RETRAIN YOUR MIND - Joe Rogan, Alex Hormozi and Chris Williamson

What would you do if you weren't afraid? That most men live lives of quiet desperation. It's one of my favorite quotes ever because it's true. You're just in this world where you just can't wait to just run away. What would have had to have happened in a week for you to look back on that week with pride. And I just I love thinking about that when I'm thinking about big life decisions like what would I do if I Weren't afraid? That's why losing in life is so important. Whether it's getting dumped, getting fired, losing a

game, loss, those feelings where things didn't work out your way. That's important because it lets you know this is the bad feeling that comes when it goes wrong and you improve and then it makes the good feelings of victory all the better. And it's usually like the big one, the the bigger thing that I really want to do, but I'm afraid to do It. It's like that's what I should do. And the crazy thing is that you can change your life in one decision. I can get drunk, drive in a car, and change my life

forever. Right? I can happen like that. But it can happen just like that the other way. It's just that the outcome's delayed. That's the only difference. You can change your life today in this moment by making these decisions and the and your life path will have veered. You will have changed Direction. Your tree of of life will move. It's just that it takes time for that new direction to bear fruit. Whereas you can poison the fruit in a second. You can kill a tree real fast. You just can't grow one real fast. But it doesn't

mean that if a seed's planted and you're watering it, it's not growing. It just takes a second to get above the surface. If you had to create a human, what would you put them through to make them Tough? It probably wouldn't be a really chill life. Yeah. What would you put them through to make them patient? You probably wouldn't give them things immediately. And so it's like we want these traits, but each of the traits has a price tag attached to it. It's just like, do you want to pay the price tag to get the

thing? And so I think if if people reframe the the period of life that they're going through as the price That they're paying out of their wallet, but the wallet is their time, the seconds of life that they're trading for it, then I think more people would be willing to make the trade because at least when I look at myself, like when I'm 80 something years old and I'm looking back on my life, I want to have these traits, but in order to have those traits, I know I have to go through these things. And

I think for me, that's given me a lot of comfort in hard times. You have to kill your current self for your new self to have room to grow. And so it's this constant appraisal of your skills and activities and saying which of these makes me stronger? Which of these makes it more likely for me to hit my goal? And I just want to give you that frame cuz that like that single frame of is this person being in my life make it more likely or less likely to hit my goal? Is this activity or

this behavior that I do make it more or less Likely to hit my goal? And I consistently just ask that question over and over and over again. And that is because for me, I do love my goals more than I love my friend. because my goals will be with me long after they are. And so if you think about your relationship with your goals and you put it on the same pedestal or higher than your relationship with your friends, you're going to lose one of the relationships. And the question is which one is the one

That's going to serve you more in the long term. I think a lot of entrepreneurship and even personal growth is training yourself on how you respond to hard. Because in the early days, hard was ooh, stop. This isn't good. I should I should this is a warning sign, this is a red flag, I should slow down or I should stop, you know, I should pivot. But the more I think about it as a competitive landscape, as I'm clear on What this path is supposed to look like, and these rocks and these dragons are things that

I'm going to have to slay along the way to get the princess or get the treasure, I get happier about the harder it is because I know that no one else will follow. It's a selection effect. And I think if you can if you can shift from this is hard to no one else will be able to do this, then it it's it flips from being this thing that you're like, "Oh, poor me to oh, poor everyone else who's going to have to [ __ ] try." Yeah. And I think that is so much more

motivating as a frame for the exact same circumstance. I started thinking like every day I was like, "I hope I don't wake up." You know what I mean? Um, and that was the that was that was the thing where I was like, "This is a big enough problem that like if you don't want to wake up, then what have you got to lose? Exactly. And that was it. And I was like, I have nothing to lose. And that was when that was when I think on the last podcast we talked about this where it's like

if everybody who's who's like at the bottom and feels like they have nothing going for them, reframe that as I have nothing going for me, which also means that I have nothing to lose by taking action. It makes you a much more dangerous person. The three most common traits of hyper successful people. So Number one was that they had a superiority complex. They thought they were better than other people and that they deserved more. The second is that they suffered from massive insecurity and feeling that they would never be enough. And third they had impulse

control. And so you've got this combination of people who are like I want to do this big thing. So this big toward thing and they've got this big away pain that's like I'm never going to Be enough. I always have to do more. And then they have impulse control that keeps them focused on the goal without seeing the woman in the red dress or getting pursued by her. and that like so it's like shoot high, have a big thing that that motivate like have a big tower behind you and stay on the path. I think

a hopeful message that anyone can think about who's about who's in that hard period or in that start period is that it won't get harder. Like this is The hardest part. And so if you can just make it through this, everything else is downhill. It's not that the things that you're the dragons are going to slay aren't going to get bigger. They are. But you become so much more equipped to slay them back. And you have so many more allies. You have people in the stands cheering for you. You have the audience. You have all

of these other things that are behind you. But in the beginning, it's just you with a stick Against a bear. And arguably that fight is a harder fight to win than beating a dragon when you have a nuclear bomb and six nations behind you. And so it's not even like the the size of the hardship. It's just also the resources and how few of them you have and how so much of the beginning is literally burning the one thing you have which is time because you have no leverage. You don't have the money to pay

other people to help you. You don't have the resources to go like Get someone to to you. No one can learn it for you. It's like there's a lot of the things that that we care about a lot like no one can work out for you. Doesn't matter how much money you have. No one can learn skills for you. And so in the early days, like it feels so painful cuz you're like, you look around to see who can help you and then you're like, "Fuck, it's me again." You have to live in it. You

have to be comfortable in it. And then maybe some of that [ __ ] Will help you a little bit along the way. Because if I just think, well, tomorrow I'm just going to coast and eat Twinkies and watch TV. Oh, hello sadness, my old friend. Hello, depression. Because when you're not doing anything, you feel like [ __ ] And that's just part of being a human being. And we can pretend that we're something other than what we really are. And we can pretend, n me, man. I'm just cool, just chilling, doing nothing. [ __

] And if you don't have any of this, you do not get your character tested. You do not advance in your own perception of who you are in this world and how you how you engage with all the other people around. Difficult things make regular life less difficult. And that sounds so simplistic, but particularly physically difficult things. Because when you do things that are physically difficult, the strain of making yourself do those things, it's very valuable. It's not Just valuable like exercise and fitness and martial arts and running and whatever you're doing that's really difficult.

