usually awake before then.

Have you ever considered taking a nap? Okay, hypothetically speaking, you need your eight hours. Well, who said you have to sleep eight consecutive hours? Nobody. No one told you, you had to sleep eight consecutive hours. The day is 24 hours. You can break it up. Have you ever considered a power nap? Test what amount of time works best for you and what time of the day. I know for myself, if I power nap longer than an hour, I am counterproductive. Sometimes I might only need 15 minutes. Anything over an hour, I get into that deep sleep and I’m going to need two to three hours because I’m groggy and I can’t get myself up. 45 minutes, I’m good. 59 minutes and 59 seconds, I’m good. It hits that hour, it’s over. I’m done. I’m done.

Now again. Now I wake up a little bit earlier. So 6:30, 7:00 is also, like depending on what time and depending on your schedule, if you’re trying to have two days in one, then if you wake up at 1:45, around 6:30, 7:00-ish is a good time to have your nap if you’ve done your exercise. But it all really depends. Everything is always evolving. So the more that you do this, the more that you practice, the more that you’re evolving, then you’re going to find out that if you do take on the vice of a power nap, your power nap, depending on what you’re doing, again, your power nap might be from eight o’clock at night until midnight. That could be a power nap. Just be creative and don’t think so traditional that I need eight hours consecutive and that’s it. And I will never change anything. Just be creative and be open to different things. Whatever can optimize yourself better, go for that.

The learning machine mentality, the reason people cannot hold on to a routine is the inability to focus and see the bigger picture. Your main focus every day should be to add fire to the learning machine, add fuel to the fire. The more you learn, the faster and more efficient you become. If a chore or progressive act takes two hours to accomplish, think of a way to be more efficient and accomplish that same chore or progressive act in an hour and a half, then try to figure out how to do it in an hour. Try to always shed time and be more efficient.

Once you can break that two hours to an hour and a half, I guarantee you can analyze at the end of the day, again, remember to analyze at the end of the day, and look at the times that you were not optimized. Look at the times where you were slowing down. Look at the times that you were on the phone longer than you should have been. Look at the time that you were on Facebook scrolling at worthless stuff. Look at a time that you were doing things that you were not supposed to be doing during those two hours, and then shed accordingly.

Make sure every night to go to bed a little smarter and faster than the night before. We’ve talked about this numerous times. Always try to make yourself 1% better than the day before. Now, 1% is a lot, but it can be 0.01% better. As long as you’re a percentage better tomorrow than you were today, that’s the main goal. That’s the learning machine mentality.

What is the opposite of being a learning machine? We talk all about what is the learning machine, but what is the opposite? So you know if you have any of these, you need to stop because you’re being counterproductive towards the learning machine. Stubbornness. When you’re stubborn about something, you’re closing yourself off to being able to learn. Being stubborn is not something to be proud of. Being closed off, having convictions we know nothing about, never studied or tested. It goes with that eight hours of sleep. How do you know that you need eight hours of sleep? And you have a conviction about needing eight hours of sleep, even though you’ve never tested anything else. 

Defaults To The Word No

So if you always say no to everything, you will miss out on millions of great opportunities. Even if it is with somebody that you cannot stand, and in your mind, you’re like, “No, I cannot go with this person. I can’t stand this person,” try saying yes. And then also tell yourself, tell your mind you’re going to have a good time and say no to the negative attitude and say yes to the positive attitude. Say yes to everything for a year and notice the difference. But as long as it’s legal, it must be in a financial budget and not too time consuming. And you’ll see how much different and how much joy you’re bringing into your life.

No Is A Negative Thing. Yes Is A Positive Thing

Now, like I said, as long as it’s not financially bearing on you, as long as it’s legal, as long as it’s moral, then do it and try it. What’s the worst that can happen? You’d be miserable? What if you don’t? You’re already miserable. So what does it matter? Life is a personalized plan. Everything in life needs to be tested to know what is optimal for you, just like with sleeping. We’ve talked about this four or five times now. If it’s good for you, it will work fast.

Like in trading, how do I know when I have a good trade? When it’s immediately making me money, immediately making me money. In order for you to understand this, you have to take early cues so that you don’t waste your time. Because if you’re not taking the early cues that something’s not working, this is another reason why you analyze every single night. Because if you don’t analyze every night, then you’re not going to be aware of the early cues of something that’s not working or the early cues that a relationship isn’t as optimal as it’s supposed to be, or as beneficial as it’s supposed to be.

