Maximizing Returns: The Power of Real Leverage In Your Life

Ed Mylett
So, hey guys, are you frustrated with where you're at right now? Maybe stunted in your progress? Well, if you are, I want to recommend a place for you to go called growthday. Growthday.com ed. It is the number one personal development app on the planet.

It's got all kinds of high performance techniques in there, courses, accountability, journaling, live speeches from some of the top influencers in the world, including me. It's an overall environment to change your life. Growthday.com ed this is the Eden mileage. This is a segment from Ed's interview with Alex Hormozi. One of the things you've been pretty good at doing though, is using leverage.

And leverage to most people typically means borrowing money from other people. But you define leverage freaking brilliantly. So talk a little bit about what real leverage is and the way you define it. So, leverage is the difference between the inputs and outputs in a system. It's the discrepancy between what you put in and what you get out.

Alex Hormozi
So if I have a lot of leverage, then it means if I put a little bit in, I get a lot out. If I have low leverage, I have to put a lot in to get a little bit out. If I'm working at a Froyo shop, I have to put a lot of time in to get a very little amount of money. So I have very low leverage. If I put a deal together and I make a couple phone calls and then that deal yields me $10 million from connecting parties and then maybe underwriting something, all of a sudden that's a lot of leverage.

So I put a very little bit amount of time in, I get a lot of money. The idea of using more leverage is looking at what my inputs and my outputs are and figuring out how I can create bigger and bigger discrepancies between those. Are there different types of leverage other than just money? Yes, which are. So anything that increases your output without per unit of effort is leverage.

And so that can happen in the physical space. So like a literal lever increases your leverage. If we take this podcast and you put it on YouTube, that was leverage because we put the same input in, but then we get more output. I have a cold calling system, and I'm able to now dial ten phone numbers per minute because I have a dialer that's doing outbound. I have more leverage per unit time if I take a form of media and then I transcribe it, and then I also make an audio version that is leveraged.

So all of those are different versions of just getting more out for what you put in. Hard question. So let's dig deep. I'm an entrepreneur, and I'm listening to this doesn't matter. I can even be self employed.

Ed Mylett
I sell life insurance. I'm a mortgage broker. I'm in real estate. I've got a cannabis business. I got six people working for me, and I now kind of get from listening to this dude and listening to Ed regularly.

Like, this idea of leverage is what successful and wealthy people do, right. They do it better than other people. This is a really big deal. Everybody listening to this right now, they do this better than you. They understand the concept of this better than you.

And to the extent that you can understand it, and most importantly, apply it, is where you make a shift. So it's a hard question because you've answered it, but I want to push you harder on this. If I have any type of business right now, and I've evaluated the concept that you've described here, how do I apply it? What do I look at in terms of buttons I could push to get more leverage? Yeah.

Alex Hormozi
So, naval rabbicant does a really good job of defining his four types of leverage. Now, within those, I described a lot of different leverage around one, which is media. Right. But you have leverage around labor, which is you buy other people's time. So that is the first version of leverage.

So, is there something that I'm currently doing that I can pay someone else to do to gain time back and then use the excess time I have to make up the difference? So if I can pay someone $10 an hour, and I know that I can make $50 an hour on the phone selling, then I can pay somebody to do any of my tasks for $10, and then I make up the time selling. Stay on that. Brilliant. We're gonna go to the other three.

Ed Mylett
Just stay on that. This is something I struggled with young. I don't know if you did. When I was young, I didn't have a lot of capital. I used to think, no, I'll just.

I will do these things because I can't afford the expenditure right now. Were you ever that way when you were young in business? Totally. I just held on 100% because I'm like, I had this scarce to the idea that this may be the $2,000 a month that keeps me in business, yet it was the very thing that kept me in the small business I. Had, I think, there.

Alex Hormozi
I mean, you got to work double time. I have. There's no real sexy answer that I have for that which is just like, you have to work the normal amount you would to make your money, and then you have to make enough and then you work again to make someone else's money. And that's in the beginning. So it's like, I'm making my job and I'm making someone else's job so that I can buy that time that I used to work to pay someone else to then make more money in that period of time.

Ed Mylett
Really good. And the big thing that I think a lot of guys, because on the flip side of the entrepreneur space, the influencer or whatever space, people are always talking about buying your time back, but that they don't talk about what you do with the time you bought back. So if you just buy your time back and don't do anything, you're going to make less money. I just want to be clear. But, um.

Alex Hormozi
Cause I had an entrepreneur who was talking, he's like, I bought all my time back. He's like, but I'm really not making it. I was like, you're not doing anything. Like, you still need to work. You just got to now work on higher leverage opportunities, more dollars per time.

So in that it, that input is my time, my output is my money. So it's a higher leverage thing in my time. What are the other three? So you got labor, which is the, which is the most operationally complex and heavy of the, of the types of leverage. The next one is capital.

If you can raise money, leverage other people, that's the one that the mortgage brokers that are more familiar with real estate guys, because if I don't have to put any money up and I can buy something and then I can sell it for more money, then I get to make the difference between those two things. And I used it on, basically someone else took the time to earn the money, and then they just gave me that time. If you think of money as a tradable unit of time that I got to borrow and then make the difference on something, the third one, and I think three and four kind of go hand in hand, but it's, you've got software, so code and then media. Uh, so code is just, you know, you write code and it, it takes you one time investment to get the thing to do something, and then every additional time. So the input was the time I took to build once.

And then every additional person who uses the software and gets a benefit from it, I get almost no incremental cost. And so that's leverage. And then with the media side, we, you know, said it earlier, if it takes the amount of time for us to make this one podcast, if one person listens to this or a million people listen to this, it's the same amount of effort. Yeah, I told you guys when I introduced them that this would be stuff you've not heard before. So.

Ed Mylett
And it is. There's another type of leverage, and I really related to this. I'm 20 years further down the road than you on some of these things, but I very much relate to some of the things you talk about. Obviously, you have this relationship with your dad. Maybe we'll go there.

But that you were, you know, just trying to prove him wrong all the time. But you said something in one of your quotes. You said, I found out later that I was constantly trying to prove a fictitious person wrong, meaning the type of leverage that I got on myself when I was young, I'm gonna prove them wrong. I'm gonna prove them wrong. It was like this.

I mean, I think the best way. To describe me as an early entrepreneur was a little bit angry. And I leveraged intensity. I leveraged anger. I actually leveraged fear of losing to this fictitious person, of them being right.

And by the way, some of that probably served me really, really well, but I don't know that it was healthy long term. So what about that, getting leverage on your self idea? Would you recommend someone operate out of that space and talk about your own journey on it? I would recommend you use the resources you have to create the life you want. And so if the cards that you have dealt right now are anger and fear and disappointment, then you can either wallow in those or you can turn something good out of it.

Alex Hormozi
And so, I mean, I love the saying, you can either let life beat the strength out of you, or you can let it beat it into you. And I think that you can use that. You could put pain, you could put disappointment, you could put fear. You could put whatever that life thing is. And so it's just a decision of whether these circumstances are going to serve me or I'm going to serve them.

And so I think that whatever your raw materials are, a lot of people lament what cards they're dealt, but you don't have control over those cards. You only have control of how you play the hand. And so I think everyone just needs to move past that and, you know, stop the pissing contest on who had a sadder upbringing. Yeah. I also think, though, that you have to be if you're making progress.

Ed Mylett
You know, one of the things that's made Jordan great or Brady great is changing the leverage they get on themselves. So it's not that Tom Brady still isn't playing football to prove the fact that he was a six round draft pick. Right. But this notion that that's what he gets up every single day, that's the chip on his shoulder anymore, is not true. He's now playing for greatness.

He's playing because it's his standard he's praying to. So, and I found with a lot of entrepreneurs, they don't ever change the leverage. And so when they get to where they have proved that fictitious person wrong or they have gotten to where they are no longer starving, they don't have any mechanism to drive themselves any further. Do you know what I'm saying? I do.

I think a lot of people are just oblivious to the fact that you've lost leverage. I'm not motivated anymore. I'm not inspired. It's because the old lever you pulled that worked at one stage. You need to now find Jordan used.

To say, listen, I play every day. But Jordan didn't take a bunch of games off. He'd say, cause there's a kid in the stands who, it's the one time he's ever gonna see me play is that night in Sacramento. And even though it's the Kings, I'm gonna play all out because that kid's gonna tell stories about seeing me play. That's different than his motivation his rookie year to prove he belonged in the league.

Right. Entrepreneurs don't find that new lever. You obviously have. So I've made some content on that specific thing that Michael Jordan said. So I super resonate on that.

Alex Hormozi
Like, that was my biggest of the whole series that I watched. That was, like, the point where I, like, had to pause and, like, chew on it. But it really made me appreciate, like, every podcast, every opportunity that we have to share something to really try and bring it rather than call it in. You know what I mean? But, yeah, for me, my leverage has changed.

I think I was really angry. Younger and more fearful than angry. Me too. Just really just the idea of the disappointment and him being right was just, like, unbearable. Him being dead.

Yeah. Yeah. Isn't it, do you think? I think that anger is typically the manifestation of fear. And so I.

Ed Mylett
When I say angry, I wasn't throwing chairs all the time or anything like that, but there was this almost, like, game day intensity type anger every day to the way I approached my life and my business. Let's talk about time today and how to bend it, how to manipulate it and how to use it to your advantage. Let me tell you one thing I've noticed about all the max out performers that I've interviewed on my program and that I've known throughout my life for the last 30 years, really. In business, sports, entertainment, politics, you name it, the elite performers look at time and use time completely differently than the people who perform at an average level. And so I want to talk to you about some tips and strategies today to begin to think about time and utilize time differently.

