– You can’t do it, don’t put your limitations on me.
I’m dead to your limitations.
Your limitations don’t exist in my world.
In life, when you roll the dice, worst case scenario
you’re going to land on average,
so don’t be average because if you don’t try
you will get to average.
When I made the decision, aah!
When I made the decision I had to follow my destiny
I felt it calling me, my destiny was calling me!
– Hello, Believe Nation, my name is Evan Carmichael.
My one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs
will solve all of the world’s major problems.
So to help on your journey today we’re going to learn
from speaker, educator, and entrepreneur Eric Thomas,
and my take on his top 10 rules to success, volume three.
Rule number three is my personal favorite,
and I’d love to know which one you guys like the best.
And, as always, as you’re watching,
if you hear something that really resonates with you
please leave it in the comments below,
put quotes around it so other people can be inspired.
Might win a prize as well.
And also when you write it down,
it’s much more likely to stick with yourself as well.
Enjoy.
(upbeat music)
– If you gon’ do what you say you’re going to do,
be what you say you going to be,
you won’t have to lion me out.
That gazelle stuff, I’m trying to tell you,
you a gazelle, you gon’ come up short.
You a gazelle, you’re not always going to get
what you want out of life.
You a gazelle, it’s going to be,
you gon’ have an average experience.
You a student, I need you in lion mode.
You a teacher, I need you in lion mode.
You an entrepreneur, I need you in lion mode.
You trying to lose weight, lion mode.
You can’t do nothing significant in gazelle mode.
Nothing.
Nothing impressive happens in gazelle mode.
Nothing happening when you running (laughs).
Nothing happen in run mode.
Give up mode, quit mode, scared mode, fearful mode.
Nothing happens.
Everything happen in lion mode,
like “I’m coming to get you.”
I love it, you all ever seen the one
where the lioness is kind of sitting there
and she double-dutchin’
and all the beasts is running by
and they just keep going,
and she’s just in preparation mode,
and out of nowhere, there is no music, no preparation,
you just see my man come our of nowhere and just boom!
Bam! Grab one. Boom!
Boom! Ripped the heart out!
That’s the lion mode!
You got to get to a place where you start executing!
Somebody just help me out.
Last year the greatest news in the NBA,
(upbeat music)
the greatest story in the NBA last year, was what?
Greatest story told in the NBA
last year all season was what?
Kevin Durant left to go to Golden State.
Durant, like “I’m out.”
I don’t know where you all come from, but that hurt hard
because they suppose to be boys.
Look at this picture for a minute,
because this why, if you’re going to be successful
this is where I need you to go right here.
What a pic!
This was the one where you played your boy, first game,
you and your homie was cool, right?
And this is where you emotionally cut him!
This is when you cut my man.
This is when you see my man and he trying to be cool.
He’s trying to act like he didn’t leave you high and dry,
He’s trying to act like the goals and the dreams
you all had,
this the one where he clapping
and you look my man to the face and say,
“You’re dead to me!”
And that’s why most of you will never be successful
’cause there’s some stuff in your past
you keep holding on to,
and you got to get to a point when you ready to grind,
and you ready to get to the next level.
You look at people you used to be close to and say,
“You’re dead to me! You’re dead.”
42 triple-doubles, we shouldn’t even be talking about MVP.
Ain’t nobody else did this.
If someone else make it close to the MVP,
the NBA is rigged, and I’m through with them.
I saw my man at the beginning of the season,
I’m talking about high octane.
They said, “If he keep doing that all season,”
what’s going to happen?
They said, “You keep running yourself like that
“you’re going to burn out.”
My man ain’t burnt out,
he don’t look like, he ain’t close to burn out.
But you know why they said it?
‘Cause they can’t operate on that level for that long.
So people will try to put they limitations on you.
I can do six gigs, I can do seven.
We can leave here tonight, you can take me to a church,
I’ll give you another hour.
You can’t do it, don’t put your limitations on me.
I’m dead to your limitations.
Your limitation don’t exist in my world.
Those are your limitations, keep ’em.
Go home, watch ’em on TV.
Go home, read the newspaper about ’em.
Go home and look in the mirror.
Go home, call your home boy,
and you all talk about your limitations.
I ain’t got none, I get off the plane from going to Dubai,
and get on the ground and I hit it!
And some of you all holding on to stuff
you shouldn’t be holding on to.
It should be dead to you.
Doggone go to a funeral if you need to,
get rid of that junk, like bury it,
do whatever you got to do.
But it’s weighing you down, it’s killing you.
Everyday you’re waking up thinking about it.
You shouldn’t be thinking about it no more,
it should be dead to you!
Move on!
And move towards your greatness.
I forget those things which are behind,
and I press, I press towards the thing.
I press.
I don’t got time for that no more.
It’s nothing personal.
I ain’t got nothing against you.
I don’t hate you, but I love me!
Look, you don’t even know what to do
if you don’t know who you are,
and so I want to tell you if nobody’s told you.
Perhaps your Mom didn’t tell you today.
Perhaps your Dad didn’t tell you today.
I don’t know, maybe your teacher had an attitude
and she didn’t say it before you left school,
but you are amazing!
(slow piano music(
Yep, I said it.
Bring it in!
I said it. You are amazing!
That’s right, I’m a say it again.
You are amazing!
And you need to understand something,
I do not get paid to do this.
I’ve been doing this for eight years, I have no sponsors.
I don’t think somebody send me like $5 to do this.
“So, E.T., why would you keep doing it?
“Year after year, month after month,
week after week? Why?”
Because I know something about you
that you may not know about yourself.
You are amazing!
And it’s time for you to act like you amazing.
It’s time for you to do the amazing, right?
It’s time for you to know you are amazing.
So, listen to me, I’m going to give you an assignment,
but before we go there I got to let you know
I’m telling you the truth.
Now, when I was a high school dropout, when I was homeless,
when I was getting kicked out of school,
I’m just going to keep it 100,
I did not know I was amazing!
I told you before, no disrespect,
but my biological father wasn’t in my life,
so I didn’t have him to tell me when I got up everyday,
“E.T., you are amazing!”
Like me and my mom had some challenges,
so my mom weren’t necessarily telling me,
“You are amazing!,” right?
And so I was eating out of trash cans, right?
Listen to me, I was getting kicked out of school,
like I was in the mall, stealing from the mall,
getting in trouble, getting arrested.
Listen, and some Pastor brought me to church, right?
And I’m telling you, my man would tell me on a weekly basis,
“You are amazing! And it’s time for you to act amazing,
and do the amazing.
So, I want to say this to you real quick.
You are not your test score.
Are you hearing me? Look at E.T.!
I’ve never done well on a standardized test.
You are not your grade.
You are amazing!
You are not what happened to you, where you were born,
what circumstance you come from,
you are amazing!
You hear me? You are amazing!
And the day you recognize you’re amazing,
the day you understand how amazing you are
everything changes.
Look, my standardized test, they didn’t change,
my test scores didn’t change,
my grades didn’t necessarily changed like that,
like this is when I became aware of the fact
that I’m gifted, that I’m special!
I need you to understand something,
when you recognize who you are,
when you realize how amazing you are,
there are certain things you’re not going to do no more.
When you recognize how amazing you are,
there are certain people you not going to hang around no more.
When you realize how amazing you are,
there’s just certain things you not going to do no more,
because eagles and pigeons don’t run together.
And when you realize sweetheart that you an eagle,
my brother, when you realize you’re a king,
my sister, when you realize you’re a queen,
things are going to change.
Why?
‘Cause queens don’t do what everybody else do.
Kings don’t do what everybody else do.
And so, I’m telling you, you are amazing.
Now, draw me a line, and I want you to do me a favor.
