How I Reprogrammed My Mind to Win

Summary

• When I was 19, I felt stuck in a dead-end life. I was overweight, drinking heavily, and had been arrested six times.
• The pain of my current situation outweighed the fear of change, motivating me to turn my life around.
• I learned to use negativity as fuel for success instead of avoiding it.
• The first principle I used is thought detachment. Acknowledge that thoughts are just sentences in our minds, not facts.
• Label your thoughts as just thoughts, creating a separation between you and them.
• Observe your thoughts without acting on them. Visualize them like fish in a pond, always moving and changing.
• Make fun of your thoughts to avoid taking them too seriously.
• The second principle is active acceptance. Accept both positive and negative emotions without trying to control them.
• Focus on the present and accept your circumstances as they are.
• Lean into discomfort and do the opposite of what your fearful brain suggests.
• The third principle is belief swapping. Identify and dispute irrational beliefs that are unrealistic and rigid.
• Use the ABC model (Activating Event, Belief, Consequence) to understand how irrational beliefs are formed.
• Replace irrational beliefs with flexible, evidence-based, and helpful rational beliefs.
• The fourth principle is practicing belief. Let your actions reinforce your new beliefs.
• Treat new beliefs as tests. Gradually expose yourself to them in small ways.
• Reinforce new beliefs daily by focusing on progress over perfection.
• Change is a process, not an event; take small, actionable steps every day to build new beliefs.

Video

How To Take Action

I would suggest implementing simple strategies from my experience to better your life, business, or personal growth.

Thought Detachment: Start by labeling your thoughts as just thoughts. When you catch yourself thinking, say "I'm having a thought that…" instead of declaring it as fact. This helps create distance from your thoughts. Next, visualize your thoughts as fish in a pond; they come and go and do not define you. Finally, make fun of your negative thoughts. Use a different, humorous tone to talk about them. It defuses their power over you.

Active Acceptance: Embrace both your positive and negative emotions without trying to control them. Practice being present and accept things as they are now. Lean into discomfort. When you're afraid to do something, just do the opposite of what your fear suggests. This helps teach your brain that it's okay to feel uncomfortable.

Belief Swapping: Identify irrational beliefs like "I can't succeed" or "I must be perfect." Use the ABC model: activating event, belief, and consequence, to understand how these beliefs form. Replace them with more flexible, evidence-based beliefs. For example, "I prefer to succeed, but failing is also part of the process and does not define me."

Practicing Belief: Strengthen new beliefs through action. Gradually expose yourself to situations that support your new beliefs. For instance, if your new belief is "I can get healthy," start with small, consistent actions like a daily short walk instead of drastic changes. Focus on progress rather than perfection. Reinforce your new beliefs daily by acknowledging small victories and making incremental progress.

These strategies are low-cost and high-value, designed to fit into your daily routine. They help you harness negativity, accept reality, develop rational beliefs, and practice them effectively.

Quotes by Leila Hormozi

"I felt like I had hit this dead end and there was no way out"

– Leila Hormozi

"Our brains are not wired for Success they're wired to help us survive"

– Leila Hormozi

"The price of the dreams you have for yourself tomorrow is your discomfort today"

– Leila Hormozi

"I must be liked by everybody to be happy"

– Leila Hormozi

"Life changes but it doesn't necessarily get better because life is always 50/50"

