 Why can't you succeed? Cause you won't stop stopping. Just keep going dude, that's all you gotta do. Today we're gonna be talking about success and what it takes to be successful. And I was on a hike a couple of weeks ago with a friend of mine, and his girlfriend and I were talking during the hike and she was telling me about the story of the Chinese bamboo. And she's like, have you ever, well she was actually telling me and she's a yoga teacher and she's talking about like what I do and she's like it's so cool, like what other motivational stories do you know? She's like, because at the end of my yoga, what I do is I teach them a motivational story. So I'm actually running out of them. She started asking me about, so we started talking about these stories. She goes, do you wanna know one of my favorite? She started telling me about the Chinese bamboo story. And for me, this one really hit home because it deals with success, it deals with life, it deals with fitness, it deals with everything. And if you don't know the story of the Chinese bamboo. So the Chinese bamboo is infamous because you plant a seed and you have to water it, it has to get the sun, it has to be taken care of, it has to get the right temperature and you take care of it for an entire year and it doesn't even come out of the soil. So you're watering it, you're taking care of it, you're doing everything that you need to putting all of the hard work in and literally for an entire year, it doesn't even come out of the soil. So what do you do? You continue to water it, you continue to help it, you continue to foster the growth that it needs to. After year two, you know how much it's grown? Nothing. It doesn't even come out of the soil. Year three, do the exact same thing. Doesn't even come out of the soil. Year four, you do the same thing, you put everything that you can, you help it, you try to help it grow, you give it the water, you give it the sun, you take care of the soil. Year four, still doesn't grow. But on year five, after four years of watering, after four years of sun, after four years of getting the right soil, what happens, it comes out of the soil. And not only does it come out of the soil, it grows 80 feet in six weeks. It takes five years for it to even come out of the soil. But once it comes out of the soil, it explodes. And they say that you can even watch it grow if you stare at it. Because sometimes it can grow up to two feet per day. So you're literally looking at this bamboo that hasn't grown for five years. And then finally, it's growing two feet a day. And what's crazy about it, the reason why it hits home so much for me is because I feel like I've finally gotten to this point in my business. I feel like I've gotten to this point in the podcast. I feel like I've gotten this point in a lot of different things in my life. But I wouldn't be at this point had I not gone through those years of almost nothing happening. And for you, you might be in a situation now where it seems like you're spinning your wheels, where nothing's happening, where nothing's happening, where nothing's happening. And maybe you wanna give up. But there's a voice inside of you that's like, just keep going, just keep going, just keep going. Don't pay attention to the naysayers. Your mom's saying that it's not working, but I know it's gonna work eventually. Eventually, everything hits a tipping point. And that tipping point is where it clicks and then it takes off. And if you give up before the tipping point, you'll never actually see what you could have been. And so let me just kind of give you an idea of the way I see it. We live in a world of instant gratification. We do. Instant gratification. I can find out whatever it is that I want to, literally from just looking at my phone, anything. I come from, I'm at least old enough to have lived in the encyclopedia age, where I remember sitting around with friends and asking stuff like, I wonder how fast the speed of light is. And we'd sit around and we'd be like, well, let's go figure it out. And we'd hop on our bikes and we'd go to the library. Take 20 minutes to ride our bikes to the library. We'd go to the library. We'd have to go and find the encyclopedias. Maybe a book that was written on it. We have to thumb through all of those little things. You guys that are older know what I'm talking about. You pull out that drawer. You need to thumb through all of the things to try to find out a speed of light. Okay, where is it? Oh, there's a book that's written on speed of light. All right, we gotta go find it. We go to that one section and we're like, oh, it's not here. The book's been rented out. Man. All right, let's see if we can find any encyclopedias. Okay, let's see. If we're flipping through the encyclopedias, oh, there it is. And we flip open and we're like, oh, there it is. It's 640 million miles per hour, right? But from thought to answer could have been an hour, 45 minutes. We could have sometimes not even found the answer because the books were all rented out and it wasn't in the encyclopedia. And we're like, well, I guess I'll just never know the answer to this question. And that's the way that it was. But now I can literally ask myself, say, hey Siri, how far is the earth from the sun? How fast is the speed of light? Boom. It speaks back to me. I'm used to that instant gratification. If I'm hungry right now, I can literally put in an order and someone will deliver it to my house within an hour. If I want groceries, I live in Austin, Texas, groceries can be delivered to me within the next two hours. I don't even have to leave my house. I don't even