Absolute Motivation - I WILL WIN - One Of The Best Motivational Speeches Compilations for Success, Athletes & Working Out

Episode Date: October 5, 2026

"I Will Win" – One of the Best Motivational Speeches Compilations for Success, Athletes & Working Out. This compilation will fuel your determination to overcome obstacles, push through limits, and achieve victory. Whether you're an athlete or simply striving for success in any area of life, these powerful speeches will inspire you to stay focused, disciplined, and committed to winning. Watch now and let these speeches drive you to rise above and claim your success! ♠️ Our channel members: / @absolutemotivation ✏️ Featuring some of the most motivational speakers in the world. 🤝Special thanks to all our partners, not just in this video but all our videos. We love you. 📱Maintain your motivation. 💡 Our official website: https://absolutemotivation.net 👕 Our official merch: https://absolutemotivationshop.com/ 👉🏻 Thought-provoking editing tapestries: @AbsoluteMotivation 📸 Instagram: @absolutemotivationofficial Our speeches are created by, remixed or licensed to Absolute Motivation. For licensing information, message [e-mail] 🔊The music in this video: The music is licensed via the fantastic teams at: Musicbed Artlist Really Slow Motion Audiomachine 🎥 The video footage in this video: All video footage used is licensed through either CC-BY, from various stock footage websites, or filmed by us. All Creative Commons footage is listed at the video's end and licensed under CC-BY 3.0. Film and TV shows used in the video are interwoven with the video's narrative, related to the video's topic, and corresponding to FAIR USE. #absolutemotivation #win #motivation Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

What is the meaning of life? One time in my life I felt that. What was my purpose? Life is really a single player game. It's all going on in your head. You know, whatever you think you believe will very much shape your reality. The one companion that's always going to be with you is yourself. The purpose is always there.

The purpose never leaves us because the very purpose is you. People don't understand is you against you. The only person that gets in your way is you. In my opinion, every single person on this planet has a reason that they are here. Understand that each and every one of us is limitless, and understand that each and every one of us can accomplish absolutely everything. It's just that we're not willing to put ourselves through the stress. I want you to think about the fact that some people never get the chance to be passionate about something that scares them. Your biggest threat is not your competition.

It's a mediocre version of you that never realized what you could become. Right now, every single one of you out there have exactly what you deserve. But how can you sleep better at night when you know that you've cheated the process? People have a hard time understanding that you have to have faith in the actual process. The problem is you and you don't want to fix it. You have something called Valeness Redemption. It does not matter how many times you fail. It does not matter how defeated you feel.

How incapable you feel. How many times you fall short. It's irrelevant. Because every time you have the decision to pick yourself up and try again. Some people never get to feel nervous about doing something meaningful with their life and making an impact. The resistance you feel is an absolute privilege, and it would be a very nervous. an insult to your potential to let that resistance win. I wish you could see life for how precious it really is because I don't need to be a hundred years old and at the end of my life to tell you that

a life driven by purpose is the only way a life is well spent. Because you can choose whether you want the pain of growth or the pain of staying the same. And the pain of staying the same is when days, months, years have gone by and you realize that you are in the exact same place that you've always been. It's the movie Groundhog Day, essentially. You have put no effort into yourself, and all you have to show for your life is your excuses. That's who you are.

Your excuses. You are all the potential that you wasted. You are always the purpose. There may be another purpose, like being a seal or going to college or whatever, but the main purpose in life is you. So if you wake up in the morning and you don't want to do something,

you don't care enough about yourself. And that's what you need to really research is, man, why am I not doing this for myself? Because that is the number one purpose in life is to better oneself. You don't have to feel good about it. You just have to keep going. The feeling will pass, but you will remain.

You are greater than your feelings. You weren't built for normal. You weren't wired to clock in and zone out. Normal is an excuse, a comfort zone dressed as a plan. You say you want change, but you move like someone who's fine with staying exactly where they are. You want a life that hits different, then you better start doing what most people won't. Because the world doesn't remember the ones who fit in. It remembers the ones who set themselves on fire to work.

fire to light the way. The will of your soul is boundness. It is limitless. It is greater than any evil that tries to tear you down, that tries to stray you away from your path, to manipulate, to deceive you into thinking that you are not capable. But it is just lies. It is you who decide your fate, nothing else. Well, I want to tell you, tell you find that sin.

of your being, you will continue to walk and live. Going through the motions. All fools have this one thing in common. All losers have this one thing in common. What is it? Seneca says it's that they're always getting ready to start. He says they're always delaying to live. There's actually a theme throughout the writings of the Stokes. You could be good today. Marksraeli's writes in meditations.

He says, but you choose tomorrow. We're not willing to push ourselves that extra 2% because we'd rather lose all of our potential as a human being than be uncomfortable for a few hours a day. It's your choice. You can choose to reach your potential or you can choose to be comfortable and either is a fine decision. But we really do need to get more comfortable with stressing ourselves out, with putting ourselves through tough things with doing things that seem difficult because they're not going to drain you. They're not going to make you tired. They're not going to make you stressed even.

They're going to wake you up. I can't find my why. I can't find my purpose. I can't find motivation. Can't find a gym. He went on and on. So I said, hey, okay, relax. Just relax.

I need to go find some shoes. If you got some shoes, you can go walk. You can go run. As far as the gym you can't find, do you have a floor where you live. Do some push-ups. Do some sit-ups. We're waiting to find purpose, waiting to find why. We're waiting to find all this before we start. The thing about is this. Start now. So when you find your purpose, you find your why, you can get after it. In five years, how old will you be? Write that down. Now think of that future you. What will that future? your version of yourself wish you had stopped doing or started doing right now and go do that thing

so next time you are alone with these voices that tell you that you are incapable that you will not succeed that you are not enough remember your strength remember who makes the decision it is you and it has always been you it will always be you so you see my friend We win in the end so long as we do not give up on ourselves. A little person on this planet has a gift and if you aren't going to pursue that gift of yours and you aren't going to follow through with your dream and actually work towards that dream of yours, then what is the point? What is the point of going any further if you aren't going to chase after that dream of yours?

