Daily Motivations - FOCUS ON YOURSELF & STAY SILENT

Episode Date: August 30, 2025

Speakers: Dry Creek Wrangler,  Alex Hormozi,  and Tony Robbins. If you find this episode enjoyable, kindly RATE, SHARE, and FOLLOW for more Instagram - @daily_motivationsorg Facebook- @daily_motivationsorg Kindly support us Support Us

I'm Erica Alini, a reporter at the Globe and Mail. I help you understand how the economy affects your finances. I give you the big picture so you can make better decisions. If that's journalism you value, head to globeandmail.com slash subscribe. Arrogance is pride mixed with ignorance. That's the definition of arrogance. I'm not talking arrogance. I'm talking about, look, as a human being, I've failed at this, I've succeeded at that,

I've wrecked this, but I've built that. And all in all, you know, I've tried, but I like me. So I'm going to give me some grace. And how many people can say that? How many people say I like me? They would give more grace, more care, more attention, more love to somebody else than themselves. There's a statistic around, I think, on average. The likelihood that you are going to complete a course of antibiotics yourself, it's about 50%.

Right. The likelihood of your dog completing it is 95%. Yes, yeah. So we're literally capable of caring for a pet. Right. Nearly double as well as we can for ourselves. Remembering that if you die, no one can look after the pet. Serving others from a cup which overflows around your own is important.

tell me how'd you like yourself find somebody that you like that you genuinely like and figure out what it is about them you like i like that that's something i like that person is uh they're understanding they're gentle they're hardworking they're honest this is what i like about that and incorporate that stuff into your own life if that's the stuff you like then incorporate that stuff you like then incorporate stuff into who you are and then you like yourself it's not rocket science but if we become the person that we like I have come to the place in my life where when I meet somebody in there and they don't like me and you can tell I don't care I like me and it's enough you know this was a lesson that I realized toward the end of my

20s where I'd accumulated a lot of success and status in maybe the way that modern society tells a young man that he should with freedom and and notoriety and women and stuff like that and that was cool and to look back on fun but it was beginning to get to the stage where I didn't like me all that much I didn't do anything bad but I just felt like there was, I was built for more. I was built for different, built for something else. Right. Right. And I realized that I wasn't keeping promises to myself. Right. That if I said I was going to wake up at a certain time, the snooze button would be hit three times. Right. If I said that I was going to stick to my diet or go to the gym or do this

thing, maybe it would happen, but it wouldn't happen quite the way that I'd meant it to. And there It would be some negotiating and some cajoling and some falling short. You know, how can you have faith that you're going to go and do all of the things that you want in life when you can't not hit the snooze button? Right. Or you can't not cheat on your diet. You can't not do, you know, you are constructed by the tiny decisions that you make every single day. Well, I'll just say I came to a place in life where I just didn't like me anymore. I wasn't a very nice person.

And I was just very on edge, very angry. So I had to make some decisions. I can't continue to live like this. Angry, there's no benefit to it. You know, it doesn't fix anything. You know, anger, it just turned out. I'm like, this is not profitable. And this is eating me up inside.

And I'm making stupid decisions. And this has just got it in. So I had to make some decisions. what what's making me like this. I need to get it out of my life. And slowly, over time, got a handle on stuff. And kind of got some of my perspective back. So imagine that you had a friend,

and every time that you invited this friend out for lunch, they showed up an hour late or they didn't show up at all. After a while, you'd stop trusting them and stop inviting them out at all. You are that friend to yourself. And I think this is such an important lesson for people who want to be liked, who want to struggle socially and want to become better, people like people that make them feel good. Right.

They don't care that much about how impressive the person is. I don't like the trend in this circle, men's motivation circle. I don't like the hustle culture as is being brought out and taught today. I don't agree with it. because I think it's out of balance. I think young men need to know that, hey, it's okay for you to sit down and to chill and to think. Because I guarantee if you're in the weight room pumping out all these reps and running on the machine and then you're going into the cubicle and you flip open a computer and you're not thinking.

