The Tai Lopez Show

There is one thing sure to kill your hopes and dreams. It's the "mismatch." And there is one thing sure to bring you the "good life: Health, Wealth, Love, Happiness." It's avoiding the "mismatch."Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Every million dollars you earn will start with an idea. But an idea isn't enough. It must evolve into a strategy. Another word for strategy is a "plan." In today's Book-of-the-Day, "How to Write a Great Business Plan" the Harvard professor William explains the secrets to creating your own powerful business strategy. It's a short read. But you definitely want to buy it. Here are a few of my notes for you: 1. Plan around 4 main areas:A. Why your team is qualified (What do you know? Whom do you know? How well are you known?)B. The opportunity (Things the entrepreneur can control.)C. The context (Things the entrepreneur can NOT control.)D. Risk and Reward (Be honest about what things could make your venture fail, not just about how many you could make theoretically.) 2. Your plan should seem like a movie about the future: Show the story from multiple angles. Unfold possibilities of problems and you reacting to them. Discuss things as a moving target not as a guarantee that you know what the future holds. 3. Don't be too cocky and think you're the only one with the idea: "Among the many sins committed by business plan writers is arrogance. In today's economy, few ideas are truly proprietary." Go out and do something big with your life. But don't do it randomly. Make sure you are following a good plan. Stay strong, TaiLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

**Sign up for my free online seminar this Thursday June 11th to learn "How to get 1 Million People to Pay Attention to your Idea: What I Wish Someone had told me at 18" - http://www.tailopez.com/onemillionpeopleyoutube Tai interviews psychologist George Mumford, adviser to all-star athletes Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant and championship winning coach Phil Jackson.  Mumford is author of the book, "The Mindful Athlete", which you can purchase here - http://amzn.to/1FHWgp8 Hear the legendary stories and lessons learned from over twenty years experience working in professional sports. They discuss everything from sports, mindfulness and how Tai can improve his ping pong skills :) There's a ton of good information in this video you can take away and apply to your life. A lot of what George Mumford talks about is stuff Tai wishes someone had told him when he was 18. Stay StrongTai Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I spend most of my workday walking on this treadmill desk because sitting kills more people than smoking. For every one hour you sit, two hours of your life is lost forever.  Dr. James Levine makes strong claims in today's Book-of-the-Day, "Get Up." And he's no pseudo "fake" scientist. He runs a Mayo Clinic... His main point is that your office chair, your sofa, the seat in your car - they are all killing you. 75% of health care costs (currently at $3.8 trillion) come from things like diabetes, high blood pressure, back pain, obesity, depression, cancer, cardiovascular disease - issues directly related to sitting too much.  Here are my book notes: 1. Going to the gym won't fix sitting all day: “4 large studies in Australia and the U.S. demonstrate that going to the gym at the end of the day sadly doesn’t quite offset the apparent harm of sitting all day long." 2. To lose weight you have to increase your "NEAT" activity - your non-exercise activity: “Non-exercise activity thermogenesis (NEAT) calories—explain why an active person can expend 2,000 calories a day more than an inactive person of the same size.” 3. It's sitting at work that's your main problem: “Job is the major predictor of NEAT. Active work can expend 2,000 calories per day more than a sedentary job.” 4. It's killing our kids: “In the USA only 4% of elementary schools, 8% of middle schools and 2% of high schools provide daily physical education. We were also told that many fidgety children (probably those with high NEAT in their brain circuits) were frequently medicated for attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD).” 5. Walk after eating: “With a 1-mph walk after a meal, blood sugar peaks are halved. After every meal, I take a short NEAT walk, usually for 15 minutes” 6. Walk 10,000 steps (2 to 3 miles) using a treadmill desk: This way you can use work hours to get in the ideal 10,000 steps a day. Plus treadmills can measure your daily steps. Also most iPhones now can measure too.  I love my treadmill desk. Set it to 1.5 mph and you easily walk 5 miles a day without even realizing it.  I use the ones from http://www.lifespanfitness.com - I don't make a penny from them for all you skeptics... Check out the full video demonstration on my youtube.com/tailopez channel.  Stay strong,TaiLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

