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FOCUSING ON YOUR WEAKNESSES MAKES YOU WEAKER

When you consider the idea of energy in relation to your biology, you probably think of it as the fuel you use to complete physical tasks. Your legs use energy to run, and your arms use energy to lift weights. But you might be surprised to know that your brain actually uses more energy per pound than almost any other part of your body. Your brain requires a lot of energy to think, focus, make decisions, and generally kick ass at whatever you set your mind to doing.

As I learned from researching my last book, Head Strong, there are lots of ways to increase your brain’s energy supply. But by far the easiest way is to simply stop wasting the brain energy you already have so you can reserve more of it for the things that matter most to you. This boils down to prioritization: focusing your brain energy on highly impactful things you love and getting rid of the things that drain you, no matter what they are; in other words, removing the things that are making you weak and adding more of the things that will make you strong. Some of these things are biological, but many are based on your choices or beliefs, both conscious and unconscious.

It may seem obvious, but there is a reason that more than one hundred high performers mentioned prioritizing their actions and focusing on their strengths as two of their most potent tools for success. The laws in this chapter are built on the ideas of preserving brain energy and maximizing productivity. Incorporating these principles into my life has made a huge difference and has clearly done the same for many people who are at the forefronts of their fields. When you focus on your strengths and stop wasting energy on things that don’t matter, you can spend more time on the things that bring you joy and allow you to contribute meaningfully to the world.

Law 1: Use the Power of No

You have twenty-four hours in a day. You can choose to spend those hours creating things you truly care about, dealing with insignificant matters, or struggling to prove your worth by doing the things that are hardest for you. Master the art of doing what matters most to you—the things that create energy, passion, and quality of life with the lowest investment of energy. Say “no” more often. Make fewer decisions so you have more power for your mission.

Long before I interviewed him, Stewart Friedman was my professor at the University of Pennsylvania Wharton School of Business. He rocked my world by showing me that I was investing my energy in all the wrong places. In addition to being a professor of leadership, Stewart was one of the top one hundred senior executives at Ford Motor Company, responsible for leadership development across the entire company. He also created the Total Leadership Program, which develops top leaders by teaching them how to balance work and life, because he proved that leaders without balance make crappy leaders. Working Mother named Friedman one of America’s twenty-five most influential men to have made things better for working parents, and his widely cited publications and internationally recognized expertise led Thinkers50 to select him as one of the world’s top fifty leadership and management thinkers. There is no doubt that he has changed the game for how tens of thousands of people, including me, work and live every day, both with his teaching and his book Leading the Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and Life.

In our conversation, Stew explained that when he examined the lives of successful people, he found that at very high levels of performance, they all demonstrated the importance of one key concept: being aware and honest about what was most important to them. It’s a simple concept, but it is often a tough one to execute. Stewart says that in the business of everyday life, most of us don’t take the time to ask ourselves what we really stand for. This makes it difficult to make decisions that are in line with our goals with any kind of clarity. Knowing what matters to you brings clarity to your decision making and enables you to then do the really important work of saying no to many (maybe even most) things and focusing your attention and energy exclusively on the things that matter most to you.

To gain clarity about your values, Stew recommends thinking about the year 2039, twenty years from when you may be reading this book. What will a day in your life be like in 2039? Whom will you be with? What will you be doing? What impact will you be having? Write all of that down. Keep in mind that you are creating not a contract or an action plan but a compelling image of an achievable future that serves as a window into your true values. Once you have this information, it will be easy to decide where to invest your energy instead of allowing others to focus your priorities for you or getting distracted with drudgery.

Once you know what matters most to you, Stewart says, the second step is to determine who matters most to you. This is a challenging question for anyone, but Stew suggests that real leaders take the time to ask themselves, “Who matters to me, what do those people want from me, and what do I want from them?” Think about the people in your life who have been influential in shaping your worldview. They should be on the list.

I learned a lot from my time with Stew, and in fact, he made me aware of some uncomfortable truths about where I was spending my energy. One of my core values, I realized, is continual self-improvement, but I had set that aside to focus on my career. So I made a decision to do something every day that makes me better. This small commitment helps me invest my time and energy wisely and focus on ways to continually grow and challenge myself.

In order to get better at this, I sought out someone who lives and breathes self-improvement: Tony Stubblebine. Tony is on a mission to make coaching the fastest path to self-improvement in every field, from business to education to fitness. He is the CEO and founder of Coach.me, a company based on the idea that positive reinforcement and community support work in tandem to help people achieve their goals.

