0:00 You can conquer negative thinking once and for all if you have the right systems. I used to wake up with negative thoughts constantly. You should have been further by now. Thoughts that just paralyzed me every day. But now I wake up rested and I've created four successful companies that have impacted over 14 million people. And finally, for once, my external success reflects my internal state. So in this video, I'm giving you the seven core frameworks that I use to rewire my thinking and become a successful entrepreneur. The first framework helps with chronic overthinking. I call it the one domino decision. Your mental spiral can be stopped with just one domino. Before I learned this trick, you know, I'd find myself in these crazy spirals. I would start to feel super anxious, really depressed, and it would go on for weeks and months, and I wouldn't even take the
0:47 time to step back for a second and ask myself, what's that one domino that if I just did that one thing, it would make everything else in my life easier or unnecessary? And oftentimes there's a one domino for each area of your life. You know, my one domino for health is getting my 6 am workout in every single day. My one domino for my professional career is really making sure I get 4 hours of founder flow uninterrupted every morning from around 8:00 a.m. till noon. It's these one dominoes that allow me to go and finally get out of the spiral of overthinking, overanalyzing, and not knowing what to do next. This breaks the loop because of something called the ziggarnic effect. Essentially, just doing one thing, one that just moves you forward ever so slightly can oftenimes set up a chain
1:34 reaction that helps you start building the momentum, getting your confidence, and getting out of whatever's leading you to those negative thoughts. It's often times the tiniest action that can just get you started on a path that helps you start feeling like yourself again. So, here's how to go and find your one big domino. Go and write down the answers to these questions that come into your mind. What thought is taking up most of my mental space right now? What actions would make this thought lose its power? If I only had 10 minutes, what would I do first? You want to think about that next big move that you can make that when you do that thing, it topples over many of the next dominoes in line. The one domino is your ticket out of analysis paralysis and into action. The second framework is called chop wood, carry water. This is
2:20 for anyone dealing with self-shaming. The problem isn't that you hate yourself, it's that you think about yourself too much. A few weeks back, I was on a founder hike here in London and I had a few founders come up to me and say, you know, the thing that they liked most about, you know, kind of what made me different online was this mix of sort of business and spirituality. Up until that point, sometimes I wondered if some of the spiritual aspects of what I may share with you guys, you know, is a little bit woowoo or, you know, if it maybe even detracts people from just enjoying and getting value from what I do. I'm sometimes super hard on myself and really just beat myself up. I think it's sometimes just part of that high achiever sort of mental condition. You know, self-shaming actually just maybe moves you further from actually what makes you different. It's actually your uniqueness, your difference that's going
3:07 to actually attract people to what you're doing and help you be successful. Self-shame is that little voice in your head that causes you to stress over every gray hair, every wrinkle that comes up, every time you've made a mistake or that past failure that you've had. To get over this, I always remember the Buddhist mantra, chop wood, carry water. every single day, you just probably have three to seven core tasks that you need to do that will get you where you are now to where you need to go. If you can just put blinders on and focus on those three to seven things and get them done, no excuses, you're going to gradually make the progress that you really seek here in life. So, if you catch yourself going and self-shaming yourself, you know, break the pattern.