You're learning you're taking in, but you're not meditating on stuff and you're not thinking. But that can be taken so far that young men are made to feel guilty for just setting down and thinking and relaxing. And I understand that there was a tendency in this country. We had a lot of young men that were not raised with dads. They weren't raised to work, you know, and so it's sitting on the couch playing the stupid Xbox, you know, not growing up learning to work. So that pendulum went too far this way. So now you've got guys who, in order to counteract that, they swung the pendulum too far this way.

And a balanced man needs to be somewhere in the middle. He needs to be able to work, to do what needs to be done, to improve himself. And he also needs to sit around by the fire in the backyard and just stay balanced. If you want it all, life will give you nothing. we're willing to sacrifice everything that we have for the thing that we want and then once we get the thing that we want we want back the things that we sacrificed which really just goes to the heart of the human condition which is we want it all and we're not willing to make trades

and so one of the reasons that I've actually I would say largely tossed out the deathbed regrets of most people is that what they do typically is they will have the bias of wanting the other path they could have taken without considering the cost of that path. So they say, hey, I was really successful and I did all these things, but I would give it all up today to have my family. It's like, well, yeah, but you didn't

because you actually chose the path that you're on. And you weren't willing to do that. But what you are saying right now is that you want it all. Sure. So does everyone. And so I've had a few moments of clarity over the last year or so, but we want everything without the cost. And everything has a price.

And you will never be able to get the sufficient price tag paid on everything to achieve a modicum of success in any domain unless you are willing to trade from another. And I think that that has significantly minimized my regret. We give up our 20s for our 30s. We give up our 30s for our 40s, our 40s for our 50s. And we trade everything we achieved in our 30s, 40s and 50s to get back to our 20s. We give up the thing we have most of for the thing that we have least of. And we give up the thing that we want for the thing that's supposed to get it. I will become happy when I'm sufficiently successful,

and I will sacrifice my happiness in pursuit of success so that I can become sufficiently successful so I can finally be happy. We spend our 20s wanting to be richer and older and have a family, then we start that in our 30s, and we gain more wealth and do the family thing, and then we get to get to our 40s, and we've got more responsibilities. We've accumulated all of this stuff. And then we think, God, if only only that,

I could go back to my 20s, but you were fucking miserable in your 20s. You hated it. You had no idea whether you were going to be successful. You were constantly concerned about money. You were desperately needing validation from all of these people around you. You were permanently in dissatisfaction about this stuff. We already know how the movie ends when we go back and say we want to relive it. And you can't relive it into the same context because uncertainty is the largest part of the story.

Perhaps golden ears can only happen in our memory. Nobody believes that we're living through in golden era right. now. We never think we're in the good old days, but the good old days are always now. I have spent a huge amount of mental resources accepting suffering and not saying that there's something wrong with something bad. Like a huge amount of mental resources gone to this because I've been better and faster at correcting the loop of like, oh, I am not happy with this particular thing and therefore there's something wrong. So fix the story that I tell myself as opposed to makes the same. And that's been super helpful with the addition of everything that I remember

will always be better than it was. And the nice thing is that there's tons of science that backs this up, which is that we learn through reward and punishment. Punishment fades with time, no matter how bad it was. Like, you get drunk, you get hungover, you say, I'll never drink again. Seven days later, you're out drinking again. Why? The punishment of the hangover fades quickly. You are with somebody for a while. You're like, this is crazy or this guy is crazy. And then you break up. And then all of a sudden, what do you remember? The good times. Because reward sticks. And in some ways, there's a little bit of a hopeful message there, which is that when you look back on your life, you will disproportionately remember the good

times. But it only becomes a problem if you limit the present, which is the only thing you've ever actually lived in. Where is my focus going? I can always be upset about something. Where do you tend to focus more? Your past, your present, your future. We all spend all three, but where do you spend more of your time? Most of us who are achievers tend to focus on the future, but all the joy is in the present. The majority of people spend a lot of time with the past,

and the problem is you can't change it. You're constantly focused on what's missing versus what you have. You're focused on what you can't control. And there's two worlds, right? The external world, the internal world. We can't control the external world. We can influence it. The part we can control is what's going on inside of us.

