The Speech to Inspire Masses - Will Napolini
So after that introduction by Mark, we have a lot of history together and I'm very grateful for the kind words he said.
I have had the privilege of interacting with him, knowing him indirectly for about 25 years and certainly directly for the last 15 years of this journey.
And it's so amazing to watch Dreamforce grow from 1300 people to 135,000 5 million people online.
This man has created like a festival. It's like a music festival for geeks.
Can we have a hand for Mark for this creation he's done here called Dreamforce? It's truly amazing.
And what touches me most about Mark is his commitment to really find a way to add value.
We all know in this room there's only one way you succeed long term.
Anybody can get lucky, do something for a period of time.
But real success in any measure whatsoever comes when you do more for others than anybody else.
There's no other way to do it.
You find a way to add more what? Value.
And if we find a way to add more value, we can be superior in the marketplace, but we can also be superior in our own lives.
We can enjoy our lives at a different level. We have a different set of pride.
That isn't fake, it's not ego.
Ego is when you try to make it better than it is. And you know the truth is it's not.
But when you really are in a position hello.
When you're in a position where you own what you're about and you know what you're here to deliver, and you delivered on a significant scale, then you have an opportunity to really experience not only success, but fulfillment.
And this conference has gotten bigger and bigger, not only in its size, but also in its impact.
And so I'm really privileged to be back with you here.
And I know you're raising, working to raise a million meals and I'm very, very into hunger, to say the least, primarily because I was so hungry at stage of my life.
And my life was completely changed because when I was eleven years old, we had no money and no food, and we gotten used to that, but it was Thanksgiving, which makes it more emotional.
And my parents were saying and doing things that after you say them, you can never take them back.
And it was very profoundly painful, obviously for myself as the oldest and trying to keep my brother and sisters from hearing it, but it profoundly changed because that day something changed my life.
And it was somebody simply coming and delivering food.
And it wasn't the person wasn't giving it, it was a delivery guy.
And it wasn't a happy moment for my father.
Mad mom and dad are yelling each other.
My mom's saying things to my father, you haven't taken care of us.
And the door happens, and I go open the door, and there's this tall guy standing there with these big bags of food.
And on the ground beside him, he had this pan with uncooked turkey.
And he said, Is your father here?
And I sprinted to get my dad thinking this was going to be the most euphoric moment you could possibly imagine.
Like God had come by and surprised us.
Somebody cared about us, whatever you wanted to frame it.
And my father came to the front door.
Begrudgingly when he saw the man, he got very angry, and he said, we don't take charity. And he went to slam the door.
And the man was a very tall guy, and he put his arm or shoulder against it.
It kind of bounced off of him.
And he said, sir, this is not charity.
Everybody has tough times, and somebody knows you're in need, and they want you to have a beautiful Thanksgiving.
My father got even more intense and starts saying, I don't accept charity.
And this time, the man put his foot there and it bounced off of it.
And then he said something to my father that I thought my father would hit him.
He looked at my father and said he looked at me in the background and said, don't let your family suffer because of your ego.
My father didn't know what to do. He grabbed the food, he slammed it down and slammed the door.
And I tell you the story, because everything in our life is controlled by three decisions.
And those three decisions I'd like you to look at today because I really want to deliver for you. I didn't come here to do a speech.
And you all giving the greatest gift you have your time.
You can get your money back, but you can't get your time back.
And so I really want to serve you.
And I think one of the most powerful things we could do to serve you is, have you become clear of what the controlling force is that's controlling the quality of your life?
And you and I both know it's not the amount of money in your pocket.
It's not who you know, it's not even what you've been through.
It's really the decisions you make moment to moment about a couple of different things.
And the three decisions I made in that moment that I'd like to pull your attention to just real quick are in this moment, you're making these three decisions.
By the way, the first one is, what are you going to focus on.
In that day, my father focused clearly on the fact that he had not taking care of his family. And whatever you focus on, you're going to feel.
In fact, many of us in this room who's ever focused on something, you were thinking, something horrible is going to happen.
You experienced the pain of that failure or that challenge in your life, and then it never, ever happened. Who said this experience? Say I.
And if things aren't bad in your life, you can always think of shit that hasn't even happened yet.
You feel bad in advance, but many people do.
Because whatever you focus on, you'll feel, write it down.
Because if you start to take control of your focus, you take control of your life.
But that day, he focused on the fact that clearly he had failed his family.
The second decision you make is, what does it mean?
As soon as you look at something, think about something, focus on it, he goes like, what does this mean?
Is this the beginning or the end?
Is God trying to hurt me or trying to challenge me?
Or is this nothing to do with God?
I was just being a lazy bastard, right?
The meanings we give to things control our life.
If you think it's the end of a relationship, are you going to behave the same way as you think it's the beginning of a relationship?
In the beginning of a relationship, when you're totally in love with someone, what will you do for them? Tell me.
What will you do when you're totally in love?
Make the sound of what it's like when you're totally in love out of your mind.
Just go and make that sound like a primal sound of what that feel like.
So we get some energy in this room.
It's been a long time for some of you.
How about pulling love and passionately desiring this person?
Like you can't wait to touch them, make love to them, be with them.
Make the sound of what that would be like. Go ahead. Nice and loud.
So when you have the meaning that this is the beginning of the relationship and this person's most incredible thing, and you will do what for them, what will you do?
What if you were that way with your client?
What if you're that way with your internal customers?
Because your partners, you go, well, if you have real sexual problems with HR, that would be a real challenge.
But if the commitment was the same when you're in that place, you do anything.
In the beginning of relationship, in the beginning of relationship, if your partner said, Would you take out the trash?
What do you say, take out the trash happily.
But after about seven days or seven weeks or seven months or seven years or 70 years, one day someone said, we take out the trash.
Go. What? Do I look like you're Janitor? You go.
What happened to our passion? I'll give you a clue.
If you want a relationship to last, if you think it's coming to the end, do what you did in the beginning and there won't be an end.
Because when you think it's the beginning, you behave differently than the end.
The meaning we associate to things controls our entire lives.
It's not that your mother or father died.
It's the meaning you think it shouldn't have happened. And we take control of the meaning. It's the only thing we can control our lives.
And we're living now where technology is happening so rapidly, it's magnificent what it does for our lives.
But we all know with that technology, our psychology is not developing as rapidly.
And as a result, the world's changing.
And there are a lot of us that have learned to engage with technology and use it to maximize most people in this room.
But there's lots of people who use technology to disengage, to be harmful to themselves and to other people.
So I'm interested in how to maximize the psychology side, and that's why I'm sharing this with you.
So you can increase both your leadership skill, but who do you have to lead first to be effective?
Yourself. And so good to see what's controlling you.
Well, what I'm focusing on is controlling me.
You can focus on something and make yourself crazy.
And most of great in this moment, you could be worried about ebola, because we all know it's coming.
People are freaked out all over the world. 36,000 people die a year of flu, and the whole world is focused on ebola because the news is not designed to inform you.
It is designed to startle you, because that's how you sell things.
So if you let someone else take control of your focus, your life will be in someone else's hands.
You're going to focus. Second meaning.
My father that day focused that he hadn't taken care of his family.
And the meaning was, I know what it was because he said it out loud.
When you come up with a meaning, it produces an emotion.
And if you and I want to look at the quality of our life, there's only way to find it.
If every day of your life you got a billion dollars and every day you feel guilty or angry?
By the way, nothing worse than an angry rich man or woman, isn't there? Just want to slap them, don't you?
How do you have the right to be angry?
But if you got a billion dollars and you're angry and you're pissed off and you're guilty all the time, what is the quality of your life?
Angry, pissed off and guilty if you have nothing. I live in Fiji a portion of the time.
I have a home there and a resort there and kind of two families of villages there that I interact with the last 25 years.
And when you go to Fiji and you walk down the street or you drive by, people jump up and they yell, Boolabulla, boola.
Be happy. We love you. And you drive by five minutes later and they jump up, boolabulla, boola.
And you're going like, what drugs are they taking?
No one's paying them. But they're so happy. They're in such a different state.
They've learned to focus on something else and come up with a different meaning for life.
But if the meaning is it's the end?
If the meaning is that you're dissing me, if the meaning is you don't care, whatever meaning we come up with, that affects the third decision, which is, what am I going to do?