3:54 Just do something for someone else. You know what I often times find useful is, you know, maybe I'll go to my team in Slack and someone's done a good job and I'll go and congratulate them on that and go and give them some specific praise. You know, maybe I go for a walk and just give myself some love by just being out in nature and just kind of switching the program in my brain. The reality is is that we all have so much to be grateful for and gratitude can oftenimes just be the anecdote to those negative feelings that can come up. So the next time you need a reset, just repeat the mantra, chop wood, carry water. Focus on what's right in front of you, do it with love, and focus on what's next. The third framework is called the personal board meeting, which is my go-to framework. Whenever I feel overwhelmed, whenever I feel buried in stress, I do what I call a personal
4:41 board meeting with myself. I'll take some time, generally about an hour around the end of a month, to go and really get outside of my environment. I'll often times go to my favorite cafe in a given city. I'll go and do some reflection. I'll go and think about, you know, over the past 30 days, what were the things that I loved the most? What are the things that I learned the most? And what do I need to go and focus on to make the next month the best month of my life? And so from there, what I like to do is then go and plan out my business goals, my personal goals, and make sure I'm clear on also my own personal board of adviserss, the kind of people in both my personal life and professional life. they're going to help me get to where I'm looking to go. Whenever you're looking to do anything big, it's a multi-player game. You need a good
5:27 support system around you if you want to be successful. And I often times find that, you know, my mentors, coaches, therapists kind of serve as these bumpers that make sure that no matter where I go in life, I don't get too far off course. If you want my personal board meeting template, you can go and check it out via the link in the description. Go and reflect on your previous month. you know, what went well, what didn't go well, and what can you do better, and then go and plan out your business and professional goals as well as your personal goals. I have board meetings from like a decade ago, which is a pretty awesome experience to be able to go back to 2015 and go and look at, you know, where was I then? What was I currently thinking about? The board meeting serves as this awesome anchor, right? That keeps you grounded. It also serves as this amazing
6:14 lighthouse that kind of shows you the way. And when you give yourself time to actually do this exercise, I think you're giving yourself an amazing amount of time to level up as a leader and leave those negative thoughts behind you. The fourth framework is external OS. This is what I use to deal with intrusive thoughts. You can't stop intrusive thoughts, but you can neutralize them with the right environment. I think as humans often times that we think that, you know, we are designers of our environment, but the truth is our environment also heavily influences us. And some of my lowest points in life when I look back, I wish I was just able to tell myself, you know what, just organize your life a bit. Organize your environment. Go and make the spaces that you spend the most time in that much more inspiring. Most people try to solve mental spirals by
7:00 going internal, right? But often times it's, you know, going and taking a look at that external environment that can change everything. You I know for me, beyond just the environment I'm in, it's also who I'm surrounding myself with. as an example, you know, making sure that I have, you know, my parents that I'm reaching out to every single weekend to kind of go and ground myself regularly, you know, staying in contact with, you know, childhood friends and university friends just to make sure that overall, you know, you have a good community, good social life, your external environment is feeling solid, which then just helps you feel good, you know, as a high performer. Here's how to install your external OS. Number one, go and audit your environment. Go and remove the things that are causing clutter, disorganization or are kind of low energy and go and give yourself finally
7:46 some space by deleting all the noise. Two is remove one piece of outdated code. Again, we don't need to solve everything all at once. Just take that one thing right now that it's in your environment and you feel like it's some way somehow bringing you down. Three, add one cue for clarity. That's a nice vision board where I work. It's a nice, you know, piece of paper where I have three mantras written out. Your mind performs best when your environment is fine-tuned and simplified to execute your true goals. Upgrade your external OS and your thoughts will follow. The fifth framework is called seek the sweat. This is how I tackle anxiety. Anxiety isn't just in your head. It's energy in your body that's waiting to be burned. When I was younger, I worked out 3 to four days a week with rest days in between. But the issue was is that those
8:32 rest days turned into rest weeks. You know, in my first business, I got it all wrong. There'd be weeks that I wouldn't work out. And I was a son of a to be around. Fast forward today, running Founder OS every single morning, 6:00 a.m. on the dot, I'm out there doing some sort of HIT workout, breaking a sweat, so that the rest of my day is peaceful. It's calm. I'm a much better leader. I learned that anxiety is just energy in your body that's waiting to be processed. There are studies from Harvard University that show just 20 minutes of physical activity a day can be better than any anti-depressant actually helping you feel better. Do whatever goes and suits you, but just make sure that you do it every day. It should be a non-negotiable. When you sweat daily, you don't just feel more calm, you also sleep better. You're
