Daily Motivations - Grind

Episode Date: January 25, 2026

This episode is for the ones who stay quiet and outwork everyone.No applause. No shortcuts. Just pain, pressure, and relentless forward motion. Shut up. Grind harder. Let results talk.Featuring voices like Goggins, Hormozi, Jocko, Rogan, and more — this is for the ones who live in the shadows and earn in silence.Speakers:David GogginsJoe RoganAlex HormoziJocko WillinkTom PlatzKevin HartGreg PlittMike TysonChris WilliamsonJordan Petersonand moreInstagram - @daily_motivationsorgFacebook- @daily_motivationsorg

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and most insured members have a $0.00 copay. No insurance, no problem. Get $80 off your first month with promo code space 80 when you go to talkspace.com. Match with a licensed therapist today at talkspace.com and save $80 with code space 80. That's space 80 at talkspace.com. Every family deserves to have a winner. I think it should be you.

There's no hacks, bro. It's you against you. You against you. Everybody's great when they're not tired. The champions is when they're tired. That's when the real champions come out. That's when that real dog come out. Because if you go piss like a puppy, stay on the porch.

And let the big dogs eat. Let them on the field. Have some heart. That if you want some kind of a good outcome, you're going to have to work hard for it. And if you don't work hard for something, you're not going to get an outcome that's really worth much. You're not only winning when things are going your way.

You've got to figure out how to win when things aren't going your way. You know, when you're going through something really challenging, how do you show up within it? Do you choose to become a victim of complaining and misery and, or do you find meaning in how you show up in the suffering, you know? But you also have to disconnect. Unplug average and plug yourself into the mindset of a winner. Lazy people do a little work and think they should be winning.

But winners work as hard as possible and still worry if they're being lazy. Go do something that's hard. Go try and accomplish something that's hard. You may win. You may lose. You may succeed, you may fail. I'll tell you what, you'll be better. Your biggest enemy is you.

My whole book is about you battling yourself. People don't understand is you against you. The only person that gets in your way is you. Nobody else. It's you. A winner does more than expected every single time, no matter how they feel, no matter the circumstances. A winner shows up 10x times more than the average person.

And I'm telling you, from the body. of my soul. It is so easy to beat people today. They are so soft. They have no work ethic. No one can stick with anything. Everyone's distracted. They're on social media. They're counting their f***ifications because they can't stick with shit. They can't say no. You know, greatness is not meant for a few chosen people. It's meant for those who persistently pursue their dreams every day and make that choice when they wake up. So just a mentality, really. If you avoid those things that are hard, if you don't accept that challenge, if you don't step up and step into that cold water and you sit on your couch and eat Doritos, I can tell you this is not a good move. This is not a good move.

Don't do that. Don't do that. Just get up. Move towards that challenge, whatever that challenge is. Move towards that challenge and go attack it. Then you negotiate with your body to find more strength. But don't you give up on me, Brock. You keep going, you hear me?

You keep going. You keep going. You're doing good. You keep going. It hurts. I know it hurt. You keep going. You keep going. It's all hard from here.

30 more steps. You keep going, Brock. Come on. Keep going. Burn. And let it burn. I'm still waiting for a big smile out of you. You're up too old.

What's the story? Are you not happy or you're only half happy? Instead of it. You're up too old. Job's not finished. Job finished. I don't think so You're lazy

You know exactly what to do Exactly what to do Because even me In my state of I can't read and write I knew exactly what to do It just sucks doing it It sucks to do it

Nobody cares about you Nobody cares It's only a small percentage of population Nobody gives a damn And even if they do what You make a mistake, you, you zig when you should have zag and you get clipped, so what? Everybody make a mistake. And you may be successful and you may not be successful, but you will be better.

And the next challenge, you're gonna be more prepared for. And the next challenge after that, you're gonna be even more prepared for. And you're gonna fail, and you're gonna fail, and you're gonna fail, and you're gonna fail, and you're gonna fail. And then you're gonna win. and that's life. Life without those challenges, it's existence. Don't just exist.