And what people do is based on the meaning, because the meaning creates emotion, right?
You can be miserable no matter what you have, and you can be euphoric having nothing.
In fact, is it possible to learn to let, for example, all hell could be breaking loose around you and you could just be sitting in a chair in this centered space, all hell breaking loose, and you could still feel great.
Is that possible? Yes or no? Yes or no?
Sure. But you and I live in a Western culture.
Well, if you sit and bliss out, people come and take your furniture.
So we have to be good at not only controlling the internal world, but our external world. And that's shaped by what we do.
And what people do is based on their emotions and also their role models.
So I thank you, Mark, and I thank all of you that are role models for people, where you show people that success does not mean taking, that success can mean truly growing and giving that money, resources and opportunity are things to be shared.
They're things that are tools for a quality of life that you're able to enhance for people and for yourself and your family.
My father that day decided what to do was if I failed and I've been worthless to my family, I must leave.
And to me, it was the worst day of my life.
I loved him more than anything.
He's the one I finally got attached to.
I was like, Mom, I'm confused.
But then finally, years later, I got the benefit of it because out of all those experiences and all that pain.
That day, I made three different decisions.
First decision, as I just decided to focus on something different than him.
We get to decide what to focus on.
And my decision, number one, is I want to focus on the fact there's food.
But the most powerful thing that changed my life was meaning I said, what does this mean?
Because my father had always said, my mother had always said, nobody gives a shit.
And that day, I had physical evidence.
Those you bringing food, I want you to know that's not just food.
That's called love for someone.
That's called hope for someone.
That's called surprise for someone.
And that day, for me, I went, Strangers care.
And so I started caring about strangers, and I decided, someday I'm going to do the same.
So when I was 17, I've had two families. It was like one of the most incredible experiences of my life.
I was all excited, saved up all my money, went to the manager and said, I want to feed two families.
It's not for me. Give me a discount.
But I went out and I delivered this food.
And ironically, I called this church and I asked in the barrier a particular place.
Where are some families in need?
I wasn't going to be acknowledged.
I also didn't want someone to be insulted because I saw what happened to my father.
And I wrote a note, said, this is a note from a friend.
And I said, I just want you to know we know you're having difficult times.
And I want you to have a beautiful Thanksgiving and please feel love.
And someday, if you can do well enough to do this for one other family and pass it on.
And I had it written in Spanish as well.
And I'll never forget first place.
I pull up in this rotten old van, stick shift van that I borrowed from a buddy of mine with all these bags of food.
And I went into this place and got out, pulled up this little tiny building, really tiny, knocked on the door.
And when I knocked on the door, this little woman opened the door.
It's probably half my size, which is not hard. I'm six, seven, so she's like, five two.
And she looked up at me like this, and she saw the groceries, and she screamed, and she started, grabbed my head and pulled it down to kiss me.
God gift. And she didn't speak English.
She crying again, trying to kiss me again.
There's a table there. I put the food down, and I went over to get some more groceries.
And when I did, four children come running out, and one hits my leg and wouldn't let go.
And when they saw the pumpkin pie, it was over.
And it was one of the most emotional experience of my life because first of all, this little boy just wouldn't let go.
And I delivered this food, and this woman was crying and smiling.
And I stayed there just to take it in for a few minutes.
Seeing them all, it was like going back in time.
And then as I went to go leave, I couldn't speak Spanish, and she was, like, trying to say something in Spanish.
And it was Thanksgiving, so I said, at least not be bad.
I heard the song, okay? And she laughed and laughed.
One of the more beautiful experiences of life, isn't it?
When you can have both those experiences in your body simultaneously.
And I remember I got in the van, and all the three, four kids were sitting on the bench here, and she's standing there waving.
And I pulled and go in reverse.
I looked in the mirror, and as I looked in the mirror, I saw these kids there, and I saw mom crying and smiling still.
I started crying uncontrollably.
And I'm, like, trying to put something in gear through tears come through my eyes.
I mean, this is a beautiful thing.
And then I realized what a gift that day was.
I realized that my worst day of my life was my best day.
And my goal for you, if you don't already have it, my guess is you've already done it knowing where you are in your world today, but maybe your second worst day.
Because out of every tragedy, out of every pain, it only gets healed when we find a deeper meaning, when we find there's a higher purpose in it.
And I realize I wouldn't have been there that day.
I wouldn't have that hunger to help somebody else if that's I hadn't had the hunger in my own soul at one point missing.
And I want to thank all of you that made the contributions.
And I told Mark and I've announced that I'm going to match the million meals if you hit it, and I'm sure as hell expecting that you will.
And when I told that, then Mark said, I'll match that lead to love like so mark's matches.
So if you do the million, we're going to do 3 million here.
So that's the way to play the game, I think.
And so I'm excited about what that possibility is.
And I'm personally also, November 18, I'm going to feed 50 million people.
And the reason I tell you this and I'll get off the soapbox, but I want you to think about what's going to create meaning for you.
Because money by itself won't do it, but impact will.
An impact can be with your own child spending more time with it doesn't have to be anything to do with contribution any other way.
You can contribute to your own family.
But contribution is what makes us feel fully alive.
And I'm doing that because I don't know if you're aware of it, but a year ago last summer, congress cut the budget for what was traditionally called food stamps by $8.7 billion.
billion is the equivalent of every family they support going without food for one week a month or twelve months out of the year.
And all the nonprofits are trying to support that.
So I'm partnering with Feeding America and I started writing this book, and I thought, I'm going to donate all the profits of the book.
And then I was like, that's not enough. And I thought, well, I'll get matching donations and I'll raise the bar.
And as time has gone by, I finally decided I'm going to do 50 million myself and I'm looking to raise 100 million.
That's in addition to the million I'm doing here.
So you want to help, you're welcome to and Feeding America is my partner, and we're working for matching funds to get to 100 million people.
I'm already to 67 million, just with some friends of mine before we even launch it.
I don't actually do it because it's a heavy or something.
I do it because you can't do it because it's fun.
Do it because research shows that when it comes to money, buying things will never make you happy.
Doesn't mean you shouldn't have some nice things.
I'm sure you do too, but it's not going to give you happiness.
Buying experiences can make you happy.
By the way, people say money doesn't matter.
They don't know where to shop.
Because there's some experiences you can buy that are extraordinary.
Who's got some experiences, some trips, some things you've done with the family or friends that will live with you for years.
Who knows what I'm talking about here, right?
Those things that money can be a really valuable tool there.
If you can find enough, add value and have money and do those experiences, how cool.
I'll tell you what else money research shows will do.
People always say money doesn't matter once you get to a certain level.
You can spend $5 a month and have more emotional juice, and it can be measured all the way down into your saliva by hormonal changes.
You want to use money, not let money use you.
So another thing it'll do it is getting rid of drudgeries.
Who here loves to pay for shit you don't want to do, right?
Who likes to have someone else be able to do that if at all possible, right?
Because once you do that, those Rudgers are gone.
And with time, you can spend more time with your passions, the things that matter for you that you can do in the world, that share in the world.
And the third thing and the third thing that gives people the most enjoyment on money, just so you know, is actually giving it away.
And nobody believes that until you do it.
Now, if you don't give a dime out of a dollar, you're not going to give 100 million out of a billion ever.
The places start wherever we are.
And if you do, I think you can find is enormous enjoyment in that process.
And I think you also find if there's somebody you love, you do something for it's even more.
And I want to now make sure in the time that you're here, let's kick this in gear and let's talk about three things that can truly change the quality of your life.
Number one, first of all, if you make new decisions about the focus on try this just for a moment.
Take a deep breath in, exhale and give it a moan.
Then make it a sexual moan and thoroughly enjoy it.
That was much longer and deeper.
I like that. That was good. One more time.
Deep breath in and give it a moan.
Now, one of the things that I want to talk to you about here tonight, this afternoon, is really simple, and that is everyone here is in business.
And there's a problem that all businesses have.
We're in the most competitive environment we've ever been in.
We went from, what, 500 million people being online to a couple billion people being online.
And in the next four years, they're saying we're going to have 3 billion more online.
That means this entire world is a bigger market if you're the person that adds more value.
It also means you're going to have more competitors than you've ever seen in your life.
How many think the economic world that we're in today is going to stay the way it is?
