How To Build UNSTOPPABLE CONFIDENCE & Start | Marie Forleo

I'm a huge fan of yours Marie I've been following you for over six years and this is where my question comes from you embody the identity of a successful woman who created your Empire around who you are you're playful you're feminine you're so authentic so I got to look up to you and learn from you on how to do that and how to show up as me in the world but when you started what was your source of courage to choose so authentically with your playfulness and femininity particularly thank you so much for this question

and thank you for even just paying attention to our work for years I so appreciate that so here's the truth you want the real deal answer the courage came from pain and here's what I mean by that when I first started out I was trying so hard to be someone else because I had this idea in my mind that I probably formed when I was a little girl about what a successful businesswoman looked like how she should act and it was involved with this again this is like taking it back I grew up in the

80s right so I imagined a successful businesswoman would probably like have some corner office in a high-rise building in New York City and have like a suit with shoulder pads and like wear high heels and pantyhose and walk around in a very authoritative like an authoritative excuse me Authority voice you know like just like strong and talking and and also there's a big thing for me about like intelligence and high levels of Education I don't really I'm the first in my family to go to college and uh I'm from Jersey and I don't always use

proper language I fumble over my words just like I just did and when I try to to create content when I first started off it was so stilted it was so stiff it had no personality and guess what it had no results it was terrible and so the pain of like working so hard and not having anything work and feeling like I was banging my head against the wall and I was like I can't do this I can't be this professional business person and the other thing was this I was so young when I started

coaching so I was 23 years old and I was completely aware of how ridiculous this was who the hell is going to hire a 23 year old life coach like I hadn't even lived life yet I had piles of debt I had failed in all these different careers like nothing made sense but I had the heart and so the big shift came when I had banged my head against the wall so many times trying to be like different than who I was to get people to like me and I was like this is I can't

do this I'm not built this way I have no filter if I really if people are gonna like actually wanna hire the real me they need to see the real me and that was the shift I really had no other choice because it felt like I was dying a slow death to try and pretend to be someone else who I really wasn't thank you Marie and I really want to tell you in mind Valley we speak about the importance of choosing which identity you want to embody and having you in the world you are the

identity I want to embody those things thank you sending you so much love and like a television your team everyone at Mindvalley I'm such huge fans of you guys you are doing such brilliant work and you're making such a difference in the world with getting this transformation material out to people so good on y'all thank you thank you Marie thank you I appreciate that you know um for for years before I started coming out more on video my team would show me videos of you and say Edition you got to get in front of the

camera you got to be like Marie I'm like I don't have that I can't do that you're so excited I've just been on your Instagram you were damn good at it now but prior to 2018 I only got on Instagram like summer of 2018 when Jay Shetty told me I need to be on Instagram I'm like the J like I don't know how to do this like literally my social media preference is only two and a half years old um I I had to learn this but I was shy I fell inadequate I didn't think

I'd have anything to share if you go if you look at my Facebook I wasn't sharing anything like like three or four years before so anyway you've been an inspiration to me as well I want you to know that now now um Annie thank you so much I'm gonna I'm gonna um keep you as a as a as a panelist okay because you're a community manager but um I need to turn off the video so it's just me and Marie how do I do that okay Annie I think you got you you got this okay

so so um Marie there's something about you which I find really interesting you're very certain and confident about what you want in your book everything is figureoutable you tell a story about how you were walking with your parents um in Manhattan it was in the West Village in bleeca street right and you suddenly decided as a young woman that this is where you wanted to live and you held your hand up and you said this this is where I'm going to be living and your mom you said was a little bit like offended your mom

is like no but we live we live across the river we live in Jersey or or wherever you were living back then what is that certainty and confidence come from so I think that particular story I was around like seven or eight years old so I was a young child and it was a little precocious thing to do so at that age the only thing I could potentially attribute it to and this is you know pure speculation is a natural knowing I think that Divine connection that we all have to something greater than ourselves um

I feel in many ways like part of my life is to Simply Be A Channel and to listen and then to speak and share and so the confidence and certainty I also want to say this I feel like I oftentimes embody radically um opposing things at the same time so while a lot of people may watch our videos or even read the book or see my newsletters or or social and be like oh my gosh she's so confident I need to be real I'm also terribly filled with self-doubt I'm also a person that questions myself

I I'm also a person that sits back and goes like I don't know is this any good like I don't think it's any good to you guys are you gonna really like this so both of those things can coexist I think that once I've had a chance to Grapple with something for a little while and also like road test it meaning I've had a chance to play with people use Concepts in real life work with them coach with them see how things actually come out how it impacts them and helps them create results then the

confidence builds quite naturally so that happened for me when I started as a coach again I knew internally this is what I wanted to do but I was very aware that I was like I don't know crap right like I have to build up that track record over time same thing with like a program like b-school I am very confident when we go into our we only open it you know once a year when we go into our promotional period I get really fired up vision and it's not false bravado it's because I'm like I'm

graduated 64 000 people and I've literally been approached in grocery stores from women who were on the verge of homelessness who now run multiple six-figure businesses and they tell me like their children's education are completely funded so when I get fired up about anything like again about this book I'm like no y'all I've Road tested this please For the Love of All Things holy just give it a try you don't have to believe it try it before you deny it though because this is good so I think um any confidence that you detect one I

just want to underscore it was born from terrible insecurity that I still carry around with me now and a lot of self-doubt anytime I'm starting something new or I'm stretching into a new Zone and then the confidence side just comes from also I've been doing this now for 20 years like starting in 1999 and it's now 2021. you just I think that's one of the best things about maturity and that's one of the best things about age is like you're like I've been around the block a few times and I've seen a couple things and

