Daily Motivations - Courage: Listen to this everyday

Episode Date: August 15, 2026

The most valuable 15 minutes you'll spend today learning how to unlock your potential! In this Alex Hormozi interview by Chris Williamson on the Modern Wisdom podcast, Hormozi shares the brutal truths you need to hear to get the life you want. One of the Best Motivational Speeches Ever featuring Alex Hormozi. Instagram- Daily_motivationsorgFacebook- @daily_motivationsorgSupport us PayPal

If you don't have courage, nothing else matters. Yeah, I think one of the strongest frames that has got me through those harder times is that this is the story I will one day tell. And so it's just like almost the more bad things that happen, it's like the more epic the story becomes. And so of course this terrible thing will happen. And like, doesn't that make the story so much better? If you are the kind of person that tells yourself the story that you're the kind of person that can get through this, that is functionally exactly what you're chasing.

Like what you're after is the story. And by putting that on the front end and going, okay, I'm just going to keep on building stories that I'm going to refer back to in future, I think you're actually being more direct than if you were trying to take a more rational view of exactly how behaviors put together. Like, the story is the rational view

of how your behavior and your identity are put together. If we remember a story, so like, let's say you have that story of you went through this hard thing, and then you survived, then it basically serves as a reminder of the reinforcer of the behaviors you did to, get through it. And so it's almost like with a kid who's smaller, if you're like, hey, remember last time you did this, you got ice cream. If you remind them of that reward, then they're more likely to repeat the behavior. And so I think stories function in that same way where we use them to

motivate ourselves in the short term to do the desired behavior that might be less comfortable in the short term, but we're reminded about the larger reinforcing event that we had in the past. Big lesson here is just because you're doing hard things in one domain does not mean that it crosses over into all domains unless you purposefully try to make your identity wrapped up around it. Lots of mistakes were made by standing still. People think that inaction isn't a decision, but it is. Totally. I mean, your conditions change through in action still.

Like, doors close. There are moments where you have opportunities where you have to act or they will go away. And so I think it's like being able to seize those opportunities. And that means that you have to actively say no to something that you might want or might want a lot. And I think those are the trades that we, I think being willing to make those tradeoffs clearly and trade them for the things that you want more is how people can progress through life and get more of what they want. The pain of having to accept tradeoffs holds a lot of people back. 100%. And then they end up getting nothing. And I honestly think that is like at the crux of why so many people are not realizing any potential at all because they are unwilling to make any trade and then make the biggest trade of all. How do you think about overcoming that decision paralysis, lots of good.

options in front of you, but it's functionally true for humans that more options make you more miserable, not happier. People get stuck because they don't know what they want. And I define what you want by what you're willing to sacrifice to get something. Take responsibility for your current position. What's that mean? It absolutely might not be your fault, but it is still your problem. Since you are the only one who you can influence directly, then you are the one who is source. And because, like, you could still be correct in saying that, like, because I insert grievance, insert, you know, trauma, insert genetic predisposition, insert zip code I was born in, or language or poverty level, or whatever it is.

All of those things could be true, and yet you still have to take action as the only source that can change it. No one's coming to save you. Yeah, which goes back to the first one. The interesting thing about no one is coming to save you also means no one is coming to stop you. Hmm. The three-step process of how to win.

Number one, realize no one is coming to save you. Number two, take responsibility for your current position. Number three, be willing to sacrifice who you are for who you want to be. I think that those three is really all about power. You own everything. It's like, okay, if I own everything, then you could still hope that someone saves you, but it still relies on someone else to change your condition. And so it's like, okay, I own all these outcomes.

I'm not going to rely on someone else to change my condition. But you're still there, which means you have to take the third step, which is that I have to sacrifice. give up something in order to get something else. And I think where people actually stay stuck the longest is the trades that we are unwilling to make. It's basically the desire to have everything at the same time. And the easiest analogy I have is like it is totally reasonable to want to have a mountain

view and to be on the beach and be walking distance from a Whole Foods. But you probably will not find a place that has all three of those because they're They are all at apparent contradictions or apparent odds. And so they're, but so what happens is we just stay in this paralysis of indecision because we feel like all paths are settling. And I think there's this movement or narrative around like never settle and things like that. But people mistake never settle for never make trades. And so we have this obsession with optionality or optionality maxing.

