26 Things Game Development Taught Me About Winning at Life in 2026

Welcome to Impact Theory with Tom Bilyeu! In this deep dive episode, Tom Bilyeu distills 25 years of entrepreneurial wisdom and his recent journey as a game developer into "26 Ways to Win in 2026." Drawing on powerful lessons from both business and gaming, Tom Bilyeu explores why your beliefs and values are your personal programming, how life mirrors a player versus player versus environment (PvPvE) game, and why skills, clear goals, and relentless adaptability are crucial for thriving in a rapidly changing world shaped by AI and economic uncertainty. You’ll hear actionable strategies on reframing challenges, building habits for success, mastering asset ownership, and surrounding yourself with a high-performance environment. From the importance of failure and iteration to crafting your own meaning and purpose, this episode is packed with insights on how to level up—no matter where you’re starting from. If you’re ready to enter the next year with clarity, confidence, and a fulfilled mindset, tune in for Tom Bilyeu’s ultimate guide to turning 2026 into the best year of your life. 00:00 Intro 00:12 #1 - You Are Programmable 02:22 #2 - Life Is A PvPvE Game 04:23 #3 - The Universe Is A Set Of Rules 05:45 #4 - Skills Have Utility 06:25 #5 - You Need Clear Goals 08:41 #6 - Understand The Economy or Be A NPC 09:54 Ad For Tom’s TCG Habit 11:03 Ad 2 For Drew’s Date Stories 12:03 Back To The Countdown 12:49 #7 - Nobody Is Coming To Save You 14:16 #8 - The Meta Is Constantly Changing 15:47 #9 - Want Bigger Rewards, Pursue Bigger Difficulties 17:43 #10 - Don’t Chase Useless Side Quests 19:38 #11 - When You Rest, Your Competition Isn’t 20:00 #12 - Your Environment Is a Buff or Debuff 21:56 #13 - Meaning Isn’t Discovered, It’s Engineered 23:47 #14 - Ship Early And Get Feedback 24:18 #15 - You Are Trapped In Your Frame Of Reference 26:03 #16 - Your First 100 Attempts Will Be Trash 26:45 #17 - Success Is Iteration Done Longer Than Others Can Stand 27:59 #18 - If You Don’t Measure It, You Can’t Improve It 28:34 #19 - Ideas Don’t Make You Valuable, Execution Does 29:51 #20 - Learn From The Past 31:14 #21 - Go To Where The Future Will Be. Don’t Chase The Present 33:11 #22 - You’re Going To Fail ALOT. Learn From It 35:09 #23 - Most People Play On Easy Mode - Go For Hardcore! 37:14 #24 - Your Habits Are Daily Updates To Your Future Self 40:19 #25 - Practice, Don’t Just Repeat 40:54 #26 - 2026 Is Here, Level Up Or Get Left Behind Quince: Go to https://quince.com/IMPACTPOD for free shipping on your order and 365-day returns. Linkedin: Post your job free at https://linkedin.com/impacttheory HomeServe: Help protect your home systems – and your wallet – with HomeServe against covered repairs. Plans start at just $4.99 a month at https://homeserve.com Shopify: Sign up for your one-dollar-per-month trial period at https://shopify.com/impact Huel: 15% off with this exclusive offer for New Customers only with code impact at https://huel.com/impact(Minimum $75 purchase). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices https://megaphone.fm/adchoices See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Tom Bilyeu?

  Let's talk about the moment your side hustle becomes a real business. Now, I see way too many founders stay stuck running their business like it's a hobby, and then they wonder why nothing ever feels real. It doesn't feel real because it's not. I've helped thousands of entrepreneurs build real businesses through Impact Theory University, and the first step in the path to building a legit business is registering it. And Taylor Brands will help you do just that in a few clicks. An LLC, a limited liability company, is an official business structure. It's inexpensive to form and very simple to maintain. It's how you open a business bank account. It's how customers know they're dealing with a real company. And Taylor Brands doesn't stop at the filing.

• 0:45Tom Bilyeu?

  Their dashboard tracks what comes next based on what your business actually needs. So EIN number, registered agent, licenses and permits, bookkeeping, business banking. I tell every founder the same thing. Just make it official. Click the link in the show notes to check out Taylor Brands and get started on your business today. This is a paid advertisement. I've been an entrepreneur for about 25 years, but the last year as a game developer has taught me 26 critical lessons that are going to help you make 2026 the best year of your life. One, you are programmed just like a character in a video game. If you want different outcomes, you gotta change the programming.

• 1:29Tom Bilyeu?

  Your life is controlled by your values and your beliefs. This is one of the most important things that I'm going to discuss today. Your beliefs and values are the programming that dictate both what you look at and what you see. It is shocking, but true, that both beliefs and values are subjective and largely choices.

• 1:54Tom Bilyeu?