Tony sets a decision budget for himself every day. He allows himself only a certain number of decisions, whether they are big or small, and then he “spends” them throughout the day. For this reason, the actions he takes in the morning will largely determine how efficiently he spends the rest of the day. If he wastes a lot of decisions in the morning, he is left avoiding even the simplest of decisions for the rest of the day in order to stay “on budget.”

He didn’t start out that way, though. He used to check his phone and social media accounts as soon as he woke up each day. Sound familiar? From the moment his alarm went off, his head was filled with all the things he felt he needed to do and people he “had to” respond to. Every subsequent step required him to make a decision. Which email should he respond to first? Should he say yes to that opportunity? Should he “like” someone’s post? Should he check out the link a friend sent him? He found that those decisions were wearing down his budget before he even started on the really important tasks he wanted to get to that day.

Over time, Tony learned that as a CEO, his most important daily habits were his decision-making habits, particularly when it came to which opportunities he was going to say yes or no to. And since he began to deplete his decision budget so early in the day, he felt he wasn’t able to make the most effective decisions for his company.

This realization led him to set healthier decision-making habits for himself. Now he prioritizes starting his day with a clear mind. He meditates as soon as he wakes up and then writes down his to-do list. To prioritize this list, he asks himself which of the tasks have the potential to significantly change the outcome of his mission. After practicing this habit for a while, he began to realize that many of the items on his to-do lists weren’t really critical.

The more clarity he gained about his priorities and which tasks would move the needle in the right direction, the more he found he was able to make quick but informed decisions. Eventually he grew so clear on what was important to him and his company that when opportunities arose it was easy for him to say yes or no without having to negotiate an answer or waste time making a decision. If an opportunity was not going to change the outcome, an automatic no was his habitual response.

This isn’t always easy, which is why it’s a good idea to work with a coach to help you figure out what habits are hindering you. I hired Jeff Spencer, who cut his teeth as the lead performance coach for top Tour de France teams—including the winners—nine years in a row before turning to coaching entrepreneurs. A good coach will help you see where you’re wasting energy in your life without knowing it, predict where you’re going to waste energy next as you scale, and hold you accountable for changing it. Jeff made such an impact on me that I interviewed him on Bulletproof Radio, too!

Tony’s solution of creating a decision budget mirrors the findings of one of my favorite studies of all time. In 2010, researchers in Israel studied how judges make decisions about whether or not convicted criminals are approved for parole.¹ After examining more than a thousand parole hearings over the course of ten months, they uncovered a fascinating and very strong connection between the decisions and the time of day they were issued: If a hearing was held early in the day, the judge gave a favorable ruling about 65 percent of the time. But as the day went on, the likelihood of a favorable ruling steadily declined all the way to zero after a noticeable bump back up to 65 percent right after lunch. This trend was consistent across many variables, including the type of crime committed, the criminal’s education, and his or her behavior while in prison.

So what was going on with those judges? It turns out that making all of those decisions about whether or not criminals should be granted parole was using up their decision-making budget, also known as willpower. Willpower seems like an abstract concept. Some of us have a lot of willpower and others don’t, right? Wrong! In reality, willpower is like a muscle. You can exercise it to make it stronger, and it gets fatigued when it’s worked too much. When your willpower muscle is fatigued, you start making bad decisions. And you do it without noticing.

The idea of a “willpower muscle” is partly based on our understanding of the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC), a little C-shaped part of your brain right by your temple. Scientists believe that the ACC is the seat of willpower. Think of your ACC as maintaining an energetic bank account. When you start your day, it’s flush with energy, but every time you make a decision or exert mental effort, you withdraw a little bit of the balance. Choosing what to wear in the morning takes out a little bit. Deciding what to make for breakfast uses a little bit more. Bigger decisions, such as deciding whether or not a criminal will be granted parole or not, empty your account faster. If you overdraw your energetic bank account with trivial decisions, your ACC stops responding well and your willpower runs out. That’s when you give in to bad decisions.

This phenomenon is called decision fatigue: the more decisions you make, the worse your judgment becomes. Corporations have known about decision fatigue for years. That’s why they put brightly packaged candy up front at store registers. As you make decision after decision while shopping, you’re depleting your energetic bank account. By the time you’re ready to check out, you’re more likely to be experiencing decision fatigue—and a craving for a quick hit of sugar to give your brain more energy—so you give in and buy a candy bar.