And that we can control what we focus on. We can control the meaning. You can decide the meaning. We're the meaning makers, and we can decide what to do. And when we do make those three decisions, we're in control of our life. And all the anxiety and bullshit tends to go away, especially if we're trying to do that to serve something more than ourselves. Because you can't serve something more than yourself and not benefit. When you want some self-esteem, do something worthwhile beyond just yourself.

We all know, the two emotions that destroy your relationship, your business, your life, it's fear and anger. Those are the two extremes. He can't be grateful and fearful simultaneously. He can't be angry and grateful simultaneously. But you look at somebody like Steph Curry, and you see this guy, you know, shoot the ball from almost half court. He doesn't even look.

He turns around and just waves because he knows it's in already. And there's swish and the crowd goes crazy. And people look at it and go, he's unbelievable. He is. He's unbelievable. He's unbelievable. He's the greatest three-point shooter in history. There's no one like him. But what they don't pay attention to is that isn't like a little gift. He shoots 500 shots every single day, never less than that, seven days a week. For more than 15 years, the 15-year professional career. He's been doing it since before he was in college. His dad really trained him. So think of that. 3,500 shots a week, 168,000 shots in a year, 2 million shots in his 15-year NBA career, so he can make 3,600 shots a week. shots, not even one-tenth of one percent.

I tell people you get rewarded in public for what you practice in private. I think everything happens for a reason. I think there's a higher purpose. I think it's my job to find it. I think that life happens for us, not to us, but it's our job to figure it out. You know, you're going to battle with internal things within you and external things, but if you keep going, you're going to eventually slay your dragons and you come out and the hero of your own life

and you have something to share that isn't bullshit. It's not something you read somewhere. It's something you've lived. And everybody can feel you've lived it because it's a different level of ownership, you know? And then, by the way, as soon as you do that, it happens again. You call on another journey. You have a new challenge that you need to go on it.

It just never ends, but it makes life really beautiful. How can people who are always very hard on themselves learn to build up their self-esteem a little bit more. I don't know self-esteem is the answer. I don't think it's bad to be hard on yourself, as long as you also celebrate when the victories happen. But, you know, so many people will tell you, I have poor self-esteem because when I was a kid,

people said this to me and that to me. It's convenient that you remember those things and not the positive things that also occur, obviously. I think it's more important is to realize that self-esteem is earned. It's only earned by you with yourself. You're not going to get some. self-esteem because everybody praises you. Someone can tell your whole life that you're brilliant, you're a genius,

you're beautiful, you're handsome, and you know, I believe it. Someone can tell you, you know, you're a piece of crap, and you're never going to become anything, and there's a party you can say, I'll show you, as many people have, and then they develop drive out of it, right? So it's really, self-esteem comes from doing incredibly difficult things where you know you pushed yourself. It's not virtue signaling, it's not telling people about it. It's what you know inside your soul is true.

And the more you do things that are incredibly difficult, and especially things that are meaningful, meaning, And they're not just about yourself, the higher that esteem would be. I think the most important thing for self-esteem is to find something you care about more than yourself. If you find something you care about more than you, you won't be thinking about yourself all the time, and all your whole self-esteem just goes out the window. The real question is, what do you want? If you want an extraordinary life, my definition that is life on your terms.

Some people, it's three beautiful children, the white picket fence, some people, it's building a, multi-billion dollar business, somebody else that's writing poetry. Instead of looking for somebody else, it's like, okay, what do you really want from your life? And aligning yourself with moving forward towards what you really want. If you can do that in a way that also you feel is serving others simultaneously, there's a sense of meaning in life that can't be replaced by self-esteem or praise or compliments or being nice to yourself. And I don't think it's bad to be tough on yourself.

I'm pretty tough on myself, I'll be honest with you. Being overly tough on yourself usually comes by making comparisons that don't make sense. You compare it to somebody else's life that has a totally different path, a totally different experience, we all develop in different stages

and different things. They all want different things. But eventually, you wake up and saying, it's good to be strong with yourself, but beating yourself up just lowers your energy. And when your energy gets lower, you produce less. And you don't have the same level of joy. You don't have the impact

that you want to have, nor do you have the excitement that you really want to have. So I look at it as something that it's worth earning your own self-esteem, but it's really not the secret. The secret is find something else you obsess about more than yourself, and you'll have a level of energy that will compel you over the long term. When I began, I began with a fuel, which was like, I'm going to show them. It was anger that drove me. You know, I'm just going to show you type of thing.