It's not just valuable in terms of like health and the way you look, but it's also valuable for your mind. I can't catch a break, guys. Get them the [ __ ] away from me. I can't I can't be around those guys. I don't want to hear that [ __ ] I don't want to hear that [ __ ] I don't buy it cuz everybody has bad breaks. I've had a [ __ ] ton of Bad breaks, but you know what I did? I I stayed up and I thought through it and I and I

figured out what the [ __ ] I did wrong and then I went back. It's like I [ __ ] up everything I've ever done a 100 times. There's no way other there's no other way to do it. And I've had a bunch of shitty breaks. Everybody has. But you got to realize when you have those shitty breaks what that is. It's an opportunity for you to reassess, reboot, get better, figure out another Way, find another way through. It's just just little challenges, bro. You got to [ __ ] stop. You got to stop with

all this I can't catch a break [ __ ] All the time you're complaining. You could be instead hustling. You could be instead chasing your dream. You could be instead figuring out what you're doing wrong, trying to improve certain aspects of your life, getting your [ __ ] together, reading a book, meditating, something [ __ ] something. I I make Myself do things that are very uncomfortable that I don't want to do. And by doing that, I develop this strength and perseverance. And some people hear that and like, I don't even want to do that.

I don't take a [ __ ] nap. you're exhausting me. Like, I'm not you. I don't want to do that. And they just like it takes them away from that. And I'm like, you don't even have to do that. Just go for a [ __ ] walk every day. It sounds like it's easy to do, but There's going to when that walk comes and look your clock. Oh, it's 8:00. Time to go for that walk. You're like, I don't want to walk. I would just rather play video games. I don't want to walk. I'd rather

like read emails. I don't I don't want to walk. I'd rather like scroll through TikTok. But if you just force yourself to go for that [ __ ] walk every day, you will develop mental persever perseverance. You will develop some tenacity. You'll develop the Ability to force yourself into work. Is that hard times create hard men, hard men create soft times. Soft times create soft men. Soft men create hard times. Afterwards, I know you don't want to do it. I never I [ __ ] hardly ever want to do it. If I maybe want to

want to actually do it five out of ten times, but I maybe less. Yeah. But I do it. I just do it. I know what it's like to not want to do it. I get it. Shut up. I just start talking to myself. I go, "Come on, [ __ ] What are you talking about? If I was you, outside of you knowing what I know. If I could read my mind, I'd be like, "Come on, [ __ ] You're just being lazy. Put your [ __ ] shoes on. Get get a sweat going. Then you're

going to feel pumped. Come on, man. You've done this a million times." And then invariably I'll be in the middle of the workout and I'm sweating. I'm like, "Fuck yeah." Yeah. And then I get into it. It's like it just you got to push past that creepy Resistance. If you dedicate your time and your focus like realistically with a professional disciplined effort to creativity, you show up every day like a professional, but you show up to be creative. If you just do it on a regular basis, ideas will come to you. So every day at

the same time you sit down in front of your keyboard and you start working and just put in the work. Put in the work and force yourself to do it. You force it like a muscle like the same Muscle that you develop when you go running every day and then you get to the point where like 7 days in you start [ __ ] feeling good running. Right. Right. So you start to feel like you're good at it. You start feeling like you're getting better. Yeah. You have to make mistakes. You've been there. You feel

it. You understand what it is. And then you have that time to adjust. That's why losing in life is so important. Whether it's getting dumped, Getting fired, losing a game, loss, those feelings where things didn't work out your way, that's important because it lets you know this is the bad feeling that comes when it goes wrong and you improve and then it makes the good feelings of victory all the better. And I mean that, you know, in a relative sense, like even getting good at something, forget about victory. making a terrible book that gets rejected

by every publisher and then Writing a really good one and people accept it and you're like, "Fuck, I got better." Yes. Like that feeling. Those feelings of failure are really critical for your motivation. You have an apartment you have to pay for. You have a car you leased. You have a wife that you have to feed. You have a child you have to raise. You have to you have your mortgage. You have your this. You have your that. And that's where it all comes from. Well, the opportunity takes place Usually when you're young and you

don't have any responsibility. That's when you have your options. Well, your options are severely limited the more you gather responsibilities. Like if I had to as a 51-year-old father of three, married man, pays taxes, has a house and a mortgage and a business and all that jazz. If I had to quit everything now and struggle the way I struggled as a stand-up comedian, it would never work. But the only way I could be this person Now is if I took that chance when I was 21. When I was dead broke and had my cars repossessed

and all that stuff, that's the only way you you ever get where you want to go. You have to you have to take a path that's dangerous. And most people want to take the safe path. And the safe path leaves you stuck in quiet desperation almost every time. It's hell. It's hell. You can't. You have to plan it out. The way you can change is you have to put aside enough Money to give yourself a window. And then you have to have a plan. And you have to spend all your waking hours outside of whatever

