https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7C-P-ctmhuU

1 00:00:00.000 --\> 00:01:00.000 in march of 2019 my wife and i were
walking together after just having finished a 4.4 million dollar month
and she turned to me and she said alex let's just shut it all down she's
like i'm so tired of this i'm so burnt out i just don't want to do this
anymore and it was at that moment that i realized that in order to
progress in the entrepreneurial game we had to change the way we
operated the way we thought and so if you're an entrepreneur or you're a
business owner the number one thing that i've seen that creates success
is longevity meaning that you can continue to play the game because at
the end of the day none of us is going to quit business or hopefully not
quit business and so in order to decrease the likelihood that we quit
which is the only way to fail we have to think through our problems with
a defined framework and so rather than focus on the actual framework of
the decision making what i want to do is focus in around the state in
which you can manage your own thoughts right and so um i've had to deal
with plenty of stressors as you can imagine

2 00:01:00.000 --\> 00:02:00.000 so if you're stressed in your own
business right now like you know add a zero to whatever your revenue is
and you'll have ten times the potential for stress if you're ten times
bigger or a hundred times the stress if you're 100 times bigger which
depends on who's listening we may be that for you and so i can tell you
truthfully that the way that i've been able to eliminate pressure which
has created longevity in the game for me has been through four
strategies that actually work in the real world for me so the first that
i do whenever i have any kind of negative situation is i go a thousand x
negative all right and then i re-evaluate so let me explain what that
means so if for example there's something that's bad that happens we get
a bad review or we get you know a client's upset or i have an employee
who says something bad to another employer or employee that's key leaves
or someone tries to you know a competitor steal stuff and then starts
back whatever it is right there's a million problems in go business or
you have cash flow issues or where you can't make payroll whatever it is
right i like to think of this one as my first this is my like my first
line of defense

3 00:02:00.000 --\> 00:03:00.000 the first thing i think about is if
this were to happen a thousand times more right and this works really
well with what i would consider like minor to medium-sized grievances so
things that happen that are kind of everyday business that can you know
bother you for a day or two days or a week right well if you can just
shorten that loop of that cycle of you being disturbed because the thing
is lots of those things are going to happen every single week a lot of
times you just don't know about them right depending on the size of your
business and so i just happen to know about it now and so first off i
like to think about that but second is i'll do this right which is i'll
imagine that every day in my life this happens whatever that thing is
right uh customer's upset now obviously if it's a core issue you have to
resolve it but in terms of like it happening in my affective or my
emotional reaction to it then i think to myself well if this happened
every single day and this happened every hour of every day at some point
i would become desensitized to it right because i had so much stimulus
of this i would not be able to have an emotional response and so when i
think and i imagine myself experiencing this negative thing over and
over and over

4 00:03:00.000 --\> 00:04:00.000 and over again it's called negative
visualization then what ends up happening is i become immune to it and
so i think to myself well if i can become immune to it after a thousand
tries i can become immune to it on the first try because it means
nothing has actually changed to only my perspective on the occurrence
and in so doing you can short wire yourself to that end outcome and then
fast forward it to the present so you can live the rest of your day or
less of your week without being emotionally disturbed and when you do
that at least for me i feel like i make better decisions and so i think
for most of us as entrepreneurs and business owners we are judged by the
marketplace by the quality of our decisions that's ultimately what it is
right it's just how good are the quality of the decisions that we make
and so if i can decrease the likelihood that i make bad decisions and i
can do it on a regular basis then this is something that protects my
mind and candidly it's what makes life worth living the second thing
that i'll do is that when i'm preparing for something that that i need
to start doing right because there might be habits or things that you
need to start doing you know this is a this is a slightly different
example but it's i'm giving you the four different

5 00:04:00.000 --\> 00:05:00.000 strategies that have worked really well
for me the second one is let's say you wanted to start working out
because you're like you know what i've been neglecting my health or you
know start eating healthy whatever it is right those are fitness
examples but just go with me what i will do is i will expect the worst
circumstance all right so rather than saying okay i'm going to go work
out and feel excited right to go work out i'm super pumped what i want
to do is i want to plan and prepare my mental state for when it times to
work out when it comes time to work out i'm going to be exhausted i'm
not going to have slept well i'm going to have a lot of business stress
and so i have to expect that going into every workout now if i don't
have that happen then it's a bonus rather than expecting nothing to be
my my mental state and then when something bad does happen then i have
this reason right and so it it literally does go into truly expecting
the worst case scenario and making the pre-formed decision to act
anyways despite that because you have planned for it so most people most
humans have really

6 00:05:00.000 --\> 00:06:00.000 good psychological resilience if we
brace for it so if you're about to give someone bad news for example you
actually have to let them hey this is bad news hey you might want to sit
down for this because people actually are very resilient if you give
them a moment to emotionally brace themselves and so what we're doing
here is using this bracing technique on ourselves in advance of a
situation that is likely to occur at some time between now and when we
die especially if it's a habit that has to be ongoing right and so what
i do is i emotionally brace for the worst scenario all right that's
number two the third thing that i do and this is probably the one that i
use the most it's really the one that i use the most actually i'll i'll
say that one for last a a different version of this the emotional brace
is an extreme version right so kind of this is imagine the thing that
you just said happen that bothered you for a thousand times then it
stops affecting you the second one is you emotionally brace yourself the
third one is you imagine worst case all right now the point here