But that fuel doesn't last. And then the next fuel that people tend to use is I got to succeed, but there's a little fear underneath that that's driving them, which is like, what if I don't? Versus a knowing, you know, it's like if you give your all every day, your gifts will make room for you. And it's like having a knowingness that things are going to be fine. And then there's the next level, which is you start to know who you are and you're not trying to prove it to yourself or other people. And it's just you just want to help. It's a difference between what I would call push motivation and pull, right? Push is, I'm going to make this happen.

It takes tremendous willpower, and I know you have plenty of willpower. I do as well, but there's a limit to willpower, but there's no limit to pull. Pull is when there's something magnificent that you want to serve, something that you've got an obsession for to create or to do or make happen. And that doesn't, you know, you don't lose that energy. You don't lose those components. and you're able to laugh and enjoy along the way. I think it's important to realize wherever focus goes, energy flows.

It's corny, but it's true, right? In fact, maybe an easier way of saying it is we don't experience life. None of us do. We experience the life we focus on. So in any moment, what's wrong is always available. So is it's right. So it's not about being positive.

It's about being intelligent. You know, you've got to look at the impact of what you're believing. And you've got to look at it and say, you know where's my focus going there's I can always be upset about something I can always find something to be joyous or at least grateful for which leads to joy and I think it's learning to discipline your disappointments you know not allow them to grow and to move on and to use whatever life is giving you you can make some simple patterns and change your whole life a focus

minute you focus on something your brain has to decide what does it mean and meaning is what creates emotion and emotion is where your life is right and so the quality of your life is the quality of your emotions we all have a pattern of focusing on what we have and at times on what's missing which one do you think most people spend more time focusing on what they have or what's missing you can engineer your life to have more happiness but i think the real challenge is thinking so hardly about being taken seriously just represents your fears right it's like I think spiritual development when people talk about spiritual not religious development spiritual development is the level of

comfort you can have with just being your real self and I think that's not an easy task because we're all are trying to be something but we already are that something we're trying to be that doesn't mean you can't be better but it's like accepting and appreciating what you really are and instead of projecting you know something else takes a lot of pain out of your body takes a lot of wasted energy out and gets a lot of fears to just disappear and I don't have an easy path for that I think it's the hero's journey I feel if I work my ass off now I've done my part okay now come through me let's do this and and it tends to flow uh life happens to me or I happen to

me yes is uh to me yeah is a wonderful reframe yeah uh I really believe it but you got to dig for it's not it's not easy it's got to be earned right like wishing for me wishing for Your confidence without competence is just delusion. You have no evidence to say that you can do this thing. If you want freedom, if you value freedom, you can't possibly have it as long as you played the victim role. None of that makes you who you are. None of that controls where you are in your life. It's like, have you ever had something happened in your life that was horrible?

I mean, it was painful. You'd never want to go through it again in a million years. You wouldn't want anybody else to go through it that you care about. But after five or ten years, you look back and you say, I never want to go through it again, but now I see the wisdom in it. I'm glad. It's like it made me care so much more. It made me so much stronger.

It made something in me more. I mean, I'm sure you can relate to that, can't you? Yeah, for sure. I mean, you don't really realize, it's just life. And then you learn a little bit more about yourself and you start to realize, well, look at all of the ways that I've had to compensate for that. Look at all of the ways that it's held me back. Look at all of the beliefs that I have about myself.