That’s right, I said it.
Draw a line, and I just want you to put one thing on there,
as a matter of fact two things.
Put amazing and put super duper amazing.
And I just want you to write down
all of the things that make you amazing.
Like for real, just sit down.
I don’t care about your teacher,
we aint’t talking about your grades right now,
I’m not talking about what you did in school,
what you didn’t do in school,
I’m not talking about where you were born,
where you come from.
We’re not talking about that, let’s all that aside.
I just want you to write down, “I’m amazing. Why?
“I’m a people person.
“I’m amazing, I’m intelligent in my own right.
“I’m amazing, I’m an artist.
“I’m amazing, I do music.
“I’m amazing, I love people.”
Like, whatever, I don’t know what it is.
“I’m amazing, E.T.”
Everything that makes you special,
everything that makes you, you.
Then I want you to get up, listen to me,
I love you guys, that’s why I do what I do,
and now it’s time for you to recognize how amazing you are.
Right? So just do that for me,
just write down how amazing you are.
I just want you to look at it in the morning,
look at it at night, look at it in the evening.
I’m not telling you something I read in a book
or something somebody told me.
I’m telling you I went from being who I was
to who I am now.
And, guess what?
My biological father never came back in my life.
Like, I’m being 100, like nothing changed,
but I woke up one day and realized,
“Yo, E., so what your father wasn’t in your life?
“You’re still amazing.
“So what you got kicked out of Detroit public school?
“You still amazing!
“So what you ate out of trash cans?
“You still amazing!”
And there’s nothing your circumstances can do about it.
And so the difference between the old E.T. and the new E.T.
is that I know about the grace of God.
I’m amazing.
And you’re amazing too.
So I need you to do me a favor,
I need you to start acting like it.
This your boy E.T. saying I love you, I believe in you,
and now it’s time for you to believe in yourself.
Now, a lot of you have heard of the Black Mamba.
The Black Mamba, let me tell you something,
when you’re talking about the Black Mamba,
you’re talking about practice, it’s a must have.
I’ve watched this dude lose a game.
I don’t even know if it was the playoffs.
I think it was like a regular game
against the Miami Heat in Miami, South Beach, Florida.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been there before
but it’s, you want to go.
It’s a nice place to just hang out.
Especially if you on the roll, playing ball,
it’s a nice place after the game to go get dinner,
sit on the beach.
It’s a nice…
And I’m sure if you NBA,
they probably got a VIP section for them on the beach.
(upbeat music)
And, unfortunately, the Lakers lost to the Miami Heat
because Black Mamba missed a wide open shot,
in the corner set shot.
He missed it.
What he did for the next three-four hours
while everybody else was getting dressed
and going on the beach,
he sat there for hours shooting the exact same shot
over, and over, and over, and over.
Like he had never won a championship.
I’m like, “Now hold up,
“where everybody else at on the Lakers?
“They need to be out there as a squad!”
But the Black Mamba’s out there doing his thing like,
“I’m not on them, I messed up.
“I got to practice”.
And this is not a coached practice,
this is not an organization in college,
this was just flat out the Black Mamba was saying,
“This is a must have.”
And where most of you go wrong, you’re not even 4.0,
and you not studying.
Like, you’re not even a 4.0 student,
like you got a 2.0, a 2.5, a three-something,
and you’re still not really studying like that
because for you it’s like, “Ah, it’s not a must have.”
It blows my mind, I work with professional athletes,
I work with D-1 athletes all over the world,
and when I look at Twitter and Instagram,
it blows my mind how dudes on Instagram, I’m like,
“Bruh, you have not won a championship.
“Like, that’s what you come here for, to win a championship”
And so, if you don’t win the championship
I don’t even know why its people broke.
I don’t even know how you have enough time
to do a 30-second video.
You’re broke!
How did you have time to do a video?
How did you have time like to do a dance routine
when you should be practicing.
You should be lifting weights.
You should be looking at them.
You said, not me, that you want to win the tourney,
that you want to win it all.
You wanted to go to the final four.
How do you want to go to the final four,
but your schedule don’t look like the final four?
What are you tweeting about when you broke?
Now, listen, what I want to talk to you tonight about
is don’t be average.
Don’t be average.
Average people make a certain amount of money.
Average people live a certain type of lifestyle.
And I’m not disrespecting average people, I’m just saying
if you have a choice don’t be average
because in life, when you roll the dice,
worst case scenario you’re going to land on average.
So don’t be average, because if you don’t try
you will get to average, right?
So let’s not shoot for average
’cause average is going to be there.
So I need you to be what? What’s the “P” word?
I need you to be what?
– [Audience] Productive.
– [Eric] Come on. I need you to be what?
– [Audience] Productive!
– [Eric] I don’t need you to be nothing else.
When you do your job, you do it in a way
that you cannot get fired.
I was talking to my wife today, she’s like,
“I want you to clean up”.
I’m like, “We’re about to get to church”.
I’m like, “How? ‘Cause I know you want it a different way
“than how I do it.”
I clean average.
(audience laughing)
I’m just being real, I clean average.
So when you say clean, you have to break that down
’cause I know where my clean and your clean,
there’s two different cleans.
I’m trying to help you.
It’s two different cleans.
My wife said, “You don’t clean, you shift.
(audience laughing)
“So you take stuff from one area
“and you put it in another area.
“That area is clean but then the other area …
“When I clean you don’t see nothing, everything is gone.”
Some of you when you get a job you shift, you don’t clean.
So I need you to find out what productive is
when you get to that internship, you get that job,
you get in that relationship with that female, that male.
Whatever you do, I need you to find out what produ —
Not what you think productive is,
find out what’s really productive.
If you do that, then you ain’t go,
they can’t get rid of you.
Anybody got any haters in the building?
Let’s me see your hands real quick.
Got any haters in the building?
Let me just see your hand real quick.
Good, write something down.
Write this down, you do that.
I just say get it out of your system, right?
Let’s get it out your sys–
Look, people will hate on you.
It’s okay.
As a matter of fact, I’ve told you all this before,
like, do me a favor, do not dismiss your haters
because sometimes iron sharpens iron.
Like, sometimes you need a little pressure
to get to that next level.
So do me a favor, don’t dismiss your haters.
Some of the stuff they say is true.
I don’t dismiss all of it,
some of the stuff your haters say it’s true,
let me tell you something,
some of your haters are going to give you a perspective
that your Momma not gon’ give you,
’cause your Momma, she gon’ always tell you this.
For real most of y’alls Mommas,
now, some of us have different Mommas,
but most of our Mommas are gon’ tell us,
like, my Mom is not going to do that, but I’d say most Mommas
they just go and, “Ah, baby, you right”.
They’re not going to really chastise you.
So you need your haters because your haters
are going to point out stuff, right?
So we’re not going to dismiss our haters all together.
We’re going to listen to ’em,
we’re going to hear what they’re saying,
and we’re going to make sure that their perspective is not,
their perspective is wrong or right,
and we take the stuff that we can take,
the stuff that we can’t use, don’t worry about it.
I got an older white male, he’s probably in his 60’s maybe,
and my man says to me, you know, like,
“I heard what you say, E.T.,
“but how do you sustain it?”
I’m like, “Okay, say it again”.
I’m like, “Say it again, ’cause I want to make sure
“I’m hearing what you’re saying”.
He’s like, “You’re talking about going 120,
“you’re talking about going hard,
“you’re talking about having what you want,
“being what you want, do what you want.
“Okay, I get it, but how do you sustain it?”
I’m thinking, “Is that a real question?”
I said, “Listen to me very closely.
“How did I start this whole presentation off?”
He said, “Write down the people names that you love.”
