Articles - Page 30 of 36

Have a Kit Kat. You Will Surely Win!

If you have been to Japan you might know that in the land of the rising sun, Kit Kat reigns supreme.

With a plethora of seemingly odd flavors such as wasabi and green tea, Kit Kat is the King of Candy in Japan.

Why? How did this come to be?

You Will Surely Win

Well, it’s not just for its bright red packaging and tasty goodness.

The name Kit Kat is similar to a classic Japanese phrase, “Kitto Katsu,” which roughly translates into, “You will surely win.”

So in Japan, when you pick up a Kit Kat, it is more than a treat. Like a wedding band, it is a symbol with much deeper meaning.

In my world, we refer to such symbols as “anchors.”

The Power of Anchors

Like those that hold a ship steadfast at sea, an anchor keeps you tethered to something of special meaning.

If you were to visit my place in New York, you would see it filled with anchors.

On my hallway wall, a decal of a quote by French poet, Anatole France—”To accomplish great things, we must not only act, but also dream; not only plan, but also believe.”

Taking up half the wall in my kitchen, a quote by Canadian educator, Claude Bissell—“Risk more than others think is safe. Care more than others think is wise. Dream more than others think is practical. Expect more than others think is possible.”

In my office I am surrounded by enormous Yin Yang and Ohm decals, as well as Buddha, Ganesh, cats, dragons, and other symbols that lend me their power!

On my desk, benches, and tables you will see my coins stacked up; the anchor I give to my clients to reinforce our work together.

No matter what they are headed into or going through, by picking up my coin they are reminded that, as the decal in my study says, “The anchor holds in spite of the storm.”

Surround yourself with powerful anchors—You will surely win!

Hate Me For Telling You The Truth, But I Won't Lie

There is no limit to how far I will go to get what I want.

I’ve worked seven days a week since high school, and I imagine I will until the day they carry me out in a box.

It’s not work to me. Doing the things that matter to me. Driving my life. Making my life what I want it to be. This is living, to me.

The other day my buddy Paulo—an expert at Do What You Want!—said to me, “The absolute worst thing I can imagine is sitting on a beach!

“Rather than being bored, give me a board and a kite, and see how far the wind carries me.”

There’s a reason I get him and he gets me!

Skiing 101 days this year, while blasting through bumps, trees, and powder, I got through 80+ audio programs and recorded most of my next book.

I don’t work this way under the illusion of “getting somewhere.” This is living, to me.

If every single day I am not creating the most amazing life I can imagine, then what the fuck am I doing, is a mantra that has fueled me.

I work with my clients the same way.

My commitment to them is absolute. Their goals become my goals and I do everything I can to get them what they want, including, sometimes hurting them and me.

Last week I pushed one of my clients beyond her limit, and it might have ended us.

Sometimes when I fight, on the inside, I am cussing out my trainer. Pushing me harder and further than is comfortable, that feeling inside of me, that rage, that force, I direct at the person in front of me.

I know it’s not about him, but when he is the one pushing me through pain, I can’t help but put it onto him.

For my clients, I will push, and I am happy to take the force of their pain.

Every day of the week, every fucking minute, I will risk my fee and relationship to keep my client moving forward.

As fifteenth century Italian author, Pietro Aretino, said, “I love you, and because I love you, I would sooner have you hate me for telling you the truth than adore me for telling you lies.”

PODCAST: Red Pill? Blue Pill? Become THE ONE

“You may have spent the last few years looking for me, but I have spent my entire life looking for you,” Morpheus said to Neo in The Matrix.

After a matrix-like moment, in my first podcast, THE ONE, I put aside the script and pick up a more powerful topic—how are you creating your reality?

This is perhaps the most important topic to getting what you want.

You must begin with the idea that it is possible. No matter what has been your past, you must believe that you can make your reality what you want it to be.

In THE ONE, I share with you five principles for creating your reality, and walk you through a potent exercise I call Reality Room.

“You take the blue pill, the story ends…You take the red pill, you stay in wonderland, and I show you how deep the rabbit hole goes.”

You choose—PRESS PLAY

Nip And Tuck All You Like…Nothing Will Change

After two decades as a pioneer in plastic surgery, Dr. Maxwell Maltz put away the scalpel.