Because I'm telling you, chasing after that dream is going to bring you the most meaning in your life. in your life. It is your purpose and if you follow that purpose, you follow it to the very end no matter where it takes you, no matter what happens, you are going to live a wonderful life and you are going to be happy by the end of your life because you chased after something that was meaningful. You would rather find purpose than a job or career. Purpose crosses disciplines. Purpose is an essential element of you. It is the reason you are on the planet at this particular time in history. Your very existence is wrapped up in the things you are here to fulfill. Whatever you choose for a career path, remember the struggles along the way are only meant

to shape you for your purpose. We have gotten so externalized that we have stopped going internal to see what it is that self is looking for. It's like something that's planted at your birth. It's what makes you different from everybody else. It's even what makes you different from your parents. That's like a seed at your birth. If you cultivate that seed, if you cultivate your uniqueness, it gives you a purpose in life.

It's your energy. It's your character. It's your awareness. It's your sense of humor. It's what draws you to certain things, what you hate about certain things. It's you. If you listen to that, it's like a voice inside of your head,

instead of listening to all the other bullshit that's around you, what your parents are saying, what your teachers are saying, what your friends are saying, if you listen to that voice clearly, it directs you, it gives you a purpose. Plant trees under whose shade you do not plan to sit. Plant trees under whose shade you do not plan to sit. Selfless service. giving without expecting, using everything you have, doing something for nothing, just being able to give.

A real man doesn't need another man to tell him how to be a man. That's the furthest thing from the truth. There's no other way to learn how to be a man except through other men who have gone before. Because there's a difference between masculinity and manliness. Masculinity is raw. It's just the raw masculine testosterone and other hormones coursing through our veins. that determine that level of masculinity. Manliness, however, is taking it, refining it,

and producing effective outcomes. Trying to get insight and see life as a puzzle, and your goal in life is to seek the adventures that piece the puzzle together. When you're coming out of these down spots, these dark spots, these slumps, you've got to allow the process, to happen. Watch it unfold. You have to be prepared to take any and every opportunity that's presented

to you. Nothing's just going to happen. You know, everybody say it's all on you. It is all on you. There's other people that can educate you and help you, but you take these different experiences that you learn that stick with you. I mean, you may not remember a whole lot when you were four years old, but there's certain memories. There's certain things. You can use them to either harness you, greatness or you can use them to kind of just keep you where you're at. So the Bhagavid Gita says that attachment and aversion are two sides of the same coin. So actually the ideal is the central balance. Where you're able to talk to your parents, you're able to give them love,

you're able to be grateful, but then again you're still realizing that there's more impact you can have in the world than just making your parents happy. Steve Jobs said he didn't want to be the richest man in the graveyard. You know, do you want to be the richest man in the graveyard? I want to be the happiest man on the way to the graveyard. There's always a next level. Your definition of greatness and what you want to achieve

could be totally different than somebody else's. You know, we always say no one wants to be first, okay, because they're afraid of the consequences that come with doing something first. Because what it means to be a man, first of all, is somebody who takes accountability and responsibility for himself and those he has an obligation for. If you don't start at a place where you have self-awareness, self-actualization, you have figured out what works for you, what your strengths are, how you want to be in an environment.

When you walk out there, most of us just pretend to be someone else. So you're not the same version of yourself. You can't expect yourself to be who you were during the last cycle. It won't happen. You have new experiences, you're older, your physiology changes, but the ego, like you referred to, wants to... to what was. You had a great year last year, but let it go because it's no longer. You're not that person anymore. So grinding and working hard and hustling is not what you optimize for. It's pain.

Why would you optimize for pain? They want to see what real people do when real crap happens when you're threatened, when you're at risk. How good could you be? And sometimes I think people, they, they, I more than think it, I feel it, that they want to be touched by it. They want to be touched by it, that maybe it'll be absorbed by them. Maybe, maybe some of it will go into their veins, that they could be better, that they could watch these noble warriors, and when they do it right, that's what they are. They can watch them and say, maybe I could be better.

Maybe my choices could be better, stronger. Maybe I can make better decisions the next time, instead of making a weak decision and screwing somebody. I love to say people with excuses are afraid to work hard. I love to say that. An excuse gives you a reason to stop working hard. And what we know about anyone ever worth writing an article about is that they worked until they dropped

to the point of alienating people around them. And if you are a user of excuses, you'll never work that hard. Your habits are the way that you embody an identity, right? So, like, each time you make your bed. you embody the identity of someone who is clean and organized. Each time you go to the gym, you embody the identity of someone who's fit. Each time you sit down to write, you embody the identity of a writer.

So you can sort of think of it as like each behavior casts a vote for the type of person that you want to become. Your goal in business and in life on the important things is to make three mistakes per million transactions. And the only way you do that is by being a perfectionist in terms of double check. The truth is very concise. The words are very few.

but people don't want to hear the truth because the truth hurts, okay, but you grow from pain. You really, you really do. You can't know how to deal with success, you can't know how to deal with failures, you can't know how to deal with the bumps in the road that if you haven't had a taste of everything. You know, people think, oh, you're just facing a guy with the left of them. No, you're not. You're facing yourself. That's the matcher. That's what people want to say, oh, this guy's facing a cat. This guy's facing, can I face myself someday? You're facing your inhibition, your insecurities,

all the stuff that's been laid on you through the years that you're trying to get rid of. Well, you hope you could get rid of. We create barriers, and I firmly believe half or more of those constraints that stop us from taking big risks, we take on knowing there are going to be reasons later we can say, no, that would be a bad risk. I don't want to take that risk, whatever that new career twist might be.

Instead of embracing it and laughing and learning when you fall down occasionally. We're back to learning from failure because young people need to know that falling on your face is a hundred percent predictable and for the smart people it's what they learn from that later makes them fall far less frequently than everyone else. If someone thinks I'm confident, I feel confident. But if someone thinks, if I think someone thinks I'm not confident, then I don't feel confident. That people were so far removed from their own understanding of themselves that they were either lost living a life they didn't want to,

lost living up to someone else's expectations, or lost becoming someone to impress someone else. And so people were so, their real identity is almost buried under six feet of multiple identities they've created. There's not other people that aren't holding you back. Your boss isn't holding you back. Your parents are holding you back.

Those are excuses. To me, there's no such thing as luck, okay? All luck is preparation, meeting opportunity. Plain and simple. Gandhi said that you find yourself and you lose yourself in the service of others. So if you're watching this and you feel lost, it's better to just sit down and be like, I'm lost because the day you admit you're lost is the day you allow yourself to be found by people who can give you a tip.