But options are only valuable when taken. And so when we never take the option, which means we don't cash in the option that we have available, like some options need to be taken. And when they are taken, other options disappear. Because just having maximum potential does not mean maximum reality. Because you need to commit. You have to commit, which is the elimination of alternatives. I mean, show me anything that was worth doing that did not require commitment,

which is an elimination of alternatives, a tradeoff. And so in the beginning of our lives, when we're younger, we are praised for maximizing our potential, right? How can we have as many colleges accept us? How can we have all the best grades? How can we have all the paths in front of us? But I think many people know people who are really successful earlier on for maximizing potential but not realizing potential.

And I think the gap between the maximization of potential and the realization of potential is the commitments that we're willing to make, which is the trades, the elimination of the alternatives, when we have to start cashing those options in and realizing that some of them are never going to come for fruition. because we can only have one life, and some of those trades are permanent. What are the hard things that people should be focusing on more? What are the step change function, hard thing, capacity, skills that people should focus on more?

What outside forces are influencing your behavior in a way that is aversive or against your goals? And so if you're like, I want to start a business, but I am afraid of what other people will say, then it means that we are allowing those other people to control your behavior. And I think when you say it in really plain terms like they're like, wow, I didn't know I was giving them that much power of my life. It's like, I'm not doing this because of them, which means they control me. And to me, like the hard thing is in some ways just not allowing that control to persist or keep going. It is interesting how many people can do hard things physically but can't do hard things decisively.

It's weird that we publicly admire the obvious hard thing, even if that isn't the one that actually. actually makes the biggest difference to people's life direction. It's not predictive of being a good friend. It's not predictive of being the best partner. It's not predictive of being a successful business owner. But because it's more obvious, because it's more publicly laudable, you can flex it online and you can tell people I ran a marathon,

as opposed to when my partner asked me a difficult question, I didn't shy away from it. I told them the truth. And to be clear, I think that those things are laudable in and of themselves. Like you go fight a war, you go run a marathon. I think all of those things are praiseworthy. It's just the generalizable component of that hard being, oh, I can do all hard things is really the misconception. I mean, I think, for me, again, like the hardest part of it was the first set of friends

that you have to relinquish. Because once you do it the first time, you realize that you will still survive, you'll still make it through, you'll find new friends. But like in the first time, it's sacrificing everything you've known and loved for something that you've never experienced and hope will happen and have no idea if it actually will. So the cost is known, the payoff isn't. And that is why I think it is the riskiest

and why so many people struggle to make the job. The world will reward you in proportion to your courage, not your intellect. The most dangerous person in the world is the one who continues to show up every day, even when the rewards are not guaranteed. Your potential is determined by the amount of uncertainty you're able to tolerate and how long you can tolerate it for. You can beat 99% of people if you can master the shame of rejection, the burden of repetition,

and the pain of feedback. I was asked if you could transfer only one trade to your son, what would it be? And I really thought a lot about it. And I was like, all the trades, what I would transfer? And I think it's courage. Because if you don't have courage, nothing else matters. Like, you can't take any action.

You can't do anything worth doing. You can't stand for anything because you have no courage. And so I think that's why. it's so much more preferable to be a failure than a coward. And I think that I would hope that I could transfer just that lesson and try and reinforce as many times as I can in his upbringing that, like, you have to, you have to take jumps and you have to lose and you have to be willing to lose.

And then realize that losing doesn't actually make you a loser because losing is the first signal on the path to winning. But like not playing is the, is the actual signal for a forever loss. What is courage to you? Being willing to take action where there's a large, short-term cost with an uncertain delayed benefit. So if you want to start a business

and you think that you are going to get made fun of Orsonide remarks or like, oh yeah, you're doing your podcast thing again. Oh, yeah, don't miss out, right? You know, don't miss Friday night because you big podcast. You know you're going to suffer that short term. That's a known cost. And then the payoff is delayed and uncertain. Like, not only will it come later, if it were guaranteed, if you knew you were going to make a million dollars doing a podcast, then you'd be like, whatever, fuck it. It takes significantly less courage. But I think it's the fact that it is unknown and delayed. So you basically have to be willing to get kicked in the nuts and multiple times and sometimes for extended durations before the hope that you will get something. But I think the only way to get through that kind of kicked in the nuts period for however long it's going to be is realizing that you have two paths, one that is guaranteed, which is that the breath you're currently on will not get you where you want to go.