[ __ ] job you do planning your escape. And you have to come to the realization very clearly that you [ __ ] up and you got yourself stuck. So whatever you're doing, you have to do it like your life depends on it. And whether it is you're trying to be an author and you're gonna you're gonna if you're gonna try to be an Author and you're working eight hours a day plus commuting plus family responsibilities or whatever else you have, whatever time that you have, you have to attack like you're trying to save the

world. You're trying to save your life. You don't want to drown that one and 1/2 hours a day that you have to write. God damn, you better be caffeinated and motivated. You got to go. You got to get after it and you got to have discipline. That's most people Don't have those things. Most people don't understand what it's like to to really go for something and to know that the consequences of not doing that are horrific. But I think one of the reasons why these people have this deep-seated anger and resentment is there's a bunch

of people out there that have these lives that are deeply unsatisfying. There are so many people that are working all day long doing something that is deeply unsatisfying and and Almost painful to them. Soul killing. Soul killing. They're stuck in traffic all day and then they're stuck in a cubicle after that. They they they they relish the time to take a [ __ ] in the bathroom and look at their phone. I mean, they literally do that. That's a highlight of someone's day. They get in traffic on the way home. They get home after that,

they're watching television and they're [ __ ] And I think if people have a regular day job, if you Could just find some one thing that you do as a passion project and just keep building on it, just keep at keep watering it, keep adding fertilizer, keep giving it attention, keep giving it focus and you can escape. You can escape and you can be self- serving. You could be okay. You're going to be okay for making furniture feels good. If you make furniture, you make furniture for a living and you you feel a great satisfaction

out of that and you sell That furniture. Look, man. If you can do that, you could you could cut those corners perfectly and sand everything down nice and stain it and then it's done and you get the satisfi and you sell it to someone and that pays your bills. That is infinitely more satisfying than being stuck in some [ __ ] cubicle working for someone that you don't want to work for, having to have these stupid [ __ ] office meetings, talking to people in human Resources, sitting down with your supervisor where they evaluate your

job performance, and you know, you're not really, you know, you you really need to be enthusiastic about this company. This company is your future. This kind like you're like, [ __ ] kill me now. You know, there's a lot of people out there that would way rather do something else. And I hope they understand that they can. And people that are trapped in bad situations. One of the problems is you Feel like this is your future. You feel like you're [ __ ] and you can't get out of that. There's no hope. There's no light

at the end of the tunnel. There's no rainbow. And if you feel like that, that alone can be incredibly defining and limiting. But if you can look at if you can look at yourself objectively and say, "Okay, I kind of am [ __ ] here. I'm in credit card debt. I'm working in a shitty job. I I I don't like what I'm doing, but I have some ideas. I need to Feed those [ __ ] ideas and I I need to feed them and water them and I need to set aside a certain amount of

time every day to just try to make those things happen. You can do that. It's like everyone has a different personality. They have different different interests, different different things that they would be really satisfied pursuing. That's not encouraged. The what's encouraged is go find a job. What's encouraged is go find someplace that you Can shove yourself into. Go find a square hole that you can stick your round peg and just [ __ ] jam it in there and shave down the top and the bottom so you slide in with all this extra space on the

sides and feel like [ __ ] for the rest of your life because you need a job because you're in debt. Because you have credit cards. Because you have student loans because that's what everybody does and so you do it too. That's what's wrong. I think here's An important thing, too. Failure is important. It is important. I think failure teaches you things that you don't learn from success. I think failure gives you an opportunity for self-examination. It also gives you a feeling that is very uncomfortable. And that very uncomfortable feeling helps you grow. That when

you feel like [ __ ] and you screw something up, like when I've had bad podcasts, my podcast has always gotten better afterwards. When I've had bad standup sets, I've always gotten better after that because those bad sets motivate you. They get they give you a perspective like, "Hey, here's some clear examples of where you [ __ ] up." Yeah. What not to do. Yeah. Don't And don't look at these failures as like proof that you suck. Look at them as opportunities for growth. Look at them as opportunities to be motivated to do better. You

see an old person walking down the street, you go, "Oh, That person's always been an old person." No, that was a baby. That was a baby that became a 90-year-old man. There's a there's a progression that you're not witness to. You don't see it. And that that that takes place in everything. It takes place in authors. It takes place in comedians and musicians. There is a starting point and then with time and focus. And as long as you re-evaluate and reassess and constantly objectively look at what You're doing and then pursue it with passion and

focus, you get better at things. Don't be scared of failure. I think failure is awesome for you. And that's one of the reasons why, like I said, I like doing things that I suck at. I just feel like people need inspiration and they need guidelines and if if as long as you could just start moving, just get action like just getting just movement. Dana White said uh this I [ __ ] love that guy. I know We're both we're both big we're both big fans of him. Dana, we're coming for you. Um he had this

really great reel that someone repurposed that said um I I think he's got sons. Uh he has. Yeah. Uh I I tell my sons it's all out there for the taking right now. If you have a gram of talent and an ounce of hard work, you'll run these [ __ ] over. And it's like it's true. Like there is that the bar has never been set lower. And I Understand, you know, if you wallow in Reddit and the dark recesses of Twitter that you can believe that you are a genetic dead end as a man

and there is nothing that you can do or as a woman that the culture is you're at kind of at the mercy of the culture in a way and you maybe feel like you missed a time of glory or that was more appropriate for you. Maybe it was the the 1950s or maybe it was the [ __ ] Middle Ages. I don't know, right? You feel wistful for a life That you never got to lead. But the the truthful fact is I don't think there's ever been a time where there's been more opportunity and a

lower degree of competition. Agreed. Like we've just said the average American that's the average American, right? Yeah. Obese less than 1K in the bank and divorced, right? Like just it's so low. And I I understand that it can seem like you're talking from an ivory tower or well Done. You had this sorted. But I didn't have it sorted. I didn't have it sorted for a very long time. You know, I I I had days where getting one foot out of my bed onto the floor was a task so great that I couldn't do it, right?

That I just couldn't bear to open the curtains. I couldn't bear to speak to anybody. And ostensibly outside, I had the entire life sorted. Okay. So, what does that tell you? Tells you that material conditions don't actually Always determine your internal state. So, don't presume that the things that you're chasing for are actually going to fix whatever your internal problem is. And also don't use your external state as an excuse for the way that your internal feelings are. That's not to say that you can't get to a state of destitution where it's pretty much impossible

to be happy. But most people's definition of work is a negative one which is why they abhore It. Which is also why they misunderstand so many people who quote I'll say quote here are successful ahead of them or whatever is that both people one person says the word work and the other person hears the word pain. And so the first step to like becoming more successful is understanding the language that the people who are successful are using. They're actually defining the word differently. And so whatever that thing is that you Actually enjoy doing where you

