Deconstruct the need of your marketplace for belonging and how you can fill that need at every level of the value chain. Your peers in your marketplace aren't even thinking like this. You will be undefeatable if you do this exercise, and then more importantly, execute on it, because ideation without execution is utter delusion. But ideas alone are worthless. What made Facebook? Facebook, Amazon. Amazon. What makes a great company great is not the idea, but it's the daily execution and implementation and iteration and relentless optimization around the idea until the company is seen as a world-class company.

It's the people who operate in different ways that get the greatest things done. So to have the results only 5% of the population has, you've got to be willing to think and do and operate as 95% of people are not willing to think, do and operate. So I would say own your freakish nature. And if people say you're crazy or strange or weird because of your daily routines or your SOPs, your standard operating procedures, or your philosophies, smile at them, send them the best and continue on your path. Be a daily hero. And that sounds very simple, and it is simple, yet it speaks to the idea that we must release our victim nature in order to own our heroism. There are too many good people on the planet today that are card-carrying members of the cult of mediocrity. It's not because they're bad people, it's because they've fallen into the trap of believing the programming of the world around them. When we are little kids, we are born into genius, but too often we resign ourselves to mediocrity. When we're little kids. We want to do amazing things with our lives. We are quite intimate with our gifts and our talents. We are okay and comfortable in our own skin. We walk our own walk, we talk our own talk, we trust our instincts. But then as we advance through life, we get hurt, and the people around us tell us how to think, and they suggest to us if we live this way, we will live soaring lives. And over time we experience a brainwashing of sorts and a heart-washing, and we close ourselves down, and we start to steadily and incrementally we contract, we play small, and we restrict ourselves, and it becomes the great forgetting. We forget who we truly are, and we wonder why we don't feel joyful, and there's a lack of soulfulness in our lives, and we don't feel alive. And it's because we have betrayed ourselves. Stop giving away your power to external things because that's what victims do. And every single time you refuse to make an excuse or offer a complaint and you take your power back from a fear or something maybe you've been procrastinating on, you become more powerful. And if every single day you practice micro bravery and you do uncomfortable things and you vote for difficult projects, you steadily become the hero that you're meant to be. We get from life not what we want, but who we are. So build your warrior character, because life is a mirror, and we from life, not the things we hope for, we get from life who we are. And so I'm going to encourage you to focus on building what I call the four interior empires of Mindset, which is your psychology, Heartset, which is your emotionality, Healthset, which is your physicality, and Soulset, which is your spirituality. All external empires of prosperity or fame and fortune or applause or lifestyle, all exterior empires come from and flow from the four interior empires of Mindset, Heartset, Healthset and Soulset. If you want a world-class life, then develop a world-class interior core, because everything you do and everything you touch reflects who you are.

Cut your excuses in half as of today and triple your rate of action. What victims do, it's all about excuses. What the average producer, it's just why you can't get things done, why you can't have high energy, why you can't get the project nailed, why you can't be a great team leader, why you can't get super fit, why you can't outlearn the competition, why you can't be a great person in your family, why you can't do your part to change the world. It's all excuses by repetition. What I'm suggesting to you is of today, at this moment, you cut your excuses in half and you triple your commitment to action. So if you look at the best of the best, they don't really care about failing. They know that every failure is going to get them closer to success, and they understand the power of action. I call it execution intelligence. When I work with the best of the best, it's all about getting things done. It's not about talking, it's about execution.

Let's say one of your children or let's say someone in your family is sort of rubbing you the wrong way, usually at the dinner table or maybe it's at a family gathering. You don't say anything. Why don't you say this?  "Hey, so-and-so, can I have a few minutes to chat with you?" And then you go off into a private place. Because you never want to do this in public. You always want the other person to save face. And you say, "Hey, you know what? Here's been feeling." That's a great line. That's a great verbal cue."Here's what I've been experiencing in our relationship. And I really care about the relationship. And it's making me feel angry and I'm feeling really disappointed."This is really powerful. This shows someone who not only loves the relationship, and the other person. It's showing someone who respects themself. And so you say, "Here's what I've been experiencing and it really hurts me and it disappoints me, and sometimes I feel really angry and I want the relationship to last. Is there a way that we can find some solutions so I don't feel like this and whatever. What do you think about it?" And that gives the other person the space to say, "Well, I had no idea." Or, "Thank you for letting me know." Or, "Well, I'm upset too and here's what I feel and here's what I've been experiencing and I'm frustrated about this." And then you can say, "Wow, I didn't know that."And it's hard and it takes bravery, but if you practice it, you get stronger, and you learn to be a better communicator. And this builds the relationship not only with the person at work or the person in the restaurant or the person within your home or family, most importantly it builds the relationship with yourself.

When I'm in creative mode every day, you might know my Five Great Hours concept. All you need is five world-class hours in monomaniacal focus and performance to call it a world-class day as an epic performer. But when I'm in those five great hours, I work in Tight Bubbles of Total Focus that have nothing around. Often they're white spaces, oak floors, lots of light, no posters, no distractions. Definitely no phones going off and music in the background because we know from the science it's called attention residue. Every little distraction, whether it's a sandwich on a counter, whether it's a phone going off, whether it's a poster on the wall, you're going to leave some of your attention, your focus on that distraction. Which means you have less available to bring the full bandwidth of your attention on the project that will allow you to do genius-level work.

No matter what your title is, you know you are leading, you know you're winning when you are creating impact. A lot of people in the world and victims love to do this. They talk about what they're going to do. Here's the project I'm going to launch. Here the marathon I'm going to run. Here's the life I'm going to craft, but they don't execute. Impact is about translating your ideas to execution. You want to be so good at what you do, that you influence other people. You want to use the words and the language of leadership versus victimspeak. You want to influence people by your Mindset, by your Heartset. You want to influence people by your thinking patterns. You want to influence people by your productivity.