  Physics is real, but beyond that, most things are just interpretation. Humans are shockingly bad at identifying what's real in the world. To give you an idea, we see 0.0035% of the electromagnetic spectrum. And yet, when we look out of the world, we feel like we're seeing everything there is to see. There is a dime-sized blank spot in your field of vision right now, but you don't perceive it at all. Your brain just fills it in. You can look up countless examples of the way that your brain will fall for optical illusions,

• 2:38Tom Bilyeu?

  because it's not representing reality as it actually is. It's representing a heuristic, a rule of thumb, a quick sketch. You can alter your beliefs and your values, and that will actually change what you see. Do you see a challenge or a problem? Do you see an obstacle that you can't overcome? Or something that you can solve? The difference between those kinds of things will change the entire quality of your life. And if, for instance, you want to feel differently and behave differently, all you need to do is change the things you believe and value. Now, I'm not saying that you can detach your beliefs from physics, but the reality is whether something's an exciting challenge or an unovercomable problem comes down to your frame of reference.

• 3:23Tom Bilyeu?

  It isn't objective truth, because if it doesn't violate the laws of physics, there is a way around it. Two, remember, life is a player versus player versus environment game, AKA this is PvPVe. You are up against other players as well as your own environment. This one always weirds people out. People do not want life to be a competition, but the reality is... Life is a competition. You have to contend with not only other people that are trying to win. You have to contend with things like your political environment, the economy, geopolitics, and in the age of AI, a whole lot more than that.

• 4:05Tom Bilyeu?

  Now, it's important to remember that it is a co-op game, but it's a competition, and so you want to play to win. I see people make this mistake all the time. Part of the frustration right now is that people want to believe that you don't really have to compete to get ahead, that you can have an incredible life just going along and cruising. But the reality is that life does not work like that. You currently live in a world with finite resources, and no one is willing to work for free. So at a minimum, everything costs money. Now, maybe one day, AI is going to change all of that, but that day is not today. For now, life is best understood as an open world survival crafting game.

• 4:47Tom Bilyeu?

  Your job is to, first of all, stay alive. Second, you want to collect resources. Three, you want to make cool stuff, incredible things. One of the great joys of life is being able to build and create, whether that's a family, whether that's a business, whether that's models, it doesn't matter. Building cool things is one of the great joys of life. One of the biggest pieces of advice that I have for people is to find a romantic partner. There's no doubt, a lot of the things that I'm going to talk about right now make it sound like this is a solo game, but life played with somebody that's trying to help you, that gives you an opportunity to help them, is going to make the most out of this game that we call life.

• 5:30Tom Bilyeu?

  Three, the universe is just a set of rules. So take responsibility for all of your outcomes. This has been one of the most profound lessons I've learned by being a game developer, is you realize, whoa, this is all just a set of rules. Everything functions on something akin to physics. And once you understand what those are, then you can get better, then you can improve, then you can anticipate where things are going to go. The game of life is not working against you, I promise. I know that it can feel that way sometimes, but the reality of how the world works is that it simply obeys rules.

• 6:10Tom Bilyeu?

  So if you master those rules, you can wildly improve your outcomes. When you approach life like it's working against you, or like you can't get better, you end up getting stuck. Life adheres to what I call the only belief that matters. The only belief that matters is that if you put time and energy into getting better, you will actually get better. We are a species that has chosen a strategy of adaptation. This is why the famous saying is, "It's not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but rather the most adaptive to change." Focus on getting better. Four, skills have utility.

• 6:53Tom Bilyeu?

  You want to relentlessly build out your skill tree in this game of life. You want to get so good that you can't be ignored. If you're willing to grant me that life really is a competition, then it becomes all about learning the things that are going to help you move towards your specific goals. You want to become very capable of doing things other people can't do. That's exactly how you outperform them. So whether that's doing better at your job, whether that's becoming a better parent, whether that's growing your business, it doesn't matter. You have to be able to outperform people by being able to do something that they can't do. Five, you need very clear goals.

• 7:36Tom Bilyeu?

  If you don't understand exactly what the win condition of the game that you're playing is, you are guaranteed to lose. The universal win condition of life is not money, it's not fame, it's not accolades. The universal win condition is fulfillment. Now, the great news is fulfillment has a formula. Fulfillment is working really hard.

• 8:02Tom Bilyeu?

  To gain a set of skills that allow you to make progress towards a noble goal. Now, a noble goal is something that elevates you and the group as you pursue it. The human mind is wired to need to contribute to the group. And so if you're only doing things that are selfishly beneficial, you are going to have a profound sense of dis-ease. You need to find something that you can pursue, that you're passionate about, that even if you were losing, you would have a good time making progress towards it. This is a deterministic universe. Your brain does work in a certain way, and you don't want to fight against that. The thing to understand about the human mind is that we are mountain climbers.

• 8:47Tom Bilyeu?

