 Who wants change? Who wants to change? Be the change. Today, we're gonna be talking about one simple solution to fix almost all of the world's problems. It's quite a promise, isn't it? Well, that's what we're gonna dive into. If you listen to the podcast, this isn't gonna make any sense to you. If you watch the podcast, so if you're watching out now through YouTube or Facebook or Instagram, you've noticed that I wear almost the same shirt every single time just in different colors, and that shirt says be the change. And it comes from a Gandhi quote, which is be the change that you want to see in the world. And so what I did about six months ago is I just started making shirts that just say be the change. I thought to myself, if I'm gonna wear something and people are gonna see me all over the internet, I want a shirt that actually represents the way that I think the world should be and the way that actually people could improve the world. And so I'll be honest with you, when I first heard the quote years ago, be the change you want to see in the world, I didn't, if I'm being honest, I didn't really understand what it meant. Like be the change that you want to see in the world. What does that mean? And if someone that's enlightened like Gandhi says it, well, it must mean something really good. And what it basically means, it's super simple, is that instead of trying to fix everybody else, instead of trying to tell people what they should do, what we should do is be the example of what we think the world should be. That's what we should do. We should be the example of what we think the world should be. And there's a couple ways to try to make people change. There's two ways. And it's the perfect example, the analogy of the lighthouse versus a tow boat. Now, if you look at what a lighthouse and a tow boat do, both of them, their job is to get boats into the harbor safely. But even though that's the exact same job that they have to do, they do it in two completely different ways. And this is going to make sense when I get done talking about it. A tow boat, what they do is they go out, they get boats, and they use all of their energy pulling and forcing the boats into the harbor. They pull, and they pull, and they pull, and they pull, and they use all of their energy to try to get the boat into the harbor. That's what they do. On the other side, you have a lighthouse. And a lighthouse doesn't leave its spot. All it does is it knows its job, it shines its light, and by shining its light and doing its one job, it still gets boats into the harbor. Now, what the hell does that have to do with be the change? Well, most people want the world to change around them. They want people around them to change. Then what they do is they try to force everybody around them to change the way that they want them to. If there's one thing that I know, it's that trying to change somebody is really freaking hard. If you want to know how hard it is to try to change someone else, think about how hard it is to change yourself. And so a lot of people will come up to me and say, Rob, I'm on this personal development kick, and I'm on this journey, and I love it, and it's new to me. But how do I get my wife to start listening to podcasts? How do I get my husband to start meditating? How do I get my kids to start doing this? How do I get the rest of the world or everyone that's around me to start reading books or getting into personal development? They try to force everybody in their immediate circle to grow. And if you want to force somebody to do something, you're going to get a whole lot of resistance. That is the exact way that a tow boat works. They try to pull the boats into the harbor versus a lighthouse. What does a lighthouse do? It does its job. It works on itself, and it shines its light for all of the boats to see and still gets them into the harbor. So with the quote itself, the real connection that I have to it, there's a meme that I love that I've talked about. It's just a picture, and it's a cartoon. And it's a guy who's up on top of a pedestal. He looks like he's a politician or something like that. And there's a bunch of people in the crowd, and he says, who wants to change? Or who wants change? And you see everybody in their hands in the air. You know, everybody wants change. And then in the next picture, it says who wants to change? And everybody's hands are down, and nobody wants to change. We all want change in the world. If you see all the stuff that's happening in the world right now, there's a massive amount of change that's happening and people wanting change to happen, which is a beautiful thing. We should always want change. We should always want to be better, to treat people to better, have equality across what we should all want change and for things to always be getting better. But we have to realize we have to be the people to initiate that change. We have to be the people that are okay with being that change. The problem right now is that everybody wants change, which once again is good, but nobody wants to change. It's very easy to just tell someone to do something. It's very easy to just tell them to change, but not change yourself. Change doesn't happen at a worldwide level very easily. It just doesn't. It takes time. Change doesn't happen at a nationwide level very easily. That takes a lot of time. Change doesn't happen at a government level very easily. That takes a lot of time. Change doesn't happen at a statewide level very easily. That takes a lot of time. And change doesn't happen at a local level very easily. It takes a lot of time. The easiest place to change is to start to change yourself. And so if you're saying, I want this in the world, the first thing that you need to do is you need to hold a mirror up to yourself and saying, am I being the perfect portrait of this that I want to see, of this change that I want to see in the world? And I know it's hard to change yourself, but you have to be the person to change. You have to be the person to eat your own dog food. If you're telling people to do something, you damn for sure, better be the person's actually doing it, eating your own dog food. I can't tell you how many times, it's at least almost every