Fünf Kernsätze, die Persönlichkeitsentwicklung erklären

0:00A lot of self work can be summarized into thoughts aren't true, feelings don't require actions, things aren't good or bad, they just are. Our greatest enemy is ignorance. To change your life, change your surroundings. Our actions, not our pasts, define who we are. I think that's pretty much probably 95% of self work. I stand by my statement.

0:26>> [laughter] >> Thoughts aren't true, feelings don't require action, things aren't good or bad, they just are. Our greatest enemy is ignorance. To change your life, change your surroundings. Our actions, not our pasts, define who we are. Man, I could unpack all of those. So, let's start with ignorance. So, I am not a moralist, but if I were a moralist, then I would say that ignorance is the only evil, and therefore knowledge is the only good.

0:59And so, most atrocities, if we define them that way, that humans inflict on one another, comes from ignorance. We don't know something about the other person or the other party. And if we had absolute context on why someone does what they do, if we lived their life, then we would have absolute knowledge on it, and then we would be them. And so, then we probably wouldn't try to hurt them because we would be them. And so, I see the pursuit of knowledge and corollary how I like it, the pursuit of learning, changing our behavior, to be my ultimate purpose in life.

1:37Because if I think about myself as going through life, then I want to learn as much as I as I can, which is changing my behavior, ideally suited to the direction that I want to go in. As for the if you want to change your life, change your surroundings, if we want to behave a certain way, then we want to increase the likelihood that a behavior occurs. And so, B.F. Skinner said this, and I just love this. It's like my most savage quote of his. He says, "People say, you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.

2:16False. So, if I dehydrate the horse, I salt its mouth, I put it in the heat, and I put its face 1 in away from water, I can virtually guarantee that it will drink." And I think about that visual all the time when I think about myself as the horse. And I think to myself, "What is the behavior that I want? Drinking water. And what is the salt in my mouth? And what is the dehydration?

2:42The motivation for this behavior that I can create?" And so, I am not a believer in free will. I believe that we respond to the conditions that we've had, and then we learn behaviors as a result of those things. And so, for example, I could get everyone in here, the entire crew to get naked. Guarantee you, I could do it. All I would do is I'd just crank up the temperature, and I'd wait. And eventually, everyone would get naked. It would happen. And so, everyone has this idea that they have this free will.

3:11But that's what would happen eventually. And so, if that's true, then we have significantly less control, and at the same time more control over our our behavior if we can stack the deck in our favor. And so, part of the reason going to bed at 9:00 p.m. is so powerful is because we're changing the conditions so that we can change our behavior. If all of your friends are poor, Harvard did that long study and said that the the number one correlate was your reference group, which is who you compare yourself to.

3:38Also note, not who you spend the most time with. It's who you compare yourself to. And so, if you want to change your life, change who you compare yourself to. Number one. But part of who you compare yourself to is who you spend your time with, or who at least you consume the most of. So, if you're doing this, then maybe that's a good thing or maybe it's a terrible thing cuz you can marry the wrong people, but either way, if you want to get fit, if you get around fitter people, you will be deprived of fitness because you'll be the least in shape person and then all of a sudden you'll be more motivated. If you are poor, but you're the richest of your friends or the same level of wealth as your friends, then get around people who make more money. And then of course people say, "But I can't get around people who make more money."

4:20Okay. No one else has ever done it. No one who has had it worse than you has ever figured out how to do it. You're right. Right, of course you're not right, so shut the [ __ ] up. Thoughts untrue. Oh. I mean, how many things do we think every day that are just false? One, they can be factually false, but also from the um reactionary perspective. I'll give an example. So, someone miscommunicates and wrongs me in some way.

4:55I get angry and think I should wrong them back. Now, that's my first thought. If I then say, "What does that behavior increase the likelihood of occurring as a result? What do I want to have happen as a result of my behavior?" Well, I want them to apologize or I want them to just not do that again. Well, then me reacting back to them increases the likelihood that they will retaliate.

5:23And so, in doing what my first thought was, I increase the likelihood of the negative occurrence that I'm trying to avoid. And so, thinking through what happens after that thing in interpersonal dynamics and also from a business decisions perspective has helped me so much. Like I've had I'll give you an example of one that happened not that long ago. Somebody reached out to me, relatively big account, and says, "Hey, um can you read my book? It would mean the world to me if you left me an endorsement."

5:53Um and I said, "Out of respect for you, I won't just ghost this message or or give you a half-hearted answer and then just hope that you forget that I said yes. I'm not going to endorse your book, but you're welcome to send it to me. I will probably just flip through it because I have a lot of other books that I need to read that are more closely related to my goal.

