My own word is believe and I believe in people

more than they believe in themselves

and my sincere hope is that if you believe in yourself

as much as I believe in you,

you'll be able to change the planet.

So to help you on your journey, today I'm doing a video

on the 10 skills that are hard to learn

but will pay off forever.

And as always guys, if you're watching,

if you hear something that really resonates with you,

leave it down in the comments below,

it's much more likely to stick with yourself

and if you leave a comment within the first few hours

of the video going live, you have a chance to win

one of two daily prizes. Enjoy!

Skill number one is speaking up.

One of the things you would want to be sure to do

is whether you like it or not,

get very comfortable, it may take awhile,

with public speaking for example.

I mean, that's an asset that will last you 50 or 60 years

and it's a liability if you don't like doing it

or are uncomfortable doing it that will also last you

50 or 60 years and it's a necessary skill.

Skill number two is being honest with yourself.

One of the big things that all startups do is they lie

to themselves, over and over and over.

Mine's faster, mine's cheaper, mine's better,

mine's this, mine's that.

No it's not and the reason it's not is because

whoever it is you're competing with,

it's not like they're ignoring you.

It's not like, oh my goodness,

this guy just started on Shopify in the startup competition

and he's doing a million dollars this year,

woe is me, I might as well close up the doors.

What are they doing?

I'm going to copy what they're doing and now you've got to

stay ahead and so, you know, you've got to be

very careful as a entrepreneur to be brutally honest

with yourself and those are some of the things

that you'll hear from me as a mentor.

That know what you know, know what you don't know,

but you got to know your business better than anybody.

Skill number three is having confidence.

I don't know if you'd agree with me on this,

but in many ways, one of the key factors

to legendary success isn't your natural ability.

It's not whether you have the right product,

it's not whether you're in the right field,

it's not whether you've had a blessed background.

It's not whether you have the right IQ.

I want you to really think about and deconstruct

and play with maybe later tonight in your journal.

I want you to deconstruct this idea of confidence

and it seems like a very simple work but just think about

it in your own life.

When you have confidence or we could even call it fire,

when you have that fire within you, that confidence,

that interior bravery,

you almost have this power to do whatever it takes

to get your brave vision done.

You see, in this world, it's not about, in many ways,

your strategy and your business or your ability

in your life, it's about this thing called confidence

and we've all had these times in our lives when we are

full of confidence and what other people see as a problem,

we simply do see as an opportunity.

Other people see it as a stumbling block or a wall

and we see it as a stepping stone or this solution.

So confidence is simply something that you really

want to wire in.

Confidence is something you really want to develop,

confidence is a practice, confidence is a muscle

and like any muscle, the more you focus on it

and practice it and train it, the stronger your confidence

is going to grow and I just have to say it again.

When you are at a place in your life,

when there is ongoing, steady stream of confidence

moving through your mindset, moving though your heartset,

you do the heroic in your business

and you achieve the remarkable in your life.

Skill number four is listening.

Nelson Mandela is a particularly special case study

in the leadership world because he is universally regarded

as a great leader.

You can take other personalities and depending on the nation

you go to, we have different opinions about other

personalities but Nelson Mandela, across the world,

is universally regarded as a great leader.

He was actually the son of a tribal chief

and he was asked one day,

how did you learn to be a great leader?

And he responded that he would go with his father

to tribal meetings and he remembers two things

when his father would meet with other elders.

One, they would always sit in a circle

and two, his father was always the last to speak.

You will be told your whole life that you need

to learn to listen.

I would say that you need to learn to be the last to speak.

I see it in board rooms every day of the week.

Even people who consider themselves good leaders who may

actually be decent leaders will walk into a room and say,

here's the problem, here's what I think,

but I'm interested in your opinion,

let's go around the room.

It's too late.

The skill to hold your opinions to yourself until

everyone has spoken does two things.

One, it gives everybody else the feeling

that they have been heard.

It gives everyone else the ability to feel

that they have contributed.

And two, you get the benefit of hearing what everybody

else has to think before you render your opinion.

The skill is really to keep your opinions to yourself.

If you agree with somebody, don't nod yes.