And God, if only that hadn't happened, then I would be here or I would be there. And then you realize, well, the light side of all of that dark stuff is usually the stuff that I'm most proud of myself for. So the fact that you were maybe a little bit alone in childhood means that you're very self-sufficient when you're an adult. Or the fact that you didn't have any need to support you means that you have no concern about working on your own and continuing to take a bet on yourself, so on and so forth. So you end up having this really strange loop where you go from unconscious incompetence in that you've somehow been through something that you really hate, to this sort of awareness of how it's held you back, to this awareness of how it's propelled you, and then you have to get to this really difficult place, which is, okay, so this is a thing that I kind of wish hadn't

happened, and yet I'm grateful that it did. And it's like a psychological superposition that you need to hold in your head at the same time. You can't collapse it down into one. You need to hold both of these things. It's like, yeah, that's, like, that shouldn't have happened. Like, I really wish that that. And had you have been able to see you, had you at 36 have been able to see you at 12, you'd have picked them up and given them a hug and said, I believe in you and you don't deserve this.

But it needs to happen to you. It was meant to be. Now, I don't believe like everything's meant to be. I think situations are meant to be, and then it's our job to choose how we're going to use them or be used by them. Right? I think that's the difference. But I think, you know, we get easy times and tough times. Why is that important?

It is incredibly peaceful if you've done the job in the beginning because you know who you are. Now you have an amazing life. If you turn around and look back with open eyes at your life, you see all the scars. The only way you cannot be humble in old age is when you refuse to look at the reality of your life up to today. That, you know, that's the only way.

Because nobody's skated through it perfectly. But this is what drives, this is what drives my, it sounds ludicrous in my ears, but my business endeavors today. This is the core of what drives me. Okay. There is no business out there that I can take on. There is no money. endeavor that I can take on that is worth the gamble of me losing me.

It took me years of a lot of grief and pain and work to get to be who I am today in spite of who I was. And I don't want to lose that. I don't want to lose myself in business. I don't want to lose myself in trying to earn a better living in trying to get a name and trying to do this. It's like, I have turned down, I have turned down so much because I've looked at it and I've asked myself, who's this going to make me be? Who's this going to turn me into, even a little bit? And it's like, it's just not worth it. It's just not, it's not worth it.

And so I'm right now trying to find the balance in undertaking some, that's not going to alter me, that I'm not going to lose myself, and then not succeeding at something because I was too afraid to try it. I've never been afraid of failure before, but now I've got something I don't want to lose, and that's myself that I actually like, a me that I actually like. The person that you have to spend the most time talking to in your life is yourself. try not to lose that respect.

How have you learned to have a better relationship with yourself, the voice inside of your head to be kinder if things go badly? I like me. I like me. I would buy me a dream. I look at me now and I see all the warts. Okay, I see all the negatives more than anybody else does. see the positives, and over the whole balance of stuff, I like me. And I can give myself the same

grace. If you and I were friends, I can give myself the same grace I can give you because I like me. I like me in spite of my understanding and the reality of my weaknesses and my warts and my scars and everything. But, you know, all in all, I'm a pretty good dude. And, uh, Man, you got to get to that point. Sometimes progress is the W. Like, maintaining in some seasons is winning. This has been my big focus right now, and I'm not the first person to say this,

but just winning the day. And Bill Ackman had this hard season where he was getting divorced. He just lost $4 billion. And he was not him today. He was earlier on his career. I mean, it was just the worst. And it was just a terrible slog.

And he said, one of the difficult parts about that period is that there was no one thing that was like, oh, I can tackle this today. Like, you're not going to finish the divorce today. You're not going to undo the $4 billion loss today. It's just like when you have these larger, more complex negative things that do scale. It's like, how do you, how do you navigate through that? And for anyone who's listening right now, it's like maybe it's the bad breakup. Maybe it's the, or maybe you're getting divorced, right? Or maybe it's like the business isn't working the way you want. It's like, and there's like 10 things that you have to fix.

And so he had this very tactical advice, which I liked a lot, which is he just tried to make progress. And that was it. And he said, you know, in a day, it's almost negligible, right? But at 30 days, you're like, okay, I moved this. And at 90, you're like, wow. Does this mean that our mood is still being dictated by circumstance? Yes, I'll be honest. Yes, it does.

