5 Powerful Quotes That Changed the Way I Think
- If you've been following my channel for any length of time, then, you probably know
already, that I am a sucker for a good quote.
I love putting them in my scripts, I love building little animations for them.
So, today, I'm going to double down on that love of quotes, and share five quotes that
are very, very meaningful to me.
Some of these quotes, come from people that I know personally.
Some come from just public figures and famous people that I admire.
But each quote on this list, represents an idea that has helped me to make a big improvement
to some area of my life.
Be it, my work ethic or my ability to make decisions or my ability to update my beliefs.
These are all things that I try to live by.
And that's why I wanna share with them with you today.
And to start things off, let's just jump immediately to my favorite quote of all time.
Which comes from Bruce Lee, in his book, the Tao of Jeet Kune Do.
"Research your own experience.
"Absorb what is useful, "reject what is useless.
"And add what is essentially your own."
This quote from Bruce Lee, is a constant reminder of the fact that, as we go through life, we're
essentially, building a library of stuff that works in our brains.
Which means that, not all the advice we receive from other people, as we go through life,
is going to be useful to us.
Not all advice is applicable in every single situation or to every single person.
And if you want a great example of this, picture the CEO of a giant corporation, like Mike
Benioff, salesforce.com or Jeff Bezoz, talking to a brand new entrepreneur.
Somebody who's maybe, 19 years old, just getting their start.
If Jeff Bezos or Mark Benioff said, the best thing you can possibly do right now, to help
your company grow is, hire a bunch of assistants, so you can delegate all of your work.
Well, that would be terrible advice for that person, who was just getting started.
Because somebody like Jeff Bezos, has a lot of money, has a lot of capital resources,
but doesn't have a whole lot of personal time, given all the responsibilities and projects,
he's got going on.
So, for Jeff Bezos or Mark Benioff or some powerful CEO, delegation, hiring people, that
makes a lot of sense.
But for that scrappy first-time entrepreneur, who's just trying to get their business off
the ground, they probably don't have a whole lot of capital in the bank.
But what they do have, is time.
Maybe some time after work, every single night, where they can work on their thing.
So, for them, being scrappy, having that D-I-Y mindset, is a much better course of action
to take.
Than to attempt to use, what little funds they have, to hire someone.
Alright, so, the second quote on my list, actually comes from my friend, Charlie Houpert,
who runs the excellent channel, Charisma on Command.
And it's very, very simple.
He told this to me, I think, two years ago at VidCon.
He simply said, "what is your art and what is your ego?"
And he said this, in response to me, kind of telling him, how I was having trouble,
delegating the editing duties on my channel, which I have since done.
But back then, I had a lot of work on my plate.
Editing videos, took way more hours than it should've.
And I had other projects that I was kind of, letting kinda go, to the back-burner.
And I had this feeling at the time that, me editing my own videos.
And basically, having my hand in every single element of the production of my videos, was
what made my channel successful.
But of course, this is entirely ego talking.
I'm not the only person in the world, who can edit video.
In fact, there are many more talented editors out there than myself.
And that is a statement that is true, for basically every other part of a production
process.
There are better writers, there are better hosts, there are better editors, animators.
Whatever role you can think of, there is somebody out there, more talented than me.
And Charlie understood this before I did, and better than I did.
Which is why, he told me, ask yourself, what is your art?
What is the thing that you can contribute the best, to the thing that you're creating?
And what is just your ego?
What elements in the process are you doing, just because you have this false belief that,
you need to be doing them.
And I sat back and asked myself, what is my art, what is my ego?
And I came to the conclusion that, well, what I really contribute, what I really bring to
the table, more than anything else is, my ability to do research.
To maybe, combine it with jokes and references and things that make the overall script entertaining.
And then, my hosting, the actual filming of the video.
So, those are the areas, where I should really be focusing my time and energy and attention.
And anything else, should be outsourced to somebody who could do it better than me.
Now, if you're not an entrepreneur, if you're not running your own business, you might be
asking yourself, how does this apply to me?
Because I have a boss who delegates things to me.
I have to do what they say.
I'm the boss.
I'm your boss.
And that's true.
But you might have built this identity up for yourself that, you're the best person
for your particular role.
And a lot of people get this into their heads.
And then, they don't actually wanna move-up or branch-out or accept new responsibilities.
Because they think, that they're the only person who can deal with the current thing
that they are doing in their job.
So, this isn't advice that's only for entrepreneurs or business owners.
This is really for anybody.
Because we can all come to conclusions, we can all hold ideas in our head, that are,
in fact, supported only by our egos.
And when we really challenge the foundation of those ideas, we may realize that, what
we're doing, actually isn't the best use of our time or attention or energy.
And speaking of time and energy, the third quote on my list, is one that comes to mind,
any time that I'm feeling lazy.
It's the one that has, I think, more than any other, helped me to develop a strong work
ethic.
So, this quote is from the actor, Will Smith.
And it goes, "The only thing that I see, "that is distinctly different about me is, "I'm
not afraid to die on a treadmill.
"I will not be out-worked, period.
"You might have more talent than me, "you might be smarter than me, "you might be sexier
than me, "you might be all those things.
"You got it on me, in nine categories.
"But if we get on the treadmill together, "there's two things.
"You're getting off first or I'm going to die."
So, this isn't one of those quotes that doles out some sort of wisdom, you never really
knew about before.
It's kind of obvious.
We all know, we need to work hard.
But I love having reminders of the fact, there are people out there who understand that,
hard work beats talent, when talent doesn't work hard.
Your high school coach has probably told you that, a zillion times.
