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05 Dec

Posted at 11:21h in Career & Purpose, Communication & Rapport, Entrepreneurship by

How to get invited to give a TEDx talk

“I'm a great believer in luck, and I find the harder I work, the more I have of it.”

- Thomas Jefferson

I have the quote above engraved on a silver cup that my parents gave me for Christmas ten years ago. It's been on my desk ever since.

Last month you all made a dream of mine come true.

I was invited to stand on the TEDx stage in San Francisco and give a talk on our core message and purpose at Live Your Legend: How to Find & Do Work You Love. Five days ago that video was published on YouTube. As of this morning it had 40,147 views, 447 comments, 1,010 likes, and 15 dislikes. ;) [Update - August 2014: nearly 1,700,000 views!] One of the members of the TEDx community wrote to me yesterday and said our talk was the #1 trending TEDx talk on YouTube. On top of that, 1,801 people joined our community here - Welcome to the adventure! I am still pinching myself as I write this... So I thought it'd be a worthwhile exercise (both for me and for all of you) to recap exactly how this dream came true and maybe sort out what was blind luck and what might have been luck that was a little more in our control - because with any dream becoming reality, there's a lot of both. Because more often than not, when things like this happen to people, the world tends to like to dismiss it as, "Oh, he just got lucky," or, "Of course they got to speak and their talk got a ton of traction. Look at the size of his following!" and on and on. But we must be very careful not to confuse the type of luck we can control with the type that's plain dumb…

28 Nov

Posted at 13:52h in Emotions & Happiness, Health & Energy!, Love & Relationships by

live to see your children grow up

“First we make our habits, then our habits make us.”

- Charles C. Noble

Many of us just got finished with possibly the most unhealthy (and fun) day of the year in an American's life - Thanksgiving. And we are all about to dive into the most unhealthy few weeks of everyone's year - the holidays. I couldn't imagine a better time to talk about the most powerful habit on the planet...

The One Habit That Will Get You Anything You Want

I believe health & fitness are the most powerful tools in the world. I guess I'm kind of fanatical when it comes to the body... Three weeks ago I attended a TEDxSF UCSF conference on Global Health. It's so mind blowing and encouraging to see how many bad ass, smart, talented and motivated people are tackling such a huge problem. Then two weeks ago I went on a run with world-champion ultra-runner Scott Jurek, author of the book Eat & Run, which was damn inspiring. In two weeks, I'll be running our second-annual Accidental Marathon with a few close buddies. It's why I attempt all kinds of fitness challenges like running an ultra-marathon in Tahoe, doing 31 days of Bikram hot yoga in a row, swimming from Alcatraz and across the Golden Gate Bridge and the 12-hour Goruck Challenge.

19 Nov

Posted at 13:35h in Uncategorized by

Thank You

"Gratitude unlocks the fullness of life. It turns what we have into enough, and more. It turns denial into acceptance, chaos to order, confusion to clarity. It can turn a meal into a feast, a house into a home, a stranger into a friend."

- Melody Beattie

On The Power of Gratitude (and Team Work)...

This week I have a challenge for all of us.

I want to see how powerful our community at Live Your Legend can be when we work towards a common goal. That's where The Gratitude Challenge comes in (more on that below). I can't wait to see what we do with this!

Every day I try to spend at least a few minutes thinking through the people and things I'm thankful for. Some days I spend much more time, and others I forget to do it at all.

14 Nov

Posted at 10:41h in Career & Purpose, Entrepreneurship by

passive income is a lie

"If you want real passive income, dedicate your life to making the people around you better, every single day."

-Anonymous

Thanks for all of your inspiring responses to our "Name our Movement" contest last week. Wow! We're still sorting out the best name, but we have chosen the 10 random folks to win a free LYL shirt. We will email the 10 winners this week. Now for today's topic... Btw, pardon the occasional unsavory language below - when I get on a rant, sometimes I can't help myself!

The Biggest Lie on The Internet

Okay so I have a bit of a bone to pick. The more time I spend online, the more I learn about how to build this business and the more I get requests from people for help, the more I hear the same damn word and it's about to cause me to jump out my window (which would suck since I only live on the third floor). The phrase is... Wait for it...

06 Nov

Posted at 14:18h in Career & Purpose, Entrepreneurship by

how to turn a message into a movement

"A message becomes a movement when every member of the mission becomes its leader. And when everyone starts to lead, a revolution begins."

Lately I've been doing a lot of research on revolutions.

I've been curious how they start, how they grow and how they create change in a lasting and meaningful way. Why? Because at Live Your Legend, we are leading our own revolution. And it's starting to catch on in a pretty big way - 100% thanks to all of you. In the last few months, readers have held LYL Live Meetups in Los Angles, Australia, Pittsburgh and New York, and more are already being planned for Minneapolis, Argentina, Germany, Switzerland, Paris and China in the next couple months. One of our inspiring members, Mark Arkell, has even started a Live Your Legend Club at his university in Ontario, Canada where he's completing his PhD in philosophy! It's hard for me to believe this is really happening, but there's no question that indeed it is.

11 Oct

Posted at 16:51h in Announcements, Career & Purpose, Entrepreneurship, Life on Your Terms Interviews by

do something that matters

"The only difference between impossible and normal is choosing to hang around the people doing the things you thought couldn't be done."

- Anonymous

Yesterday a big dream of mine came true...

I stood up on the TEDx stage in San Francisco and gave an 18-minute talk (17:51 to be exact). The topic was "The Work You Can't NOT Do & Surrounding Yourself with the People Who Won't Let You Fail". It was the most invigorating/exhausting/terrifying/emotional/awesome/humbling/surreal day I've possibly ever had. It was perfect.

TEDx Golden Gate Park

And the best part about it? You guys made it possible. Without this community I could have never stood on that stage. In fact without you, I would have never even known about the event - one of you told me about it in our Facebook Action Group last month! As usual, I cannot express my gratitude enough. But hopefully this post is a start.