Unleashing Your Inner Potential: Thibaut Meurisse's 'Do the Impossible' | MindHack Ep. 044

In today's episode, we have the pleasure of introducing you to Thibaut Meurisse, a renowned author and personal development coach. Thibaut is widely recognized for his expertise in emotional mastery, mindset, and self-improvement. With his 'Master Your Emotions' book series, he has empowered countless individuals to understand and effectively manage their emotions. And guess what? We recently had the opportunity to sit down with Thibaut for an inspiring podcast interview, where he shared valuable insights from his upcoming book. In this episode, we'll delve into Thibaut's journey, his groundbreaking new work, and the key takeaways from our thought-provoking conversation. Get ready to unlock the secrets to emotional well-being and personal growth with Thibaut Meurisse!

More on Thibaut Meurisse:
Website
Twitter
Instagram
Do the Impossible
Other Books here:

Books and other interesting mentions:
WOOP
The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph by Ryan Holiday
Jim Rohn
Six Pillars of Self Esteem by Nathaniel Brandon
The Second Mountain: The Quest for a Moral Life by David Brooks
Steve Pavlina
Steve Pavlina Books

Transcript

Thibaut: 0:00

just have, do the work. If you do the work, you can have anything you want in your life. That's kind of was my mantra as well. If I do the work, I can have anything I want in my life and I would go back to work, you know, myself, go back, go back, go back very hard. It was very hard. But that's a process.

Cody: 0:14

Welcome to the podcast. Today I'm talking with Thibaut Maurice, who is an acclaimed author and personal development expert and mentor who sold over 500,000 books worldwide and reached over 1 million readers. His bestselling book, master Your Emotions, has transformed lives and been translated into multiple languages Thibaut's. Journey began in 2017 when he left his job to pursue his passion for personal development and writing. Overcoming personal challenges has allowed him to immerse himself in the self-development world and allowed him to share some unique insights through public speaking, YouTube videos and writing. Today, Thibaut serves as a mentor and coach to high performers, helping them achieve extraordinary results. I'm going to be diving into Thibaut's Journey, and we'll be discussing his upcoming book called Do the Impossible, how to Become Extraordinary and Impact the World at Scale. A book about finding a mindset that will allow you to become self-actualized. So please welcome Thibaut Maurice, So I would love to just hear your thoughts and what is do the impossible about and why did you decide to write it?

Thibaut: 1:33

Yeah, so to give you background, I wrote about over 20 books so far since, uh, 2015. And, uh, this book is kind of the summary of everything I've been working on for the past five to 10 years and how to really think of, let's say, I wanna impact the world, I wanna impact, I don't know, a million life or 10 million lives. Like what can I do exactly to get there? What's the mindset and what is. The framework I can use, what the strategy I can use to hopefully get there in 5, 10, 20 years. Because it's all about long-term thinking as well. You have to be really long-term, a long-term thinker. So that's kind of the idea behind the book.

Cody: 2:13

where did you find the mindset and the information and the knowledge that you have in relation to the book and this idea of having a mindset that can allow you to achieve things you otherwise wouldn't have thought you could achieve?

Thibaut: 2:29

Uh, honestly, just, uh, over, over a time it's experience. Cause I studied like, you know, like everybody, I didn't have a network. I wasn't a writer. I didn't have any, any anything going for me in that sense. And I had to learn from scratch how to write a book, how to market a book, how to keep going for years, how to keep believing in myself. And over time I realized, oh, what I can do more than I believed I could do. And what else can I do? And I just realized that. There's not that much limit to what we can do, just a matter of what do we want and like how hard we, we need to go after what we want and how hard we believe in ourself. So we need to work on building those skills over time.

Cody: 3:08

And

Thibaut: 3:09

So that's what I discovered in my journey over the years.

Cody: 3:12

And so how can we identify and overcome some of these self-imposed limitations and societal conditioning?

Thibaut: 3:19

I guess we have to look at what results we are having in life, but what, what's the starting point? Am I struggling in my relationships? Am I struggling in my, in my business, in my work? Am I struggling with making money? And when you look at why are you struggling in that specific area? What's stopping you from, from going to the next level? And once you've done that, you want to. Surround yourself with knowledge, books, mentors, maybe it's coaches, and keep working and learning as much as you possibly can in that specific area of your life. Cause it's crazy that so many people don't actually learn about like an important topic in their life. And in today's world, we have all the books out there. Information is almost free We just have to really, decide to learn and to keep going until we have the knowledge we want to have and the result we want to have in the long term.

Cody: 4:10

And so one of the things that you mentioned in the book is that most people don't actually know what they want. And they'll just follow somebody who does know what they want and they never think about for themselves how they'd actually like their life to be, and they lack that exciting vision to kind of propel them into the future. How can we find what it is that we truly want that's separate from what society tells us we should want?

Thibaut: 4:37

think first thing I would do is try to have more time on your own by yourself to think about what you want in your life. Because you know, today we have Instagram, TikTok, YouTube shorts all these videos, and it's really hard to have a time to think for an hour, for a few hours about what you really want in your life. And then you can just take a piece of a pen and a piece of paper and write down what do I want in five years, in 10 years, in 20 years, what do I like to do? What is the absolute like ideal for my life that I think would be nice to have and keep working on that because the vision is really something you refine over over time. You don't have clarity at one point if that's, that's it for the rest of your life. It's always an ongoing process of do I still want that, or what can I change about that vision that I have that would make it even more inspiring or even more better in the next five years. And we have to keep refining what we want and the vision we wanna pursue over time. That would be one thing, spending time alone. And then you wanna spend time with people who will actually inspire you to do more you probably know the famous, uh, saying that we are the average of the five people we spend the most time with. And you want to be, try to find people. We really inspire you to become, uh, a better version of yourself. And I know for me it has been very inspiring to be around people who are maybe healthier. Like some of my friends are into longevity, some into diet. I'm into business and it's really nice to have this kind of group that is, that is helping you grow as well.

Cody: 6:06

Hmm.

Thibaut: 6:06

So that would be a second thing I would look into. And the third thing would be, what are my strengths? What do I like to do? What do I do during my spare time? What do I volunteer for? And look at really what are you doing on your own by yourself. We don't have the pressure of society that tell that is telling you what you should be doing with your life. So it could be volunteering some hobbies you have. What do you read, for instance? Do you read about philosophy, politics, sports? So whatever it may be. So that's the thing I would look into, uh, to try to find the passion we have inside and start working toward our vision.

Cody: 6:43

In your book, you mentioned this Mark Twain quote, which I love. He says, I can teach anybody how to get what they want out of life. The problem is I can't find anybody who can tell me what they want, and so it's spending time by yourself being alone, asking yourself. And it's a process. It's a process that requires a certain level of commitment to really extract from your, your inner world exactly what it is that you want to achieve and do in this world.

Thibaut: 7:15

Yeah, and I would like to mention as well, is like taking action. You know, the more you do in the world, the more feedback you get from the reality around you. And if you try to do so many things in your twenties, for instance, you're gonna learn so much about yourself, what you like, what you don't like, what you're good at, what you're bad at. And it's gonna help you really find out what you want to do know in your thirties or in your forties and beyond. So taking action, absolute. We have to take more action. Starting small, we have to do more.

Cody: 7:44

And in one of your chapters you mentioned what you refer to as fundamental assumptions about human beings. Can, can you discuss what you mean and, and perhaps give me some examples.