I've fallen on my face so it's all all gonna be okay and I think probably one of the other things again not to push it but Vision I know you and I are both such fans of books you know one of the byproducts of adopting the belief that everything is figureoutable is what I'd like to call remarkable resilience remarkable resilience and also a bit of Courage because this belief this notion that everything is figureoutable is so a part of my cellular DNA that I literally feel Unstoppable not Unstoppable in the sense that everything is going

to go my way because it certainly does not and not Unstoppable in the sense that I'm like better than anybody else but Unstoppable in this sense that if there is something that I want to learn or experience or achieve or help bring about I am 100 certain that if I'm committed to that we will figure it out we will find a way or we will make a way and when you have that core belief embedded in you which is what we teach you how to do in the book it shifts everything because look at how

much our World Vision is filled with uncertainty and filled with fear and uncertainty that's natural right we kind of kid ourselves into believing we have some sense of control but when you have this Bedrock belief that everything is figureoutable when you believe in yourself that much all of a sudden you're able to to stand in the tornado of uncertainty because you know without a shadow of a doubt that whatever comes down the pike no matter how hard it gets no matter how much you cry no matter how much pain or suffering or confusion or doubt

there is you are going to rise and you will make it through you know it doesn't cost you anything not to believe in yourself excuse me it costs you nothing to believe in yourself but it costs you everything not to hi Marie I love your Insight and coaching a ton thank you thanks for helping me so much already as a singer-songwriter I know what holds me back the most is fear of criticism I've been a musician long enough to know that no matter how hard I try I will never have a hundred percent approval rating

but in order to rise to the next level I have to face critics my question is how do I not let criticism crush me and make me feel worthless Anne-Marie oh criticism crazy how scary just the thought of it can be right you know this is a topic that never gets old and I don't think it's ever going to go away because as long as there's creativity there will be criticism of it now we've covered this topic before and I do recommend that you check out these other episodes but I've got more to say on

the subject specifically to you so today I want to look through the lens of being criticized for your art and in this case your music now this could apply to Fine Art writing sculpture making friendship bracelets you name it every creative person I know has their own method of dealing and I've got one that you can try but before I share it there's three things that I want you to remember number one everything that you love is disliked by somebody so whether it's a movie or a book or a song or a person and sometimes

something that you love is vehemently disliked by hundreds or thousands or even millions of people I can't tell you how many times I've said I've Loved a book or I love this TV show and other people smart people who I respect think it sucks number two it's a whole lot easier to critique a thing than it is to make a thing critics whether amateur or professional whether insulting or thoughtful are not up on that stage singing their heart out day in and day out like you are so before you give their opinion too much weight

do not forget to ask oh yeah what's the last thing you made foreign number three you asked how do I not let criticism crush me and make me feel worthless I need you to listen up here do not give anyone the power to make you feel worthless nobody as Eleanor Roosevelt famously said no one can make you feel inferior without your consent and there's no place that this is more true than with criticism now here's an exercise that I want you to try Anne-Marie it's called give your critics the mic so not literally on the

stage but give them a voice on the page meaning in your journal or on a legal pad or on a computer wherever you like to write privately I want you to go off on yourself so write out the exact words you think it would crush you to hear so what could anyone say about you that you would consider bad would they say you've got a weak voice that you're too old to be doing this that your songs are just bubble gum pop drek that you're pitchy got that one from American Idol would they say you're

a wannabe Katy Perry or a poor man Stevie Nicks if you've already heard hurtful things you can include those then take a deep breath in and out and read it to yourself or if you've got a creative soul mate who just gets it you can read it aloud to them then boom the worst that anyone could say about you you've already said you've faced it now I want to be clear the point of this is not to trash your self-esteem it's to bring your fears out into the light because when you do that they lose

all of their power just like the boogeyman that shadow in the corner you thought was a big scary ghoul turns out to be a freaking coat rack oh oh now before we wrap there is one more thing that I have to say about your art and what people think of it make your music for you you are not a software engineer that needs a piece of code to work for an end user that kind of Creator must listen to critics to improve her product art is different you make art because you have to make art

make art because your soul will implode if you don't make it because it brings you Joy and exhilaration and Transcendence I know you're doing this for a living so I get that it matters what some people think because you need some people to pay you but when you're making your art it has to be for you let's finish this set with a tweetable foreign if you make art you'll have critics it's easier to critique a thing than it is to make a thing or how about this one everything you love is disliked by somebody that

doesn't make it any less worth loving I'm a relative newbie in my industry and I'm constantly fighting thoughts about not being good enough not being experienced enough or not being old enough are there any tips for beating down the voice of resistance mmm girl first of all Marie you have an awesome name here's a little secret I want to tell you everybody thinks they're not good enough the fear of not being good enough is one of the deepest most fundamental fears every human being on the planet has my man Josh pie says this a slightly

different way he says if you listen to your thoughts in your mind they all boil down to the same thing I suck so the first thing I want you to recognize Marie is the whole I'm not good enough thing is not personal to you we all have it it's like our minds default factory setting that's why it's so important to recognize that you have a mind but you are not your mind you're also not the thoughts that you think in your mind it's something I talk about a lot in my book and it's something my

homeboy Eckhart Tolle talks about in all his books you believe that you are your mind this is the delusion second thing we need to talk about is this those I'm not good enough thoughts do not go away the older you get the more experience you get or the more successful you get I've been doing what I've been doing for a long time now and I'm damn good at it but I will tell you this every time I start a new project those same old I'm not good enough BS thoughts come up but here's the thing