The wisdom, and right now, man, the wisdom of your body says, allow the process to happen and get familiar and disciplined and committed with your rituals. There's a lot, there's a lot of people that are just a something. There's very few people that are the something. We bring to our experience, our own stereotypes and expectations and we color the world with our own interpretation. And so it's this notion that our experience of the world is kind of a dance or kind of like a collaboration between what's coming in and what we're bringing to the table. And so what that tells us is,

no, we don't have a direct experience of reality. We don't have an empirical experience of reality. We don't see the world as it is. We see the world as we are. Energy is always flowing out of us to people and things around us. And one of the ways to get to enlightenment is to first stop the loss of energy.

Then you harness that energy from going out of you. You would draw it into you, you concentrate, and you channel that energy. up your spine into your head to awaken higher states of consciousness. But in order to do that, you need to consider as much energy as possible. The more people you have in your life, the more things you have in your life, the more energy you expand. That which you do not hate, you will eventually tolerate.

Average becomes sort of like this slow asphyxiation. It's almost like an anesthetic, and that over time we become kind of immune and dulled to the average that we're becoming. You don't magnify the degree to which the pain ought to be effective. And so really what he means in that is, listen, you're going to get out of your life what you'll accept. That's really difficult for people I think to understand is, look, what you think you're worth and what you're going to tolerate is absolutely what you're going to bring into your life. Dominant culture that is designed to destroy your sense of self and your belief in yourself. And you have to learn ways in which you can begin to connect with this power that you have within yourself to handle where you are.

The key is to be constantly in a perpetual process of discovering the truth of who you are and fighting constantly to look for ways in which you can escape the inner conversation. There's a lot of obstacles that we're going to face in our lives, whether it's on a football field or basketball court or just in life in general. And if you're not really willing to fight and give it everything you have, as long as you're alive, then what are you really doing it for? Because if you're not feeling well, where do you? You go online, right?

You look at people standing at the bus stop for 10 minutes waiting for the bus. They get uncomfortable with being with themselves, they pull out the phone and they start engaging with something. Because to actually be with you is probably one of the most challenging things that you can face in life. And the whole purpose of the monastery is to you strip everything

and everyone away from a person and they're only left with themselves. And I thought I was going to die. I saw scenes of my life when I was surrounded by the people that I loved. And my instant feeling was, I'm going to miss them. And they're going to miss me. That realization was like, oh, my God, at the end, all you're going to wonder is about your family and your friends and people you love and all they're going to miss you because you're going

to see scenes of your life surrounding people you love at the very end. And I'm like, so live your life. So it's this epic, beautiful movie. Insight is when you are listening. Insight is when you go through introspection. Inside is when you meditate. Inside is when you learn to listen to your heart or intuition. And insight is what you call a satori moment.

It's growth through awakening. Like I let myself sort of feel the pain and the difficulty of being not where I want to be in whatever that area is. Because my spirituality, my relationships, my money. I let myself feel that pain. Because as you know, there's two motivators, right? There's the gaining of pleasure, right? Wanting to go get something chasing the dream.

But then there's the avoidance of pain. And for a lot of champions, that's a pretty big driving force for them. And so at least for me, I leverage both of those things on me to get myself to take action. Dare to be willing to question everything you thought you knew. Dare to dissolve your own dogmas. Dare to be challenged. Dare to see the world differently today than you saw it yesterday. Motivation is crap.

Motivation comes and goes. When you're driven, whatever's in front of you will get destroyed. You really want, wants you too, because what you really want versus what you think you want, what you really want comes from the soul. And what you really want because your soul is part of this larger universe, it wants you too. And so, don't tune in to the rules of the world

that tell you who to be. who to be or what to want or what to do. Instead be who you really are. Listen to that soul and know that what the soul wants, the universe wants you to have. And this is when the magic happens. And we don't have priorities in life. Most people don't have clear priorities in life. Simplifying first the people and things into your life into who and what's most important. Taking that finite energy that you have each day and focusing, second step is looking at the second step is learning how to focus and concentrate, that finite amount of energy into the people and things that truly matter. I think for me, optimism, though, is definitely like an antidote, right?

It's my way of raging against the darkness, you know, living in a space of possibility, living in a space of pro-noia as an antidote of paranoia, right? Pronoya is, I connect the dots and I think that everything could go better than it's been going before, that things might get better, that we can't overcome, that we shall overcome. a choice you make. Because a lot of people look at their scars as a bad thing. A lot of people try to hide the pain that they're in, but I believe that your scars really show

that you overcame whatever tried to break you. The more we can be into a reward ourselves with bliss, we're not going to lose our dissatisfaction. We're not going to lose that. And so for me, our brains, there's dopamine hit you get when you do something successful. If you constantly cheat yourself out of that hit, right, biomechanically, in your heart,

in your body less and less in the future where you want to achieve the next level the next dream the next step and that's why so many people stall out in life They didn't they got to a certain point and they cheated themselves out of the bliss out of the celebration It's important that we celebrate our wins we celebrate our lives because it causes us to want the next bite It keeps us hungry earth not the reverse We have the ability to go in such a space if you're willing to suffer and I mean suffer your brain and your body once connected together, can do anything. I always say you should never pursue happiness. Don't pursue happiness.

Pursue a lifestyle where the byproduct of that lifestyle is happiness. You can find things to be grateful for in that space. Man, is your life going to be rich when there really are external things to be grateful for? So my first mechanism out of that space was honestly to stack the things I was grateful for and I started reinforcing it over and over and over again. And what happens is there's this reticular act. system in our brains, right? And all of a sudden, because that's the messaging I was giving myself,

all of a sudden, all these things start to come into my awareness that I'm grateful for. It's crazy how when you shift your identity at a subconscious level, the world shifts. But remember what Michael Beckwood said, the law of attraction is incomplete. It's really the law of resonance. When you change who you are, the world will shift to make, to ensure that who you are is true. true. So it starts inside. Remember this. Your life is not about you. Rather, your life is about the lives of everyone you touch. When you make your life about the lives of everyone you touch, you will never

wake up feeling anxiety or worry or stress again. The red pill, its only promise, its only promise is the truth. That's it. It's not saying that it's not saying that it's going to make things better it's simply going to reveal the way that the world really is and that for me was incredibly intoxicating and I took the red pill intellectually and what I began to realize is that the mind is the matrix in and of itself because I can tell you right now today in this moment I promise you the matrix has you know I want to live in a world in which the vast majority of people wake up every single

morning inspired to go to work, feel safe when they're there, they come home fulfilled at the end of the day. That is not the world we live in now. That is the world I want to live in, and that is the world I want my friends and family to live in. The true goals, true intention comes from within. And when it comes from within, you tend to have more emotion towards it. Because I can do something. If I can do it better than others, and it's for a greater good in society, I would be. responsible if I didn't know. That many people look for meeting in life.