So let's start out. The first thing I want to tell you about people who win, who max out. They are in a much bigger hurry than the people who are average. And I'm not kidding you when I say this, they're in a bigger hurry to get to their destination, to get to their outcome. Their pace is faster, they walk faster, they talk faster, and their expectation when they're going to arrive at their destination is sooner.

This may seem like a very small, subtle thing, but I want you to evaluate how big of a hurry are you in? Because there's something to be said about how close you think you are to a goal and how fast you will run to get to the finish line. Let me give you an example of that. If you and I started out right now and we had a 26 miles marathon to run, right in our minds, it was 26 miles. We were going to race each other.

We would pace ourselves at a certain speed in order to maintain that speed because of the duration of the run. So if it was a marathon, we'd jog, wouldn't we? Pretty slowly. You certainly wouldn't sprint 26 miles. And so, because the destination, because the finish line is so far away, our pace or our hurry is limited based on how far away we think we are or when we'll arrive there.

But if you and I were to run a hundred yard dash, would the pace be the same? Because the finish line is so much closer, we'd run full speed from the minute we took off, wouldn't we? Because of the proximity of how close the finish line is. The people that win in life don't necessarily have more vision than you see. It's not a lack of vision always.

That means that you are going to lose. It's a lack of a type of vision, which is depth perception. You think you're further away from the outcome, and so you pace yourself like it, and you jog all the time throughout your life. The people that win may have a bigger vision, but they have accurate depth perception. They understand how close their goals are, how close their outcome is, and they're constantly in a sprint to get there throughout their day.

That means, consequently, they get started earlier and they finish later. They get up earlier throughout the day. They're in a bigger hurry to get to the places they need to be because the finish line in their mind is so much closer. I cannot emphasize this enough to you, is just the pace and the way time shrinks for elite performers compared to the average. I'm telling you, the average performer can say the same things, read the same books, have the same schedule, yet the person who is in a bigger hurry throughout the day ends up winning the day, winning the week, winning the month, winning the year, and winning the life.

And so, please evaluate your pace. You should be in a so much bigger hurry than everybody around you. You almost have people telling you to slow down a little bit. So that's number one, is you've got to be in a bigger hurry. The second thing is the way we begin our day.

I'm going to tell you right now, either you're going to control your time, or your time's going to control you. Either you are going to dictate the terms of your life, or you're going to be somebody who reacts and responds throughout their life. This device right here can both speed up time in your life or it can slow it down. It's not always a speed tool. So one of the tips that I've covered before, but not enough people implement that, I promise you, is a quality of max out performers that relates to their time, is they control it.

They do not react and respond. They dictate the terms of their life most of the time. And that means this. When you wake up in the morning, the greatest thing you could do for yourself is not touch or look at this device for 30 minutes to an hour after awakening, so that when you wake up, you take control of your time. You control the time.

You control the beginning of the day. You get clear. You meditate, you pray, you stretch. You think. You go through a gratitude exercise.

You control the first 30 minutes of your day. It sets a tone that I'm in charge of my time, not what enters this. If the first thing you do is grab this, this now dictates the term of your day. This controls my day. What hits this?

What email? What text? What call hits this? What Instagram post hit this. This controls me.

It controls my time. But if you can stay away from it for the first 30 minutes to an hour, you send a message to your brain, to yourself, that you control time, that this day is on your terms. And again, you stack up a day, a week, a month, a year, five years of a lifetime of you controlling and dictating the terms of your life for just the first 30 minutes to an hour every day. It will revolutionize your life. It'll be very difficult to do for the first 30 days, but after 30 days, you'll never have the desire to do it again.

You'll completely flip your life around. I'm not suggesting that all max out performers dictate every turn. Of course I respond. Of course I react throughout my day. It's not the syntax or context of my day.

I control my day. There are things throughout every day where we react and respond. There are conversations where someone says something to us. We clearly react and respond. But I'm the assessor of my life, not the assessee.

I assess my life. I dictate the terms of my life. I'm not being assessed, and I'm not being dictated to by other people all the time in my life. That's a huge separator in how people look at time. For max out performers, the third thing is this.

Why is a day only 24 hours? I mean, if the average people in the world, or the majority of people in the world, have a 24 hours day, why does that have to apply to you? Many years ago, I discovered, have you ever had a day where in four or 5 hours, you got more in the first four or 5 hours done or accomplished in your day than you had in a normal day? You ever have a four or five hour window, a six hour window? Like, they go, I've got so much done in these 6 hours.

It's more than I get done in an average day. And what I found out was Max out. Elite performers, people that perform at the highest level, they get more done in a six hour window then most people get done in a day. And here's why most people measure a day by 24 hours. So I started to think I was young in business.

I was in my early twenties. And one of the things that was held against me by other people is, you're too young to win. You don't have enough experience. You just haven't had enough days of experience of your life, enough days in business to win. I thought, well, how can I fix that?

And here's how you can fix that. And I've adopted this now for almost 30 years. I want the average people I compete against to think they have a 24 hours day. My days are six days long. So I want to teach you the concept of running many days.

My day, my first day is from 06:00 a.m. to noon every day. That's a full day for me. So I try to get done a full day's work from 06:00 a.m. to noon because I no longer have a 24 hours day in my life.

I have a six hour day. And so a day to me is that measure of time. It altered the complete direction of my life. It transformed who I am. So now, from 06:00 a.m.

to noon is a day that's my first day every single week. 06:00 a.m. to noon Monday morning. And what happens in that 06:00 a.m. to noon?

I see there's a mental thing we have. I have a whole day to get all these things done. And so we stack and dictate and schedule our day over that 24 hours window of time. You'd be surprised if you shrunk that eight to 6 hours. You can get the same things done in those 6 hours you used to get done in 24.

From noon to 06:00 p.m. is my second day. And in that second day, I fill that up with a full day's worth of fun, memories, meetings, phone calls, you name it. Meetings with my relationships in my life. In that six hour day, I pack out another day from noon to 06:00 p.m.

i fill that day up. And my third day is 06:00 p.m. to midnight. And in that 06:00 p.m. to midnight, same thing.

My relationships, my meetings, my phone calls, my emails. The work I do is a third day. And so what happened was when I was in my early twenties, I went from having three days in the same window of time when the average person had one, and I started to accomplish triple what the average person was accomplishing. Now, once again, you stack up three days in 24 hours, over a week, a month, a year. In just one year, I end up with over a thousand days.

And I'm competing against people only have 365. Think about the mind blowing difference could be in your life if you ran many days the rest of your life. I'm telling you right now that my days are 6 hours long. You'll be the amount of work you could get done, the amount of compounding that'll take place in your life. It's gonna blow your mind when you start looking at your schedule.

Day one is 06:00 a.m. to noon. Day two is noon to 06:00 p.m. day three is six. Six pm to midnight.

Your whole existence is going to change and it'll be kind of fun. In the beginning, you'll mess it up, but you stack up a week or two and you do that for a month. Imagine that in one month getting 90 days. Think about what would happen in your life if in a month you had 90 days and the rest of the world, the average in your life, imagine that for a second, the rest of the world only had 30 and you stacked that up over a year or three years. How different would your life be?

And I'm telling you, I'm an example of how different your life would be. I'm an example of what that productivity and compounding in your life can look like. More fun, more memories, more meetings, more encounters, more relationships, more experiences, more money, more achievement, more joy, more bliss. I'm creating opportunities constantly. So what I do is I shrink the finish line.

So there's sprints all the time. And so because I only have a six hour day, I'm going to hurry throughout that day. I'm not jogging, I'm not walking. I'm in a big hurry. And you're going to be amazed at the transformation of your life.

I may never give you a bigger gift than the concept of six hour days. I think I'm one of the only people you'll ever hear explain this to you, but I can tell you, I started to study these successful mentors and I'm like, my gosh, they get so much done before 09:00 in the morning. My gosh, by 01:00 they've accomplished so much. And the average person is just stretching, getting out of bed, done their first appointment or two, especially you entrepreneurs out there, how critical this is. Because when you're an employee, at least as an employee, to some extent, they control your time.

They dictate you need to be here at 09:00 a.m. you can't leave until 05:00 p.m. and so, although that's a nuisance, it helps you be more productive because they're paying you. They tell you when to be there. But what happens for most entrepreneurs, they don't realize when you become an entrepreneur, you've taken on three jobs, four jobs.

It requires more time, but people start to relax, oh, my time's mine, my time's free. I love the freedom of being an entrepreneur. There's the greatest fallacy in the world is that you are free as an entrepreneur and as a matter of fact, you have more responsibility, more obligations, more accountability when you're an entrepreneur, because there's no guaranteed money coming in. The biggest mistake, the biggest misnomer, the worst thinking you could have as an entrepreneur is that somehow you're free because you don't have a job. Just because you call yourself an entrepreneur, if you are one, doesn't make you free.

In fact, it makes you less free. And so what will make you free is really being free, really getting financially independent, really having enough money that you would never need to work again, really having enough money that if you didn't want to take a meeting, you didn't have to. So stop deluding yourself into this false sense of freedom because you call yourself an entrepreneur. It's hilarious and it's why you're losing. You have this fallacy, this relaxed state of freedom where you're going to get around to doing things and you get to go to the gym anytime you want to, and you're wearing your sweats at 1030 in the morning.

