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 you on your journey,
today’s message is a lot of people don’t want success.
Over to you, Maya Angelou.
(rooster crowing)
♫ I wake up every morning.
♫ Entspresso keep me going.
♫ I wake up every morning.
– Well, a lot of people don’t really want success.
– [Interviewer] I’ve never understood that.
– This is true.
– You mean because they don’t want it
and the best evidence of that is that–
– They fail. – They fail.
And the best evidence of that is they don’t try things.
– That’s right, that’s right.
But to succeed means that you’re in front of God
and lots of responsible people
and you have to either eat your words or stand by them.
I think that I have agreed a long time ago, Charlie Rose,
this may be my greatest blessing.
I agreed a long time ago that I will die.
Now, if I can admit that,
that no matter what happens, I will do this thing,
this is the biggest bugaboo of them all.
I will do that, well then,
why couldn’t I attempt something lesser?
So I will try.
– Your fear of failure has done more to harm you
than any insult anyone has thrown at you.
Your fear of failure has done more to harm you
than any beatings that anybody’s ever put on you.
Your fear of failure is the biggest thing
that’s holding you back from achieving amazing things
and building amazing companies.
And the biggest failure of all
is not doing the thing that you want to do.
Not doing the thing that is inside you.
That you know if you did it, it’s going to be amazing
but there’s this huge wall of fear
that you have to break though.
And I think we need to have a discussion around fear.
I think we see fear as the negative, fear as the enemy.
You know, we shouldn’t do anything that we’re afraid of.
But if you look at all the people that you look up to,
all the people that you respect,
athletes, entrepreneurs, musicians,
whoever it is that you look up to,
they had an insane amount of fear
to get to where they wanted to go.
There’s that great diagram,
I’ve got a t-shirt I made about the comfort zone,
where it shows where your comfort zone is
and it shows where the magic happens
and the magic always happens outside your comfort zone.
And the more you can stretch and the more you can push
what makes you scared, then the more you’ll be able
to create for yourself, for your community,
for your family, for the world.
If you just stay within this bubble
and you never do the thing that you’re afraid of,
you’re never going to grow
and you’re never really going to be happy
and at the end of your life you’re going to look back
and be filled with regret that you didn’t do this thing.
There’s been a lot of times that,
at least for me, I’m sure you can relate,
there’s something I was so afraid to do,
I was so afraid to do it and then,
once I did it, I was like, hey you know what,
that actually wasn’t that bad.
And then you do it over and over and over again
and the fear is totally gone.
I think about making videos on YouTube.
The first time I got in front of a YouTube camera,
I had to have my sister or somebody on my team come in,
I used my own camera, focus it,
and then leave the room ’cause I was too afraid
of their judgments, of their opinions,
even though they didn’t really care.
They were actually supportive of me,
but I was just too afraid to talk in front of somebody else.
When I was walking on the street
and filming myself, I’d be too afraid
of other people, their judgments,
their looking, and it throwing me off.
And so if I let that prevent me
from actually making videos,
then I wouldn’t have made this
and I wouldn’t be helping you guys.
You wouldn’t have anything to watch
from me on a regular basis.
Right, I wouldn’t have closing in on 800,000 subscribers.
It wouldn’t be happening.
And that would be a huge hole for me,
that would make me feel really bad.
Fast forward to age 90, looking back on my life,
say I didn’t do that because I was afraid
of getting in front of a camera and saying something?
For me, that’s how I’d get through the immediate fear,
is I’d fast forward to the end of my life
and I’d trade off this immediate tiny little fear
of getting up in front of a camera and doing something
versus an entire lifetime of regret
and that’s what I want to try to avoid.
And so failure is going to happen.
Failure is going to happen, you will fail.
The most successful people in the world fail,
over and over and over and over and over again.
They fail, they fail their way to success.
Everybody has had massive failures.
If you don’t have any failures,
it means you haven’t tried anything.
And so don’t be afraid of failures.
I just try to make failures on a small scale.
A lot of the videos that we’ve made
for this YouTube channel don’t go anywhere.
Series die all the time.
The top 10 was just one that I did as a one off
and it did well so I just did it again, let’s do it again,
let’s do it twice a week then three times a week,
five times a week and it builds,
and others, I don’t even remember how many we’ve killed off.
I’m not held up by it.
It’s just part of the distant past.
I don’t remember the names of the series anymore.
I loved them when I launched them
and you guys didn’t relate to them as well so we killed it.
And I expect most things to fail.
That’s okay.
I don’t tie my self worth to one idea working out.
Because if you can do that,
if you can get past the fear of failure
and just expect things not to work at the beginning.
And just keep driving and keep improving,
keep getting better.
Like nothing that you try at the beginning works.
Everything you do will fail at the beginning.
Any skill that you try to learn,
you’re going to suck at it at the start and it’s normal.
If you’re trying to learn a language
or pick up a new skill or you’re going to go snowboarding
or mountain biking or learn how to do YouTube or lights
or whatever it is, you’re going to suck at it at the start.
That’s okay, that’s normal.
Expect it, embrace it.
And know you’re going to continue to fail
and not get so caught up
on every failure damaging your psyche so much.
And then at the other end,
and this is where modeled success can help,
by looking at these people and knowing
that they made it through, so if you stick with it
and you embrace the failure and you keep going
and you keep working and you keep hustling
that eventually you’ll make it through,
just like they did, but if you quit,
and you stop and you hold yourself back
because you’re afraid, then you’re going to continue
to live a life that you’re going to regret
instead of doing the thing that you were going to do.