lose track of time when you're in it, even if it's challenging, but usually it is challenging, right? Like it's not easy cuz then it's boring, right? Which is also why the uncertainty thing is so key, right? To not knowing if it's going to if it's going to work or not. You are going to work though either way. um is that the people who are quote addicted to work make it easy to be addicted to work because They do things worth doing. And I think a lot of it is coming down to making sure that you

take the few precious seconds that we have to do the few things that are worth doing for the rest of your life. And that's what's that's what's painful is that it takes more effort to start in the beginning. And more people are right about the fact they're like, "Hey, you're not going to hit it big." And guess what? A month in you're not. but they're only measuring On months. And at six months, you're also not going to have hit it big yet. And they're going to be like, "I'm still [ __ ] right." And at

a year, you're still not going to have hit it big. And they'll still be [ __ ] right. And every day that you haven't hit it, they're going to feel like they were right. But they're wrong because they're measuring in days and you're measuring in decades. But you have an excuse that only you need to believe. And you Believe that excuse. So it excuses you from working harder on the stuff you know you should be doing but aren't. And that that work, the work you know you should be doing but aren't is the opportunity because

that is the work that your competitors also aren't doing. And I'm telling you from the bottom of my soul, it is so easy to beat people today. They are so soft. They have no work ethic. No one can stick with anything. Everyone's distracted. They're On social media. They're counting their [ __ ] notifications because they can't stick with [ __ ] every single person who wants to do something with their life and has done something with their life has gone through the exact chapter that you're going through and it's the lonely chapter. It's the chapter

where you you're you don't fit in with your own friends, but you don't have the outcomes yet to fit into a new group of friends and you're doing this thing. You're Consuming content on the internet. You're you're doing these free tutorials online to try and figure out how to set up a podcast and where do I host this thing? And then there and and and you're going through this and you're like, am I is this even worth it? Because you have no signs of success, right? But if there's anything that you can take away from

what we're saying right now is that the sign of success is the hate that you get along the way. And what you can't do Is bend the knee to their hate and fit back into the conformity because it's comfortable and it's warm. Because like in the Matrix when Trinity opens the door when when Neo's about to go take the red pill and he wants to get out of the car, she says, "No, you've been down that road and you know exactly where it leads and I know that's not where you want to be." The only

thing that you can do is win. so big that all of them constantly compare themselves to you and Then you'll forget they exist. And he and that's when he said he said success is the only revenge. He's like it's not the best revenge. He's like it's the only one. There's no other revenge cuz everything else is petty. Everything else does show that you were thinking about these people all day long which means they win by default. He's like all you can do is think about your goal and winning. He's like, "And when you win, that's

when you become so big That they shrink into irrelevance. You cast a shadow that no one even can see them behind you." People only root for people who don't need it. Like the amount of times when I was on my lonely path where I was too different from the friends that I had, but not successful enough to be friends with the people that I wanted to be friends with. That's when that's when you want people to root for you. That's when you want People to support you. Once you've already won, people are like, "He's amazing.

He's so good." But like, that's the time when you need it the least. And so, you always have to be the person who roots for you before everybody else does. And it's usually a single clap in the auditorium for a very long period of time. It is a slow clap. That's just you rooting for you. Um, champions are broken. We're like, "Huh?" He's like, "They people look at champions and try And find something that that champion has that they don't have." He's like, "But it's not that at all." He's like, "They lack something everyone else

has, which is an off button. They just don't stop." And at the end of the day, like, if we're if we're optimizing for outcomes, then the most broken person will win. the person who has the absolute biggest, you know, desire for achievement, the absolute biggest fear or pain that They're running away from. Every hardship that you encounter, if you reframe it as the story that you will someday tell to yourself of the person that you've become based on the dragons you've slain and the obstacles you've overcome, then I think that makes those obstacles a unique

opportunity for self-improvement because we can be grateful for these things. I think um I think Joo uh has a has a whole bit on this where whenever Something bad happens he says good and I think it's a great train response because if something bad happens my train response isn't good it's I will tell this story someday and so I think if you have that frame then everything serves you cuz if something good happens cool if something bad happens it'll be a story that I will someday tell because it assumes assumes that you will live through

it and it assumes that you will eventually figure it out. And so then You can't lose. Maybe stop breaking promises to yourself. But when you say, "I'm going to wake up tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. and when the option comes to hit the snooze button," don't do it. There's one win that you've got for the day. That's action. If you had a friend and every single time that you and your friend decided that you were going to go out for dinner, that friend either showed up 2 hours late or didn't show up at all, you would

stop trusting that Person, that is the relationship that you have with yourself. Yeah. People only root for those who don't need to be rooed for. Well, I think balance is very important to happiness. And I think you can become incredibly obsessed on one goal. Your life could be a wreck outside of that one goal. It's a a balancing act. It's a balancing act between family and friends and hobbies and rest and nutrition and passions and discipline and grinding and Brutal workouts and recovery from those brutal workouts. It's a big gigantic mandelola. It really comes down

to what what are you trying to accomplish and what makes you happy? And for me, if one part of my life is awesome, but the rest of it is a wreck, I'm not happy. So, I'm only happy if I've got like a good big picture going on. If I'm doing this balancing act and everything seems to be maintaining. If it goes a little bit like this, then I Can bring it back like this. And I'm constantly in this state of adjustment. What's your morning routine like? Or do you have a morning routine that you like

or do you just kind of fasted cardio is what I like to do or fasted yoga? That's my my most recent thing is I'm doing either 14 to 16 hours depending upon what my day looks like. So intermittent fasting and then uh I usually either like yoga or running in the morning. Today was running and then I'll do Something in the afternoon either martial arts related or weightlifting related. Do you uh do you drink coffee every morning like when you right when you wake up or not always but I like it. I like these things.