Thibaut: 7:57

Yeah. I mean, when you wanna have some kind of impact in the world, you have to think how, what? How does the world work? Not how I wish it would be. How is it? How it is? So what you can actually. Start working on the world and have an impact. So for instance, um, one example I'd say is like, uh, you can act out of fear or out of love. So for instance, you can be either acting because you're trying to get something from the world. So it's kind of mindset of lack and scarcity and trying to get, trying to be famous, trying to make more money and so on. Or I can realize that, okay, it's not a zero sum game. I can go out in the world and I can give information, I can give feedback, I can learn, I can try to help people with my business. I can serve people, I can contribute to the world in some way. I can add value to the world in itself. So there's one thing you can realize. Okay, I can add value to the world. I don't have to take, I don't have to be scared. I can actually create more and create more value and, you know, increase the economy. Think about like countries like Japan after World War. They didn't have like oil, they didn't have gas, they didn't have a lot of resources to actually grow their country, but because they had human capital, people are working super hard. They're creating a lot of wealth in the, in the next, you know, 30, 50 years. So I think we have to think in term of, we realize we can always create more value. And that's actually, wealth in a sense can come from within yourself. So that's one thing I would say about understanding reality and how it works.

Cody: 9:34

when you mentioned that the two incentives that, that rule the world are fear and love, that that really hits home because I'm, I'm somebody who grew up in foster care. I, I, I had all these, these roadblocks in my life and when I was 14, I had a business, but then I was literally in foster care while I'm trying to run this business. And I was picked on and I thought all these negative things about myself and that fear of being homeless is what drove me for so many years to try and be successful. And the, the kind of ironic thing is the more successful I became, the less motivated I became. And now I'm at a point, I don't know if you've read the book called Second Mountain by David Brooks, where he describes. It's, it's a, it's a fantastic book where he describes the first mountain, which is fame, which is glory success, and most of us are trying to get to that first mountain. But then the second mountain is trying to be part of something larger than yourself. It's being part of a community, having a social impact. And I think that's a good example in terms of what you say in terms of this fear and love is we're either being driven by a fear, which is kind of a negative force, or we can be driven by love and a positive force. And so as somebody who's trying to find that motivation that is a associated with love and less with the fear, what advice would you be able to provide for me?

Thibaut: 10:59

And the first thing I would say about fear is like, it's not all bad. You know, like, as you say, it can drive you to be successful over time. And fear is also a motivator, very powerful motivator we have. So the problem is when you start only using fear as your main, uh, source of motivation in your life, you know, if you only trying to escape from a situation in your life, it becomes a little bit, um, hard to stressful maybe. And that's really fulfilling. Um, advice would be try to focus on what can I do? How can I add value? How can I contribute in my own way? And how can I express myself in a way that is actually, you know, impactful in the world? So again, not trying to get something outside in the external world, but realize that you have something within yourself and to expand that, that you have within yourself. As much as you possibly can. It might be maybe you are a very compassionate person. It might be a compassion, it might be you are very inspiring. You are very good teacher, very good writer, very good speaker. So whatever it may be, you wanna work on that and expand it to the, to the full of your possi as much as you possibly

Cody: 12:03

Hm

Thibaut: 12:04

That's the way I think about you. Fear versus love expressing yourself versus trying to complete yourself with something outside of yourself. It doesn't work in the long term,

Cody: 12:13

Hmm.

Thibaut: 12:14

in my opinion.

Cody: 12:16

and in your book you mentioned that there are three things that we seem to have control over, which are our thoughts, our words, and our actions.

Thibaut: 12:24

Yeah,

Cody: 12:25

Can you tell me more about that?

Thibaut: 12:27

yeah. Actually, I start with saying we have three things we can control for thought, feelings, action. But in the end, if you think about it, it's only one thing, which is what you're

Cody: 12:36

Hmm.

Thibaut: 12:38

Cause what you think influence how you feel and what you do. To really be simplified. And then your thought is also influenced by different things, your beliefs about yourself, your beliefs about the world, uh, your surrounding, your education, your environment, your, the culture you grow, you grew up into. So you have all these different factors. And that's why the book I talk about focusing really on how can you increase your belief, work on your thinking, be a better thinker, think bigger, be more con convinced about your, your, your, your vision, what you wanna do. Cause you ultimately, everything will come from, most of the thing will come from what you believe about yourself, and the world as well. So your assumptions about the world, you know, what you talked about before, fundamental assumptions about the world are useful, and also what you believe about yourself so that you can actually go out in the world, take action and have an impact.

Cody: 13:34

and so I think a lot of people have a lack of self-compassion for themselves. And so what advice would you give to somebody that really feels like they're a screw up and they, they aren't capable of achieving all these things? What's the first step that they should take?

Thibaut: 13:52

yeah. I mean I really, I'm a big like fan of like self-compassion. It might be, it's probably even more important than self esteem. Cause you know, if you try to be to love yourself and everything, it's good, but it's not gonna work all the time. You're gonna have bad time, you're gonna beat yourself up, you're gonna have setbacks. And it's way better to think of yourself as, you know, as being full of self-compassion and trying to pick yourself up. And so one thing I would say is change how you talk to yourself. Just a few words like you're doing okay. 80, but you're doing okay. It's fine. You'll do better next time. You'll wanna try again. It's okay. You tried something, it didn't work, but you tried. It's good. So we wanna start reframing how you talk to yourself. And I did that years ago when I was, you know, working on the business, I learned about self compassion and I just used it for four years Now, every time it would be hard to say, it's okay, Thibaut you're doing your best. Keep going forward, try again tomorrow. So that's one thing, the safe talk. And the second thing is to start small. You know, have small goals in the short term and keep making progress every day. Daily progress, slowly but surely. And that will also help, you know, increase self-esteem and increase maybe self-love in a sense. So that's what I would say, uh, about, uh, yeah, self-compassion and loving yourself more in

Cody: 15:12

Hmm. Yeah, it's, it's really by taking those small steps to reinforce your internal beliefs. And there's another technique I you probably haven't heard of. It's called whoop, which stands for wish, outcome, obstacle, and plan. And I found that to be tremendously helpful for me in terms of achieving my goals because it's a visualization about the future. And you do what's also called mental contrasting, where you envision what it feels like to have achieved that goal. But then you also envision what it feels like if you don't achieve that goal. And that creates a sort of internal intrinsic motivation, if you will. And so that, that, that's just a side tangent, just something I've personally found helpful.

Thibaut: 15:57

Yeah, no, I, I would also say, like, what I do is I like to envision the worst case scenario. You know, like, what if everything goes wrong? Because when you prepare your mind, okay, maybe it might go very, very wrong, but you already know it. So if it happens, you're like, okay, yeah, sure, I knew about it, I knew it was a probability and you were better able to bounce back from, from that setback. But if you believe like it's gonna be easy and just you kind of too optimistic, in a sense, it might be a bit harder when, when something like that happens to you.

Cody: 16:23

Hmm.

Thibaut: 16:24

So that's one more trick. I would, I would apply, I would use myself.

Cody: 16:28

Can you tell me what is the law of cause and effect?

Thibaut: 16:34

It's kind of just simple idea that whatever you do has consequences. So instead of being like, maybe, maybe being a little bit of a victim or I can never, I cannot change anything about my life, just how it is. Where, okay, yeah, if I do something, there will be something bad. There will be some consequences over time, good or bad. And so you wanna learn to what can I do to improve the likelihood I, I'm successful, I'm happier, or getting result I want in my life. So just taking ownership of, you know, your actions again, your thoughts and your action so that in the real world we have the consequence. And again, that you have to be aware that there might be a gap between the time you act and you get results. No, sometime years.

Cody: 17:14

Hmm.

Thibaut: 17:15

So people know, sometimes they start believing about, oh, I wanna do this, I can do that. Everything is possible. It's great. But it might take years before what you believe actually start becoming a reality. There is, there's a time gap that people have to understand that just how it works in, in the physical world, it's like you have to focus your, your thoughts intensely enough for long enough until they become like a crystal clear reality and actually have an impact on the world. That's how I would frame it.