Okay, how many think that the economic environment is going to go through seasons, we're going to have some more ups and downs as we adjust to what's happening in the world here, say I.
Well, then if we know that our goal, you and I, as leaders should be to anticipate that in fact, everyone in this room is a leader of something, whether you're the leader of the company or whether you're a leader of department, whether you're a parent or hopefully you're a leader or not a follower.
If you're a leader, you've got to exercise that skill.
And so I want to talk to you about that and one of the most important skills of that.
But most people don't exercise that leadership because they're dropping behind in their skill sets.
And I'll give you an example of what I mean. How many of you in this room?
I want an honest answer and I'd like you to yell the answer and raise your hand if you would, please.
How many of you in this room have ever experienced the absolute total humiliation of playing a video game against the child?
Scream I if you've done this experience.
Oh, come on, let me hear you. What happens when you play the child?
Why? Is it because they're faster?
Is that they're smarter, they're younger, their neurons are functioning at a quicker tempo.
You're a mother, a father, you're an uncle or an aunt, your grandfather, grandmother.
You're a friend of the family, you're looking for a gift.
We live in a tech world, in a world where today children play with an iPad and learn how to use it before they know how to tie their shoes.
I was in Mark yesterday with his daughter for six year old six year old birthday, and we're talking about things and she's got these Legos and a friend of ours says, oh, my six year old goes on the iPad, searches on YouTube for videos on how to build cool stuff using Legos and starts to study how to build all these structures.
That's the world we're in, that our kids are in at six years old. And imagine what else they're searching for and finding at six years old.
So here we are, this technology, and most of us are not seeing what it's doing for us.
So you sit down with this child who's high tech.
You're not even the techies in this room aren't usually as gamers.
I know there are plenty of gamers in the room, but there's plenty of not.
And then what does the child do?
The child says, oh, come on, go look, I'm not good at this.
This is for you. Come on, uncle. Come on, Auntie.
Come on, mom. Come on, dad. It's my birthday.
They use the guilt approach, don't they?
You finally break down, okay, now you should know you're being set up.
When they go, you go first, right?
And they go, look, it's really simple.
You just shoot these guys, it all drops down.
You think, okay, I'm going to show this little bastard I can do a thing or two here, right?
Take out the gun you're choosing and you're dead in 2.3 seconds.
Whose experiences say I, now what happens to the child in about 45 minutes?
Later you get your second turn.
And then now you're really pissed.
You're dedicated, you're devoted, you're focused, you're going to take this thing out.
You lost 4 seconds and you're dead out of the side of the head.
Again, who's had this experience say I, why does the child always win?
It's because they're smarter. It's because they're stronger.
No, it's because they played this game before.
As a result, they have the secret to success.
And if you know the road ahead, you have an incredible power called anticipation.
Anticipation is the ultimate advantage.
See, winners, leaders, anticipate, losers react.
The reason you get beat is you don't know where things are happening, so you're reacting.
Reaction is always stressful and yet so much of our life is predictable.
If we just were to study it, not be caught up in our day to day. It's predictable.
The challenges you're going to have in your relationships or with your kids, or with your body, or with your job or with your economics, or with your mother in law or father in law, these are predictable.
And if you were to anticipate these things and put a strategy in place, you could take it all out and have the quality of life that you deserve. In business, it's everything.
Those that anticipate, those that lead and then there's those that follow the followers are the reactionaries.
So the more we can anticipate and you can't anticipate and lead unless you first learn how to lead yourself at a different level.
And so I'd love to have you just see that if you and I can start to take control of our focus and we can start to control the meaning of our lives and make something really that meaning that empowers us.
Because look, what's wrong is always available, isn't it?
There's always an ebola, a bird flu, there's always something that's going to kill the entire human race tomorrow on TV and then there's your life.
What's wrong is always available and so is what's right.
And you have to take control of that focus because otherwise you become the follower and you get to live your life even though you're a smart person.
We're all smart, but it's easy to get led astray by everybody else's focus, isn't it?
And then all of a sudden let them create the meaning for us and then all of a sudden we're settling for a life far less than what we desire or deserve.
So my approach is really simple.
My approach is to say, let's you and I just for a few little time we have here, by the way, this, to me is a little time, a couple of hours, two and a half hours, I guess, at this stage, because kind of the minimum length of seminar I do is 50 hours.
50. And you go, Are you kidding me?
I don't like to hear myself talk.
I like to see people do things so often they build muscle, not just thoughts.
And so one of the things I'm going to ask you to do in a few minutes is we're going to go from this passive mode that you're in right now into full engagement.
Because if you get fully engaged, it's amazing what you can accomplish and do when you're partially engaged.
You get a little bit of result when you're disengaged.
We all know what you get nothing.
And we live in a society where most of us are so overwhelmed, there's so much information.
We're not having a problem with information.
We're being drowning in information, but we're starving for wisdom.
And so we got to separate it out.
And so one way to separate it out is I'd like to talk to you about three things that can help you increase your performance and your life.
Because what I'm obsessed by and have been for 37 years is what can increase performance for an individual or an organization?
But also I'm equally obsessed about what's going to make somebody fulfill because who's had this horrible experience?
Who here has ever achieved your goal?
And then your brain said, is this all there is?
Who's had this experience here? Say I.
And that's worse than failing.
At least when you fail, your brain could say, I can figure this out and do it again a new way.
But when you succeed and you're miserable, you're basically technically screwed.
So what I want to make sure that you and I do is we set ourselves up to be able to win.
So there's three things I'd like to walk you through.
One, I'd like to walk you through out of the competitive edge that's going to get you both the performance you want at the highest level and also the fulfillment you want.
Because if you want to know my view, I can tell you there's two master lessons in life.
Lesson one is the science of achievement.
If you want an extraordinary life, if you want a magnificent life which by my definition has nothing to do with me, it's life on your terms.
Some of you, what's an extraordinary life. It's having cool little company.
For some of you, it's having a big billion dollar company.
For some of you, it's not a company.
It's three wonderful children that you totally love and adore and spend time with.
It's making a difference in the environment.
It's different for all of us, it's life on your terms.
But if you're going to have an extraordinary life, you need to master, number one, the science of achievement, which most of you are damn good at, or you wouldn't be in this room, right?
You know how to go from where you are, have a vision, make it real.
Speeding that up, that's my business.
When Mark talked about he actually showed me the other day.
We were together a couple of days ago, and he showed me the very first day he did his V Two mom, which is really a simple way of saying, what do you really want?
What's your vision, your validity is, why do you want it?
And walking through the obstacles and the solutions and strategies to get where you want to go.
He showed me on the back of an American Express bill where they designed on the very first day salesforce.
And there you see that day where he engaged.
He engaged in his vision. Instead of settling for a life that someone else had designed, he had a great life, extraordinary life.
Top guy at Oracle, working for one of the most brilliant people on the face of the Earth.
Can you imagine how hard it would be to leave there and start something from scratch?
But he had something larger that he wanted.
So how do you do that? How do you get yourself there? You got to understand the science of achievement.
But I know so many people I get the call from most successful in the world.
Business person, politician, leader of some sort, economic leader, financial trader.
And they call me up, and they want me to change something in their business.
But I know what they really want.
They really want to find fulfillment still, because success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure.
Right? You make everybody else feel great.
I mean, it's a horrible example.
But we all know an extraordinary spirit that took his own life just recently.
Probably lit up more human beings than almost anybody alive when it comes to humor and joy.
He made everybody else feel happy but himself. It's sad.
You don't want that to be you.
If there's any gift he can give besides his joy is the evidence of what you want to move towards.
Nobody in this room is going to move towards that, but we do it at a low level.
We die a little bit along the way by giving up what we really desire and believe in.
And my goal is to make sure to see if we could wake that up.
And by the way, fulfillment is as unique as our people achievement.
There's laws. You do this money, there are laws. Your body, there's laws.
We all have biochemical special, unique identities, but there's certain fundamentals.
If you do them in mass, you're going to be overweight.
If you do them differently, you're going to be fit and strong.
But fulfillment is as unique as art.
Art is what one person thinks is beautiful, somebody else can think is ugly, and that's perfectly fine.
Have you ever gone to an art museum and you see this big red square, and they go, $10 million?
You go, you got to be kidding me.
$10 million for a freaking square?
Look at the texture, the fab, the taste, the flavor.