It's amazing how big an impact Robin Williams' suicide had on society. Celebrities, presidents, musicians, little kids - the whole world noticed.  For today's Book-of-the-Day I was reading Emily Herbert's, "Robin Williams - When The Laughter Stops." It made me think deeply about human happiness. The book lists different theories on the reason for Williams' suicide: money problems, bad marriages, drugs and alcohol, being bullied as a child, an absent mother, Parkinson's prescription drug side effects, a highly sensitive personality, and addiction to video games.  He struggled with demons his whole life. Here are my notes: 1. You can't be delusional: "One of Williams' tragedies was that, although an exceptionally intelligent man, he couldn't see the truth about himself." 2. Video games made his depression worse: "Dr. Douglas Gentile says, 'I was expecting to find that depression leads to video gaming. But (our study) found the opposite. Depression seems to follow the video gaming. As kids became addicted the depression seems to get worse… I think it's truly co-morbid - where medical conditions are intertwined." 3. Physical exercise helped his depression: "Robin Williams took up cycling… And the more he cycled the better he felt… Physical exercise helps anyone with depression…" Williams' said, "Cycling saved my life… " 4.  He knew how to change the world: "No matter what people tell you, words and ideas can change the world. " I don't know the answers to these hard issues but I know there is much to learn from mentors who achieve great things like Robin Williams did. P.S. My favorite Robin Williams joke: "If women ran the world, we wouldn't have wars, just intense negotiations every 28 days." HahaLearn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

To make real money you have to train other people to have all your same skills.This frees you up from the day to day to work on the big picture. This is easier said than done. Like the old business saying goes, "You have to work ON the business, not just IN the business." You need someone to mentor. To be your protégé... But remember, this assumes you have real skills yourself - or else nobody is going to listen to you.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Your brain can easily be manipulated. Be careful. Science says you are more likely to buy German wine when German music is playing at the store in the background, and French wine when French music is playing. You are more likely to name Gatorade when you are given a green pen in order to fill out the survey of your favorite sports drink. You are more likely to buy an an expensive couch from a website with a background of fluffy white clouds.  A bit sad (haha) but research shows this is how simple our brains can be when it comes to decision making. For today's Book-Of-The-Day I was just reading, "Everything is Obvious – How Common Sense Fails Us" by Duncan J. Watts. The author makes a good point. You can't always just rely on common sense. The world is too complex.  Too many factors are involved.  "Common sense is bad at dealing with complex social phenomena like political conflicts, healthcare economics, or marketing campaigns..." Our inborn common sense only works some of the time.  Watts explains, “Urban planners in the United States have repeatedly set out to 'solve' the problem of urban poverty and have repeatedly failed. There is a wistful myth that if only we had enough money to spend—the figure is usually put at a hundred billion dollars—we could wipe out all our slums in ten years.… But look what we have built with the first several billions: Low-income projects that have become worse centers of delinquency, vandalism and general social hopelessness than the slums they were supposed to replace..." Why did those housing experts with good intentions make such stupid mistakes? It's the effects of the cognitive biases.  “Psychologists have identified so many of these effects—priming, framing, anchoring, availability, motivated reasoning, loss aversion, and so on..." I would add to this book's list all of the other 25 cognitive biases and 100+ logical fallacies.  If your whole life strategy is to just trust your common sense, you are probably headed for a disaster.  “Bad things happen not because we forget to use our common sense, but rather because the incredible effectiveness of common sense in solving the problems of everyday life causes us to put more faith in it than it can bear." Common sense is best kept for simple stuff like not petting a growling Rottweiler. Don't over use it.  It won't work on some of the most important areas of your life It won't work on your diet. When you eat junk food your bodies "common sense" meter will tell you that it must be good for you because it tastes good.  Wrong. If you're driving fast and you hit a water puddle and start spinning out of control, common sense will tell you to slam on the brakes.  Wrong. The list could go on and on. Learn when to use common sense and when to use higher thinking. Higher thinking comes only through training. The world is full of people going to the gym for their body.  But hardly anyone's going to the bookstore to "workout" their brain. One of the main reasons I created the 67 steps program was to show how you can invert the problem and reverse engineer your own brain.  Put in the work.  Use your common sense for common things and your "trained" brain for the harder things in life.  What's an example of an area in your life where you overused common sense?Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

