bad at something, so I decided to get better at it. I put all of my energy into becoming a certified project manager and ended up just barely average at something that drained my energy and went against my natural strengths. I realized that I could have better used the energy I’d wasted becoming a less than halfway decent project manager to really move the needle in other areas. So I deleted Microsoft Project and worked with experienced project managers who seemed to have magical unicorn project management powers but in reality were simply good at their jobs because they loved what they did and had mastered the necessary skill set.
Later, I was able to put this lesson into practice when I went to Wharton, where people worked really hard to get straight A’s. I decided ahead of time to get base knowledge and just barely pass the classes that actively drained me in order to free up energy to dive deep into areas that fascinated me. I ended up intentionally getting a D in several classes, but I got the same MBA that my straight-A friends did without feeling like a failure. Focusing on the areas I loved did more for my career than spending extra time on areas of study that didn’t light me up.
With coaching from the legendary entrepreneur coach Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach, I have learned to prioritize my actions into three buckets: things that drain my energy, things I don’t mind and are important and useful, and things that give me energy and bring me joy. My goal is to break my daily actions down so that I spend none of my time on tasks that fall into the first category, 10 percent of my time on the second category, and 90 percent of my time in the final category, the one that Robert Greene calls primal inclinations. When I find myself drifting too far from the goal, I reset my actions.
This may feel impossible to you right now. Most people spend the majority of their time on tasks that fall into the first category, but it truly doesn’t have to be that way if you use the competence-confidence loop to create the motivation to become the person you want to be and focus your energy on your primal inclinations.
Action Items
Find three words that describe your highest, best self and write them down where you’ll see them throughout the day. Or do what Brendon does and set a phone alert to go off three times a day to remind you of these words. Write them down here. Do it now.Word 1: __________________________________________Word 2: __________________________________________Word 3: __________________________________________
Identify your primal inclinations—the things you love that you just can’t help learning about.________________________________________________________________
Write down what percentage of your time you spend doing things you hate, things you don’t mind, and things that light your fire. Write them down here.Percentage of time spent on things that drain me:__________________Percentage of time spent on things I don’t mind:__________________Percentage of time spent on things that give me joy, including my primal inclination:____________
Now do what it takes to shift your ratio to 0:10:90.
Recommended Listening
Brendon Burchard, “Confidence, Drive & Power,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 190
Brendon Burchard, “Hacking High Performers & Productivity Tricks,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 262
Robert Greene, “The 48 Laws of Power,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 380
Dan Sullivan, “Think About Your Thinking: Lessons in Entrepreneurship,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 485
Recommended Reading
Brendon Burchard, High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way
Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power
Law 3: When You Say You’ll Try, You Are Lying
The words you choose matter more than you think, not just to the people you speak to but also to your own nervous system. Your language sets your limits and to a great extent shapes your destiny. When you unconsciously use words that make you weak, you stop trusting yourself and lead others to question your integrity. Game changers deliberately choose truthful words to build trust and break free from self-imposed limitations. So stop trying and start doing.
My dear friend JJ Virgin is a well-known health and wellness expert and a four-time New York Times bestselling author who has benefited hundreds of thousands of people with her work in nutrition. On top of that, she teaches some of the most innovative experts in medicine how to use their knowledge to reach the people who need it. A few years ago, JJ’s teenage son, Grant, was out walking to a friend’s house when a hit-and-run driver left him for dead on the side of the road. Doctors told JJ that it wasn’t worth airlifting Grant to the only hospital that could perform the risky surgery he needed to save his heart because it would cause his brain to bleed out. She could have his heart or his brain, they said, but not both.
JJ, being the dedicated mother and unstoppable badass that she is, overruled the doctors in charge of Grant’s care time and time again as Grant went on to defeat the odds with her help. He survived the surgery, he woke up from his coma (which doctors had said would never happen), and he began to read, walk, and then run. JJ attributes Grant’s survival against the odds to many things, from cutting-edge therapies and good nutrition to skilled surgeons. But there was one action she took that she believes played a critical role in her son’s recovery: she was intentional about the words that she and others used around him.
Even when Grant was in a coma and doctors believed he couldn’t hear her, JJ never expressed any doubts about Grant’s recovery in front of him, and she didn’t allow the doctors or nurses to, either. This is because JJ knows that our bodies listen to our words at a subtle level. At his bedside, JJ told Grant over and over that this was going to be the best thing that had ever happened to him and he was going to come out of it at 110 percent. When a doctor told her, “We’re doing our best to get him to the point where he’ll be able to walk again if he ever wakes up,” JJ quickly ushered the doctor out of Grant’s earshot. She didn’t want him to hear that not waking up and never walking again were even distant possibilities.
Sure enough, when Grant woke up, he already had the intention of recovering to 110 percent. He never considered the possibility of not being able to walk again. And I have no doubt that the words JJ so carefully chose played a huge role in Grant’s incredible recovery. Words are powerful. They set expectations and limits and send messages to our brains and even our bodies about how much we are capable of. Language is a part of your mental software. Use it consciously and with precision, and you will achieve things you probably never thought you could.
Perhaps no one knows the power of words better than Jack Canfield, the man behind Chicken Soup for the Soul, who has sold several hundred million copies of his books and broke a world record when he had seven books on the New York Times bestseller list at one time. Jack’s focus is on distilling what makes people successful, culminating in his book The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. In my interview with him, we talked about how language impacts success, and I was surprised to hear that he keeps a list of limiting words that he guides successful people to avoid.
I do this, too. As I used biohacking to upgrade my abilities to focus on and pay attention to my words as they came out of my mouth, I discovered that I often used self-limiting words without even realizing it. Even when I was in a deep state of consciousness using neurofeedback, I was unknowingly setting intentions by using those limiting words. My subconscious was choosing safe words that made unimportant things feel huge and other words that allowed me wiggle room to avoid doing the big things I wanted to do.
I call such limiting words “weasel words.” People who work at Bulletproof know that I’ll call out someone in a meeting who uses weak language in a subconscious attempt to avoid responsibility. Similarly, Jack says that he keeps empty fishbowls in his offices, and if one of his team members uses a weasel word, he or she has to put two dollars into the bowl. This is meant not as punishment but to show that there is a cost to using such words. Clear speech means clear thinking and clear