Judges are not immune to this phenomenon; they use up a lot of willpower throughout the day hearing cases. At the end of the day, when the energy balance in their ACC is running low, it becomes easier to deny parole than to try to negotiate a more complicated decision. This also helps explain why the judges in the study granted more paroles right after lunch than at other times in the afternoon; their ACCs had just received a hit of energy.

One wonders whether the type of lunch they ate was an important variable. It only makes sense that a lunch designed to deliver sustained energy would lead to better decisions. Silicon Valley lore says that many years ago, the once dominant computer company Sun Microsystems banned pasta from the lunch menu used for on-site meetings because its executives noticed that meetings tended to tank after high-carb lunches. The reality is that what you eat does impact your willpower—though it is easier to stop making meaningless decisions than it is to change what you eat (I do both).

The good news is, now that you know about decision fatigue, you can be sure to schedule all of your parole hearings for the morning. Even better, you can free up more willpower to start making better decisions so that you don’t end up being convicted of a crime in the first place! You can do this in two ways: by building up the amount of energy stored in your ACC and by reducing the number of decisions you make throughout the day to preserve your mental energy.

You can build your “willpower muscle” the same way you strengthen any muscle in your body: by doing hard things you don’t want to do. A simple trick I use is to keep a heavy-duty spring-loaded hand-grip trainer on my desk. When I think about it, I squeeze it until it burns and my arm tells me to stop and then keep squeezing. Another technique I use is to hold my breath until my lungs scream at me to breathe and then hold it longer. When you successfully do the things you don’t want to do, everything else seems easier by comparison. Your willpower grows. But consider not pushing your willpower on a day when you have other major decisions to make. On those days, don’t burn out your willpower reserves before a crucial meeting or presentation.

Some game changers find that simply eliminating as many decisions as possible offers them more mental clarity. Every time you avoid making a choice, you save a little bit of willpower that you can then put toward something that will have a greater impact. Many high performers have developed day-to-day routines that are so dialed in that they don’t even think about them. These people simply show up and execute with extreme focus and energy.

Experiment with tracking your decisions for a few days, and then start automating the ones that are a waste of energy. Meal and wardrobe decisions are two common ones that high performers tend to automate. Why do you think Steve Jobs wore a black turtleneck and New Balance sneakers every day, Mark Zuckerberg has ten identical T-shirts in his closet, or most corporate CEOs cycle through three or four suits every week (and I’m usually wearing one of several Bulletproof T-shirts and ugly but massively comfortable toe shoes when you see me online)? When you reach for some version of the same outfit every day, you never have to worry about what to wear. This may seem like a minor decision, but it saves a lot of mental energy that you can then use for something more meaningful.

Admittedly, this is usually easier for men than women, but either gender can opt for a “capsule” wardrobe if you’re not ready to go full Steve Jobs. To do this, pick three or four tops, bottoms, jackets, and shoes, all in neutral colors such as gray and navy. Plan so that everything in your closet matches, to the point where you can get dressed in the dark and still look good. Then get rid of all your other clothes so that you have only twenty or so items in your closet. You can find capsule wardrobe guides online for inspiration. Some popular clothing brands now even tag “capsule” pieces in their catalogues. There’s nothing wrong with saving a few special pieces for social events and formal occasions. The point is to avoid having to make daily decisions about what to wear when no one will notice whether your outfit is awesome or not.

You can also create a sort of “capsule diet” by cycling through the same few meals. To do this successfully, find five or six different tasty recipes you can cook that your whole family likes. Then you can buy groceries and cook on autopilot without having to make lots of decisions about what to buy and cook each week. When you get tired of one of the meals, swap it out for a new one. One of my most impactful willpower hacks has actually been none other than Bulletproof Coffee. I don’t ever have to think about what I’m having for breakfast, and I save the time I would have otherwise spent preparing a meal. You can do the same thing with whatever breakfast gives you the most energy with the fewest decisions and the least amount of work.

When you use these techniques to cut down on decision making, you free up a tremendous amount of mental energy that you can use however you like. I recommend devoting it to your most meaningful life work. Not sure what that is yet? Here’s a hint: you decide.