Adjusting their noses. Lips. Jaws. Eyes. Boobs. Seeing patients show up repeatedly, Maltz came to a powerful realization.

He could nip and tuck time and time again, but if his patients didn’t change the way they perceived themselves, their self-image, nothing would change.

As he wrote, “If the scalpel was magic, why did some people who acquired new faces go right on wearing their old personalities?”

In his revolutionary book, Psycho-Cybernetics—which has sold 30+ million copies and displays cover art gifted to him by Salvador Dali—Maltz highlights an often over-looked aspect of success and happiness.

Posing the question, “Why are the rich and powerful unhappy?” Maltz writes, “To really live, that is to find life reasonably satisfying, you must have an adequate and realistic self-image that you can live with. You must find yourself acceptable to you.”

And while this is a powerful prescription in itself, Maltz goes much further, laying out a mechanism for achieving any goal.

“In short, the goals you attempt to convey to this mechanism are filtered through the self-image,” wrote Maltz, “and if they are inconsistent with the self-image, they are rejected or modified.”

Maltz concluded that, not only must you be able to visualize your goals being achieved, you must develop the self-image of you being the person achieving them.

Take, for instance, an Olympic decathlete with her sights set on gold.

Not only must she be able to visualize an athlete winning gold, but she must imagine herself as the athlete standing in the center podium for all the world to see.

She’s not just seeing gold being won. She is building her self-image as the one winning gold.

An obese man with an enormous tush and a healthy goal must first build a healthy self-image, and the same is true for any goal.

Not only must you be able to visualize your goal happening, you must first see yourself as the person that is making it happen.

How Can You Love Your Life If You Don't Love Your Work?

How can you love your life if you don’t love what you do?

If two-thirds of your life is spent doing something you don’t love, how can you?

Back in the day I believed you could separate your work and life.

So even if you didn’t love your work, you could say, I work hard and play hard. Or, It affords me the choices to do the things I love, but today I see it differently.

When your plate is jammed with omelet, there is little room for pancakes.

We work too many hours to fit in the life we love on the side.

The old paradigms also imply that your work and life are mutually exclusive.

Rubbish!

This might have been true in the bad old days when most humans were laboring draught horses, but in this modern age it is much easier to do what you love (and make a barn-load of hay doing it).

But even if that isn’t possible for you.

Even if you don’t do what you love, you can still choose to love what you do.

You can love a party even if you don’t love every person in the room, and you can love your work even if you don’t love every hour.

Stop focusing on the things that you don’t love, and focus on the things you do.

Simply through practice you will learn to love what you do!

How can you love your life any other way?

Forget Criticism, Become Immune To Praise

There is an interesting notion in Vipassana meditation.

You see, when you sit for some time with your legs crossed under you, until you become expert at that posture, you suffer extraordinary pain.

At first it just feels uncomfortable.

Then your legs get that pins and needles feeling. And then it just hurts.

It pretty much just hurts for years, but you learn to work with the pain.

Work With The Pain

You don’t label it. You watch it expand and contract, move in waves, whatever it does.

You don’t try to resist it. You stop thinking, How long will this last?

You just sit with it.

Through working with the pain, you learn you are not the feeling body and the thinking mind.

Now, here is the thing.

Some teachers will say: well, why work with pain when you can work with pleasurable sensations in the body?

Some will even go so far as to say it is part of the teaching that they have harems of women.

It’s Easy To Fool Yourself With Pleasure

I call bullshit because of something I think legendary teacher, Shinzen Young, told me, or helped me see.

You can fool yourself with pleasure.

You can pretend that you have transcended, or perhaps mastered the body/mind, but why then be pulled toward the pleasure?

I used to think that the hard part about my job was becoming immune to criticism.

But as I got more into it, I realized that wasn’t the hard part.

You can become all badass and say, “I don’t care what other people think,” but if on the other side there is this small part of you that gets excited when someone likes a photo you took, or feels a hit of validation for every person who likes what you wrote, then what have you achieved?

You may be immune to criticism, but you are “controlled” by your cravings for praise.

If you want to truly become immune to criticism, begin the other way.

Become immune to praise.