Cody: 17:41

Right, and, you mentioned that whether it's writing a book, running a marathon, or speaking on stage, we often never give ourselves a chance to succeed in these challenges because we don't believe we can. And I run into that so often of people who I know are capable of so much more, but they have these self-limiting beliefs that prevent them from even feeling like they, they might make an attempt at it.

Thibaut: 18:07

yeah, yeah. I mean, so most people would have. The assumption that they cannot do something, they have something they cannot do in their life, or I could never do that thing, you know? And I would say, instead of thinking that, which reverse it, think, okay, my assumption is I can do anything I want. What do you think is possible? But, but my basic assumption about life, and then I need to go out in the world and test it, test my assumption. Is that really, really true? And when you start taking action, you realize that it is not, oh wow, I can do this, I can do that. I can go on tv, I can run a marathon. What else can I do? That's really how you start building beliefs, building momentum in your life. And there's no limit. Like you can always keep growing, you know, in the long term. So that's what I would say. I mean, change your assumptions. Start with, okay, everything is possible. Let's see what I can do about it now based on my

Cody: 18:55

hmm, and, and what I noted something interesting that you, you say that there are three, what you refer to as meta beliefs. And they will restructure your belief system and change everything and, and those are, everything is possible. Everything is learnable, and every problem is solvable. Can you go into more detail about these?

Thibaut: 19:15

yeah. I mean, if you think of your brain as like an operating system, you need to have certain beliefs that will help you navigate through the world. So do you want to have poor beliefs? Like, oh, I can never do that. Why does it happen to me and blah, blah, blah? Or do you want to have the best possible belief you can have in the world? I was thinking, what are the best possible beliefs you could have as an operating system as you navigate through the world? And that's what I came up. Obviously, I didn't invent anything. I heard about it. I know I just reframe it in my own way. But one is everything is possible. Everything is learnable, and every, every problem has a solution. So these are kind of the foundations that will help you over time, believe in yourself, take more action, expand your field of possibility, expand your potential, and get a better result over time. So that's how I would think about it as I, as an operating system. But you are training to get better results in your life.

Cody: 20:13

So if it's. If it's an easy comparison to be able to look at, we can either believe we can't do these things, or we can believe that everything is possible. Why? Why don't why doesn't everybody just make the everything as possible? Their default assumption?

Thibaut: 20:31

I think nobody really like, no, told them like, you can do that. They're just operating by default, you know, by, based on this society. And if you think about people like society, people are average by definition. Like average people are average like the average. So if you do like everybody else, you're gonna be average like, like everybody else, just how it works. So we have to go beyond that and make a decision to re, to retrain our mind to think differently. first being aware of, okay, am I, I, I am limiting myself in some way. So we have to recognize that because oftentimes we have some setbacks or parents tells you, or you can never do that. Don't try doing this too dangerous. Don't go that path. So that's kind of how we are programmed, in a sense, to, to evolve through life. So we have to make a conscious decision to, reprogram our mind. That's just how it works,

Cody: 21:27

Yep. When I was growing up, my, my grandfather would always say to me, remember Cody, there's always going to be somebody better than you in everything.

Thibaut: 21:38

Yes.

Cody: 21:39

And I think that's a good example about the mindset that a, a lot of parents have taught their children is kind of a negative connotation. Of don't let your ambition and your drive and what you think you're capable of to be too much because then you're gonna fail. And so in some ways, they're trying to protect us from failing, but they're also harming us in the same way when they do that.

Thibaut: 22:07

but like better than you about? No. In what sense? You know, because we are all unique in a way, and sometimes it's not about being better. It's about what is your unique strength that you have or the combination of strengths you have, but you can use and you can combine to have impact in your life or in in people's life, and to really enjoy your life. It doesn't have to be being better than you know that person or worse than that person. And I really try hard, again, to not be into that comparison game in your life. You know, because again, coming back to fear versus love, again, it's fear. You know, oh, what if I'm not good enough? What if this guy's better than me? But I'm like, it doesn't matter. I do my own thing. That's what I wanna do. I like it. I don't really care what people are doing on, on, on, no, on, on my field, in my field, for instance. So I really try to stay away from that idea about competition,

Cody: 22:55

Hm. And so we.

Thibaut: 22:57

Like, how can I express myself, you know, in, in a different way, in my own way, but actually make sense and people actually enjoy. That's what I'm trying to think about.

Cody: 23:06

And so we've talked about meta beliefs. Can you tell me what are sub beliefs?

Thibaut: 23:13

So when I came up with these three meta beliefs, so again, everything is possible. Everything is learnable. Every problem as a solution. I was thinking, okay, how can I make this belief a little bit more like practical? And how can make it easy for people to start building those belief over time? So for instance, um, every, everything is learnable. would say. Uh, I am an unstoppable learner as a meta, as sub-belief, meaning that I can learn anything I want at any time, in any situation, any skill I want, and start believ the identity of someone that can actually learn and convince yourself that you are a learner. It's just who you are. It's not, it's not about I am learning something, it's, I am a learner, so that's what I do inevitably. So that would be one way to start building that belief that no, everything is learnable. One more belief could be, a sub belief would be if someone else can I can do it as well. So that really helped me a lot when I was starting writing. In my, starting my business like years ago. Cause I looked at people who were actually, you know, successful in my field and I said, okay, yeah, this guy is doing it. This guy is doing it. Okay, they're making money, I can do that. And I just decided, okay, they can do it. I can do it. And I really tried to learn everything I could about what they were doing to, uh, increase my chance on my order of Success. Success. So these are basically sub belief to help you implement these very, you know, big beliefs about life. You know, big assumptions.

Cody: 24:41

Right. I, I, I, I love that because we often don't believe we're capable of so many things, but it's by realizing that we are capable of achieving these things and it's only by going beyond what's possible that we will achieve the impossible, as you say.

Thibaut: 24:58

And possible. It's like, you know, when I say like becoming extraordinary or doing impossible things, it's not about being on Musk, you know, just. For you where you are today, what is impossible for you, you know, and for me, like it might be small things, doesn't matter. It might be some fear. You have like irrational fears. It might be, I don't know, uh, like maybe podcast interview. It might be running 10 miles. I don't know what is possible for you today, but you wanna work on that. And over time you can expand your, what your field of, you know, what is possible for you in your life. So it's about being extraordinary in your own way. That is not being living your life by default, but trying something a little bit more and challenging yourself a little bit more.

Cody: 25:36

and so is this some kind of unshakable belief in ourself that we can create as a function of having successes and proving to ourselves that we have been able to, to do things that we once thought we were not capable of achieving. And. is that something that we kind of have to overcome every single time, or is that something that we can kind of embody?

Thibaut: 26:00

I think it's, you can embody it over time. You know, if you start from zero, you have no, you are in early 20 years, maybe you have no success in life, anything. You have to build it over time, starting small, achieving some goals. But the more you achieve goals and bigger and bigger goals over time, it start becoming more like a, a foundational, fundamental beliefs that you have. But you see, you have to keep, you know, working at it every day. But it's, it's more like, it's, there's more depth to it. You really believe it, you know you can do it. It's not like, oh yeah, I wish, no, I know I can do that if I want. But this inner belief that you can develop over

Cody: 26:32

hmm.

Thibaut: 26:33

Yeah.