now I know how to deal with them and I will say it is a practice so nobody gets this perfect you will have to work on it here's exactly what to do when that thought I'm not good enough comes up say thanks for sharing and get back to kicking ass what do I mean by kicking ass I mean put all of your attention on the person you're serving or helping do the work put your attention out not on you if all your attention is on creating results and helping others you've got no room to wonder

whether you're good enough hi Marie I really appreciate your website it's been a great resource for improving myself as a new business owner a major thing I struggle with is shyness and speaking in front of groups of people I realize that this is a huge hindrance and something I need to overcome do you have any advice or guidance on how I can improve my speaking skills and overcome shyness thank you and have a wonderful week Miriam so Miriam let me tell you you are not alone millions of people have this same fear and I gotta

tell you I have a special treat for you today I have a special guest who has helped thousands of people overcome the same fear and I know that's a big promise but what you're going to learn today in this marietv episode will change your life and I'm not just saying that because this guest happens to be my fiance Josh Pious is an actor who's been in over 90 movies and TV shows and he's also the founder of committedimpulse.com high performance training for actors artists and entrepreneurs Joshy thank you so much for being here thanks for

having me baby so um you're one of the most brilliant people when it comes to this subject and I've seen firsthand how you've helped thousands of people overcome this very issue so what's the first step in supporting Miriam and everyone else who struggles with shyness or having some type of thing that that's blocking them so one thing that I hear in that is that Miriam wants to overcome shyness right and maybe maybe shyness is awesome and maybe it's not something to overcome and maybe trying to overcome it could be part of the uh why she's

having a struggle with it well I think that's genius and I know one of the things that you teach is a completely new way to quote unquote overcome for lack of a better word anything that we're struggling with so I know Josh that you have three really simple but really profound steps to dealing with shyness and to be able to really be your best no matter what you're feeling and step number one for you is you're a vibrator and that's profound that is profound that's profound that if you are vibrator so what does that mean

exactly well with them can I tell the story about my daddy absolutely okay so my daddy was a theoretical physicist who worked with Einstein for 11 years and I grew up in the in Manhattan as you know and in the Summers I would go to Brookhaven National Laboratory and that's where my dad he would go off to work and he would do his thing and I would play with kids and ride around on my bike and sometimes I would ride up to his office and he had a floor to ceiling Blackboard and I would come

in and he would be like deep in you know thought and he was kind of you know doing these enormous calculations and some you know I knew that alphabet I knew the numbers but there were like all these other images and symbols and things that he was that he was drawing and I would just be like what does he do and I just remember thinking like all the other kids you know in New York like their dads were like truck drivers or School teachers it was like things that were you know comprehendable to a six

or seven year old right and so I was like then tomorrow morning I'm gonna Grill him I'm gonna find out what he really is doing and so I was like sitting in the living room and he was like packing up you know his bag and I was like okay no I'm gonna do it and it was like so what what do you do like what what is your job and um and he said well um Joshua and was like and he said do you see you see this table it's like you're not telling me what

your job is and it was like yes and he said do you see your name and then he said the smallest part of this table and the smallest part of your knee when you break it down to the absolute smallest part it's the same thing and it's atoms and he said and that's what I explore he said I explore like the building blocks of the universe yeah exactly I was just like well and then he like picked up his bag and walked out the screen door and I was just like whoa dude it's like I'm

Adams and I was like I'm the same as the table and and so why that story had such an impact on me is is later in life when I was starting acting on Broadway and movies and television there were times when I felt I would feel so much emotion and sensation and shyness you know and and I was like and and I didn't know how to deal with and I tried to overcome it and and then I remembered what my dad said that my body is a massive atoms and it really something really shifted for

me in that moment and I instead of looking at these feelings and they really emotions really are vibrations in different parts of our body right and all of a sudden it was like how could how why should I look at this sensation and it's really no more than this like inside my chest why should I look at that as something bad right like if you felt shyness what you Associated to be shyness as a certain vibration right I identified as shyness but the truth is it's just atoms that are vibrating and that gave me a

huge amount of freedom because I stopped associating it with something bad it was just a vibration right and that's why the first one is you're a vibrator if we can just recognize that we vibrate and that's just part of life and it's not good and it's not bad I think I just want to put a little pin in that thought because that's probably one of the most profound things that you've ever taught me is you know recognizing that as a human being and an alive human being that we're constantly vibrating yeah and that we've only

learned to label certain emotions and certain Sensations as good and bad and if we actually remove those labels and just really look at the pure Sensations we're experiencing in our body the physical Sensations the vibrations so to speak that we have so much more compassion for ourselves and we get out of that realm of good and bad and we can actually just experience what it is we're really experiencing without all those labels that put us into a whole mental drama so I think I think it's really really profound and if people really get that you're

right there's a huge sense of freedom in it it's yeah really really important and we're always going to vibrate right as long as we're alive yeah we might as well appreciate it and when we're not alive and we're like floating around we're gonna like remember when I used to feel shy and vibrate we'll miss all that which is so we might as well party with it now right right so so step number two that you have is nickname your Vibes nickname your Vibes nickname tell us about gaming I mean a lot of my students you

know if they feel nervous they they'll call it for example shushy you know or whatever they choose and like shushy if you go if you're about to you know put yourself out there go in front of a group of people or ask for a raise or whatever and you feel this and you go I'm I'm nervous like I'm shy I'm shy it's like instantly alone and that's bad we know that's bad but if you just go like I'm shushy it's like okay like I'm shushy and it's like a little you know Jewish leprechaun or something