I said, “Duh, if you’re waking up everyday
“and think about your wife, duh, how do you not sustain it?
“If you wake up everyday and you’re looking at your son,
“how do you not sustain it?
“You think I’m going to put my kid’s life
“in the hands of some other man?
“You think that’s my role as a father?
“You think my role is to allow my kids to come here,
“to pay all this money, go to school,
“and do everything they did
“and now they got to go beg somebody else for a job,
“that’s not my role or responsibility?
“How do I sustain it?
“What do you mean?
“How do you not sustain it?
“I ask you, why are you not pumped up?
“Why do you have days off?
“I’m asking you why you give 70%.
“You don’t love nobody?
“Is there not somebody
“that you don’t love more than yourself?
“Is there not somebody you’re waking up for?
“Is there not somebody you’re grinding for?”
Somebody told me that they get distracted easy.
Let me tell you something, the reason
why you’re getting distracted easy,
’cause you ain’t got eight or nine things
you wake up to every single day and say
“I got to go get that.”
Many of you are getting distracted because you don’t have
something that’s stronger than the distraction.
You need something stronger than the distraction!
You getting distracted with parties.
You getting distracted with smoking.
You getting distracted with drinking.
You getting distracted with sleeping.
You getting distracted with video games.
Why?
Because the video games is stronger than your goal.
Tell my homies all the time,
bro if they ain’t go out and do it,
you all be playing, I’m like, “If it ain’t about the money.”
You just singing it, I’m for real,
“Don’t be blowin’ me up.”
I went to a Redbox about two months ago,
I went to go get me a Redbox.
I told C. I was getting a Redbox and he joked,
“You’re still getting Redbox?”
I’m like, “Yeah, what’s wrong with Redbox?”
He’s like, “Netflix. You ain’t on Netflix?”
I’m like, “Nah, I don’t watch TV.”
I said, “I don’t want to watch no movie
“on my little small computer.”
He’s like, “Your little small computer?
“Put it on the TV.”
I said, “I can’t put my stuff on no TV.
“I don’t want to buy one of those auxillary cord
“all running through my crib like that.”
He’s like, “No, the Smart TV.”
“Bruh, I’m getting paid and I ain’t got no Smart TV.”
I need you to hear what I just said.
I got bread, and I got the same TV I bought
when I moved into the house.
Why?
‘Cause I could put on, and that joker come on.
You all laugh and you like,
“Why would you do a TV like that?”
‘Cause I remember back in the day
when we used to keep the hanger with the aluminum foil
and drop that joker on, and it’s cloudy cloudy
and you’re trying to do what you got to do.
So what I got is way sweeter than that.
We used to have to do this old school,
you had to turn to get to station two (laughs).
Then you “do-do-do-do-do”, seven (laughs).
Right, and that joint went off at night.
Your TV don’t even go off, our TV like 11:00 goes,
♫ Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light
Your TV go “phfff”.
I could just go and cash me out and get a brand new one,
but the reason why I don’t do it
is because of a healthy sense of scarcity is great.
You get too much, you got too much.
You get everything, you lose your bite.
I can’t afford to lose my bite,
’cause there’s other dudes out here doing what I’m doing,
and if they do it better than me
my kids ain’t going to have the lifestyle of theirs.
My wife is retired at 45 ’cause she got MS.
She cannot go back to work,
I cannot let you beat me,
so I’m not going to go buy three, four cars.
Scarcity.
You cannot have everything you see.
It’s not healthy!
There’s a part of lack that make you hungry!
There’s a part in eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,
that make you deep within the dude
that’s eatin’ five star meals!
Let me tell you something, man, I promise you
on everything I love
if I could do my life all over again,
I promise you I would, I’m glad my daddy wasn’t in my life.
I swear to you, I’m glad I lived in abandoned buildings.
I swear to you, I’m glad I got my GED.
I look at cats who way smarter than me,
but they ain’t got no dog.
They ain’t got no bite.
(upbeat music)
I’m looking at grown men
who ain’t what they want to be in life,
in no part of they life, and they waking up at eight,
nine o’ clock in the morning.
I’m like, “Bro, what you smoking?
“I thought you was a Christian, you wasn’t on no drugs.
“You’re on drugs.
“Are you invested in you?
“Do you care about you?”
So what you need to transition from,
with your entitled self,
what you need to transition from is friends and fun.
You need to stop having it.
Until you get to where you want to be in life,
you need to stop having all that fun
and you need to just start making up in your mind,
just start saying you broke.
Just start saying it, ’cause you probably are for real.
Even if you got some money,
you probably got your parents stuff,
it probably don’t belong to you,
which means you didn’t earn it, is what I’m talking about.
So if you have something that you did not earn,
you have to stop telling yourself that you have something.
Look, you got to hear what I’m telling you,
I’m trying to help you!
I only take pictures of clothes that belong to me.
I don’t put my boys shoes on
and then take a pic of it like their mines.
No, and what I’m trying to tell you is you are broke
but you don’t realize you broke
because you’re living somebody else’s life,
and if you’re living somebody else’s life
what you should be able to do is say,
“I am grateful that this person
“is trying to set me up for greatness,
“but I won’t fake it like it’s my life!”
All I’m saying to you is when you act
like you got something that you really don’t,
then you don’t have the drive
that it takes to be successful.
You can’t make a difference, until you make a decision.
Ah! Ha-ha!
You better hear what I’m telling you, man.
I’m talking about the secret to success.
I’m always telling you how I went from one spot
to the next spot, and that was it, right?
There, listen to me, catch the first principle.
You got to hear, you can’t make a difference,
until you make a decision.
So, for real, some of you, man, you keep crying.
You complaining about your job.
You complaining about where you are financially.
You complaining about your relationships.
You complaining about your opportunities.
You complaining, complaining, complaining.
Listen to me, you murmuring and complaining.
You complaining, and complaining, and complaining.
Shut up!
Stop complaining and do me a favor,
if you want to make a difference,
all you got to do is one thing.
This is how you get started.
You want something different?
Listen to me, all you got to do is make a decision.
That’s it.
And for those of you who be making the wrong decision,
all you got to do is make the right decision.
But if you want to make a difference, make a decision.
Are you hearing what I’m telling you?
What I’m trying to do for you,
to take you to that next level,
is I’m trying to give you control of your life back.
Some of you, you ain’t got control,
you talking about your job.
You got control!
Listen to me.
Somebody talk to you about your economics
like you ain’t got no control.
You got to control!
I want you to know that your life right now
it’s the sum total of your decisions.
Not your Momma decisions, not your Daddy.
Listen to me, even if you made they decisions,
you decided to make their decisions.
So I need you to do me a favor,
I need you from this day forward for the rest of your life,
make a decision.
And I’m not talking about, again, something that I read,
I’m telling you what I experienced.
I remember being upset, okay?
The word is pissed off.
Forgive me.
When the boss go and tell me
I can’t go see my daughter get her award,
you heard me say it before, it burned.
It burned! “She gon’ tell me you can’t go see–“
My daughter’s getting an academic award,
seven, eight years old,
ain’t nothing like having your Daddy in the building,
and my boss tell me I can’t go.
So, guess what?
I let it burn and then one day I made a decision,
and I made the decision to walk away!
And, let me tell you something, I walked away
and two weeks later the video went viral.
When you want to succeed, as bad as you want to be viral
but it didn’t go viral until I made a decision.
The video never went viral when I was complaining.
It never went viral when I was murmuring.
It never went viral when I was talking just to be talking.
But when I made the decision to walk away,
when I made the decision, ah!
When I made the decision to follow my destiny,
I felt it calling me, my destiny was calling me.
And when I decided to stop letting it calling me
but I chased after her, we went viral.
