Today I was watching this video from Alex Hormozi, Alex is a bit of a "business guru" on YouTube but personally I see him more of a philosopher and see his advice as beneficial to general life instead of to the specific endeavor of Business. I thought the video had some great ideas. Since I don't want to forget these good ideas I started taking notes on some of the ones that stuck out to me the most. These are those notes.

Don't build confidence without evidence

Confidence without evidence is an illusion, you're tricking yourself into being confident even though you don't have the backing to support your beliefs. This is pretty much lying to yourself. Confidence without evidence is an illusion, you should do things so you become confident, You shouldn't wait until you're confident to do things. Fake it till you make it should become "walk it before you talk it" prove it to yourself so you don't have to prove it to others, let your path do your talking for you.

Solve for proof

The message is 10% of how people perceive what you say. Context is everything else. Example of Elon being able to tweet whatever he wants and it going crazy. The context of Elon and everything he has achieved allows him to do this. Solve for evidence over everything else. If a billionaire is giving business advice someone can't say "you don't know anything about business" because objectively they do. Even if what they're saying is wrong, people or someone else is saying the same thing without the credentials but communicating it better will listen to them just because of what they've done.

Measuring

Don't measure by results, measure by effort. If someone is doing better than you, compare your input to their input (what they're doing to get that result) and not their output. The output is irrelevant because it's the input that really matters. If you're putting in a greater amount of input than someone else over a long enough time period the output's will start to reflect the relative inputs. The greater the difference between the inputs the faster the outputs will change.

Lagging metrics vs lagging metrics

lagging metrics = what happens (outputs)
leading metrics = the inputs that create the outputs

Track leading metrics not lagging metrics. Don't track your weight, track your calories. etc. etc.

the Delta between what you did and what you could have done

Focus on the delta between how hard you try and how hard you can possibly try. The gap between these two values is all that matters because it's all that you can control. You should redefine your concept of "winning" to how small the difference between these two deltas is. Because at the end of the day that's all you can control. It's also more immediate, you see results straight away, this makes it far more motivating to stick with.

By default if you don't give up, you win

The best games are ones where there isn't an end goal.The goal is just to keep playing business, marriage, being healthy are all like this. So by definition if you stay in the game you're winning. He uses an example of Kobe being asked " do you think you're someone who is afraid of winning or someone who loves losing" and him replying "I just love playing to the best of my ability". There aren't two frames “winning" or "losing" this is a false dichotomy. As long as you're playing you're winning by default. If you change your definition of winning to be reliant on your character, and judge your days based on this, as long as you contributed to the character of the person that you wish to become, then you won the day.

Bunch of great one liners in this section

if you have the menu item of things you can do in life, just remove quitting as one of them and then try your next thing.
The rocky cut scene in the move lasts 2 minutes in real life it lasts a lot longer
this is where most people stop, and this is why they don't win
if you play to win you'll be out first. play to outlast and you'll win.

Other people's opinions

The best thing you can do for your own life is not to listen to other people's opinions about your life. Most people don't want the best version of you. They want the version of you who best suits them. More people root for you when you have succeeded than people who rooted for you along the way.

Whenever someone gives you an opinion of what you should do with your life it's really what they want to do with their life. People make statements to release their discomfort e.g "you should train less" "your standards are too high” etc etc. and that's their problem not yours so dont worry about it.

I am statements

People like saying they are things and then love giving a "because" reason...

The “because” adds nothing, and most of the time you don't even know why you are that way and you're just guessing. All you know is that you do a certain type of behavior. By giving these “because” statements power you put things in the past. if you change the mentality to "I do x". then you just change your day to day behavior and give the control to your present self.

Epic stories razor

When choosing between two or more options choose whatever will create the cooler story. Reframe "these are all the reasons that i can't succeed" to. "These are all the reasons why when I succeed it will be awesome.

Heroes vs villains

heroes and villains in stories always have the same backstory - pain. The difference is what they choose to do about it. The villain says "the world hurt me, i'll hurt it back". The hero says "the world hurt me, I'm not gonna let it hurt anyone else" Heroes use pain. Villains are used by pain.

Everyone inevitably feels pain. It's a constant of life, you just have to choose how you deal with it.

Document your life

Document your life when it sucks, not when it's great. Because these are the moments that you can use in the future to prove who you really are. Quote from the matrix

I stand here truthfully unafraid. Not because of the path that lies before me but because the path that lies behind me - Morpheus

The struggle or hardship that you might be facing right now is the path that your successful future self looks back on to be confident in whatever path lies in front of them.