– Leila Hormozi

Full Transcript

have you ever looked at your life and thought to yourself damn I am so far from where I want to be right now today I want to teach you how I went from asking myself these exact same questions to reprogramming myself to succeed when I was 19 I didn't know how I was going to turn my life around I felt like I had hit this dead end and there was no way out you see 99% of people stay stuck in that dead end it's the fact that we lack the insight to understand that those things are actually tools to help us succeed the top 1% of people have the same negative circumstances the difference is that they do not avoid those feelings thoughts or circumstances they actually learn how to use them as fuel to make themselves succeed in life and that is what I had to learn to turn my entire life around I was 19 I had gained almost 85 lbs I was drinking all the time I was a dead beat by all measures it wasn't until my sixth arrest and in that moment my disgust for where I currently was felt more painful than the potential pain of any change I could make that day and it was that day that changed my life because it set me on this journey to understand how to harness that negativity and use it to my advantage and with that what I want to share with you are the top four principles that I have used to reprogram myself from being that 19-year-old to being the CEO of a $500 million portfolio and to having a life that I love the first principle that I used to reprogram my mind is called thought Detachment when I was in that spot a lot of it was because I was very fearful of the thoughts in my head I'll tell you the one that held me for many years which was I don't want to end up like my mother if I even glanced in the mirror and I saw a glimpse of her it terrified me because I watched her ruin her own life and I was fearful that I had any sort of relation to her and so what ended up happening is that my life became a series of actions to avoid my internal world my external world was a series of behaviors and habits that were an attempt to avoid everything I was thinking inside learning about thought Detachment was understand that thoughts are sentences in our minds they're not the end all be all ruler of the Universe telling you something that you must do and until I understood that they always had a hold on me but what I've learned is that every time I accept a thought I create a more productive life rather than a destructive life so how do we detach from our thoughts the first one is that we want to label our thoughts for what they are most people treat thoughts as facts and reality thoughts are thoughts they're sentences in your mind and so the first thing that we can do to create that space is to start off by saying I'm having a thought that I've noticed that I'm having a thought that I'm incredibly anxious today even just saying that versus I am anxious it sounds very different and it feels different coming out so I could have the thought wow what if you end up like your mother and I can say it in two different ways I'm really scared I'm going to end up like my mother or I could say I've noticed that my brain is going a little wild today and she decided to tell me today that she thinks I'm going to end up like my mom crazy notice the difference in how it creates separation between me and my thoughts and remember our brains are not wired for Success they're wired to help us survive and so if we identify something as scary like my mom or dad who were terrible my whole life and I don't want to end up like them if we label that as a threat then our brains see anything that relates to it as a threat and they put a thought in our mind to get us to run from it just like it would if there was a tiger trying to eat you our brains just don't know the difference between a tiger and my mother the second thing we want to do after we label them is we observe them so a lot of times here's what happens we have a thought and then immediately we go into an action don't do anything but the second favorite solution is we observe the thoughts there's a visual that's always worked really well for me which is I think of thoughts almost like fish in a pond I see all these really pretty goldfish cuz I like goldfish and then I see like one poisoned one and that's the thought that I'm not too happy with and what I look at is I just see that the fish are always moving and changing which is similar to thoughts and so what this helps me do is it helps me recognize that thoughts can live inside of me and it doesn't mean anything about me as a person and now the third thing that helps me work through this and my favorite of all is I make fun of the thoughts I use different tonalities most most of the time we get ourselves into a point where our life is a dead end it's because you take yourself too seriously this is something that I have dealt with my whole life and I was miserable because I took myself too seriously I thought I can't believe I'm having this thought I'm just an anxious person I'm so stressed I'm so this what if this happens what if this person hates me so what if they do maybe you are a bad crazy person what I have learned is talking about my thoughts in those ways has helped me manage them so I might have the thought what if I fail on stage and I do the speech and I have a panic attack and I might be like well that's their problem not mine someone else going to have to clean up if I P myself you don't need to engage with the thought you can actually make fun of the thought or even make light of the thought the difficulty is that a lot of people that might be watching this and resonating is you take yourself so seriously thoughts and feelings don't always make sense and so first we label them it's a thought it's not me then we observe them and then next we make fun of them if I have one takea away from you don't buy into your thoughts the second principle Le is active acceptance when I was spiraling and my whole life was going in the wrong direction I was angry at the fact that I had to deal with all these emotions that somebody else had put upon me and what it did was to create this tension in me it was this tension with what I wanted my life to be and what my life was and they were at odds but I constantly felt that that wasn't fair and I wanted my reality to be different here's what I learned focusing on my past doesn't help me accepting what happened that is what helped me move through it acceptance is allowing thoughts both positive and negative to exist without trying to stop or control them and it wasn't until I understood that I needed to accept what was and accept that certain things had occurred and also accept responsibility that today I can do something about it and also accept that in