Make a decision.
You give 70% effort, the most,
the optimal that can come out of giving 70% energy is what?
70% outcome. That’s it.
So you all got to do me a favor for real, I’m not playing.
Like the energy you all give off sucks.
Like it ain’t no other way for me to say it, it sucks.
And I don’t care about the energy you giving me right now,
but if you’re taking this energy you giving me
into the real world, you going to be average.
So when you get out of here, I’m talking about,
I need energy.
You don’t have to be the smartest person in the world,
’cause sometimes when you’re smart
people still don’t notice you.
People always notice what?
Always.
If you not careful you’ll get electrocuted.
You have to pay attention to energy
and things that energize.
That’s all I’m asking you to do.
I’m saying, most of you are not successful
not because you have reached your highest level of success,
you are not successful because you stopped focusing on it.
You quit focusing on it.
You got a job and you just stopped.
Alright, you got to do me a huge favor.
Alright, look, I know the power of one.
Trust me. Look, don’t get too analytical on me.
I know the power of one, but I’m telling you,
sometimes to make a milestone become a reality
you got to get it done by twos.
One of the greatest basketball players
that ever played the game.
Yep, Michael Jordan.
– [Presenter] Oh! Spectacular by Michael Jordan!
– [Eric] Yep, Michael Jordan, he didn’t do it alone.
Come on, come on, come on!
When you say Mike, you got to say Scottie Pippen.
Are you hearing me?
L.A., L.A., baby, when you say Kobe Bryant,
like for real, for real, you can’t go without saying,
when you’re talking about that era,
you can’t go without saying Shaquille O’Neal.
Are you hearing me?
Sometimes, yup, the power of one is great.
M.J. was doing his thing on the solo, yep.
Kobe was doing his thing on the solo.
But you got to keep it 100, when Jordan has Scottie,
ah, magical.
Magic happened.
Oh, when Shaq was with Kobe. Ah!
Magic happened.
And what I’m telling you is,
as long as I was doing it by myself,
yep, as long as I was doing it by myself,
I could never get that dissertation done.
The power of two.
No man, and I mean it, no man is an island.
And let me tell you what changed the game.
What changed the game is when I met with Dr. June.
What changed the game is when I sat down with Dr. June,
and I had some accountability.
Can I say it? Ah!
Accountability partner.
Your problem is you’re doing it by yourself.
Your problem is you don’t want nobody to notice
you got (laughs)…
I know you are afraid for them to see your weaknesses,
I know you’re afraid to be vulnerable,
yep, you’re afraid to tell them your dream.
Look, you got to tell somebody,
somebody got to hold you accountable.
I’m not telling you to tell the world
but one other person needs to know,
and one other person need to hold you accountable.
And my life changed, my milestone became a reality.
Listen to me, I’m giving you the secret to success.
The day I told Dr. June I wanted to get it done,
and Dr. June looked at me in my face and said,
“Don’t play with me.
“Don’t play with me. Are you ready?
(♫ Rocky Balboa theme song)
“Look, not only do I have a PhD,
“not only have I sat on many committees,
“listen to me very closely,
“I can and will help you to get through this,
“but don’t play with me, you got to be serious.”
And doc said, “All I need you to do, you tell me,
“you tell me when you want this PhD.
“You tell me when you want to be
“finished with this dissertation.
“You tell me when, and I’ll tell you,
“I’ll tell you what you have to do every single day,
“how many pages you have to write,
“how much research you have to do,
“how much time you have to spend on it.”
Listen to me, it did not become a reality,
it didn’t become real until I sat down with Dr. June
and we made a commitment.
Are you hearing me?
Before it was just an idea, before it was just a thought,
before it was just something I said,
but when I sat down “mano y mano”, man to man.
“Mano y mano”, man to man, when I sat down
and I made that commitment and I shook his hand,
when I looked him in his eyes and said,
“I’m ready to get it done.
“Always get with me every Monday.”
Are you hearing me?
I know this sound too simple,
I know it sounds too good to be true.
All we did was sit down on Mondays at nine o’ clock,
and every single week he said,
“This is what you need to get done.
“If you are a man and you do what you said you going to do
“and you make no excuses,
“and you don’t let nothing get in your way.
“I guarantee you in a year’s time,
“if that’s how long you want this process to take,
“I guarantee you we can get it done.
“But what I can’t do is I can’t do it for you,
“but I can show you what it takes.”
There was a part in me that
I never really wanted to link up with nobody else
because I really didn’t want to fully expose myself.
I really didn’t —
He said to me, “Kid, you’ve never written
“a dissertation before, how would you know how to do it?
“That’s what I’m here for.”
And when you get that life coach.
That’s the problem with some of you,
you can’t get to that next level
because you trying to do it on your own,
you trying to do it on your strength.
And I’m not saying there’s no power in one,
Mike was murdering the game,
putting up 60-something against Boston.
Mike was dunk content, Mike was doing it,
but Mike never reached those milestones by himself.
He had to bring somebody else into his sphere of influence.
– Thank you, guys, so much for watching.
I made this video because Sam Mendimasa asked me to.
So if there’s a famous entrepreneur
that you want me to profile next,
check out the link in the description
and you can go and cast your vote.
I’d also love to know which clip
resonated the most with you,
what lesson are you going to take from this video
and immediately apply to your life,
or to your business somehow.
Leave it down the comments below.
I’m really curious to find out what you have to say.
I’d also like to give a quick shout out to Matt and Dan
from the Square Peg Round Hole Podcast.
Thank you, guys, so much for picking up a copy of my book,
“Your One Word,” and having me on your podcast.
It was an awesome experience,
and I hope you guys enjoy my book.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
I believe in you.
I hope you continue to believe in yourself.
And, remember your one word is,
much love.
I’ll see you soon.
– I need you to do me a favor.
I just need you to expect to win.
Yep, yeah!
You’re like, “Come on, E. That’s simple.”
Look, number one, I need you to expect to win!
When you wake up in the morning, I expect to win.
I expect it to be a great day.
Listen to me very closely,
I do not get up at three o’ clock in the morning to lose.
I used to be a loser, a high-school dropout.
I used to be a loser, a homeless.
I used to be a loser, eating out of trash cans.
Listen to me, this ain’t no feel-good stuff.
I used to be a loser,
now, listen to me, all I do is win.
And the first thing I did, I said,
“Look, it’s unacceptable. I will not be a loser.”
All I did was say to myself, “I expect to win!”
Listen to me, when I get up at three o’ clock in the morning
I expect it to be a great day.
When I grind, I expect to win!
When I wake up, I expect a miracle.
I expect that phone call.
I expected to have marital bliss.
I had kids,
I expected to have a great relationship with my kids.
When I went to school to get my PhD, I expected to pass.
Are you hearing what I’m telling you?
I wake up every day and I expect it!
All I need you to do, (motivational music)
don’t practice to fail!
Are you practicing to fail?
Are you going to class all the time,
doing all your homework to fail?
So, number one, mental toughness.
Everything you put your hands forth to do,
expect to be successful, expect it to be positive.
When you set up for a goal,
expect that it’s going to happen.
That’s all I need you to do.
Number one, expect it to happen!
What if I told you that you’ll never ever
have to come up short again? (crowd cheering)
So, this is all I need you to do for me today.
Listen to me, this is all I need you to do for me today,
is that you declare that it’s over!
That yesterday was the last day that you were a loser.
Like yesterday was the last day you expected to lose.
Like yesterday was the last day you expected,
listen to me, to come up short.
All I need you to do is declare for me like, losing is over.
All I need you to do is speak up and say,
“I expect to win”!
I’m dead to your limitations.