The Eyes Are The Window To Influence

A devastating attack in kickboxing is to glance down at your opponent’s leg while at the same time kicking her in the head.

Where the eyes go so often does your attention.

Women who favor low-cut garb use this to their advantage.

Do YOU?

One of my clients has become an expert at using eye contact in meetings.

By establishing firm eye contact right away he asserts himself as someone of confidence and value.

Then throughout the meeting he plays with eye contact in many different ways.

Here’s just two.

To begin with, when the other person is talking he gives them 100% of his attention. With his eyes he is saying to them more than, I am listening and I hear you. He is saying, I deeply understand you.

This in itself is incredibly powerful, yet the real juice is what he’s setting up.

My photographer was telling me that when my eyes water and go a little red that they look more blue because of the principle of contrast. “It is the red that makes the blue pop,” as he put it.

And after having established a pattern of firm eye contact my client then selectively takes advantage of this same principle of contrast.

When the other person is talking about a topic that my client wants to avoid—such as what he likes about my client’s competition—he breaks eye contact and lets his eyes wander around the room.

Quickly the other person learns that some topics get him attention and others don’t.

And with a deep desire to keep feeling heard, he’s likely to keep steering himself to the topics that my client rewards with eye contact.

As you know, ONLY 20% OF COMMUNICATION is the words you use—80% is NON-VERBAL.

Whether you are kicking someone in the head or influencing any other way, the eyes are the window you crack open to get inside.

How Did Peter Dinklage Get So LUCKY?

peter-dinklage-on-being-cast-as-tyrion_o_2886451

Walking on tenth avenue, outside Star on 18 I ran into Peter Dinklage.

I rarely approach public figures I don’t know but this time I felt compelled.

Perhaps fearful of some clown about to ask him for a selfie, pulling out his earbuds he scowled at me as if to say, WTF?

But as I began talking he got smiling and we had a good chat.

I apologized for interrupting and told him that I only did because just yesterday I saw this quote from him that rocked me.

You often hear the notion that you make your own luck.

As far as I can tell this means being willing to do hard things long enough until other people label your success as “luck.”

What Does Jay Z Know?

In “Diamonds from Sierra Leone,” Jay Z raps, “I’m not a businessman, I’m a business, man!”

In his case it is entirely true.

Like Warren Buffett can move a stock 20% just by taking a position, Jay Z need only put his name on any stock to move it.

Records. Champagne. Clothing. Other people…You name it. With the Jay Z brand you are in business.

The same is true for my mate who struck a deal with Trey Songz to brand and market his sexy bottles of liquor.

With star power, his sales have exploded skyward!

One of my buddies is a photographer.

He used to think his business was what came out of the camera after the shoot, but today he sees his business is, just like his famous clients, in his name.

He gets hired to take photos, but his clients are only buying one thing—HIM.

When your name is on the gear, you are the business, man!

In the bad old days you got paid for being a company man, but today you must be driving the company, man!

If you are waiting for your company to drive your business, you might as well be driving Miss Daisy.

The best business people see them and their employer in partnership.

They bring the labor and the company provides the platform for them to build their business.

No matter what you do, you are the business, man!

Don't Be A Dick

Last week, former CEO of Lehman Brothers, Dick Fuld, broke his silence.

For the first time since the credit crisis he took to the stage to pontificate on topics mostly unrelated to his leadership in the biggest financial disaster in history.

Like many people, proving he learned nothing from the credit crisis, he pointed the finger.

It wasn’t his fault. It was the government’s emphasis on home ownership and the Federal Reserve that led to Lehman’s demise…

It is true. The government, The Fed, and lousy borrowers must take responsibility for their roles in the credit crisis, but so too must we on Wall Street.

Guns don’t kill people. Idiots kill people.

But the guy who sells the idiot the gun must take some responsibility, especially when he is minting money doing everything he can getting him to buy it.

Lehman didn’t fail because of bad borrowers or The Fed or the government. It failed because Dick ran his business like a gorilla.

In life we learn through experience, yet we only learn when we take responsibility.

Because the government, The Fed, Main Street, and Wall Street have continued to point fingers, we have only learned how to recreate the same conditions that led to the credit crisis in the first place.