Right? You wouldn't do that if you work for someone else. You don't do that when you work for you. And so the greatest thing I can give you is the gift of many days. The next thing I want to share with you is that there needs to be an alarm clock where performance is measured, performance improves.

Secondarily, the more you can shrink the timeframe where you measure performance, the better chance you can have to alter that performance and improve it. So what do most people do? They measure their performance. The average people in the world measure their performance at the end of every year, New Year's Eve, right? They take an account.

But here's my life, here's what I accomplished, here's what I didn't get done. And once a year, they take a look at themselves, they make an adjustment, and their performance improves. They measure their performance, they measure the results, and then they make an adjustment. So they adjust. About once a year, pretty good performers shrink the timeframe at the end of every month.

Most companies kind of do an inventory. Most people do an inventory. They look at their books, they look at the profit and loss, they look at their schedule, and they make an adjustment after they measure that performance at the end of the month, really good people kind of get together on a Sunday night. If they're pretty good performers, once a week, they measure their performance, they make adjustments, and they move on weekly. And then there's really top level performers, and they do at the end of every day, don't they?

The end of every day, they sit back, they look at their calendar, they look at the results, and they measure the performance daily. Well, who do you think is going to do better? The person who measures it once a year, once a month, once a week, or once a day. We all know the better adjustments. They've shrunk the time frames down.

They adjust, they get better, they improve daily. And then there's the maximum out 1% of 1% performers. And they have a clock that goes off every hour, every hour in their head. Alarm goes off. In my mind, it's sort of weird, but it works.

I'm addicted to it now. About every hour, the top of every hour at 11:00 a.m. it's funny. My mind just knows. What did I do to move closer to my goals?

What did I do to move closer to my outcomes? Have I achieved the things on my to do list today? Have I achieved my biggest and baddest outcomes of the day? And every hour? Did I move closer?

Did I move closer? What adjustments do I need to make? What do I need to celebrate? What tweaks? What's been accomplished so far?

An hourly alarm clock goes off in your head. If you can get to the point where you just begin to practice it. And maybe for now, you program this thing to go off every hour just to remind you, what did you get accomplished? Maybe when that hour goes off, you know what flashes on the screen, your outcomes and your goals. Hourly the alarm goes off.

Hourly the alarm goes off. It'll begin to train you to begin to measure the timeframe of your performance every hour. Now, let me ask you a question. There's a group of people that measure their performance, their race, their marathon is once a year. Then there's those that do it once a month that make adjustments and measure where they are and increase effort.

Then those that do it monthly, weekly, daily, hourly. I can tell you that I run many days and I measure my performance hourly. It will transform your life. You will become more productive in your family, in your personal relationships, in your faith, in your business, in your fitness, in your nutrition, in your money, in every area. If just something goes off every, by the way, it's a five second just reminder.

Am I moved closer to my outcome? If I move closer to my to do list today, what adjustments do I need to make? You'll be reminded at that time of someone you forgot to call, an email you didn't return, a meeting you haven't asked for yet, but something you're supposed to eat, hydrate, whatever it is. If you can begin to have that alone, just go. It's just 5 seconds.

It's just every hour. It's just 5 seconds. And I'll tell you, it happens to me constantly now. And I know that one of the reasons my life is improved is because I've shrunk the timeframes down of where I measure my results, right? Where I recalibrate, where I course correct, where I make an adjustment, where I realize I'm behind or I've made a mistake and I improve a performance.

And so, so far, can you imagine if you started just be in a bigger hurry and you had perception, correct, about how close you really are to your goal? The difference in winning and losing is this much. It's like a veil. And when you remove that veil, you see, my gosh, I'm so much closer. I promise you, one of the things that you suffer from isn't just like a lack of vision and clarity.

I wish you more clarity and more specificity in your vision. And I wish you more proximity that you knew how much closer you were to achievement than you think you are. In fact, it's the fact that you think you're so far away from achieving these things that's causing them to constantly stay that far away from you. Because you're not running fast enough towards them, you're not measuring them fast enough. You're killing your goals and your dreams by thinking they're so far away it kills everything.

If you knew how close you really were, you'd run so much faster. So if you altered that, if you altered the first 30 minutes to an hour of your day, and you just stopped letting yourself be a reactor, but you took control and became a dictator of your time, if you manipulated and bended time like I have to, where a day is 6 hours, let the rest of the world think a day is 24 hours. And by the way, someone just made that crap up a long time ago. An hour of measurement. 24 hours is a day.

365 is a year. Someone just made that up. And everybody's bought into it. Well, guess what? I've made mine up.

My days are 6 hours long. I've just manipulated and changed time. It's a figment of our imagination, is how time works. And what if an alarm could go off every hour in that mind of yours? In that heart of yours?

Just checking. Just a wake up call. Just a wake up. Just an alarm. Hey.

Am I closer to my goals? Am I closer to my outcome? What adjustments do I make? What course corrections? What was achieved?

What am I grateful for. It's just a five to ten second reminder and you're back off to the races again. If the earth spins around once, we call that a day. If the moon goes around us once, we call that a month. If we go around the sun once, we call that a year.

It's just stuff people made up, right? And so time is a figment of our imagination. And if you'd use your imagination, imagine what you could accomplish if you shrunk the time frames down. The last thing I want to tell you about time is that the best people I know have a focus on the future and use their time in the present. They focus on the future and use their time in the present.

Too many of you are focused in the past and are thinking all the time about the future dreaming and aren't taking advantage of the present. The present is a gift and we need to treat it as such. The past is literally gone forever and in many cases it's a figment and a manipulation of our imagination. The future is grand and powerful and we need to be focused there and thinking about it and dreaming about it because we are pulled towards it. But the best people can simultaneously be dreaming and optimistic about the future and take massive action right now.

Most of the max out achievers I know in my life spend almost 0% of their time on the past. And I'm talking about people who have pretty darn good past in some cases as well. It is wasted time. You are wasting time. You're stealing and robbing your future and your presentation by focusing any of your attention or thoughts on the past.

The past, if it's negative and wasn't positive for you, is a place you should avoid forever. It's not coming back. It doesn't exist anymore. All we really, truly have is this moment right now and our dreams about the future. If the past was wonderful and you were a high school quarterback, or had a business victory, or got a college degree, or had an achievement there.

Those things aren't your present and all aren't your future. And dwelling on them and focusing on what you've done previously is not going to produce for you a future. Here's the truth. Your past does not equal your future. What will equal your future is what you do in the present.

And so I want to encourage you to take these tips I've shared with you today. And I want you to know if you would make a couple of these changes. I can assure you your future is closer to you than you think it is. If you'll take massive action right now in the present. So, hey guys, as you know, I've.

Partnered up with my good friend Brennan Burchardt, who's created the greatest personal development system that has ever been designed called Growth Day. There's everything from journaling to accountability programs, live messages every Monday for myself and other influencers. There's an opportunity for you to get courses that would cost thousands of dollars completely for free. It's incredible. Go to growthday.com ed and check it out.

I want you to remember something. Comparison is the pathway to unhappiness. I'm telling you that in every area of your life where you find unhappiness, you will find comparison. In fact, the antithesis to that is also true. When there is no comparison, you cannot create unhappiness in your life.

That's a pretty bold and powerful statement. But it's true. We only feel unhappy in our lives when we compare something to maybe something in our life that was a different time. Maybe perhaps when we were wealthier or in a different relationship, or we were healthier on some level. Comparing our current conditions to previous ones.

That comparison is what creates the unhappiness. It's actually not the condition itself. Or perhaps you're in a relationship where you compare it to a previous relationship you had and how they treated or how you felt at that time. Perhaps you compare this time in your life just to a simply a different time, and that comparison will always create unhappiness in your life. If you can remove yourself from from comparing both yourself to a previous time in your life, a previous condition, a previous situation, or even comparing yourself to other people in your life.

This is a recipe and a formula for unhappiness. Every single time in your life where you're experiencing unhappiness, you are doing a comparison to something. It's the contradiction between your current situation, current relationship, current body, current finances, current anything and something exterior. Either a previous time in your life, a previous person in your life, or you comparing yours to someone else's. It is an insidious disease that so many people in society suffer from today, particularly because of the advent of social media.

We watch someone's video of what they're doing on a Friday night and it's not what they're doing that makes us unhappy. It's comparing what they're doing to what we're doing that makes us unhappy. It's seeing people laughing and jovial or jet setting, or seeming to be having a great time compared to what we're doing and that creates unhappiness. It's not the success of people, you know, that's making you unhappy. It's you're comparing your situation to the success they're having that creates unhappiness in your life.

So for those of you that are struggling and saying, you know, one of the things I suffer from is I'm just not very happy very often. I can tell you that that presence of unhappiness, you will always link to a comparison of some sort, either in your own life or in other people's lives. And just being aware of that fact and stopping the comparison, embracing this moment, embracing this time, knowing that you can't go back to that previous time, knowing that you can't be in somebody else's life, you're not gonna have that other body right now. And so if you're looking to be happier, I can promise you the number one key that I would give you is to stop the comparison game. You'd say, well, that's not completely true.

I mean, what if someone passes away? That makes me unhappy? There's no comparison there. Let's take the most extreme example. Or when someone's sick in my family, you know, someone in my family's got a really bad illness, that makes me unhappy.