  We are not designed to sit at the top of a mountain. That's why you'll never be able to achieve something so grand that you feel like you've crossed the finish line. The reality is that we are designed to keep moving, to keep climbing. And so you've got to orient your mind towards making progress rather than achievement. Now, you're going to set that goal. It's going to be very clear. You're going to know what the achievement looks like, but you're not going to fool yourself into thinking that once you get it, you're somehow going to be satiated or you're going to feel like you've finished. You want to always have your eye on what's that next thing? What's that next thing? And to fall in love with the sense of progress. If you tie your ego to outcome or accomplishment, you're going to be devastated.

• 9:31Tom Bilyeu?

  First of all, you're going to fail a lot. And second of all, you're going to be left feeling depressed when you actually get the thing that you've always said that you wanted, because you will get there and you will realize that that hunger for more has not gone away. So don't trick yourself. Six, if you don't understand the economy, you're going to be stuck being an NPC, a non-player character. I hate that this one is so true, but the reality is one of the most important skills in today's world is to understand how money works. I never thought I would be talking about the economy as much as I do, but this is one of the things that people really get wrong.

• 10:14Tom Bilyeu?

  The markets are complex. There's no doubt about that. But because the government is printing money, if you don't own assets, you are going to be in trouble because inflation is going to erode all of your purchasing power. And whether you like it or not, you are going to be competing in the markets against other people, against other people using AI, by the way. So you've really got to have your wits about you. You've got to be sharp. I wish that the government never created a central bank. I wish that they weren't printing money, which is just counterfeiting by another name. But the reality is, they are. And therefore, you have to understand how it works. Otherwise, you're going to be working incredibly hard to earn money

• 10:56Tom Bilyeu?

  and be stuck where so many people are stuck right now today, which is they cannot make ends meet. Taking a short break, but there's more Impact Theory after. Stay tuned.

• 11:09Tom Bilyeu?

  There's a reason Quince sells cashmere for $60, and it isn't the cashmere. It's real 100% Mongolian cashmere. It's the same stuff luxury labels charge a fortune for. Quince just works directly with ethical factories and cuts out the middleman. So there's no need for a markup and no logo tax. The $60 goes to the actual sweater, not the fancy name on the tag. That's why everything they make runs 50 to 80% less. And it's not just the cashmere. I ordered a few things myself, their fleece joggers, a couple of their tees, which I wear obsessively. First thing I noticed was the quality. Soft, well-made, built to hold up. They make down jackets and wool outerwear now, too.

• 11:54Tom Bilyeu?

  So upgrade your stuff to things you'll actually wear. Find your next fall favorites at Quince. Download the Quince app for app-exclusive offers, or go to quince.com. Get free shipping on your order and 365-day returns, now available in Canada and the UK, too. And when Quince asks where you heard about them, let them know it was Impact Theory. It's the best way to support the show. Let's talk about something that genuinely keeps me awake at night. My team at Impact Theory gets hit with Fishing scams from bad actors pretending to be me all the time. And they keep getting more sophisticated attacks with details specific enough to look legit. AI has made a lot of things possible, including scams like this.

• 12:38Tom Bilyeu?

  But AI still needs raw material. It gets it from data brokers who sell your name, address, phone number to anyone willing to pay. Incogni goes after that supply. They handle removal requests across 420 plus harmful broker sites. And they keep checking back as brokers constantly try to relist you. On the unlimited plan, the exposure scanner hunts down your information. Send a link and their privacy experts handle the takedown. Track your progress in the app and get a monthly risk assessment showing exactly where you stand. Go to incogni.com/impact and use code IMPACT for 60% off an annual plan.

• 13:19Tom Bilyeu?

  Incogni is I-N-C-O-G-N-I dot com slash impact. Promo code IMPACT. It's completely risk free with a 30 day money back guarantee.

• 13:34Tom Bilyeu?

  All right. Thanks for sticking with us. Let's jump right back in. This isn't because you're a bad person. This is because the way that money works, the government can actually rob you of your buying power, even as you're working your ass off to make more and more money. You have to understand inflation. You have to understand asset ownership. You have to understand how money flows, how it works. Otherwise, you're going to get eaten alive by the bad policy that we have had for more than 100 years. All of that forces you to go into asset ownership in order to escape inflation, which is why you have to master money. Learn about how assets work. Learn about how the system is rigged against you, but that you can still win. Now, if you own the right basket of assets, you'll be able to thrive.

• 14:18Tom Bilyeu?