As though they will, you know, I'm still searching for meaning in my life, as though it's going to be under a rock. You have more power than that. You have the power to create meaning in your life rather than passively look for it. This is water. to a fish, water is so ubiquitous, it ceases to exist. Now, we all have that same thing, and it's playing on us, and it's keeping us from becoming who we want to become. And that thing is our mindset, it's our belief system, it is so ever-present, it is so ingrained into the fabric of who you are, and the way that you process data, you don't even notice it.

You don't even know that it's real, and this is the thing that impacts your life. It is your inability to see that your mindset controls everything, that it is water in and of itself. That once you become aware of the water, you can change everything. That you can go from a scared, lost kid in Tacoma to whomever you want to be. Have I, by whatever powers I have available to me, have I lessened the suffering of others? Or the corollary to that would be, have I enhanced? life of others. They're related. And I don't mean have I devoted the whole day to doing that, then I would be ignoring myself. But if there's some small gesture that I can do that can completely

add value to someone's life, I'm going to do it. Because the leveraging of 10 minutes of my life into the happiness or enlightenment or the reduced suffering of someone else, I'd be irresponsible if I did not. that one-third or not all of my life is generated through pure intention. There's a large portion of it. Marie says one-third that is your soul's intention for you. In other words, it is people that you are meant to meet and it's predetermined. It's situations you're meant to go through and you're meant to experience these situations.

And sometimes it's pain and failure that you're meant to go through so your soul can learn. And you want to surrender into this. Now, and but what this means is accept uncertainty. If you have three goals, one may just not be in your soul's part. That's okay. Once you pick a meaning, which is always your choice, then you can start to build a great life. Stories are the outpicturing or the way we tell the own journey that we have to go through. And most people live vicariously through a film.

Three people in the world today are obsessed with this idea called the Law of Attraction. But I can tell you the law of attraction is wrong. The universe doesn't give you what you want. The universe gives you who you are. Don't think law of attraction. Think law of resonance. In other words, you have to be that which you want. And then the universe responds.

If that's the game that we're playing, if I can construct my belief system, if I can choose at any moment to believe something that's more empowering, one can have no smaller or greater mastery the mastery over oneself. On my tombstone, I want the epitaph. Be ashamed to die until you have scored some victory for humanity.

Any of us, I think, should want the world to be a little better off for you having lived in it. But what do you have to give with no expectation of return? Being a good student is a coachable skill. And I gave up on so many things in life, whether that was basketball. I concluded I was bad at languages in ninth grade and so on and so forth. And I think so many people run into this where they abandon things and they accept a partial completeness where they're like, oh, my voice just isn't good. I'm just not good at X.

And usually if you track that back, it's because a parent or a teacher or some authority figure criticized you really heavily. And it turns out that if you just get a better toolkit, sort of a better set of questions, that you can do things that seem impossible to the untrained. setting really low expectations. Not what a lot of people expect. And when I spoke to, say, Rick Rubin, when he has a musician who's stuck,

great musician, but they've developed performance anxiety about songwriting for whatever reason. He will say, do you think you could get me one sentence or maybe two words that you like by tomorrow? That's it, two words.

Can you do that for me? And he gives them a micro-assignment. Best writing advice that I probably ever received and I've received a lot of good writing advice, but I can get myself really wound up because I expect perfection to flow from my fingertips like magic, and that never happens. So then I beat the hell out of myself,

and that makes me less likely to put pen to paper in the first place. I'll procrastinate, which is why if you write two crappy pages per day, you've won the day. That's a successful writing day. And that does a few things. It helps you to maintain enthusiasm because you're constantly winning. And, of course, on many people, is you'll write more than two.

You'll get to two, then you go to five or to ten. But if you're on an off day, you write two crappy pages, even if you never use it, it's a successful day. And that, I think, for longer-term projects and extended creativity is really important. But the story that this writer told me with that tip, he said, okay, this is where this comes from. Did you know that IBM, when it was the 800-pound gorilla,

it was an undefeatable sales force? Do you know what one of their rules was? He's like, no. He says, well, what do you think their quotas were? And I was like, oh, I'm sure their quote was really high because they wanted to motivate their guys to get after it. He goes, no, their quotas were the lowest in the industry. And the rationale was we don't want our salespeople

to be intimidated to pick up the phone. We want them to feel like they're going to pass their quota quickly, which they did, and then they shot well past it and clobbered the competition. So the counterintuitive pairing of low expectations leading to higher performance is really odd. What that is is performance anxiety that you've imposed on yourself because your expectations are too high. And it's like, just lower your standards. Lower your standards till you get started.

You're the average of the five people you associate with most. That's like a basic tenet of my life and Silicon Valley where I live. And my other career is investing in early stage startups. And I've been very successful in that. Twitter, Facebook, first pre-money, pre-seed money advisor to Uber, first advisor to Evernote. Baba. What you realize, though, when you meet these people, when you sit down and talk to the people who start those types of companies. And by the way, like they all start out where everyone else starts out. And that's another, like, you hear these criticisms, oh, that's easy. You have a really big blog. And it's like, well, I started with zero readers, just like everybody else. And you find that those thinkers and doers fall into the category of examining the anomalies as opposed to dismissing them. So I think, you're that there are kind of two binary choices that you have, and there are probably others. But when you see someone who's doing something that you think is really incredible, you can either build yourself up or tear them down to make yourself feel better. And tearing them down doesn't do anything for you. It's an illusion. I think it was Carlos Castaneda, actually,

who said, you know, whether you make yourself happy or you make yourself miserable, the amount of energy required is the same. So it's like, focus on building yourself up. And the way you do that is by asking better questions. And the power of these questions is just incredible. So Peter Thiel, for instance, the first money into Facebook, co-founder of PayPal, co-founder of Palantir, I mean a billionaire many times over. One of Peter's favorite questions is, why can't you accomplish your 10-year goal in the next six months? And when you apply these ridiculous constraints, your thinking has to change. You can't just upshift one year. You have to get an entirely new car to think about that, so to speak. And these guys just do not accept the shoulds and the musts at all.