These nitros, these caveman nitros. But I like regular coffee, too. But I drink water with Himalayan salt in it, too. That's one of the first things. Yeah. Put a little lemon in there, too. Sometimes. Sometimes I throw a little cayenne Pepper in that [ __ ] Wow. Any apple cider vinegar. I do that stuff sometimes, too. I take a lot of probiotics. Those are the a lot of I eat a lot of kimchi. I I find like kimchi and game meat is like I've been on this kick for the past three or four months where

I just eat kimchi and elk like three, four times a week. I mean stuff, dude. It's hard when you eat some elk before bed and you wake up hard as a rock. [ __ ] people up, dude. You're like, "What the fuck?" People don't know, man. They don't know. You're eating a super athlete. If you eat elk, you're you're literally eating a super athlete, you know? How long does your training routine take you? Generally 2 hours. A regular day for me is 2 hours, but it depends. One of the things I do is I use

when it comes to training like with weights and kettle bells, I treat kettle bells like it's a skill. And I think that is something that I learned from Pavle Tatsulene and studying his strong first protocol. He he advocates a long a long rest period in between workout sets and more repetitions in terms of volume by virtue of the fact they have larger rest periods. And a lot of people feel like they're being lazy when they do that because they they're not pushing themselves. But I push myself doing other things. If you look at general population

and you get a bunch of weak [ __ ] and you get them together, how Many of them are going to keep it together? How many of them are going to run every day? How many of them are going to work out every day? very very very few. You're dealing with outliers in particular just by what by virtue of what you do. How many people are willing to put the work in to achieve this? How many how many was going how many people are going to achieve this physique? Very very few. Right. So we're talking

about outliers. We're talking about that's What I like. I like outliers. I don't like people. It's too hard. I can't hear that. The real message is we all started from no. I mean we all had [ __ ] jobs. We all felt like losers. But through time and effort, you build a stronger human. You build a stronger body. You build a stronger mind. You build accomplishments and will and momentum. And then you look back and you go, "Hey man, I'm not washing tables anymore." You know, I'm not uh I'm not Washing dishes. I'm not cutting

lawns. I'm not digging ditches. You know, I'm I'm a different person now. You know, there's a lot of people out there listening to this. There's so many people that are in that that starting point like the people that come up to you and say, "What do I I don't know what to do. What should I do? How do I do it? How do I get going?" But you're going to have to figure it out one foot in front of the other. Exactly. You're Going to have to You're going to have to find a thing and

keep working at it and get better at it. Love is the most important thing. And that sounds so cliche, but without love, it's all useless. It's all useless. You don't There's no personal satisfaction and accomplishments. If nobody loves you, you're not going to enjoy it. Yeah. At least your fan everybody. And the the more you can spread positive energy, the more people Will love you. The more you'll have that community of love. Being on it isn't even always about success. Being on it is about learning. And sometimes learning comes from failure. And failure is one

of the best teachers. Failing and getting right back up and figuring out why you failed. And then next time try to do better. That's being honest, too. It's not just about always being this unstoppable winner who's better at everything than everybody else. Nope. It's about doing your best all the time. Most men live lives of quiet desperation. It's one of my favorite quotes ever because it's true. And I've been that guy. Oh my god. You just you're just in this world where you just can't wait to just run away. And how do people get stuck

there? How do you think they get stuck there? Bills. Bills. Like financial bills. Yeah. Bills and commitment. You you have an apartment you have to pay for. You have a car you Leased. You have a wife that you have to feed. You have a child you have to raise. You have to you have your mortgage. You have your this. You have your that. And that's where it all comes from. Where do you think opportunity plays into that? Well, the opportunity takes place usually when you're young and you don't have any responsibility. That's when you have

your options. Well, your options are severely limited the more you gather, right? Responsibilities. Like if I had to as a 51-year-old father of three, married man, pays taxes, has a house and a mortgage and a business and all that jazz. If I had to quit everything now and struggled the way I struggled as a stand-up comedian, it would never work. But the only way I could be this person now is if I took that chance when I was 21, when I was dead broke and had my cars repossessed and all that stuff. That's the only

way you you ever get Where you want to go. You have to you have to take a path that's dangerous and most people want to take the safe path. The safe path leaves you stuck in quiet desperation almost every time. It's hell. Like I've made huge huge huge developments while I was staying up until 4:00 in the morning, 5:00 in the morning running a nightlife business. You can make huge developments in your personal growth journey while you're doing a 9 to5. And if your purpose is Aligned within a 9 to5 career, it doesn't matter. Like

that's your thing. Just lean into it. Enjoy that. And all of the guys that don't know when they're supposed to start or when they're supposed to stop or they've got to be the task master or they don't know what they're supposed to do today and they don't get holidays and they don't get all of that. You don't have to worry about any of that. There are tons of advantages of having a 9 to5 and if You're enjoying it, your purpose is aligned with it, nail the self-development on an evening time, make sure that you lock

into a hard routine and you are going to you're going to have a great time. So, I'm it genuinely genuinely genuinely envious of people that have great 9 to fives where their purpose is aligned to it, especially if they've got a lot of um oversight and structure because it takes all of the pain. I did a video ages ago Uh you might even be able to find it. uh I can't remember what it was called something like uh re 10 reasons to not start your own business or something like that and it was about precisely

this that it's not all it's cracked up to be to go and work for yourself so I don't know the disparaging of 9 to5s I'm not on board with that is it possible to be world class whilst having fun that was that's the question for me this year it may be that in order to be world Class fun has to go out the window and if that's the case it'll be it'll make me sad but it's whatever like that's a price that you perhaps need to pay, but I'm really really trying to do this. So,

uh what brings me joy? Hanging out with my friends, uh being outdoors, doing new things, visiting new places, going for good food, especially in different like adventure and novelty for me are uh very invigorating. It's also a great way to make uh time slow down. When people say Um I can't believe how quickly this year's gone, what they mean is I don't remember the days that have gone so far in this year. One of the best ways that you can slow this down is to add more memory units. and memory units are highly derived from

how much novelty there's been. If you drive the same route to work every day for 3 years, that's basically a thousand journeys that's condensed down into one memory. Unless there's one day in particular Where it was rainy and you skided or you were involved in a car crash or someone gave you a phone call and told you that you got a raise or whatever, like you'll remember those, but because it's always the same thing, it just gets condensed down into one essentially one memory. So trying to vary and add as much novelty in as possible