Experiment until you find out what you’re good at. The only way to truly find out what your value can be is to experiment and test everything. Test everything. You have no idea what you’re good at until you try it. Now with that, keep your mind on being a learning machine. Don’t be stubborn and try new things. And most importantly, analyze your day every single night.

Table Of Contents

1. Belt & Suspenders
2. 10 Dark Years
3. The Profit Motive
4. Forgetting Who’s In The Room
5. Mastering Your Daily Routine
6. Balanced Life
7. Simple Not Easy
8. Building Military Mental Discipline
9. Studying The Minds And Habits Of Others
10. Learning 9x Faster

For this chapter, we’ll be discussing forgetting who’s in the room. This is a fun one. There’s three different parts to this. Everyone has been burned at least once by following someone else’s advice. Number two, what you think might change what you do, but what you do changes the way you think. And number three, there is a time to talk and a time to listen. Make sure you know what time it is.

Everyone Has Been Burned At Least Once By Following Someone Else’s Advice. 

Most of the time the people giving us bad advice did not know any better. People are far less evil than we imagined. Now, it’s the same as when you lose your wallet and there’s people in the room or in the house with you. The very first thing that comes to your mind is somebody else took it. It’s almost human nature, our first reaction is to think the worst. Someone did something maliciously. And more times than not, they don’t. As disappointing as that could be, most of the time, they’re not out maliciously trying to get you. It’s just, they personally didn’t know any better.

So if someone gave you a stock tip and they were gung-ho about it, and they truly believed in this tip and you lose all your money, I doubt that they purposely wanted you to lose all your money. There are people out there that are shysters and sneaksters that are out there trying to get you for everything. But for the most part, people are not evil, trying to get you. What happens after we get burnt though, is our brain adapts and becomes less open to other people’s suggestions. So if you’ve lost on the stock market, and the reason we use the stock market, you’ve listened to a couple of gurus and you’ve lost a lot of money. So what happens is you become less receptive to other people’s suggestions. Now it’s the same as the first time you touched a burning stove and you know, you learn not to touch the burning stove. That’s if you don’t want to use the stock market, we’ll use the stove. But over and over, you get burned. Now that’s good, but also it’s not the greatest.

When you are no longer open to other people’s suggestions, you might not learn that next step. So remember in previous chapters we said it’s okay to make errors. They just don’t have to be your own. So always remember who’s in the room and who’s telling you this advice.

What You Think Might Change What You Do, But What You Do Changes The Way You Think. 

Now, gurus make money by telling their secrets, because they know a lot of people will buy the secret, but only a small percentage actually follow the secret. Another reason why I use the stock market. Now, if you pay attention to everyone, everyone has stock tips. Even that friend that gave you that one stock tip and they come back a week later and like, “Oh man, I profited a whole bunch.”

And you’re like, “Man, I lost everything.” So, in your mind, you’re like, “Man, that’s evil.” But they probably weren’t evil. They just were a guru and knew exactly what they were doing and knew that you probably wouldn’t follow their advice to the T. They told you to do step one through 10, but you heard step one and you ran with it. Now, let’s think of this. We talked about this in the first chapter. Always bring a library. Warren Buffet and Bill Gates are avid readers. The secrets to wealth. Just remember if you’ve read other of my books, if you’ve heard different stories about the influence that the Biltmore house library had on me when I was a young kid. The secrets of wealth are in the books. The average American reads one book a year. The average ignored the secret, but complained that they’re not wealthy. So my question is this, most of us aspire to be wealthy. Buy the Lamborghini and Ferrari, which is nice. And most wealthy people have that, but the uber wealthy have one other thing in common. Can you guess what it is?

Oh, don’t worry. We just talked about it, but still you probably have no idea what I’m talking about. It’s a library. If you want to be uber wealthy, then stop looking at the Ferrari or the Lamborghini and start looking at the library. Because what you think might change what you do, but what you do does change what you think. So if you build that library, just in the process of building it, it’s going to change the way that you think. So at first you were gung-ho. Yeah, the symbol of success is the Ferrari or the Lamborghini, or the mansion. But if you change the way you think, and change the way you think, as in real wealth has libraries, then you change what you do. And you start working to build a library. Then that’s going to change what you think even more. And it’s going to show you ways to become uber wealthy, like the Warren buffet or the Bill Gates.

There’s A Time To Talk And There’s A Time To Listen. Make Sure You Know What Time It Is. 