That's not a comparison. In fact, it is. The fact of the matter is that when someone gets sick in your family or passes away, what you do in your mind is you compare it to when they were healthy. So that comparison of I wish they were healthier. Again, that is a comparison between the previous situation and the current condition.

If someone passes away, it's comparing the time that you had them. That's why people say, if I could just have one more moment with them, if I could just have another conversation, it's comparing it to when you had the moment. It's comparing it to when you had the conversation. And so those are extreme examples. But if we reduce it all the way down to anything right now in your life that you say it brings me unhappiness, there's no joy there.

There's a comparison happening that's not serving you. It's so important to take a look at it, because I really believe most people think, and I've covered this before from a different angle, that if I can just change my exterior circumstances, I will be happier. And that's because they're comparing their current circumstances to someone else. That'd be like somebody sitting in their home who's unhappy in their current home and saying, what I'm going to do is I'm going to rearrange the house and then I'll be happier. And so they rearrange the exterior furniture, the exterior can conditions of the house.

And then when they sit back down, they're still unhappy. So they go, okay, what I'll do is I'll rearrange the exterior of the house again or the interior of it and they fix it again and they're still unhappy. The reason that's so important is when you accept the fact that it's not the external conditions of your life that create happiness. What creates happiness in our life is realizing that we are not our possessions, we are not our titles, we are not our recognition, we are not our accolades. We are not our popularity.

That we're perfect as we are, we're perfect as we are. That we begin to accept ourselves and love ourselves as we are is when we find true happiness. But comparing yourself to another time where maybe you had more recognition, you had a better title, you had more influence will always lead you to a pathway of unhappiness. Now, I'm not talking about self love in the sense that you just accept everything in your life and you sit around. What I'm suggesting to you is happiness and success are often two different things.

Happiness comes from acceptance. Happiness comes from surrender and loving ourselves as we are. Because if we think we're just going to rearrange the furniture and then we're happier, we still live in the house that is us. We are still housed. Our souls, our hearts and our minds are still housed in the same home, which is our body.

And if we can't begin to love it without the comparison of some change, we're never going to love it. We will always be trying to exchange the furniture of our life. We'll always be trying to change the exterior. So many of you achievers are listening to this right now and you're nodding and you're saying, my gosh, that's why I'm never happy. I'm always thinking, if I could just exchange the furniture, if I could just change the external conditions, then I'll be happy.

Then I'll be happy. Then I'll be happy. And every time you switch the furniture, every time you change the conditions of your life, you find yourself very short term finding happiness and then right back to the unhappy state. That's because you keep comparing your situation to someone else's. No matter how good yours is, you have to compare it to someone else.

Someone else's recognition, someone else's wealth, someone else's supposed happiness, someone else's relationship, someone else's body, someone else's confidence. And that comparison is flooding you with unhappiness, no matter how good or how bad the external conditions of our lives are. Now, having said that, we've now found a formula, haven't we? That we know when we compare to something, it creates unhappiness in us. This is a key to success now.

So we know to find happiness in our lives, we have to stop comparing. However, when there's an area we know, we must change. Stay with me here. When there's an area we know, we must change. Now, we use comparison as a weapon to our advantage, because most people are motivated by avoiding pain, right?

That's their motivation to avoid unhappiness. And so I use comparison as a weapon, as a catalyst to get leverage on myself to change. So I'm very conscious when I'm feeling unhappiness in an area that I'm not conscious of changing to not do comparison. But when it's an area I must change, I do use comparison as my own weapon to get leverage, because the gateway to get people say to me all the time, how do I get leverage? How do I get drive?

How do I get that voiding pain thing? Comparison. Comparison. So it's a two edged sword. We use it against ourselves too often in our life.

That gives us misery and unhappiness and takes our bliss away. And not enough of us leverage the power of unhappiness, using comparison to our advantage. For a perfect example, right now, I'm not in the physical shape that I want to be. I am comparing myself to the previous fit version of me. And this discomfort, this dislike, this pain, this unhappiness that I'm flooding myself with by using the weapon of comparison to my advantage is a catalyst to get me going forward.

I shared a story on social media the other day. I was at the gym and I was working out and already not feeling great about how I've looked. I've had enough people comment, man, that you're looking when you're a fit person, or if you're a male and you're kind of, I don't know, a bodybuilder, whatever, but you have muscle on your body. When people see you, they haven't seen you for a long time. They'll say things like, to you, hey, you're looking pretty lean.

Look like you're slimming down. That's not what you want to say to someone who's sort of muscular, right? And that's usually code for, you don't look as good. You're shrinking, right? And so I've been hearing that lately from people.

I had a good friend of mine hug me the other day, and he's like, wow, I can get my arms all the way around your back. You used to have these huge lats. Couldn't even get my arms around. Your arms were so big, too. Like, wow.

So I'm working out at the gym, and a young man's behind me, and I hear him say, hey, hey. And I finally lift my earphones off, and he says, mister Milet, would you please get out of the way so I can look at myself in the mirror when I'm working out? I'm not kidding you. And I looked back at him and I went, are you crazy? I won't even give you the words that I really said to him, right?

And I just will leave it at that. So I let him know that that wasn't an appropriate thing to say to me. But what I did is I used it as leverage. When I left there, I'm like, my gosh, two years ago, no one would want me to get out of the way. No one would talk to me like that.

But right now, I look so average or bad. He's like, get out of the way so I can look at somebody who's really jacked up and fit, right? And I'm leveraging that comparison to what I used to look like to my advantage. That's causing me to eat cleaner. I'm telling you, since that's happened, every meal that's been put in front of me, I think about in slow motion.

I can see it in slow motion. Him telling me to get out of the way and me feeling like the most out of shape, not fit human being on earth. And what I was doing was comparing myself to the two year ago version of me when I was much bigger. And that comparison is giving me leverage, okay? And so I will use leverage to get me to do things I will let people see.

A lot of people say, that would knock a lot of people down, but that's not what it did to me. It gave me fuel to my fire. The winners use fuel to their fire. They'll use comparison as a weapon. When I see people succeeding in different areas, I don't use the comparison of them doing it to great unhappiness with me.

I will use it tactically in specific situations to cause me to want to move away from how I feel about that comparison, either to my previous body, my previous wealth, my previous energy, my previous influence. Mike, my cameraman and I were just talking today outside, and I said to him, you know, I used to be better speaker than I am now. And I said, man, if you'd have seen me years ago, you'd have seen the energy I brought, how dynamic I was, how articulate I was compared to this version of me now. And the reason I'm doing that is I want to get better as a speaker. I'm using that comparison.

It gives me pain and unhappiness to think about the kind of communicator I am now compared to how I viewed the previous situation. So I compared it to give me leverage to improve, to give, to make it a catalyst to change. I understand when to use comparison and when not to. When I want to create a situation of change, I will leverage comparison to my advantage. When I want to create a situation of bliss and happiness and I'm feeling unhappy in an area, I just always evaluate what I'm comparing at that time, and I remove the comparison, and it creates a happy situation.

Remember this, when there's no comparison, there's always happiness. Where there is no comparison, unhappiness cannot exist. Comparison and unhappiness only coexist together. And so I will only leverage this very dangerous thing called comparison when it's an area I must change in my life to get leverage. For those of you that want to create change, it's okay to leverage it from time to time.

But when you become addicted to the mechanism of comparison to get you going to competing, to get you going all the time, when you're always competing against others, always comparing with others, people say, well, there's a difference between competing and comparing. Truthfully, not much. And the fact of the matter is, to compete against somebody, you are typically comparing where you are to them. It's not necessarily a bad thing. But when you leverage that mechanism over and over, it's a pathway to unhappiness.

When a woman goes out in the evening and she's feeling great about how she looks that evening, and she walks in and she immediately compares herself to the other people in the room, she will inevitably find a woman that she thinks is more attractive than her, and it steals your unhappiness for the entire evening. Men, same thing where, you know, maybe you've had some financial success and you're proud and you've gone out and you're whatever your new car or your new suit, or you've got a new watch on or whatever it is, you're just feeling good about yourself. And then immediately when you go out, you begin to compare yourself to other men or other people and what it will do is immediately steal all your joy. Or if you're a couple and you're having a beautiful date night and you happen to observe, you're comparing to other couples in the restaurant, for example, and there's just some couple who's more affectionate or holding hands differently, or he opened the door for her and you immediately steal your joy and create unhappiness for the evening. When you compare the treatment of your partner in the relationship to how your girlfriend's husband or boyfriend treats them, or if you're a male in a relationship and you compare it to how one of your friends wives or girlfriends treats them, you've immediately created a formula for unhappiness.

You will never win the comparison game if your outcome is happiness. You will win the comparison game if your outcome is change or pain avoidance. So you got to get clear on what your outcomes are. There's areas of your life where comparison should never exist and in most times that's your relationships with other people. Don't compare to a previous time in your relationship because it'll create unhappiness.

Don't compare to other relationships or other people. So I understand in my life where to use this weapon and where to put it down. And if you want to create more bliss, if you want to create more connection in your life, you need to learn to put the weapon, the very dangerous weapon, the very insidious weapon of comparison, down most of the time and only pick it up where you want massive change. And the truth of the matter is there's probably one or two areas of your life at any given time that you're really working on changing and you can harness the power of the comparative relationship to your advantage there. But what vast majority of us do, and I know this from my own experience, is we're always in comparison mode.