it's not it's not anything bad right you know all of a sudden it's just like yeah I'm vibrating and I'm gonna go ahead with with the task at hand so maybe Miriam you know can come up with you know like maybe she can call it Shazam I love Shazam because imagine if Miriam was like stepping on stage and she was about you know to go out and speak in front of like 100 people right and instantly she gave herself a reframe like rather than feeling shy she's like oh I feel Zion I'm Shazam right now

yeah come on it would kind of be energizing yeah so um I love that and I love the power of I think reframes are really really powerful in our lives and I love the fact that we can have fun with this and you can name it anything you want yeah so um the third step and this is again this is something really profound and I've I've seen your work in action now almost over a decade and it's it's incredible step number three you have is ride it don't hide it yeah ride it don't hide it

write it don't hide it and and by that I mean if you take this these vibrations that are happening and you just recognize that it's creative Fuel and that it and that it's something that's going to propel you into action yes as opposed to you know trying to breathe it away and do all our you know techniques to get calm it's like just like let that it's just energy and let it just Empower you to to do whatever they're it's creative fuel yes to go out there to go out there you know a few things

that you've taught me over the years um you know when someone tries to hide what they're feeling you know whether it's nervous or anxiety or anything that they've labeled this bad right whenever you try to suppress or hide it you actually display that quality even more yeah absolutely because you're just trying it's like I'm calm yeah and I've seen this in action again when someone just rides it meaning they allow whatever the Sensation that is to be there and speak authentically from that place ironically the person appears very centered and they are centered it's like

the idea that centered is something different than who you are in that moment is it's a centered is like if you're feeling this like you're centered if you're feeling this you're centered it's about telling the truth yeah and the interesting thing is that when you speak from whatever is there people are compelled to listen to you but if you're feeling this and you're trying to you're putting your energy to try to be like calm it's like people disengage like they can't listen because they're getting a mixed signal well there's a sense of dishonesty right it's

like the person is feeling one thing and pretending or trying to show something else yeah which all of us have such acute BS meters BS meters these days that you can instantly fear like I can't trust this person somehow you know I think you've made a really good point once that I heard you talk about where you know no one really wants to see like who wants to see really a calm public speaker right it would be boring it totally rather to see somebody reveal their soul reveal their heart even if there are a little

bit uncomfortable if they just keep going it's like you just you'll you're just like you root for them and you want to hear what they have to say because you know it's coming from their heart yes and I think I don't know if we said this before but one one of the other things that's been my Saving Grace that you gave to me was the idea and the concept and really the truth that if you allow yourself to feel something fully without resisting it that never lasts more than seven to twelve seconds yeah yeah if

you just feel like if Marion before she goes out on stage you know to speak and she feels this instead of trying to put it down like just fully feel it it's like you're on the roller coaster you know going up and it's like you feel it and then it's going to shift and move to something else into something else you just want to let the this information be your guide track yes I first discovered you last year when I cut the cord to my day job in Academia and I took the leap to doing

my music business full time I went from making no money from my art to charting number one on iTunes and making a comfortable six figures one of my biggest struggles is the what-if anxieties about my business and the fear of not being able to stay at the top I do not want to go back to a day job and I'm often paralyzed at the thought of what the heck would I do if I couldn't do what I love sometimes I feel like my business is happening to me more than I'm happening to it into a

large degree I have no control over whether people buy my products would love for you to a this cue on the fears and pressures of staying successful sincerely Philip Philip this is a really good question you know why because not that many people talk about it and the other reason it's a great question is because you can actually do something to take care of this so here are three steps on helping you alleviate the fears and the pressures around staying successful step number one is you gotta pull the lap bar down now people have this

mistaken notion that sometimes success is this uphill climb and then you plateau and then you just hang out for a while or you're gonna climb climb climb and it never ends unfortunately that's just not reality success is a lot more like a roller coaster where there's like twists and turns and upside down loops and all kinds of things that make you want to hurl and that is true for all of us so Philip you need to sit your butt down secure all your loose clothing and your jewelry and get ready for one heck of a

ride because you're on it whether you like it or not and I gotta tell you the little pimply teenager at the control panel will not let you off so don't resist this fact just pull your lap bar down and enjoy for the ride now I'm not saying that you're gonna have to go back to your day job but there may be a time when one record doesn't sell quite as well as your last or maybe you just hit a creative route but here's the deal there's not one great artist or a business person or human

being that doesn't have Downs that go along with their UPS this is a natural part of life it's the yin and the Yang the back and the fourth the change of seasons nothing in this life is static so don't be afraid of that fact you need to account for it which brings me to step number two step number two is don't be MC Hammer now let me be clear I do love some Hammer Time and FYI Hammer pants are back but y'all know about Hammer right I mean accurate or not Legend has it that once

hammer hit it big he took all his money started buying fancy cars and big mansions and then unfortunately not only did he have to declare bankruptcy but then the IRS came knocking at his door and they took away all his stuff and then they said uh You Can't Touch This Legally Legally you can't touch any any of this we're going to take it away right now uh that we're gonna take that I don't even never seen what is that why do you even did you spend a lot of money on that now thankfully Hammer got

himself back on track but the lesson remains you should always live below your means one of the best ways to relieve stress and pressure around losing success is just to be really smart and mindful with your money that means you should live simply you should save and you should invest wisely now one of the best things here is that a financial cushion actually gives you a creative cushion this way you can keep taking risks with your music step number three deal with the worst now now this is one of my very favorite ways to deal

with any fear you've got to ask yourself what's the worst thing that could happen to you if you lost all of your success really think about that and then here's the part that people miss how exactly would you deal with it I don't want you to just say this out loud I actually want you to write it down really face the fear what's the worst thing that could happen and what would that mean to you if you lost all your music business success emotionally and mentally and find financially would you be out in the street