We don’t need leaders who are blinded by their own hubris. We need leaders who are willing to speak the truth, and lead.

It’s like being a good parent.

As Dick said in his speech: “You know what, I feel sorry for all of you that don’t drink, ’cause when you wake up in the morning, that’s as good as you’re going to feel for the rest of the day. I told my children that for many years.”

Don’t be a Dick.

How Old Is 52?

I learned a lot from reading Ray Kroc’s autobiography, Grinding It Out.

Not only does he tell a fascinating story of how McDonald’s was built, but he also gives you keen insights into how he was built.

One fact that is particularly telling is disclosed in the preface.

As Paul Paganucci, Associate Dean of the Tuck School of Business writes:

“The title brings to mind the long apprenticeship of over thirty years during which Mr. Kroc worked for others as a salesman and sales manager…For the great opportunity of his life did not come until 1954 when he was fifty-two.”

And not only was Kroc approaching his sunset years, but like a prizefighter stepping into the ring, he was carrying the wounds of his previous battles.

As Kroc himself writes, “I had diabetes and incipient arthritis. I had lost my gall bladder and most of my thyroid gland in earlier campaigns.”

Yet, as he continues, “I was a battle-scarred veteran of the business wars, but I was still eager to go into action.”

And perhaps most importantly: “I was convinced that the best was ahead of me.”

What is age but a number?

Is it not like the rings of a tree, only seen from the inside-out?

The question is not, how old are you?

It is, how old are you being?

Like the ninety-five-year-old spry Captain America, we all know people well beyond fifty who are more energized than many people in their twenties.

It’s not about age, but vitality.

And vitality is all about having something that gets you so excited to feel young!

Just F'n Get Going!

The hardest thing I have done is write my first book.

I’ve done some hard things in my day but it all seems easy relative to writing The Guide.

Of course it would have been easier if I could actually write! But even then writing is notoriously hard.

There are many quotes from writers, such as Dorothy Parker’s, “I hate writing, I love having written.”

And in perhaps the best book on this subject, The War of Art, Stephen Pressfield writes:

“The most important thing about art is to work. Nothing else matters except sitting down every day and trying.”

Over time it got fun for me as I learned to stop thinking too much.

So rather than sitting down to write, and thinking about writing, and thinking about what I just wrote, and analyzing words, and sentences, and paragraphs, instead you learn to get in the flow and keep moving.

Writer of the James Bond novels, Ian Fleming, said, “Never look back, if you look back you are sunk, just keep writing, the story is everything.”

Like a fat kid on skis, once you have momentum it is easy to keep going.

And if you keep going, you will keep making progress.

And if you keep making progress, you will inevitably finish.

Whether it be improving your career, changing your job, transforming your life, or any other project, sitting down and getting started is the most important and often the hardest part.

Like writing a book and thinking about the thousands of pages of mess in front of you, you can become over-whelmed and fail to take any steps.

Yet a book comes together by working at it consistently day by day and getting what you want happens the same way.

Just f’n get going!

"How Can I Make This A Plus10 Experience?"

This tool is so potent that my client wrote “+10” on the inside of his wrist as a reminder to practice.

Truth be told, it’s not a revolutionary idea, and it isn’t even my own.

It’s a practice I love from one of Tony Robbins’ PowerTalk! episodes from back in the early 90s.

He called it quality quantifiers. And rather than share with you all the setup, let me just give you the answer, which like Jeopardy is in fact a question.

At every moment, ask yourself:

How can I make this a Plus10 (or “+10”) experience?

So, right now, on a scale of minus 10 to plus 10, how do you rate your experience?

Suppose you said, “I’m feeling great today, I’m about an eight.”

Now ask yourself: How can I be a ten?

You might say, “Well, if I was hanging out by the pool with a cocktail and a bunch of friends,” but that’s not the exercise.

This isn’t about changing how you feel by changing your circumstances. It is about changing your experience of any circumstance by changing how you think and feel.

So you might say, “Well I could be a Plus10 if I was focused on why what I’m doing today really matters to me.”

Then you might start to think about why your goals matter to you. What is important to you and how does what you are doing today fit your goals?

Just by getting fired up about these topics you might be getting closer to a nine.