We're comparing our home, our relationship, our fitness, our happiness, our strength, our energy, our looks, our brains, our accolades, our achievements to other people all the time. And we wonder why we live unhappy almost all of the time. It's because you're always comparing. You lose that every single time. You think, well, no, sometimes I compare it, I'm ahead.

That's not how your brain works. Your brain is eventually looking for the person that you lose to. Your brain is eventually going to find the better looking, funnier, wealthier, fitter, happier, better relationship. Having person to wire you for pain. It's a part of our brain that was wired all the way back for survival mode in order to keep us functioning.

The reason that this is so important is we both have two parts of ourselves. We have a higher self and what I'd call a lower self. And it's okay to live in both those places. But most happy people live in their higher self state. The vast majority of the time, the higher self state is very inward.

They're focused on themselves. They're focused on creating bliss and happiness. And the only thing that they ever focus on outside of there is their spirituality, the universe, their God, their connection with something bigger than them. Our lower self is always external, but we need to have that lower self, because that lower self is that catalyst that gets us to move. That lower self does compete, that lower self does compare.

It's a matter of having a life of both of success and fulfillment, happiness and achievement. Happiness is achieved in the higher self by not comparing and not going external, not thinking the external furniture or life, or external, external people, or comparing outside of ourselves, or comparing to a different time outside of ourselves. That person right there, that doesn't do that, they end up living very happily. The person who achieves leverages the lower self by competing and comparing when needed. And remember this also, the more we begin to learn about ourselves is always a win, the more we have a breakthrough and a discovery.

There's probably some things I've said today that have made you think there's probably some things you're evaluating and seeing in yourself that maybe you were blind to before, and just that discovery is a win. The more we begin to evaluate and discover what our thoughts really are, what our behaviors seem to be, our habits and our patterns. The more we become self aware, the more we have the capacity to live as the higher self and the more powerful it is when we leverage the lower self and we leverage comparison. And so don't beat yourself up over what I've covered today. Self awareness and self discovery is what life's all about, and it's a win.

Even if you discover something about yourself you're not proud of, even if you discover something about yourself that you wish didn't exist or that you wanted to change, that's discovery. That awareness is 80% of the step to changing it. And so give yourself some credit today for being aware, for being honest. Oftentimes, when content like this is covered, people sort of like to check the box of who they'd like to be and that it doesn't apply, as opposed to who they really are. The truth is everybody listening to this and the man speaking this to you is too often in the lower self, too often creating unhappiness in our lives, including me, by comparison to previous times, other people, other conditions in our lives.

Hey, guys, I want to talk to you about Shopify. Look, you know, when I started the show, the furthest thing from my mind was doing online business, and now I. Can'T imagine my life without it. So I love Shopify because they're a global commerce platform that helps you sell at every stage of your business. So whether you're in the startup phase where you're just launching your online store, or you're at that really big business.

Where you're like, hey, we just hit. A million bucks in order. Stage Shopify is there to help you grow. They've helped me through every single stage. I wouldn't even know what to do without them.

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I wouldn't even know what to do without them. Sign up for a $1 per month trial period@shopify.com. my let all lowercase go to shopify.com mylet now to grow your business, no matter what stage you're in. Shopify.com mylet this is a segment from Ed's interview with Dean Graziosi. Let's stay on this, everyone.

This is like kind of breakthrough stuff. Even though you, I want you to hear me on this. There's a lot of talk in personal development about breaking patterns. I talk about all the time. You do?

Tony does. There's also a lot of power in leveraging them and this idea, there's two things that are going to move every human being. Dean's told you it's either to avoid pain moving from pain, or to gain pleasure. Absolutely. And usually most human beings, I think in general, pain avoidance is the stronger of the mechanism.

But it works for both people. You need to know which one moves you. So you've already said yours is pain avoidance. Yep. Right.

So is mine. The truth is I've become a pretty big dreamer, visionary guy. But I wasn't. Yeah, it took me a long time to get there. Long time to get there.

And the fact is I only really got really good at that after certain dreams were achieved. But why? I had to figure out which one moves me more. Okay. Avoiding pain moves me more, even to this day.

Why? It's more familiar to me. I grew up in pain. So go take a look at the video of your life. Did you grow up in a really beautiful environment with lots of love and dreams and bliss and all this great stuff?

Maybe your mover is more blame dreams and bliss. If you grew up in some pain, chaos, angst, fear, anxiety, stress, that's probably your pattern. And instead of trying to spend all your life breaking that pattern, there's parts of it you need to break your behavior from it, but the mechanism itself for change for me is pain and pain avoidance. I'm familiar with lots of pain. And so to this day, why do I prepare for speeches or podcasts or things so bad?

Is it because I want the pleasure. Of a great podcast? Yeah, that's there. No, you don't want to screw up. I don't want to screw up.

I don't want to make a mistake. I don't want it not to be good. Why do I work so hard? Is to make difference in the world, obviously. I don't think anybody listening would know the kind of work you put in it.

Dean Graziosi
Seriously, or you either. I don't think they know that. You started at 330, going to do four podcasts that you're going to jump, you're going to go take a suit, you're going to go do an event tonight, you're going to get up in the morning, fly someplace. I don't think anybody realize it. Are you doing that because you want to sell more books?

Are you doing it because you don't want to sell just one? I'm doing it because I don't want to just sell one right now. You've evolved because you know every time a book gets in someone's hand, you get to change their lives. I do. So if you just nailed it, I was just going to say the other.

Ed Mylett
Part of it is impact for me. Right. So you know the impact. But you're not saying. But I know for a fact you're getting up tomorrow morning, subconsciously not saying, I'm getting up tomorrow because I don't want to.

Dean Graziosi
You're getting up subconsciously because you don't want to fail. That pain hurts. It's a major. And everybody told us we weren't going to make it and our parents probably thought we weren't going to make it and all that kind of stuff. It's a major driver.

Ed Mylett
And by the way, my impact, stay with me on this because I know you're this way, too, because you grew up in pain. The impact I make still comes from pain, meaning this. I know so many people are in pain, and because I connect with their pain, their lack of belief in themselves, they're feeling invisible. They're hurting right now, want to be happier. That connection of pain is still the impact I want to make.

So a lot of it is connected somehow to pain in my life, and it is for you, too. It's like one is avoiding the pain. Of failing or not being successful or not ending up in heaven, which is that picture of who I'm capable of becoming. Like, do I really want to just get to heaven, or is it the pain of not becoming that man? It's both.

But also even the impact part where I go, I want to make an impact in people's lives is because I connect with pain. I connect with the discomfort. And you want to get it out of them. I want to get it out of them, yeah. So that's a major driver for me, is pain.

And I know my map and I know my pattern, and that's why so many athletes, by the way, when their. Career'S over, they have a very difficult time. One, their identity was tied to their athleticism. But also, there's no pain to avoid anymore. Now they're getting pat on the back.

You were great. I loved your games. There's no pain to avoid. There's nothing to fill. So I got to think you're that way, too.

Dean Graziosi
I am. And the only reason I share that is because I hope you don't use pain to be successful for the rest of your life. But you can use it as that launching pad. It's a level, and you can use. It as a launching pad to start the business, to show up for the challenge, to play full out, to do something uncomfortable.

Right. The term I've been using since COVID is we all need to take more uncomfortable action. Did it surprise you that I said, I don't want to just sell one book, or did you think that's what I was going to say? I knew that's what you're going to say. Okay.

Yeah, because it's me, right? I play like I'm ten points down. Tony and I are doing this challenge, right. We're going to put a million people in it. That's the goal.

Last year, we put 900,000 in. Right. And it changed a million people's lives. Right. This year.

I. I attacked this edge as if two people are going to show up. Because I know if you show up I know the end result. I saw hundreds of thousands of comments a day of like oh my God. I didn't know it was going to be like this.

Oh my God. I love you, Tony. I love you, Dean. I love you. Thank you.

Thank you. And you know that driver? Just like the comment. I see the comments coming in for your book. You want to sell another 200,000 copies in the next two weeks so you can help people.

I will play like I'm ten points down through this entire challenge. I will rehearse. I've already watched the last two years that we did this. I watched what Tony did. I watch what I did.

He's doing the same thing. We're prepping. If people are going to show up even we want to deliver something that's transformational. But I'm going to look through the lens of not wanting to fail still because that's how I'm avoiding the pain of it not working at the level of the impact that I want to make. I know we went down a couple different rabbit holes but I just want to give people permission.

Today heading into a recession, heading into a shifting world again. I hope it doesn't. But it looks like an economic winter is here. I'm going to tell you. Use whatever leverage you can use to move.

Just move in a direction. Investigate. Look where the puck is going. Look for something different. Explore.

Question every story that comes into your head. Know your enemy. That story that's already screwed you over and cost you too much. You know that? How do you shift that story?

How do you barricade it? How do you not let it in? How do you talk to someone like, whatever you got to do. I just believe this is a crucial time. I do too.

Ed Mylett
In people's lives. I think that what you do the next. There's this analogy in anti aging. David Sinclair. Doctor David Sinclair has been on my show a few times and he goes, hey, if you can get to like 75 in this day and age, you're probably going to live to 100.

If you can get to 75. And in the world today, I really believe that if you can get this next two years nailed. Yeah. You've got 20 year type multipliers of wealth, bliss and happiness in your life. If you can get the but if you don't these next two years, I think the difficulty of getting there is magnified.