Cody: 26:33

And so I'm, I'm curious about the awareness about realizing whether we feel we're good or we're capable of achieving something. I think it's possible that we can. Mentally tell ourselves in our head, yeah, I can do that. But subconsciously we don't believe we can do that, and that subconscious belief that we're not aware of can prevent us from taking action. You know, it's often like we have this fear, but we're not aware that the fear exists. We just, we just get anxiety and we don't want to do it. W what advice do you have to somebody to help them become more aware about their subconscious beliefs?

Thibaut: 27:13

Yeah, I mean if, if you start noticing that you know, you've been procrastinating on something for years, you have to look at, okay, I'm not doing that thing. You know, let's, I say I can do or I wanna do. So you wanna look at what are the reasons why, is it there's different reason? Is it like a lack of clarity? I don't really know what I want? Or is it a lack of how to do it? I don't really know how to do that. Is it because there's too much friction for me to get started? Meaning like maybe you have to buy equipment or. It's just too much for you at the time. And if so, how can you break that down to the like, very, very small task that you can actually start doing and over time you build momentum. So you have to look at what is the reason behind that fear, lack of clarity, uh, lack of knowledge on how to do it, lack of support. So I would start by, you know, trying to even write it down, you know, why am I not doing that? And, and then, you know, you will find out why and, and you can start having or creating a plan to help you get in start and can move forward.

Cody: 28:09

Is there. Any Is there. Any habit or any kind of habits or mindset that you've developed that allow you to recognize when you have a subconscious belief that is preventing you from accomplishing something? Because I think it's that awareness, right? That's so hard for most people. Is it, is it meditating? Is it just writing down things, uh, in a room by yourself

Thibaut: 28:35

I think it's, you know, awareness can be done anytime. It can be walking around being, being present, washing the dishes, being present, meditating, observing your thoughts. So yeah, I think it just practice. And for me, I know sometimes I start feeling a little bit bad about myself or I have some like negative thoughts. I'm like, okay, where does it come from? Like, okay, this, then I can just erase it. Okay, that's coming. Okay, I can do that. So it's fine. You really have to go to that point where you're aware of your thoughts, which I think require, as you say, practice maybe years, month of practice, meditation, observing your thoughts, journaling. You can do many different things. But yeah, I think it's, um, it's

Cody: 29:11

Hm, Hmm. Often people seem to create this belief that, they view themselves as a victim and they isolate themselves and they feel helpless, and they look to others to save them. Can you tell me about that, that mindset and how you can go from feeling like a victim all the time and becoming powerful.

Thibaut: 29:36

first I think we all, like, we have to realize we all are victims at some point, you know? No, we all behave at the as victims during the day in different areas of our life. At some point I do, you know? Oh, yeah. And I, I have to be aware of that as well. So I said something about you can maybe overcome completely. So why we have that, I think it's, it's like a way to protect ourselves. Because if you are a victim, you don't have to do something about it. You know, you don't have to face discomfort and fears and try and get setback, you know, have setbacks. You can just say, it's not because of me and it's because of that person or that person. But the problem is every time you do that, you give your power to do something. You give it a way to people around you instead of having your power to yourself and use it to change your life. So I think people have to understand that. Every time you play you, you cannot be a victim and like, transform your life in a sense. You know, it's like opposite.

Cody: 30:30

Hmm.

Thibaut: 30:30

You cannot be a victim and, you know, transform, become extraordinary. Do extraordinary things in the world. Change your life, lose weight, make money just really complicated. It's so people need to understand that they need to change that if they want to have better result in their life. And even if you have good reason, no, you can have a good reason to be, to be broke or unsuccessful. No, like, like child, whatever might have in your life. That might be a fact. But the thing is, what can you do about it? Because are you gonna just complain about it for the rest of your life? Are you gonna do something at some point in your life, but just no reality? And I don't know what to say. Like, people need to come to the realization that, okay, if I want to change, I have to do something about that situation. I cannot be like a victim forever.

Cody: 31:16

Hmm.

Thibaut: 31:16

Even if I, I want to be, or like I have good reason for people say I should be a victim because I'm, I don't know if you're disabled or whatever it may be, issue you might have in your life. You have to go past that. Yeah,

Cody: 31:27

And perhaps one way we can overcome that is by seeking help from others in a way that in people who have solved issues that we're going through

Thibaut: 31:38

Yes.

Cody: 31:39

And Yeah.

Thibaut: 31:40

And yeah, I think people also are afraid of asking for help. You know, it's always be, I, I wanna be successful by math just with myself. Self, self-made whatever it means, it means, you know, nobody's self-made is a nonsense. You have to be dependent on so many, you know, people around the world working for you, delivering your food, you know, delivering package for you. You have, you always dependent on so many people in the world, and I think people have to be willing to ask for help more if they need to. And it's that ego and a pride problem. I think people want to be, I don't know, they have too much pride or they're afraid. They don't wanna ask, they don't wanna disturb maybe as well. And I know for myself, I had to learn though how to ask for help, you know, more often because I don't really like to, you know, ask for help. But I think it's really, uh, useful. And if you look at, at the most successful people, if they tend to actually be asking lot of questions to people around them, you know, what do you think about this? How can I, how do you do that? Can we help you do that? And they, they wanna be part of masterminds or ask questions and that's what you wanna do. Be open-minded asking questions and people will, will, most of the time. People will want to help you if you like, really want to, if you're genuine in your approach.

Cody: 32:49

and often, I mean, I think a lot of people and the younger generation, I mean they resort to Google and now chat gpt to, answer questions for them. And in the past I've had friends that would text me a question that my initial response was almost kind of like, well, you can just Google that. But then, Throughout in time I've come to learn that that is, it's, it's a way of, gaining knowledge from others and respect from others. And, uh, creating relationships too is asking them for their expert opinion on this subject. And I think that's something that we can all do more of, a little bit less Googling and a little bit more relying on the community and the people around us.

Thibaut: 33:33

and it's faster, you know, like if you really wanna learn from someone, like yes, you can go on Google, but if you need to find information, it's gonna take you a lot of time. You're gonna have to do, is it fake news? You know, all this stuff you're gonna have to deal with. But if you know someone is really good at something, oh you just, just teach me, tell me what to do. You know, I would do with my friends, you know, like one guy is, my friend is into longevity. I said, what book do you read? What should I eat? What do you do? Just asking questions. You know? I wanted to improve and it's better than Google most of the time, I think.

Cody: 34:02

And and so in your book you mentioned the power of subjective reality and you provide an exercise about doing some kind of projection of your inside world. I'm wondering if you can go into that.

Thibaut: 34:16

Yeah, so I think earlier we talked about the, you know, victim mindset in a sense. So it's kind of the ob opposite of the exact opposite of victim mindset. It's like extreme responsibility, like you think, okay, the entire world is because of the state of the world is because of me. In a sense, that's what you would say. You see, you can argue it's not true, blah, blah, blah, but just, just, just a full experiment. So what if the world around me is an absolute reflection of who I am right now? And if so, what do I need to work on to change that? You know, what beliefs I need to change about myself, about the world? Like what do I need to do every day, but actu what, how do I need to change and what, what goals could I set and achieve I wanted if I were actually in this world where I am the entire world? In a sense, you know, I think it's a really good exercise to. Maybe to help you take responsibility in your life, you know, and overcome like this kind of victim, uh, mindset some people have, but would be to focus on the idea of subjective reality. I am, I am, I am the world in the sense and what can I change to improve the world around me? And the funny thing is, if you actually do that, if you really, really change and look between yourself, it will have an impact in the world around you. I mean, I guarantee over five, 10 years gonna have massive impact in the world around you, just how it works. So I think it's really very powerful and really interesting to do.

Cody: 35:33

Yeah, that, that internal self-reflection, I think a lot of people would be able to be on a path that they would be much more satisfied with if they just took a moment every day to just do some, some self-reflection. And I think that's something that would honestly change the world. So you also mentioned how big thoughts create extraordinary leverage. Why does thinking bigger help you act from a better place?