Then you might say, “What if I started to laugh and smile more, and have more fun like I’m hanging out by the pool?”

How would that move you closer to a Plus10?

This is just one example of how you might use this powerful tool and I’m sure you can see how potently you can change any experience.

From feeling anxious or angry or frustrated or helpless or depressed to minus 10, you can guide yourself to less negative and more positive experiences.

And even your best experiences you can easily jack up a notch.

Just ask the question: How can I make this a Plus10 experience?

No Goals, No Game

Without goals a football field is an empty plot of grass.

But with goals, now you have a game!

Have A Target

In my Do What You Want books I wrote:

“You do not need to read book after book or study after study to know that setting goals is important to getting what you want. If you are firing a gun, you already know that you damn well better have a target.”

Yet few people clearly define targets for their career and life.

They might have a loose idea of where they are headed, but like an offensive line just moseying down the pitch, you rarely score that way.

Goals = Focus

Getting started, a new client said to me, “I get goals are important, but what is the real purpose of defining my goals?”

One word: “Focus.”

When you clearly define your goals you know what does and doesn’t matter to you and you know how to prioritize your time.

And because no spare time is going to magically appear for you to put towards your goals, getting what you want is a matter of focus and prioritizing your time.

Without clear goals, many people are running ragged chasing dozens of balls around an empty field, but if you want to win the game of life, you need focus. You need goals.

And although many people turn goal setting into a complex and painful exercise, it should be fast, easy, and fun:

Right now, take a moment to get excited about what you want and why you want it, then write down three clear goals and three actions you are now committed to taking.

Set Higher Standards, Work Less To Get There

As an analyst at Goldman I was fortunate to work with two top associates.

Goldman Australia was a small office at the time, a dozen or so crack troops who absurdly thought of ourselves like SEAL Team Six.

We were the elite of the elite, we had to be.

To get the only job Goldman offered in Australia in my year, I had the best grades— likely of anyone in the country.

Joining Goldman I thought I was the bees knees. Little did I know I had only been playing baby bee.

I was lucky to work with two leaders (both went on to run big businesses) who day and night showed me that to keep playing on this team I had to keep raising the bar.

In school I thought I had worked around the clock, but watching the sunrise from my seat on the 48th floor of the Governor Phillip Tower overlooking Sydney Harbour, at Goldman I learned this was literal. I had another 20 to 30 hours a week in me.

I thought I had strong attention to detail and I set for myself incredibly high standards, but they showed me there was a higher level.

Although I was regularly working 100+ hour weeks, I absolutely loved that first year at Goldman, testing and pushing my limits.

A new standard had been set for me and I was 100% engaged in meeting it.

While this led me to great results, being promoted early to associate after just two years, the greater benefit was learning I could keep pushing my limits.

This is the power of setting for yourself higher and higher standards.

Often people tell me that they are doing everything they can to get what they want, but it only takes them about three minutes with me to realize they have been playing JV.

My job is to develop processes and tools that drive top human performance and help others reach this standard.

Unlike my Goldman days, however, I show them how to work less to get there…

Many Bad Marriages In One Formula

You see this formula over and over again in bad marriages.

Men and women have different needs.

The woman is seeking more emotional fulfillment, the man more physical.

When the relationship is physical, the man thinks it’s all good, and when there is an emotional connection, the woman thinks it is.

But then it goes awry.

She begins to feel her emotional needs aren’t being met (which is almost inevitable because, having never been taught, many of us men are emotionally incompetent).

Unable to talk to him about it, she holds out on sex and intimacy.

Now his physical needs are unmet. Unable to talk about it, he gets frustrated, which creates more emotional distance, which increases her unmet emotional need.

She blames him and he blames her.

If they still care, they fight it out or worse they go to a therapist.

Like he’s not part of the problem, he says, “I just want you to be happy.”

She says, “Well you aren’t making me happy.”

He says, “It’s not my job to make you happy.”

And the more they talk about it, the less happy they get, and the more their physical and emotional needs remain unmet.

What’s the solution?

It’s shockingly easy to fix, but only if they are willing to evolve.

How Can I Make This Easier For You?

I wonder if I am catching you in the same trap that once trapped me.

Reading thousands of books I found myself overwhelmed with ideas but without much more clarity on what I needed to do.