have to put on underwear to get groceries sent to my house, right? Like that's the crazy world that we live in right now. TV. I want to watch any movie that's ever been made. It's at my fingertips. How amazing is that? It's amazing because we've built a world that has instant gratification. But your success, your bank account, your happiness, your fitness, all of these things that you want, none of them come instantly. All of them take work. And the crazy part about it is that for quite some time, you might think that it's not working at all. But really what it's doing is it's growing under the surface. What's actually happening with the bamboo and the reason why it takes so long is because before it breaks out of the surface, it's making a really deep, deep, deep, deep, deep root system so that it can explode into the air because if they were to have no root system and it were to take off 80 feet in the air, it would fall over. But it doesn't. Why? Because it's four years of building the roots deep down, building everything that it needs in place so that it can take off. Maybe you have to have four years of failure and four years of how to not do it in order to figure out exactly how to do it. And then once you have those root systems deep, those belief systems deep, the strategies deep, you can take off because you know exactly what to do. And it's crazy. That's exactly how life works. And when I look back to how everything's been in my life, you know, working out once doesn't make you fit. Eating one salad doesn't make you skinny. Saving $20 doesn't make you rich. Working 18 hours one day doesn't make you a millionaire. But doing those things over and over and over and over and over and over again for the next five years, what is that doing? It's building the root system deep so that you can take off. So when you look at one day, when you look at one habit, when you look at one moment, it's not much, but repeated over and over and over and over and over and over again, fast forwarded five years, 10 years, you're in a completely different situation. You're in a completely different life. Hey, if you're enjoying this video, do me a favor and hit that like button down below. It helps with the YouTube algorithm so that more people can see this message because it helps us get it out organically. So hit that like button and I appreciate you. And as I was writing this episode, I started thinking about how can I think of aspects of my life that I can talk about? This podcast, day one, I put out three episodes on the very first day. August 23rd, 2015. Put out three episodes. I got 44 downloads, episode one, day one, 44 downloads between three episodes. So what is that like, basically 15 people listen to my podcast, day one? That's nothing to be super excited about. Something to run home about. And then I put work in and work in and work in. And within about six to eight months, I was able to get the podcast to about 80,000 downloads to 100,000 downloads a month, which is pretty good. Like it's more successful than most and I worked really, really hard to get it there. But here's what's crazy. It stayed between 80 and 100,000 downloads for three years. Three years, almost nothing happened. And it just stayed the same. And I was like, okay, I was still satisfied. I was still happy with it. I'm still getting 80 to 100,000 downloads. That's a pretty big deal for me. I was excited about it. But it stayed that way for three years. And then something happened. I don't even know what it was that happened. But it went from 100,000 downloads and it hit like this tipping point after three years of staying at the exact same point. And within six months, it 10xed. And I went from 100,000 downloads a month to a million downloads a month. I was like, whoa, what happened? I don't know what happened. I still don't know what happened. I have no clue. It just took off. Something happened. It hit a tipping point. And then one year later, it went from about a million downloads a month to now, and most people don't talk about how many downloads they get. I don't know why. It's that people don't share. Who cares? Now it's at about three million downloads, three and a half million downloads a month. So literally, it went from three years of the exact same number to 10x within about six to eight months time. And then within another six to eight months in time, it then got even bigger and basically tripled in size. So it went from the exact same number for three years to 30x within about a year and a half. 30x in a year and a half. Imagine if I would have given up before it hit that tipping point. Imagine where it wouldn't have gotten, right? And it's crazy to think about because I got a notification the other day from Spotify saying that this is the number one podcast in Australia. I don't know how that happened. It just somehow happened. Cool, that's amazing. It's the coolest thing I've ever heard. I've never even been to Australia. Now I need to go and I need to meet all of the Ozzy friends all of the Ozzy friends and fans that are out there. But it's just something that happened because I just didn't stop. What's cool about that is my income basically did the same thing. I was at a good point for a long time and then it basically 10xed, 15xed because I put four years of work into it. And I was like, holy s***, my podcast and my business is literally like the Chinese bamboo. It makes so much sense. So many people give up before they get to the point of success that they wanted to. It's like there's a really cool photo. I'm sure most of you guys have seen it if you've ever been on Instagram. And