is very good. As the world has become so comfortable, we're having to go out of our way to actively seek discomfort. We inject it into our Lives. We artificially inseminate it. People, every time that you achieve something, what you're doing is positing a new minimum bar which you have to get over. Right? Fantastic. I've just done this many plays or made this piece of art that sold for a particular amount of money or whatever. How exciting. And almost immediately there is this sort of like postcoital realization that oh my god that's the new bar for

my best performance. That's really high. That Means I now need to be even better at my next thing. And someone recently won the largest lottery in history, a $1 billion lottery. Someone just won that. From a life trajectory perspective, that's potentially one of the most disastrous things that you could have happen to you because how are you ever going to have a better day than the day you woke up and found out that you'd won a billion dollars? It's the argument is a slow success strategy would be to Purposefully try and drag out the wins

that you have. Habits are hard to break, man. And the habit of not doing things is unbelievably difficult to get past. It's one of the problems with anyone that listens to your show or my show. You will love being cerebral, right? You will love the idea that I can use cognitive horsepower to just get myself out of problems. And there is a case of learning as masturbation, right? Uh and believing that learning about Something is the same as enacting it. And it's not. That's why it has to be action first. A a quote from one

of my friends that he uses when he's thinking about a concept is, "Does this grow corn?" Basically, is it useful? Tell me how I can use this in my life. Does it grow [ __ ] corn? Right? I It's this beautifully uh beautiful sounding concept, cognitive bias that helps me understand the way that my brain works And my relationship with everybody else. How do I use that in my life? give me something to apply it to. And that's why with the confidence thing, choose promises that you will never break to yourself. I'm going to get

up on time for the next month. I am not going to hit the snooze button. If you do that and you look back in a month and you go, "Oh my god, that's the first time I've done that in forever. Maybe that's a big win." And you can do the James Clear thing. We'll write it on a board. We'll track it. What gets like measured, etc., et, etc. But the main thing is just keep promises to yourself. And that is a good way to go from here is an insight I learned about I want to

do breath work, cold plunge, go to the gym, fast until 12:00 midday, get up on time, sunlight in the eyes, in the whatever it is, right, that you want to do. Turn it into a promise. Don't break the promise. You're going to lose sleep. You'll doubt whether it'll work. You'll stress to make ends meet. You won't finish your to-do list. You'll wonder whether you made the right call and have no way to know for years. This is what hard feels like. And that's okay. Everything worth doing is hard. And the more worth doing it is,

the harder it is. The greater the payoff, the greater the hardship. If it's hard, good. It means no one else will do it more for you. Right? And it's not just me that's Got better. The world is undeniably a better place because of the sort of person that I've become. I'm a better friend. I'm a better son. I'm a better boss. I'm a better partner. I've had the fortune of reaching tens of millions of people on this podcast and I've given TEDex talks and I've improved the texture of my own daily existence because of the

process that your work triggered. You do not know the depth of impact that your work has had. And if The option had been there, I and probably a lot of other people would have happily taken on our share of your suffering over the last year if it would have somehow helped as a thank you for how you've helped us. So, Thank you. Yeah, people only root for those who don't need to be rooted for. People are afraid of valid, you know, not getting validated or they're afraid of judgment that they perceive from other people that

exist or don't exist In their lives. A lot of people just underestimate the amount of effort it takes to go from good to great. I think the things that we that were withheld from us are the things that usually we seek the most. I think how many how many really successful guys have daddy issues? And so for whatever reason, they have this second voice that criticizes everything they do that in reality isn't even there. But I would say 99% of the things that I have learned, I've learned Through doing. Like competitors don't put you out

of business, but you obsessing over competitors does. My future self would trade all the money he had to be poor in 20 again made me really reanalyze how I saw living life in the moment. Be the hero of your own movie. If your life was a movie and it started now, forget about whatever financial disasters you've had, personal failures, relationship failures, what would the hero of your life's movie do Right now? Do that. Do those things. We define ourselves far too often by our past failures. We look at our past and we say, "Well, that's

me." That's not you. You are this person right now. You're the person who's learned from those failures. And you can choose to be the hero of your own movie right now. Write down your goals. Write down things you want to improve. Write down things you won't tolerate from yourself. Write down things you've done in the past you Never want to see yourself do again. And go forth from here as the hero of your own movie. Build momentum. Build confidence and momentum with each good decision that you make from here on out. You can do it.

Anyone can do it. We live in unique times. We live in one of the rarest times in human history where you can choose almost all the input that comes your way. Whether it's the movies that you watch, the books you read, the podcasts you listen to, you can choose To be inspired. Do that. Do that. Find something. Find a thing that you genuinely enjoy because getting good at things you genuinely enjoy is extremely beneficial for young people because it lets you know that like everybody thinks they're a loser. Every young person thinks they're a loser.

At least a young person in the situation I was at. Like I didn't know I wasn't a loser until I started winning, till I started doing martial arts. Martial arts taught me That like I could get better at stuff that it wasn't I wasn't really a loser. I just was someone who was like in a [ __ ] up situation, but you could channel all that energy that you have as a young person into something and get better at it. And then all a sudden people admired me. I was like, "This is crazy." So I

went from being someone who was incredibly insecure and basically a failure to someone who was really successful at this one thing that was Very dangerous that other people were scared of. Also this idea this this is a really important one cuz people have this idea that somehow I'm 30 years old I shouldn't be doing this anymore. I'm 50 years old I should have learned by now. That's all [ __ ] Throw that away. Toss that [ __ ] aside. you like these ideas of numbers that people have in their head that by a certain age

you should stop you are alive and if you are alive and if you are thinking all those Numbers that you keep attaching well you know when Einstein was 30 he shut the [ __ ] up stop doing that that is a waste of your time and stop saying to yourself I should be better by now I'm such a total non-helping thought what you need to think of is life you're living. You're alive right now. And if you've made a mistake and you're still continuing to learn and grow, that's all just data. Over time, I've learned

that these people, you just you you're not Going to fix them. I used to want to fix them when I was young. I used to want to go, "Hey, man, I see what you're doing." Like, "Dude, don't do that anymore. Listen, just try just just do this and and stop doing that and start doing this and if you just work towards this, you could be successful." And then a week later, the guy's doing the same [ __ ] you're like, "Okay, I'm wasting a significant amount of my energy on someone who doesn't want to waste