9:18 going to be a better leader. You're going to just feel a lot less anxious in your day-to-day life. Think of anxiety as just a pipe that's just building up with pressure. You know, if you don't go and break a sweat and work that off, it just builds and builds and builds and eventually it just breaks you. In your career, you're working with other people. You're closing deals. If you're not feeling great, these things don't go great. You know, in your relationships, it's important that you're present, you're able to listen, you're able to work through different things. Everything involves being around others. And to be someone that others want to be around, you got to be feeling good. So the next time you feel anxious, move your body. Seek the sweat. The sixth framework is called strategic stillness. Here's a controversial take. Doing nothing is the most productive thing you
10:03 do. Now, we've all been there. You know, just feeling completely burnt out. You know, I know that if I'm not being careful because I'm just so obsessed with building great things, amazing teams, creating awesome content, and living a vibrant life that sometimes I get so obsessed that I just run myself into the ground. I think we all do that from time to time. But hopefully as we get older, we start seeing more of the signals that kind of signal to us that it's probably just time to slow down a little bit and find some strategic stillness in our lives. You know, for me, I know that when I'm, you know, working and starting to kind of feel a level of brain fog, I start to look at tasks that I know I genuinely love, but they start to feel more like chores or I just find myself getting a little agitated for no reason, right? It's probably time for me just to take a step back, chill out, and go do what I call a
10:49 soul trip. You know, I like to take a soul trip about every 6 weeks. It's a spontaneous trip for around 4 to 7 days out into nature. You know, I've been to Joshua Tree, Sequoia National Park, Yeusede, all over the world doing these soul trips. They're a chance to disconnect, you know, recharge, get away from my phone, get away from meetings, and just be able to kind of reset myself. Neuroscience shows that your brain has two major modes. One is that take action mode when you're getting things done, getting after it, and really just building something impactful. But the truth is that part of your brain can run dry, which leads to the second mode, your default mode. This is when you're at rest, you're chilled out, and this is what allows you to overall recharge and make sure that
11:37 you're not just running yourself into the ground. You know, we've all been there. You know, at the end of a busy day, you go take a break and you go for a nice shower, the warm water hits you, and all of a sudden, you have some epiphany idea, that big breakthrough that you were waiting for all day. Well, why did that happen? It's because you finally gave yourself some stillness to let your nervous system downregulate. As author and activist Annne Lamont says, almost everything will work again if you unplug it for a few minutes, including you. Strategic stillness is the only solution to burnout that actually works. The seventh framework is externalize, don't internalize. 9 years ago, I was going through a really rough time in my life. I was burnt out. I didn't know what to do. And I called my dad super
12:22 distressed in a hotel room that I was staying at in LA and I told him, you know, I needed some help. One thing led to another. I ended up going to a brain clinic in LA, discovering that because of a series of concussions I had playing hockey when I was younger, there were some issues going on. I was in this sort of constant state of fight or flight because of this kind of undiagnosed condition. I would have never discovered what the hell was going on had I not just made the call. And the reality is is that this happens to all of us in small ways and big ways all the time. You know, for me these days, what I've learned is to externalize, not internalize. For me, that's like having things like a therapist that I speak to every 3 weeks, being able to constructively deal with the different emotions that come up. You know,
13:08 similarly, it's having a coach. You know, I have a coach, Ryan, I've worked with for the last 7 years, and he helps me in so many ways. He exited his last business for about $60 million and is able to help show me the ropes in terms of how to build a beautiful, peaceful, bootstrapped company. The reality is is that there's so many times that I'm thinking that there's something wrong with me. Am I really a good leader? Is there a way that I could be better? There's got to be a system to solve something. There's got to be, you know, something I'm doing wrong. But the reality is I'll have a call with Ryan and realize, you know what, you're actually doing a lot of things right. and there's just maybe a small piece that's missing or one new hire I need to make. Research shows that externalizing reduces ruminations by about 30%. You know, that means less paranoia, less stress, less depression, less anxiety
13:55 when you just go and reach out and get help for the problems that are going on. The reality is that we all have so many people around us that can help us get over those struggles in life. And sometimes it just means taking that first step. All right, so think about tomorrow morning, right? You wake up and maybe there's something that's bugging you. It's nagging at you. The first thing you can do is go and write down a list of five people that you know or maybe would love to know that could help you with that thing. Then go and take the next step, whether it's an email, it's a text message, it's a phone call to those five people to go and get help today. This one habit can help you go and begin to externalize things versus getting stuck internalizing. If you like this video, don't forget to hit subscribe and go and watch this video on
14:40 I'm 35. If you're in your 20s or 30s, go watch this. Trust me, you're going to love it. and I'll see you in the next one.