Go live. You find no answers in the light. None. It's too happy. It's too nice. We need to be taught how to live in happiness. That just comes naturally to us. Happy moments, but the dark times, man,

and you can't get there unless you put yourself there. It takes more effort to start in the beginning, and more people are right about the fact. they're like, hey, you're not going to hit it big. And guess what? A month in, you're not. But they're only measuring on months. And at six months, you're also not going to have hit it big yet.

And they're going to be like, I'm still fucking right. And at a year, you're still not going to have hit it big. And they'll still be fucking right. And every day that you haven't hit it, they're going to feel like they were right. But they're wrong because they're measuring in days and you're measuring in decades. The confidence comes from preparation. You know, so when the game's on the line, I'm not asking myself to do something that I haven't done thousands of times before. right so when I prepare I know what I'm capable of doing I know what I'm comfortable doing and I know what I'm not comfortable doing

And so in those moments if it looks like I'm ice cold or not nervous It's because I've done it thousands of times before so what's one more time? Through this through through discipline through self-discipline through repetition Through tons of repetition the same thing that you don't want to do That's the key thing through repetition of things you don't want to do you develop mental Like an armor for your mind. Start to armor your mind. Because your mind's like, okay, we suffer, we suffer every day.

It's what we do. We do stuff that sucks every day. So then when the suck stuff comes, you're ready for it. And that's how it started coming up. You know, I just started being very uncomfortable. And now it's like just a way of life. A winner has these unreasonable expectations of himself. A winner knows that he's destined for greatness.

And no matter how many people around him tell him to slow down, Be careful, watch out, that's too risky. You don't have the genetics, the DNA, the money, the mind, the brain power for that. A winner locks onto their fo' goals and keeps going. That's what the winner does. The biggest risk to your future isn't your competition. It's the distractions you insist on keeping in your life rather than doing the things you know you should be doing but aren't.

People delay doing things they don't like for longer than it takes to do them. You see this guy here standing back at you? Yeah? That's your toughest opponent. Every time you get into the ring, that's who you're going against. I believe that in boxing, and I do believe that in life. For me, anger was good. Anger was good because it was motivating.

The more I could create an enemy, the more I wanted to go on and kill those guys. You won't die, and if you do die, you won't care, because you'll be dead. Best case, you win. Worst case, it won't matter. If you believe it, if you really believe that you could be something, if you have that little voice in your head saying, hey, you got talent, you can do this, then follow that voice.

You don't start things and not finish them. You don't quit. There's nothing that comes out of quitting besides knowing that you didn't finish. We finish everything. You start it, finish it. If you're going to do it, do it to try and be the best. The fear is never reaching your potential. That's it.

That always falling short, always quitting before you're done, always procrastinating, always not doing the right thing. And then one day you're an old man. Yep. And you look back and go, God, I could have been great. Yep. It could have been great. If you want to know something about yourself, sit on your bed one night and say,

what's one thing I'm doing wrong, that I know I'm doing wrong, that I could fix, that I would fix. You meditate on that? you'll get an answer and it won't be one you want but it'll be the necessary one whatever it is that you're doing I'm telling you right now man as a winner 80% of the time you're gonna feel like you're failing 15% of the time you're gonna feel like you're just treading water you just got your nose above the water line 4% of the time you feel like it's fucking over this is it I'm about to tap out but you don't because that 1% of the time my friend that 1% of the time is when you know you're winning

and you go, I'm going to take these one percenters, I'm going to stack them and stack them and stack them. And you know what happens when you stack winning over years and decades? You become a formidable force to be reckoned with. The purpose is you. We forget that. Every day I wake up, I don't want to do some fucking shit.

I'm like, okay, man, do you want to be a bitch today? Do you want to feel like a little bitch? Do you want to walk around all day knowing that you could, but you didn't? I'm going to have setbacks, I know. But if I'm feeling me, bad, that doesn't mean I'm doing bad. That doesn't mean I am bad. That doesn't mean that I can't still take some action.