single post I put up on Instagram. I put up a quote or I put up a post and somebody always says, easier said than done. Of course it is. Everything is easier said than done, because it is easy to move your lips. You don't even have to get off the couch to move your lips. I don't have to get out of my chair right now to move my lips. So of course it's easier said than done. The hard thing is to actually do it. And so you have to be willing to eat your own dog food. Too many people are just sharing posts and thinking that they're going to change the world. You're not going to change the world by just sharing posts on Instagram, sharing posts on Facebook. Are they important? Sure, of course. But what we really need to do is we need to be the lighthouse. We need to be out there making change happen and changing ourselves and inspiring others to change as well. Exactly the same way that the lighthouse would be. So how can you be willing for someone to change themselves, to change their perspective, to change the way that they were raised if you're not willing to change yourself first? Really, how can you actually expect that? You have to be the first to eat your own dog food. You have to be the first one in. The speed of the leader is the speed of the team. If you want things to happen, you need to lead people and inspire people to change themselves. It's easy to say something. It's hard to get off and actually start doing something. One of the examples that I love is, if you follow me on Instagram, you probably saw a few days ago, it snowed for the second time in eight years since I've been in Austin. It snowed here. It snowed about three inches of snow. And so I literally put up a post of all of the snow coming down on Instagram and said, Instagram stories and I said, should I jump in the pool? And it was like 88% said yes. And I was already going to jump in the pool. But I jumped in the pool. Why? Not because I'm trying to show off and be like, oh my God, look at me. I'm so cool. I'm instead of cold water. It's because I know that conquering that little voice inside of your head is important. And how do you conquer that little voice inside your head? One of the easiest ways is to go in the cold. The cold will bring out a lot of you. It'll show you and bring to your surface all of the little voices that are holding you back from who you want to be. And so what did I do? I jumped in the pool and I had a couple of pictures of me inside of the pool. And I had the picture or the screenshot of me being in it for nine minutes. I didn't do it because I wanted to be cool. I did it because I wanted to inspire others to do it as well. What's really awesome about it is how many messages. It was about 40 or 50 messages of people saying, you just inspired me to take a cold shower. I just took one. It was really hard, but it was amazing. And people talk about how it inspired them. But I can't just put up a picture of somebody else in cold water and just expect that everyone's going to jump in cold water. I have to realize that if I'm going to be a leader with anything that I do, I have to be the one willing to do it first. Because the speed of the leader is the speed of the team. If you have a team that's not performing the way that you want it to, you have to look at yourself in the mirror and say, how am I not showing up? It's never your team's fault. It's always your fault. And when you can put it back on you and say, how can I change? If my community is not what I want it to be, I need to ask myself, how can I be better? How can I inspire more people? Not try to force them, but how can I inspire them to be better? One of the things I said in the beginning is that so many people reach out and they're like, hey, I want to change my spouse. I want my spouse to get into this. And I'll hear something like, oh, my spouse is really, my wife is really anxious. She worries a lot. She's really anxious. She gets emotional with all the stuff that's happening in the world. How do I get her to start meditating? I can't tell you how often I see something like, how do I get my husband to start meditating? How do I get my wife to start meditating? They have anxious thoughts and feelings. I really think that it would help them to meditate. My response to them is, you need to meditate. They need to see you meditating. You don't force it on to them first. What you do is you take ownership and say, okay, if I want to see this person meditate and I think it will help them, then I want to be the first person to meditate. And I want to go out and meditate and I want you to flaunt my meditativeness in front of them. But what I need to do is actually just go and meditate. And if they see me meditating or if they know that I did and I go and meditate for 20 minutes and they start to notice, man, he's a lot more calm. He's a lot more peaceful. They start to notice a dissonance between how calm you are and how anxious they are. And essentially what's going to happen, eventually it might not be a first week, the first month, the first five months. They're going to notice a difference between you and them and they're going to go, honey, I've been really anxious lately. A lot of the stuff that's happening in the world is really getting me down. You seem to be really laid back. What are you doing? And what happens? They see you being the change that they want in themselves so they reach out to you for advice. They ask you what you've been doing. And now you have an opportunity to help them change. How do you make sure that you don't help someone change? Try to force change onto them. People don't like to change. People do not like to be told what to do. You want a perfect example of it? Do two-year-olds like to be told what to do? No, of course not. It's ingrained as humans to not like to be told what to do. We like to have our own sovereignty. We like to be an individual. We like to be independent. So if you try to tell your spouse that they need to meditate because they're too freaking anxious, they're going to resist meditating. But if they see you with the change internally of more joy, of more peace, of more calm, then they're probably going to reach out to you at some point in time and say, honey, I'm