The greatest gift you can give your child, or your spouse, or your client, or your co-worker is the gift of the fullness of your attention. When you focus your presence and your energy and your attention on another human being, you make that person bigger.
You validate that person. One of the greatest gifts you can give another human being is the gift of pristine listening. If you're checking your phone, well, then again, you're taking your attention and you're leaving attention residue on your phone, which
means you have less attention for the conversation. And if you have less attention for the conversation, then you're not really listening to that person. And if you're not really
listening to that person, the deep place within them knows it and they're going to trust you less. And you're going to miss data that would allow you to serve your client or build the teammate or dominate your domain.

So, no phone conversations professionally and personally. Just turn off your phone, turn off your device before the meeting, and go all old school and have a real conversation. The best leaders are curious. You don't get that if you're worried about your incoming digital messages. 

The second excellent habit that will allow you to beat digital distraction, construct your own Menlo Park. I'm a big fan of Thomas Edison. He's one of the greatest, if not, arguably, the greatest inventor in the history of humanity. I mean, over a thousand patents to his name, came up with amazing, amazing things. How did he do it? Isolation.
You can be out in the world, you can be a history-maker and a productive legend. You don't get to do both. One thing all great geniuses do is, they spend a lot of time in solitude. Solitude has a bad reputation in our society right now. We think if we're
not with the cool crowd, if we're not checking our devices, if we're not posting selfies or other images, we are losing out. We have all these fears. And here's what really happens.

As you start to play with your phone, as you start to get hooked on likes, as you start to spend most of your best hours of your greatest days, posting, checking, playing with apps, getting hooked, you actually become addicted. We all know about technological addiction. And it's literally a dopamine. Dopamine is the inspirational neurotransmitter. And every single time you check for a like, there's a shot of dopamine. And it becomes this addiction. Every single time you check for a like, the hook grows stronger. Every single time you pick up your phone, you build the neural pathway to check it even more often. Every single time you see that if someone's liking you, and is your following growing, you tap into that reward system that every human brain has. Because when we were tribal, thousands of years ago on the savanna, we wanted to be liked by the
people in our tribe. We wanted to follow the herd. And if we weren't being followed by the herd, we would stray from the herd and get eaten by saber-toothed tigers. We would starve or we would be captured by warring tribes. And now here it is in modern society, but we still have that neurobiological instinct, it's a part of who we are, to check for likes, so we fit into the crowd. Well, the true nature of a leader is you're not a follower, and so you absolutely have to do the inner work required to break that hook of being liked. I mean, that's what leadership is all about. That's what being a great artist is all about. That's what dominating your domain is all about. That's what changing
the world is all about. It's about saying, here's who I am. I have my own mission, my own vision, and I'm going to break free from the crowd. So, an addiction to distraction is the death of your creative production. Your phone is costing you your fortune. If you look at the great geniuses of the world, the Shakespeares and the Basquiats and the Beethovens, and the great chefs and the great titans of industry, and the great humanitarians, all great thinkers have one thing in common: They spent long periods of time away from diversions, distractions, trivial interruptions.

Ordinary people really think about week-to-week. It's how can I get through the next seven days? Okay? How can I watch enough TV so I can numb out the pain of my potential unexpressed and just get to next week? How can I eat enough junk food so I derive a little bit of pleasure in the moment to get through the next few days? How can I maybe gossip or coast out the next few days to just get into the next week? That's how a lot of people, very unfortunately, are living. But those who are in rare-air are fundamentally different. And this is a total mindset shift. It's not about getting through the next week. It's not about getting through the next month. It's about how can I think the thoughts, run the routines, do the work, live the life, and have the impact so that I'm not trying to get through the next week, but that I'm impacting coming generations? And that's a whole new orbit to be playing with. Asking yourself, even if you are a street sweeper, a pizza maker, whether you're a teacher, a firefighter,a manager, or an entrepreneur, what do I need to do in terms of my psychology and my emotional life and my spiritual life so that the rest of my life has an impact on the coming generations? And with that mindset, then your performance matches your daily behavior. And you do leap from the 95% into that %, which is where I invite you, with great love and great passion and great encouragement, to play out the rest of your days.

You can behave like a leader, which is assuming personal responsibility for your results. Or you can be like a victim, which is something bad happens or something doesn't quite work out, and you give away your power and you blame and you complain and you become toxic. And right now, the world has far too many victims, people who are rather than looking in the mirror saying, "I have the power to change, and I might not like where I'm at in my work right now, or in my life, or in my health, or in my love or in my spirituality, but I have the power to change." Well, victims say, "I might not be where I am at in the world, but it's because of the world. It's because of my childhood. It's because of my husband, my wife, my boss, my team, my country, my economy." And so my loving encouragement to you is ask yourself right now, "Am I behaving like a victim?" Maybe it's in your health life, maybe it's with your finances. And a victim would be saying, "I can't do this."That's what victims do. "I can't do this." Or victims, they point fingers. "Well, it's the economy where I live right now," or, "It's the industry. It's going through a lot of commoditization and a lot of disruption. And if I was in a different industry, I'd be successful." Ultimately, we all know this. We create a reality. And even in the most difficult and most competitive industries, there are people who are playing at world-class, who are doing really well. Why? Because they have a different approach. Because they're doing different things. And fundamentally, they're not behaving like victims, blaming and complaining and being toxic and wasting time and living in the past. They're showing up like leaders.