But I think many of us have this ideal. We'd love to be in a great mood in the absence of things to be in a great mood about. but I had this one great podcast today. I'm going to make that thing, the thing that's making this a great day. And then if I can make that great day, then maybe it can be a great week. And then trying to expand those, basically let those good moments eat up the season in actively trying to minimize all the down things and super, super focus on those moments and be like, cool, I had that good moment, that's my day, days made.

And I'm trying to even say that more. basically I've had to recalibrate my entire scale to how little of a thing can happen that makes my day how little of a thing can happen that makes my week how little of a thing can make my month how crazy would it be if a year from now I say that was a great year I'm putting a huge amount of my discretionary effort into this because it's my belief that right now what will what will prevent me from achieving my ultimate goals because that that motherfucker's not gone is running out of steam because I don't need to do this. Like, I don't need to work this hard. I have to, I prefer to make the ride more enjoyable. When I think

about a business and I want to grow it, for example, I would think, okay, what are all the things that can destroy this business? And this is Charlie Munger. This isn't me. But basically, he says invert, always invert. And Einstein said that too. And it's because, like, you get to use this way stronger horsepower engine of like, how do I grow my business? That's, you could obviously think that way. But the alternative would be like, how would I absolutely destroy this business in the fewest possible moves? And then when you list out those moves, you're like, cool, now let's do the opposite of that. And that has been, honestly, a lot of the, some of the sources of my greatest kind of creative moments have come from these apparently obvious things that would kill us.

Well, what if we did the even more obvious thing and did the opposite of what would destroy us? and it's worked better than I deserve. Figure out what you want. Ignore the opinions of others. Do so much work, it would be unreasonable that you fail. Realize it never mattered to begin with. Help others once you get there. You've already achieved the things you said would make you successful.

Yeah, the first five steps there is basically my master life plan. I had a pretty terrible first out of college experience of work. But from that, I learned some of the most important life lessons that I still take to this day. And that boss particularly said one thing to me one day. She said, figuring out what you want is 99% of it. She said, once you know what you want, getting it's the easy part. And I kind of adopted that as a worldview. Because it's like once you're really clear, like this is what I want,

that everything that's not that is what I'm willing to give up to get it. Now, that thing can change. And I think that's the part that people miss. And I think we should all have permission to change what we want in any given moment. And not having basically sunk life bias of like, I put 10 years into this thing. And that's okay. And that's what I needed to do at that time. And today, I'm willing to, I'm going to change everything.

It's been super helpful for me to not think of my changes as permanent. Because it's been, it's allowed me to make such dramatic. changes in my in my life or my business much faster than I think most people have been willing to because there's this this weight of forever on top of everything like I can do this for today and tomorrow if it still works I will do it for tomorrow and if five days from now or 25 days from now if I work this way I then say you know what I need a day people are like oh he's burned out it's like I took a day because that's what I needed that day and I think giving myself permission to have that freedom has allowed me to take significantly faster action because who am I apologizing to?

One of my themes this year has been focusing on moments and on both a positive and the negative. And so like when we think back on, if I think back on the last year, right, I don't remember probably 95% of the year. Like I, you know, I did the same things. And so it's like it just didn't get recorded. Like nothing notable happened. And so really like when we think about a year, we really, really just recall a handful of moments and that's it. And those moments in time are usually very short. And so I've been trying to think about the bad, you know, seasons as, well, maybe it wasn't a bad season. Maybe I had five bad days or really five bad moments that I then thought about for the entire season and turned what would have otherwise been five minutes times five

into an entirely bad year. It's like, okay, well, if we can do that in the negative, can we do the positive, which is obviously the thing to exercise. I thought about that. It's like if I were to boil everything down of all the skills that you can learn, if everything that we do eventually becomes irrelevant, then the single greatest skill that you can develop is being in a great mood in the absence of things to be in a great mood about. Most people don't question someone who's in a bad mood. Like, I'm just in a bad mood. So it's like, well, if you can be in a bad mood for no reason, it's like you might as well be in a good mood for no reason because that one at least serves you. And so I've been trying to exercise, like, because on one degree, there's like, let's count things to be grateful for.