Action Items

 Take a deep breath. Now hold it until you’re sure you have to breathe. Hold it for eight more seconds. (Don’t do this if you’re driving or have health problems.)

 Take note—mentally or on paper—every time you make a decision for a week. As you notice yourself making a decision, ask yourself two questions:Did this decision matter?Was there a way to avoid making this decision by ignoring it, automating it, or asking someone else who loves making that kind of decision to make it instead?

 Start now. Name two decisions you make every day that add absolutely no value to your life. Write them down here so you don’t have to decide to do it later.Useless daily decision 1:________________________________________________________Useless daily decision 2:________________________________________________________

 Now stop making them.

 Take a look at your breakfast. Can you automate that decision? What’s your new “no-thought” default breakfast going to be? Try it for a week.

 Go through your closet and put the most compatible stuff in the front so you can spend a few days making fewer decisions about getting dressed. If you like how you feel, go for a capsule wardrobe!

 Consider working with an experienced performance coach. There are dozens of quality coach training programs. Look for a trainer certified by the International Association of Systemic Teaching (IASC). (I’ve trained more than a thousand coaches in the Bulletproof-inspired IASC-certified Human Potential Coach program who would be pleased to help you, too!)

Recommended Listening

 Stew Friedman, “Be Real, Be Whole, Be Innovative,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 83

 Stew Friedman, “Success, Leadership & Less Work,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 196

 Jeff Spencer, “Success Intoxication & the Champions Blueprint,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 213

 Tony Stubblebine, “Getting Out of Your Robot Mindset,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 296

Recommended Reading

 Stewart D. Friedman, Leading the Life You Want: Skills for Integrating Work and Life

Law 2: Never Discover Who You Are

To change the world, tap into your strengths, but do not passively discover who you are. Actively decide and create who you are. If you abdicate this duty by allowing others to tell you who to be, you will struggle greatly in life and likely fail to achieve greatness. So discover your passion and follow it, but do it as the person you create. The difference is a life of mediocrity and creeping misery compared to a life of freedom and passion.

Brendon Burchard is the founder of the High Performance Academy, the host of The Charged Life podcast, and the author of the number one New York Times bestsellers The Motivation Manifesto: 9 Declarations to Claim Your Personal Power, The Charge: Activating the 10 Human Drives That Make You Feel Alive, and The Millionaire Messenger: Make a Difference and a Fortune Sharing Your Advice. Brendon has the number one–rated personal development show on YouTube and is one of the one hundred most followed public figures on Facebook. His educational work has helped millions of people around the globe achieve the results they are looking for in the areas of business, marketing, and personal development, and his programs, such as Experts Academy and World’s Greatest Speaker Training, have helped thousands of people—including me. So of course I had to interview him!

Getting time on Brendon’s calendar to meet him in Portland was surprisingly easy because he manages his time like a boss. Of course, it helps that we’re friends, but he genuinely has more free time than anyone else I’ve met at his level of achievement because he has consciously built his life that way. The man truly practices what he preaches at every level.

Brendon believes that humankind’s main motivation is to seek personal freedom, which he defines as the ability to fully express who we are and pursue the things that are meaningful and important to us. But we have two enemies that get in our way every single time. One of them is self-oppression, our tendency to put ourselves down. The other is social oppression, the people who judge us and fail to be supportive of who we are or what we want. Brendon suggests that we can overcome these two barriers by developing what he terms a “competence-confidence loop.” The more you understand something, the more confidence you will have to pursue it further, despite what anyone else may say. And of course, the more you pursue a subject and learn about it, the closer you’ll get to true mastery.

This strategy is similar to Stewart Friedman’s advice in the sense that both require knowing what matters most to you. But Brendon believes that we should be intentional about our aspirations rather than focusing on what may feel the most practically achievable. He recommends recording three words on your phone that describe your highest, best self. These are the words you would most want someone to use when describing you, and they should apply to both personal and professional settings. Some of the words I’ve heard from game changers are: engaged, grateful, energized, warm, loving, devoted, and impactful. Choose three that resonate with you, then set an alarm to go off three times a day and remind you of this aspirational sense of self.

When you act without intention, you will experience self-doubt. But when you are reminded of who you want to be throughout the day, you are more likely to act in accordance with your highest goals. This process serves as an endless feedback loop that leads you to find more confidence in yourself and thus to become more competent. You can actively generate the emotions that you most want to feel by doing things that are in line with your vision of the person you want to be. Brendon believes that the most important skills to master are setting intentions and taking the necessary steps to become that person. In other words, instead of discovering who you are, you become powerful when you decide who you are.