  If you don't understand money full stop, you are going to be on a hamster wheel until you die. Seven, no one is coming to save you. There are going to be plenty of boss fights in this game, and you are going to have to win with your own skills. One thing you're going to hear. Hear me say over and over is that this is about skill acquisition. You want to improve your skills. What's standing between where you are today and where you want to go is a set of skills. As you level those up, you are going to be able to move farther forward. The key to leveling up your skills is to understand exactly how the game works. It really is rigged against you. There's no doubt about that. But once you understand the ways in which it is rigged against you,

• 15:02Tom Bilyeu?

  you can master the actual rules of the game, not the rules as they should be, but the rules as they actually are, and you can play the game to thrive. I find so many people are so busy trying to get the whole world to be this moral, just place, instead of looking at what are the changes that they can make in their actual life, their real skill set right now, today, based on how the game actually is played, not how they wish it were played, but the way that it's actually played and win right now, today. That option is available for all of us. But you've got to set aside all of the campaigning to get the world to change

• 15:44Tom Bilyeu?

  and instead focus on the thing that you can actually control, which is changing you. Eight. The meta is constantly changing. You have to adapt or you're going to be eaten alive. You are living through the greatest period of change since an asteroid killed the dinosaurs. AI is changing everything. But for right now, the key is to master AI. Don't get stuck in fear about what's going to happen. Figure out what works right now, today. You cannot afford to bury your head and wait until AI's impact is fully realized. You've got to be willing to adapt as rapidly as you can to what's changing in the meta.

• 16:29Tom Bilyeu?

  There's no sense in fighting about it. There's no sense in wishing that the world would stay the same. There's no sense in being paralyzed by a fear of change. That is what the vast majority of the world is going to do. You cannot allow yourself to do that. Figure out what is going to win right now. And right now, that's mastering AI. That is dealing with the rapid rate of change. That is getting control of your own emotions. So that you can continue to move forward. No matter how much the world is changing. The human mind wants to hold on to the past. But the reality is you can't. We are always moving forward. Now faster than ever. So the people that are going to win are going to be the people that stay centered. Do not allow fear to overtake them.

• 17:13Tom Bilyeu?

  And no matter how crazy things are getting in the world. They keep marching forward. Adapting, learning new skills and mastering whatever works today. Nine. If you want bigger rewards. You've got to enter higher difficulty zones. Your abilities will improve. When the challenge is just outside of your current skill level. It is a fascinating element of the human experience. That if you want to adapt. You have to put yourself into a zone where things are a little too hard. It's called the optimal zone of development. You want to get to that space where it's like, ah, it's a weight that you can't quite lift yet. And you push yourself and you try and you struggle and you actually break.

• 17:57Tom Bilyeu?

  The muscle fiber, literal or metaphorically, so that you can rebuild stronger. But you have to put yourself in that position where you're actually breaking yourself down a little bit. So that you can get stronger. So you want to seek out a higher level of difficulty. If you don't seek out that higher level of difficulty. You never encounter the thing you can't do. You never give yourself the impulse to adapt. Elon Musk has a great quote that I'm going to paraphrase. You're paid in direct proportion to the difficulty level of the problems you solve. So you want to seek out the hardest problems. You want to get to the point where you're capable of actually solving those.

• 18:39Tom Bilyeu?

  If you stay in the small pond and you solve the problems that are easy for you to solve. You're never going to be able to make progress. Not in a world where other people are pushing themselves. So you want to figure out where is that thing that just exceeds what I can actually. Actually reach and push yourself to grow into that, to become capable of that, to face that failure, to be willing to try something that you can't quite do yet. Step back and assess, why wasn't I able to do that? Be honest with yourself. What's the hole in your game that you need to improve? What skill do you need to seek out? And then go and do that. 10. Don't chase side quests that don't move the main story forward.

• 19:21Tom Bilyeu?

  Persistence without a strategy is just grinding. Now, I'm haunted by a phenomenal quote. You can do anything you want, but not everything. You've got a finite amount of time. There are only so many things you're going to be able to focus on. And the constraints that you put on yourself to ensure maximum momentum, those aren't limitations. Ultimately, they just focus you. And given that we all have a limited amount of time, a limited amount of energy, the fewer things you try to do, the better you will be able to do those things. And when you go into a competition, you're going to be able to outperform other people

• 20:02Tom Bilyeu?

  because you have taken all of your time and pointed them at a small subset of things. There's a great quote from Bruce Lee that I'm going to paraphrase. And he said, "I don't fear the man who practices 5,000 kicks once. I fear the man that practices one kick 5,000 times." That's the situation that you want to put yourself in. You want to set a clear goal and then go after it with single-minded determination. You want to be obsessed. You want to eliminate distractions and you want to outwork everyone else. That has somehow become one of my more controversial beliefs, which is wild to me. The reality is, this is a competition. And if you want to win, you've got to get better than other people.

• 20:46Tom Bilyeu?

