[0:03]What's up, believe Nations? Greetings from Copenhagen, Denmark. My name is Evan. My one word is believe, and I believe in people more than they believe in themselves.
[0:10]And my hope is that a little bit of that rubs off onto you so you can create something amazing in this world.
[0:16]So to help you on your journey, today we're going to look at five lessons in life that people often learn too late, and hopefully you can pick it up a lot sooner.
[0:25]Lesson number one is don't sleepwalk through life.
[0:29]I advise students as much as possible, look for the job that you would take if you didn't need a job.
[0:36]I mean, don't sleep walk through life, and don't don't say it's all going to be great. You know, I'll do this and I'll do that, and you know, I'm just marking time to get to be older.
[0:46]That's I've told people that's like saving up sex for your old age. I mean, it just is not. It is not a good idea. Yeah.
[1:01]What are you urging them to do? I'll explain. You just you really want to be doing what you love doing and you can't necessarily find it on your first job.
[1:20]But don't give up before you find it. Lesson number two, live life without fear.
[1:25]If there was one uh concept that I would um suggest to people to take a daily confrontation with is fear.
[1:39]Um the the problem with fear is that it lies, right? So fear tells you, hey, you know,
[1:49]if if you say that to that girl, she's gonna know she has you. You know, and she'll never really be attracted to you if she knows how much you attracted to her.
[2:04]Right, slow key. You know, it's like Fear tells you dumb shit like that. You know? So, you know, for for me, the the daily confrontation
[2:18]um with with fear has become a real practice for me since about three three years ago, um I went, uh, I went skydiving in Dubai, right?
[2:27]And skydiving, skydiving is a really interesting confront with fear, right?
[2:34]So, so I got to I got to stand up. I'm sorry, I got to stand up. I got to stand up. All right. So,
[2:40]So, all your friends, what happens? You go out how you Oh, sorry. Oh, I dropped my thing. So what happens is you go out the night before and you, you know, you take a drink with your friends and somebody says, yeah,
[2:50]we should go skydiving tomorrow. And you go, yeah, we'll go skydiving tomorrow. Yeah. Yeah, and you go, yeah. Everybody goes, yeah, right?
[3:00]And you go home by yourself, you're like, right? You're like, well, yeah, I mean, they they was drunk too.
[3:09]Right? So, so maybe maybe they not maybe they I mean, we we don't have to go. We don't have to do it.
[3:15]So then that night you're laying in your bed and you just keep And you're terrified.
[3:20]You keep imagining over and over again jumping out of an airplane, and you can't figure out why you would do that, right?
[3:27]And you're laying there and you have the worst night sleep of your life, but you still have the hope that your friends were drunk, right?
[3:34]So, you wake up the next day and you go, you know, down and you say where you were gonna meet and everybody's there.
[3:39]You're like, oh, All right. All right. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Cool. Right?
[3:46]So you get in the van and you don't know that your friends had the same night that you had because they're pretending like they didn't. They're like, yeah, man. My uncle's a Navy Seal.
[3:55]And you know, it's gonna be great. I'm looking forward to this. And you're like, oh my God. Oh my God. And your stomach is terrible. You can't eat and everything, but you don't want to be the only punk who doesn't jump out of this airplane.
[4:07]So you get there and then you have the safety brief, and you're standing there and the guy that tell you, well, if the shoot doesn't open what's going to happen is you're doing, well, why the hell would why would it happen?
[4:18]The shoot would the shoot wouldn't open, right? So you do a thing and what you do is your first jump you're attached to a guy who is going you know, he's gonna walk you out.
[4:27]So you go and you get there and there's an airplane and nobody's stopping. Everybody's still going.
[4:34]So you get onto the airplane and you're sitting there and and you know, it's extra because you're sitting on some dude's lap, some stranger.
[4:41]He's sitting on his lap and it's like, you know, you got trying to make small talk. Yeah, man. You You do you'd be you'd be jumping with people all the time, huh? You Right?