would you lose your home would you have to be taken in by a friend once you get all that down then I want you to do this write down the exact actions you would take if that happened in other words deal with the worst case scenario now what most of us find when we get to the very bottom of our fear is that actually we would be okay and when we create an action plan we realize that even if everything went to hell in a hand basket there are steps we could take to lift ourselves

back up so this is a very powerful exercise for both your conscious and your subconscious mind to start to release these fears so you can get back to enjoying your life and creating music which brings us to our tweetable [Music] foreign let our Advanced worrying become Advanced thinking and planning are you ready to create your own success story if so I've got a free coaching tool for you it's called how to get anything you want it's an awesome audio it'll give you three simple steps to create your dreams on your terms all you need to

do to get it is go to marieforleo.com subscribe that's marieforleo.com subscribe see you there you know last year on vacation something kind of scary and embarrassing happened to me but as with most things that seem kind of negative there was this hidden lesson inside so Josh and I were on Selena which is a beautiful little island off the coast of Sicily where the best way to really get around is by scooter now I hadn't ridden a scooter for at least 20 years but I was super excited to get back on one so it was this

blazing hot day it was in the summertime and I had shorts on and we walked from our hotel over to the rental place now I don't speak much Italian and the women at the rental place didn't really speak much English but after a few minutes with Google translate we were ready to just hop on our scooters and start exploring the island so the folks at the rental place asked me if I was familiar with riding scooters and I said no not really so they wanted to give me a little tutorial essentially they said that you

go like this to give it gas and that you squeeze the handles to break it now I ride my bike quite a bit and it seemed really similar and I said okay this sounds easy enough and in Italian that's that's facile so I put on my helmet I turned on the ignition and I got ready to ride off into Paradise now here's the thing what I didn't quite realize was that the right lever was for the break on the front of the bike and the left lever was for the break on the back wheel now

I'm not so sure how I managed to do this but basically I gassed it and I squeezed the brakes at the same freaking time and within three seconds I crashed it I flipped it and I landed on the asphalt with bare knees and a 250 pound scooter on top of me not one of my finer moments now thank God there were no cars coming down the road and thank God Josh and the folks from the rental place immediately got the scooter off of me and they pulled me onto the side of the road so miraculously

I did not break any bones and I couldn't even believe this but I wasn't bleeding I was just extremely shaken up and I was engulfed by this tidal wave of Shame and embarrassment I felt like such an idiot now the people from the rental place they were so sweet and they wanted to take the scooter back they said you know what you can just give this back to us we're going to give Josh a bigger scooter so you could just relax and ride on the back of his now in that moment I had a choice

it was either a I could play it safe and give the scooter back and then I would be a passenger rather than a driver or B I could get my butt back up get back on that scooter and learn how to ride it without killing myself or anybody else now if you know anything about me you probably know what I chose which was B and here's why I made that choice I didn't want fear to take hold in my bones and start slowly turning me into a person who was scared and small and insecure just

because I made a mistake and it was a pretty big one I messed up doesn't mean I was gonna give up so I got back on the scooter and yes I was completely terrified but I started nice and slow and in painstaking detail I had everybody explain to me exactly what to do and what not to do and very very slowly I got back on the scooter and I tried it again first I did a little test I did little test runs up and down this one road until eventually I got comfortable enough to keep

going I told the people at the rental place I got this and by the end of the day I gotta be honest I was 10 times more comfortable and confident than I ever thought I could be and I was actually able to zip around the island without causing any damage to myself or objects or other people and every single day after that as I rode more and more I got more confident and as you can see from this little picture eventually I got really into my little scooter so you might be asking how does this

relate to you well I think the biggest lesson that we can all remind ourselves of is this when you get knocked down it does not mean that you're weak or that you're stupid or that you're incapable it just means that you're human and that you're really brave for even trying but I think what's even more important whether you wipe out physically like what I did or you wipe out in your business or your relationships or some creative project which trust me I face plant and those many times myself let's be really clear and yes this

one is a tweetable foreign unless you stay on the ground so here is the bottom line do not give fear a chance to solidify and Harden in your bones you've got to get back up while the fear is fresh and new and I promise then you will not be trapped by it and here is the great thing once you get back up you are no longer the person who fell you're actually the person who's still writing I want to talk about too muchness you write can you imagine if someone walked up to you into your

face said I need you to be less you'd clutch your pearls and be offended but that is what they're saying when they say you're too much they're just saying in a less accusing and more shaming manner so you take it to heart any place that demands you to shrink is a place that will suffocate your spirit and leave you gasping for air foreign yeah have you been told you're too much most of your life absolutely you know I show up as who I am no matter what room I'm in and even if I'm not told

to my face I've definitely been told in different ways right people wouldn't necessarily see you too much they'll just say it in different ways it might be how they look at you it might be them reporting you to HR after you make a you know make a statement in a meeting it might be them saying you know what just be just be quiet you know so there's different ways that people can tell you that you are too much and in my life I found that usually the thing that is too much about me is typically

my superpower right like the thing that people want you to quell the thing that they want you to be less of is typically the thing that you are gifted at so I used to grow when I was growing up I got in trouble for my mouth like I didn't get in trouble for climbing trees I got in trouble because I would be saying something to somebody about what I didn't like that they did or what wasn't fair and I'm just like that same thing that got me in trouble is what now allows me to take

a stage and be on a TED Talk stage and get five million views that same voice that same mouth that same boldness is what now allows me to make a living that I would have never thought about so when we're accused of being too much I'm always like you know a lot of it is not even our business a lot of it has nothing to do with us or what we did a lot of it is other people projecting themselves on us or where they failed on us so our job is to recognize those moments