Because yeah, nothing changes, nothing changes, man. Hard work brings great rewards. This is a reminder of the hard work and dedication that I put into everything that I've done. I'm not content because I know where I came from

and I don't ever want to go back. I don't care how good you are in anything. You don't have Discipline, you ain't nobody. Right. You're nothing without discipline. Because you give up under the slightest struggle without discipline. 100%.

Discipline is doing what you hate to do, but do it like you love it. Doing what you hate to do, but do it like you love it. I'd say one of the strongest mental frames that has gotten me through my hardest times is thinking this will be the story that I will one day tell. And that means the harder it is, the bigger the dragon, the more epic, story and by consequence the more epic the hero. Turn your feelings off when it comes down to you wanting to be better. What that means is when that long clock goes off, your feelings got to go away.

It's raining outside, it's cold outside, when you don't want to put those long hours in at work, that's what I'm talking about. Your feelings must go away. Unchosen suffering is going to happen in life. Your parents are going to pass away, loved ones are going to die, your relationships are going to break down, your body is going to fail you, you're going to become ill or sick or destitute. Things are going to happen and you have no control over. And the only way that you can prepare yourself for unchosen suffering is with chosen suffering. If you have to ask how to get motivated to go to the gym, you don't need to be going to the gym.

You don't want it enough. When you're sick and tired of looking and feeling like shit, you'll show up. I'll see you there because you're going to look in the mirror and you're going to be like, fuck that you gotta want to be in the gym do you actually want to do this or not because if you actually want to do it what's going to stop you nothing and if you don't really want to do it what's going to stop you just about anything that comes up just about any obstacle it gets in your way becomes an excuse it becomes a reason it comes a rationale for not proceeding down that path don't follow what most people do because you don't want the results that most people get the average

person is obese, likely to be divorced and has less than 1K in the bank. It feels safe to do what everyone else is doing, but it's actually a terrible decision. It's like the best way to guarantee to not have the life that you want is to do what everyone else is doing, unless you want what everyone else has with no one, which no one does. This is kind of part of being a man. It's like you kind of got to fuck it all up a little bit. I think so. I think part of learning is dying. I think part of learning is you got to die a little bit because what is learning? Learning is me giving up on my old, my old ideas. Those ideas have to die for me to be open to some new shit.

And so me learning how to be a better man, I had to die a little bit. You know, there's an expression that I've said on this podcast many times, but I'll say it again, is that hard times create hard men. Hard men create soft times. Soft times create soft men. Soft men create hard times. We are now around soft men and hard times. This is probably one of the heaviest hammer blows, I think, for today, this next one.

This is a real hammer blow. My anger tweeting? No, it's not. It's an existential one. Oh, fun. You've already achieved goals you said would make you happy. You've already achieved goals you said would make you happy. How bad do you want this?

If it's as bad as you want to live or breathe or sleep, whatever hell it may be, I can work with you. But a lot of people, most people, don't want it that badly. why they always asked a question, man, how did you get to where you are? You know how to do it. You know exactly how to be you or how to be me. You don't want to do it. Like, I'm 54 years old right now. Like that. I mean, it just flew by. And you think when you're young that you have all this time, you have no time. There's no time. I mean, one of the quotes on the wall in the gym and theirs, you know, there is no tomorrow from Rocky 3. There's no luck in this game, man.

It may be a little bit of luck, but the luck happens after you bust your ass and you put yourself in that lucky situation. Luck doesn't happen. You put yourself in that situation where luck might happen. And that's what people don't know. But to get there, luck ain't going to happen. You have to put yourself in that situation, man. It takes a lot of work.

Fear is a mile wide and an inch deep. And so it looks like this ocean that you're going to step into and drown. But as soon as you step into it, you realize it was not that deep at all, and you can keep walking through it. And I just love that visual because a lot of times when it's like we have this anxiety around this big decision we have to make, if you actually take the step and realize that it's not death, you're not going to drown immediately. There's plenty of other steps you can take from there, even if you get a little wet. Give a man a purpose and the ability to achieve it and he will crawl over broken glass with a smile. And I think that feeling capable and powerful and competent and respected and admired is something that will get a man so far.