I can taste the paint from here.
They have a different way of being fulfilled, right?
So those are two kind of lessons of life.
So this is what I like to do to help you with both those today, if you want to play with me.
Number one, let's take a look at what will give you the edge.
Who's up for having a competitive edge in anything you do? Say I.
And it's not positive thinking.
It's something you can test, because the edge is what's going to get more out of you.
Second, I'd like to show you how to create a breakthrough. Who.
Here is an area of your life where there's something you've struggled with for a while, and you're sick of struggling with it, and you're sick of making excuses, and you want to actually change it today.
Who's got one of those in your life?
If you want to play full out, I can show you that.
And the third element really affects the other two, and it's really the one that affects business and life, and that's the power of engagement.
All of these are tied to engagement.
I'll tell you what triggered me on this.
Just think about how could I add the most value here?
And engagement is one of those new flashwords in the corporate culture we all hear about, oh, full engagement, partial engagement.
Engagement plays such a huge role.
And some of the studies that are out right now are mind boggling.
Have you seen the recent studies they've done?
142 countries asking workers around the world, how would you describe yourself?
Fully engaged, partially engaged, disengage, aggressively disengage.
And guess what they found out?
Around the world in 142 countries, they found out that 13% of employees worldwide said they were actually engaged in their work.
Now, for us in this room, you'd say, that's absurd.
There's something wrong with this survey.
In a room like this, it's full engagement, or at least a lot fuller engagement.
America has the highest engagement of any country in the world, 29%, which sounds so much better when you're 13.
Like, so which would you rather have, a punch in the face or a kick in the stomach?
But let's flip that around and say, what does that really mean?
It means 71% of people are disengaged at work in the richest, most powerful, and most influential country in the world.
You'd say, oh, it was a partial, but you can see study after study coming up with similar numbers, slightly off, but pretty much the same ratios.
Now, here's what's really interesting.
Of those 71%, there's a group in there, about 24% of them that are actively disengaged.
That means they hate what they do and they hate you.
Now, this is pretty important, isn't it?
They hate what they do, they hate you, and they will actively work to disempower the organization.
Who has ever bumped into one of these humans?
Raise your hand, say, I okay. So when you bump these humans, it's not usually a pleasant experience.
And we all know they're out there.
And by the way, how much damage can they do in a world that has social media everywhere, where good news travels fast and bad news travels fast?
Her and people don't care what the truth is afterwards.
So this is an area that if you're going to change your business, you got to make a difference.
So here's what I'm looking at.
What makes the difference in people, what makes a difference in an organization?
And I would submit to you that it isn't getting a head start.
You can find individuals who you give everything to, you can love on them, give them a great education, they get a great economic background, and can spend the rest of their life going in and out of rehab.
Who's seen this before, knows what I'm talking about.
Say I on the other hand, you see people that life's kicked in the face.
Somebody's been abused mentally, emotionally, physically, you name it, and they become the oprah's of the world.
So it's certainly not advantage does not come because you were given something.
And by the way, in business, advantage doesn't come because you have most resources.
Companies with most resources don't win.
The most resourceful companies win.
The most resourceful companies are the ones where employees are the most engaged.
And it's statistically proven.
You look around, you say, who had the lead? Well, before YouTube, there was vimeo.
Pretty much the same technology just didn't engage as many people.
Before Google, there was, what happened? Yahoo.
If you're out there, what the hell happened to you people? Right before Facebook, there was what happened to MySpace?
Engagement is really the new factor, being able to be fully engaged.
And by the way, in your intimate relationship, how important is engagement?
I want to put it off as long as I can.
No, I don't mean that full engagement in that area is going to term the level of fulfillment you have or don't have in a relationship, right?
The more engaged somebody feels that you are with them, the more energy you have. The more connection you have, the more aliveness you have.
So part of what I'd like to kind of, like, experiment with here is kind of discover what creates engagement for real with you, what creates disengagement, because these are huge factors. Because if you understand what they are, your level of performance, your level of results, your level of leadership, your level of joy will change very, very radically. Who's with me? That engagement is not just a term, but something can make a difference in your body.
Let me see a show of hands. Say aye. Now, I'm asking for your hand raised for some engagement, because here's what research shows.
If you listen to me passively as I'm talking here, guess what? Within a month, you just listen. Sit passively, which most of you are doing. There's nothing wrong with this, what you've been doing your whole life, what you've been taught to do.
You'll remember about 10% of what I say two months from now, which basically means you wasted your time today and I wasted mine. 10%. How many came here because you want to learn something, do something, change something, make something stronger or better, say I.
If that's true, then if all you do is take notes, which I don't see anyone barely doing, oh, thank you very much. A few of you, I stand corrected and nudge the people on other sides. What's wrong with you, bitch? Come on.
Where's the notes, right? Because I don't know anybody's got that great a memory. My entire life, I've kept journals, because here's what I learned early on. Writing it down if I never look back and read it again.
The physical act of writing it down drives the groove deeper. Repetition is the mother of skill. You look at anyone who's masterful.
Why are they masterful? Why can LeBron James do what he can do? Because he's done it a few million times, right? Kobe will go out and make 300 shots before he will leave that floor. Every day, 300 shots. The same freaking activity.
Most people in Tech World. Oh, I heard that story. I know that thing.
Oh, yeah. If you're not doing it, you don't know shit. You understand.
And understanding in $3 will almost get you a Starbucks. If you're going to master something, you need to get the repetition where you get it in your body and you bring emotion to it. And enough motion, enough repetition, it gets in your body, and now it becomes physical mastery.
You don't think about it, and you just do it. Mastery is tying your shoes. Most of you can do this.
Chew on some gum. Send a text simultaneously. Not some people.
Some people leave their tongue out while they're doing it. But you get the idea. If you do something enough and you're confident enough, you're certain if it's in your body, that's mastery.
So I like to see if we couldn't get to a different level of mastery in this. And what I'm going to ask you to do is, by the way, if you listen to take notes, just write those notes down or you type them in, whatever you do, research shows you'll retain about 40% to 50% of what's been said for the future, I'd highly engage or encourage you to do that. Now might be a good time.
And then the third most powerful one is if you physically engage your body, if you ask you a question, yell back the answer, or in a few minutes, I'm going to ask you to actively engage in a different level. Engage with each other. Do some crazy things, things you wouldn't normally do.
What that does, it brings up engagement, 80, 90% retention. Because now it's not just a thought or right, it's a feeling in your body as well. And if you do that, you're going to retain it.
Who's up for doing more and holding on to more? Say, I'm going to do that. Last couple of things. One is, if I ask you a question, please yell at the answer.
You're already doing that. You're being very kind, but don't be kind anymore. Do it with more passionate intensity.
Because I'm not going to ask you questions you don't know the answer to because I want you to feel good about yourself. But if you yell at the answer, you'll activate your body's nervous system. Makes sense.
And the more you activate, the more energy you'll have. We live in a passive society. And if we're going to engage, by the way, the companies that engage, the companies that have records of 24 at the top 25% in the country highest levels, engagement of employees, companies like Google, companies like Salesforce, companies like Apple, companies like Facebook, and by the way, guess what? All the research shows 22% more profitability, almost one for one.
For every percentage of increased engagement, you almost get an increase of profitability. But I would argue you get that in your personal life as well. The more engaged you are, the more the other person will become engaged.
You want to get somebody engaged, you get engaged. Think about it. Everyone in this room is a leader.
What's our job to do as a leader? Our job is maximize resources, right? How do we take whatever resource and get more out of it? Ourselves, other people, our economics, our business, our technology, that's the job of a leader. But you can't maximize resources if you don't have full engagement. So I'd like to see if we could increase that.
And so one simple way of doing that, increasing that engagement, is to start with us, because, by the way, are you going to engage other people if you're not engaged? Yes or no? Yes or no? Are you going to be able to touch other people if you're not touched? Are you going to move other people if you're not moved? And so, by the way, here's the problem. How many of you wake up? You have certain days you wake up and you think to yourself, today, I don't want to talk to any people who in this room has days like this? You don't want to talk to anybody here. Say I oh, come on.
Say with some energy, I. But as a professional, you got to do that most times. And if you fake it, do people feel it? So I want to show you some ways to change it.