Your limitations don’t exist in my world.
In life, when you roll the dice, worst case scenario
you’re going to land on average,
so don’t be average because if you don’t try
you will get to average.
When I made the decision, aah!
When I made the decision I had to follow my destiny
I felt it calling me, my destiny was calling me!
– Hello, Believe Nation, my name is Evan Carmichael.
My one word is believe, and I believe that entrepreneurs
will solve all of the world’s major problems.
So to help on your journey today we’re going to learn
from speaker, educator, and entrepreneur Eric Thomas,
and my take on his top 10 rules to success, volume three.
Rule number three is my personal favorite,
and I’d love to know which one you guys like the best.
And, as always, as you’re watching,
if you hear something that really resonates with you
please leave it in the comments below,
put quotes around it so other people can be inspired.
Might win a prize as well.
And also when you write it down,
it’s much more likely to stick with yourself as well.
Enjoy.
(upbeat music)
– If you gon’ do what you say you’re going to do,
be what you say you going to be,
you won’t have to lion me out.
That gazelle stuff, I’m trying to tell you,
you a gazelle, you gon’ come up short.
You a gazelle, you’re not always going to get
what you want out of life.
You a gazelle, it’s going to be,
you gon’ have an average experience.
You a student, I need you in lion mode.
You a teacher, I need you in lion mode.
You an entrepreneur, I need you in lion mode.
You trying to lose weight, lion mode.
You can’t do nothing significant in gazelle mode.
Nothing.
Nothing impressive happens in gazelle mode.
Nothing happening when you running (laughs).
Nothing happen in run mode.
Give up mode, quit mode, scared mode, fearful mode.
Nothing happens.
Everything happen in lion mode,
like “I’m coming to get you.”
I love it, you all ever seen the one
where the lioness is kind of sitting there
and she double-dutchin’
and all the beasts is running by
and they just keep going,
and she’s just in preparation mode,
and out of nowhere, there is no music, no preparation,
you just see my man come our of nowhere and just boom!
Bam! Grab one. Boom!
Boom! Ripped the heart out!
That’s the lion mode!
You got to get to a place where you start executing!
Somebody just help me out.
Last year the greatest news in the NBA,
(upbeat music)
the greatest story in the NBA last year, was what?
Greatest story told in the NBA
last year all season was what?
Kevin Durant left to go to Golden State.
Durant, like “I’m out.”
I don’t know where you all come from, but that hurt hard
because they suppose to be boys.
Look at this picture for a minute,
because this why, if you’re going to be successful
this is where I need you to go right here.
What a pic!
This was the one where you played your boy, first game,
you and your homie was cool, right?
And this is where you emotionally cut him!
This is when you cut my man.
This is when you see my man and he trying to be cool.
He’s trying to act like he didn’t leave you high and dry,
He’s trying to act like the goals and the dreams
you all had,
this the one where he clapping
and you look my man to the face and say,
“You’re dead to me!”
And that’s why most of you will never be successful
’cause there’s some stuff in your past
you keep holding on to,
and you got to get to a point when you ready to grind,
and you ready to get to the next level.
You look at people you used to be close to and say,
“You’re dead to me! You’re dead.”
42 triple-doubles, we shouldn’t even be talking about MVP.
Ain’t nobody else did this.
If someone else make it close to the MVP,
the NBA is rigged, and I’m through with them.
I saw my man at the beginning of the season,
I’m talking about high octane.
They said, “If he keep doing that all season,”
what’s going to happen?
They said, “You keep running yourself like that
“you’re going to burn out.”
My man ain’t burnt out,
he don’t look like, he ain’t close to burn out.
But you know why they said it?
‘Cause they can’t operate on that level for that long.
So people will try to put they limitations on you.
I can do six gigs, I can do seven.
We can leave here tonight, you can take me to a church,
I’ll give you another hour.
You can’t do it, don’t put your limitations on me.
I’m dead to your limitations.
Your limitation don’t exist in my world.
Those are your limitations, keep ’em.
Go home, watch ’em on TV.
Go home, read the newspaper about ’em.
Go home and look in the mirror.
Go home, call your home boy,
and you all talk about your limitations.
I ain’t got none, I get off the plane from going to Dubai,
and get on the ground and I hit it!
And some of you all holding on to stuff
you shouldn’t be holding on to.
It should be dead to you.
Doggone go to a funeral if you need to,
get rid of that junk, like bury it,
do whatever you got to do.
But it’s weighing you down, it’s killing you.
Everyday you’re waking up thinking about it.
You shouldn’t be thinking about it no more,
it should be dead to you!
Move on!
And move towards your greatness.
I forget those things which are behind,
and I press, I press towards the thing.
I press.
I don’t got time for that no more.
It’s nothing personal.
I ain’t got nothing against you.
I don’t hate you, but I love me!
Look, you don’t even know what to do
if you don’t know who you are,
and so I want to tell you if nobody’s told you.
Perhaps your Mom didn’t tell you today.
Perhaps your Dad didn’t tell you today.
I don’t know, maybe your teacher had an attitude
and she didn’t say it before you left school,
but you are amazing!
(slow piano music(
Yep, I said it.
Bring it in!
I said it. You are amazing!
That’s right, I’m a say it again.
You are amazing!
And you need to understand something,
I do not get paid to do this.
I’ve been doing this for eight years, I have no sponsors.
I don’t think somebody send me like $5 to do this.
“So, E.T., why would you keep doing it?
“Year after year, month after month,
week after week? Why?”
Because I know something about you
that you may not know about yourself.
You are amazing!
And it’s time for you to act like you amazing.
It’s time for you to do the amazing, right?
It’s time for you to know you are amazing.
So, listen to me, I’m going to give you an assignment,
but before we go there I got to let you know
I’m telling you the truth.
Now, when I was a high school dropout, when I was homeless,
when I was getting kicked out of school,
I’m just going to keep it 100,
I did not know I was amazing!
I told you before, no disrespect,
but my biological father wasn’t in my life,
so I didn’t have him to tell me when I got up everyday,
“E.T., you are amazing!”
Like me and my mom had some challenges,
so my mom weren’t necessarily telling me,
“You are amazing!,” right?
And so I was eating out of trash cans, right?
Listen to me, I was getting kicked out of school,
like I was in the mall, stealing from the mall,
getting in trouble, getting arrested.
Listen, and some Pastor brought me to church, right?
And I’m telling you, my man would tell me on a weekly basis,
“You are amazing! And it’s time for you to act amazing,
and do the amazing.
So, I want to say this to you real quick.
You are not your test score.
Are you hearing me? Look at E.T.!
I’ve never done well on a standardized test.
You are not your grade.
You are amazing!
You are not what happened to you, where you were born,
what circumstance you come from,
you are amazing!
You hear me? You are amazing!
And the day you recognize you’re amazing,
the day you understand how amazing you are
everything changes.
Look, my standardized test, they didn’t change,
my test scores didn’t change,
my grades didn’t necessarily changed like that,
like this is when I became aware of the fact
that I’m gifted, that I’m special!
I need you to understand something,
when you recognize who you are,
when you realize how amazing you are,
there are certain things you’re not going to do no more.
When you recognize how amazing you are,
there are certain people you not going to hang around no more.
When you realize how amazing you are,
there’s just certain things you not going to do no more,
because eagles and pigeons don’t run together.
And when you realize sweetheart that you an eagle,
my brother, when you realize you’re a king,
my sister, when you realize you’re a queen,
things are going to change.
Why?
‘Cause queens don’t do what everybody else do.
Kings don’t do what everybody else do.
And so, I’m telling you, you are amazing.
Now, draw me a line, and I want you to do me a favor.
That’s right, I said it.