  And what is the fastest way to do that? To just be mono maniacal on the thing that you want to accomplish and then just go after it with everything you've got. To the point where I tell people, you want other people to be worried about you. You want other people to be concerned about how hard you work. That's why make sure you have a clear That you care about so that as you pursue it, you actually enjoy your life. Remember the punchline is fulfillment. Eleven. When you rest, your competitors are practicing. And when you meet, whoever is the most prepared is going to win. Always be improving. When you collide with somebody in the marketplace, applying for a job wherever,

• 21:27Tom Bilyeu?

  you are going to lose if you're underprepared and you're going to win if you're more prepared. Twelve. Your environment is either a buff or a debuff, so choose wisely. You want to surround yourself with people who are optimistic and driven, who are emotionally stable, who want to get better, who stare nakedly at their inadequacies and are willing to work to improve them, who will give you honest feedback, who can love you and yet be truthful. When you're surrounded by a group of hyper ambitious people that act like that, you are going to improve. The reality is all of us will go way out of our way

• 22:12Tom Bilyeu?

  to earn the respect of the people that we respect. And ultimately, that's going to be the people that we surround ourselves with. So as they say, you are the average of the five people and ideas that you spend the most time with. Make sure that you are surrounding yourself with people and ideas that are going to buff you. And by the way, booby trap your life in a way that makes pursuing your goals the easiest path. So things like putting gym clothes next to your bed. So that's the easiest set of clothes to put on is the thing that prompts you to go into the gym. Uh, only have good food in the house if your diet is bad. Remember that you're being trained by your algorithms.

• 22:53Tom Bilyeu?

  So make sure you train your algorithms to show you useful content. Do not be blinded by the ways that the world manipulates you. Take control of that. Be very intentional about all of the things that you intake in your world. Do not let external forces decide for you what you do. Have that goal. Structure your life in a way that's always going to be moving you towards that. That is how you get the momentum going. That is how you make the structure of your day, your life, your calendar, all of it, be something that elevates you rather than just dissipates your energy into nothing. 13. Meaning isn't discovered, it's engineered. You are not going to turn inward and find a thing that you were born for.

• 23:38Tom Bilyeu?

  It doesn't work like that. Meaning and purpose are not archaeological digs. They are architectural builds. You get to decide what your purpose is going to be. It isn't handed to you by anything because there's nothing that immediately feels obvious. Nobody was born to do something. You turn inward, you see an area of interest, you decide, I'm going to go do that thing. And then you pursue it and you get better at it. And you move through the creation of a passion, which is a loop. And it starts with area of interest. You then invest time and energy into it. If it grows in fascination and interest, then it's a candidate for becoming a passion.

• 24:23Tom Bilyeu?

  As you build your skill set, if as you go through that process of doing the boring, hard work, you start getting positive feedback from the world that, oh my gosh, I love this thing that you do. That feedback loop of, I like it, I'm more fascinated by it, the more time that I spend on it. And when I start putting this skill out into the world, I get the feedback from other people that, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's amazing. We want more of that from you. That then inspires you to work harder, to get better, to be able to further contribute to the group, to be able to further make progress towards your goals. Progress is a foundational pillar of human happiness. And so as you do that, then it becomes a passion.

• 25:07Tom Bilyeu?

  If there's no feedback from the real world, you are not going to turn that thing into a passion. And it certainly isn't already going to be a passion when you look inward and try to figure out what your life's purpose is. You decide. 14. Ship early and get feedback. I am constantly letting people play my video game, Project Heisen, even though it is still 23 months from being ready for early access. But I need to get out of my own assumptions and into the real world. As Mike Tyson says, Everybody has a plan until you get punched in the face. You've got to want to get punched in the face. You've got to want to figure out what's working and what's not. Fifteen.

• 25:52Tom Bilyeu?

  All of us are trapped inside of a frame of reference. Your frame of reference is to you what water is to a fish. You don't even notice it. You don't realize that it's there. And you've got to figure out what's really going on with your ideas. You want your ideas, your beliefs, your abilities, and the things you're trying to create to encounter that real world. You want them to get walloped so that you can figure out how to dodge that punch, how you can hit back even harder. And to do that, you've got to be honest about what's working and what's not. Please, I beg of you, don't lie to yourself. This is where people go because they want to feel good about themselves. You have a thing called the psychological immune system.

• 26:36Tom Bilyeu?

  The psychological immune system's job is to keep you from killing yourself. So it's going to lie to you. It is going to tell you that you're awesome. The world is against you. Those other people are stupid. They just don't understand. And the reality is you've got to be hungry for disconfirming evidence. You've got to want to know, wait, why didn't that work? Why are people rejecting us? Because I own my outcomes entirely. I am not going to blame anybody else, not going to blame the universe, not going to blame God, nothing. I'm going to look at what I can control, which is me. And I'm going to be honest that it's not working as well as I thought it was, that there are reasons. Remember, you live in a deterministic universe, meaning this is just a set of rules.

• 27:18Tom Bilyeu?