But here's the reward of engagement. If you can become a person, engage others, you will now become an extraordinary leader, not a mediocre or good one. As far as I'm concerned, good is the enemy of great, corny as it sounds.
So think about it. I'll give you an example. This book that I did.
I do this book because back in 2008, I felt like I was back in my childhood. Everybody around me was suffering, and I hate suffering. Most of the skills I developed is because I want to take somebody's suffering and take them to a place where they have joy and aliveness and health and vitality and abundance or whatever I can do to help.
And so I've got the guy that cuts my hair. My barber is like, his kid can't go to college. He's lost half of what he's got to do.
A billionaire client of mine is no longer a billionaire, and he's feeling equally bad, he thinks, but suffering is suffering in somebody's mind, right? And so I thought to myself, something's got to be done. And like most of us, somebody's going to do something. In 2010, when things actually got worse and the system wasn't changed, I started reading everything.
I could read, started watching everything. Watch. And I watched a documentary called Inside Job.
Anybody here see? Inside Job, if you didn't see it, was Matt Damon did the documentary on it, and it won the Academy Award. And it actually walked through systematically and showed how the entire world economic experience, our entire economy as a world, was almost destroyed by a few people. And they identified who they were, how they did it.
They documented it all, and then they showed what happened to them and what happened to them. Does anybody know? No, not nothing. Nothing would have been a reward compared to what they should have got.
They were actually put in charge of the turnaround, and they were given your money and mine. We were taxed so they could put their money back or belong. So at the end of this film, depending upon your personality, if you haven't seen it, I should warn you'll, have one or two reactions.
You'll either be very depressed or very pissed. I was on the piss side. I was so angry.
And I thought to myself, nothing's been done. This is insane and something's got to be done. I thought, you know, everybody says something can be done, but what can I do? And I thought, you know what? I've got access for 21 years.
Most people think I'm a happy, bouncing around, positive thinking greening guy on an infomercial from 20 years ago, but I have continued to grow. Not taller, hopefully, but in all that time, for 21 years, I've coached Paul Tudor Jones, who's one of the top ten financial traders in the history of the world. He's a man who's made more money than almost anyone on earth, along with George Soros and a few other names you may know.
But Paul's really unique in that. Paul found himself in a position that in 1987, when the stock market crashed, the largest percentage in a day. Still to this day, he made 20%.
When the whole world was losing everything, he made 200% that year for his clients. Just unbelievable. And then it was like the guy that walked on the moon.
What do you do if you walk on the moon? You see that. You look at that incredible view of the earth you seeing, it's not a photograph. You come back to the earth, you shake the president's hand, you have a ticker tape parade.
Now what do you do? And a lot of those astronauts, if you know the story, he actually became depressed because they didn't have what I call a compelling future, something to look forward to. So Paul had a little fall back and I was called in to turn him around. Came in and started studying everybody around and figured out what it took to do it and built a strategy to put him back in state.
He's been successful and made money every year for 21 straight years. Every single year. There's no one in his class that's done that.
No one. Pretty amazing. I was with him to give example, we were together in back of you remember, in the tech bubble of 2000 and blew up.
Paul made money right by him, side by side, every single day. He's emailing me every single day. I'm talking in some ways, communicating, or I'm going to see him every three or four months to be there in person to make sure we keep tweaking the system.
I'm not there to be a positive thinking coach. He didn't need that crap. I'm a prepare for anything coach.
How do we figure out the strategy? I've always been a strategist. I've never believed in positive thinking. I never told people, you should go go to your gym or go to your garden.
Better yet, and chant, there's no weeds, there's no weeds. There's no weeds. There's no weeds.
I'm like, here's the weed, let's pull it out. That's what I do with him. 21 years.
21 years includes 911 and when the whole markets are blowing up, making money. 21 years includes everything we saw in the subprime crisis, making money it includes when we all went through the dropping gold, those are associated to it not long ago. So I've been there with all those pieces and I got a chance to learn from this guy side by side and I've been able to contribute to him in a significant way.
So I got access. So I decided I'm going to go find a way to interview the 50 most influential financial brilliant minds on the face of the earth. Not people you read on the internet.
Not people on television screaming at you what to buy and telling you some mythical mutual fund that gives you 12% every year and it doesn't exist. But the real guys and the real ladies that do it. But how are you going to do that? How? I'm going to call up Tony Robbins.
I'd kind of like to come interview you. You're worth $27 billion and I'd like your time. You have to engage people.
So I'm going to show you some ways to do that. I'm going to tell you when you can engage people, there is no limit to the resources you can access. If you want real wealth, wealth is access to resources.
It doesn't have to own them all, just access to them all. You can do whatever you want, go wherever you want to go. That's real wealth.
And you can do it if you can engage people. And engaging people is a finding way to meet their needs, not yours. If you meet their needs, your needs can be met as well.
And it can be done in a way that has integrity and love and vision and creativity and it can truly be a synergy. Now, I'll give you some examples of it just for 2 seconds. And we're going to do some things that engage this so you get the sense of its value.
One of the first people I called on was Carl Icon. Carl Icon is a very gentle soul. He's a man who has a hard time expressing his true feelings about things.
Who knows who Carl Icon is going to have sensor? He's worth $27 billion. He has made more money in fact, on the COVID of Time magazine. They called him the Master of the Universe because Kiplinger did a little study and found out Warren Buffett is not the most profitable person.
You could have invested with Carl Icon is. In the last 14 years, you would have made 1600% with Carl Icon. 75% overall in the SP with the ups and downs, right? Net, I'm talking about after inflation.
If you had invested with him in 1968 in his company, you'd have an average return of 31% for all these decades, doubling your money every 2.6 years. If you were with Warren Buffett, you get a mere 20%.
This is amazing guy. He agrees to the interview. I use every tool I got, I get there.
And the first thing he does is he throws out. My camera crew. No, I don't want this camera crew.
I don't want this. I don't want the lights. I don't want this.
Like, dude, do you agree? I don't care. I changed my mind. Get him the hell out of here.
I'm master of the freaking universe. Don't you understand? Says, okay, no problem. Let's do the audio.
My audio team goes, no audio. I said, what am I supposed to do? He goes, you got a pen? Come on, you got ten minutes. Ten minutes.
All my interviews are supposed to be 45 minutes. The average one went 3 hours. How? Engagement.
I figured out how to engage these people, and I found something inside of them that really wanted to give. Not to me. They got what the mission was to other people, and I got them tell me things nobody tells.
Jack Bogle. Been in the business 63 years. Showed up for 45 minutes, 4 hours later, left his office, and afterwards he wrote a quote for it.
And he said, it was the most probing, most intense interview you had in 63 years. Provocative and probing is what he said. Now, that says to me pretty cool thing.
That means I engaged him better than anyone in 63 years and got those answers according to him, not according to me. Pretty cool. I went to a guy named Ray Dalio.
How many know who Ray Dalio is in this room? Look how few people know Ray. Ray Dalio has been called to the Vinci of investing. He's been called the Steve Jobs of investing.
But most of you never hear of him because you couldn't access him in a million years. But if you're President of the United States, if you're ahead of the Fed, if you run China, you know who he is. And I'll tell you why to work with Ray.
First of all, for the last 23 years, he's made 21% per year, compounded before fees through all those environments. Unbelievable. But here's all it takes to work with Ray.
You need a $5 billion net worth. And $100 million is the initial investment. And that was ten years ago.
And now he won't take your money, no matter how rich you are. You're talking to him, and he gets a phone call. It's the Prime Minister of China who wants some coaching.
A large hedge fund might be $15 billion. Ray is $160,000,000,000. I got a hold of Ray.
Part of what happened with Ray was he'd been a fan of mine, it turned out, for about 20 years. But what I did, I spent 15 hours to be ready to engage him. 15 hours of total immersion so I could pitch and catch with him.
So I didn't just talk. I could do it back. He wouldn't just throw the ball.
I could throw it back to him. And guess what? At the end, he has built something over the years called his all weather fund, which is designed to make money no matter what market you're in. You don't have to know the markets.
He said, what if I die? Someday I will. How my white kids have money? How will my philanthropic areas have money? Here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to figure out why a balanced portfolio doesn't work in 2008 or 2000.
And everything we've been taught about finance is wrong. And the DA Vinci of investing figured out and has done it for himself for a decade and a half. And he tested it back to 1925 and it just makes money in any environment.