Draw a line, and I just want you to put one thing on there,
as a matter of fact two things.
Put amazing and put super duper amazing.
And I just want you to write down
all of the things that make you amazing.
Like for real, just sit down.
I don’t care about your teacher,
we aint’t talking about your grades right now,
I’m not talking about what you did in school,
what you didn’t do in school,
I’m not talking about where you were born,
where you come from.
We’re not talking about that, let’s all that aside.
I just want you to write down, “I’m amazing. Why?
“I’m a people person.
“I’m amazing, I’m intelligent in my own right.
“I’m amazing, I’m an artist.
“I’m amazing, I do music.
“I’m amazing, I love people.”
Like, whatever, I don’t know what it is.
“I’m amazing, E.T.”
Everything that makes you special,
everything that makes you, you.
Then I want you to get up, listen to me,
I love you guys, that’s why I do what I do,
and now it’s time for you to recognize how amazing you are.
Right? So just do that for me,
just write down how amazing you are.
I just want you to look at it in the morning,
look at it at night, look at it in the evening.
I’m not telling you something I read in a book
or something somebody told me.
I’m telling you I went from being who I was
to who I am now.
And, guess what?
My biological father never came back in my life.
Like, I’m being 100, like nothing changed,
but I woke up one day and realized,
“Yo, E., so what your father wasn’t in your life?
“You’re still amazing.
“So what you got kicked out of Detroit public school?
“You still amazing!
“So what you ate out of trash cans?
“You still amazing!”
And there’s nothing your circumstances can do about it.
And so the difference between the old E.T. and the new E.T.
is that I know about the grace of God.
I’m amazing.
And you’re amazing too.
So I need you to do me a favor,
I need you to start acting like it.
This your boy E.T. saying I love you, I believe in you,
and now it’s time for you to believe in yourself.
Now, a lot of you have heard of the Black Mamba.
The Black Mamba, let me tell you something,
when you’re talking about the Black Mamba,
you’re talking about practice, it’s a must have.
I’ve watched this dude lose a game.
I don’t even know if it was the playoffs.
I think it was like a regular game
against the Miami Heat in Miami, South Beach, Florida.
I don’t know if you’ve ever been there before
but it’s, you want to go.
It’s a nice place to just hang out.
Especially if you on the roll, playing ball,
it’s a nice place after the game to go get dinner,
sit on the beach.
It’s a nice…
And I’m sure if you NBA,
they probably got a VIP section for them on the beach.
(upbeat music)
And, unfortunately, the Lakers lost to the Miami Heat
because Black Mamba missed a wide open shot,
in the corner set shot.
He missed it.
What he did for the next three-four hours
while everybody else was getting dressed
and going on the beach,
he sat there for hours shooting the exact same shot
over, and over, and over, and over.
Like he had never won a championship.
I’m like, “Now hold up,
“where everybody else at on the Lakers?
“They need to be out there as a squad!”
But the Black Mamba’s out there doing his thing like,
“I’m not on them, I messed up.
“I got to practice”.
And this is not a coached practice,
this is not an organization in college,
this was just flat out the Black Mamba was saying,
“This is a must have.”
And where most of you go wrong, you’re not even 4.0,
and you not studying.
Like, you’re not even a 4.0 student,
like you got a 2.0, a 2.5, a three-something,
and you’re still not really studying like that
because for you it’s like, “Ah, it’s not a must have.”
It blows my mind, I work with professional athletes,
I work with D-1 athletes all over the world,
and when I look at Twitter and Instagram,
it blows my mind how dudes on Instagram, I’m like,
“Bruh, you have not won a championship.
“Like, that’s what you come here for, to win a championship”
And so, if you don’t win the championship
I don’t even know why its people broke.
I don’t even know how you have enough time
to do a 30-second video.
You’re broke!
How did you have time to do a video?
How did you have time like to do a dance routine
when you should be practicing.
You should be lifting weights.
You should be looking at them.
You said, not me, that you want to win the tourney,
that you want to win it all.
You wanted to go to the final four.
How do you want to go to the final four,
but your schedule don’t look like the final four?
What are you tweeting about when you broke?
Now, listen, what I want to talk to you tonight about
is don’t be average.
Don’t be average.
Average people make a certain amount of money.
Average people live a certain type of lifestyle.
And I’m not disrespecting average people, I’m just saying
if you have a choice don’t be average
because in life, when you roll the dice,
worst case scenario you’re going to land on average.
So don’t be average, because if you don’t try
you will get to average, right?
So let’s not shoot for average
’cause average is going to be there.
So I need you to be what? What’s the “P” word?
I need you to be what?
– [Audience] Productive.
– [Eric] Come on. I need you to be what?
– [Audience] Productive!
– [Eric] I don’t need you to be nothing else.
When you do your job, you do it in a way
that you cannot get fired.
I was talking to my wife today, she’s like,
“I want you to clean up”.
I’m like, “We’re about to get to church”.
I’m like, “How? ‘Cause I know you want it a different way
“than how I do it.”
I clean average.
(audience laughing)
I’m just being real, I clean average.
So when you say clean, you have to break that down
’cause I know where my clean and your clean,
there’s two different cleans.
I’m trying to help you.
It’s two different cleans.
My wife said, “You don’t clean, you shift.
(audience laughing)
“So you take stuff from one area
“and you put it in another area.
“That area is clean but then the other area …
“When I clean you don’t see nothing, everything is gone.”
Some of you when you get a job you shift, you don’t clean.
So I need you to find out what productive is
when you get to that internship, you get that job,
you get in that relationship with that female, that male.
Whatever you do, I need you to find out what produ —
Not what you think productive is,
find out what’s really productive.
If you do that, then you ain’t go,
they can’t get rid of you.
Anybody got any haters in the building?
Let’s me see your hands real quick.
Got any haters in the building?
Let me just see your hand real quick.
Good, write something down.
Write this down, you do that.
I just say get it out of your system, right?
Let’s get it out your sys–
Look, people will hate on you.
It’s okay.
As a matter of fact, I’ve told you all this before,
like, do me a favor, do not dismiss your haters
because sometimes iron sharpens iron.
Like, sometimes you need a little pressure
to get to that next level.
So do me a favor, don’t dismiss your haters.
Some of the stuff they say is true.
I don’t dismiss all of it,
some of the stuff your haters say it’s true,
let me tell you something,
some of your haters are going to give you a perspective
that your Momma not gon’ give you,
’cause your Momma, she gon’ always tell you this.
For real most of y’alls Mommas,
now, some of us have different Mommas,
but most of our Mommas are gon’ tell us,
like, my Mom is not going to do that, but I’d say most Mommas
they just go and, “Ah, baby, you right”.
They’re not going to really chastise you.
So you need your haters because your haters
are going to point out stuff, right?
So we’re not going to dismiss our haters all together.
We’re going to listen to ’em,
we’re going to hear what they’re saying,
and we’re going to make sure that their perspective is not,
their perspective is wrong or right,
and we take the stuff that we can take,
the stuff that we can’t use, don’t worry about it.
I got an older white male, he’s probably in his 60’s maybe,
and my man says to me, you know, like,
“I heard what you say, E.T.,
“but how do you sustain it?”
I’m like, “Okay, say it again”.
I’m like, “Say it again, ’cause I want to make sure
“I’m hearing what you’re saying”.
He’s like, “You’re talking about going 120,
“you’re talking about going hard,
“you’re talking about having what you want,
“being what you want, do what you want.
“Okay, I get it, but how do you sustain it?”
I’m thinking, “Is that a real question?”
I said, “Listen to me very closely.
“How did I start this whole presentation off?”
He said, “Write down the people names that you love.”