If we remember in step one, we’ve been burnt in our lives. And our minds have evolved a little to not listen to others advice when we enter a room with our idols. So, we’re walking into a room with, we use the stock market, Ray Dalio, and let’s say John Carter, and Tim Sykes, throw in a couple more hedge fund people in there. You were just interviewed on CNBC. And so you’re living this big high, and you walk in a room. Now you walk the room with your idols. And you’re overtaken with excitement. And you just start talking and talking and talking until all the people that your entire life you’ve been waiting to talk to, they tell you they have to leave. You’ve literally taken as much time as you possibly could.

They were very polite, you got your selfies, you shook their hands. You got what you wanted. But what was the problem? You forgot who was in the room. All the best people to teach you were in the room with you. But instead you were too busy telling everybody else about you. Instead of listening to people who’ve already been on CNBC a hundred times, who’ve already made your money a million times over. But instead of you being quiet and paying attention to who’s in the room with you, you were busy talking opposed to listening. Make sure you know what time it is. Is it time to talk or is it time to listen? And with that, you have to realize who’s in the room with you. And take every opportunity to learn what is presented to you.

A very important thing about listening is to analyze the conversation and see if it’s progressive or regressive. See what’s being talked about. Now, if it’s a progressive conversation, then listen and pay attention. If it’s a regressive conversation, then you need to leave immediately. What happens in this situation, and people don’t really notice this, and this is why forgetting who’s in the room goes both ways. So you can lose an amazing opportunity with your idols in the room, if you’re too busy talking. But what happens if you’re not talking and you’re in the room with what’s the opposite of your idol. You can put whatever adjective you would like to put there. However, when you are with the opposite of your idols, and we’re talking about the complete polar opposite, like idols are up on the top. We’re talking about the people that are all the way on the bottom. When you’re in the presence of them, what happens is if you’re not talking, then you’re probably listening. But that’s almost just as detrimental as when you’re doing all the talking around your idols.

Why? Everything begins with a thought. So if one of these people from the bottom think of something and they spit an idea and your mind starts to process that thought, that idea into thinking, it’s a terrible idea. Terrible, because of where you got it from, you got it from the bottom. You didn’t get it from the right people. If you had got that idea, maybe that same idea from the people from up top, then you can ask them questions to articulate that idea better, to formulate a better plan. But what happens if you take the idea from the bottom, it could be the exact same idea. But if you start asking the people from the bottom, then you’re going to be poisoning your brain with other people’s thoughts that don’t know how to get to the top. Does that make sense?

So it could be the exact same idea, but it depends on where you get the idea from. Because if you formulate the idea around a whole bunch of people that have never been able to be successful, then that formulation of the idea has a higher probability of what success or failure? Failure. But if you would have that same idea and you’re around the right people, pay attention to who’s in the room. If you’re in the room with the right people, when you have this idea, when you’re formulating this idea, the probability of success is much higher because you’re in the room with the right people. So if you’re struggling in whatever it is that you’re doing, take a minute to think, and look, who’s in your room.

Are you trying to formulate an idea with people that will never help you? Are you in the wrong room? Because if that’s the case, then you know the problem. Just move rooms and find the people that are at the top. That when you formulate your idea, it has a higher probability of success. And when I say idea, it could be lifestyle, whatever you want it to be. But make sure you’re in the room with the correct people. And when you’re in the room, make sure you act accordingly. If you’re in the room with people that can help you then be quiet. Don’t talk, be a sponge. If you’re in a room with people that can’t help you be quiet and leave because it won’t help you. So rarely ever do you need to talk most of the time, you should listen. You learn more when your mouth is quiet.

All right. Let’s see what our next chapter is. That was a quick one, but I liked that one. Mastering your daily routine. See you in just a second.

Table Of Contents

1. Belt & Suspenders
2. 10 Dark Years
3. The Profit Motive
4. Forgetting Who’s In The Room
5. Mastering Your Daily Routine
6. Balanced Life
7. Simple Not Easy
8. Building Military Mental Discipline
9. Studying The Minds And Habits Of Others
10. Learning 9x Faster

This chapter, we’re going to discuss the profit motive. We’ve got six different sub-topics to talk about. The first one is, we are surrounded by mixed messages, but what are your true options for capturing value? Two, capturing value. Three, the three ways of learning. Four, no matter the approach to capturing your value, the fundamentals don’t change. Five, most people live in financial scarcity because they lack the correct vehicle to get paid and capture the value they desire. Six, rules to value.

We’re Surrounded By Mixed Messages, But What Are Your True Options For Capturing Value?

