Rise and Grind #2

If success is the result that you are ultimately seeking, you must be obsessedwith the process. You have no time to let fear, doubt, failure, quit, negativethoughts or give up enter into your mentor. So you have massive potential. So from the moment you open your eyes in the morning your mindset has to be win.Meaning winning that particular morning and carrying that winner's mentalitywith you as you enter your classroom. 

So what the person to the left of you ispessimistic? So what the person to the right of you is zoned out? You. Yes you!Can only be concerned with staying locked in because you refuse to let the auraof your classmates or classroom enter into your mental space. See this race iswon by the one that can distance him or herself from the rest of the pack, and those are facts, so I need you to realize that there will bebad days. There will be times that you feel like you have no earthly idea what yourteacher or professor is talking about but what you will never, ever do is throwa pity party. What you will never ever do is tap out, what you will never ever do isconcede and throw in the towel. 

What you will do, is knock on his or her door, and say listen. I only have one option and that is success in your classbut right now, I'm confused about the lesson you taught today and I need clarityand I need it now. I guarantee, that if you are passionate about wanting to achieve success in that class, he or she will bend over backwards to help you. But if you settle for mediocrity and never sayanything you are setting yourself up to fail and failure my friend, is not in your DNA. I promise. You're not the first person to question whether or not they have what it takes to achieve at a high level. I promise you're not the first person tofeel like they are underperforming.

 I promise you are not the first person tofeel like their brain is about to explode. Listen to me those that can push throughno matter what storms arise are in the small minority, that small percentile ofthose that ultimately break through and make their goals and dreams a reality. So the reality is this. You were blown witheverything you need to pass every class with flying colors, you were born witheverything you need to overcome the anxiety that may pop up from time totime on a mission to derail your lifelong hopes, dreams and aspirations.See my favorite acronym is HWPO and just in case you forget, or just incase you don't know, that means Hard Work Pays Off. So winners like us never lose focus and we're horrified and petrified wheneversomeone tries to tell us to take the easy route because we already know thereis no easy route because if it were easy everyone would do it.So we avoid that ignorance and get back to our grind of studying harder than we'veever studied before because we understand that you get out of it what you put intoit. So we pour our heart and soul into our homework, we pour our heart and soul into studying for exams that way we sleep like a baby because weknow in our heart of hearts that we have put every ounce of our being into our work and therefore, success is a foregone conclusion. Listen to me. What if, after all of the hard work, after all of the studying,after all of the blood, sweat, and tears, you still fail? I need you to believeand never forget this. You never fail, you never lose, you only learn. See, life will knock the mess out of you when you least expect it. It's part of the process. See that's when you have to tell yourself, because of this setback, I'm stronger because of this setback, I'm wiser, because of this setback, I'm smarter and because of this setback, I'm hungrier than ever! So I say all of this, as a friendly reminder.You got this. 

You were born to be spectacular! So I need you to jump over the obstacles, I need you you to go around the pitfalls and I need you to push through the adversity because that dormant volcano of successthat's living inside of you it's just waiting for you to grant permission for it to erupt. Choice is one of the most intoxicating things in your life. iIt'sone of the most beautiful things any of us are ever going to encounter buthiding in that beauty is the most destructive force imaginable because if youwant to get something done, if you want to do that thing that burns inside ofyou, you have to remember you can do anything once you stop trying to doeverything. The key to really being successful, thekey to doing something at a grand scale the key to playing on a world stage isto pick something. To be able to stand in a room with a thousand doors and shut999 of them, to have the balls to know which path you're willing to take and toexclude all others but until you can do that, you're never going to be able todevelop the skill set that you're gonna need to perform because here is thereality. It isn't about what you think you should have to put in, it isn't about the amount ofenergy and drive that you think is reasonable. 

As Carl von Clausewitz said,pursue one great, decisive, aim with force and determination because that is how you bend the universe to your will. Thatis how you impress people, that is how you capture the human imagination and ifyou want to do something extraordinary and be remembered, you've got to get sogood that you're performing at a level that has never been seen before. That isthe only path to set the bar ridiculously high and then surpass allexpectations. You can't put it down low and then beat it and say whoa look at me.People don't give a shit, they see through that. You've got to do somethingthat leaves their jaw agate, you've got to do something that makes the hair onthe back of their neck stand up, you've got to leave them in awe but the onlyway to do that is to get that good and the only way to get that good is to pickone thing and go at it with everything you've got. 

What do you do when you make a mistake?I get everything wrong, it's just that I can't recall it because once it's wrongI'm moving on to the next thing. Like dwelling- dwelling on what f-ed upon is the quickest way for the next thing not to work, right? Yeah. So like- soI think I do everything- I mean you know this- this is a fun thing to say, somepeople in the back know this, I was a breakout YouTube star in the first year,2006. I decided that the right strategy was to leave YouTube completely and goto Viddler because Viddler offered me equity in their company and I've left anenormous amount of attention, I deviated from my attention thesis to doshort-term economics and equity in a company and I lost. I lost.