any of Their energy on themselves." And so managing the the community and the tribe that you're in, making sure that you're a good member of that tribe, that you're doing your part. When you're around happy, inspirational people that are successful, it makes you feel better and you get inspired. And if you act on that inspiration, your life will be more fulfilled. And it's not just inspirational in terms of financial success, but in terms of doing difficult Things, whether it's running a 100 miles, it doesn't pay you a goddamn thing other than the the the the

wealth of the knowledge that you can push yourself to such an extreme or anything else. Whether it's someone who becomes really good at playing chess or someone who's really good at martial arts or or whatever it is, there's there's a great feeling in these overcoming these difficult things. I think a lot of what happiness is is a management issue and Decisions that you're making right now like you could be in a [ __ ] state of mind right now, but you can make some decisions to adjust that and over the next couple hours you'll get

to a much better place. I promise you, every single person who wants to do something with their life and has done something with their life has gone through the exact chapter that you're going through and it's the lonely chapter. It's the chapter where you you're you don't fit In with your own friends, but you don't have the outcomes yet to fit into a new group of friends and you're doing this thing. You're consuming content on the internet. You're you're doing these free tutorials online to try and figure out how to set up a podcast and

where do I host this thing? Then there and and and you're going through this and you're like, am I is this even worth it? because you have no signs of success, right? But if there's anything that you Could take away from what we're saying right now is that the sign of success is the hate that you get along the way. And what you can't do is bend the knee to their hate and fit back into the conformity because it's comfortable and it's warm because like in the Matrix when Trinity opens the door when when Neo's

about to go take the red pill and he wants to get out of the car, she says, "No, you've been down that road and you know exactly where it leads and I know that's not where you want to be. And then he closes the door. Like right now, this moment that you're going through is Trinity opening the door and being like, you could go back. But then you'd have to remember exactly what the reason was that you decided not to go out to begin with. Just because you listen to this podcast and you consume this

content, you're like, I could [ __ ] do more than this. Like because you are starting to live in some of that Hell where you look in the mirror and you're like, I can do more. And you start to see the person that you could be and you're like, this does start to feel like hell. Act first. Okay. You have to lead with action because if you are someone that deals with a crippling sense of insufficiency, your ability to discount any good thoughts you have in your mind is going to be so strong. If you

try and lead with positivity first, I need to think it, wish it, believe it, and I will achieve it. Your set point of negativity is going to just crush that into the ground. I'm speaking from personal experience, right? as the guy that was chronically unconfident and still has, you know, the imposter syndrome that does creep in. You have to start with action. It needs to be okay, what would have had to have happened in a week's time for me to look back on that week and find pride in Myself. Pride's seen as uh something that

you uh should be ashamed of. It's one of the seven deadly sins. Uh but David Gogggins, I did an episode with him a couple of months ago. We can put it in the show notes if people are interested. And he said pride is something that everybody misses. That having pride in your name, your performance, uh the way that you show up for other people is something that you can do. But you need to do something That is worthy of being prideful about, right? What would have had to have happened in a week for you to

look back on that week with pride? Okay, maybe stop breaking promises to yourself. When you say, "I'm going to wake up tomorrow at 7:00 a.m. and when the option comes to hit the snooze button," don't do it. There's one win that you've got for the day. That's action, right? And it is just, you know, it's tried to say the Peterson clean your room thing, but the Reason that that works is that you start with the smallest step and you expand out from there. You want to become a writer. You want to leave your job and

become a writer. Okay? Can you commit to writing one blog post on Substack per week for the next 3 weeks? That would make you feel like less of a loser if you did that. Action has to come first if you're the sort of person who is chronically unconfident because you will drag your sense of Identity behind you. Mark Manson says that identity lags behind our status by about 1 to two years. So for both me and you in two years time we'll go ah I understand why I was in LA that day and and and

look back start with action and make small promises to yourself that you don't break. If you had a friend and every single time that you and your friend decided that you were going to go out for dinner that friend either showed up 2 hours late or didn't show up at all you would stop trusting that person. That is the relationship that you have with yourself. You need to be able to trust your own word. And a lot of us don't because life is very convenient and it is easy for people to not stick to the

promises that they set themselves because our ability to be idealistic is always going to outstrip reality's ability to deliver that to us. Soon as you posit an ideal, you then Begin to compare yourself to that ideal. And true hell is when the person that you are meets the person that you could have been. The path of the exceptional person is one of an exception which means that you are not with other people. And rather than fighting that or bemoning it, see it as an indicator that you're on the right path. Because if everyone else were

cheering you on, then it means you're not in the right place because it Means you're just like everyone else and that's not where you want to be. And this includes the way you communicate with people. This includes like the friendships that you have, making sure your friends know that you love them. They oftentimes think I want to be the one that's enjoying life. Like especially selfish people. If people enjoy being around you, right, you'll enjoy everything more. The solo effort That's right. of going through life like With a a narcissistic perspective. One of the major

problems with that is there's no one to share it with cuz you're all out for yourself. That's right. Even if you get there, you're going to be filled with sadness and despair. That's right. It's not what you want. Well, you want us to be happy, right? Well, I know you think that you have to be all about yourself to be happy, but in fact, that is a way to ensure unhappiness regardless of Success. That's right. You are not your past. You're you. You're you right now. Like the past you did, you might have done some

things you wish you hadn't done. Don't dwell on that. You learn from it. That's fine. But don't dwell on it. Just keep moving. Keep moving. You know, use it. Use it as fuel. Say, "Never again." You know, I I get I get what I did wrong. But don't think that you're that person that made those mistakes. You're the person who's Learned, you know, and to have that attitude is a really important thing. And to not say, "Why am I doing this now? I could have been doing this my whole life." Well, you you weren't, so

the [ __ ] is that going to help, you know? You got to just got to not think like that. You just got to be happy you're doing it now. Sounds like really hippie, but true happiness comes from making other people happy. True happiness comes from being around happy People and enjoying each other's company. That's yeah, that's really hard for people to wrap their heads around because they always associate true happiness. No, true happiness is with like titles or, you know, numbers or, you know, objects that you possess or whatever it is. You're not concerned

about being nice to people. You're not concerned about having a positive impact on people. You're more concerned with making ones and zero. But it really Truly is how the human race interacts with each other. You you really have to be nice to other people to be happy. You have to. If you're not, you won't be happy. And you know, we all make mistakes and we all find ourselves in positions of frustration and we've all acted out and yelled at our dog when maybe we shouldn't have. And you know, there's all pressures in this life. But