You give a man those things and he'll deal with suffering until the ends of the other. Here's something a guy said recently. This dude said, there's a moment when every boy realizes no one's coming to save him. And that's when he becomes a man. and some boys never get there and stay children forever. That guy was you that said that. And it's important when we step out of this. Like, this stuff matters because no one's effing coming to save you.

If you want to change your life, you must change your ways. You must develop discipline. You must develop strength. It doesn't matter where you are in life. It really doesn't. because the great thing about life is it's always your next move. Your next move that counts. There's no dopamine.

There's no dopamine in there at 300 pounds. You got nothing. Your hormones are shot. You have to envision something that is more powerful than you. Something has to get you out of bed. And you have to create it. It has to be false. because you're not it.

You're a fat piece of shit and that's the reality of it. If your definition of success is win or lose giving everything you've got and growing or learning along the way, then you're setting yourself up for success. I really think the biggest cheat code in life is just going after it

and not being concerned of whether or not you fail at one specific task. Instead, understanding the big picture, what your long-term goal is and knowing if you keep driving forward and never quit in the end you will succeed. The thing is, man, it's always going to be a party. There's always going to be a time to celebrate,

and the time to join friends or a day. I mean, the bars are always open. Always open. You know how old are you are, they're always open, you know? What's not always open is the opportunity to check the box in life, you know, achieve your dreams. That's not always open. It's so easy to be great nowadays, my friend,

because most people are weak. most people don't want to go to that extra mile most people don't want to find that extra because it sucks it's miserable it's lonely you talk about that you were kind of you know lonely by yourself I was the same way and that used to hurt me growing up now I've driven that shit that's the only place to be and my personal question to you is why not you you've got the brains you can make decisions. You can study the plan. You can change your life. You can grow immensely in the next few years. You can make your dreams come true. You can build a financial wall around your family. Nothing can get through. You can become healthy. You can become powerful. Why not you? It's all in your mind. Whatever you hold in your

mind will tend to occur in your life. If you continue to believe as you have always believed, you will continue to act as you have always acted, you will continue to get what you have always gotten. If you want different results in your life or your work, all you have to do is change your mind. There's a book called Celesteine Proxy. If there was a big meta-indicator that you're doing the right thing, doing what everyone isn't doing is already probably the single biggest indicator that you're doing the right thing. If I could wish nothing else on my child whenever I choose to have them in the future, is that they have high agency, which is that they are, they make decisions independent from the opinions of other people. And when we hear words like authentic and original and things like that,

it's because the person starts at square one and says, well, what do I want? And then they start building from there. I cannot stress this enough. The more you put into anything in life, the more you're going to get out. Now, for whatever reason, people understand this. and they understand that the more you put into building a business, the more you're going to get out of it. The more hours you spend working on anything, the more you are going to get out. Work pays. You're a man. You are a man.

Stand up and be a man. Make the hard decisions. Make the sacrifices. Make the unpopular decisions. And become comfortable in your own. own skin. And if you are not a person that you are comfortable being alone with, that is the one person in this universe that you have full power, full right, and full responsibility to change. Let me tell you something you already know. The world ain't all sunshine and rainbows. It's a very

mean and nasty place. And I don't care how tough you are, it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me or nobody. is going to hit as hard as life. But it ain't about how hard you hit. It's about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward? That's how winning is done. Reminder that if you want to be exceptional,

you're going to be different from everyone else. That's what makes you exceptional. You can't fit in and also be exceptional. Both have discomfort. When you fit in, you have internal conflict because you're not being 100% you. When you're exceptional, you have exceptional. you have external conflict because everyone sees you as different.

Pick one. When your friends start to say you've changed, remember it's because they don't know how to say you've grown. You know, some of y'all are motivated by broke. I can't do nothing. Some of y'all are motivated by just wanting to accomplish the things that you want to accomplish. Other folks are motivated by materialistic things.