6:17But I appreciate the flattery that's implied in you asking me to do that." Before I wrote that message, I was like, "Okay, what do I want to have happen after I send this message? Now, if I say the if I just ghost him, then I will probably have a null outcome. And he'll probably have a slight negative cuz he'll remember, but but he'll be like, "Okay, fine. That was his way of saying no." But if I say if I compliment him, thank him for the compliment with me, and also tell the truth, I'll probably get somebody who in the future will know that my yes means something when I when I choose to do it. And so, it's thinking like two steps ahead of what happens after I say this thing back, and is how do I increase the likelihood of that second move, not the first move. And it sounds silly to say cuz people are like, "Oh, of course." But like, I don't think most people do that. And it has helped me so much. And even like with interpersonal dynamics with with with my marriage with Leila. If I want Leila to to talk to me a certain way, then if I punish her when she doesn't talk to me that way, what she'll really do is she'll avoid talking to me in general.

7:29>> [laughter] >> And so, it's like I have to find a time when she does that thing so that I can immediately reward her so that I can increase the likelihood that it occurs. And so, I I think about this all the time with most of the dynamics that we have. And so, um anyways, I'll just stop on that tangent but I think this is something especially over the last year that I've as a rehabilitating people pleaser big people pleaser uh being able to make your needs known being able to make demands uh is a real skill and it's a it's so strange given that pursuing your needs is maybe one of the most fundamental human things that there is but I kind of realized that especially people that you respect in a sort of social dynamics way people don't want to hear what they want to hear they want to hear what you actually think about a thing so so many times someone will ask your opinion what do you think of the Oppenheimer movie what you think they want to hear is whatever they think which is oh wasn't it great did you watch it in IMAX yeah I did did you get sour patch kids yeah I did but what they actually want to hear if you were to say do you know what it is man like I don't know it was just a little sort of drawn out for me and all of the visual effects felt a little bit more I haven't seen it I don't [ __ ] know but what you think people want to hear is not what they actually want to hear they want to hear what you think and that requires you to tell the truth and oddly enough that means that telling someone what they don't want to hear ends up with a bigger net positive for you than actually giving them the thing that they wanted for the business owners or for the advertisers in the room or the people who make content by the way this is the ultimate hack is just tell the truth because when you do that you will by definition make very unique content because everyone else is so afraid of thinking or saying what they actually think and so you can stand out without trying to stand out the problem is that the vast majority people who quote make content or try to quote add value just regurgitate what they think adds value rather than just saying what they really think

9:36>> also the benefit of experience Right? Because it's the only way that you can stress test whether or not this thing that you're trying to talk about is an actual thing. And you also get an extra perspective on that, too, when you know that this is what most of the people say about a thing, and I have tried it, and this is my perspective on not only the thing, but why other people think that this thing is a thing, given that I know that it doesn't work.

10:01Feelings don't require action. Very similar. I think this one is super powerful for Well, really at all phases, but especially the beginner. So, if you're a beginner, you have to separate you feeling something and you acting on that feeling. Because you may feel hopeless many, many times, but you need to continue to do the activities that are aligned with your goal. You may feel hungry, but you need to not eat the cookie to stay aligned with your goal.

10:30You may feel angry, but know that retaliating at your coworker has no likely positive outcome. You may hate your boss, but undermining them in front of the team may make you feel good in the moment, but again, destroy your long-term career prospects. And so, I think creating a gap. And so, I was talking to one of our CEOs who was having a little bit of stress issue, and I said, "I want you to think that you're a Yeti can. I want you to think you're one of these cans that has a vacuum between both walls." I was like, "You got your feelings on one side. You've got your internal temperature. You've got your external temperature." And I was like, "I just want you to do this."

11:03Just create space. And space within the context of behavior is time. Which is when I feel something and I have the desire to act on it, you can at that moment, you have the lowest action threshold, which means that you're the highest likely to be behaving or or doing something is when you have this feeling. And so, I want to make as logical of decisions as I possibly can. Hopefully, we're all aligned on the fact that logical decisions, in general, work out better than illogical decisions. And so, if we make logical decisions on a regular basis, then we'll have longer-term outcomes. If we want to increase the likelihood that our decisions in general are logical, then we want to create space between when we feel and when we do.

11:44And encapsulated in one sentence, it's just because you feel something doesn't mean you need to act on it. And if you have an idea that you want to act on because of a feeling, if it still feels good in the morning, then do it. But, I've never regretted taking time before acting when I was angry. But, I sure as hell have regretted almost everything that I've done immediately the moment I felt angry.