Thibaut: 35:58

But the thing is, when you start thinking bigger, when you create a strategy to, to achieve your goals, it is based on where you want to go, where you want to go in your life. So if you have a big goal, then you're gonna have a better strategy that's gonna have more leverage, more impact. You're gonna take bigger action every day and you're gonna have better results. But if you only have very, very tiny goals, and it's going to kind of prevent you from, from thinking bigger, thinking long term, having better strategies and, and having better results. That's why I think it's, first you have to think big. And then once you have your massive vision in your life, you can break it down into, into the milestone, into small goals. That's fine. But you wanna start with a big goal, with a big vision that you can have a better strategy and more chance to actually, uh, change your life, have an impact, and have an impact in the world.

Cody: 36:47

And so what are th some things that we need to apply leverage against an order to. Achieve the, the goals and the vision that we have for ourselves.

Thibaut: 36:58

Yeah. So in the book, I think I have seven leverage, right? I think seven. Leverage leverages. Uh, one would be think so thinking, so thinking big. So having big thoughts and having an intensity of thinking, your thinking intensely. Spending time to really think about your vision, build your conviction, see it as a reality. Believe you can do it. So all this kind of work you can do on, on a day-to-day basis, like in the shower, when you go for a walk for instance, and you have what I call, uh, accurate thinking. So that, that's coming back to the idea of making good assumptions about the world around you and about yourself. So if you can think accurately and you understand how the world works, you understand like psychology, incentives, maybe biology, all these kind of different fields, at least to a certain extent, then you will have, you will take better action. And again, you will have better impact, more impact because you are aligned with reality or more aligned with reality. So it would be another leverage. You have, um, money. So the more money you have, the more you can use it as a tool to, you know, have a team maybe buy, buy courses, investing in like in equipment, um, marketing. The more money you have, the more you can actually leverage and increase your, expand your yourself and your impact. So that would be different. Another form of leverage. Then you have technology, which is, for instance, algorithm. You know, I, I've been using Amazon for instance, to be successful, but really help me could be YouTube, TikTok can be having a website, seo. So anything that can allow you to ex extend your impact. Cause you're just one person in the end. And the only way to have impact at scale is to use all possible forms of leverage. So technology thinking, thinking bigger, thinking better. And also one, leverage would be like personal development, which in the book, uh, would be things like having more perseverance, more grit, and seeing yourself as someone who's really, really perseverant, uh, would be having more discipline as well. Because some more discipline you have, you're gonna be more consistent, you're gonna achieve more, and you're gonna have, uh, more impact over the long, over a long period of time in the long term. So you have all these different kind of leverage you can use, and to, in a sense, it's about cloning yourself, you know, like expanding yourself so that you can be, it can be a thousand, thousand you and thousand me, and you have more impact with the work you're doing. And that's kind of the point of the book to help us, one, develop the mindset, and two, develop the strategy and the leverage to actually have an impact or at least have a chance, uh, to have an impact in the

Cody: 39:33

Hmm. And so what are some things that we can do to think bigger and and avoid reverting to mediocre?

Thibaut: 39:44

I think you wanna start with, it's kind of hard, but you wanna start with what you really want. That's your ambition. Even if it's like based in fear or maybe, but it's fine. But whatever you wanna do, like you think, whatever crazy vision you have, if you have one, don't limit yourself. So I would start by not limiting myself in any possible way. What is the biggest possible vision I can have in the next, no, 30 years, 50 years, even beyond your, you know, your own life if you want. So I'll start with asking yourself that question. What's the biggest possible thing you could do if everything was absolutely possible in your life? And that's how you start breaking through, you know, your, your own like limitations that you have.

Cody: 40:23

Hmm.

Thibaut: 40:24

And one, one thing is again, to be, to be around people who are successful will to be some mastermind people who are, who will help you change your mind, have some insights. And that's so very useful I think to be, be people who are more successful than you currently are. Because if you spend your time with average people, you will be average most of the time. It's very hard to fight against, I call it the gra gravitational pool to what MA or average. Cause if you stay on average, it's gonna be very hard for you to suddenly become extraordinary. In overnight. You're gonna have to be the process to build your mastermind, your team, your mindset, consume better information, better books, uh, and you would have to do a lot of work in order to go beyond average.

Cody: 41:07

Hm. And so you mentioned that it's the size and the intensity of the thoughts that allow you to have a stronger desire and thus are more likely to reach your goal. How can we increase the intensity of our thoughts?

Thibaut: 41:22

Intensity is both, um, lot of repetition. So it could be visualizing your goal, you know, every day over and over again. But what most people do is like, they only daydream about a goal. You know, they have some kind of fantasy. One day they're gonna do this, one day they're gonna do that. It's like daydreaming or wishful thinking. But you people wanna do about it. You wanna do like, like intense thinking, like this is what I'm gonna do. And it's not the same energy. You feel like I'm gonna do this. You build your conviction over time. This is what I'm doing in the next five years, in the next 10 years, in the next year. And you keep focusing on that vision. Keep focusing on being more intense and believing that you will achieve that goal over time. And then once you've done that, at the same time, you want to take action. Obviously, you know? Cause if you just believe and you don't never act, it's not gonna work. There's a combination of. Having intense conviction and beliefs and taking as much action as you can in the direction, uh, where you wanna go. So that's a combination Of the two,

Cody: 42:19

Right. It, it, it's by asking yourself if you were to multiply this goal by 10 or a hundred

Thibaut: 42:25

yeah.

Cody: 42:26

and, seeing how, how you would feel, and I guess whether it would make you insecure, uncomfortable, uh, and probably dig into those feelings and find out what's, what's beyond that. But you're arguing for the most part that. Whatever goal you have, it needs to be multiplied. And then that could be the, the larger goal at hand. Is that, is that correct?

Thibaut: 42:49

yeah. I think. It has to be to a point where it's a little bit scary and also it's inspiring. You know, it's Cause if you go for, if you go after like some kind of half baked goal, you're like, yeah, my goal is do this, but because it's not possible, I'm gonna do this instead. And I think it doesn't work cause you don't have the motivation and drive to actually activate it. But if you have your real vision but you really wanna achieve, and instead you break it down into really small goals, but you can do today, tomorrow, next week, then you're gonna have better result. You're gonna have more excitement. You're gonna make, you're gonna be making progress every day anyway. But again, you're gonna have bigger vision, better strategy, more impactful action every day. More alignment with your vision. Vision. And that will have an impact in the long term. I'm talking like two years, five years, 10 years, or maybe even beyond, you know?

Cody: 43:35

Hmm. and so you say that whenever possible we should spend time alone thinking of these thoughts of, of these goals, and then increasing them in size and the repetition of thinking them will increase the intensity and the feeling that we have for them.

Thibaut: 43:53

yeah, yeah. Because it's like when you have some kind of vision or kind of dream, you want to protect it. And the problem is because people around you tend to be average by, by definition average people average. They're gonna try to send you some, like, they send you some limiting beliefs. Oh yeah, you cannot do this, you cannot do that. Just they're gonna send you some kind of limitations and you're going to be, have a really hard time to protect that big vision that you have, but it's way bigger. So sometimes you wanna keep it for yourself in, in a way, and keep growing it. I call it like a marinating in your own thought, you know? So for a long time, keep increasing your, your convictions, your gain, more clarity, work on the why you want to achieve certain goals, why does it matter? And keep working on that conviction, uh, by yourself instead of, you know, maybe sharing too much or, yeah, I think it's, I think it's, there's a place of

Cody: 44:49

Hmm.