  The rules are not different for different people. They're simply the rules. And so if you adjust your approach to adhere to what's going to work within this system, then you can get ahead. And if you're not getting ahead, it is by definition because you're not doing the right things. So adjust as needed. Sixteen. Your first 100 attempts are going to be trash. You still have to do them. Please burn the following idea into your soul. Failure is the most information-rich data stream on planet Earth. You're not going to improve by thinking about things. You're going to improve by taking action and then thinking about why you aren't good enough yet. Now, don't worry.

• 28:04Tom Bilyeu?

  Even if you're bad, just focus on learning and getting better. If you stay in that loop, constantly trying to figure out, "Hey, I did this thing, but it didn't work as well as I thought it would. What exactly do I need to alter in order to get better?" That is a springboard that will send you forward. Seventeen, success is iteration, done longer than anyone else could possibly stand. Here is the good news. Most people quit. Ninety percent of businesses fail to even make a million dollars. Ninety-four percent of businesses fail to make $10 million. It is because everybody breaks emotionally. It is so hard to face an unrelenting parade of failure

• 28:47Tom Bilyeu?

  and recognize that failure is the most information-rich data stream on planet Earth, that most people just stop. It's just too hard. It's too damaging to the self to have to admit that you're not good enough yet. Taking a short break, but there's more Impact Theory after. Stay tuned.

• 29:06Tom Bilyeu?

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• 29:49Tom Bilyeu?

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• 30:12Tom Bilyeu?

  All right. Thanks for sticking with us. Let's jump right back in. That's frame of reference. That is a frame of reference that tells you who you are now is what matters. The thing I want you guys to embrace is it doesn't matter who you are today. It matters who you want to become and the price you're willing to pay to get there. If you want to become someone extraordinary and you're willing to pay the extraordinary price that that's going to demand, there's essentially nothing that you can't accomplish. You just have to keep your wits about you, stay emotionally resilient and keep moving forward. But if you do that, you're going to be ahead of 99% of the world. 18. If you don't measure it, you can't improve it. You've got to track your progress, measure results,

• 30:57Tom Bilyeu?

  find more efficient and effective ways towards your goals. Life is really about something I call the physics of progress. You're going to be wrong a lot. That doesn't matter. What matters is that you measure the outcomes that you're getting, accept responsibility if they're not the outcomes that you want, adjust your approach and move forward. And remember, unless your goals violate the laws of physics, they are achievable. So it's just about finding that right path forward. 19. Ideas don't make you valuable. Execution does. Please do not worry about people stealing your ideas. This gets so many people hung up, but ideas are a dime a dozen. What matters is execution.

• 31:40Tom Bilyeu?

  So when you've got your idea, you're going to run into something that I call the chaos machine. The chaos machine is just life. Everything is so difficult. The economy is constantly changing. Look at what AI is doing to disrupt us. Your competitors are going to try to outcompete you. You're going to get sick. Someone in your family is going to get sick. Life is just hard. If you focus on becoming the kind of person that can just keep moving forward, being resilient, learning from your mistakes, not giving up, focusing on progress, you can start generating momentum. You're just always in a solution-oriented mindset. You're trying to find ways around the problem, over, under, through it. It doesn't matter, but you never accept defeat. You just always ask. Does this violate the laws of physics? Because if it doesn't, there is a path forward. I just have to find it.

• 32:25Tom Bilyeu?

  And if you can stay enthusiastic through that, you're going to win. Churchill used to say, "Success is the ability to go from failure to failure without a loss of enthusiasm." Stay focused, create that momentum. Twenty, learn from the past. Understanding history is the single best way to predict the future. History really does loop, and it loops because we live in a deterministic, rules-based universe. The human mind might be complex, but it is knowable. We act in very similar ways. There's a guy named Ray Dalio. Ray Dalio created a company called Bridgewater.

• 33:07Tom Bilyeu?

  Bridgewater is the largest hedge fund ever created. And he said when asked, "Ray, how were you able to create this incredibly successful company?" And he said, "The answer is, I have learned about economic history." I understand what he calls "the big debt cycle." And he says, "It's a loop that just repeats over and over throughout history." And simply by being able to identify what countries are at what stage of the debt cycle, I just go in and bet that the future is going to look like the past. And by doing that, he built this incredible company. Now, that isn't just true of the economy, that's true of so many things in life. History may not exactly repeat, but it does rhyme.

• 33:52Tom Bilyeu?

  And the reason it rhymes is because the human mind only operates in certain ways. We're not suddenly going to start acting like a zebra or an amoeba. We're going to act like people, and people act in knowable ways. Twenty-one, skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it is. Nobody understands better than I that in the age of AI... It is very hard to do this because it's like the puck is teleporting. It's very hard to understand where it's going to be. But you really do need to try to be two or three steps ahead of everybody else. To do that, you have to figure out the underlying mechanics of how things work. Cause and effect. You want to think about how one thing naturally leads into another.