And so you want to look for the odd behaviors that produce good results and that can be replicated. So, for instance, if you want to become a world-class learner, treat reality as negotiable. Because ultimately, what we have to do, what we should do, are usually a very fragile collection of just socially reinforced beliefs. And just because something is said often does not make it true. Like it takes a lifetime to learn language. Complete nonsense. Complete. Adults can learn languages five to ten times faster than children, period.

Kids just don't have jobs and mortgages. If more information were the answer, we'd all be billionaires with six-pack ass. Just absorbing, not even absorbing, just reading and watching and listening to more isn't enough. Like you have to apply it. You have to use incentives. You have to have rewards and punishments set for yourself so you actually get things done. timelines, et cetera. So that's one. Another one is, don't be a donkey. And the reason is, there's a, I want to say, it might be a philosopher's paradox, but I don't think it is. I think

it's just a parable about Buridan's ass. So Burridden's ass, it's about a donkey. It's about a donkey who is thirsty and hungry. And there's water on one side, a few feet away, and hay on the other. and he can't decide whether to do the hay first, the hay first, or the water, the hay or the water. And he dies of thirst at the end of it. He couldn't do them sequentially. In effect, you can do almost everything you want in life, but you can't do it at the same time. And if you can just dedicate yourself to one thing for even a year, and then the next thing, for a year, you can do those 10 things. But if you try to do all tenant ones, you're going to be bird in his ass.

Should I do this? Should I do this? Or should I focus on this? So don't be a donkey. You decided there's something you wanted so bad that you unleashed all your desire. You became obsessed with it. If it was a business or a car or a relationship or a transformation of your body, if there's something you once envisioned and now it's real, it's because you didn't just envision it. You brought so much emotion to it that now it's in your life.

It was once a dream, it was once a goal, and now it's in your life. Because I know how hard I've played every day. I know how much I'm willing to bleed for my goals. So this is not about emotional austerity. This is not about grinding yourself into the dirt. First of all, it's doing something you love, so that as you're grinding and going that hard, it's something that you just want to do.

On the other side, because you're going that hard, that you just don't have the guilt that most people have when you take time off. Honor the struggle. Like so many people bemoan the hardship and they hate it. And I was saying, you know, anything you apply hate to quickly dies.

You got a dream and you're hating the process. You apply a hate to the process. The dream's going to die. You know, be very careful of what you put hate or things to it. Most people do that with hardship. And I've always seen hardships. I'm going to honor this process. I'm going to honor that this is difficult

because that is precisely what's needed. But most people have strategies available, or they could get them or you could create them. But the problem is you've got a story. And your story is why it isn't working. And the story is, I've tried what? Everything. If you tried everything, you'd be fit. There's always a story.

And when I tell people, you know, if you can just divorce the story of your limitation and marry the truth of your unlimited capacity, then the whole game changes. Deep and lasting fulfillment. The thing that as a human makes us feel good, the thing that we're all saying, We're all secret, deep down, no matter what you tell people you're chasing, the thing you're actually chasing is fulfillment. You want to feel good about who you are. You want to feel good about your contributions.

You want to feel good about meaning and purpose in your life. So those are the things ultimately that people are chasing. They think that money is going to give that to them and that they're wrong. No limit people are human beings who take what they are and accept it. and don't tell themselves that somehow they're deficient because of anything about themselves. It's this idea of taking your life in your own hands and being the kind of person that you choose to be

and understanding that everything that comes your way is an opportunity, is a blessing. And it wasn't until I learned how to, virtually everything that came my way that I was able to transcend it. Does the decision that you're about to make expand you, expand your future, or expand the possibilities of your life? If the answer is yes, then the decision is yes, no matter how terrifying it is. Have a mind that is open to everything and attached to nothing.

One of the central principles of my life is that no one knows enough to be a pessimist about anything. And that each and every one of us, when we close our mind to what is possible for us or what is possible for humanity, closes off the genius that resides and lives in each and every one of us. Truth is life will never be joyous

unless you break the joy. I really feel like that. So many people are waiting to have happiness and they're just, they're waiting to like, maybe when my boss loosens up, I'll loosen up, or, you know, when she's vulnerable, we'll all be vulnerable, or if it's like we're waiting for something. I'm like, it's not, your life will never be what it's going to be unless you bring that thing. Shakespeare noted, there is nothing good or bad that thinking makes it so. There's nothing good or bad, right? There's just stimulus and then there's response. People think that it is objectively a certain way. So now because they're

think it is an object objectively a certain way they feel they are supposed to react based on those emotions that are getting kicked up in their mind what i'm saying is absolutely not those emotions may not serve you they're certainly not aimed at moving you towards your goal their jobs to keep you alive plain and simple so that's not necessarily very helpful in a modern context so if you want to always be moving towards your goal you want to be optimized you've got to learn to get control of your emotions you've got to learn to understand to tell yourself a narrative that isn't predicated on necessarily identifying what is objectively true because I don't think that we experience the world that way it's identifying what's going to work to get me to my

goal and if you don't find something that you love what you do don't bother because if you don't have a passion for what you do and your love it gets old okay well if you're not passionate about what you do in life it gets old and then it becomes work and as soon as it becomes work you're finished so this progress that we're creating in the search for ubiquity of happiness, for the utopia of this place that we will arrive at, this tropical place called happiness is the biggest lie of it all. So the truth of our existence is that there is nothing truly on the outside that can ever, ever fill us up. A lot of you feel stuck because you're waiting for some kind of external force to either push you and pressure you to change and to be great and to be amazing.

Or you're waiting for somebody to give you permission. Or than likely, no one's going. The only kind of force that will truly create change in your life is you. The internal kind of force. I hate to say it, but for those of you that feel really, really, really, really stuck and you keep thinking that somebody's got to pick me. It's ridiculous. This is external versus internal force.

He said, then there are those who reach a stage in which they realize the futility of this constant striving, struggling for the things that perish, things which after they are obtained proved to be shadows. It is at this stage that some person's term from this seeking for things in the outer realm. to a seeking for them from God. Taking the focus in my life off of the things, the accomplishments, the acquisitions, reputation, and identify ourselves as.