I know, my wrestling coach told me that.
But I have to be reminded of it, every so often.
Because sometimes, I find myself leaning on my talents.
Or leaning on what I've already built in the past.
And I realized that, that is just, resting on my laurels.
And I need to actually be working.
Furthermore, this is a reminder of what we can actually control.
Even if you start from a less advantageous place.
Even if you come from a less wealthy background or you have less innate talent, quote-unquote.
Or you're not as good looking as somebody out there.
What you can really control, is how hard you're willing to work.
How much you're willing to focus.
How much you're willing to push-out distractions.
How much you're willing to prioritize what you really want.
These are the things, you truly have control over.
So, those are things that you should focus on improving.
Alright, that brings us to quote number four on the list.
And this comes from my previous boss, at Iowa State University.
Back when I was a student.
But also, a student orientation assistant.
And she was basically, the director of the entire new-student programs' department.
And I remember this very distinctly.
We were getting ready to build this entire event, for all the new freshmen, coming into
campus.
And we were riding in a golf cart, over to the next thing we needed to do.
And we happened to start talking about this whole idea of, it's the thought that counts,
right?
The actual gift you give somebody or the presentation or whatever, it doesn't matter so much, as
the thought, right?
And I will never forget this.
She turned to me and she said, "It's not the thought that counts.
"Presentation matters."
and then, she continues to tell me that, if I couldn't wrap a present correctly, then,
I needed to go learn how to do it.
My grandma was good at it.
And it would be unacceptable for me to be terrible at it.
And for most of my life, I never thought this way.
I did think, it was the thought that counts.
It doesn't matter if I wrap a present terribly.
I'm giving a present to the person that I like.
Which means, that I love them, right?
They should know that.
It's the thought that counts.
But listening to her, I realized, it's the thought that counts, is kinda like, the whole
saying like, that person has a heart of gold.
It's an excuse, for what would be considered unacceptable behavior, by people who don't
already maybe, know you or love you or excuse that behavior because of that foundation of
love.
So, this really stuck with me.
It's not the thought that counts.
The presentation matters.
And in fact, if you love somebody, if you're giving them a gift or doing something to show
your appreciation for them.
Then, it should be immediately apparent from the presentation of that gift, from the gift
itself, that you do care.
You shouldn't have to make an excuse like, oh, it's the thought that counts.
It should be readily apparent.
So, anyway, her telling me that, much like, Charlie telling me to examine my ego, was
something that made me really challenge my beliefs.
And I had to change them afterward.
Because I knew, what she said was true.
And that actually brings me to my fifth and final quote on this list.
Which comes from the artificial intelligence researcher and rationality writer, Eliezer
Yudkowsky.
"Do not flinch from experiences "that might destroy your beliefs.
"The thought you cannot think, "controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud.
"Submit yourself to ordeals and test yourself in fire.
"Relinquish the emotion which rests upon a mistaken belief.
"And seek to feel fully, "that emotion which fits the facts."
To put this in some simpler words, essentially, think like a scientist, in everything you
do.
Scientists follow the scientific method.
Where, they form hypotheses.
But then, they test those hypotheses and they use the evidence they gather, to update their
beliefs.
Don't fall victim to dogma.
But instead, they are constantly seeking objective truth.
Now, this specific quote from Yudkowsky, was something that I came across, a little bit
after I really started to learn about rationality and about these ideas.
My original exposure to them, was his fan-fiction called, Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality.
Which is, frankly, a pretty well-written story, at least for fan-fictions standards.
But it's also a pretty thinly-veiled attempt, to teach people about rationality and heuristics
and biases and all these kinds of things.
And I read this, back in, I think 2013.
Right around the time, I was about to graduate from college.
And it was kind of a revelation to me.
I mean, in the past, I had always thought of myself as rational.
But really digging into these ideas and challenging some of my long-standing beliefs.
Asking myself, why was I afraid to go down certain avenues of inquiry?
Really showed me that, I wasn't quite as rational as I had thought.
And this is now, sort of, part of my core beliefs of, how I should act as a human being.
I should constantly be seeking-out points of view or perspectives or avenues of inquiry,
that do challenge my beliefs.
So, I have the potential to shatter them.
Because if my beliefs aren't rooted in truth, then, I shouldn't have them, in the first
place.
Now, if you're also interested in learning about human rationality and heuristics and
biases, well, you are in luck.
I've got two specific recommendations, for where you might want to start.
One, is something written by Eliezer Yudkowsky, himself.
And for a really long time, he really only wrote directly about these topics on, lesswrong.org,
in blog-post form.
But he recently, took all those blog-posts and turned them into an book called, Rationality:
From AI to Zombies.
Now, while I have benefited greatly from many of the essays in that book, I will say that,
if you were to say, listen to it, it is 49 hours long.
And it's still, not the most cohesive thing in the world.
So, there is some real gems in it.
But if you wanna really good place to get started, to start learning about these topics,
then, I would suggest Dan Ariely's book, Predictably Irrational.
And the great thing is, you can start listening to either of these titles, completely free
today, by starting a free 30-day trial, on Audible.
And you could do that, by going to, audible.com/thomas.
Or by texting, Thomas, to 500-500 on your phone.
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in your audiobooks.
So, if you come across a great quote that you wanna remember, you can easily do that.
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You can also watch one more video on this channel right here.
Or you can listen to the podcast episode that we did, a few weeks ago, which inspired this
video on, six very powerful quotes that changed our lives.
I highly recommend going to listen to that one, if you enjoyed this video.
So, that's it.
Hopefully, you found something useful in this video.
And I will see you in the next one.