It's a very simple concept. If you want it, you've got to go get it. I'm obsessed with finding myself now after and not having to prove anything in anybody other than myself and my family, you know, really myself. And realizing that that is enough. You know what I'm saying? Like that, like, giving your best is enough. And sometimes we lose track of that. you know and and yeah so for anybody out there you know you're enough man this is intentional

intentionally act like the person you want to become because when you intentionally act like the person you want to become your brain sees you taking those actions so your brain starts to change the way it relates to you when your brain sees you high-fiving yourself in the mirror it starts to go oh wait a minute Stephen loves himself. Steven's cheering for himself. We don't beat Stephen up. The dumb shit that I've done or the bad mistakes that I've made, they've taught me.

You know, you learn. Like, that's why failure is so important. Like, failing and fucking up and making mistakes, it's very important. That's how you learn. See, the bad feeling that you get from something that you shouldn't have done or wish you didn't do or wish you did better, like especially failing at something where you half-assed it,

and you just feel like a fucking loser. Like, that just teaches you. It teaches you to get your shit at you. Man, how do you do what you do? At the end of the day, I ask myself one question. Can I take one more step? And usually the answer is yes. So if you can answer that question and not take another step,

that is real failure. That is real quitting. So a lot of people can take one more step, but they choose not to. I don't know if you can take two steps. You got to answer that question after you take the first step. But I can always take one more steps. If I choose not to, that's on me. And I got to live with that.

There's 10,000 times more going on inside the head of a man than you have any idea. He's carrying burdens that you don't have a clue about. And he don't know how to express them. And he don't know what to do about it. And he figures if he puts it out there and communicates it, he's just going to be shot down, called a fool, called weak. So he carries it inside. and you have no clue the burdens and the hell that most men are carrying inside and not even showing you.

Going into combat, going into war, the 100 men that go into war, tensioning for you there. 80 of them are just targets. 10 do most of, or nine do most of fighting. One is a warrior. And it's a true quote to life. I saw it going through train. I saw it everywhere I went. There's so many people who just show up to life that shouldn't even be around.

And there's a few people who do all the work. I wanted to be part of that nine. And I'm working towards being that one. Your motivation. You need discipline. Because motivation's not there every day. I'm missing motivation most days. Some days, yeah, sometimes I got motivation.

Sometimes I'm just like, yeah, today I feel good. I can't wait to get to the gym. But a lot of days are like, got to get to the gym. And then once I get going, then I feel great. And I feel great when it's over. But it's that beginning part that's hard because your body wants to stay comfortable. Your body to trick you. Man, today should take the day off, Theo.

You don't feel good. Theo, what did you get, like six hours sleep last night? That's not enough. I was so hard to see the good if you're only seeing the bad. Like, there's so many people that struggle with what their version of success is because they're looking at someone else's. There's so many people that struggle. struggle with their world of relationship because they're judging theirs based off of someone

else's, right? And when you're constantly in the space of not realizing or noticing your world, your reality, because you're living in what appears to be someone else's, well, your shit is never going to be right. It's never going to be right. So if you're in the woods and you don't know where to go, start walking. You've got to start walking because the perspective is not to change. You have to start moving forward. You have to start taking steps in order to improve your vision, improve your perspective, change your perspective, make some kind of progress. And worst case scenario, you figure out that you walk the wrong direction. Okay. Now you can go walk in the other direction. And that's, that's going to be fine. But standing there lost and not doing anything

is just waiting to die, waiting to starve to death. Don't let that happen. We're not on this stage just because of talent or ability. We're up here because of 4 a.m. We're up here because of 2 a day or 5 a days. We're up here because we had a dream and let nothing stand in our way. If anything tried to bring us down, we used it to make us stronger. We were never satisfied, never finished, will never be retired. My high school English teacher, Mr. Fisk, I actually We paid attention one time in class. And he said, he had this beautiful quote. And it read, rest at the end, not in the middle.

And I'm telling you, you don't need to determine. I'm telling you it's worth it. Oh, yeah. I'm telling you it is worth it. And you know what? You actually know it's worth it. That's why you're asking this question. You know it's worth it.