doing something about it it doesn't mean that my life feels better tomorrow it might mean that it's hard for 2 years or 3 years life changes but it doesn't necessarily get better because life is always 50/50 with the good comes the bad and it wasn't until I understood that I didn't need to get rid of any of the negativity I just needed to allow it and recognize I am all of these things I can be stressed and also successful I can feel depressed and also change my life you can be a walking addiction you can feel certain ways and you can act another the price of the dreams you have for yourself tomorrow is your discomfort today in learning how to allow all the discomfort because anything that I've done in life turning my life around then and keeping my life on track now it costs discomfort today but I can find joy in that if I know that it's normal and not something I have to stop and so how do you actually do this the main thing that I learned with acceptance is you have to lean into the negative if you want to teach your brain that these things are acceptable then you cannot run from them my thoughts were working against and so I had to develop these mantras for myself to remind myself to lean into to the things that didn't feel good the first one I had was do the opposite I would have a thought come up if I go to the gym everyone's going to think I'm fat and I look like I should not go I should just stay home I could do it at home nope do the opposite your brain's not helping you right now because your brain's going keep you in the shitty ass State until it's actually giving you those thoughts that are helping you succeed why the are you listening to it the second montra that I gave myself was being able to stare my fears in the face when I had a thought that I didn't like and so I would imagine having this thought in a mirror and I just stare at it and I don't let myself leave until I feel at peace with that thought because what I realize is it's just a thought it doesn't get to bully me but if I run away from it it kind of is bullying and that helped me because then it meant that any time that I felt or thought something that wasn't conducive to my goals I didn't run from it acknowledging imperfection and I think that a lot of us drive ourselves miserable because of these expectations that we have both that we put on ourselves that we put on our lives that we put on others and because of that we're then at odds with what is because we think it should be perfect and so it's that I've accepted that I am valuable and I will make mistakes that other people are valuable and will make mistakes and if you can understand and accept the fact that you're not perfect that life's not perfect and that nobody is perfect it helps you become more tolerant of frustrating situations and what I've recognized is that so much of my life that had gotten me into that dead end was me refusing to acknowledge the fact that I'm not perfect and I never will be and being ashamed of the fact that I wasn't being ashamed of the fact that I had thoughts and feelings that conflicted with the person I wanted to be who doesn't I needed to accept the fact that I am not perfect and that is life and it's okay when you really accept this you can actually love yourself because you're not lying to yourself about who you are and so if you're watching this and thinking about your life what are all the things that you're doing to try and avoid the fact that you know you're not perfect that you know you do things that are not conducive to your goals and that you haven't accepted the fact that's just part of being human and the last part of practicing acceptance that I've learned is that to actively accept something often means to let it be so now when I catch myself in a mode where I'm like oh I hate that thought I hate that feeling rather than trying to fight it and trying to change it I ask myself what could I do instead so that the likelihood I forget about this thought or this feeling in the next hour or two hours is low and so that might be working on a project that's important to me it might be having a conversation with my family but what I found is that it's much easier to accept something when you have other things to do why do so many people that drank and did drugs pick up smoking well because they're trying to find something to do instead and you know what being somebody who comes from families of Alcoholics and and drug addicts and also has a history myself I think that's better than the opposite and so I use that like as an extreme but it counts for so many situations which is we're not trying to avoid it but we do want to do something else instead because we also don't want to dwell on it go do something productive you need to get bigger problems to solve what is something that's aligned with your values that you could do not aligned with your negative thoughts not aligned with your negative feelings but something that's aligned with your values and where you want to go in life that you could do instead and so every time that I recognize I need to accept something I then ask myself what is an actual I could take that is me committing to the person I want to be and acting in accordance with my values in this moment the third principle is belief swapping how many of you can relate to beliefs like this I can't lose wait no matter what I do I think I was just born an anxious person I don't know why but I can't grow my business past a million dollars it's just must be the market we all have these irrational beliefs we hold on to that don't serve us they're not helpful and I had a lot of those irrational beliefs when I was trying to turn around my life I didn't think I could lose weight I didn't think that I could be successful because I felt like I was too far down the wrong direction you see I had all these irrational beliefs that made me feel worse about myself not better now what's an irrational belief it's usually unrealistic it's rigid like there's not much flexibility at all it's illogical there's nothing to support it and it has no evidence there's nothing in the real world that tells you this is true and once I learned what types they were it was easier for me to identify them when I when they popped up so I could catch it and say that belief is not helping the first one is that we have catastrophizing beliefs which is you believe that if you do this thing the worst case scenario ever will happen the second type of irrational belief is usually demandingness which is I must perform perfectly as should others perform perfectly or else and so it's this pressure that we put on ourselves and we put on others this is also irrational because again we are all valuable humans we make mistakes as do other people and so again irrational