• 34:37Tom Bilyeu?

  Once you understand the cause and effect of a system, no matter how complex it is, you can begin to navigate it. You can begin to create that momentum because you know, if I do this, I'm likely to get this outcome. But to do that, you really have to get down to the mechanisms that drive everything forward. So start mapping out the most important things in your life. How do relationships work? How does your own mind work? What is the nature of emotions? What triggers your emotions? How does the economy work? These are the kinds of things that are going to have a outsized impact on your life. And if you fail to understand those mechanisms of the human experience, you're forever going to be lost. But once you understand things like your mind follow predictable patterns,

• 35:23Tom Bilyeu?

  then you're able to step outside of that stream and begin altering it from the outside. Not altering the way that it works, but altering the way that you respond to it. Altering the control that it has over your life. So instead of getting mad and lashing out, you can get mad, pause, step outside of that, ask yourself, what's my goal? What behavior in this moment would lead me towards my goal? Instead of just being swept away by the emotion, which is what happens to people that don't understand the human mind. The same kind of thing applies to the economy. The same kind of thing is going to apply to your relationships. Master the underlying mechanics and life gets a whole lot easier. 22. You're going to fail a lot.

• 36:06Tom Bilyeu?

  But as I said before, failure is the most information-rich data stream on planet Earth. Life is like a roguelike. You want to understand, you're gonna go in, you're gonna metaphorically die over and over and over, but by putting yourself in those difficult situations, by forcing yourself to go up against the big boss, by forcing yourself to approach things that you know you're not quite ready for, that odds are you're going to fail at this thing. That is exactly how you acquire the things you need to acquire to go back in and finally beat it. If you live in that loop of being totally fearless of failure, being totally unafraid to embarrass yourself, then you'll actually be able to grow and dominate in whatever it is you're trying to do.

• 36:51Tom Bilyeu?

  But most people are so afraid of being embarrassed that they just never try. They would rather stay outside, not play to win, let other people embarrass themselves, but they never get better. I've always said one of my superpowers is that I'm not afraid to look stupid. And the reason I'm not afraid to look stupid is I know that if I can map cause and effect, that I can do things that other people aren't going to be able to do, because they don't understand how things work. They're steering by emotion, they're steering by intuition. Those things will lead you astray. Think from first principles. First principles thinking is very simple. You're not reasoning by analogy, you're thinking up from physics, literally. So how does the world actually work?

• 37:36Tom Bilyeu?

  How does the human mind actually work? And once you have those things, you can begin to put the pieces together, act in a way that is optimally efficient, because you're not fighting against your own nature, you're not fighting against the nature of the world, you're not afraid to embarrass yourself. You know you just need the information. Once you have the information, then you can make decisions that actually yield the outcomes that you're looking for. 23. Most people want to play on easy mode, but you're gonna put it on hardcore instead. I absolutely love the phrase, pray not for a lighter load, but instead for stronger shoulders. The great news is, you don't have to pray.

• 38:17Tom Bilyeu?

  You can just get stronger by taking on difficult challenges and pushing through all of that difficulty. And getting stronger is far more useful than constantly going to where things are easiest. So many of us, and I've been as guilty as anybody else, but so many of us wanna go where things are easier. So we can look cool, so we can feel strong. But the reality is, all of this is relative. It's how strong are you compared to other people? How good are you at the markets compared to other people? How good are you in terms of your ability to do a job compared to the other people competing for that job?

• 38:55Tom Bilyeu?

  If you want outsized success in life, you're going to need to become stronger than the people that you're going up against. Now, that's gonna be hard, and it will require you to put in the energy and effort to actually build your muscle, metaphorically or literally, but it will also be insanely rewarding. I've said many times, if you wanna get to the mind, go through the body. Go into the gym, get stronger. When you realize, wait a second, I couldn't lift that weight a month ago, but I can lift it now. It does something to the brain. There is a feedback loop that we are hardwired for, that if you get strong in real life,

• 39:38Tom Bilyeu?

  it will show you mentally that you can make change. And once you believe to the core of your existence that you can get stronger in all areas of your life, then you'll start moving in the way that is going to help you become capable of what other people aren't, what you weren't capable of before. It is incredible. Transform the body, transform the mind. But ultimately, the goal is to get stronger shoulders. 24. Your habits are daily updates to your future self. To paraphrase Aristotle, we are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act, but a habit. Be hyper cognizant of the Things you repeatedly do and think.

• 40:21Tom Bilyeu?