You know it's worth it to have discipline. But you think there's an easier way. You think that it's something that people have. You think that when Jocco's alarm clock goes off, it's like, oh, just like my father taught me, I rise and I shine. You know, like, no. It's like the pillow feels soft and comfortable. Yeah.

And the alarm clock is banging on my head and I don't like it. But you know what? I know it's worth it to get up and get after it. I know it's worth it. And you know it's worth it. Here's the thing, though. We all know it's worth it. He was like, the only thing that you can do is win so big

that all of them constantly compare themselves to you. And then you'll forget they exist. And that's when he said. He said, success is the only revenge. He's like, it's not the best revenge. He's like, it's the only one. There's no other revenge. Because everything else is petty.

Everything else does show that you were thinking about these people all day long, which means they win by default. He's like, all you can do is think about your goal and winning. He's like, and when you win, that's when you become so big that they shrink into irrelevance. You cast a shadow that no one even can see them behind you. It's easy to get it. It's the easiest thing in the world to do, all right, man, I'm done. I ain't going.

I ain't going to keep going. I don't feel like going to work. I'm done. Yeah, man. It's easy. It's very easy. But what's hard is going, yo, yesterday I got nothing from working as hard as I could.

Nothing happened from that. I'm going to do the same thing again today, but I'm going to try to go harder. That's the hardest thing in the world. To get up every day and give 100% and be in the same position that you were each day, but mentally know that you're trying and trying and trying, that's a real grind.

Trial and error. You grow up and you make game winning shots and it's awesome. You come back the next day and miss a game winning shot and it's misery. And then the next day comes and you're back playing again. And you understand that life has this cyclical nature where it's, you know, what you do on Monday, it's fantastic. But then Tuesday, it's a bad day. But guess what? There's Wednesday.

So are we just supposed to live our lives like this the whole time? You know, versus just staying like this and understanding that it's really just a journey of evolution every day. It's just constant improvement, constant curiosity, constantly getting better. The results don't really matter. It's the figuring out that matters. Now, get control of your emotions and carry on with your life. And sometimes you're going to get hit with those waves. And that's okay.

I think that's a big misconception. It sort of relates to what you're saying. Oh, I'm having an emotional moment right now. There's something wrong with me. No, there's nothing wrong with you. There's nothing wrong with you. The other extreme is, oh, I'm letting my emotions wrong. my life and I'm making a bunch of bad decisions and my excuses, well, you know, I lost

some friends or I had this traumatic experience happen to me. That's why I'm doing, that's just an excuse. And it's a very easy excuse. The ultimate lesson here is this. Everybody's on their own path. And I don't want to judge someone for wanting to be free and easy. I just want you to understand that there's a cost to that. And the cost that you're going to have to that isn't going to come until later. Most people need to shut the fuck up and focus on that version of themselves. they want to become and actually be willing to become it. And that's what's ultimately going to create the fulfillment that you're looking for. It's not going to be your cold plunge.

It's not going to be your morning routine. It's going to be the work that you fucking do to become that version of yourself that is the exact version that you know you're supposed to become and then being proud of it. That's what's going to create the fulfillment that you're searching for. Be a dangerous man. That's a lifetime right there of study, okay? but start working on that.

Second, be a dangerous man. Now, being dangerous is not being a threat. There are two different things, all right? And it's not about going out and lifting weights and getting a bunch of tattoos and wearing leather jackets and walking around. We're chest and shoulders up hulking around saying, I'm dangerous.

That's very rarely, is that a dangerous man? Often the most dangerous man in the room is the quietest man in the room. I became obsessed. I became obsessed with being the baddest mother that God ever created. Am I that? I don't care. I believe it.