7 00:06:00.000 --\> 00:07:00.000 is kind of like a pain anchor okay and
so what i mean by a pain anchor is it gives you perspective on your
current issues right so for this for example whenever you've had a
family member die or someone close to you die or some of you even have a
pet diet depends on where you're at in your life right if you have
something that was painful for you right all of us benefit we get the
gift of perspective from those who die that's like the one of the final
gifts that any death occurs that's in your proximity will give you right
and so for me i think about that negative situation i really like trying
and soak myself in it right really try and like put it on and walk
around and what that painful state would be whatever whatever worst case
scenario i could imagine might be death of a spouse it might be death of
a of a parent whatever right or a child something horrific right but if
i can truly allow myself to go there then what happens is i get so much
context and perspective on the little thing like somebody bashing a
piece of content or someone saying that they hate your ad

8 00:07:00.000 --\> 00:08:00.000 or whatever it might be the thing that
is deriding you and all of a sudden that problem becomes massively
minimized right it becomes almost inconsequential and what i found is
that over my life in the business there are so many there's an infinite
amount of problems truly like there's an unlimited amount of problems i
could think of so many things we should be doing or we could be doing
better or should not have happened right but it's only because we put
the word should in front of it that we have an expectation that is
different than reality which creates the the friction in our minds
creates the dissonance it creates the unhappiness that we have and so if
i can imagine the worst case scenario and then actively minimize my
current situation then i usually can get right through it and most times
what i what i found is that most problems shrink into a relevance within
broader context they actually never get solved we just realize that we
just don't care and that they are no longer meaningful to us and so that
has been something that's been very useful for me as we've grown because
frankly the bigger your company gets the more ability and potential you
have to become stressed

9 00:08:00.000 --\> 00:09:00.000 and i think most of us are here for
freedom and so if you want freedom then you have to at least for me i
have found that i have to manage my mental state in order to continue to
make high quality decisions and so that leaves me the last one which is
probably my my favorite and most used one that i use on on anything and
this may this may bother some of you and that's okay this is an n sorry
universe is that this is a this is a world view that i have so if you
are if you are you know don't don't be trigger you know don't don't take
offense to this but i'm telling you what has worked for me and so i
believe that the universe will continue to expand until eventually
everything becomes a fine mist over a long enough time horizon the sun
will give out all stars will extinguish and then everything will just
become a fine mist and as silly as that may sound it means that anything
that we do this video anything that i accomplish in this world will
eventually disappear and be meaningless and so some people find that
incredibly depressing i don't

10 00:09:00.000 --\> 00:10:00.000 i find that to be incredibly
meaningful because it means to me that i'm allowed to i am the only
person that ascribes meaning to anything because it means that nothing
has inherent meaning and so that means that when i have any stressors in
my life i'm saying that i'm choosing my brain is choosing to make
meaning out of this when there was no meaning to be made to begin with
and so by doing that i can play the notes of the piano of meaning that
happen across the occurrences and circumstances in my life and so when i
think about it in this context everything shrinks into a relevance and
so a lot of the the concepts around like i want to build a legacy i want
i want to make an impact i want to leave a dent in the universe you're
not you're probably not going to leave it done in the universe and even
if you made some big advancement within 500 years like it'll probably be
forgotten and that would be like if you're the top point zero zero zero
zero one percent right it's unlikely but it is a hundred percent likely
that over a long enough time horizon everything will disappear right and
by doing that for me it

11 00:10:00.000 --\> 00:11:00.000 decreases the pressure that i put on
myself for having to i must i should i have to like i can't live without
those thoughts that strangle me right those are the things that destroy
my ability to make decisions because i become way more emotional as a
result of them and so whenever i have any kind of negative occurrence or
any stressors that come up in my life which are inevitable i use this as
my ultimate frame of reference this is my ultimate trump card that i use
to keep my my emotions at bay and ultimately say i am the master of my
own universe i get to decide what has meaning and for me i'll tell you
what what what i have found most meaningful for me is that my purpose in
life to to my knowledge at this point is to learn i love learning and so
that is that is why i make these videos because i feel like i am able to
better learn how to think i'm better on how to run businesses i'm a
better learn i can better

12 00:11:00.000 --\> 00:12:00.000 learn all of the aspects of everything
by teaching it right and i'm sure if you ever did a book report when you
were in high school you learned the one chapter you had to do your book
report on or give a presentation on way better than any of the other
chapters because when you have to teach something you have to learn it
better you have to learn the nuances of what makes something work and so
for me even cataloging these things been useful for me because i think
these are all the things that i do huh but now i have a process that i
can continually use use haphazardly just because i've just trained
myself over time doing this and so i don't know where you're at in your
business career if you're you know you're at seven figures you're at
eight figures or multi-figures you have multiple companies whatever it
is right this has been so personally impactful for me that it has helped
me be in this for the long haul because if nothing has meaning except
for what i choose to give meaning then it means i can choose to only
play games that i find meaningful and by extension i will not fall out
of the game or quit because the thing that i'm doing is the thing that
that i derive the most meaning from and

13 00:12:00.000 --\> 00:13:00.000 so i will be able to outlast longer
players pursuit and what happened is for me my life becomes a
glorification to an idea faster and break through the bottlenecks that
you have so you can so for me like this i will you know we'll do every
time i can check out one of my uh my next videos that are coming out as
i'm going through courses the lessons that i have more engaging more
entertaining more educational have more stories woven into them so that
hopefully i can transfer these things to someone else because that is
what i find meaningful not because it is eternally meaningful but just
because that ideal to me has meaning and so um that is something that i
believe is eternal values are eternal values in the universe and so for
me i choose to dedicate my content to those ideals and so anyways i hope
you find value in this i hope this is interesting to you subscribe like
all that jazz um and have an absolutely wonderful day where you can
create all the meaning you want or remove all the meaning from the
negative things that occur in your life

14 00:13:00.000 --\> 00:14:00.000 using some of these four hacks so lots
of love keeping awesome and i'll catch you in the next vid bye