it's like these two guys that are digging through the ground and there's all of these diamonds they're trying to find. So there's this big pile of diamonds and then there's one guy that's literally almost all the way there and then he turns around and starts walking back and you can see how close he is to the diamonds but he has no idea how close he is to the diamonds. And he gives up and starts walking back right before he gets to the diamonds. And then there's the other people who the guy who's almost there and he's continuing to dig and he's about to get to the diamonds because he's not going to give up. Simply sometimes success is just not giving up. And eventually getting to the point where no other people get to him. You know, it's like the, if you've ever chopped wood before. Sometimes it takes four or five hits to chop through the wood but it's not the fifth hit that chops the wood. It's the fifth hit plus the four other hits before it to chop the wood. That's exactly how your life is. That's exactly how success is for you as well. You know, the thing about it that people don't realize is that they're so much closer to that breakthrough than they realize. They're so much closer to that body that they want than they realize. They're so much closer to that business that they want than they realize. But they're like, I've been doing this for four years and I'm barely getting to where I want to be. Just keep going. One of the beautiful things about life is that most people start but most people give up too soon. Why is that beautiful? Because it shows you if you just don't stop you'll eventually get to where you want to go. You'll eventually get to the place that you want to be. So what I want you to do is I want you to think of something that you are doing right now whether you're a month in, six months in, three years in and if it's really truly important to you. If it's something that you're obsessed with if it's something that you truly want to do I want you to make the mental decision of I will not give up. Either I'll succeed or I'm gonna die trying. That's it. There are no other options. I'm going to make this work. And if you have that mentality of I'm going to make this work it will work 100%. What will make it not work? You giving up. You not fully believing in yourself. You only giving 90% instead of 100%. What you want is possible but you just have to put your full effort into it and just keep going. And that's the thing that most people don't realize. You're so close to your income 30Xing. You're so close to your business 30Xing. You're so close to your podcast 30Xing. But if you give up you're not gonna get there. And if you don't get there what are you gonna do? Start something else that's new? So many people start something new and they do it for two years. And it doesn't work. So then they start something new and they do it for two years. And it doesn't work. So then they start something new and they do it for two years. And it still doesn't work. And they're like why can't I succeed? Why can't you succeed? Cause you won't stop stopping. Just keep going dude. That's all you gotta do. Eventually you'll figure out exactly how to succeed at the thing that you want to succeed at. It's that simple. But once again, we live in a world of instant gratification. We want it now. I want, I'm looking on Instagram and I see the deal with the Lamborghini. I want that freaking Lamborghini. I'm on Instagram and I see the person with a perfect body. I want that perfect body. I see on Instagram the person has the house I want. I want that house. And then I work for six months and I'm like why don't I have the body I want? Why don't I have the house I want? Why don't I have the business I want? Why don't I have the Ferrari I want? Why? Because you're too early in the process. You're in the root growing process. You're in the still needing to water process. You haven't hit the tipping point where you explode in 30X in six months. You haven't hit the tipping point where just like the bamboo, you grow 80 feet in six weeks. But if you don't stop, you'll hit the tipping point. You'll figure it out. It will click for you. Something will happen. But you have to keep working at what it is. And if it truly means something to you and you just don't stop, I promise you, promise you, you'll eventually get to where you want to be. Because what happens, while you're quote unquote failing, I like to call it falling and falling and falling and falling for years and years and years, what that's doing is that's developing the root system that you need to. You're developing the strong foundation that you need to. If you just don't stop, you'll eventually explode. And that explosion will take you way into the stratosphere, way past everybody else, where there is no competition. And the reason why is because most people usually give up from that time. So just like the Chinese bamboo, you will eventually get to where you want to go. You will eventually succeed. You will eventually break through the ground. But if you give up at year four before you break through the ground, you're just gonna have a deep root system and nothing else. You're gonna have a bunch of failures and nothing else. But if you just don't stop, you'll hit the tipping point, you'll explode, you'll get where you want to go and you'll be able to look back and go, damn, I'm so glad I didn't give up when it got hard because I wouldn't be here had I not gone through those things. Hey, thanks so much for watching this video. If you wanna learn even more about Master Your Mind, click right here and watch this video as well.