We don't really know who we are, and I want people to admit that when they look at their books. The truth of it is that we really don't know who we are. We have many different selves. There isn't never one. never one self. This is a concept that's very deeply ingrained in Buddhism that's greatly influenced me. Our self is constantly in fluctuation. We're not the same person we were as a child. In the course of a day, we have different moods. We have one self when we're with a lover. We have

another self when we're with a boss, as I alluded to earlier. So to think that there's one consistent, stable self as an illusion. And neuroscientists have pointed this out. The brain tries to create for us this sense that we have a stable, consistent world so that we don't constantly freaking out about the actual chaos of life. So we even simplify ourselves into this idea that we have this one consistent, authentic self. Your authentic self is actually coming to terms with this chaos and accepting it and not trying to imagine that you're some consistent, great, do-good, moralizing person.

And the other thing is you have a dark side. You have dark desires. You have aggressive impulses. You have anger. You have things that I call it the shadow. That's not me. It's a concept of psychology. You have a shadow side to yourself.

Well, that's also part of being authentic. And you tended to repress it. So embracing the many different sides of who you are, including embracing the fact that you're not new, as good or moral as you think you are, actually would add up to be more authentic. To ground yourself in reality, you would first have to ground yourself in yourself.

You have to know who you are. You have to detach yourself from social media, from all the other influences that people are giving you. So when you don't know yourself, when you're not in touch with your own tastes and desires, your own impulses, what makes you different, what makes you unique, you are alienated from the one basic reality, who you are. And it creates, I think, a lot of anxiety and a lot of depression

because we all have a deep need to sort of express our personal opinions, our personal tastes, to find some outlet and some career to give expression to what makes us different from others. And so if you're constantly listening to what other people are saying, if you're plugged in to the Matrix continually, and that's your only reality, then really what you're doing is you're never understanding who you are. What you see when you look in the mirror is a reflection

of all the other opinions that other people have, opinions of you, opinions of politics, opinions of what's political, opinions of what's politically correct, of what's good and what's bad, you've become a reflection of other people. And being alienated from yourself is a deeply, deeply depressing experience. It can lead to taking drugs, to stimulants, to all kinds of addictions. So we can say certain basic things about yourself. You were born, very different from other people. Your brain is wired in a very unique way.

your DNA is unique. You are going to die someday. You're mortal. You have to fend for yourself in this world. People aren't going to give you things. This is sort of a basic kind of ground for your feet to sit, stand upon. And understanding that is sort of understanding reality and a lot of people. Because living in that kind of matrix world of social media and all the fantasies,

You don't really have to confront yourself. You don't have to deal with your own demons, with your own weaknesses, with your own flaws, but you pay a terrible price. But I think the principal source of the problem is that people are running away from themselves. And on social media, that process is greatly accelerated. A lot of times I think people have this misconception

that if you practice something in the morning, people say to me, you know, Don't know, if I practice meditation, for 10 minutes every morning is not going to affect my life. Yes, but what are you doing the remaining 23 hours and 50 minutes? If you're doing things that counteract what you're doing in the morning, then it doesn't help. If you exercise for 10 minutes and morning and the rest of the day,

eating fish and chips and drinking beer and pizza, laying on the couch, it's not going to help. So the people I work with have kind of changed over the years. And I would say in the last two, three years, the people I've worked with, what they really want to know is I think they've come to the realization that they know very little about the mind.

They're experts in their areas, but they know very little about the mind and they really want to understand the mind better so that they can leverage their mind to be even better at what they do. All of them want to leverage themselves better and they feel like they have a lack of understanding of how their mind works.

So two things here, Ryan. One is wanting to, a quick fix to learning. You know, I spoke yesterday in Munich to a group of entrepreneurs and one guy asked me, so on this, is there a quick fix to having more energy in life? I'm like, there's no quick fix in life. That's the first thing you have to understand.

And I think technology trains us to think they're quick fixes. So I can go on my phone. I live in New York City. Last week, I went on Amazon, ordered something at 10.30 a night. And the next morning, at 8 o'clock in the morning, FedEx buzzed my door and it was there. It's crazy.

So I can get things instantaneously through technology. And then, because we're so trained to getting things as soon as we want them, that we apply that to our life. and we think that yeah we can change overnight and then people out there selling hacks does this hack, that's that hack how are we going to hack this how we're going to hack business,

how we're going to hack the mind, how we're going to hack the body. But it doesn't work that way. You have a child and your child is growing slowly and learning slowly. There's no way to hack your child. Can you make your three-year-old boy, right? Yeah. Three-year-old boy learn.

Walk faster, talk faster. Walk faster, learn triple integrals by tomorrow. Why don't you hack him? It doesn't work, right? And then why as adults do we think we can hack everything? It's not sustainable. And then the other thing about being a teacher is that, you know, that's another thing

that's being sold out there, besides hacking, it's like, you know, let me certify you to be a yoga teacher, let me certify you to be a life coach. I know you're 19 years old, and you've never had any experiences in life, nor have you done, achieved anything that pushed you beyond the limits of your imagination, but let me certify you as a life coach

after a three-day weekend program. And I think when you go with the idea that I'm going to learn something and then take that content and teach it, you never really learn. When I went to the monastery and to learn from my guru, I went purely to be a student. First of all, I went there with the knowledge that I knew nothing. I wanted to learn from him. And then once I learned from him,

my goal was to strive to implement everything as best as possible. I have zero intent to teach. right and that and I feel when you take that approach you learn the best and some of the people that I work with purely have that approach they have zero intention to teach they just really want to learn and so when you go that with that intention

then you learn really well like we were chatting earlier you know if someone wants to learn martial arts they want to learn the quick swirled 360 kung fu-kik in the air or something you know no one wants to go and do the hard work and that's all about the quick fix. How can I get from A to B as quickly as possible? And it's not only about training the body,

it's about training the mind too, right? The mind needs to adjust, and the mind is like a muscle. It needs to reshape itself to be able to take on a new way of thinking and a new way of behaving and progressively hold that new shape. And that only comes through repetition

and patience and slow, hard work of doing the same thing over and over and over. again and I think so many teachers out there are selling quick fixes and because they have never been trained themselves properly so they just they've got a quick fix learning to get from A to B so then they go and teach a quick way to get from A to B. They don't understand this old traditional path of slowly learning and developing yourself over a period of time is what really creates mastery in a certain level. You get used to being comfortable and that's the problem