In today’s world, we live in a specialized world in that we have the doctor, we have a fireman, your home builder. You wouldn’t call your doctor to build your house. And you would not call your contractor if your house was on fire. You’d call the fire person. You call them after to come fix it, but you wouldn’t call them during. So, when you’re thinking about capturing your true value, you have to think of what can you specialize in? What are you good at? What can you capture the greatest amount of value? Now, it doesn’t always have to be what you like. It has to be what you can do in scale. So, you might not necessarily like to write, but if you’re really good at writing, then you need to specialize in writing. You can do what you want to do later. But first, figure out what you can do to capture your true value, the most amount of value that you can get.

Capturing Value

We learned about specialization. So you have to learn how to specialize in what you can do on scale. Don’t try to specialize in something that you’re kind of fast at, that you can kind of do naturally. Scale what you can do naturally. Get good at that. And then later, you can work on different skills. But master what you’re already good at.

So capturing value, you can be the greatest artist in the world, but if no one sees your art, then you have no value. You need to have a system in place to begin capturing your value. All successful people have one major thing in common. They have a vehicle to capture the value they create. The quality of your life is equal to the value you can capture. If you can’t capture any value, then don’t expect a high quality life. It’s almost to say you are being selfish if you do not capture the value in your life. 

Now let’s talk about three different types of people, whether they capture their value, whether they do not capture the value. First, a homeless person. Second, the average person. And third, the exceptional person.

Now, it’s almost obvious. The homeless person is not capturing the value that they could provide in life. So they have a poor quality of life. In terms, they’re being selfish because they’re denying the world their value. Each of us has value. It all depends on whether you capture it or not. And you radiate it out to the world. The average person, capturing glimpses of their value. They’re having the attaboy every now and again. They have an average quality of life. Their fear causes them to be selfish, not allowing their attaboys to compound, to being exceptional in whatever it is that they’re doing, and capturing the most amount of value that they can provide to the world. Now, the exceptional person is the person that’s radiating all their value to the world. They have no fear. Discouragement just doesn’t exist in their world. They’re going to do it regardless. So they do it regardless. They capture all the value of their life. They have the highest quality of life. And they’re selfless because they’re giving all that they possibly can to the world. Does that make sense?

Look at Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was an exceptional person. Why? He gave every thing that he could to the world. Let’s look at Tupac Shakur. Died at 25, but it took 10 years after he died for all of his music to come out. Why is he an exceptional person? Because he produced so much that his value radiated to the world. Let’s go to Martin Luther King. Same concept. He created so much value and he radiated it. It’s not about being the greatest artist and then never letting anyone know. they went through a lot. This is before social media. So they struggled and they pushed. But they were so exceptional at what they did. They radiated their value to the world. They were selfless in giving themselves to the world. They were so selfless. They gave their lives. But today, years after they’re gone, we still talk about them. Malcolm X would be another one. Now he radiated so much value that, even at the time, the Nation of Islam, and if we look years later, he was so valuable, and he was such an exceptional person, that out of the Nation of Islam and Malcolm X, we remember Malcolm X. I can’t even remember the Nation of Islam’s leader right now. Why? He might have done exceptional things, but he, himself, was just an average person. He didn’t give his value like Malcolm X did. The first rule to this is don’t lose value. No matter what you do, don’t lose your value. Second rule, always remember the first rule. All right, now we’ve talked about value. Well, now you can be like, well, how do you get to that part?

There’s Three Ways Of Learning

Most people get stuck on the second, understanding. But make sure you make things instinctual. So work on being on instinct. So, after you know what value you have, and then you have to learn how to capture your value, how to radiate your value. You have to learn and then be constantly learning all the time. Always, always, always. And that’s how you conquer rule number one, which is what? Do you remember what rule number one was? Don’t lose value.

So, hearing. Acknowledging a new idea or term. The second one is understanding it. Studying the new term or idea until you can teach it to another person. And then making it instinctual where it becomes second nature, no longer have to think. It is ingrained in your frame of mind. Now, let’s think of a baby. And I don’t know why this is the first thing that popped in my mind. Hearing and seeing. Potty training. When I was young, I was potty trained extremely fast. I don’t know why, but I was. I understood that idea so well that when I was at the daycare, I was teaching the other kids how to become potty trained, and how to get off the diaper. Then making it instinctual is, it became so second nature that even to this day, I know how to go to the bathroom.