So now his clients get to do it. Not the 1%, not the zero, the 1%. So I'm sitting out with Ray and didn't explain how it works.
And at the end we're engaged. 3 hours into it, he tells me how this works. And I said, this is beautiful, but I'm doing this.
So I'm not doing this for money. I'm giving all the money away. I want people to have answers.
And you just got done saying the average person going to wealth manager will never work. They can't possibly do it. They might be sincere.
They might even put their money in the same place that put you. But how many gold medals have they won? He said, Those are the only people to win. There's only a few.
It's a giant poker game with a few winners. So you just said they're not going to win with anybody else. So I said, this is worthless without knowing the exact recipe.
How much in this, how much in that, how much in this percentage? Whether I got $1,000 or 20 million, 200 million? He goes, Tony, that's my secret sauce. That's what $5 billion and 100 billion used to get you. I said, yeah, but you won't take anybody's money now.
He said, yeah. And I said, you're giving away half your fortune worth 14 billion. You're a giver.
Help a guy out. Give me the secret sauce. And he goes, It's really complex.
I can't really just share it that way. I said, I know it's complex, but I'm a pretty smart guy and I'm good at simplifying. I believe complexity is the enemy of execution.
That's what it is. You got to make it so simple. People do it.
Complexity is the enemy of execution. So I'll get it simple, you get it to me, I'll make it simple. He goes, well, it uses leverage.
I said, Give me one that doesn't leverage that anybody could do, they could do with ETFs. He goes, Well, I don't know. I don't know what that's going to look like.
It won't be perfect. I said, your worst plan is going to be better than anybody else's best plan. And then he like this moment of engagement, this magic moment.
He opens up and he goes, okay. And I'm writing like crazy. I got the video camera going.
I'm feeling this vibration in my body. I left so excited knowing it was something special and not knowing what it was. But that formula, I took it to hightower $30 billion asset company and said, test this 30 years, 40 years, 75 years.
How's this done over all that time period in the last 30 years, it lost money four times, made money every other time, and with four times, one of the losses was zero. Three. So really practically lost money three times.
You know what the average loss was? 1.9%. But the average gain just under ten. All in the largest loss in 75 years.
It's been right 85% of the time. The largest loss was 3.95. And that was 2008.
Less than 4% when the rest of the world, from top to bottom, lost 51%. It's in my book, by the way. And so a bunch of my partners like, hey, this is a business.
Don't put that shit in the book. And I said, you know what? It is a great business. We can help people do if they want to do it.
But it wasn't offered in that spirit, so it's there. I tell you this because I want you to understand.
With engagement, you can get anything but engagement.
I want you to define it once you experience it.
So what's the first thing that allows you to engage somebody?
What's the number one thing right now?
If I said to you what? What is it? How many think Mark is a fairly engaging guy without blowing smoke?
How many have to say, this guy's pretty damn engaging?
Say I. What makes him engaging?
What makes somebody you find engaging?
What makes them engaging to you? What is it about them? Think about it.
Say it out loud. What makes somebody engaging?
They're positive. What's that? Eye contact makes somebody engaging? She's talking about another level of engagement.
I can feel it right now. What else creates something engaging?
Come on, smile. What else makes them engaging? Energy.
Passion. Talking the truth instead of what you want to hear.
Who loves someone who will tell you the damn truth in a world? We do.
The world. Not even reality television is freaking real anymore, right?
Raw and real may not sound good, but it sure feels good, because you know it's there. Sincerity.
When you feel like somebody how about caring?
When you feel like somebody truly cares about you, does that make you engage more?
Right. What makes something disengaging to you?
What makes you disengage with someone?
Lying when you can't trust them? Arrogance.
What disengages you when they come up to hit on you and they're not even committed.
You're like the 12th person, and you can feel it when they're insincere disengages you.
When the communication or the relationship is one sided, totally disengages you, doesn't it? Inauthenticity.
Whereas authentic does engage you, doesn't it?
When they're on their phone talking to you while they're also doing something else.
How many love this experience, and yet we've made it culturally okay.
Depending upon what generation you're in.
Depends on how your mindset is and where you live in the world, I guess, to some extent, but all the things you said are true.
When you feel that someone cares about you, is interested in you, is sincere with you, shares the same interest, is trying to accomplish something.
If there's that caring, sincerity, mission.
Passion is passion. Something engages you, yes or no.
And then disengagement is the opposite.
But all of them start with one thing that I want to do right now so we can shift this gear, because you've been sitting way too long and so quietly, you've been so nice.
But this passive learning has got to end now.
I just did it so it wouldn't feel jolting when we began.
Now we can step into the real game.
And here's how I want to do that.
How many agree energy is engaging?
Say I if you want to change something in your life, and you are what I call energy, poor, low energy, are you going to follow through?
You love your husband or wife, but you're exhausted.
Love. You love. Okay? There is no passion.
There is no intimacy without energy.
Am I right? You're not going to go to build a business without energy.
He's filled with energy day and night, night and day.
Sir Richard Branson. How much energy does that man have?
Anybody I've ever met who really has this compelling ability to engage with people, it's energy.
Some, maybe, most not. Because I've interviewed him, I've seen him, and I also see some of them.
Like Richard. Richard is a ball of fire of energy, and then he's not. He's actually a very internal guy in many ways.
He's external. When he wants to go do something, he's crazy and willing to risk his life. Not in business.
In business, he goes, okay, I'm going to take Virgin and make Virgin Airways, so how can I lose?
Oh, I'm going to make a deal with Boeing that if they fail, I get to give him the jets back. That's how he thinks in his life.
Let me go in the middle of a balloon in the middle of the sky and hope shit happens.
The point is, engaging people have that kind of energy.
Doesn't matter who they are, where they are. They have that kind of experience.
So what you and I got to do is got to tap that out.
So how many of you have had times when you were in the flow where energy was going through you?
Like, you don't have to think about it.
The right thing came out of you.
Who's been in this place before? Say I oh, come on. Say I.
Who's ever had a time where you did something and after you did it you thought, I can't believe I said that.
I can't believe I did that. That was so stupid.
Who's done this before? Say I.
Who's done something where after you did it, you went that was me. I don't know how I did that.
Shit, that was cool. Shit. Who's ever impressed yourself? Say I.
Now you're the same person. How come?
One situation you're an idiot, the other one you're brilliant.
Who's ever forgotten how to spell your own how to remember, let's say your own email or your home phone number?
Or how to spell a difficult word like the let me see, show hands here.
In fact, phone numbers are crazy now for most of us, right?
Because now we have this outboard brain.
If we lose this brain, we're screwed.
I don't even know how to call my mom, for God's sakes.
Right? You don't know what to do or you don't have this thing.
So the point of the matter is if we increase the energy in the work so now, here's the thing. Where does energy come from?
Does energy come from sleep? Yes or no? Really?
Who here has ever slept 8 hours and still been tired as shit? Let me see your hands.
Okay, so that wasn't it, right? Is it food that gives you energy?
Really? Really? Thanksgiving is coming.
I know what you're going to do, right? You're going to get to Thanksgiving.
You're going to take care of this nurtured body of yours.
You're going to say, no, give me the vegetables.
Right. Now, what do people do at Thanksgiving?
What do they do? Eat everything within reach.
And when you're totally stuffed and you can't have another bite and you say I'll never what?
And somebody goes pumpkin pie, you go, okay, come on.
Who knows? I'm talking about here.
And by the way, what happens after you felt like going for a run?
What do you want to do at the end of that meal?
Who here has ever fasted for five, six, seven days or more gone on a fast?
Does your energy increase or decrease as you no longer eat?
Which one increases massively?
So if it's not food and it's not sleep don't get me wrong, those are useful then what is it?
The answer is, it's psychology.
It's a mindset. It's a decision inside yourself where you say I will no longer tolerate low energy in my life because low energy equals shit relationship.
That's a technical term. Low energy means low lousy business. Low.
Poor energy means I no longer have the impact on my children.
Someone else with greater energy is going to.
And if we can find a way to increase our energy and here's the good news about it.
The way you move will create it.
So I'd like to start out right now with no more passiveness and let's get active.
Say I stand up. You've been sitting wait too long.
Come on. We've been sitting way too long.
And then before we do anything else, just to get you going a little bit, stretch up a little bit here.