belief the third type of irrational belief usually comes from low frustration tolerance frustration tolerance is your ability to remain frustrated for a period of time and people who have a low frustration tolerance say I just can't that's the main word they use I can't do that because the amount of times I've had people tell me I can't fire people because I get too anxious I'm pretty sure you can fire people and you will not die the anxiety will not kill you you might sweat you might be uncomfortable you might not sleep well the night before but you won't die and so I recognize that I had a lot of instances where I had low frustration to an I didn't even want to step into a gym because I was so worried about what people are going to say about me and I was so nervous that when I stepped into a gym that I was going to feel so overwhelmed and so anxious that my workout was going to suck and so to understand how irrational beliefs are formed I want to walk you through a model that I've learned from Albert Ellis which is called the ABC model A is the activating event that means that something happened B is the bed which is a person makes a judgment about the event and that judgment turns into a belief and then C which is the the consequence of that belief so that belief leads to thoughts feelings and behaviors so for example I walk in the gym and somebody stares at me funny I might then do B belief that person stared at me because I'm fat and I shouldn't be in the gym which then leads to see the consequence of having more stress and more anxiety of walking in the gym and also thinking that people are going to stare at me the whole time How likely is it that that's true a lot of times the beliefs that we create are based on preconceived judgments that we have about ourselves about the world and about situations which are not always correct so what I have had to learn to do is to constantly argue with my irrational beliefs and this is how I swap beliefs by first understanding what is an irrational belief and then how do I dispute it so then I can trade it for a better one the first piece that I've realized is that anywhere where I have an irrational belief it's usually somewhere where there's an intense emotion that's provoked to me someone says something and I feel a pay of anxiety most of those situations I've learned for myself are because I hold irrational beliefs in certain areas and so now what I've trained myself to is anytime I have an intense pay of anxiety I ask myself what's the thought that popped up into my head so the reason you're having that thought is because the last time a situation was similar to this here's what happened and here's what you told yourself about it does that mean it needs to be true in every situation no because this situation is different from that situation and so what I have learned to do is to argue with those beliefs and so for me that starts with one look at how different the situations are and so I start to show myself that these things are not the same event and so what I usually do is I make a little chart and it just has evidence true evidence false and I just write down all the reasons why this would be true and why this would be false the number one way to dismantle an irrational belief is to look at the evidence and then you see logically your brain looks at it and says oh wow there's like two reasons why I believe this thing but there's like 15 reasons why I don't believe this thing and then the next question I ask myself is is it helping me or hurting me in terms of reaching my goals in life and if the belief is hindering me from achieving my goals then I'm going to continue to try and over index on acquiring more evidence as to why that belief is irrational I need to dispute it and so once I've basically dismantled the irrational belief you've got to replace it I'm not the type of person that replaces it with the complete opposite listen when I was 85 lbs overweight the last thing I'm going to be saying is like I'm going to be a Victorious secret supermodel like there was no way my brain would believe that so instead here's the actual goal we want to replace a an irrational belief with a believable one if I believed that when I walked into the gym everyone stared at me because I was fat and overweight and we've disputed that belief and understand that people stare at you for all sorts of reasons maybe you have nice teeth maybe your hair was weird once we've done that then we say what's the belief that I would want to trade with that that's actually believable might be sometimes when I walk into the gym people stare at me and they stare at me for a variety of reasons sometimes it's because they think that I'm overweight and they're excited to see that I'm in the gym sometimes it's because they like my clothing either way I'm going to go to the gym because guess what irrational beliefs are rigid there's no room for flexibility whereas rational beliefs have hold a lot of flexibility within the belief itself and what you'll see is that once you write down your new rational belief it's actually a lot more believable than the irrational one and when you look at them written on paper you're kind of like oh yeah that made no sense so when we're developing that new rational belief there's three filters I put it through is there evidence to to support it is it flexible and is it helpful and if it does not pass those three filters then I don't want to believe it if it's not based in logic and there's no evidence to support it then why am I going to let it rule my life the second piece is that thoughts need to be flexible just as things are in the world and so if I have a belief that is rigid and has no contingencies no exceptions and changes not at all based on circumstance then that's not helpful either a helpful belief holds a lot of flexibility and the last place is is it helpful because again if we get to choose what we want to believe and these beliefs help us take action towards our goals and align with our values then we want to pick ones that are helpful so let's take an irrational belief I must be liked by everybody to be happy a lot of people that have this belief might consider themselves people Pleasers how do we dispute this belief well is it realistic that everyone must like me is there evidence to support that if one person in the world doesn't like me I will be unhappy forever so obviously the answer is no so now let's swap it for a rational belief a rational belief would be I prefer when people like me but I don't need everyone to like me to be happy I can still be happy despite some people not liking me let's take another if I fail at this then I am a complete failure if you fail at one task does that mean that you've never succeeded at