I mean, that’s a stupid example, but it’s the same thing. And it’s so easy to understand. First it’s hearing. Acknowledging a new idea, a new term like, what? I don’t have to go to the bathroom on myself. Okay. Understanding it. Studying how do I get this diaper off of me? How do I go to the bathroom? And then knowing it so well that even in goo goo ga ga language, you can teach other babies, in goo goo ga ga, how to live a brand new life without the diaper. Then making it instinctual to where no longer when you have to go, you even think of going on yourself. It’s instinctual that the second you got to go, you’re going to the bathroom. Now, you can take that with finances. That was very simple. And I’m pretty sure each and every one of you will be like, “Erik, that is just stupid. That is so simple for you to understand.”

Accomplishing goals, the three ways of learning. Hearing it, there’s a new way of learning. It’s the six strategies to conquer any challenge in life. Understanding it, studying those six ways and studying them so well that being able to teach a class on it. I have a class and a book. And making it instinctual. All of these goals of what I have to do today are on my board. My to-do board. Instinctual. I have studied how to accomplish goals and be the most efficient that I can be that I’m able to accomplish things that other people would only think impossible.

And the only way I’ve been able to do that is because, first, I learned a new way and learned a new term, new idea. The second one, I studied it so much. And I implemented it so well into my life that I was able to teach it. And then after I taught it, it became instinctual to where I’m able to accomplish things that no one else would even think possible. But I can do it, no problem. Because I have understood how to break down problems to the most minute portions, and accomplish itty-bitty tasks at a rapid pace, like a computer. Three ways of learning. First, you grasp the new concept. Then you have to study that concept so much that you can teach it in your sleep. And then after you’ve learned it that well, then it becomes instinctual.

No Matter The Approach To Capturing Your Value, The Fundamentals Do Not Change

Mother Teresa vowed to be impoverished her entire life, but still understood how to capture her value. Over time, she developed the skills to promote her agenda in a non-manipulative way. Now let’s talk about that. No matter the approach to capturing your value, the fundamentals don’t change. Now, using Mother Teresa, because she was a very valuable person. We Still talk about her today. I think she might’ve even made it to Saint-hood. Very valuable person, with no money. She was able to get people to donate and help with her cause by being a leader and showing it, and giving people that had no voice a voice, and being a mother. Mother Theresa, hence the word.

No matter your religious beliefs, each says to have. (So it doesn’t matter if you’re Christian, it doesn’t matter if you’re Buddhist, it doesn’t matter if you’re Muslim, it doesn’t matter if you’re Baha’i. It doesn’t matter if you’re Rasta.) Every one of them has the same basic fundamentals, which is faith, trust, and action. Have faith in something that you do not see. Trust that if you do the right thing, the right thing will happen. If you put the right in, the right will come back out. And trust that if you put the right action in, the right action will come out. So the fundamentals of that do not change.

Fundamentally, if you are lazy, then you’re going to have a lazy life. Fundamentally. If you get up every day and try to accomplish new goals, then you’re going to have a better life. And what is that? Faith. Having faith that if you work hard and you do the necessary things, working hard doesn’t necessarily get you what you need to do, because working hard and also studying. Remember the three ways of learning. So you have to consistently capture your value, and consistently learn the three ways of learning so you see another way to capture value, a new way of doing things. You’ve got to study it and make it instinctual. Same thing with this. You gotta have faith in something that you don’t see. Trust it. Trust it enough that you’re going to put action behind it and go for it.

Most people live in financial scarcity because they lack the correct vehicle to get paid and capture the value they desire

Remember, we live in a specialized world. You can’t do everything. You need units of exchange, could be money, time, experience, labor. You have to have value. In order to obtain any units of exchange, you have to bring value. You have to have the ability to persuade your customers to take money from their bank and add it to your bank. Capturing value. So with that, we live in a specialized world. So again, you can’t capture all the value in the world. You can only capture what you’re good at. You can capture your value. What is your value? What can you offer to the world? Not what the world can give you, what can you offer to the world? The more that you offer, the more value you create. The more value you create, the more money you will receive. Or if you’re not looking for money, like Mother Teresa, the more value you create, the more help you are able to provide. So you need more units of exchange.

If you do not have very much money to assist you on capturing your value, well then, your value might be time, trading your time for units of capital. But during that, you better increase your value. So, if you want to exchange your time for units of money, then you need to constantly increase your value so that your time becomes more valuable, and you become more valuable. If you want to do it through experience, well, that’s through working more and more in something and becoming more specialized in whatever it is that you do. Now, you have to have value. I’m not going to hire anyone that doesn’t have value.