figure out what to internalize what to receive as constructive feedback and move forward yeah you know what I actually want to dig into that a little bit deeper because I loved that you broke it down in the book because people will ask and I think it's a it's a fair question um taking the other side of the coin if folks right now are listening or watching and they're wondering okay lovey but what if right what if I am acting a fool in some kind of way what if I am being a particular way that they're

rightfully calling me out for being a little too much or whatever it is how can we distinguish whether or not something is valid or as you call it pure compost and trash sentence which you have to ask yourself a series of questions about who is who is bringing this to you and how what is their motivation I break it down more in the book but it's like who the person who's bringing this to you matters but also keeping in mind that sometimes they actually will be people who care about you and that's when it usually

will cut through the most it's like your mom says it to you or somebody that's related to you says to you but you also have to figure out what they're carrying that made them bring that to you and again maybe you are too loud in the library yes but are you being too loud by raising an objection about an idea that happened in a room that you thought the idea was thoughtless right are you being too loud in the moment when you're saying hey don't say this joke about this person you it's it's things you

have to kind of run through your own filter yes to give Credence to or not because again I think you spend a lot of time giving credence to a lot of people's ideas about us so much time without also now checking ourselves and being like but do I feel bad about what I did that cause them to give me this criticism yes and I love I have the three questions written down um just for anyone to walk themselves through if they're like huh I really want to take a deeper look at this objectively you have

one is this hindering my personal growth two is this harming someone else and three is this critique coming from someone who loves and respects me and of course you go deep into each of those questions and how to kind of parse through that but I wanted to just at least top level outline that because I think it's so incredibly valuable in my life I often tell people this especially when they ask me about criticism and this is the truth up until now I have never received a piece of hurtful criticism from anyone that I love

and respect anyone who I admire their work anyone who I really appreciate who they are how they carry themselves in the world has never slung a piece of like just harsh hurtful demeaning criticism my way even if people have an opinion to share or they're like hey I just wanted to share this with you something for you to consider it never comes through with us with you know what I mean with a knife a knife's edge that's a great point that is actually a really point doesn't mean that people who love and respect you won't

bring great criticisms to you it is how that they will bring it they're not coming to cut off your head they're coming to be like I am saying this because I'm expecting you to grow from it they're not coming to be like I want you to be in the fetal position after I walk away from you yeah right like they're not going to do that and people who love you will not do that and if it makes you want to be in a fetal position that's something you also have to figure out like why am

I taking this so bad but to your point in that the how oh my God like your friends your friends can check you your family can check you but they're not going to do it in a way that breaks your spirit that's right and that's a very big difference and I think that it's so important it's one of the best things about getting older like you know stuff that I used to just think was you know oh gosh this is just how people act you know in your late teens or early 20s and then you

just start maturing and you're like there's a whole different way to be there's a whole different way to be because I mean in our 20s we were all trash let's yeah to be trash in your 20s it is a lifetime rite of passage that is this that is the that is a decade where you can be a raving dumbass because you're finally an adult even though you're not really one right you're not going to high school there's nobody who's on your back that's like have you completed this thing the 20s is your first real decade

of autonomy so that decade exists for you to mess up in multiple ways so you have stories to tell in your 30s when you get to look back and be like thank God for growth thank God for it because oh my goodness yes no the fact that I even survived it's it's kind of amazing um you know the one of the other things again so many times there's laugh out loud moments in your book but I just love how much you love and appreciate and tell me if I'm wrong in this but you're like I'm

Petty and you will go there for a second and then you're like but I'm mature now I'm gonna pull it back and then you're like but I need to sprinkle a little bit in you had me laughing so hard and I just it was so endearing and I love you so much for it because you know people will sometimes ask to be like but Marie you're always so positive I'm like I don't post everything I think on the internet and because I'm not it was just like I'm like oh God lovey I love you so

much because it's just all there we gotta be able to agree like we're all petty like that's the thing about who's who says they're not Petty is not being true they're not telling the truth also if you can be Petty what can you be like Petty is a piece that's necessary because sometimes people do things that you just have to side eye them over or be like come on and sometimes you realize you're being the person who needs to be outside right and one thing I am to thine own self be true I know myself

above all else I'll tell you all my flaws first because I am very clear what they are and being petty I'm not gonna stop being petty let's also be clear like you kept saying Jesus isn't done with me yet and I'm like I love you yeah I'm a working person I never take myself too seriously even as I'm writing this book and I'm like listen I'm a hot mess I am a hot mess who's learning a lot and I'm always sharing and learning out loud hot mess Express ain't no shame about it because I will

continue to be a hot mess don't expect me to be anything but a hot mess who happens to be growing right I am a blowing hot mess but I am yes better than I was in my 20s yes this book exists like way better I was a douche in my 20s and we have to be able to say that we have to bear together with each other like and with everybody a lot like I think and as public figures and people who are more visible yes that vulnerability is necessary because we happen to fall and

trip in spite of and because of ourselves yes on massive platforms and our work has connected with millions of people and people see us in a certain way but I'm always like I don't belong on a pedestal do not put me there I do not I will disappoint you I will fall off it I will do something ridiculous because I'm a human who is petty and all her hot mess Glory have all my random baggage I just happen to have hundreds of thousands of people watching me so yeah it doesn't mean I have everything figured

out it means I'm sharing what I have learned but on the way there do not make me a hero and icon because you will set me up for failure correct I remember especially I was so insecure when I started by the way I don't know who the hell I think I was I think that I think the inner Spirit of me knew who I was but like in my 20s like as a 23 year old life coach Who the hell's gonna hire like what was I thinking I hadn't even lived life yet I had piles

of debt I talk about hot mess I had like failed at all the jobs I had anywho um I remember I distinctly would tell my clients I said look I am no Sage from the stage I am a guide on the side I am learning I am growing but I love what you said this whole thing of like holding people up on pedestals I'm like y'all even like with everything is figured out people like oh so you're saying you have everything figured out I'm like hell no it's literally just a little phrase that helps me

every day to figure stuff out yes that's exactly it it's like we don't we we our setups fail we are set up to fail because people do think I never call myself an expert at anything I am amazing at certain things I know what my gifts are I'm amazing writer I'm an amazing marketer I'm amazing Storyteller I would never call myself an expert because to call yourself an expert to say you have no other room to grow that you have reached the Pinnacle of this thing you've learned all there is to learn about this thing