 When D-Rockfinally came in my life two years ago and we started to try to build up my YouTubefor the first time, I was sitting on 40,000 user- followers in a world where Icould have had millions if I just stayed the course, so I make mistakes all thetime. I'm reorganizing VaynerMedia everyday because it's based on a mistake I made the prior year, I just don't give a fuck about my mistakes, everybody elsecares about your mistakes. If you're worried about your own mistakes, you'vealready lost. I've had lots of bad luck in my lifebut I think having bad luck is equally as important because when you have badluck in life, you have to reflect, you have to take the knowledge from thatexperience. We've all been treated badly we've all made mistakes, we've all hadbad luck so what we have to do is reflect, take the knowledge from thatexperience and then allow it to enrich our life. It's as simple as that and let's behonest when people say do you have any regrets Marco I say no because had it not befor all those mistakes I made, I I wouldn't have the knowledge thatI have today, I wouldn't have the experience that I have today because mistakes arefine as long as you take the knowledge from the mistake.

 Through are series ofevents I learned the power that we have in our brain. When I overcame so many challengeswhen I was launching rockets of being a woman, andbeing a person of color in a predominant area that was differentthan myself, I had to think differently. I had to think, “Alright, I’m going to stand out. Everything that I do is going to have to be twice as good. That’sjust the nature of it.” I had to change the way in which I was thinking in order to do that. How am I going to be such a contributing force to this environment that whenever I leave I'vemade a difference? When I realized that, and then when I coupled that with the aspect of mathematics, where the same type of math that we used to launch to Mars it’s the same type of math that we use to literally reshape our own brain,I realized the power of our thoughts. When we are aware of where we are, what we’re dealing, and more importantly the decision that we have in front of us, the choice in our thought in a situation whateverdecision that we make in that full awareness, that decision in itself is a fractal moment in chaos that literally changes the brain at that very moment torestructure it inside of your head so you can unleash your power. When you lookat how are my thoughts going to align with where I want to go and you decidethat moment in time where you decide this is a thought that’s going to get me tobeing a rocket scientist. This is a thought that’s going to get me to be a doctor.This is a thought to get me to be a host of my own show. Whatever it takes, I’m going to have allthe type of thoughts that’s going to get me closer to where I want to go in the future. When we realize that we have a choice in how we think about things, where we have a choice, are we going to be scared about something,or are we going to go for it no matter what’s going to happen, that is when we unleash thispower to here. When you are expected to succeed by your mentors or parents or teachers, when there is an expectation on your life to do well,at an early age you adopt it, you address it, you adhere to it, you create it.But if you’re never given that opportunity to know what you are capable of doing, ifyou are never given that word, that encouragement that says, “You know what, you can be good at mathematics even though you failed algebra and geometry and calculus and chemistry,” which I did. “You can actually do well in mathematics.”If there is not someone showing you your worth when you can’t see it, you’ll foreverbe looking in the mirror thinking that you’re not worth what youare. When you see exactly what you don't want, if you can take the exact opposite ofthat, that’s how you find out what you do For example, when we launch rockets we knew,okay, we didn’t want there to be an explosion out the jacket, which is was like the sideof the rocket. We wanted the explosion to go down.So we thought, “Okay, what is the worst case scenario.” And the worst case scenario is, “Okay, there will be flames blowing out where we don’twant it to go.” So we’re like, “How could we prevent that? How can we focus on where we do want it to go? Where’s the ideal part for it to go?” The ideal part is for all the flames to godown the tubes and go through and create a plume.What we had to do in that aspect is literally envision exactly what we didn’t want, andfigure out the chain of events that could possibly get us there to what wedon't want and then go backwards. The beauty about working in rocketscience is that I had the ability to observe genius brains and and I realizedthat any of us can gain a genius brain no matter what age you are at. It doesn’t matter.Forget what anyone’s ever told you. You can gain a smart brain at any age, at any age. Every decision that you make reshapes your brain. The more powerful you are in making decisions after decision after decision, the more powerfulyour brain becomes. Does that make you really careful about what decisionsyou make? Like, are you super aware when you're making decisions? I’ve learned to become aware to see, “Alright, this is where I want to go. 

How is this decision going to help me get there?” It’s always keeping that in the back of the head like this is where I’m going to go. I made the decision very early in life thatno matter where I was I was going to change it. I was going change it so I would leave mymark to be able to help in a very powerful way so people after I leave would be ableto make their own mark and build it in a way in whichwas going to be very powerful for their life.If you’re a person in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, in other words STEM,Go into it, do it. There is such a overwhelming need for you, because you have theability to see the big picture. You have the ability not only to do themathematics, but you have the ability to see the big picture and use yourcommunication skills in order for people to see how important concepts are. Sothat is the gift that you bring if you have the opportunity to go into that, doit.