And I was trying to tell them once you become obsessed with something, obsessed. It's okay to be unbalanced for a while. It's okay. Don't be all this stuff. People say, you've got to be balanced. To be the best in the world at what you do. It's not about being a Navy SEAL, people. The best at what you do, you have.

to be unbalanced to find every bit of energy and strength that you have to pull it off. Then you get balanced once you become great. Pain is passed down from father to son and son to son. A lot of pain in Troy's life is the result of the pain and the damage from his father that he then visits on his son. We have to, as black men, be mindful of that. Sometimes it's unfair and sometimes we take it out on those we love. And I'm guilty of that frustration.

guilty of that frustration that we all have. But we have a responsibility and a duty to be fathers, not to just make babies, but to be real fathers. And you can't expect any good to come to you if you don't visit any good on your son or your daughter. So be a man. But just like success, no matter what field or wherever you are in success, whether it's in the gym here, if you're in business, or whatever success is, whatever success is, The underlying quality of that life runs parallel to a commitment. They go hand in hand, guys. It doesn't matter how much money you have or how much success you have.

Well, the overall quality of life is that journey of the struggle of it. And that journey and that struggle is successful only when the commitment rises equally to the effort. And nothing given to you has ever valued. It's what's earned its value that you can go from. That haunting is something that's still there today. Because no matter how much you improve, no matter how much you change who you are, it's not permanent. You'll just wake up and say, oh my God, man, you're David Gagans.

You break records. You do this, you do that. People don't know, how are you able to just be so hard? Because I never turned the fucking thing off. Because once it turns off, I go right back to the David Goggins that is. And that's the guy that I'm constantly fighting every day. And it's a choice. And that choice makes you misunderstood.

It makes you crazy. Remember to tell yourself the truth. Remember to tell yourself the truth. You know what that means. The truth is you need to do more. The truth is you need to be more. To reach your fullest. maximum capacity and capability as a human being.

And if you tell yourself that truth, you will find discipline. And if you find discipline, you'll be less than, you'll be a loser if you don't. I can't leave the gym. You won. You fucking won. When you walk out here today, you know, you've won. Imagine walking out the door at a loser. I'd rather die.

I would rather die than be that loser guy. Think about that. You want to walk out that door at that damn loser? Do you know, you know, I'll fight to the death? And sometimes I actually went close to death. It sounds crazy, but you've got to give it that much. If you want results, otherwise you'd be like everybody else. The majority of the population, they think they're praying hard.

That was hard. Life isn't fair at all. At all. So what are you going to do about it? I knew that no one would come back to help me. No one was a miracle of me to be somebody special. So, mentality is the only thing that gets us through life. I was an underdog.

We are all underdogs in life. Even the baddest person in the world should think that way. So you should always have, I've never arrived mentality. And the can't hurt me mentality is no matter where you come from, the sewer, or wherever you think you're from, when I got out of the sewer, I got to the road and looked around and said, can't hurt me. Nothing should be able to hurt you. If you believe that, it starts to become true. You know, if you set out a path towards a goal, which you want to do because you need a goal and you need a path,

because that provides you with positive emotion, right? So you set up something as valuable. So that implies a hierarchy. You set up something is valuable. You decide that you're going to do that instead of other things. So that's kind of a sacrifice because you're sacrificing everything else to pursue that. And then you experience a fair bit of positive emotion and meaning as you watch yourself move towards the goal. And so the implication of that is the better the goal, the more full and rich your experience is going to be when you pursue it. So that's one of the reasons of that's one of the reasons for developing a vision and for fleshing yourself out philosophically because you want to aim at the highest goal that you can manage. You were there. You know this. There was no one there to pick up the rucksack, to pick up the boat, to pick up the log, to go in that. It was you.

It was you. There wasn't no pat in the back at 300 at 275, at 250 at 220. No, that was you. There was no fucking me. It was you. There was no weight loss programmer. Mom and dad waking you up saying you can do it. You can be better trying to build belief.

You built belief when you had nothing. Rock bottom. You did that. So as times get hard for me, the truth comes out and my truth is powerful as it's real it's tangible

patience the thing that goes beyond hustle and hard work the discipline of patience the thing that goes beyond hustle and hard work right because we all talk about hustle we talk about working hard we talk about grinding this that and the third but nobody talks to you about patience

Nobody speaks about that patience Because in the patience That's where you're going to make it Or you're going to break the discipline of patience Right? Because when you're not patient You can make a lot of mistakes, man Like I told you, the quote said

I don't judge each day by the harvest you reap You judge each day by the seeds that you sow Right? When you sow a seed, you got to be what? You got to be patient It's hard when you're young To wake up in the offseason at 6. a.m. to go train and work out, knowing that all your friends are sleeping in and eating pancakes.