I think it's really important to recognize what what those truly are and To understand that at the end of it, we can alleviate a lot of how we deal with in this life if we really treated people the way we would treat them as if they were ourselves living another life. You don't have that, everything else is horshit. You can have a hundred million dollar house and a private jet and if you don't have love, you don't have anything. You're missing the the key ingredient. That's right. You know, it's like having cement but not having

water. You have nothing. It's just hard for people to understand that there's techniques and there's strategies and there's philosophies that can help you steer through this world with a a happier life. And that that that is a big part of it. A big part of it is embracing love and friendship and camaraderie and being nice to people. Yeah. It it's hard for some people because they're not even nice to themselves. I think everyone looks Forward to this utopian time where whatever motivates them, drives them, freaks them out right now can be set aside. The work

is done and you can just sort of like watch the sunset over the pond. And the the the problem is this uto utopian vision of the future that we have is probably a carrot that's on a stick that will just never reach. and we keep working hard to improve our society and our life and ourselves and our families and our relationships hoping That one day we'll achieve this ultimate peace that will never come. I completely agree with you and we're going to get attacked for this by people who are unhappy with their choices in life.

And that's a fact. You know, there's there's a bunch of people that will say, "Yeah, well, I have a family, so you know, it's all great idea for you to just go out there and go crazy. I have people to support." You need to listen. Stop saying that. Stop saying any of those Things. Every single person who has ever done anything worthwhile or exceptional or difficult or extraordinary, anyone, whether it's great artists or authors or mathematicians or whatever the [ __ ] it is, everyone encounters difficulties. There is no easy road. It does not exist.

It is impossible. Everyone has issues. If you have time to pursue a hobby, if you have time to do anything in your life, you can better yourself. And here's one way you never better Yourself. When you come up with excuses for why other people are successful and you're not, that [ __ ] is [ __ ] dangerous. When you give yourself an escape, yeah, well, that's easy for you to say, you know, you do this. Trust me, everybody has a hard road. We all go through hard times. We all go through depression. We all do

go through doubt and and then moments in your life where it's really [ __ ] difficult and you're trying to figure Out what the [ __ ] your path is going to be. It's hard as [ __ ] but that is what makes you a person. And those difficult moments are what build your character. When you're alone with your thoughts, you get an idea of what your thoughts actually are. If you live your life just acting constantly on the momentum of other people's expectations of you wanting to be liked by these other people, you can

run into a trap and you you you set up a life that you didn't Really want. You're [ __ ] You're you're you're trapped in this situation where you have a mortgage, you've got credit card bills, you got student loans you have to pay, you have a bunch of [ __ ] going on that you have to continue to feed and all that. And especially if you have a family and you have to feed them. Oh my goodness. Then you're fully locked in. You can't take any chances whatsoever. And often times people make the mistake

of getting stuck. And it is Just a tactical mistake just like it would be a mistake if you got stuck on a video game. Just like it would be a mistake if you followed a map incorrectly and you got stuck in the woods. Your life is certainly some sort of a journey. It's certainly some sort of a journey. And we have to all be aware that when we're making journeys, we're not going to always make the right steps. And sometimes you have to back up and try again. And if you're in a Position where you

can't back up and try again, you've trapped yourself. And the system will set out honeypotss for people to get trapped in. The system will set out the ideas of retirement, the ideas of the golden years, providing you benefits, providing you a healthy work environment. Why? Well, because they want people to work for them. They don't want people to realize their own dreams and escape. And those that's a [ __ ] pain in the ass. So, you got to Hire more people and train them. And they want to set it up so that you stick around.

you stick around in some sort of an unsatisfying world. It's up to you to see that video game problem, to see that issue as it comes up on the map. And no, no, I think this is a right turn to see all the problems that could potentially lay in front of you and calculate your your future. And then also look around all the people that didn't do it and look at the misery that they're in and Learn that you don't want to be like them. And then look at the people that are have kind of

taken chances and navigated their way. What do they do differently than you? What what what objectivity do they have that maybe you lack? what insight into their own mistakes are they willing to delve into that you're not that you step back and you go you know I don't just don't I just don't want to look at myself that closely but the person who's able to Look at themselves the closest is going to get the more rational results it takes more effort to start in the beginning and more people are right about the fact they're like

hey you're not going to hit it big and guess what a month in you're not but they're only measuring on months and at 6 months you're also not going to have hit it big yet and they're going to be like I'm still [ __ ] right and at a year you're still not going to have hit it big and They'll still be [ __ ] right? And every day that you haven't hit it, they're going to feel like they were right. But they're wrong because they're measuring in days and you're measuring in decades. But I

didn't get here doing everything that I love. I did a fuckload of [ __ ] I hate. And I did it for a very long period of time. And I did not have anyone to root me on. And in fact, I had many people who were actively trying to destroy my path and tell me why it was a Terrible idea. There's so much opportunity on the other side of being willing to persist for an extended period of time on the correct path without getting positive reinforcement from your environment. And the longer you can stick with

something without that positive feedback loop in terms of the big external thing, the the the easier the opportunities are because so few people can pursue them. You're going to lose sleep. You'll doubt whether It'll work. You'll stress to make ends meet. You won't finish your to-do list. You'll wonder whether you made the right call and have no way to know for years. This is what hard feels like, and that's okay. Everything worth doing is hard. And the more worth doing it is, the harder it is. The greater the payoff, the greater the hardship. If it's

hard, good. It means no one else will do it. More for you. [Music]