I resolved to leave Wall Street and make this easy, yet as I read back through my newsletters I wonder if I am making this more complicated for you.

Really, it is so damn simple:

1. Decide what you want: Stop wavering, get over your smallness, fire up your beliefs, decide what you want and commit yourself to getting it.

2. Establish a process: No matter what you want, getting it is merely a series of steps that you take every day. What are those steps?

3. Take action: Every day do the things that you decided to do.

4. Grow: Read, learn new skills, and change the way you think to keep you growing and moving towards what you want.

And, perhaps most importantly, HAVE FUN!

Really, have fun, enjoy taking your life to a new level!

Enjoy challenging yourself, doing new and exciting things, becoming more, and getting more of what you want!

Tell me, if it is this simple, where might you be trapped?

Do You Do It Good Or Do It Better?

Although Steve Jobs was a perfectionist, he brilliantly grasped the power of evolutionary change.

If you contrast iPhone 6 to the first generation iPhone, while you see obvious similarities, you clearly see just how far the device has progressed.

When Jobs first presented iPhone in 2007, it was a radical revolution in technology.

We take it for granted today, but back then bringing to market a fully integrated phone, web browser, and email device was an enormous leap forward.

Beyond that, Jobs brought to us technological revolutions that have become mainstream, such as the touch screen.

But although iPhone was an enormous advancement, it was also merely the base upon which Apple would keep innovating.

Comparing my iPhone 5s to my iPhone 6s, I see just how far their evolutionary leaps keep taking them.

The innovations might be more subtle these days, but in form-factor, weight, and look and feel alone, iPhone 6 is a significant upgrade.

Of course when iPhone was first presented at the Macworld conference, it was the pinnacle of technological advancement.

It was as good as it could get at that point in time.

And the genius of Jobs wasn’t just to re-imagine the phone, it was to keep evolving iPhone to make it the best it can be.

Good companies and good people do good things.

Great companies and great people take what they do good and constantly seek to evolve and do it better.

Projecting More BS

You cannot project what you do not have.

A flashlight cannot project light if it has no source.

And a person cannot project confidence if they do not feel it.

It is impossible to project more gravitas, you can only have more gravitas.

People talk about projecting more personal power, but people with personal power don’t need to project it.

A body builder doesn’t need to be standing in his undies flexing his muscles for you to see his bulge.

Often in life we are focused on how we are perceived by others, when ultimately others see us for who we expect them to see.

We all know women who lack beauty but have a magical attractive quality to them.

We know men who are five foot six who carry themselves like they are giants.

And we know men who are giants, who on the inside see themselves as small, and this is how we know them to be.

A man can put on a bespoke suit but if he sees himself as a derelict you will quickly see through the fancy attire.

A worker sitting in his office thinking he’s an imposter and that it is only a matter of time before others figure it out, has already been figured out.

To lead you must first convince yourself before you can lead others.

To project yourself as you want to be seen, simply be that you.

You will be seen.

Remembering Dave Goldberg

Last week, Dave Goldberg, beloved Silicon Valley founder and CEO of SurveyMonkey and Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg’s husband, suddenly died.

He was 47.

Little has been said about his death, but read through his Facebook page and you hear from many people he touched the stories of his life.

You see whether it be as a leader in business, as a friend, or just in his company, he was a man who brought a spark to those around him.

He was adored.

I met Dave only once, last year at a charity poker tournament that he and Sheryl hosted at their home in Menlo Park.

Dave was a top poker player and you could see in this room surrounded by poker pros and his friends he was in his element.

After I quickly burned through my chips, wandering around their home I came across a large-scale wall of digital photos of him, Sheryl, and the family, where I stood for a good fifteen minutes enjoying watching their fun memories.

We all die, but how many of us truly live?

Dave truly lived!

When lives are taken so suddenly and at such a young age, we ask, “Why?”

Why not?

Every day we are lucky to be here, we are all living on borrowed time.

Theologian Robert H. Smith wrote, “The clock of life is wound but once, and no man has the power to tell just when the hands will stop.”

If time were to stop ticking for you today, how would you feel about your life?

If you knew you only had five more years of ticks, what are the things that you would now do differently?