Go over to one side and give it a nice deep moan like a little kid.
Louder. Moan the other side. Back, high pitch, moan forward, deep moan.
Shake your body out a little bit.
Now, here's what I like to do.
And a way to do that with people like yourself who are completely non competitive is simple.
I want you to turn to someone next to you and I want you to point them and go, I own you.
Go ahead, try it. No, I mean say like I own you.
That means I am challenging you, lazy, tired person.
And here's what we're going to do.
How many like to have more joy in your life, more excitement, more passion, more aliveness?
You have everything in your life work out and still be in a lousy state?
Can you achieve your goals and go?
In fact, in our society it's almost encourage because if you do really well, who's ever lowered your enthusiasm about something you achieved?
Because you don't want to upset somebody else who's done this before.
But by the way, it teaches your brain never to go for it, never to feel great.
So the first thing, which is really simple, I just want you to try not using your head, but just your body.
And I just want you to just turn the person, point them, go, I own you.
Some of you have to join a group of three.
When I say now, I want you to literally try to outdo their body with energy.
I want you to shake the building like you're celebrating the greatest sports victory of your life.
Like you have the greatest orgasm you've ever had.
And you are like a little kid celebrating a lot like a boring adult.
You're going to outdo them for 30 seconds.
Come on, come on, come on, come on.
Oh, yes. Now high five your partner and say, you rock, baby.
Yes or no? I got a question for you.
When you feel better, do you treat other people better or worse?
When you feel better, you perform at a higher level or a lower level.
When you feel better, you're a better lover or a lesser lover.
Good. Now, here's what I want you to understand.
If you and I can train ourselves to make our nervous system play at a higher level and that becomes our standard, then all of a sudden it'll feel effortless.
But in the beginning it's like lifting a weight.
It feels stupid. It feels like, what is this weird crap?
I'm not into positive thinking. I'm into results.
And every great athlete knows how to put themselves in state.
Every great musician know that puts themselves in a state.
And if you try to do with your mind, you'll succeed sometimes and you'll fail others.
Because your brain is always circulating can always rationalize something, right?
But the body used effectively can change at all.
So I like you to try something real quick.
If you're a leader in this room, how many consider a leader in what you do for a living when you see your hands?
So if you're a leader, that doesn't mean other people follow you, by the way. It just means you live life on your terms.
You don't settle for less than you can do or be or share or give.
Then you got to say, okay, if I'm really going to be a leader in my life then I need to own my energy, my certainty.
I can't just wait till I feel good to do things. I got to be able to get myself to feel good and not phony and not fake.
So I'd like to show you as a leader your skill as a leader.
Your number one skill that makes you a leader is your ability to influence of.
Is it true? And who do you have to influence first?
That's right. If you can't influence you, you're going to influence somebody else.
But your Billy influence the thoughts, the feelings, the emotions, the behaviors of other people.
If you do that, then you will be able to engage the world and yourself.
So how do we do that? Well, to influence other people hear me now.
To influence other people, you have to know what already influences them.
If you try to get your kid to clean their room the way it would work for you, I promise you it probably doesn't work that way for them.
But there are some universals.
And one thing that influences all of us is our state.
If you're in a pissed off state, have you ever had a friend do something nice and you're in a pissed off state and you snap at them and you feel bad later on, it was just a state you're in.
Who knows what I'm talking about here?
So we need to train ourselves to be in a better state.
And the second thing that affects what we do long term, besides our state, that's what affects things moment to moment, is we all have a set of beliefs or expectations, or we might call it a blueprint for how life's supposed to be.
When life is in alignment with our blueprint, we're happy.
Sometimes there's nothing wrong with life.
We just need to update our blueprint.
So for this brief session, let's start with just changing our state, and let's learn something about how your brain blueprints things.
So I want you to try something with me.
Take your hands out like this.
And when I say now, I want you to bring them together like this.
You can hear the entrepreneurs in the room.
I'm going. I'm ready. I love it.
Now? Ready? Now. Ready? Now. Keep your hands together.
32 years of research in 160 countries shows something really simple.
As often as you pull your hands apart and bring them back together, if I don't mention it, you will always run the same pattern with the same thumb on top.
Just try it and see what happens.
Ready, go. Ready, go. Ready, change thumbs.
Go. Put the look on your face.
Why does your face look like that? How many feel like this?
Feels a little weird to change thumbs.
Let me see if Joe's hands here right now.
Try it again. Do it the normal way.
Watch how good you feel. Ready, go. Ready, go.
Yeah, I'm good at this shit. I can do this. Try it the other way.
Doesn't look your faces look really bizarre right now.
Now, some of you say, I want to change my business.
I want to change my life, but you're really upset about the thumb move.
We're really having some problems here.
Let's go back to your normal way one more time.
Truly, 32 years of research has found something interesting about the pattern of how you hold your hands when they come together.
If your left thumb is on top of your right thumb, then the driving force in your psychology is the desire for sex.
And you're an incredible lover.
We're going to try to show the one.
However, if your right thumb is on top of your left thumb, then the driving force in your psychology is intelligence, and you will be absolutely financially free in your lifetime.
Look at this poor bastard. He's having a thumb fight.
So I want the sex of the money.
If your thumb just came together and you didn't cross, it means you think you're smart, sexy, and rich, but you will never be near the three.
This has nothing to do with anything.
We're just engaging your body.
And here's what we're going to do right now.
We're going to go engage each other.
How many believe that engagement makes a difference in the quality of your life?
How many engagement makes a difference in how happy you are? Say I.
If you think engagement affect your business, say I.
So then why don't you engage? The answer is, you do. The question is, what level? Right.
Do you engage at a low level, a deep level?
Do you engage your own mind and heart, other people's mind and heart, or just their head?
The people that engage the mind and heart, they have some extraordinary capacity.
In fact, I'm going to show you something, a few minutes that I think you'll find very useful.
Before we do it, let's just see the ways we can change our engagement.
Most of us do this unconsciously.
I want you to become aware of how you change your state of engagement.
So when I say now, I'm going to ask you to walk around this room, introduce yourself to as many people as you can.
I start most seminars this way because I want people to see something inside themselves they don't notice usually, and that is when you go to introduce yourself, though, I want you to do it in a very specific level of engagement.
I want you to go up to people where you're really not wanting to gauge.
You're just doing it because you should.
And it's polite, but it kind of annoys you.
Who knows what I'm talking about here?
When you walk up to them, I want you to walk up to them like, you're doing this because you have to, but you really are annoyed by this.
Like, this is a stupid exercise.
Why should we have to do this shit?
This guy Robbins is saying, Why do I have to shake your hand?
You don't say that. You just think it.
What do you do when you're a little annoyed with your face?
What do you do with your body when you're a little annoyed or a little frustrated or it's a waste of your time?
How do you walk to somebody when it's a waste of your time?
How do you shake your hand? I want you to notice specifically, while you do this, two things.
One, how does it feel to be greeted that way?
But more importantly, what do you have to do to lower your engagement to this level with your body?
Because if you become aware of your body, you can change your engagement that fast.
I want you to see if I'm annoyed or frustrated.
And I want you to play like a kid, like you're really doing it.
If you like it, you'll go, all right, let's do this stupid exercise.
Really put yourself like I have to shake their hand.
I don't want hi and just notice what do you do with your face?
The tension, your face, your breath, your neck, your shoulders, your hands, your voice.
And I want you to get to as many people as you can over a minute and a half.
Ready? Introduce to as many people and it's a waste of your time.
In fact, let me show you what it looks like before you do it.
So you're clear. Sir, you come here, come here. What's your name? What? Lewis.
Get out of here. Give a hand. It's Lewis.
Ladies and gentlemen, it's Lewis. All right, get to as many people as you can. Now it's a waste of your time.
See what you do with your body. Go. Stop.
Freeze. Wherever you're in the room, freeze. Shake your body out of that state.
Now, when I said freeze, that wasn't hard for many of you because you didn't go anywhere high that shit's over.
So question shake your body out of that space. You have none of that left.
And we've got in this room, what, 6000 people, 7000, 8000 members in this room?
I like, if you would, to yell the answer because we have people virtually every country in the world here and see what really happens.
I want to see if we got a measure.
Raise your hand and shout yes.
If you made a significant change in your body to go in that state, say yes.
Did you change the muscles in your face, yes or no?