I said, “Duh, if you’re waking up everyday
“and think about your wife, duh, how do you not sustain it?
“If you wake up everyday and you’re looking at your son,
“how do you not sustain it?
“You think I’m going to put my kid’s life
“in the hands of some other man?
“You think that’s my role as a father?
“You think my role is to allow my kids to come here,
“to pay all this money, go to school,
“and do everything they did
“and now they got to go beg somebody else for a job,
“that’s not my role or responsibility?
“How do I sustain it?
“What do you mean?
“How do you not sustain it?
“I ask you, why are you not pumped up?
“Why do you have days off?
“I’m asking you why you give 70%.
“You don’t love nobody?
“Is there not somebody
“that you don’t love more than yourself?
“Is there not somebody you’re waking up for?
“Is there not somebody you’re grinding for?”
Somebody told me that they get distracted easy.
Let me tell you something, the reason
why you’re getting distracted easy,
’cause you ain’t got eight or nine things
you wake up to every single day and say
“I got to go get that.”
Many of you are getting distracted because you don’t have
something that’s stronger than the distraction.
You need something stronger than the distraction!
You getting distracted with parties.
You getting distracted with smoking.
You getting distracted with drinking.
You getting distracted with sleeping.
You getting distracted with video games.
Why?
Because the video games is stronger than your goal.
Tell my homies all the time,
bro if they ain’t go out and do it,
you all be playing, I’m like, “If it ain’t about the money.”
You just singing it, I’m for real,
“Don’t be blowin’ me up.”
I went to a Redbox about two months ago,
I went to go get me a Redbox.
I told C. I was getting a Redbox and he joked,
“You’re still getting Redbox?”
I’m like, “Yeah, what’s wrong with Redbox?”
He’s like, “Netflix. You ain’t on Netflix?”
I’m like, “Nah, I don’t watch TV.”
I said, “I don’t want to watch no movie
“on my little small computer.”
He’s like, “Your little small computer?
“Put it on the TV.”
I said, “I can’t put my stuff on no TV.
“I don’t want to buy one of those auxillary cord
“all running through my crib like that.”
He’s like, “No, the Smart TV.”
“Bruh, I’m getting paid and I ain’t got no Smart TV.”
I need you to hear what I just said.
I got bread, and I got the same TV I bought
when I moved into the house.
Why?
‘Cause I could put on, and that joker come on.
You all laugh and you like,
“Why would you do a TV like that?”
‘Cause I remember back in the day
when we used to keep the hanger with the aluminum foil
and drop that joker on, and it’s cloudy cloudy
and you’re trying to do what you got to do.
So what I got is way sweeter than that.
We used to have to do this old school,
you had to turn to get to station two (laughs).
Then you “do-do-do-do-do”, seven (laughs).
Right, and that joint went off at night.
Your TV don’t even go off, our TV like 11:00 goes,
♫ Oh, say, can you see, by the dawn’s early light
Your TV go “phfff”.
I could just go and cash me out and get a brand new one,
but the reason why I don’t do it
is because of a healthy sense of scarcity is great.
You get too much, you got too much.
You get everything, you lose your bite.
I can’t afford to lose my bite,
’cause there’s other dudes out here doing what I’m doing,
and if they do it better than me
my kids ain’t going to have the lifestyle of theirs.
My wife is retired at 45 ’cause she got MS.
She cannot go back to work,
I cannot let you beat me,
so I’m not going to go buy three, four cars.
Scarcity.
You cannot have everything you see.
It’s not healthy!
There’s a part of lack that make you hungry!
There’s a part in eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches,
that make you deep within the dude
that’s eatin’ five star meals!
Let me tell you something, man, I promise you
on everything I love
if I could do my life all over again,
I promise you I would, I’m glad my daddy wasn’t in my life.
I swear to you, I’m glad I lived in abandoned buildings.
I swear to you, I’m glad I got my GED.
I look at cats who way smarter than me,
but they ain’t got no dog.
They ain’t got no bite.
(upbeat music)
I’m looking at grown men
who ain’t what they want to be in life,
in no part of they life, and they waking up at eight,
nine o’ clock in the morning.
I’m like, “Bro, what you smoking?
“I thought you was a Christian, you wasn’t on no drugs.
“You’re on drugs.
“Are you invested in you?
“Do you care about you?”
So what you need to transition from,
with your entitled self,
what you need to transition from is friends and fun.
You need to stop having it.
Until you get to where you want to be in life,
you need to stop having all that fun
and you need to just start making up in your mind,
just start saying you broke.
Just start saying it, ’cause you probably are for real.
Even if you got some money,
you probably got your parents stuff,
it probably don’t belong to you,
which means you didn’t earn it, is what I’m talking about.
So if you have something that you did not earn,
you have to stop telling yourself that you have something.
Look, you got to hear what I’m telling you,
I’m trying to help you!
I only take pictures of clothes that belong to me.
I don’t put my boys shoes on
and then take a pic of it like their mines.
No, and what I’m trying to tell you is you are broke
but you don’t realize you broke
because you’re living somebody else’s life,
and if you’re living somebody else’s life
what you should be able to do is say,
“I am grateful that this person
“is trying to set me up for greatness,
“but I won’t fake it like it’s my life!”
All I’m saying to you is when you act
like you got something that you really don’t,
then you don’t have the drive
that it takes to be successful.
You can’t make a difference, until you make a decision.
Ah! Ha-ha!
You better hear what I’m telling you, man.
I’m talking about the secret to success.
I’m always telling you how I went from one spot
to the next spot, and that was it, right?
There, listen to me, catch the first principle.
You got to hear, you can’t make a difference,
until you make a decision.
So, for real, some of you, man, you keep crying.
You complaining about your job.
You complaining about where you are financially.
You complaining about your relationships.
You complaining about your opportunities.
You complaining, complaining, complaining.
Listen to me, you murmuring and complaining.
You complaining, and complaining, and complaining.
Shut up!
Stop complaining and do me a favor,
if you want to make a difference,
all you got to do is one thing.
This is how you get started.
You want something different?
Listen to me, all you got to do is make a decision.
That’s it.
And for those of you who be making the wrong decision,
all you got to do is make the right decision.
But if you want to make a difference, make a decision.
Are you hearing what I’m telling you?
What I’m trying to do for you,
to take you to that next level,
is I’m trying to give you control of your life back.
Some of you, you ain’t got control,
you talking about your job.
You got control!
Listen to me.
Somebody talk to you about your economics
like you ain’t got no control.
You got to control!
I want you to know that your life right now
it’s the sum total of your decisions.
Not your Momma decisions, not your Daddy.
Listen to me, even if you made they decisions,
you decided to make their decisions.
So I need you to do me a favor,
I need you from this day forward for the rest of your life,
make a decision.
And I’m not talking about, again, something that I read,
I’m telling you what I experienced.
I remember being upset, okay?
The word is pissed off.
Forgive me.
When the boss go and tell me
I can’t go see my daughter get her award,
you heard me say it before, it burned.
It burned! “She gon’ tell me you can’t go see–“
My daughter’s getting an academic award,
seven, eight years old,
ain’t nothing like having your Daddy in the building,
and my boss tell me I can’t go.
So, guess what?
I let it burn and then one day I made a decision,
and I made the decision to walk away!
And, let me tell you something, I walked away
and two weeks later the video went viral.
When you want to succeed, as bad as you want to be viral
but it didn’t go viral until I made a decision.
The video never went viral when I was complaining.
It never went viral when I was murmuring.
It never went viral when I was talking just to be talking.
But when I made the decision to walk away,
when I made the decision, ah!
When I made the decision to follow my destiny,
I felt it calling me, my destiny was calling me.