right you know you stay in an apartment for long enough you stay in the city for long enough you're comfortable you know where to go by your milk your bread you know your surroundings to get comfortable you get used to it and you know one of the biggest teachings he taught me is about awareness in the mind you're not the mind rather your pure awareness traveling through different areas of the mind and your goal is take your awareness from your conscious mind move it through the conscious mind through the subconscious into the super conscious areas of the mind which is the most refined areas of your mind to experience deeper in the states and ultimately self realization, God realization. But awareness travels in the mind but when you get

stuck physically in a certain place and you get used to your surroundings and your comforts, your external environment is a reflection of how your awareness is working in your mind. That means your awareness is stuck in a particular area of the mind because there's really no separation between your inner state and your outer state. And what he was teaching me is that by moving me around making sure I never got comfortable long enough one place to stay attached, he was teaching me that to not allow my awareness and get stuck in a particular area of mind and in a particular area of the mind and stay in a rut

and that I could actually prime, break my awareness free from the particular area of the mind, really grab all of it and take it deep within myself and experience deeper states of mind. Right, I mean if you go on most people's timelines, a lot of people's timesline. It's amazing. You can scroll through and it's just a thousand, that's a thousand posts and it's 99, nine pictures of themselves, selfies. And I think social media has made people extremely selfish and all people think about it themselves. You know, here's what I'm doing. Look at me here. Look at me there. You know, and you look at also public figures and celebrities and influences. They constantly post pictures of themselves and their amazing lives. And they're amazing

life traveling all around the world and you know I see and I know some of these people and they never post pictures of their students or you know who's following them it's always about them nobody spends time with themselves and when I say to people to say this to people they go like oh I have alone time every evening when I walk my dog for half an hour that's my alone time and you're like no that's walking a dog when I'm at the gym working out that's my alone time I go like no that's being at the gym alone time is used sitting down in a chair at home or on the floor cross-legged you know no music no journal no podcast your eyes close and spending time in contemplation and a reflection not meditation but in actual reflection and

really having a conversation with yourself the same way we're having a conversation getting to know each other and and each other's opinions and thoughts you have a conversation with yourself and people don't do that right they don't spend any time doing that and if you don't spend any time doing that How would you know what's important in your life? Where are you struggling and what you need to focus on next and what you need to work on? You're so busy from the moment the alarm rings,

they reach over to the side table, grab their phone, turn off the alarm, look at all the notifications, and then start stroking that phone. This is how people get pledged in the morning, stroking their phone. And then every 10 years, someone has a quote unquote midlife crisis when they realize that they're living living a life that they've never contemplated, they've never planned, they're not connected with, right?

And then that's kind of life and then you're on your deathbed looking back saying, what did I do, why did I value these things? And they're wondering why and it's because they never spent the time in solitude with themselves. Do the work now so you can spend the rest of your life living a life that's in alignment with your purpose. Once you figure out what you want, what your purpose in life is, then you can spend the rest of your life living a life in alignment with that purpose. And you know, talking about deathbed, you know, when my girl was dying, one of the last things he said on his deathbed was, what an amazing life I would not have traded it for anything in the wall. What an amazing life, I would not have traded it for anything in the world.

Now, what words to hear from a dying man? You know, to be able to look back on your life and say, that was freaking spectacular. So when you're so determined, when you're so clear what you want in life, and you're so determined to get it, and you're willing to give up everything and everyone for it. Then you're living a life in alignment with your purpose, and then you can spend the rest of your life in sync with who you are,

as opposed to chasing so many different things around you that sparkle, whether it's, you know, I want to be like that person and I want to do this, and that sounds fascinating, maybe I'll try that for a few years. You know, you meet kids nowadays that are 18, 19, 20 years old, when you ask them, to do? What are you studying university? Oh, I think I'll do science and for a year and, you know, and then I might major in this, but I was also thinking I might take a year off, you know,

travel a little bit and then come back and I'm not sure, maybe I'll do arts. I'm kind of interested in this topic. I do not know what you want to do. It's, you know, we have one life. You don't get a second shot at this. Get clear what you want. Anybody who believes anything other than this, This is all my responsibility that I can change and get a different result. If you believe anything other than that, you're never going to reach your full potential. What are your goals? The only thing that you should believe or do is that which moves you towards your goals. So if lamenting and feeling broken inside because I was victimized by somebody is going

to move me forward, then I will do it. But my gut is that'll take me to a dark place. It won't put me in a position to think and act and try to be strategic. and make more useful decisions in the future. Rather than the problem is overwhelming, this problem is solvable. People always start with that. This problem is solvable.

Now we may disagree about how to solve the problem, but we're at least in the right frame of mind. There's not the hopelessness. There's not the, this is forever, we're stuck. It's what can I do? How do I improve? How do I get myself out of this? People have been given sort of a general sense

of how to think culturally that I don't think moves people towards their individual goals. And I just know that fulfillment requires you to do something hard to build yourself to become stronger to become more resilience to have meaning and purpose we are hard-wired to experience joy when we have meaning and purpose and that we had to work hard for a set of skills that allow us to serve other people it is innate you'll never be able to

get somebody to not feel good about that so if we know that's an innate path get people on that path right know what your goal is and then do and believe things and move people towards that goal Where the other thing to be cynical, to be pissed about what somebody else had, it's a dark place, man. Transform yourself into something that is truly undeniable, to become so good that they can't ignore you. The reason that we have taken over the globe in a way that no other species has is because we are the ultimate adaptation machine. Darwin is often misquoted as saying it's the strongest of the species that survived. He did not say that.

What he said was it's neither the strongest of the species that survived nor the most intelligent, but rather the most adaptive to change. It is the animal that can change the fastest to a changing environment that becomes the most dominant species the world has ever seen. It is our very nature to change. That is what we are wired to do. If you look at human DNA, we have roughly 20,000 genes that encode traits. And for a long time, scientists disregarded all of the other, what they call junk DNA. that didn't encode for traits.

But what we now know that junk DNA is, is epigenetic signaling. It is the thing that makes us extraordinary. It's the thing that says, ah, in this environment, respond like this. So you can go to the gym and bust your ass and train your body and change your physique. And we've all seen it happen with bodybuilders.

We all get that they came out of the womb, weak just like everybody else, and they put themselves under an ungodly amount of stress and strain, and they push themselves every day, and they had this just unimaginable amount of discipline. And from that, they are able to transform themselves into somebody completely unrecognizable.