Thibaut: 44:50

like marinating in your own thinking and vision and beliefs.

Cody: 44:54

And I love when you mentioned SpaceX and Elon Musk and you, you, you said that when he wants to do something, he begins by asking himself the following question, does this break the laws of physics? Does he really ask that?

Thibaut: 45:09

I heard, I, I, I think so. I think he, that's kind of how he thinks. No, because sometimes people would say, oh, this is not possible. You cannot do this. You cannot have rockets and. Do his stuff, say, okay, but is it actually not possible? Like, physically speaking? And actually he proved it was possible, you know, so that's kind of how he's thinking, you know, like the first principle, like what is, what is true again, what is true? You know, start to watch the law of physics. And when I say everything is possible, it's kind of the same thing. Because obviously, you know, there are, there are physical limitations, there are laws of physics, but they are way bigger. I know about most of our goals. Right. So it's, it's, it's kinda the same thing in a way. Yeah. I think it's a good way to, I just liked it. Oh, yeah. Makes sense. You know, think about that. Does it break the law of physics for me to, to create a business or to do this or to, oh, no. So maybe it's possible.

Cody: 45:53

And so you also mentioned money and, and relationship success. How can we apply these meta beliefs or the self-talk in a way that will allow us to achieve goals in that those areas?

Thibaut: 46:12

Yeah, good question. I mean, Relationships. Like I think you, you have to believe that, you know, you will find someone that you, you know, that you, that you wanna be with. Cause I remember I was, I was traveling, um, and I met some America. Guy from the US was a very young 25 years old. And he was telling me, oh, I don't really know if I can ever attract woman of my dream. Like, I didn't think you're 25. You, you, you have time. Just have to believe that make me realize, like you have to believe, you know, somewhere you're gonna find what you want in business or in relationships. And I think that's important to, again, to believe it. Cause if you don't believe it, but you can, you're not gonna put the work, you know, you're gonna be, ah, I'm not sure about it. Maybe I should give up. It's not worth it. So you have to again, have the kind of strong belief that would help you go out there and try to, you know, find if you wanna get married or find your, your spouse and your, your future wife or husband.

Cody: 47:01

Yeah.

Thibaut: 47:02

So that's that's the same thing I think would work like that. Yeah. And money. And money. It's like you have to believe that. Instead of, again, you don't have to take from people. You have to believe that you can create more with your creativity, expressing yourself, creating product, adding value, but it's coming from within yourself and not, you don't have to take from people.

Cody: 47:24

Hm.

Thibaut: 47:24

And that's kind of hard to understand when you think about it. You can actually, you know, create, like, I know in my case, I know it's not everybody's like writing books, but for me it's like I started from like an ID and you create a product and you impact people. Like starting from the invisible, there's nothing. And just using your creativity and your mindset and what you're learning, your skills, you can actually create value and have an impact. So that's would be one belief to believe that you can create more value, you can always create more value that it's coming from within yourself.

Cody: 47:56

it reminds me of that quote, if I had eight hours to chop a tree down, I'd spend six hours sharpening my ax. And I think it's so relevant when it comes to our thoughts because our thoughts shape our actions. And too often we're just trying to do stuff and we're being busy, but we're achieving nothing. And I think if we thought more about our goals and vision, we would be able to work less and achieve more.

Thibaut: 48:26

Yeah. And I think a lot of it has to do with distractions. You know, like

Cody: 48:31

I,

Thibaut: 48:32

if you can do like deep work, uh, for a few hours a day for five years, you can, you're probably gonna do great, you know, in any, any, almost anything that is kind of require your brain, right?

Cody: 48:42

Hmm.

Thibaut: 48:43

But people will be spending too much time if, again, no strategy, trying different things, not really doing any, anything that is meaningful and, and deep work, more like, you know, like sending emails here, doing something there, changing their logo, you know, whatever. Maybe. And I would always. Myself, I have this kind of mantra when I was trying to know to make it as a writer, it's like, do the hard work. You just have to do the hard work. Do the, it's like do the hard work and you know what the hard work is for you, you know? So don't fool yourself into getting distracted. Do what is hard over and over and over again. And that's just what I was doing personally. But it's hard. No, that's why no, you would avoid, wanna avoid

Cody: 49:25

Hmm.

Thibaut: 49:25

oftentimes.

Cody: 49:26

That reminds me of the book by Ryan Holiday called The Obstacle is The Way, and so often that the thing in front of us that's so hard that we don't want to do, that's where we need to go.

Thibaut: 49:38

yeah, exactly. Like it's like, you know, facing your fear, doing something like this hard. And once you actually do it, you feel great about yourself. Higher self-esteem, building momentum, creating more, more, more things. So yeah, it's, but it's hard, you know, again, it's hard.

Cody: 49:53

And so you, you mentioned to also consume inspiring content that can help empower your beliefs and we should all consume inspirational and educational content. And so, so you mentioned Steve Pavlina, who I've, I've heard before. And so is that somebody you recommend? Are there other people you would recommend on the personal development front?

Thibaut: 50:17

it's kind of, you know, where, where when I started I had this kind of two whatever gurus, whatever. I had this Steve Pavlina, one guy was this guy from, uh, actualized at org. I dunno what he's doing now, but he was more into spirituality in the end. Uh, more like spiritual enlightenment. Um, yeah, I think it's, they, they have very good resources. They are more into like spiritual as well, spirituality. So it depends on what you like and what you want. But they have a lot of great con, great articles and or videos. So yeah, why not?

Cody: 50:44

Okay.

Thibaut: 50:45

Um, YouTube videos. I know for me, when I was working on, again, the business, the book business, I had to stay motivated. So I would really have this kind of daily routine, reading some books, inspirational books, maybe some videos, some music, gratitude and work, trying to maintain a good state of mind so I can actually be productive over a long period of time and keep going. So I think it's important and maybe when you reach a point where you're like successful or like, you don't need to do that that much, I don't know, maybe, but I think it's good. Like whenever you feel down to, to use that note to, to help you, uh, to boost yourself a little

Cody: 51:22

Hmm, and so you also mentioned the idea of having affirmations and mantras. Are those important?

Thibaut: 51:31

Yeah. I think Cause no people, some people would say affirmation doesn't, don't work. Some people would say it works, it depends. But the way I, I frame it is like, Every time you're talking to yourself, you are doing an, you are doing an affirmation, basically. And we know that how we talk to yourself does have an impact on how we feel. I mean, know, like if you, if you criticize yourself, beat yourself up, you're gonna feel it at some point. So I think it's, they matter, but it's more about, you know, dialogue as well. Don't, you don't have to repeat them all the time, but it might be in your mind. Or when you go, forget, when you go for a walk, everything is possible. Why? Cause I can do this, I can do that. Um, and you wanna remind yourself of the beliefs you wanna have, what you wanna solidify in your mind, or I'm, I'm a learner, I'm unstoppable learner. Uh, and that's what I like to do, is to reinforce the core beliefs that will serve you in your life. That's what affirmation I think are for. And hey, you can be writing them down, saying 'em out loud, thinking about them, uh, so you can do different things to help you.

Cody: 52:38

And, and you mentioned that beliefs are thinking habits and that really resonated with me. I think we don't really often think about the beliefs and values we have. They're actually habits.

Thibaut: 52:50

it's, it's, it's conditioning and like, again, it's coming back to, it's like you have your operating system working for you, but you have to program it through habits, through repetition. So what you actually, when you have a problem, you feel you are more, you feel better, you have better thoughts about it, you can solve it instead of getting angry, for instance. Or you are more resourceful instead of being a victim. But you have to practice thinking and believing through repetition. It's a habit. Yeah,

Cody: 53:20

first we have thoughts and that generates beliefs and then we act, but then that actually goes back to beliefs and thoughts. Can you tell me how that works?