No conversation about acting with intention would be complete without input from Robert Greene, the author of the New York Times bestsellers The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction, The 33 Strategies of War, The 50th Law (coauthored with 50 Cent), and Mastery. In addition to having a strong fan base within the business world and a deep following in Washington, DC, Greene’s books are hailed by everyone from war historians to the biggest names in the music industry (including Jay-Z and 50 Cent) because he has relentlessly studied the world’s best to see what makes them tick.

I sought out Robert because long before I interviewed him, he transformed my career. Twenty years ago, I helped to start part of the company that held Google’s very first servers, eventually attending board meetings with people who were twice my age and about a hundred times more experienced. (Of course, I was the most junior person in the room, so I wasn’t allowed to speak at those board meetings, but I got to witness what went on in them.) As a rational engineering kind of guy, I simply did not understand the powerful executives around me. Their choices and the way they conducted themselves often made no sense to me. They looked irrational, if not downright crazy.

Then I picked up a book that changed that dynamic. It was called The 48 Laws of Power. This incredibly well-researched book included stories from throughout history examining how people in power had gotten there and stayed there and elegantly distilled lessons from those stories into actionable “laws.” A week after I read it, I sat in the next executive staff meeting and realized: These people are not crazy. They’re powerful! The rules they are following are entirely rational, but they’re not engineering rules. They’re power rules.

That taught me how to function at a new level in Silicon Valley, how to work in a venture capital firm, how to raise money, how to work with powerful people, and how to do what I now do at Bulletproof every day. If I hadn’t known those rules that enabled me to start thinking like a chess player, I wouldn’t be where I am now. The 48 Laws of Power not only changed the course of my career, but it also inspired the structure of this book.

When I sat down with Robert and asked him about his views on becoming the person you want to be, he said that most of us have always known who we wanted to be—we’ve just forgotten. When you were a kid, it was probably pretty obvious. He refers to the subjects you were inclined to pursue, even when you were as young as three years old, as your primal inclinations. These are your basic strengths, and they should not be taken lightly, because you are a completely unique person. No one else has ever had or ever will have your exact set of molecules or your DNA. And your unique brain learns at a much faster rate when you are learning about something that excites you. When you want to learn, you do. Robert says that if you’re forced to learn something that you’re not interested in, you will absorb only one-tenth of the information that you would if you were deeply engaged in the subject.

Yet when most people choose a career, they heed the well-meaning advice of their parents and friends or chase money instead of pursuing the things they truly care about. You can get pretty far this way, but you’ll never develop true mastery in something you don’t love because you won’t be learning at your optimum rate. Robert says that if everyone discovered the one thing they really loved and spent all of his or her time and energy on it, mastery would develop organically. I can attest to the fact that it does.

It really comes down to playing to your strengths, something I wish I had learned to do sooner. When I was starting out in my career, I sucked at project management. I didn’t like the way it felt to be bad at something, so I decided to get better at it. I put all of my energy into becoming a certified project manager and ended up just barely average at something that drained my energy and went against my natural strengths. I realized that I could have better used the energy I’d wasted becoming a less than halfway decent project manager to really move the needle in other areas. So I deleted Microsoft Project and worked with experienced project managers who seemed to have magical unicorn project management powers but in reality were simply good at their jobs because they loved what they did and had mastered the necessary skill set.

Later, I was able to put this lesson into practice when I went to Wharton, where people worked really hard to get straight A’s. I decided ahead of time to get base knowledge and just barely pass the classes that actively drained me in order to free up energy to dive deep into areas that fascinated me. I ended up intentionally getting a D in several classes, but I got the same MBA that my straight-A friends did without feeling like a failure. Focusing on the areas I loved did more for my career than spending extra time on areas of study that didn’t light me up.

With coaching from the legendary entrepreneur coach Dan Sullivan of Strategic Coach, I have learned to prioritize my actions into three buckets: things that drain my energy, things I don’t mind and are important and useful, and things that give me energy and bring me joy. My goal is to break my daily actions down so that I spend none of my time on tasks that fall into the first category, 10 percent of my time on the second category, and 90 percent of my time in the final category, the one that Robert Greene calls primal inclinations. When I find myself drifting too far from the goal, I reset my actions.