It is amazing. And because it happens on the outside, we all get it, we all believe in it. We look at athletes, and we understand that they work their way there. But we don't look at Gary Kasparov and realize he did the same thing, because what's happening in the mind seems invisible. We can't see it. We don't understand what's happening. What you build your self-esteem around matters.

And whether you realize it or not, each and every one of you has something that sits at the core of how you feel about yourself. And from that, your identity, your sense of self-worth, your self-esteem, it is all built around that thing. Because you cannot make change until you acknowledge where you're actually at. If you understand where you're weak, then you know where to spend your time building skills. To me, the gap between where you are now and where you want to go is a gap of skill set. As Nassim Thelib says, things that are robust, that are strong, that are tough, that can take just a lot of abuse before they break. They are still ultimately defined by their breaking point. Something that is anti-fragile, on the other hand, is something that the more you attack it, the more it is pounded on, the stronger it gets.

What's the most important key to success? I think it's hunger. You know what's the number one way you measure somebody that's hungry? Very simple. Their sense of urgency. I don't believe in talent. Well, some people they have talent, that's good at help when you have talent. As long as you have a lot of determination and willpower, that's all you need.

You have to have the world to win. This is it. There will never be a more perfect time than now. Young warrior, you will must get up. Your journey is not over. And it's one thing to be hungry, it's another thing when you're starving for greatness and starving for success. If you want to be really great at something, you kind of have to be out of your fucking mind, but you also have to have an iron will.

Because pain, you're going to have all the time, uncertainty, and constant work, constant one, constant one, constant one. Life is hard. Everything worth doing is hard. There is no easy path. There is no tomorrow. It is your journey, young warrior. Only you decide when it ends. The world is yours. There's something that you want and you're hungry for it. You've got to do whatever is necessary until.

And when you give the best you can and that's not enough, you must do what is required. I didn't teach myself victory first. I taught myself failure. If you want to go from where you are to where you want to be, you're going to have to do something that makes you more different, more weird, more easy to be mocked. And there is this temptation to go back to your old ways of thinking. Go back to the road that you already know how it's going to end. And I get the sense that this is not a bug.

It is a feature. It's a part of moving from a place that you do not want to be to one that you do. And for the most part, you actually need to live through this lonely chapter. And this is most people, I think, most people's experience, because if most people don't change, you are going to be an outlier if you're somebody who does change. So you want to be normal. So you just want to be like everybody else that roams the world, not knowing the power that's in them. Being fine with being mediocre. You want to go back to who you were, huh, David?

Only two mistakes along this way. You are not starting this one or you are not bringing it. this one through the end. Everybody knows you got to pay a price for winning, but most people are willing to pay it. They may pay it once, but literally you got to pay it every single day. And the crazy part about that is the price changes daily, just like the stock market goes up and down. The price of winning changes on a daily, daily basis. You've got to be willing to pay that price whatever it is on that day. I call the Rocky Cutsine, and almost every successful person that I have ever encountered has gone through not a month or a year, but many years of doing

work without reward where they have to do things that other people find boring and they have to sacrifice things that everyone finds interesting that most people want to do during that entire season of their life. And they basically sacrifice a season of other things that they would prefer to do to do stuff that they would not prefer to do because of the one thing they want most. And that's the rocky cut scene. And instead of lasting five minutes, it just usually lasts five or ten years. One day to change your life forever. I know that you have a grand vision.

I know you want better for yourself. I know that you are fed up with being stuck in the same place. You seem to be stuck in this endless, dreadful cycle of stagnation. Well, this is your chance to get out. And once and for all, show yourself that you are capable. to remind yourself of the power you possess. And I promise you if you do, you will never look back,

because this time is different. And don't give up on yourself. Don't throw the towel in so quickly. Many people give up on the one-yard line. Oh, no, no, no. See, life is not just that simple. It's not that cut and dry. And that's why most people never realize their personal greatness,

because they're casual about life. And when you are casual about life, you will end up a casualty. It's hard. It's frustrating. There's things that are going to happen. You're going to get punched in the face. You're going to get sick. You're going to have breakups.

You're going to have people let you down. You're going to have people steal from you. You're going to have friends let you down. You're going to make mistakes. And everybody's going to see it and laugh at you. All of these things are going to happen. You have to build yourself into someone who can continue to execute regardless of what's happening around you. And if you can do that, it doesn't matter what's happening around you.

It doesn't matter if they're laughing. It doesn't matter if they're making fun. It doesn't matter if the weather's bad. It doesn't matter if your parents don't approve or your wife or your girlfriend or your husband. It doesn't matter if you keep executing because eventually you will find yourself in the place you set out to be. Get serious. Life is serious. We call it life or death.

You can't just give in. You've got to push back. Serious. Life is serious. The future is serious. One ancient novelist said, these are the best of times and these are the worst of times. The best of times and the worst of times.

That's called serious matter. It's serious whether you win or lose. It's serious whether you succeed or fail. It's serious whether you've got a good future carved out for your or you do not have. These are serious matters. Matters of the heart are serious. Matters of income are serious.

Matters of supporting your family, serious. And when you have goals that are maybe outside your reach, you have to know that getting to that goal, you can have a lot of bad days. So I was just failing. I kept failing, I kept failing and kept failing, and kept failing. So I had to teach myself how to fail right. And what that means is, when I fail, I can't say,

spend much time in that fail zone. I have to be able to get up and get after the next day just as fast. So the big thing is know that if you have big goals and big dreams, along the way failure is going to happen. So how fast do you get up from that? Everything changed for me when I realized that we're not meant to feel excited and perfect all the time. I started accepting that where I am right now is where I'm genuinely meant to be. Tough days are all a part of the process. lean into them. Bad days are also part of a very good and meaningful life. So on my toughest days, I think about getting through one more day, one more workout, one more rep. He says, press on. Nothing can take the place of persistence. Talent will not. The world is full of unsuccessful people

with talent. Genius will not. Unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education alone will not. The world is full of educated derelicts. Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent. The world might say you are not allowed to yet. I waited a long time out in the world before I gave myself permission to fail. Don't even bother asking. Don't bother telling the world you are ready.

Show it. Do it. When you began your journey, you were determined. Nothing could stop you. And now that you are so close, are you willing to give up so easily? I think the most expensive thing you could do is lose hope.