[Music] [Music] the Y was born out of pain it was never an academic or commercial exercise it was born out of a time in my life many years ago ten years ago where I had lost my passion for what I was doing I owned my own small business I was living the American Dream superficially my life was fantastic and yet I didn't want to wake up and do it again and I was embarrassed by that you know who am I to complain about my life my life seemed perfect and yet I hated it and so
I kept it to myself every ounce of my being every all the energy that I had was invested in pretending that I was happier more successful and more in control than I felt and it was debilitating quite frankly strange things start to happen when you put yourself in that cycle and the stress starts to build you start to become paranoid so for example I was convinced that my employees hated me I didn't go out much and it was really it was really a bad time and it was until a friend of mine came to me
concerned that I wasn't acting myself and basically offered me nothing more than moral support what have you need I got your back I'm worried about you and it was that simple act that gave me the courage to face my own problem and was that simple act that gave me the courage to seek out a solution to go back to the way I used to feel to be passionate about something again there was a confluence of events and I made this discovery that every single organization on the planet even our own careers always function on the
same three levels what we do how we do it and why we do it and it was based on the biology of human decision-making it wasn't some highfalutin management Theory was based on brain stuff and I realized I knew what I did and was good at it and I knew how I did it I could tell you what was different or special about the way I did things but I couldn't tell you why I was doing it that was the missing piece you have to have all three I became obsessed with this thing called the
why I figured out how to find my why and it restored my passion to levels I had never experienced before and more importantly I figured out how to help others find theirs and I did what anyone would do when you discover something beautiful you share with your friends and my friends started making crazy life changes themselves and they started finding happiness and passion that they'd never experienced before it was me solving my own problem that happened to help others solve it for them too and people just kept inviting me and I just kept saying yes
I was making huge decisions that were really easy to make like I shut down my office and started over again because I realized the business I had built was so inconsistent with my why all my friends thought I went out of business and they were worried about me he was the easiest easiest decision I ever made in other words when you know your why the filter is clear it's not like there are options the option is obvious there's only one option share give inspire and everything that I've achieved any success that I've enjoyed has all
been a hundred percent because of the gracious just amazing generosity of people around me my friends my colleagues people who just believe what I believe they are the ones who either introduced me to others or took a risk or said let me try that or bought a book or watched a TED talk or more importantly sent it to somebody else because they thought they would be inspired by it for all of the things that I've done over the past decade I still feel like I'm at the beginning I have been saying it for 10 years
and everybody says to me you know congratulations on X Y or Z my answer is always the same tip of the iceberg and I think that's what keeps me inspired which is for me it's a journey I'm on the right path I'm walking past the right mile markers in other words I know I'm making progress to the vision that I have to build this world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning inspire to go to work feel safer and there they're returning home at the end of the day fulfilled by
the work that they do when I started the race I ran by myself and it's lonely lonely lonely and now I don't like it here like a thousand people to the left a thousand people to the right the thousand people behind me and I look around I'm like yep we're gonna change the world we're gonna change the world there you go [Music] [Music] you