This may feel impossible to you right now. Most people spend the majority of their time on tasks that fall into the first category, but it truly doesn’t have to be that way if you use the competence-confidence loop to create the motivation to become the person you want to be and focus your energy on your primal inclinations.

Action Items

 Find three words that describe your highest, best self and write them down where you’ll see them throughout the day. Or do what Brendon does and set a phone alert to go off three times a day to remind you of these words. Write them down here. Do it now.Word 1: __________________________________________Word 2: __________________________________________Word 3: __________________________________________

 Identify your primal inclinations—the things you love that you just can’t help learning about.________________________________________________________________

 Write down what percentage of your time you spend doing things you hate, things you don’t mind, and things that light your fire. Write them down here.Percentage of time spent on things that drain me:__________________Percentage of time spent on things I don’t mind:__________________Percentage of time spent on things that give me joy, including my primal inclination:____________

 Now do what it takes to shift your ratio to 0:10:90.

Recommended Listening

 Brendon Burchard, “Confidence, Drive & Power,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 190

 Brendon Burchard, “Hacking High Performers & Productivity Tricks,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 262

 Robert Greene, “The 48 Laws of Power,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 380

 Dan Sullivan, “Think About Your Thinking: Lessons in Entrepreneurship,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 485

Recommended Reading

 Brendon Burchard, High Performance Habits: How Extraordinary People Become That Way

 Robert Greene, The 48 Laws of Power

Law 3: When You Say You’ll Try, You Are Lying

The words you choose matter more than you think, not just to the people you speak to but also to your own nervous system. Your language sets your limits and to a great extent shapes your destiny. When you unconsciously use words that make you weak, you stop trusting yourself and lead others to question your integrity. Game changers deliberately choose truthful words to build trust and break free from self-imposed limitations. So stop trying and start doing.

My dear friend JJ Virgin is a well-known health and wellness expert and a four-time New York Times bestselling author who has benefited hundreds of thousands of people with her work in nutrition. On top of that, she teaches some of the most innovative experts in medicine how to use their knowledge to reach the people who need it. A few years ago, JJ’s teenage son, Grant, was out walking to a friend’s house when a hit-and-run driver left him for dead on the side of the road. Doctors told JJ that it wasn’t worth airlifting Grant to the only hospital that could perform the risky surgery he needed to save his heart because it would cause his brain to bleed out. She could have his heart or his brain, they said, but not both.

JJ, being the dedicated mother and unstoppable badass that she is, overruled the doctors in charge of Grant’s care time and time again as Grant went on to defeat the odds with her help. He survived the surgery, he woke up from his coma (which doctors had said would never happen), and he began to read, walk, and then run. JJ attributes Grant’s survival against the odds to many things, from cutting-edge therapies and good nutrition to skilled surgeons. But there was one action she took that she believes played a critical role in her son’s recovery: she was intentional about the words that she and others used around him.

Even when Grant was in a coma and doctors believed he couldn’t hear her, JJ never expressed any doubts about Grant’s recovery in front of him, and she didn’t allow the doctors or nurses to, either. This is because JJ knows that our bodies listen to our words at a subtle level. At his bedside, JJ told Grant over and over that this was going to be the best thing that had ever happened to him and he was going to come out of it at 110 percent. When a doctor told her, “We’re doing our best to get him to the point where he’ll be able to walk again if he ever wakes up,” JJ quickly ushered the doctor out of Grant’s earshot. She didn’t want him to hear that not waking up and never walking again were even distant possibilities.

Sure enough, when Grant woke up, he already had the intention of recovering to 110 percent. He never considered the possibility of not being able to walk again. And I have no doubt that the words JJ so carefully chose played a huge role in Grant’s incredible recovery. Words are powerful. They set expectations and limits and send messages to our brains and even our bodies about how much we are capable of. Language is a part of your mental software. Use it consciously and with precision, and you will achieve things you probably never thought you could.

Perhaps no one knows the power of words better than Jack Canfield, the man behind Chicken Soup for the Soul, who has sold several hundred million copies of his books and broke a world record when he had seven books on the New York Times bestseller list at one time. Jack’s focus is on distilling what makes people successful, culminating in his book The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be. In my interview with him, we talked about how language impacts success, and I was surprised to hear that he keeps a list of limiting words that he guides successful people to avoid.