I don't ever call myself an expert it's not because I'm being humble it's because I am always committed to getting better at whatever that thing is so when I call myself an expert it means I can no longer get better at it I'm no expert at anything the only thing I'm an expert at is probably my side eye I'm amazed like my side eye is pretty intense at giving side eye so you know what I will say that one yeah hi Marie how do you push yourself to go for your dream when you know you

could mess up fail might be a tough let down a big embarrassment or the wrong path altogether how can I find the courage to jump with no certainty or guarantee it will all work out thanks for all you do June June this is an awesome question uh what I want to say is that this isn't just a fear that we face at the beginning of something this is a fear that can come up for us no matter what we're doing at any stage in our life no matter how many risks we've taken in fact Seth

Godin says at some level this might not work as at the heart of all important projects of everything new and worth doing look nobody has a crystal ball and nobody knows what's going to work and what's not going to work until you actually do it I think it took Thomas Edison about a thousand tries before he actually figured out the light bulb and then when a reporter asked him hey how'd it feel to fail well a thousand times Thomas Edison actually said you know what I didn't fail a thousand times the light bulb was an

invention that had a thousand steps Booyah Mr Edison so here's the point anything that you're going through right now um if you want to take a big scary leap and you want to start a new career or perhaps start a business anything that you might consider a failure is really just a necessary step on your journey to success so no matter what you're facing right now no matter what's getting you so scared there's only one question that you need to ask and answer to find the courage to make that big leap and the question is

this what's the worst thing that can happen so not just by saying yes but what's the worst thing that could happen if you said no so for example a few years ago I asked my really dear friend Laura to come speak at one of our Live Events now this was a big opportunity for her but I know it was kind of stressful and I said you know what this is big so take a few days think about it because once you say yes you're going to be locked in so first she had to ask herself

well what's the worst thing that could happen if I said yes so for her it was the stress it was wishing that she never committed which she wished she never committed but it was also this fear that she was gonna completely freeze up on stage that she was gonna mess up horribly and completely ruin her reputation which she did not now on the flip side she had to ask herself what's the worst thing that could happen if she said no so you gotta get that Laura really wanted to grow her business and her brand and

if she said no to this opportunity she'd have to face herself in the mirror every single day and say nice going bonehead you had the perfect opportunity to grow your business and you turned it down thank you for the wisdom you offer it's been such a great help for me I've been through a series of traumatic events and suffer from depression I live in Iraq and my country has been in war for decades I'm an architect and love my job but here everything you care about or build can be destroyed at any moment that's if

you manage to survive so here's my cue how can I find the courage to continue building knowing all my hard work can be wiped away due to circumstances I can't control loving what I do for a living has become a kind of cure to me I know you say everything is figureoutable and I profoundly share this belief with you but it's so hard to do on my own thanks for giving me a chance to get help for myself and whoever is going through a similar situation lots of love to you and your team are are

thank you so much for reaching out your words went great to my heart we have viewers in 195 countries and I do my very best to stay conscious of the fact that many people like you are living in Conflict zones amidst extraordinary challenges you know right now I'm in New York and it's hard to Fathom the fear and turmoil and uncertainty that you experience on a daily basis my heart goes out to you and I want you to know that we are sending you love and my hope is that something we share today can help

you feel supported and find a sense of strength you mentioned something really really important when you talked about finding the courage in the midst of circumstances you can't control that's the operative phrase circumstances you can't control you're living an amplified version of that but you're 100 right for all of us so much of what happens in life is completely beyond our control and that can leave us feeling powerless but here's the good news there's one thing that we have just a smidget of control over and that's ourselves and how we choose to direct our thoughts

and our words and our actions keeping this in mind when I read your question there were two key habits that I wanted to recommend for you both of these can be done anywhere they don't cost anything and they're both scientifically proven to help improve depression and anxiety and the impact of trauma habit number one daily meditation so meditation is the ultimate technology for creating peace from the inside out for me it's what helps me stay connected to the loving and strong parts of myself and observe my circumstances without getting swept away by them now we've

done a whole episode on this one already which includes a free 10-minute guided meditation made by me so if you're willing I invite you to watch that episode and meditate for at least 10 minutes a day for the next seven days and then I want you to write to me at info marieforleo.com and let me know what if any impact it's made habit number two is movement now what's tough about this one is that when we feel depressed or we're under extreme mental anxiety we don't feel motivated to do much of anything besides maybe eating

some chips or in my case you're really craving some mac and cheese however exercise in is scientifically proven to be especially effective for depression you don't even have to get fancy you don't have to go to a gym you could run or you could work out in your house you know there are a ton of free videos on YouTube that just use your body weight so you don't even need any equipment now I will say for me it's not just about exercise but it's also about the music that I listen to while I exercise that