And when I decided to stop letting it calling me
but I chased after her, we went viral.
Make a decision.
You give 70% effort, the most,
the optimal that can come out of giving 70% energy is what?
70% outcome. That’s it.
So you all got to do me a favor for real, I’m not playing.
Like the energy you all give off sucks.
Like it ain’t no other way for me to say it, it sucks.
And I don’t care about the energy you giving me right now,
but if you’re taking this energy you giving me
into the real world, you going to be average.
So when you get out of here, I’m talking about,
I need energy.
You don’t have to be the smartest person in the world,
’cause sometimes when you’re smart
people still don’t notice you.
People always notice what?
Always.
If you not careful you’ll get electrocuted.
You have to pay attention to energy
and things that energize.
That’s all I’m asking you to do.
I’m saying, most of you are not successful
not because you have reached your highest level of success,
you are not successful because you stopped focusing on it.
You quit focusing on it.
You got a job and you just stopped.
Alright, you got to do me a huge favor.
Alright, look, I know the power of one.
Trust me. Look, don’t get too analytical on me.
I know the power of one, but I’m telling you,
sometimes to make a milestone become a reality
you got to get it done by twos.
One of the greatest basketball players
that ever played the game.
Yep, Michael Jordan.
– [Presenter] Oh! Spectacular by Michael Jordan!
– [Eric] Yep, Michael Jordan, he didn’t do it alone.
Come on, come on, come on!
When you say Mike, you got to say Scottie Pippen.
Are you hearing me?
L.A., L.A., baby, when you say Kobe Bryant,
like for real, for real, you can’t go without saying,
when you’re talking about that era,
you can’t go without saying Shaquille O’Neal.
Are you hearing me?
Sometimes, yup, the power of one is great.
M.J. was doing his thing on the solo, yep.
Kobe was doing his thing on the solo.
But you got to keep it 100, when Jordan has Scottie,
ah, magical.
Magic happened.
Oh, when Shaq was with Kobe. Ah!
Magic happened.
And what I’m telling you is,
as long as I was doing it by myself,
yep, as long as I was doing it by myself,
I could never get that dissertation done.
The power of two.
No man, and I mean it, no man is an island.
And let me tell you what changed the game.
What changed the game is when I met with Dr. June.
What changed the game is when I sat down with Dr. June,
and I had some accountability.
Can I say it? Ah!
Accountability partner.
Your problem is you’re doing it by yourself.
Your problem is you don’t want nobody to notice
you got (laughs)…
I know you are afraid for them to see your weaknesses,
I know you’re afraid to be vulnerable,
yep, you’re afraid to tell them your dream.
Look, you got to tell somebody,
somebody got to hold you accountable.
I’m not telling you to tell the world
but one other person needs to know,
and one other person need to hold you accountable.
And my life changed, my milestone became a reality.
Listen to me, I’m giving you the secret to success.
The day I told Dr. June I wanted to get it done,
and Dr. June looked at me in my face and said,
“Don’t play with me.
“Don’t play with me. Are you ready?
(♫ Rocky Balboa theme song)
“Look, not only do I have a PhD,
“not only have I sat on many committees,
“listen to me very closely,
“I can and will help you to get through this,
“but don’t play with me, you got to be serious.”
And doc said, “All I need you to do, you tell me,
“you tell me when you want this PhD.
“You tell me when you want to be
“finished with this dissertation.
“You tell me when, and I’ll tell you,
“I’ll tell you what you have to do every single day,
“how many pages you have to write,
“how much research you have to do,
“how much time you have to spend on it.”
Listen to me, it did not become a reality,
it didn’t become real until I sat down with Dr. June
and we made a commitment.
Are you hearing me?
Before it was just an idea, before it was just a thought,
before it was just something I said,
but when I sat down “mano y mano”, man to man.
“Mano y mano”, man to man, when I sat down
and I made that commitment and I shook his hand,
when I looked him in his eyes and said,
“I’m ready to get it done.
“Always get with me every Monday.”
Are you hearing me?
I know this sound too simple,
I know it sounds too good to be true.
All we did was sit down on Mondays at nine o’ clock,
and every single week he said,
“This is what you need to get done.
“If you are a man and you do what you said you going to do
“and you make no excuses,
“and you don’t let nothing get in your way.
“I guarantee you in a year’s time,
“if that’s how long you want this process to take,
“I guarantee you we can get it done.
“But what I can’t do is I can’t do it for you,
“but I can show you what it takes.”
There was a part in me that
I never really wanted to link up with nobody else
because I really didn’t want to fully expose myself.
I really didn’t —
He said to me, “Kid, you’ve never written
“a dissertation before, how would you know how to do it?
“That’s what I’m here for.”
And when you get that life coach.
That’s the problem with some of you,
you can’t get to that next level
because you trying to do it on your own,
you trying to do it on your strength.
And I’m not saying there’s no power in one,
Mike was murdering the game,
putting up 60-something against Boston.
Mike was dunk content, Mike was doing it,
but Mike never reached those milestones by himself.
He had to bring somebody else into his sphere of influence.
– Thank you, guys, so much for watching.
I made this video because Sam Mendimasa asked me to.
So if there’s a famous entrepreneur
that you want me to profile next,
check out the link in the description
and you can go and cast your vote.
I’d also love to know which clip
resonated the most with you,
what lesson are you going to take from this video
and immediately apply to your life,
or to your business somehow.
Leave it down the comments below.
I’m really curious to find out what you have to say.
I’d also like to give a quick shout out to Matt and Dan
from the Square Peg Round Hole Podcast.
Thank you, guys, so much for picking up a copy of my book,
“Your One Word,” and having me on your podcast.
It was an awesome experience,
and I hope you guys enjoy my book.
Thank you guys so much for watching.
I believe in you.
I hope you continue to believe in yourself.
And, remember your one word is,
much love.
I’ll see you soon.
– I need you to do me a favor.
I just need you to expect to win.
Yep, yeah!
You’re like, “Come on, E. That’s simple.”
Look, number one, I need you to expect to win!
When you wake up in the morning, I expect to win.
I expect it to be a great day.
Listen to me very closely,
I do not get up at three o’ clock in the morning to lose.
I used to be a loser, a high-school dropout.
I used to be a loser, a homeless.
I used to be a loser, eating out of trash cans.
Listen to me, this ain’t no feel-good stuff.
I used to be a loser,
now, listen to me, all I do is win.
And the first thing I did, I said,
“Look, it’s unacceptable. I will not be a loser.”
All I did was say to myself, “I expect to win!”
Listen to me, when I get up at three o’ clock in the morning
I expect it to be a great day.
When I grind, I expect to win!
When I wake up, I expect a miracle.
I expect that phone call.
I expected to have marital bliss.
I had kids,
I expected to have a great relationship with my kids.
When I went to school to get my PhD, I expected to pass.
Are you hearing what I’m telling you?
I wake up every day and I expect it!
All I need you to do, (motivational music)
don’t practice to fail!
Are you practicing to fail?
Are you going to class all the time,
doing all your homework to fail?
So, number one, mental toughness.
Everything you put your hands forth to do,
expect to be successful, expect it to be positive.
When you set up for a goal,
expect that it’s going to happen.
That’s all I need you to do.
Number one, expect it to happen!
What if I told you that you’ll never ever
have to come up short again? (crowd cheering)
So, this is all I need you to do for me today.
Listen to me, this is all I need you to do for me today,
is that you declare that it’s over!
That yesterday was the last day that you were a loser.
Like yesterday was the last day you expected to lose.
Like yesterday was the last day you expected,
listen to me, to come up short.
All I need you to do is declare for me like, losing is over.
All I need you to do is speak up and say,
“I expect to win”!
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