I do this, too. As I used biohacking to upgrade my abilities to focus on and pay attention to my words as they came out of my mouth, I discovered that I often used self-limiting words without even realizing it. Even when I was in a deep state of consciousness using neurofeedback, I was unknowingly setting intentions by using those limiting words. My subconscious was choosing safe words that made unimportant things feel huge and other words that allowed me wiggle room to avoid doing the big things I wanted to do.

I call such limiting words “weasel words.” People who work at Bulletproof know that I’ll call out someone in a meeting who uses weak language in a subconscious attempt to avoid responsibility. Similarly, Jack says that he keeps empty fishbowls in his offices, and if one of his team members uses a weasel word, he or she has to put two dollars into the bowl. This is meant not as punishment but to show that there is a cost to using such words. Clear speech means clear thinking and clear execution. By listening to and analyzing the words you use on a regular basis, you can learn to stop unconsciously programming yourself to have limited performance.

There are four particularly insidious weasel words that you likely use many times a day without even noticing it. Use them in front of me, and I’ll make sure you start to notice it (at least, if I like you!).

WEASEL WORD 1: CAN’T

This word is first on Jack’s list and mine, too. It is perhaps the most destructive word you use every day. The word “can’t” means there is absolutely no possible way you can do something. It robs you of power and crushes innovative thinking. When you say, “I can’t do that,” what you actually mean is one of four things: you could use some help doing it; you don’t currently have the tools to do it; you simply don’t know how to do it; or you just don’t want to do it. Or heck, maybe no one in history has figured out how to do “it” yet. Given enough resources and enough problem-solving creativity, you can do whatever it is. It may or may not be worth the time and effort to figure out, or maybe it’s just a stupid idea, but it’s not impossible.

The true meaning of “can’t” is obvious to your conscious brain, but it isn’t so obvious to your unconscious brain because that part of your brain doesn’t understand context. Yet it is still listening to the words you use. This miscommunication between the two parts of your brain creates confusion and subtle stress. If you start to use words that mean the same thing to both your conscious brain and your unconscious brain, you will be a calmer and more empowered person. And because other people also hear your words on both a conscious and unconscious level, when you choose your words more intentionally, other people will tend to trust you more.

This lesson came into action for me as I was writing this book. I was catching a flight to New York to be on The Dr. Oz Show, but I arrived at the airport fifty-nine minutes before takeoff instead of one hour. Even though I had checked in online for the flight, I couldn’t get through the security line without a printed boarding pass. The United gate agent was adamant that she would not print one for me. She even said, “You can’t make this flight.” Because I am programmed to hear “can’t” as a lie, it caused me to think about the problem differently. So I asked another, more helpful airline for the cheapest ticket to anywhere and bought it, which provided me with a precious printed boarding pass to get through security and board my original flight. It felt good to walk up to the United gate and see the look of disbelief on the face of the agent who had said I couldn’t get past security without a boarding pass for her flight. It felt even better to make the flight so that I didn’t fail to show up for a commitment.

“Can’t” is always a lie. Learn to see it that way, and you’ll solve problems differently. Go one week without using the word “can’t.” Normally, I would say, “I bet you can’t do it,” but it would be more honest for me to say, “I bet it will be very difficult until you have practiced.”

WEASEL WORD 2: NEED

Parents use the word “need” with kids all the time: “We need to go, so you need to wear a coat.” The truth is, you didn’t need to go, and you didn’t need to wear a coat. Your parents might have wanted to leave, and you would simply have been cold without a coat. By telling your primitive systems that you need something, you end up turning a desire for something into a straight-up survival issue. On a deep level your primitive brain believes that you’ll die if you don’t get the things you say you “need,” even though your conscious brain knows better.

Of course, you probably use this word in all sorts of other ways, too. “I need a snack” or “I need a new coat” are two good examples. You do not need those things, and lying to your brain about what you need is making you weak. The harsh reality is that there are few things you actually need: oxygen every minute, water every five days, and food before you starve after a couple months of hunger. You need shelter, and you need a way to stay warm. The rest are wants, not needs. Be honest by choosing the word “need” only when it is 100 percent truthful; the rest of the time replace it with the truth. You want. You choose. You decide.