On the other side, it's like, why do I have to have things to be grateful for in order to be in a good mood? Like, why is trying to find things a requirement of being in that mood? Like, can I not find things and still choose to be in a good mood? Because I've certainly not had things to be in a bad mood about and been in a bad mood. And so I've been trying to flex that, which is like, sure, we can find things to be grateful for. And when those things pop up, yes, and of course, it's a practice. You get better at it. but like, what if I can just be in a good mood?

And so I've just tried to break that relationship between the two because then it makes it contingent on something that I can find. To take this to the absolute extreme, why should I be grateful? Why should I be happy? Why do I demand of my life that I must be happy during it? I think it comes down to, I used the word control before. Basically, if you can predict, it means you can control.

But if you can predict what's going to happen, it means that you know what the variables are and you can influence those variables, which you can influence the outcome. we have a set of behaviors or skills that will increase the likelihood of goal achievement, whatever that goal is, being spiritual, being a good husband, whatever it is. These behaviors will do that. To increase the likelihood of me doing these behaviors, then I have to have more good stuff,

less bad stuff. I will down that hill. Beyond that, what is anything that happened prior to this matter at all insofar as it only works if I could use that same variable and then use it again to change my behavior yet again to be conducive to the goal? expectation of life is that it's going to be, until I make the billion dollars, until I get married to the love of my life, until I get these things, you're just holding your happiness hostage until something great happens. What if something small could be something great? People only root for others at two times. First, when they're at the beginning of the race, second, when they finish. Neither is when you need it. So you have to master the middle. The boring, exhausting, soul-crushing middle. That's where the winning happens on your own. People will only cheer for you as long as you can't beat them at the game they value most.

Friendly reminder that every person who doubts you is right until they aren't. It's a bug, not a feature. You know, the very, very beginning people say, you know, I'm really excited for you that you're trying this thing out, right? And I noticed that everyone was very happy for me to try because I temporarily decreased my status. I actually became worse than them during that period of time. And then as soon as I achieved a level of success,

which I then realized that their happiness for me was proportional to where they were on the latter relative to me. And so as soon as I pass some people, then they stop being happy and then they start, you know, saying bad things, right? And the people who were still always ahead were still like, keep it up, keep it up. And there's still people who have been that way my whole life. And I just wonder, if and when I pass them, will they flip? I don't know. But also to the same degree, it was the, it was after you start the race when you're in the thick of it, because you'll quickly pass the people who've done nothing. But then you have this long period of time where you don't catch up to the people who've been doing it for a long time.

And that's the part where it's very lonely, because you don't have your initial posse. You have to leave them at some point. But then you don't get to the new group that's, you know, way ahead and actually has some proof behind them that you can actually like sit at the table. And so like today, I have, if I were to do something, I have tons of support. But I don't really need the support now. I needed it in the middle, right? In the many years that like, no one knew who Alex Ramosey was. And that's, that's the hard part.

And I think it's the story that Morgan Hassel tells, which is that you just don't know how it's going to finish. And that's what makes it hard. It's the uncertainty of like, what if I give up everything that I've done in my life for nothing? And then all of a sudden, if I knew that, then I wouldn't be willing to make this trade. But in retrospect, when you do have the thing, you're like, of course I was, like, if I knew that this was going to happen, I would happily, I would happily make the trade. But you don't know. And so you're just putting the money down and they're rolling it, but you get to find out if you hit black five fucking years from now. It's why dealing with uncertainty is such a meta skill.

And it's one that I, to be honest, it's one that I really suck at. I'm very, very not good at dealing with uncertainty. My required line of assurance in order for me to commit to a decision is incredibly high, which is why I've basically never failed at anything that I've done. All of the stuff that I've done, a string of incredibly slow but very reliable successes, is just because my required number of sort of justification points is very high. And, you know, in retrospect, it might look like it was a risk. It's like, dude, I took so long to fucking make this decision.

On the friend point, it's a painful realization that the small number of good friends want you to win in case you take them with you. And the large number of bad friends are scared of you're winning in case you leave them behind. the best way to know who a real friend is is how they react when you win and when that happens you'll realize how few real friends

you really have many people were like sure like good luck with that but I knew that they just weren't really rooting for me they were rooting for me to fail they're rooting for me the wrong way one of my rules is you should only take advice from people

whose dreams for your life are bigger than yours are which is a very small number of people sometimes it's your parents. Sometimes your parents really do have bigger dreams for you than you do. The people who are closest to you in the beginning, if they're like true, like actual friends, then you recognize that because they actually want you to win.