If you disagree with somebody, don't nod no.

Simply sit there, take it all in, and the only thing

you're allowed to do is ask questions so that you can

understand what they mean and why they have the opinion

that they have, you must understand from where they

are speaking, why they have the opinion they have,

not just what they are saying

and at the end, you will get your turn.

It sounds easy, it's not.

Practice being the last to speak.

That's what Nelson Mandela did.

Skill number five is managing your time.

My challenge in our generation is that gradually

through entertainment, through television, through media,

through every way possible, we are living in a

generation of the dumbing down of ideas

because we have traded effectiveness for busyness.

Statistics say, yeah somebody ought to clap on that.

We are busier than any other generation we have seen

in the last three to 400 years.

We are so busy, we are busier than a one armed

wallpaper hanger, we're just busy, you'll get it later,

don't worry about it, it'll hit you in a minute.

We are just as busy as we can be and we think

because we're busy, we're effective.

But I want you to challenge your schedule for a minute

and ask yourself, are you really being effective

or is your life cluttered with all kinds of stuff

that demands you and drains you and taxes you

and stops you from being your highest and best self

and are you substituting busyness and all the chaos

that goes along with busyness from being effective?

Let me tell you, a bunch of scientists got together,

they begin to do some research and they begin to determine

that 80% of the things we do are busy things that we do

in an area that is not effective, that the average person

only spends 20% of their time doing the thing that they

are really gifted, creative at, passionate about,

excited to do and the rest of it is all the dismal,

dumb stuff that we all have to do in order to survive.

Just crazy stuff that we're doing.

Wonder what would happen if we would go from doing

80% of things that are busy but not effective

and 20% of the things that are really effective,

if we would switch those numbers around and only give

20% of our time to the things that we have to do

and 80% of our time to thing that we were

created to do.

(audience applause)

Wonder what would happen to your life.

Now think about it a minute, there's a lot of things

you could take from me and I could make it.

You could take my suit, I got another one.

You could take my car, I could get another one.

You could take my house, I could get another house.

But when you take my time, you have taken something from me

that is totally irreplaceable.

We take all kinds of questions from money management.

We know how to manage our money, we know how to repair

our houses, we're working on our hair and our bodies

and all of this kind of stuff.

We do everything except the most important thing

is to value our time.

It takes time to be creative.

You were meant to be creative.

You were created in the likeness and the image

of a creator and in that likeness and in that image,

you have creativity.

If you had time, you would be creative

but in the absence of time and with busyness

and clutter the ring ring ring, the phone ring,

beep, beep, beep.

You all got music playing on your phone, all kinds of stuff.

No matter kind of song you put on,

after awhile you hate to hear it because every time

you hear that sound you know it's somebody else

wanting something else from you that's taking you away

from what you are gifted and created to do.

Skill number six is stop whining.

So I have this thing that I've been promoting called

No Whining Wednesdays.

Wednesday you cannot whine, complain, or criticize.

And people are like, well what is whining?

Whatever you think it is, don't do it.

And every time you do it,

you have to put a quarter in a jar.

If you whine about anything, I can't, I'm tired,

why me, why don't you?

Every one of them will cost you a quarter.

Or complaining, why don't you, why do you always,

how come you, I am always, they never.

Oop, cost you a quarter.

Then last week, I had people send me pictures of their

jars of quarters.

Oh my god. (laughs)

What they said to me also was, this was wonderful

because I was never, ever aware of how much whining

and complaining and criticizing I do.

I've got mothers doing it with their children.

So Wednesday is No Whining Wednesday.

We need to practice that.

We need to stop whining about what isn't happening,

what we don't have, what we can't do,

what somebody didn't do.

We got to get it clean in 2014.

No whining, no complaining, no criticizing.

Skill number seven is staying present in the moment.

Skill number eight, being consistent.

Success is not a destination.

People always think that oh my god, this person's

so successful because they've had a successful movie

or a successful show but success is a journey.

You have to consistently always, always be successful.

That's when you're really successful because otherwise

you'll be remembered for your last failure

and I've had a few but I just have to compensate for

my failure by just getting up and running.