This matters even more if you’re in a leadership position. Our systems aren’t good at distinguishing between real and perceived threats. Imagine the panic and bad decisions you can initiate if your team believes at some level that they will die if they don’t do something you suggest they “need” to do. In a physical state of stress, they would be unable to perform and make wise decisions. You can motivate people to run away from something scary, or you can motivate them to run toward something amazing. So instead of telling my team at Bulletproof that we need to hit a deadline, I say, “This is mission critical, and we’re going to do it. What obstacles can I remove for you? What will help us do this?” That truthful language means we can have an honest conversation if we’re really not going to be able to hit the deadline. People who believe the “need” lie will run like maniacs toward a deadline they know isn’t going to happen because that’s what you do when your life is at stake. So stop needing, and start wanting. You’re not going to die.

Challenge yourself to go a week without using the word “need” unless it’s true. You will be tempted to use the word as long as you qualify it, but even in those cases it is unlikely to actually be true. For example, you might say, “We need to leave now if we want to get to the store before it closes.” Even with this qualifier in place, this is still a limited way of thinking. What if you were to simply call the store and asked the people there to stay open a few minutes late? Or simply asked a friend to go? By using the word “need,” you put an unconscious box around the solution set, create subconscious stress, and limit your creativity.

WEASEL WORD 3: BAD

In reality, very few things are inherently “bad”; bad is a value judgment you assign to something. The problem with labeling things as “bad” is that your subconscious listens and prepares you psychologically and biochemically for impending doom. The vast majority of the time, when you say something is bad, you actually mean that you don’t like it or don’t want it. For instance, you might say, “I was planning a picnic, but now it’s raining, and that’s bad.” The truth is that you can have lunch somewhere else, probably without ants. And you’re damned lucky to be able to have lunch at all today. So is it really bad that it’s raining? Nope.

People tend to use the word “bad” a lot in relation to food, which also creates problems. Some foods work better for certain people than others. Those foods aren’t good or bad—and neither are the people who eat them! Even eating something obviously “bad,” such as an MSG-filled vegan pseudoburger, is better than starving to death. The word “bad” creates a false binary. The world doesn’t naturally fall into two camps. Sure, there are things that are truly tragic, such as violence and natural disasters, but when it comes to our everyday lives, judging things through a filter of either good or bad is limiting and creates unnecessary obstacles and black-and-white thinking. When you label something “bad,” you miss out on an opportunity to figure out how it can be good.

WEASEL WORD 4: TRY

“Try” always presupposes a likelihood of failure. Think about it. If someone says he’s going to try to pick you up at the airport when you land, are you going to count on him to do it? No way. You know that there is a good chance he won’t show up. However, if someone says he is going to pick you up, you can believe it. If you tell yourself that you’re going to try to stay on a diet or try to read a book, you’ve subconsciously already planned to fail. You won’t do it.

Jack illustrates the power of “try” during his powerful keynote presentations when he asks audience members to put something (a notebook, a pen, or whatever else they have handy) on their laps and lift it up. After they do it and put it back down, he says, “Now this time just try to pick it up.” That confuses everyone, and they don’t move for a moment. Then a few people start to pick up the item, but suddenly they’re struggling with the same item they lifted effortlessly a moment ago, as if it had gained several pounds. This is because as soon as you hear the word “try,” you assume that whatever you are going to “try” to do might not be possible. It gives your brain an out.

The point is that in order to become a better human, you want to push your brain to perform at its full potential instead of giving yourself an excuse to fail. This doesn’t mean that you have to do everything that is asked of you. If you don’t think that something is the best use of your time and mental energy, you can honestly and clearly (and kindly) say no. But if you choose to take something on, commit to it with all your might. As Yoda said, “There is no try. Only do.” Do you think he developed Jedi powers merely by trying? No way, and the point is that neither will you.

Action Items

 Ask someone at work and someone at home to call you out when you use weasel words and to fine you a dollar to put into a jar for charity (or the office coffee fund) when you do.

 Set your computer’s autocorrect to automatically capitalize or highlight weasel words so you’ll have to change them to more truthful words. It’s amazing how frequent reminders drive behavior change!

Recommended Listening

 JJ Virgin, “Fighting for Miracles,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 386

 Jack Canfield, “Go Beyond Chicken Soup & Confront Your Fears,” Bulletproof Radio, episode 471

Recommended Reading

 JJ Virgin, Miracle Mindset: A Mother, Her Son, and Life’s Hardest Lessons

 Jack Canfield with Janet Switzer, The Success Principles: How to Get from Where You Are to Where You Want to Be