I feel makes the biggest difference so my challenge to you is that for the next seven days in the morning if you could do just 10 minutes of exercise to music you love I think it would make a big difference now if you wind up doing more than 10 minutes that's fantastic but at least 10 minutes every day for the next seven days and again I would love you to write me and let me know how it goes so are those are two non-negotiable habits that I strongly recommend you give a try but now I

want to move on to the core of your question which is how how much you love being an architect and Building Things but that understandably it all feels futile I have to tell you are I've had similar thoughts not tied to the nature of my circumstance but tied to the very nature of life itself which is impermanence that inescapable fact that nothing in the physical plane lasts I mean everything including you and me including everything we make and everyone that we love will one day be gone and when I think about this I can either

let that fact get me down or I can let that fact get me fired up meaning fired up to love as much as I can possibly love while I'm still here fired up to take risks and to speak out and create things for as long as I possibly can and the one thing that might be really inspiring for you on this topic is something called the 10 paradoxical Commandments which is by Dr Kent Keith which also really inspire fired Mother Teresa here are just three of them and the third one is especially for you people

are illogical unreasonable and self-centered love them anyway if you do good people will accuse you of selfish ulterior motives do good anyway what you spend years building may be destroyed overnight build anyway look are you are on the planet for a reason you are here to create and contribute and the things that you build and the love that you bring to them that is your legacy as Khalil gabran said work is love made visible and that my friend cannot be wiped away so let's wrap up this episode on a tweetable [Music] nothing physical lasts forever

but the Legacy you create is here to stay and run a company you can manage a project but you can only lead people and for anybody in a leadership position who says I am a leader you are a leader of people that's how it works and the problem is is we have to go through this transition some people make it quickly some people make it slowly and some people will never make it Windward Jr the only thing we have to do is be good at our jobs that's it the company trains us how to do

our job some of us get Advanced degrees on how to do our job accounting engineering whatever and if you're really good at doing your job eventually they'll promote you and eventually you'll get promoted into a position where you're now responsible for the people who do the job you used to do but nobody teaches us how to do that and so they put us in a position of leadership and demand results which is like putting us in front of the machine and demanding results although they never showed us how to use the machine and so we

fumble our way through and we break things and we don't want anybody to know that we have no clue what we're doing and of course we manage people because I do know how to do your job better than you that's what got me promoted we have to go through this transition where when you're now in a leadership position you are now no longer responsible for the results you're now responsible for the people who are responsible for the results I love talking to CEOs and I say what's your priority they say my customer you haven't talked

to a customer in 10 years there's not a CEO on the planet anywhere who's responsible for the customer you're responsible for the people who are responsible for the customer as a solopreneur that's a I mean your Chief cook and bottle washer it's a hard it's a hard job and when you have a very small Enterprise you have to balance this thing because you have a responsibility as a worker but you also have responsibility as a leader and they have to be separate so when you do work you're a worker you do the best job you

can do if you're out there consulting or pitching or whatever you're doing but when you're the leader you're taking care of your people so they can be at their natural best so that they can Thrive and you know that their work is not your responsibility they are your responsibility their work is their responsibility and so it's it's it's it's it's a really hard sort of Yin and Yang when you're when you're when you're small but as you gain size and as you gain you'll start hiring a few more people the problem is we can't we

can't extricate ourselves we struggle like I said that transition is really hard it takes practice it's hard work it requires studying just like you study how to learn the machine you have to study how to learn to be a leader all the great leaders I know are students of leadership none of them consider themselves experts we're all students of the subject and we when we get together we talk about it because we're genuinely interested in it you know golfers talk about golf yeah leaders talk about leadership if they're good because they're constantly in learning mode

so yeah it's a human Enterprise and uh it has to be treated that way so this was just genius I'm wondering if there's anything that you want to leave us with today because what I took away from your book and I love this idea of studying leadership and talking about it but the simplistic idea that if we look out for the people around us I feel like that is something anyone can do whether they're running a company or they're looking across at their family or their friends uh is there any closing thought that you want

to leave us with Simon it's it takes practice and it is a daily practice you're not going to be an expert tomorrow leadership is the practice of putting the lives of others sometimes ahead of our interests so practicing leadership is like um driving to work in the morning and someone wants to cut in your lane do you pull forward or do you pull back that's leadership like we don't know maybe they're running late for a big interview and they've been unemployed for six months maybe maybe their boss is an ogre and they left late because

their kids you know had trouble getting out to school today like I don't know why they're late you know I don't know why they're cutting in or maybe they're just a bastard I don't know but we can sacrifice being at work one car length late you know that's leadership you're standing in the elevator you're running late for a meeting the doors start to close you see someone rushing towards the elevator what do you do oh sorry like we've all done that you know no lean forward and push hold that's leadership you pour yourself a cup

of coffee it's the last cup you put it back it's empty the next person wants a cup they'll make a next pot or when no one's looking you make the next pot of coffee this is leadership and if you practice the little stuff when somebody when you ask someone how are you doing you actually care about the answer right if you don't care don't ask so these are little things that if you practice and practice and practice like exercise the pain starts to go away you start to get a little stronger it starts to get

a little easier you start to take those kinds of risks with bigger and bigger things and people start to recognize that you've changed or that the environment is changing then it's different working here it's a daily practice don't be intimidated by the fact that it's it's an awesome responsibility just do little little things to make the lives of the people around you better and if you practice a lot you get good at it oh my goodness that was so fun now if you loved this episode you're gonna love this next one even more because it

goes even deeper so enough talking click watch now and I'll see you there if you set up your goal in order to get there you have to get uncomfortable I mean do you know any successful person ever that hasn't got an uncomfortable or failed