anything else in your life you are not a failure you can never be equivalent to a word and so you might as well use that in your favor which means just because something happens one time doesn't mean it will happen forever always and indefinitely into the future so what's a more helpful belief we can replace that one failing at a task might mean that I need to acquire more skills in a specific area but it doesn't mean anything about me as a person and if I fail and acquire more skills then it's likely I will succeed next time when you're swapping beliefs you're really trying to align yourself with reality our thoughts and the automatic thoughts that pop up into our heads and the feelings that come up in our guts are not often indicative of reality and so we have to work on creating beliefs that are and that's something that I had to do for myself is I had to understand that using absolute statements didn't help me in life it actually kept me stuck and now the fourth principle is practicing belief you don't believe something until you take action on it so if you want to prove to me that you believe something you take committed action towards that thing maybe there's been a time in your life that you can recall where you did not believe you could do something maybe it was like you couldn't believe that you could lose weight but then you closed your eyes trusted a process that somebody taught you and then one day woke up and we're like holy crap my whole world has changed I lost 20 lb and suddenly you believe that it's possible now did the belief come before the action or did trust in the process come before the belief if we want to ingrain a new belief in our minds we have to create evidence for it in the real world our brains are going to follow the evidence and so the more evidence that you create in your life that this belief is true the more that you're going to actually believe it and continue to take action on it and so there was a time many years ago where I was super stressed and I wasn't doing all the things to take care of myself during this point in time with my career and so it kept compiling compiling until one day I had a full-blown panic attack and what happened after I had that panic attack is I was terrified of having another one in fact I would say that it felt like a traumatic event for me because I didn't believe that Leila could have a panic attack I thought that Lila 15 years ago would but I didn't think Leila who has this business and has this husband and has this house and has all these things would have a panic attack suddenly these absolute beliefs that I had about myself and how I was perfect and how I was controlled and how I had everything under control at all times were shattered and what happened was that I was terrified of it happening again and so I found myself trying to avoid situations that reminded me of the circumstances that occurred and were happening when I had that panic attack and so I did what I always do which I said okay let's go back to the principles that have always helped me succeed in life how am I going to practice a new belief and I walked myself through these three steps that I did the first one is I approached everything as a test so there was a lot of things I was nervous to try and do because they reminded me of the feeling I had when I had a panic attack and so rather than saying I'm going to do something I said let's test this and if it sucks and it's terrifying then now we know but if it's not then that's great and now I know I have more freedom in this area the second piece to practice new beliefs is to constantly expose yourself in small ways to those new beliefs so for example if you're trying to lose weight and you're like terrified of going to the gym you're terrified of eating vegetables we want to gradually expose ourselves to the new beliefs like I can lose weight so how would we do that we would say what's something small that if I did today would give me evidence tomorrow that this was possible maybe it's that you don't go to McDonald's today you don't need to do All or Nothing the thing is is that the most lasting change you can ever create your life especially when you want to adhere to new beliefs is when you decide on the belief you want and then you gradually expose yourself to it over time so it's not like today you're here and tomorrow you're there it's like it might take two weeks it might take three weeks and so what you want to understand is that it's not like tomorrow you're going to walk out and you're going to watch this video and suddenly you're like I wrote down all my irrational beliefs and now I've swapped them and now I'm practicing them and so it's just going to be black and white tomorrow I'm a new per like it takes time time change is a process not an event treat it as such you work on it every day what is something small you can do every day something I do with myself when I'm trying to change something about myself is I in the mornings write down what are those few things that I can do today that might seem tiny and so small but what I know is that they're achievable and so they give me evidence tomorrow that I can tackle an even bigger task and so for you it might be just putting on your tennis shoes and going for a walk if you take a tiny little baby step every day within two weeks 3 weeks four weeks you'd be shocked at the amount of belief that you have on that new belief that you actually want and how you've disputed all the irrational ones and so we want to one test out our new beliefs we're not saying that we're committed to them for life we're not married to them we're going to test them out once we decide we're going to test them out we're going to gradually expose ourselves to them we're not going to go all or nothing and then the last piece is you want to reinforce this in every situation possible every day you want to focus on progress not Perfection baby steps not giant leaps I don't set my expectations super high in fact I set them super reasonable and logical which is what is something I can do today that is tolerable I think a lot of times the difficulty is that we're impatient you're in pain and you don't want to be in pain tomorrow here's the thing you're going to be in pain at in 6 months still and that's just the reality of life there's nothing wrong with taking more time to change and to adhere to those new beliefs but if you put a ton of undue pressure on yourself the likelihood you succeed is low listen if you found this video helpful if you feel like I have completely reprogrammed your mind in the last however many minutes this video was I have another video called how I brainwashed myself to be rich so if you want to get rich and get a ton of money just joking you can go to that video