So the question of the day today is,
I’m curious, what is the thing
that you are most afraid of right now?
Leave it down in the comments below.
Really curious to find out.
I also want to give a quick shout out to Rebecca Zhou.
Rebecca, thank you so much for picking up
a copy of my book Your One Word.
I really appreciate your support
and I hope you enjoyed the read.
So thank you guys so much for watching.
I believe in you.
I hope you continue to believe in yourself
and whatever your one word is.
Much love and I’ll see you again tomorrow morning
for another shot of Entspresso.
♫ I wake up every morning.
♫ Entspresso keep me going.
– Socrates said practice death daily.
He didn’t mean that in a morbid sense.
He meant that if we really consciously realize
and remember everyday that we’re all going to die,
then we live life differently
because, first of all, we don’t sweat the small stuff
and when it comes to death everything is small stuff.
It’s the same thing that the Romans thought.
They would carve on statues and on trees MM,
memento mori, remember death.
Again, it’s one of the things…
We actually have now a dedicated reporter
on the Huffington Post covering death,
because again, that’s a huge silence in our culture.
That the thing that is the absolutely inevitable part
of our lives is not being covered by our media.
The Columbia Journalism Review,
his first name is Jaweed.
If you can’t remember his last name,
he’s doing amazing things around death,
in our religion section,
which is next to our science section
because increasingly we’re trying to see
how the two are not opposed to each other.
Dogmas may be opposed, but the heart of every religion
is very connected to the heart
of huge scientific discoveries.
So my point to go back to death is that
if we make it part of life,
if we make us lead life differently,
so when the time comes for us to die,
we will be prepared for it.
– Because we practiced it.
– Because we’ll have practiced it, every day.
– I tell people all the time,
and I really believe this,
that I exist to show people what’s possible.
I really do.
It’s like go for it, try it,
because another thing, I am no different
than anyone else out there.
I am not here to say I have a superpower
and it was all this, it was just try it, go.
Let’s see what happens.
And all of a sudden when you get rid of judgment,
now you can be creative,
but any bit of judgment kills creativity.
Anytime you start to go, well, maybe I shouldn’t.
And it’s funny because you look at lipsync
or you look at any kind of dancing or anything like that,
as soon as people see you being inhibited, you’re done.
You’re like oh, this guy, what is this.
But all they want is for you to give all you got.
– [Interviewer] Just put it out there.
– And then everybody’s with you,
and let me tell you, Terry Crews is going to give you 150%
no matter what and I learned that’s my whole career.
– You should just observe.
If everybody makes a little effort,
everybody take a little time for this piece of life, okay?
Not for your family, not for your carrier,
not for something else, something else.
Just for this piece of life.
Give it little time because this is the most important
piece of life in your life, isn’t it?
Yes or no?
– Yes.
– Even if you’re in love with somebody,
still this is the most important piece of life, isn’t it?
So pay some attention to this.
How does it happen?
Why have you taken it for granted?
Believe me, you’re not going to be here forever.
I’ll bless you with a long life,
but you’re going to fall dead one day.
Yes or no?
– [Woman] Yes – [Audience] Yes
– So do not take this for granted.
If you wake up in the morning,
tomorrow if you wake up in the morning.
It’s not my wish, but I want you to know,
of all the people who go to bed tonight,
over a million people will not wake up tomorrow morning.
And tomorrow, if you and me wake up tomorrow morning,
is it not a fantastic thing?
A million people did not wake up.
You woke up.
Is it not a great thing?
Just look at the ceiling and smile.
(audience applause)
You are still awake!
You’re still there!
And for many, many millions of people,
somebody who is dear to them did not wake up.
So just check those five, six people around you,
they all woke up?
Wow, it’s a fantastic day!
You woke up and everybody who matters
to you around you woke up.
Is it not fantastic day?
You don’t think so?
– Yes (laughs)
(audience laughter)
– You don’t seem to think so.
– [Woman] Yes.
– Because the problem is just this,
you are living with an idea that you’re immortal.
When I say you’re immortal,
you’re not actually thinking you’re immortal,
but you are not conscious of your mortality.
If you are not conscious of your mortality,
somewhere you think you’re immortal, isn’t it?
How many moments in a day
are you conscious that you’re mortal?
If you are conscious, would you have time to crimp?
Would you have time to fight with somebody?
Would you have time to do some rubbish with your life
if you knew, if you are conscious that you’re mortal,
you will do nothing other than what is absolutely needed
for you and everybody around you.
This one thing, if you do,
if you just remind yourself.
Don’t think it’s a negative thing.
Death is not a negative thing.
It’s the only thing which has added value to life.
If you’re here forever, you’d be unbearable.
(audience laughter) – (laughs) Yes, yes.
– Aren’t we glad everybody dies one day?
If you just become conscious of this one thing,
that always you’re conscious that I’m mortal,
you don’t have to think I will die today,
we don’t intend, we want to live as far as possible,
just you’ll know, one day I will die.
If you’re just conscious of this one thing,
you will naturally become spiritual,
every day, every moment, if you remind yourself,
this is a brief life, I am mortal,
one day I will end.
Just do this for two days and see.
You’ll become something truly fantastic
within yourself, just this is all.
– That is simply beautiful.
– That’s all that’s needed.
If you want to know the value of life,
just know that it’s a brief happening.
”
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