Did you change the way you moved? Yes or no?
Did you talk louder or quieter?
Did you talk faster or slower?
Did you go straight form or did you hesitate?
Now, by the way, I could go through 20 of these.
And if you notice, every country in the world, I think, is represented in this room.
Every belief system, every background, every sexual preference, every spiritual preference, everyone in this room is different, comes from all kinds of places.
Every one of you to feel this way are doing the same things.
Because the one thing that's universal in engagement is if you engage your body one way, you're going to feel like shit, another way you're going to feel incredible.
But if you're unaware of it, you let the environment control you.
Become aware of it. You can take charge.
Like knowing the buttons to your brain.
So that's what that one does. Now let's contrast it to a totally different state of engagement.
Who's ever wanted to engage with somebody, a man, a woman person?
You wanted their employees, somebody, a client you want to gain and you wanted to engage with them, but you.
Were afraid they wouldn't engage with you fully.
You're afraid they reject you.
And that fear was really strong and held you back.
Who's had this experience before?
If you don't raise your hand, you lie about other shit too.
So here's what I like you to do.
When I say now, I'm going to ask you this time to greet people in a different level of engagement.
I want you to greet them as if you're deathly afraid they're going to reject you.
But to do this, I want you to be like a little kid again.
Because when adults, we're all achievers in this room, right?
Fear is not a word for an achiever.
Stress, by the way, is the achiever word for fear.
No, I'm not scared. I just have to get these things done. I'm stressed out.
Well, what if you don't get them done? I have to get them done.
But what if you don't? Well, then the thing will fall apart.
What if it falls apart? Well, then you'll fail.
Then I'll be a failure. If I follow the trail of your stress, it will bring me to your deepest fear.
So if you own your fear, you can figure out where it is and actually how to change it in seconds.
And when fear is no longer around, fear is your only enemy.
Because when fear is not there, nothing stops you.
Who's with me on this? Say I. But we don't call it fear because that doesn't seem cool to us. We're all adults.
But kids will kids show their fear?
Oh, yeah, they'll do it, they'll make sounds, they'll do everything.
So I'd like you to do this time is when you greet somebody, I want you to exaggerate like you're deathly afraid.
I want you to exaggerate it so you'd see what you're doing on a very subtle level underneath.
Who's ever watched the Winter Olympics on television?
And you're in your chair and watching somebody snowboarding or skiing.
And as you're watching, feel yourself doing this.
Who knows what I'm talking about here? Say I.
So I'm going to ask you to exaggerate so you notice it.
It's the only way you're going to see what you do and see what do you do differently with your face, your voice, your body.
When you're really afraid, it'll show you contrast, just for 1 minute. As many people as you can totally exaggerate.
You're definitely afraid. Go greet them. Greet them.
Greet them. Okay, stop. Shake your body out.
Shake your body out now, nice and loud.
Did you use your body differently to go in this state?
Did you use the muscles in your face differently?
Yes or no? Please say it again.
Or quieter than you were annoyed?
Which one? Faster or even slower?
Did you go for them faster or hesitate even more? Yes.
Was there tension in your body?
Now notice you're hearing the exact same answer for me. I didn't tell you to do that with your body.
But you did the same thing with your body.
We're all unique, but you have this gift that our creator has given us called the nervous system.
Use it one way, you'll feel afraid.
Use another way, you'll be annoyed.
Use another way, you could feel incredible.
So let's find that. Shake your body out one more time.
Check it out like a little kid this time.
When you go to greet people, though, how many of you in this room own your own business?
How many of you are leaders in a company where you have to lead and influence significant numbers of people?
How many of you in this room are parents?
How many of you in this room have a relationship with a human?
Then this shit will work for you.
So here's what I want you to do.
This time, when you go to greet somebody, I want you to do this.
I want you to greet them as if whether or not they like you or not in the first three to 5 seconds of meeting you is going to determine whether or not they do business with you or not, which is going to determine whether or not your kids eat next week.
By the way, human beings never judge another person in the first three to 5 seconds of meeting them.
And some of you don't have kids, so let's make the game more intense.
If they don't like you in the first three to 5 seconds of meeting you, then everyone you care about dies like pigs in hell.
Let's see if you use your body differently.
If everyone you care about is on the line and they got to like you in the first three to 5 seconds. Ready?
Does that feel better? Yes or no? Yes or no?
Did you use more of your body or less of your body?
More of the muscles in your face or less?
Did you talk louder or quieter?
Did you hesitate or go straight for them?
You should have seen who I touched.
You forgot the lesson already.
Because emotion is created by motion.
And the more you use of the gifts that you've been given, the more of those gifts you experience.
See, this is a gift that most of us don't pay attention to, especially in a world where everything we do is in a box.
They wake up, have a box breakfast, get in their box car, drive to their box office, type in a box, have a box lunch, drive back home in the box, turn on a box, go to a box and open up, get a cylinder to change their state.
But if you and I use our body differently, we are going to think and feel differently.
Do you feel more engaged or less right now?
Did you engage others more or less?
Now? By the way, was that the best way you could greet some, by the way?
Do the feel, first of all, did that feel good?
Make some noise if you enjoyed that feeling.
Was that the best greeting you're capable of giving a total stranger?
Listen, you hear some yeses and some no's. If you're saying no, that's not the best you could do.
Should we review the experience here for you?
We said if you don't give your best, everyone you care about dies like pigs in hell and you still don't give your best.
We need to talk. If you said no, I respect you.
You know why? Because if you said no, that wasn't my best.
Because whenever we get to what we think our best is, what do we always find? There's always what?
Come on, guys, there's another level.
Is it true? So if you said no, I respect you.
So I'm going to ask you to take it up one more level.
You say, what are we going to do, get naked? No.
What I want you this time is I want you to greet people as if they're your best.
Let's say last person on earth you've loved. You've missed your best friend, your lover, if you're like.
There she is. Oh, my God. Oh, wow.
I want you to greet people like they're your long lost lover or best friend.
Come on now, shake your body out.
You feel more alive or less alive?
Did you use more of your body or less?
Did you use more of your face or less?
Did you talk louder or quieter?
Did you hesitate to go straight for him?
Did you touch him? Did it feel good?
Why? Because emotion is created by now.
The more you use of this, the more you're going to have.
By the way, the more you use of this, the more you engage other people.
We talked about Robin Williams.
How freaking crazy was he in the use of his body.
That's why he could reach everyone and except himself.
So we're going to make sure you do yourself and everyone, because the first engagement is inside.
How many feel much damn better right now than we were sitting here before?
Say Ah, so we want to use this.
This is not something you just engage in one time.
If you become engaged, you can engage anyone else.
If you sincerely care about them, if you're looking out for a way to support them and yourself.
But you're not going to do it if you're low energy, poor energy, you want to be energy rich.
Now, if you do this and you sit down and you don't drop out of state, this energy is still available to you once you turn on.
How many, by the way, feel like sitting down right now?
How many feel like rocking and doing something, say, because life is momentum, isn't it? Just like businesses momentum, emotions, momentum, sports momentum.
So you can build your own momentum.
But what you got to do is you got to do the simple practice of putting yourself in a peak state.
Because why? Peak performance comes from being in a peak.
What say, Tony? What am I to do?
Go to the president of Microsoft and go, Charlie, I bet it'll change his state.
No, but if you start within you, even if you only show a portion of it, like a tip of the iceberg, people feel there's something deeper underneath.
Even when you don't say it, they sense what's in you. And when that's there, you can have a much deeper impact.
Now, why did you come to this conference?
Tell me, anyone, why did you come to this conference? Sir?
To grow. To grow what? To grow what?
To grow inside as an individual.
What did you hope would happen if you grow inside as an individual? I'll be a better person.
If you're a better person, what will that give you?
A better life. And if you have a better life, what will that give you?
Happiness. So he's got a long story, but he just freaking wants to be happy.
And most of us have a long story.
If I do this and this and this, if I have 14 perfect children, if I change the world, if I make a trillion dollars, and if I do these things then and then you have some people's happy, some people's free, some people feel a life of meaning.
Some people say I'm lovable or I'm loved.
We all different words. But we're after emotions. Everything you do.
And most of us, in truth, are pretty intellectual individuals, pretty smart individuals.
At least we think we are. But this gets in the way often to this.