From: alexhormozi
To achieve success and impress your future self, it’s essential to adopt a specific mindset and approach to actions, learning, and personal growth. The goal is not to impress others, but rather to win for “future you” [00:00:02]. This framework applies to any area of life, including health, relationships, business, sales, real estate, and investing [00:00:27].
What to Do: The Power of Inversion
Winning starts with understanding what leads to losing and then doing the opposite [00:01:50]. This “inversion” process leverages the brain’s natural ability to identify problems more easily than solutions [00:02:13].
Identifying What Not to Do
Imagine the “least successful version” of yourself and list the actions they would take or not take to guarantee failure [00:03:05]. Examples of behaviors that lead to losing include:
- Being impatient [00:03:52]
- Showing up late [00:03:52]
- Being unprepared [00:03:56]
- Lacking confidence [00:03:56]
- Being transactional rather than relational [00:04:03]
- Not following up [00:04:07]
- Not advertising [00:04:22]
- Not asking for referrals [00:04:24]
The more concise this “lose” list is, the more potent its inverted counterpart becomes, often serving as a “north star” for how to win [00:04:50].
How to Do It: Breaking Down Skills and Building Confidence
Many people struggle not because they don’t know what to do, but because they don’t know how to do it, often due to a lack of detailed breakdown of tasks [00:06:25].
Operationalizing Actions
Skills and actions need to be broken down to their most basic, observable form. A highly skilled person can follow a general command, but a less skilled individual needs every step articulated [00:07:07]. If there’s one “broken link” in a chain of instruction, progress halts [00:08:26].
To operationalize means to explain using actions or behaviors that can be seen, rather than feelings, thoughts, or intentions [00:12:15]. For example, “being charismatic” can be operationalized into observable actions like:
- Smiling when people walk in [00:09:41]
- Changing emphasis and tonality [00:09:43]
- Remembering names [00:09:46]
- Asking about people’s lives [00:09:49]
- Maintaining eye contact [00:09:53]
- Addressing everyone in a room when entering and exiting [00:09:56]
If you can learn something, it’s a skill, and if it’s a skill, it can be taught [00:10:29]. Traits like “charismatic” are simply shorthand for groups of smaller, learnable skills [00:11:10].
Learning, Intelligence, and Confidence
- Learning: Occurs when, under the same condition, you exhibit a new behavior [00:16:29]. If you don’t change your behavior in the same situation, you haven’t learned [00:17:37].
- Intelligence: Defined as the rate of learning, or how fast you change what you do in the same situation [00:17:45].
- Confidence: The percentage likelihood that something will happen, built through repeated proof of action [00:19:32]. Confidence is domain-specific; practicing a skill repeatedly in its actual context builds true confidence [00:20:04]. Confidence comes from the past, not the present – preparation happens before the skill is needed [00:20:35]. If your plan requires luck, it’s a bad plan [00:20:41].
Why to Do It: Overcoming External and Internal Barriers
External Conditions: The Five Stages of Opportunity Hopping
Many individuals fall into a cycle of “opportunity hopping” instead of sticking with a venture [00:21:30]. This cycle includes:
- Uninformed Optimism: Excitement based on superficial observations [00:21:35].
- Informed Pessimism: Realization that the task is harder than expected [00:21:47].
- Valley of Despair: Questioning purpose and justifying quitting [00:22:02]. Most people jump to a new opportunity here, restarting the cycle [00:22:23].
- Informed Optimism: Understanding the process, breaking it into actionable steps, and committing to a feedback cycle [00:23:12].
- Win: Achieving success through persistence [00:23:37].
Sticking with things yields compounding returns [00:23:51]. Wealth is often made during hard times because the market consolidates to the few who remain persistent [00:23:56]. “A smooth sea never made a skilled sailor” [00:25:23]. Hard times are opportunities to gain proof of who you are [00:25:56]. What makes you extraordinary is not what you do, but how long you are willing to do it for [00:26:10].
Internal Conditions: Motivation from Deprivation
Motivation stems from deprivation [00:26:56]. When you’re hungry or thirsty, you’re motivated to eat or drink [00:27:32]. With money, deprivation is psychological, not physiological [00:28:47]. You only feel “poor” or deprived if you perceive a large gap between your current situation and where you want to be [00:28:52].
Changing your environment and who you compare yourself to can stretch this gap, increasing your sense of deprivation and thus your motivation [00:31:04]. Your environment sets your standards [00:30:16]. To leverage this, compare yourself to the person you generally want to become [00:31:45].
Who You Need to Become: Identity Through Action
Contrary to some popular beliefs, “being” and “identities” are simply descriptions of what we do [00:32:42]. As Aristotle said, “We are what we repeatedly do” [00:32:49]. Therefore, the phrase “Be, Do, Have” can be simplified to just “Do” [00:33:52]. By doing what a certain type of person does, you become that person and achieve the results of those actions [00:33:43].
The work you put in shapes who you become: “The work works on you more than you work on it” [00:34:19]. A new identity comes with new priorities and a shift in how you allocate resources [00:35:11]. To be number one, simply do what the number one version of yourself would do [00:35:27].
When to Start: Now
There are three common reasons people delay starting:
- Season/External Timing: Believing the current economic climate or life stage isn’t ideal [00:36:16]. However, the best time to change behavior is when you are busiest, so that the change endures even when life gets hectic again [00:36:34].
- Hour by Hour (Lack of Time): Feeling there isn’t enough time in the day [00:36:20]. This often means you’re doing the wrong things. The first step to correcting course is elimination, not addition [00:38:21]. If you’re busy and broke, you’re not smart with your time [00:38:35]. People who achieve goals faster are more leveraged; they get more for what they put in [00:38:52].
- The “When-Then” Fallacy: Believing “when I have more time, I’ll do it” [00:39:27]. This inverts the sequence. You do now to get later; you don’t get in order to do [00:39:52].
The moment you want to be the future version of yourself is when you should start [00:40:07]. If identity is based on action, then the moment you begin doing what future you does, you are that person, even if the proof takes time to manifest [00:40:18].
Conclusion
To win and learn, you must change your behavior [00:46:58].
- What to do: Invert your “lose” list into actions to win [00:41:29].
- How to do it: Break down terms into actionable, observable steps. Practice these skills until they become second nature [00:41:43].
- Why to do it: Stick with things for compounding returns, especially during hard times when champions are made [00:45:56]. Create motivation by changing your environment and comparisons [00:46:04].
- Who to become: Focus on doing what the future version of yourself would do [00:46:19]. Identity is built through consistent actions [00:46:21].
- When to start: Now. Learn to make it work in the worst conditions, and it will stick in the best [00:37:20].
Measure success by whether you completed the actions, making failure unreasonable [00:42:02]. The greatest games in life, like marriage or business, are about outlasting, not winning a single event [00:42:38]. This shifts winning to a decision you can control [00:42:43]. “Everything must be hard before it can be easy” [00:44:50]. The hard times are opportunities to give yourself proof that you can overcome challenges [00:45:01]. Focus on the activities, not internal feelings, to win [00:44:39].