By a huge factor. I think right now is a chance to get way ahead. That same analogy to get to 75 gets you to 100. If you can get these next two years, just momentum, you have to make millions of dollars, but you just get momentum. You get in your groove, you get moving, but if you stay stagnant another couple years, you don't get something going.

The longer you do that, it's harder to get that sucker going again, and I feel like it'll be much harder. Those people that get moving now, they get. And by the way, it might evolve. You may start marketing one thing right now, and it evolves into something else over time. Got to get in motion right now.

Do you agree with that? Oh, true story. I heard somebody say it's a strategic byproduct. How many times in life have we had a goal? And when we have the nerve to go after the goal, we find something as a strategic byproduct of the goal that's way bigger.

Dean Graziosi
Way bigger. You never thought you'd have one of the top podcasts in the world, one of the top books in the world. It's a strategic byproduct of you going all in on your businesses, wanting to impact others. Great point. That's a great point.

So know that when, whether it's God, the universe, reward you for just having the nerd to go after it, and usually your goal, you're something so much bigger or something different that actually aligns with you. There's a couple things, I think, as we're at this point in the podcast, I want to say this. There's a couple things. If you're going to protect yourself, build a moat. Build a moat on your emotions.

And what I'd say is the news is going to get worse. That's a fact. Conversations with your negative friends is going to get worse. That's a fact. I would say if you really want to stop dabbling, you know, it's somebody who's saying they want to lose weight, but when no one's watching, they're eating the wrong food.

Or someone says they want to start the business, but no one's watching, they're binging out on Netflix. You know, if you're that person, and I'm not knocking you, if that's who you are, enjoy it, live it, but don't say you want it. Don't talk out of two sides of your mouth. Like, either go all in, burn the boats and do it, or just accept the life that you have. Like, I hate to be real, but you can't lose weight and not work out and eat bad.

Like, it just doesn't work. You can't make more money, have Ed's life or someone else's life that you see, you can't have that without putting the work in. So if you're going to put the work in, you have to have the mindset to be committed and dedicated to it. Right? We have to be disciplined.

What robs discipline is lack of confidence, insecurity, uncertainty, whatever word you want to use. So here's what I'm going to share. What are the things that make you uncertain or lack of confidence? I would build a moat around those things. If there's certain people in your life that are going to make you feel insecure, believe me, it's going to feel worse during a recession and tough time.

Spend less time with them or find a way to be a mirror or be a Teflon. If watching the news, whether it's CNN, MSNBC, or Fox, whatever one you want to watch, if when you watch the news, you get frustrated, you get scared, you get uncertain, you get pissed off, stop watching the news. You need that energy for you. So what I'd say is I would figure out the things that rob your confidence and rob your certainty. And this is going to sound like, oh, Dean's really smart, is do less of those, like, especially over this next year.

You want to, like, you want to take a challenge? Go on a 30 day news diet. Don't talk about it. Don't watch the news. Don't talk.

And spend 100% of that energy on you 2.0. Take the next 30 days and do not surf the Internet. All of you are getting sucked into. Let me just see what Ed Milette did. And an hour later, you're like, oh, my God, I just burned an hour online.

Right? I would say, just find the things. Avoid the things that rob your confidence. Don't talk to the negative people that are hurting you. Don't focus on your weaknesses.

Identify who your villain is, who that inner, that inner story that's already cost you too much, and protect yourself against it. Investigate to where the puck is going. You do those things in this time, you're ahead of 95% of the world, and they're simple. I didn't give you a business plan. I gave you just the foundation of what can make you thrive in this shifting time.

Ed Mylett
When I hear you say all those things, I think about energy. I think about do things that preserve and increase your energy and don't deplete them. So if there's people around you that rob your energy. You gotta reduce it. If there's things you're doing that take your energy, whether it's worry, fear, surfing the Internet, watching news, those other things, energy, you know, and we all talk about it.

I don't know who's first at it or whatever, but energy is influence. We've talked about this a lot. Tony talks about it a lot. You do? I do.

And energy is also the most important commodity you can possibly have in your life. And you're going to watch a bunch of people, whether you call it words, thoughts, etcetera, you're going to watch a lot of people, starting now, through the next two or three years of their lives, you're going to watch their energy change. You're going to watch their vibrational frequency shrink. You're going to watch them shrink. And that's incumbent upon you to feed your energy right now.

That's podcasts, that's books, that's events. That's a challenge. Like what you're doing right now with Tony. You got to feed your energy. Highest energy wins.

Highest energy will win. And though, amen to that. And I'm going to tell you, everyone's energy is going to evolve and change. It is difficult when everyone's thriving. Why?

Everyone's energy is pretty good. High energy will stand out now. Positive energy, optimistic energy, movement. Energy is momentum. Energy is going to stand out more than ever.

And you're going to see energy change in your investments, in your mindset, in your businesses, all over the place. This is a segment of Ed's interview with Tom Bilyeu. How's the next step happen? I began to discover brain plasticity. So I'm laying on the floor of my apartment, I'm flirting with depression.

Tom Bilyeu
I just don't know how I'm gonna make anything in my life feel hopeless and lost. And so I start reading about the brain. And reading in college revealed itself to me as the way to gain knowledge. And so I start reading, reading about the brain. I see there's this debate going on.

This is like late nineties, early 2000, and there's a camp of people saying, no, no, no, you can learn, even like, to your last day on this planet. But it was highly debated. It's not anymore, but it was then. And I said, I choose to believe that. I choose to believe that I can grow and change.

And so I start reading voraciously. I start thinking about brain plasticity and getting better. I take a job as a teacher and realize in teaching them, I'm able to make their films better. And if I can make their films better, why can't I make my own films better? So that starts to rebuild me and I start thinking of myself as someone that needs to grow and learn and get better.

So it's now called the growth mindset. You can now get a book on it, you can watch a thousand YouTube videos. None of this existed back then, which is why all the stumbling around. But I start reading, and I start reading voraciously and it starts to build my belief system. And that belief system ultimately is what completely changes my life.

But first, I need some more pain and suffering. So when I meet my wife, part of what she's attracted to is I'm talking growth mindset, man. I'm like, I can do this. This is what I'm going to do. My dreams are big.

I went through this, I've learned from it. I know how to do this now. I got it. Trust me. Come with me, kid.

You're going to be rich one day. And literally, that's what I'm saying to her. And she's into it, ready to go for the fight, wants to be a part of it. My wife is a real slugger. We then are doing the back and forth because she started as my student at the film school and we fell in love.

But she's in London and I'm in LA, and so we're having to do back and forth. And I find myself living in London and now I want to ask her hand in marriage. And I know she's old school, so I need to go to her dad and I go to her dad and I say, you know, I want your blessing to ask your daughter to marry me. And in the nicest way possible, he says, no. And my wife Lisa had always warned me, my dad's going to quiz you when I introduce you.

My dad's going to quiz you. Introduce me. He almost doesn't look at me. Okay, no quizzing. Gets to know him a little bit.

No quizzing. Seems kind of disinterested. He'd ask me a question and then wouldn't even listen for the answer. But when I say, I want your blessing, just like starts going through all these questions. And the final question was, how do you plan to take care of my daughter?

Because he was very successful, okay? And he said, my daughter's become used to accustomed to a certain lifestyle and how are you going to provide that for her? And I said, sir, I know what you see right now is a broke, unemployed kid, but I'm the most ambitious person you've ever met, and I will one day make your daughter rich. And he said, thank you. I hear that.

I still don't want you to marry my daughter. Now, important to acknowledge. He's always been incredibly kind to me. He was just very clear that he did not want me to marry his daughter, man. And so that was like, whoa.

Like, the gauntlet has been laid down. I'm gonna rise up to this. And so in my soul, I'm like, I've got this, man. I'm gonna do this. I'm committed.

There's no way I will not get rich now, because I'm gonna take care of that woman. I'm gonna show him that I'm right. And then the next morning, I lay in bed for 3 hours, maybe four, and the day after that, three, 4 hours again. Why? Because it was cold.

I didn't want to get up and put a sweatshirt on and literally walk the eight paces. And so I would sweat it because she was working, and my job was to make her lunch, and she would come home, and we'd eat lunch together. And when we get to the punchline of what I'm like today, even I have a hard time believing that was really me. So then these two successful entrepreneurs walk into my class, and up to that point, I'd promised myself two things. So I grew up chubby, in a morbidly obese family and with no money, and I said, one day I'm gonna be rich, and one day I'm gonna have six pack abs.

And that was my promise. And these guys walked in, and they were rich, and they had six pack abs, and they said, look, we're starting a technology company. Why don't you come be a copywriter? And I was like, absolutely. And it's one of those where people like, what are you doing?

Like, you're leaving the secure job for me. I was like, they're like unicorns to me. They are literally the thing I'm looking for. They are rich, and they have six pack abs, and they're going to let me into their company. And so their whole pitch was, look, man, this is a startup.

You can have any job in this company you want. You just have to become the right person for the job. So it was a tech company. It was in this beautiful office overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Every single person in that company had a floor to ceiling window overlooking the Pacific Ocean, except me.

And they put me in the server room, which had no windows, and a bunch of computers all worrying and making noise. And I remember one of the guys was like, who's the kid in the server room? And so that's how I became known I was the kid in the server room. I know anything about business, I would bring my wife to visit me in the office. And I'm like, look how beautiful the office is.

And this is where I'm at, you know? And, like, literally, like those makeshift desks that are like really like a table that you would use on a picnic, but you've got computers stacked on it. That's where I worked all day. Come on, brother. And so that just being around other people now who had that same kind of drive.