really starting to stress out. I'm really not feeling good with all the stuff that's happening in the world. I need to calm down. I need to stop worrying. I need to stop being so anxious and sad and emotional about this. You seem to be handling your life and everything really well. What are you doing? Now you can go, well, what's really been helping me is meditating. And now instead of you forcing it upon them, they are asking for it from you. It's a perfect example. So many times I hear people and they're like, oh, you know, my, I'm really afraid to go out and do this and be a coach or put up motivational videos or inspirational videos on Facebook and Instagram because I'm worried what everyone's going to say about me. Well, what happens is at the moment that you start changing, people will start to resist it. But then what happens is people look at you and they say, man, he's been doing so well. She's been doing so well. Maybe I should reach out to them and see what's going on. Maybe I should reach out to them. Like they, people will change when there's a part of you that inspires them to want to be like you. Not when you force it upon them, but when they go, I want to see what they have. They seem to be living a life that I love. I would, I would love to feel that peaceful. I love to feel that joy. I love to make the money that they're making, whatever it is that you have. And then what happens is they reach out to you, but they don't reach out to you unless you are first embodying that change. So what change do you want to see in the world and how can you embody that change? How can you become that? How can you be the change that you want to see in the world? That's the question that I have for you. No one likes to be told what to do. Everybody always wants to think that what they're doing is their own idea. Do you want to know the best way to do that is to be so inspiring, to live your life at such a high level, to shine your light so bright that nobody can look away from it. And then what happens? People start reaching out to you and asking how to do it. People start saying, man, that's really inspiring. Man, that's really great. Hey, what are you doing? Can I get some help? Can I get some tips? Can I get some advice? It's funny how many people literally today, if I'm going to be honest with you today, I got a message from a friend that I've known since 2006. And he was semi supportive when I decided to start the podcast. But a little bit skeptical, kind of made fun of me like a friend does. And I was like, you know what? That's just what's going to happen. I'm okay with that. People are going to resist the change. He sent me a message today about 20 minutes ago and it said, you interviewed Matthew McConaughey. Holy s***. That's so amazing. I never thought that you would be where you are at this point. And it shows me what hard work can get you. Right? That inspired him to maybe go do something different in his life to actually follow something. So was the resistance when I first went and started the podcast and started point motivational videos and started to do this? Of course. But my job is not to try to prove anybody wrong. My job is not to live the life that somebody else wants me to live. My job is to live the life that makes me feel like it's 100% right for me. And if that inspires some people, there's a lot of people that won't inspire them. That's okay. I don't need to inspire everybody. But if it does connect with them, that inspires other people to live a better life. I never want to tell you what to do. I want to show you what I'm doing that's helped me. And then I want to inspire some people to do the same thing. That's really what it is. I never preach something on the podcast that I've never done myself before. I want to use myself as a guinea pig first. I want to show you that I'm going to be the first one to do it and I will put myself through the ringer to see if it works. And if it does, I will bring it up to you so that you know. And if you follow me on Instagram, I'm going to show you I'm jumping in the cold pool. Why? Because I'm telling you to jump in the cold pool. I'm telling you to take cold showers. I'm never going to tell you to do something that you don't want to do. But hopefully, by seeing that, you go, you know what? I'm inspired. I want to do that as well. That's what you want other people to think. So what I want you to think about is this, number one, how do you want the world to change? The world is not perfect. It's far from perfect. It's getting better. Things are happening. The old mechanisms that kept the world together and governments running are starting to come apart and starting to come to the surface and to the light. So now we can change those things, which is great. But if I were to ask you, how do you want the world to change? Write down the answers. How do you want the world to change? What would you like to see in the world? Right? That's the first thing. Number two, what are the biggest changes that you would like to see? What are the biggest change? How do you want it to change? And then what are the biggest changes that you would like to see? And then number three, how can you embody that change? So you figure out what change you want, and then you find out how can I personally embody the change that I want to see? Not force it upon someone else, but how can I embody it to the highest level so that it will inspire other people to act the same as me? So how can I embody that change and inspire others to be that way as well? Because ultimately, you can't force anybody to do anything. If you want to know how hard it is to change somebody else, think about how hard it is to change yourself. It's really freaking hard, right? So it's nearly impossible to change somebody else. Do you want to know how to change somebody else though? Is to be so, to live your life at such a high level that it inspires other people to go, I want that. I want that happiness. I want that peace. I want that joy. I want that money. I want that success. Whatever it is that you have, that you inspire people to do the same as well. Because ultimately, the only way for the world to change is if we be the change that we want to see in the world.