Thibaut: 53:31

yeah. Because it's, it's, it's kind of, A positive or negative feedback loop, depending on what you're thinking, it's a good or bad. If you think like, okay, I can learn anything I want to learn, any skill I want, I can learn it. Then you go to learn a new skill. Dancing, I dunno, playing the piano, podcasting. You learn something new. Then you believe, oh, I can learn this. So it, you reinforce the belief that you can learn anything you want. And then you go back, oh, now I'm gonna learn this. And again, you become more confident and you keep doing that. So that's coming back to what you talked about earlier, like creating the beliefs over time. But it's, it can become a foundation that you have within yourself. I know I can learn this, I know I can do that. So, yeah. Yeah, that's how I would say it. It's a feedback loop.

Cody: 54:18

and so as we think about bigger thoughts, we can sometimes face doubt. And perhaps we overshoot the mark. Perhaps we aim too high is, is it possible to have too lofty of a goal? And what happens when we feel that self-doubt come up?

Thibaut: 54:37

Yeah, that's why I like to differentiate, like goals and vision because if you think about what is a vision doesn't really have an end. I want to eradicate poverty, I wanna do this, I want, it's like doesn't really end. You can do it forever. So it's good to have this kind of lofty, big vision to help you navigate through life. Then once you have that, you want to come back to the present with some milestone, some goals that actually realistic to you based on where you are today. So you need to calibrate your goals and again, it's, it's a skill. The more you set goals and achieve them, the more you're gonna be able to calibrate your goals and achieve more and more goals over time and, and again, build confidence in doing so. So it's a practice, it's a habit. That's why we always say to people, start really small. It's all about habits. Build the habit, achieving a goal, a daily task every day, one task, two days, five days, 30 days, 90 days a year. And then you, you realize you can do more. And that's how you build confidence over time. That's a skill that takes a lot of time and practice.

Cody: 55:37

And so earlier we talked about how most people don't know what they want, and so we need to uncover our desires through authenticity, and we need to be able to be able to identify those desires. Is there any specific methodology or modality that you recommend on how we can uncover those desires?

Thibaut: 55:59

so desires, I would, I'd like to use to connect desire with your values as well. Your values, your goals. So why do you want to achieve something? You have to know the why behind something. And for instance, if you have, if you want to, I'd like to cont if you want to contribute to the world. Maybe contribution is a value you have. If you want to be independent, maybe you need to find a way to be independent in your career so that you feel better about yourself. And so that's one thing. Values. The second thing is you want to take more action. Again, take action toward what you kind of enjoy or interested in. Lean into that, do more of it, see how it works, and get feedback from people as well. So for me, I went into writing, blogging, writing. I got feedback. The feedback was mostly good, so I kept going and okay, I'm onto something right now. I like it, people like it, but they had said like, you are really, really bad. Maybe I would've done something different. So I think there is, it's about leading toward what you like, and taking more action, getting more feedback from reality, and then reflecting on that. So again, it's like clarity. It's a process. So you have to keep going over and over again. And we find the process of getting clarity. And then when, when you wanna build more desire, it's about what I took in the book about, uh, different motivators we have, you know, like, so we have fears, love, ego, and desire. That's what I, how I like to break them down. So fear is basically what you said before. You wanna move away from something and that drive you to improve, which is, it is not bad, it can be good. is about giving more. So you mentioned before, give more about yourself, about your personality. Express yourself, try to be authentic. That will be love, contribution, giving, giving your time, giving your money, giving your skills. Um, that would be love. Then you have desire is more about what do you like life? Do you want in love generally? Like what lifestyle do you want? Um, do you want go on vacation? You want a car, but it's kind of more lifestyle thing. What's your desire and ego is about, um, Again, getting the getting part, I wanna be famous, I wanna make money, I wanna get that girl, or whatever it may be. And that's also a good driver, I think, in the short term. But my ideas that over time you want to move away from ego, no, as over time, as much as you can toward no more love. Uh, and I think it's, it's, I would say it's healthier, but ego is actually useful as well. I think you, you know, you wanna prove people wrong, you wanna be right, you wanna be famous. I think it can be useful at some point. So it's kind of a combination of the four different motivators and to use them to build your desire and achieve your

Cody: 58:48

Hmm. Because everything is a feedback loop,

Thibaut: 58:52

Yeah.

Cody: 58:53

and I, I, I love how you make a comparison between saying that a goal is merely a dream with a deadline. So true.

Thibaut: 59:01

Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a famous quote. Maybe not only here. I think so. It's about, you know, you have a dream and you, you have the mind stone and you make it a goal by making it specific, measurable. You have a timeframe, you have a deadline, and you start moving toward it. Yeah, that's so it's not, it's not, again, it's not day dreaming, wishful thinking. It's like committing committed thinking. You know, I'm getting there. I'm taking action. I'm specific. I have desire. I'm strengthening my desire through MO for different motivators

Cody: 59:30

Hmm.

Thibaut: 59:31

All this process.

Cody: 59:32

And you also mentioned a, another Jim Rohn quote that where he says, success is not to be pursued. It is to be attracted by the person you become. And I think that's so true.

Thibaut: 59:42

Yeah, it's one of my, my favorite quotes of all time when I started my journey back 10 years ago now I really like this like, Just about how, who you become and if you, if you become better person, you be to attract over time, you attract more success in different areas of your life. If you're more compassion, if you're more loving, if you're more disciplined, if you are more skilled, uh, if you work on all this stuff, you're gonna have better result over time. So instead of, again, instead of getting, trying to get money, success, fame, you work on yourself so that you can actually give more, give more, create more value to the world as a, as a human being. And that's more of my, my philosophy of life now

Cody: 1:00:21

Hmm.

Thibaut: 1:00:21

become better and everything's gonna become better for you in a sense.

Cody: 1:00:25

And so you mentioned a book or you mentioned a strategy about stacking your why's enlisting all the reasons that you have to reach your goals. Can you tell me what that process is like?

Thibaut: 1:00:36

Yeah. So when I started my business know, years ago, I, I had all these different goals, making money, traveling around the world, selling books, having an impact. So I kind of, write wrote them down and connected. All reason why, why, why is it important for me to succeed in that specific area in my business? And because I had so many reason, you know, like compelling reason, traveling around the world and retiring early, having an impact. And it was for me, very inspiring and that's what gave me motivation to, to keep going over and over again. And I would just again, tell myself, just have, do the work. If you do the work, you can have anything you want in your life. That's kind of was my mantra as well. If I do the work, I can have anything I want in my life and I would go back to work, you know, myself, go back, go back, go back very hard. It was very hard. But that's a process.

Cody: 1:01:27

Hmm.

Thibaut: 1:01:28

So yeah, so that's how, how I would do it. Where do you wanna go and how can you connect it with your values? Is it a family? You wanna have a family, you wanna make money, you wanna travel around the world, you want a certain lifestyle, you wanna be a certain type of person. And thinking of that and then combining them together so that you have more motivation, more drive to keep going, keep you going when you are like having a difficult time in your life.

Cody: 1:01:53

And I suppose that's an exercise that you can do if you know what you want to do, but you aren't able to force yourself to do it.

Thibaut: 1:02:00

Yeah. Yeah. You need, you need to have some kind of direction in which you wanna go in your life, at least some kind of direction.

Cody: 1:02:08

And in order to be able to create those goals, we need to have self-esteem. Of course. And I love that you mentioned author Nathaniel Brandon in his book, the Six Pillars of Self-Esteem,

Thibaut: 1:02:19

Yeah. Yes.