Ed Mylett
Yeah. And I remember now, people are really going to enjoy this one. We used to race to see who could relax our bladder the fastest and finish peeing sooner. And that, like, that got me thinking at tempo, right? Like you're snapping and that literally, I could feel it make my brain speed up what it was.

Tom Bilyeu
It's one of the most surreal things. Now, since then, I've read studies. You can, the number of patents filed in a city is directly correlated to the speed at which the average citizen walks 20 yards on the sidewalk. Let that sink in. So that little, like.

And I'm obsessed of the chills now. I'm obsessed with the physiological hooks that can help you develop your mind and moving fast and being made fun of. By the way, when I move slowly, that, like, oh, if I got out of the car last or oh, you take too long to piss, like any of it, you're gonna get teased. And so now I'm in this environment where like the standards are crazy high, baby, and I've now got the drive. I want to be held accountable.

I'm thinking I'm gonna make rich. I remember being in the gym. I hate working out. And I was sitting, especially the shape lisa's in and you're in. Well, she's a beast.

Ed Mylett
I know. Don't confuse me and my wife. I don't. By the way, I know she is a monster. We flex together.

I know you know the drill. I do. I am not cut of her cloth. Could we say 1 second on something? I just want to go back for a minute because I think, man, there's like so much stuff in here.

And again, it's your story. But like, I can't get over that all of these things lead to you because that's aid lot of turns, right? But I do want to touch on one thing because you changed environments. And to me it sounds like one of the key things was having some thoroughbreds you started to run with, like, that power of environment. So before we talk about that part, I want you to just speak to that, because we're going to be everywhere today on this stuff.

But I'm a monster believer that the way you change your identity is your associations. And so what you just described to me was this guy who's trying to find an identity for the better part of his life, right? I'm ambitious, but I'm not driven, right? I break down barriers for two years, then I get a big ego. Then I do something great, then my ego gets smashed, right?

Then I start. Then my mouth writes these big old checks to my father in law. I'm all fired up. Then I sleep in bed all day long. But do you believe, big time, that identity shaped by these associations in everybody's life?

Tom Bilyeu
100%. Talk about that for a second. It's so aggressive now getting repeated. So I fear trite words, but words become trite because they're so true that people repeat them until they lose their meaning. So you're the average of the five people you spend the most time with.

That's just true. And. But now it's become so common to say, and it's like every Instagram post, that I fear it's gonna lose its meaning. Who are you spending time with? Because if you're spending time with people like you, you're spending time with people like me, I'm raising you up, or I'm just not gonna spend time with you.

So it's like, now, if you get in a mix of people like that who are like, man, we'd love for you to raise up to this level, but if you don't, it's fine. But we're just not going to spend time with you. All of a sudden, that desire to belong to something powerful that you can see is going to lead you to your dreams. And I remember saying to my wife over and over and over, they are the surest path to my success. I don't know anything else.

I just know if I can hang on to these guys, they're going to make me better. And so that was through all the years of being embarrassed and developing, actually, massive anxiety because I was always behind. I was always the dumbest person on the phone. I was always the dumbest person in the room. And it was like, was I going to be willing to emotionally go through that to get great?

And most people can't. So here's the thing. Now, imagine I'm not the only person. They said, hey, this is a startup. You can have any job you want.

I saw twelve people, maybe more, come and go over the years. They just couldn't emotionally deal with. And so I remember thinking to myself, why is it that I'm able to do this? And the answer was, I could self soothe faster than anyone else. So I would get kicked in the face and I would do something really dumb.

I'd be called an idiot, told how stupid I was, and then I'd just be like, all right, I need to recenter. And that just became my obsession. I need to be able to emotionally get back to complete neutral so fast that you don't even see it register on my face. How'd you do it? How do you do that?

Literally practicing. So remember, the same time, I'm reading about the brain voraciously. I'm reading about people that understand human behavior. I'm getting into cognitive science, neuroscience, like, really going into it. So I'm reading all this stuff, going, whoa, we're just a chemical processing plant.

There are physiological hooks into these chemicals. So, hey, if you're mad, scared, whatever, but you force yourself to laugh out loud, you will change your neurochemical state. And you literally, your experience is the neurochemistry. So I was like, whoa. So I could get.

I could be in a situation where I'm being berated, or I legitimately messed up, and it costs money, and it's like, whoa, that's on me. And it is nobody's bad but my own. And I realized that what most people do, their strategy is to deflect it. It's your fault. It's not my fault.

Ed Mylett
Yes. So I started thinking of this as a metaphor. People are throwing gold at me. They're throwing it really hard. And I can put a shield up and deflect it, but then I lose that piece of gold.

Tom Bilyeu
If I drop my shield and just take the pain, let it hit me in the head, then I bend down and go, this thing, which was me being stupid, there's a lesson here, and now I have this piece of gold, but the whole thing is I have to be defenseless, so I have to own it. I have to take it. I can't fight. If someone is like this. To this day, if our team is like, hey, there's something we need to point out to you.

I'll do this. I square up to it. I want them to know. Like, hey, I want to hear it. I want to know.

Like, I want to be literally physically open. I'm not going to close down. I'm going to do everything I can to square off, to open myself so that they know I'm receptive to the criticism. Right. Because that's the nugget of gold.

What I know is it's gonna hurt. It's gonna sting. Yep. But if I can emotionally recenter so fast, you don't even see that I went through something. Now I can just process, how do I take this information you've given me and get better?

Ed Mylett
This is a segment from Ed's interview with Darren Jones you talk about. Here's some of the steps that you went through to start to turn your life around that you weren't doing prior. So I want you to just share some of these things. I'm gonna. Not rapid fire, but like, I want to talk about them.

Voluntary discomfort, which included some phone calls you made to certain people. I'm sure it was uncomfortable. So just take the bow around that. Yes. So I didn't know that you can't change what you're not aware of.

Dean Graziosi
But I was changing, and I didn't realize that it was rapidly changing my life. So everything I'm about to share with you is as I connect the dots. Looking backwards. I saw the power of apologizing to somebody for something that I did when I was seven years old that I didn't know that she held. Like, I hit this girl over the head with a backpack when I was seven.

And then I messaged her, like, six years ago. And I was like, hey, kids do the stupidest things. I know you don't remember this, but I just want to say that I'm sorry. She goes, number one, why did you do that? I'm in tears right now.

Two, what about me made you do that? Three, the same thing is happening to my kids. And I don't know what to tell them. So that moment right there, I was like, oh, people keep things. They remember how you make them feel.

I wrote a list, and I didn't know it was going to turn into as many people. From kindergarten up to present date. I wrote a list of 250 names of everyone that I had ever impacted negatively thought of negatively. Not even in the physical thought, negative thoughts. Wow.

And anybody who had ever hurt me with the intention of apologizing for my part and not expecting them. Whatever their response was, their response. I was clearing myself. I wanted to be truly fez. You can't fight for something that you can only give to yourself, which is internal freedom.

The person who molested me, people who jumped me. But I held on resentment for 30 years. I was like, I just want to apologize for when we had that fight. I want to apologize for holding resentment towards you for 30 years. They're like, what are you apologizing for?

We were the ones who jumped you. And I was like, but I held on to the resentment. That resentment affects me. And so I just want to create the possibility of just having no negativity when I think of you instantly. Freedom.

So I did that for 250 people up into present day, including forgiving the two men, and I don't know where they are in the world. Forgiving the two men who murdered my father whole, wholeheartedly, simultaneously. I'm watching all of this business come. I'm like, where are these people coming from? I forgive these two people.

Two new people come into my business. I let go of this thing, this new thing. It's almost like this universal order of this magic trick. I do this. And I spoke to my spiritual advisor, Monica Zanz.

She said, garen, you released hate from your heart. These were all little subtleties of hate. So any level of resentment, and it doesn't matter what they do, the forgiveness is freedom. And letting go of resentment will complete the cycle. Brother.

Ed Mylett
Whoa. Yeah. One of the top things ever said on the show ever, ever, ever. Yeah. Out of a bazillion episodes, I'm convinced.

What that is, by the way, is that you're, when you have negative stored energy in your body, either through holding. We come back to that again. Yeah. When you store it to your point with either something you've done that you want to apologize for or forgiving someone else for trauma they've caused you, that energy is blocking you. Yeah.

And when you release that energy, your vibrational frequency increases tremendously. And that's when you begin to magnetize the things into your life that, because we've all had those moments, you're like, I was thinking of so and so, and then they called me. Yep. That's when you're vibrating at a high frequency. But usually for most people, that is like once a year deja vu or some fluke thing.

But you know this. Now that you're on the other side of it, when you do begin to live with this type of intention, when you are a vulnerable person, that frequency increases and it's just unbelievable. Perhaps all these things were already there, but your reticular activating system was blocking you from seeing, feeling, or hearing them, or perhaps they weren't there and now you're attracting them. But all I know is they've appeared in my life the last 30 years in ways that are what you would consider to be miraculous, which now has become habitual. Yeah, right.

What was once miraculous is now habitual, and that can happen in everybody's life. Who takes some of the steps that we're talking about today, putting yourself through volunteers, voluntary discomfort, doing uncomfortable things. But the apologies, the forgiveness, these are real things. The other thing that you say about vulnerability, and I want people to really hear this because there's different aspects, what we're going to talk about today that hit different people. But you're so right.