And the other path is not guaranteed to get you where you want to go. to go, but it's the only one where you have a shot where you do. And that's where your potential is determined by the amount of uncertainty you're able to tolerate and how long you can tolerate it for. The longer the game you play, the bigger the game you play. And so if you want to create rockets that go to the moon, you have to be able to deal with uncertainty for just an absolutely absurd amount of time compared to most humans on any endeavor. There's a line at the end, pain of feedback.

I'm interested in that. I mean, rejection hurts, failing hurts. And I think when you give it your all and then the market, society of the universe, whatever, determines that you are still not enough. That is very painful. I think that in time, you learn that feedback is fuel rather than failure. And once that new association gets paired, I mean, you've had plenty of incredibly successful people on this podcast. And I would say many of them have this same kind of, I would call it lesson as like it's not failure, it's feedback or it's not failure. or it's not failure.

But it just means that fundamentally they have a different pairing for losing. And so everyone has to go through this because like, losing is good. And feeling bad about losing is good because it forces you to change. And that change means that over time, as long as you're changing in the correct direction, you get better. Or else you would continue to do the strategy that caused you to lose last time and you would just run it back again. And this is why I have this like, I think one of the big, losses or failures of society right now is that we are trying to castrate the teeth from the pain of loss.

We're trying to not allow kids, people, the feeling to feel bad. It's like we have determined that feeling bad is bad. But feeling bad is not bad. Feeling bad is a signal so that we need to change. Because if no one feels bad ever, then it means that everyone is doing what they want to do all the time. and that is not how a functioning society works. Sometimes people do stupid shit and need to know and feel bad for it.

Eventually reality is going to come into contact with your decisions. Yes. And the more that that's put off, the less likely you are to come up with a way to avoid that reality coming into reality. Trying to just redefine reality and create a fantasy where you losing and you feeling bad isn't true,

but it doesn't change reality. It just changes someone's perception of it for the short term and then they have to pay reality back with interest in time. And like the check always comes due. It's just like the interest is much bigger. And so in light of, you know, my son, my child that I have in the future, like, I want him to experience the pain of loss so that he can learn. Because like, how else can you learn? You have to.

And there's tons of things that you can probably do that feel good that are not good. And there's tons of things that you can do that feel bad that are not bad. But what a gift to give somebody to say you can feel bad and not. feel bad about it. Yeah. And that's okay. Like, you lost. What will we learn?

What will we do next time? Great. Do it again. That feels like resilience. Yeah. As opposed to any time that you feel this emotion, which is negative, that is worthy of rushing in and panic and control and distance. That's almost like a formula for fragility. Okay.

If we know that we're on the path getting kicked in the nuts right now, and I know I'm on my 17th or 100th podcast, and I'm still not, like a millionaire yet. I have not achieved what I want yet. It does not mean that I have to change course. But earlier on he said that bad feelings, feeling bad, are important to update the way that you're approaching this situation. So how do you distinguish between the two? No, and that's, and I'd say what you what you hit on is, is the crux of it, which is judgment. And this is one of the hardest ones is like, how do you help someone recognize patterns? Basically, it's the eternal question of when do I push and when do I pivot, right? When do I push through the hardship versus when do I adjust?

Am I giving up on this set in the gym because I'm being a... Am I giving up because I'm about to injure myself? Yeah. And I've worked with this a lot because it's a pretty classic entrepreneurship issue of like, if one of the fundamental assumptions that you begin your quest with

has been proven untrue based on the feedback, then that is where pivoting makes sense. But it is definitely one of the harder lines to know like when should I push, when should I pivot, what lesson do I learn from losing?