[4:52]You know. So and then you just want to make sure you you got you got kids, right? You got people you need to see.
[4:59]Right. You just wanna make sure he's serious, right? So you get in there. So everything's normal. So you fly and you go up, you go up, you go up, you go up to 14,000 ft, and you notice there's a a light. It's red and it's yellow and green, right?
[5:12]So right now the light's red. So then you start thinking at some point the light's gonna go green and you don't know what's going to happen, right?
[5:19]And you wait and it goes yellow, and the light goes green and somebody opens the door and in that moment you realize you've never been in a freaking airplane with the door open.
[5:31]Right? Terror no, sorry. I'm spitting. Oh, sorry. No, terror, terror, terror, terror, right?
[5:40]So you go and then you know, if you're if you were smart, you sat in the back so you don't go first, right?
[5:49]And then people start going out of the airplane and you go and the guy walks you up to the end of the thing, and you're standing and your toes are on the edge and you're looking out down to death.
[6:06]And they say on three and they say one, two, and he pushes you on two because people grab on three. Right?
[6:16]Right? And you go, and you fall out of the airplane and in one second you realize that it's the most blissful experience of your life.
[6:31]You're flying, right? It doesn't feel like falling, right?
[6:34]It's like the you actually are kind of held a little bit by the wind, and then you start and you you start falling, you're falling and you there's zero fear.
[6:44]You realize at the point of maximum danger is the point of minimum fear. It's bliss. It's bliss, and you're flying.
[6:55]Right? And you're doing that and then 20 seconds, 25 seconds, 40 seconds, and you have enough time to just kind of be like, ah, that's that building. I said, I like that, man.
[7:11]Oh, you can see the ocean. Right? You start doing all of that and the the lesson for me was, why were you scared in your bed the night before?
[7:20]Why did you need what do you need that fear for? Just don't go. Why are you scared in the car?
[7:31]Why couldn't you not enjoy breakfast? What what what did you need that the fear is fear of what?
[7:38]You're nowhere near the airplane. Everything up to the stepping out, there's actually no reason to be scared.
[7:49]It only just ruins your day. You're you don't have to jump. And then in that moment, all of a sudden where you should be terrified is the most blissful experience of your life.
[8:00]And God placed the best things in life on the other side of terror, on the other side of your maximum fear are all of the best things in life.
[8:10]Lesson number three. Stop complaining.
[8:13]What if I told you this was the last Monday morning of your life? What if I told you you died this week? Would you complain about your crap job or that test you don't want to take?
[8:23]I doubt it. You would go much higher level thinking. Well, that's really what it takes. It takes understanding that if you're not pumped right now, if you're begrudging what you're about to do, if you're if you're not looking forward to it.
[8:35]Look, I respect practicality. You got to go through school because your parents want to. You got to pay your rent.
[8:41]You got student loans. I get it. But please recognize the world we're living in.
[8:45]We're living in a world where there's so much more opportunity. This internet thing created way more opportunity for all of us, way more.
[8:53]I mean, look, you might not even be alive. Like your mom and dad could have had sex like three minutes later, and you wouldn't even exist.
[9:00]And you're complaining. You could have ended up being a bus, a tree. I just don't get the mentality of being head down sad on a Monday morning.
[9:08]I'm gonna make Monday morning my. I'm gonna make you Saturday Monday morning. That's what I want to do every morning, and that's what I want from you.
[9:16]Please take a step back and think about how awesome it actually is. And then recognize that you can attack the world in a totally different way, cuz you were lucky enough to be born during this era.
[9:29]Lesson number four. Know your destination.
[9:32]Imagine we're standing in a big empty room, right? And we're standing in one corner and I give you a simple instruction.
[9:40]I want you to go to that corner in a straight line, right? If you go, no big deal, right? Without telling you I slip a chair in front of you.
[9:48]What do you do? You go around the chair.
[9:52]Now you just disobeyed what I told you to do. I told you to go to that corner in a straight line, but this is the amazing things about human beings, which is when we're given a clear destination,
[10:00]we use our own creativity and our own sense of innovation, and our own problem-solving abilities to overcome obstacles to get to the destination.