I've only. I said this 20 years ago. I haven't said it since. So I know you didn't get it from me. It's yours.

But causing people to feel safe in your presence is one of the great keys of being a leader of anything, is that people can feel safe in your great father, great mother, great brother, great sister, great business person. Right. Great coach, great anything. People have a tendency to feel safe in your presence. And you say the pathway to that happening, ironically, is to be what?

Dean Graziosi
Man, there's. There's so much. There's so much to. That's such a loaded question. But when.

When you accept who you really are. And are willing to share it. Yeah. And you're willing to share it and you're willing to create this, it's like a pathway. There's an energy that just comes through you.

Through the presence of vulnerability. Yes. That level of openness, it taps into the voiceless, or the. It taps into the voiceless part of you that you haven't yet given a voice. And so this.

Because you can't be what you can't see. So the second that you. You talk about something that most people won't talk about, and they can. They listen to who they relate to, and then they can relate to it. Then all of a sudden, that part of them that they haven't given a voice goes, I'm not alone.

I learned this skill because in the scariest time of my life, where I'm still living in my car, I'm still. I was still $200,000 in debt. I got tired of living a life, trying to put on a mask or pretend to be what everybody else thought I should be. And I say, you know what? And then Rihanna's song we out here living a lie had came on.

It's like, out here living a lie. I couldn't get it out of my head. I was like, no more. True freedom is power to possess your own mind and, like, use it in a way that uplifts yourself and other souls.

Ed Mylett
Drop the mic. He paused because I fell out right there. That's really good. Keep going. I went on Facebook, and the post is on Facebook right now.

Dean Graziosi
I say, you think you know me? You have no idea. Here's what you know. You know this, this, this and this. You know, I've dated this person.

You know, I was in this music video 15 years ago. You know this because this is what I told you. But what it really is right now, I'm $200,000 in debt. I'm living in my car, I've cheated on every girlfriend I ever had. I have no relationship with my family.

And I just put it all out. The scariest moment of my life. First message I got was from a stranger. I said, how did you have that kind of strength? When I read your testimony, I put the gun down.

I put the gun down. And it was in that moment my purpose was birthed. I said, hmm, I know why I'm here. To speak. To be the voice of the voiceless, or the parts of you that you haven't yet given a voice.

And I know there's all those people doing all these other things, but when it comes to that deep, dark, treacherous place that people mask and they try to overcompensate and do all these other things, that's my playground. Yeah. That's so unbelievable. Most people listen to this on audio, so they didn't just see your face, but like, I watched your face when you said that. It's like there was like a spiritual, soulful transformation in those moments.

Ed Mylett
You can see it right now. It's happening again. Right? By the way, thank you for listening to the audio and share the podcast today. But I have to tell you, like, it's all over you now.

By the way, just when you think we're getting real foofy here, you're not so foofy. You're pretty hardcore too, when you're frank with people. So there's this piece and then there's like, hey, bam. And I was watching some of your content. The other, like you literally said on something I watched.

I don't feel sorry for you if you're broke. I don't feel sorry for people to. Tell me they have no money. This was interesting to me from everything we just said. I'm taking you the whole other direction.

How I do this? Yeah, I want people to see the whole perspective here. And then you said, people that say, hey, I don't feel seen. You said you kind of chuckle and laugh. So there's a part of you that's like, hey.

And I think the reason that you do that is, you know, now so deeply that people can change, that you're not going to give them their b's ways of getting out of it. Right? Yes. But just talk about that for a second, because, like, it's one thing to be what we're both talking about, being vulnerable, sharing these parts of our souls, making people feel safe. These are all things that are beautiful.

Two masculine men to be willing to talk about. Absolutely. Same time, though. Same time. There's this other parties, like, I don't feel sorry for you.

Yeah, and why is that? And, well, I want you to elaborate on it. Well, I'll tell you this. I'm a big context guy. Me, too.

Dean Graziosi
So in the same conversation, my story will always live there. The vulnerability of my story. So. But, Karen, you don't understand. I don't have any money.

And I'm like, somebody said to me the other day, oh, no, it's easy for you to talk about that. You have this big house and you have the wife and you have the. Yeah, I've been saying the same thing. When I was living in my storage unit and sleeping on bubble wrap, sleeping in an abandoned building. Y'all are just now catching up.

You know, I've been like, when I was living in my car, you probably had a home. I don't want to assume, by the. Way, I have a photo of the storage unit right here that he was living in, just so you all know. Yeah. So I have it keep going.

So it's difficult. And now I can have empathy and compassion. Absolutely. But I wouldn't just come out if somebody was like, oh, you don't. I wouldn't just laugh in anybody's face.

There's always context and my story that goes with it. So if somebody's saying that, and I'll be like, hey, I experienced the same thing. And you know what I did when I was living in my car? I went to Starbucks every single day, and I wrote down ten things that I'm good at, ten things that I absolutely love to do, found a way to weave that, and then I went on Craigslist, and I found a way to make money every single day. And then finally something hit, and then something else hit.

So what you're seeing now is the overflow of what I was doing when I was living in my car. It was almost like God, was like, I want to see if you are really serious about what you say you want to do, okay, pay me no money, and I will still do it, and I will do it to excellence. And that's what I did. So therefore, when the money does coming in now, like, more money is coming, I'm like, it doesn't surprise me. It makes sense because I put in the work.

Ed Mylett
Well, the reason you did, though, and this is important, you make a big. You paint this distinction. You didn't try, okay? You did this like your life depended on it. You say, there's a big difference between this and everybody really close.

If you keep trying things, that is the lowest possible commitment level, is to try. Now, I'm not saying in my book, I literally have a chapter called one more try. So I believe in trying something again, but behind that, there has to be something in you that has already sort of pre negotiated the price you're going to have to pay so that you're not constantly navigating the price you're paying. Because you talk about trying versus mastery. Yeah.

And by the way, I think the money comes in. You're earning the money while you're trying to get good at something, but the money doesn't come in until you've mastered it, typically, or at least increase your capacity to do it. Like in business. I earned most of the money I make now when I was broke years ago. It just comes in now, but I earned it back then when I was making an effort with no reciprocity.

I was making an effort when nothing was coming. In fact, I was making an effort. As my life went backwards. So it was earned then. I'm just getting paid now.

Dean Graziosi
So good. So good, Ed. So good. It's just true. And it's.

Ed Mylett
It's. That's the hard part of watching successful people, because they behave in a particular way often when they get there. I didn't earn my money now. I earned it back then. And you.

You had to make a. You cannot go from living in a storage unit, being incarcerated, blowing through a record deal, having a dad that's murdered, having someone try to murder you in your life, right? All these mistakes you've made, and, like, I'm gonna. I'm gonna give it a go. That couldn't have been what it was.

You don't go to where you are. By giving it a go. So what's the difference?

Dean Graziosi
I would say the difference is most people don't realize the value of not giving it a go. So I'm going to try it a time or two to see if it works. Here's what doesn't work. Everything that you've done up until this point where you felt like it didn't work, and then you kept doing that. So what you did is master it not working, so you're actually in mastery any direction you go.

So this is why I teach a lot at my retreats on energy transmutation. Tell us what that means. Yeah. Who I was when I was sleeping around with all those women breaking into cars and everything, that there's an energy behind it. It's not the action.

It's the energy behind it that's driving that level of success. That same person is the same person that messaged 900 producers say, get my song on a record. Get my song. And then in 30 days, I had 28 songs, and then two months later, I had a record deal with Ludacris. It was the same.

I just transmuted the energy in a different direction. So you come into mastery when you're doing something over and over and over and over, like the little kid learning how to walk over and over and over and over and over. And walking is not even our natural state. It's something that we adapt into. So you adapt into mastery.

Mastery and excuses insecurity, devaluing yourself, devaluing people around you. And if you could see that you are actually in. You're actually a mastery esque person. You just need to transmute that energy in a direction where it's moving you forward, not keeping you stuck or keeping you back. So all this is a redirection because you can't see the picture while you're in the frame of what really matters to you, staying in the same spot or moving forward and creating an extraordinary life for yourself and your family.

I started caring that my mom was working at a job that was killing her, and she's got these back to back surgeries. Colostomy bag, barely alive. I started caring that maybe. Maybe I can do something about it. I started caring that I could support my daughter's mother, and we can come together and create Kylia's college fund.

I started caring. You know what I want my mom. I want to retire my mom. So what would that mean? To put this energy into these actions and whatever it takes?

By 2015, I will have my daughter's college tuition paid for three years before she graduates high school. And by 2015, I'll be a multimillionaire. This is back when I was living in my car. By 2015, I'm going to retire my mom, and it all happened. I started caring about the things that actually matter to me, and I put all the energy in that direction.

Ed Mylett
That's heart power, right? Yep. Yeah. You talk a lot about heart power and I think in life and business you win with your heart, not your head. I think you have to have good strategies, right?

Yeah, but I think with your heart. And most people aren't willing to put their heart into it. If you're listening to this, you got to put your whole heart into it. You're going to be in a really blissful, loving, incredible relationship with somebody. You have to have your whole heart in it just like you do with your kids.

If you're going to build a great business or a great body, you have to have your heart into it. Your heart's 50,000 times more powerful than your brain. The electrical current is the power of it is now you get your head and your heart in congruency and you have that. Now you're unstoppable. And that's really what you did.

Maximizing Returns: The Power of Real Leverage In Your Life

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1: Defining Leverage

2: Practical Applications

3: Psychological Impacts

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