And that's amazing. A lot of people don't have that. And so what I have felt, at least for me, was that when you're a little ahead is where the friction is, when you blow them out of the water and there's no question, like it's beyond reproach. They will do one of two things. they will either be really happy for you or they'll change the game that they're beating you at.

That's great, but I'm in better shape. That's great, but my marriage is better, right? Or whatever, you know, whatever game that they choose to play, people who doubt you will be right most of the time. And this further increases your uncertainty about the path that you're choosing to take. But on a long enough time horizon, most people who don't bet are guaranteed to lose. And so they get to win at being right more times than you get to win at being right.

But what that equation doesn't take into consideration is intensity, which is, can I be so right one time that it makes all of the times that I was wrong or relevant? And in the nature of life, the answer is yes, almost a resounding yes for just about every domain. like everyone can say that every person you've ever dated has sucked and they could predict that you're going to break up until you find the person that you're going to marry and in that moment who fucking cares about the other 90 people that you went on dates with that everybody said was a bad idea or that you have a bad picker you don't have a good taste it's like well you're not marrying them I date in a way that's different than than you would prefer great but I did end up finding this thing I the you know the first thing that I ever did was you know an online an online fitness thing and it kind of worked. And then I did my first gym and it kind of worked. And then I started all these other side projects. They got distracted and I didn't know. And the downside risk is significantly smaller and more frequent. It's both. You're more likely to lose and it's more likely to happen more times. It's just that upside is uncapped. And so, and I think about this one a lot. So there's the story of the guy. Do you know the guy who wrote jingle bells? No. So. I didn't even know that that was

I thought it was like happy birthday. I thought he was just gifted to humanity when we started. So there's this guy. He's a he's a he's a he's he's he's he's he's the most tragic life you can imagine just like did nothing but failed was a failed everything and his entire life was nothing. He just happened to write this small thing called jingle bells and it has become you know put the number one song at Christmas time like maybe globally and I think about that life where it's like what if I failed everything but then I have one thing that actually makes a permanent impact. I was like Would I trade that life for Aristotle's good life, where I amount to nothing, but the whole time was good? And this is just one of my eternal battles where I think with myself that I have no answer for, to be clear.

But when I'm thinking through the periods where things suck, I'm like, well, maybe I'll get a jingle bells out of this. And maybe it'll just take 20 years longer than I thought. So not taking the shot, it's like saying, life, I don't want to scratch off this lottery ticket, but the lottery ticket's free. Why would you not scratch it off and try it? Whatever reasons that we usually give ourselves in the beginning for why we can't achieve something, you can almost always find not only just someone, but someone who's achieved world-class levels of success with worse conditions than you currently have, which then means it's absolutely possible.

And then the only thing that it takes to get there is work. I think type A people have a type B problem. And type B people have a type A problem. Insecure overachievers need to learn how to chill out and relax, and lazy people need to learn how to work harder and be disciplined. Given that you subscribe to me, I'm going to guess you're probably type A, some version of a walking anxiety disorder harnessed for productivity, as Andrew Wilkinson says. Here's the thing you may have already realized. Type A people with a type B problem get very little sympathy, because a miserable but outwardly successful person always appears to be in a much more preferential position than the content being lazy. but on the verge of being bankrupt person.

The problems of opportunity will always get less sympathy than ones of scarcity. One feels like a choice, the other like a limitation. I need someone to teach me how to be disciplined and work harder, feels noble and upward aiming and charitable. I need someone to teach me how to switch off and relax, feels dopaminergic and addicted and transactional and opulent. Every underdog movie ever has a training montage of someone working their life out by working harder. Non included a guy learning how to log out of Slack at 6pm or finally enjoy a beach holiday.

Type B problems are just as tough as type A ones, but they require a much less sexy solution, peace, one that you can't achieve by just working harder. Thank you.