If you want to learn faster you have to experiment with different 'modes' of reading and learning. One of my favorites is the 'gulping' approach, where you bounce around between 4 or 5 books all in one sitting. This takes advantage of what Steven Johnson in his book, "Where Good Ideas Come From," calls "negative quarter-power scaling." This means reading twice the books doesn't just give you twice the knowledge - it's exponential - it gives you 3 or 4 times the mental growth...Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I once read a poem that said, "Who is mighty? They who control their own thoughts." The good news is as you learn to harness your brain you will unlock a tremendous tool. How are you practicing mind control (haha I like how that sounds)...?Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Everyone says you should follow your passion. But everyone isn't always right. If you want to achieve massive success in your career then passion might not even remotely be the right place the start. In today's Book-of-the-Day, "So Good They Can't Ignore You," Cal Newport examines the science of how to best choose your life's work. Newport says, "Don't follow your passion." This book is a bit controversial. It goes against most of what you've heard in the popular media. Steve Jobs, of course, disagreed with this book's premise.Jobs said, "You've got to find what you love... And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking. Don't settle."But Newport argues that if you actually look at what Steve Jobs did with his life, you will find a different story. Steve Jobs didn't start with passion for technology or design. In fact he was more of a hippie at first, interested in going to Zen monasteries and 'dropping out' of life.Newport summarizes, "Compelling careers often have complex origins that reject the simple idea that all you have to do is follow your passion."That reminds me a bit of Einstein, "Everything should be made as simple as possible, but not simpler." So what is a better way to find out what you should be doing for work?Let me give you a few ideas from the book and a few of my own:1. Experience Creates Passion: Yale professor Amy Wrzesniewski published a paper called, "Jobs, Careers, and Callings: People’s Relations to Their Work." She discovered that the strongest predictor of seeing work as a calling was the number of years spent on the job. Experience at something seems to create love of what you do. Practice and years in the career matter.2. Passion Is A Side-Effect Of Mastery: Daniel Pink is mentioned in the book along with a 40 year scientific framework called "Self-Determination Theory." The theory goes that intrinsic motivation comes from:A. Autonomy - Having control over your career and feeling that what you are doing is meaningful.B. Competence - Feeling like a master of the skills you practice at work.C. Relatedness - Having strong social connections at your job.So you must have a well rounded approach to finding your life's work. It's not as simple as just finding your passion. This theory of 'relatedness' actually shows that "WHO" you work with is almost as important as "WHAT" you do for work. Social life matters - even when it comes to work. 3. Strengths Before All: My personal experience is a bit different than this book. I think that more important than just having a lot of experience, autonomy, competence, and relatedness, you must have 'APTITUDE' - what are you good at naturally?I believe that this is the trump card that beats all other factors. This is what Peter Drucker taught in "Managing Oneself": "Most people think they know what they are good at. They are usually wrong…And yet, a person can perform only from strength.” One of the most important parts of my "67 Steps" program is the question of "Eularian Destiny."I talk about the 5 or 6 ways you can determine your strengths (it's a bit too long to explain here but check out the "67 Steps" and review that video).The basic explanation is that you have to open up multiple lines of "feedback analysis" so that you can get clues as to what your strengths are from multiple sources. You can't just go with your gut or ask your mom or best friend. Most of us have huge blind spots when it comes to determining our strengths.And make no mistake, personality types exist. And because they exist it's logical that natural strengths and weaknesses must also exist. You can't just pick something you are passionate about and make that your career if you have no natural aptitude at it. Some passions should just stay hobbies.You have to be better than the average. Much better.In "Positive Psychology: The Science Of Happiness and Flourishing" authors Compton and Hoffman say the three most common human regrets are: Career, education, and romance.Let me know, how well have you built your career around these principles?Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.