  One of the most critical things that you could do to improve the quality of your life would be to create something called a pattern interrupt. I have not found a way to stop myself from thinking that first negative thought, but I've become absolutely ninja level at stopping myself from repeating it. A pattern interrupt is simply something where you say like, "I don't do that. I don't allow myself to repeat negative thoughts." You don't need anything fancier than that. You just need to religiously deploy that against your negative thinking. If you know that certain habits are going to lead you to your goal, then do those things and have a rule in your life that I don't allow myself to have more than one day go by

• 41:04Tom Bilyeu?

  in a week or a month or whatever you're willing to tolerate. I don't allow myself to do that. So if you've already taken that day off for whatever reason, you got sick, something bad happened. If you have a bright line in your life that says, "No, I'm not taking this off again," and you wake up the next day and you're sick or whatever, tough break. You've got a rule in your life. Now, I'm very careful about what rules I put in my life, but once I put a rule in my life, I adhere to it. I'm not 100%, but I'm north of 90%. And that has had a huge positive impact on my life. It does mean that you have to be draconian with yourself. It does mean that you have to learn to punish and reward yourself

• 41:49Tom Bilyeu?

  for adhering or failing to adhere the rules that you have in your life. You want those lines to be incredibly bright so it is clear. One of the rules that I live by in my life is that Monday through Friday, if I'm awake, I'm either working or working out. Now, that usually pisses a bunch of people off, but I've gotten incredible results in my life by adhering to that, say 90-ish percent of the time.

• 42:16Tom Bilyeu?

  There are always going to be exceptions. Don't get hung up on that. Just having that bright line allows me to know instantaneously whether I'm doing the thing that I should be doing or not. Remember, the rules in my life are about the goals I'm trying to achieve, and the goals I'm trying to achieve excite me. So I'm not saying Monday through Friday, if I'm awake, I'm either working out or punishing myself relentlessly and I hate my life. I'm saying I've built a life that I want to adhere to. That's the goal. What are the things that if you put rules in your life, they would allow you to make progress towards something that you really care about? The punchline of life is not money, fame, success, it's none of that. It's fulfillment. So build a life that you want to adhere to,

• 43:01Tom Bilyeu?

  and then put strict, clear lines in your life that allow you to build the habits that are going to move you towards that life you want. Twenty-five. Practice, don't just repeat. So we become what we repeat, fair enough. But the reality is you can blindly repeat something, or you can intentionally practice and therefore improve. Make sure that your practice zeroes in on the things that you need to improve on. Don't just repeat the things you're already good at, which is everybody's temptation. You want to zero in on the things that you're struggling with. Work on them intentionally to get better. Practice can be incredibly boring, but it's how you actually make progress. Twenty-six.

• 43:46Tom Bilyeu?

  Twenty-twenty-six isn't waiting for you to be ready, but if you're ready to meet the challenge, this can be the greatest year of your life. If you need somebody to believe in you, I believe in you. I believe in you not because I know you. I believe in you because, like you, I was at one point stuck. I was depressed. And the reality is, all the things that I've just gone through with you were all the things that slowly, over time, I had to cobble together to get myself moving in the right direction so that I could finally have the kind of success that I wanted to have in my life. And I didn't show any early signs of promise. My mother thought I was going to fail. My best friend thought I was going to fail. My now father-in-law definitely thought I was gonna fail,

• 44:29Tom Bilyeu?

  which is why when I asked for his blessing to marry his daughter, he said no. But nonetheless, I was able to succeed in life. And the reason I was able to succeed is because of all the things we've gone through today. I started cobbling together things that allowed me to make progress, to identify what was I struggling with, to identify what skills I needed to acquire, and then just relentlessly focus on acquiring those skills, even if I had to look stupid. It didn't matter. I just wanted to get better. And by pointing myself at those things, I was actually able to acquire skills. I was actually able to get better. And I know that you guys can do the same thing. I am a hopelessly average person by nature. You don't need to be anything other than average. The average human is designed to grow and get better.

• 45:14Tom Bilyeu?

  And I really hope that's what you invest in in 2026, because I get it, a lot of people are paralyzed right now. The economy is terrible for anyone that doesn't own assets. The job market is softened. AI is making the future seem intolerably uncertain. I understand why people right now are freaking out. I understand why people want to wait and see how all of this plays out before they plan their next move. But standing still is the only thing that's guaranteed to be a mistake. So if you want to smash 2026, set a clear goal for the year. Build the necessary skills to get there by taking on more and more difficult challenges. Learn from your mistakes. Focus entirely on progress that you're gonna measure.

• 45:58Tom Bilyeu?

  Adjust course as needed. And remember, sincere pursuit and progress matter. Actually achieving the goal doesn't. Never lose sight of the fact that the win condition of life is not money, fame, or accolades. It's fulfillment. So get out there, build up the skill tree, take on the hardest bosses you can find. And play to win. If you do that, I know you guys will have an amazing 2026. All right, guys. Until next time, be legendary. Take care. Peace. Let's talk about a pattern that is guaranteed to be killing your progress. You know what you need to do. You need consistent nutrition. We all do. You need vitamins, probiotics, greens.

• 46:39Tom Bilyeu?

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