12:13Things aren't good or bad, they just are. Ugh, this is the the essence of Mosey. Um, I'm not the only one. Um So, I think what makes life more difficult for people is the judgment they have on themselves about what they believe they're supposed to do or supposed to have achieved or that this condition or this thing that happened is good or bad or it should have been good or it should have been bad or and the story of the boy with the horse in the village, I'll tell it in 30 seconds, which is uh dad gets kid a horse and everyone in the village says, "That's amazing." The old man says, "We'll see."

13:01And then, the kid is riding the horse and he breaks his leg and everyone in this town says, "Oh, that's so horrible." And the old man says, "We'll see." And then, the army comes to town to take all of the young men to war and the kid can't go because his leg is broken and everyone says, "That's amazing." And the old man says, "We'll see." And the thing is is that as we continue to play out the timeline of life, we can't know if anything is good or bad until the day we die and the day we die won't matter cuz we'll be dead. And so, it means that at the end of the day all of the things that occur simply occur.

13:30And for me reminding myself of that that I think this is bad or I think this is good. It limits the peaks and it also limits the valleys. And saying this just is and I think it's in my opinion absolute acceptance of the world without casting judgment on it. And it's difficult to do because we all want to make judgments and we have to make judgments in order to live. We have to approximate this a good decision, bad decision. This is a decision that will increase the likelihood that what I want to have happen will happen. But most of the good bads that we have that are coming up are not for our own benefit, are not aligned with our goals.

14:04They're aligned with one person that told us something when we were 7 years old and then we incorporated that and we say, "Oh, this is bad." because someone else when we were a kid like you hit your head and then you look at the adult and the adult says, "That's bad." and you say, "Oh, it's bad. I'm going to cry now." right? And so there are so many thousands and millions of those tiny judgments that are passed on to us that do not serve us. And so for me it has been more beneficial to whitewash everything and then actively rebuild what I believe to be good or bad based on those things but with a baseline reality that none of it is.

14:35It is kind of narcissistic or solipsistic to believe that you know whether a thing is good or bad. Means you know the future. You know what the outcome of this is going to be, right? There's this story that uh I I couldn't believe it was about September 11th. So I didn't realize this but the night before September 11th actually had quite bad weather, I think. And it meant that people getting home from baseball games got home way later. And then you'll remember the morning of September 11th, it's beautiful blue clear skies.

15:10So had that storm been only 12 hours later, the whole world would have been different. But it wasn't. There's this story of a guy who was going for a meeting and I think it was his birthday. The lady that he worked with had got him one of these illustration ties, you know, sort of gaudy, hideous thing with drawings all over it. And he was wearing a shirt that clashed with it.

15:37And she gifted him this as they had coffee on the morning of September 11th, early, downtown Manhattan. And she says, "Look, your shirt's wrinkled and it really doesn't go with this tie. Wear the tie, it'll make you feel confident. It's a nice present for you." So, he goes back to the hotel, she goes to the North Tower. She dies. He's alive. How on earth are you supposed to say giving that tie was good or bad? You have no idea what's going to happen downstream from the things that occur.

16:09So, I know this guy who has a podcast and years ago, he like snapped his Achilles and could barely walk. And so, the crazy thing is is that many people in that I would have been like, "This is the worst thing that could have possibly happened." But because he had snapped his Achilles, he was like, "Well, I have to make the best of this. I have to do something. I might as well stick with that podcast that I said I was going to start." And then years later, he became a top 50 podcast in the world.

16:36And I think an amazing frame is you can make anything that feels circumstantially negative in the moment if you ask the question, "What would make this thing the best thing ever?" And so, I would argue maybe you would agree that you snapping your Achilles was probably the best thing that ever happened to you because it got you here.

16:59And right now, you probably have your version of the snapped Achilles that's going on in your life, but there's also the version of the top 50 in the world podcast that is waiting for you to take action as a result of your snapped Achilles. Real quick, if you're a business owner and you are not growing as fast as you'd like, I'd like to give you a free gift. So, my team and I put together the $100 million scaling roadmap, which is basically 200 hours of us looking over all the portfolio companies we've had and what stages of growth they went through and more importantly where they got stuck and how they got past it. And so we broke it into these 10 stages and we made this little kind of quiz thing where if you put in your business information, it'll tell you where you're at and the most important part for you, what to do for each of functions of the business across product, marketing, sales, customer success, recruiting, IT, human resources and finance. And so, no matter what you're struggling with, someone else has already struggled with it and solved it. And so I'd like to give you this thing absolutely free. You can go to acquisition.com/roadmap, plug in your business information and if you want us to actually help you deconstruct the business and you're trying to scale, we'd love to help you out. On the thank you page you can just book a call with my team and we will look at the business, see if we can help and if we can, we'll invite you out to Vegas and we'll do this in person live.