Cody: 1:02:20

gives the definition of self-esteem as the reputation we acquire with ourselves.

Thibaut: 1:02:26

Yes. I really liked as well this definition. He, he gave, and it's the idea that if you want to love yourself or have, have respect for yourself, you need to do, to be disciplined and to take care of yourself, you know, to, to respect yourself. Cause if you want to be self-confident without doing anything, it's not gonna work. No. If you only do affirmations, for instance, it's fine, it's great, but you wanna do the action every day, but make you feel good about yourself. So that's why I always say start with one goal. Know, one small goal, one small task every day. One challenge, you know, a 30 day challenge, 90 day challenge. Cause it, it create the, the self-respect you need to have, you know, more self-esteem, more self-belief, and start, you know, achieving bigger goals. That's how you get started from zero in a sense. Now if you're starting with your self-esteem.

Cody: 1:03:17

Because when we have self-esteem, then we're more motivated and we're able to build that level of self-discipline that achieving these goals require. And we have to avoid beating ourselves up and we have to practice as you compassionate self-talk, right? what things can we tell ourselves?

Thibaut: 1:03:38

I mean, for me, I know it would be very simple like I mentioned before. It's okay. Thibaut it's, it's okay. Thibaut This is simpler. It's okay. You're doing okay. Uh, you do better next time. Or, or you tried your best but it didn't work out, it's okay. Cause sometimes, you know, we have bad, uh, the way we define failure is not really productive. You know, we don't really fail anything. We try something didn't work out. We try something. Reality said no, it's time in a sense. So yeah, the simple safe talk and just being aware whenever you can, you see that you start maybe, uh, beating yourself up in even insulting yourself sometimes. You know, like I would, you know, we would do that sometimes. So for me, I kind of made, I guess the decision or the commitment and every time I would start beating myself up or like insulting myself, I would just stop. I would stop when I'm talking. I would stop my own dialogue and reframe it over and over again until it becomes like a new, like a habit again. Habit. Habit in thinking. So that's what I would do.

Cody: 1:04:41

And one issue that you note is that when we keep breaking promises to ourselves, it erodes our self-esteem. And you give an example about meeting a friend. Can, can you elaborate? I.

Thibaut: 1:04:55

it's like, um, if you tell a friend, I'm gonna be here, uh, 1:00 PM every time you're late, every time you, you are one hour late, half an hour late, what's gonna happen is your friend's gonna stop inviting you or gonna see you as like, no unreliable. You know, that's kind of what you're doing with yourself. You know, if you're not keeping your promises to yourself, basically your words to yourself have no power, no meaning, so then your self-talk, your observation might not even work because you don't even act on anything you're saying. You know, if you keep saying stuff, I'm gonna do this, I'm gonna do that, I'm gonna change the world, blah, blah, blah, but you're not really doing anything in your day-to-day life, then you're not going to have self-esteem. You're not gonna respect yourself. So I think there's a need to have some kind of discipline in our life so that we can respect ourselves. We know that when we say something, we will know, most likely do it not all the time, obviously, but most of the time.

Cody: 1:05:47

Right, because we need to develop a reputation with ourselves that allows us to keep. Our promises and our commitments so that we can maintain the high self-esteem necessary to have the discipline to achieve our goals.

Thibaut: 1:06:01

yeah. So that you maintain self-esteem, you maintain motivation. So we feel like more excited you have more resources, more to keep going toward your goals. So I wish you could, you know, not have self-respect, not do anything every day, not have any daily habits, but it just kind of doesn't really work that way, at least for me. I don't know for you. So we need to have some kind of structures every day, some kind of habits. So no, you're going for a walk, I'm going to the gym, I'm eating healthy healthily. So we need these kind of habits and promises that we keep. ourselves promises to that we keep. keep.

Cody: 1:06:37

And so you mentioned three types of focus there. We have short-term, transitional, and long-term. Can you tell me what these are?

Thibaut: 1:06:46

Yeah. So that's actually in the book, I, I wrote, uh, a while ago, master Your Focus. I talk about these three different type of focus. So the first one, so the short term, uh, transitional focus and long-term focus. So the short term is what I call just basically distraction, being focused in a moment or, or not being distracted. And the second one is when you have to switch between one task and another task, how do you deal with the transition? Cuz sometimes you have a task, you finish it, you go on YouTube, and then you're kind wasting your time. And it goes, um, with planning, having a better planning, having a better day, knowing what you're gonna do so that you can actually move from one, move, from one task task to the next more effectively. So that's the second type of focus. And the third one is long-term focus is like basically your vision. And what I say is that it all starts with your long-term. Again, same thing as I said before, long-term vision where you wanna be in 5, 10, 20 years. And then once you have a vision, you can, you can reverse engineer what you need to do to get there today, this year, next year. And when you do that, your action today are actually aligned with your 10 year vision or 30 year vision. So it has much more impact than being distracted every day, having no strategy or no long term goals. So that's kind of why they work together. I know long-term vision and leads to the plan, short-term focus, and then it's just connected. What you do every day is connected to your vision.

Cody: 1:08:21

and by, by focusing on say too many things or lacking the clarity, we never accumulate the energy that is required to achieve outstanding results.

Thibaut: 1:08:31

Again, it's all about energy. So if you're distracted, you don't really benefit from the, the deep work and the energy focus toward a specific goal for a long period of time. And we know that oftentimes in, in, in the world you have compounding or exponential effect. So if you keep doing something for long enough, you tend to have exponential result at some point, sometimes in your life, your business, for instance. But you can never get to that point if you don't have energy and focused energy toward your specific goal. It's very hard to do.

Cody: 1:09:04

and a part of that is also challenging our limitations one by one, and removing the idea of, of who we're supposed to be and discovering the person that we want to be.

Thibaut: 1:09:18

Yeah. I mean, It all comes down to how do you see yourself? Like what, what do you want? What identity do you wanna have? So I remember when I was, um, starting a business, I had to create, I had to be, to be more disciplined, you know, self-employed. You have to work on a business. And I created this identity of being someone who never gives up. just, just, I just decided I'm never give up. It's just who I, I cannot give up. It's not just not who I am. And I think it's really helpful. It becomes who you are. It's like saying I'm a non-smoker. I, I'm, I'm someone exercised, whatever, whatever it may be. And that's what I did, but really helped me. Um, Yeah. To be successful in, in my life. yeah. Identity and, yeah. You can decide who you wanna be and, and then you decide what do I need to believe to reach that goal? Who do I need to be? I need to be someone who never quits. I need some, be someone who have, who has high develop of integrity. I need to be someone who, um, is on time or who keeps his promises, for instance. Yeah. It's a choice in the end.

Cody: 1:10:24

Right. It's everything from, from sharpening our thinking, leveraging technology to multiply our time, making personal development a priority for us. Developing that, that laser sharp focus over the long term and require and collaborating with other people and kind of rallying them around a cause that will increase the amount of energy that you can channel towards your vision.

Thibaut: 1:10:51

yeah. And the more energy you have, the more impact you're gonna have. So that's why I talk about different leverages and people can, when they're gonna read the book, if they read the book, they can say, okay, how, how would I rate myself on on that specific leverage? No. And do I need it or not for my vision? So we can really think about what do we need to work on? So it's a framework. What do we need to work on to increase their odds of success and their odds of having a bigger magnifying, their impact if they wanna do that.

Cody: 1:11:19

I absolutely love reading your book. I think everybody should read his book, do The Impossible, and I really appreciate you being on the show today. Thibaut

Thibaut: 1:11:30

Yeah. Thanks. 30. It was very nice to talk about the book for the first time. In the podcast. That was nice. Thank you.