[10:07]In other words, the destination is more important than the root, right? We're flexible about the root. We're obsessed with the destination. Reset.
[10:14]We're standing in the corner together and I give you a simple instruction. Go somewhere in this room in a straight line, and you say to me, well, where do you want me to go?
[10:20]I'm like, I don't know. You're smart, figure it out. Go on a straight line. And so you pick a point and you start walking, and without telling you I put a chair in front of you. And what do you do? You come to a grinding halt.
[10:30]And I say, what did you stop for? You go, well, you put a chair in front of me.
[10:33]Or you'll make a sudden turn and go in another direction, right? And this is the problem. It's the same obstacle.
[10:40]The difference is when you have a clear set of clear destination, the obstacles become easy to overcome.
[10:46]When you don't have a clear destination, you keep coming to a grinding halt. And what we do in our companies is we're counting the steps we're taking along the route, but we're never looking at the destination, right?
[10:53]So the company says, made a million dollars this year. We were only planning on making 800,000. It's like we took 10 steps. We're only planning on taking eight.
[10:59]Where are you going? No clue, right? We count the steps. And so the point is is that people want to feel that the effort that they're exerting actually are moving somewhere.
[11:08]And so successful measurement, successful recognition is not just for the steps you take. It's not just for the effort.
[11:13]It's that the effort you exerted moved us closer to where we're trying to get to, and that get to should be some crazy ideal.
[11:20]My ideal is to live in a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single morning, you know, inspired to go to work and fulfilled by the work that they do.
[11:28]And the the the couple of measurements that I use are if the book is selling, and I by the way, people ask me, how many have you sold? I have no clue.
[11:35]I've never asked the publisher because I don't care. I really don't care how many I've sold. What I care about is the Amazon rankings and that those are going steady or up and not plummeting.
[11:46]Because that means other people, right? Because I don't have a publicist. I don't have a marketing strategy on purpose.
[11:51]I didn't hire one of those companies to sell the book for me. And the reason is, is because I'm not interested in book sales. I'm interested in the spreading of an idea.
[11:57]And so I just use that as a metric to help me understand, am I sort of marching in the because the more I preach is it resonating?
[12:05]You know, and so you have a couple of these imperfect measurements that help you understand are you going along the way.
[12:11]So it's not just great effort. Look what you achieved, because that's what we're doing now, right?
[12:17]Our goal is to increase top line revenues by 50 million dollars. For what reason?
[12:22]Right? Which is we have to know the destination, and then we say, amazing.
[12:28]You took us that much closer and if we go to the right, it's because we were overcoming an obstacle.
[12:33]If we hadn't gone to the right, we would have been stuck forever. Thank you. You know, it's not always straight lines.
[12:40]It's not always straight lines, but it's it's in one direction. She's pulling the cane out.
[12:45]And lesson number five, enjoy life.
[12:49]I'm not sure about that in the future. I can't I would dictate I would be stupid.
[12:54]That's why I should retire early when I'm young. That is why I have a lot of things that I dream I want to do.
[13:00]I want to philanthropy, I want to be a teacher, I want to go back to school, I want to do the environment. And the world is so wonderful. Why should I be the CEO of Alibaba all the time?
[13:11]I I'm coming to this world not to work. I want to come to this work to enjoy my life.
[13:17]I don't want to die in my office, I want to die on the beaches.
[13:21]Thank you guys so much for watching. I hope you enjoyed. I'd love to learn. What did you learn from this video?
[13:26]What was your favorite lesson? Leave it down in the comments below. Is there a lesson six or seven that you want to add to the list?
[13:31]Put it down in the comments. I'm looking forward to hearing from you. Thank you again for watching. Greetings again from Copenhagen, Denmark.
[13:38]I believe in you. I hope you continue to believe in yourself and whatever your one word is.
[13:43]Much love. I'll see you soon.