And I’ve tried to go over this. I made a couple of videos. And I showed the dollar example where I showed a dollar in whole. And yes, it has value. It’s worth a dollar. But if you rip that dollar up, it’s no longer valuable. So in order for you to capture your value, you have to remember that example, if you do not capture and do not withhold your value, what is rule number one? It’s don’t lose value. So don’t rip yourself up, like I ripped up a dollar in a different video, and tried to explain how, in the beginning, it had value. In the end, it had no value.

So be very careful with yourself and don’t lose value. But more importantly, always figure out how to increase your value. And you have to have the ability to persuade people because you have to understand, it’s almost like a zero sum game. It’s not as vicious as the stock market zero sum game, but one person is taking something out of their pocket to give it into yours. So whatever value you’re giving, or whatever it is that you are doing, keep that in mind that you have to provide something that creates enough value for other people to take money from their coffers and put it into yours.

The rules to value

It has to be true value. We all think we can sing in the shower, but can you actually win a Grammy? Now, let me think about that one for just a second. We’ve been talking about it this entire chapter, about you have to find what you’re good at. What can you give to the world? You have to be blatantly honest with yourself. You have to be blatantly honest, because if you’re not honest with yourself, you’re going to go down the wrong hole and you’re going to be trying to provide value to the world, but you’re just not able to, because nobody wants the value that you’re trying to give. It’s just not valuable. It’s just not valuable.

No matter how many pennies I collect, at the end of the day, it’s still just a penny. If you have not worked on increasing your value from a penny to a nickel, from a nickel to a dime, from a dime to a quarter, to a quarter to a dollar, then you can’t get frustrated if all you’re worth is that penny. But do not think, as being a penny, that you are bringing the truest value. You have to be really good. You got to be a dollar at whatever you do. The world will consistently test you. Just because you were valuable yesterday does not mean you carry the same value today. So that goes with, what is rule number one? Do not lose value. The most important thing of all this is, do not lose value, and the three ways of learning.

So you have to consistently search out ways to increase your personal value and then step in the three ways of learning. Learn a new idea, learn a new concept, get so good at it that you can teach it, and then make it instinctual, rare and in demand. Now this is the most important part about value. These are the key rules of value. Rare and in demand. The value you bring has to be in demand, but also has to be rare. Flipping burgers is very high in demand, but it’s not very rare. So it doesn’t expect lots of money. Does that make sense?

So just because something that you’re doing is in high demand doesn’t mean that it’s creating very much value. And I do not want to downgrade anyone when I say this. Like the nursing industry, it is in high demand, but you’re only going to make so much. It’s not rare. It’s just in high demand. Flipping burgers is the easiest one because it’s easy to look down on people that flip burgers. But even a lawyer, they’re in high demand, but they’re also not very rare. So they’re maxed out at what they’re at. Look at a doctor, the more specialized you become, the rarer you become, and the more you’re worth. But again, you’re only tapped out a certain amount.

Now let’s look at Michael Jordan. He was very rare in his talents. And there was also a huge demand to watch him. So how much value did he create? There was such a huge demand for his greatness that he created a shoe. And to this day, that shoe, 20 years after he ever touched a basketball professionally, still sells. So Michael Jordan was able to create value. He was able to know what he was good at and capture the most amount of value that he was able to. Does that make sense? So he was rare in his talents and his ability. His talents were so rare that they were extremely in demand. And at the time, he demanded the highest paid contract. Now that’s like pennies on the dollar. But then, it was a huge amount of money. Rare and in demand. All right. Onto the next chapter.

Table Of Contents

1. Belt & Suspenders
2. 10 Dark Years
3. The Profit Motive
4. Forgetting Who’s In The Room
5. Mastering Your Daily Routine
6. Balanced Life
7. Simple Not Easy
8. Building Military Mental Discipline
9. Studying The Minds And Habits Of Others
10. Learning 9x Faster

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.

Table Of Contents

1. Belt & Suspenders
2. 10 Dark Years
3. The Profit Motive
4. Forgetting Who’s In The Room
5. Mastering Your Daily Routine
6. Balanced Life
7. Simple Not Easy
8. Building Military Mental Discipline
9. Studying The Minds And Habits Of Others
10. Learning 9x Faster

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.

Table Of Contents

1. Belt & Suspenders
2. 10 Dark Years
3. The Profit Motive
4. Forgetting Who’s In The Room
5. Mastering Your Daily Routine
6. Balanced Life
7. Simple Not Easy
8. Building Military Mental Discipline
9. Studying The Minds And Habits Of Others
10. Learning 9x Faster