It's hard when you're on your way to practice, way down with all your gear, and it's 90 degrees out and all the other kids are at the pool or at the beach, and your body is already completely exhausted from workouts in two a days. It's hard to throw, catch, block, and tackle and hit kids when they're way bigger and way more developed than you, only to go home that night bruised and and strained, but knowing you have to show up again the next day for just the chance to try again. But understand this, life is hard. I'm one of those old school guys. You know, when you talk about men's mental health and that men have to carry this burden and men have, yeah, that's what we do.

Guess what? Somebody's got to get up. I have a family, right? I have children. I got to get up every day and go to fucking work and I have to, you know, do what I have to do. And no, I don't give a shit about my feelings. You know, you see these guys these days on social media. Like, hey, you know, I'm saying.

Just talking about their bad day and this happened and I'm fucking. Right. And shut the fuck up. Oh, I know. Get up. Oh, I know. Get the fucking work and do what you got to do and be a man. Be a man.

I tell you. Just be a man. Doing the thing in spite of not wanting to do the thing, is discipline, right? You don't need motivation to get yourself up to go and do a thing. Make the promise small, build it up step by step. Know that you are going to have setbacks. And this is my favorite rule from James Clear, which is a habit missed once is a mistake. A habit missed twice is the start of a new habit. Never miss two days in a row. So ideally, go for a month, build it up. But after that, if you ever miss one day, go, okay, mistakes are going to happen.

tomorrow I double down. Tomorrow I go on time absolutely perfect. I'm straight up out of bed or I go to the gym or I walk the dog or I do my meditation or whatever and that's a good heuristic stops errors snowballing into new habits. You're going to lose sleep. You'll doubt whether it'll work. You'll stress to make ends meet. You won't finish your to do list. You'll wonder whether you made the right call and have no way to know for yours. This is what hard feels like and that's okay. Everything worth doing is hard. And the more worth doing it is, the harder it is. The greater the payoff, the greater the hardship. If it's hard, good. It means no one else will do it.

More for you. I get happier about the harder it is because I know that no one else will follow. It's a selection effect. And I think if you can shift from this is hard to no one else will be able to do this, then it flips from being this thing that you're like, oh, poor me, to, oh, poor everyone else who's going to have to fuck cry. And so if you tell young man, look, you're going to find the meaning in your life by adopting maximum responsibility.

Right? That's going to be extremely difficult because you're so bloody useless. You can't even get your own house in order. And you're going to be called upon not only to get your house in order, but to do that well enough so some woman can stand having you around for more than like 15 minutes in the back of a car. And then maybe you're going to have to do it so that you could be a good father to a family and a pillar of the community. And that's not just empty words. Like if you do that, nobly, there'll be something to you. And then when the storms come, you won't be blown over by

the first four-foot wave. I found out through this path of life, who is David Gagons? Who am I? To going through all, I did it alone. There was no trophy on the wall, the mantle. That trophy's in my fucking brain. No one helped me get to. No one paid my bills. No one did shit for me. No one ran those miles, lost that fucking weight.

I suffered on my own and developed this man who said, it's who I am, man. That's important, man. And most people struggle their whole life to find out who they are. Struggle their whole life to find out what defines them, what they actually enjoy and what they don't. You start putting yourself in situations that suck. You'll find yourself.

Yeah. You'll find it real quick. That is the thing, right? And that's one of the things that I've gotten from paying attention to you is that you, what you're preaching, what you're talking about is finding yourself through struggle. That's it. So people always ask me, when they saw me in the gym in the pumping iron days, they say, why is it that you're working out so hard?

Five hours a day, six hours a day, and you have always a smile in your face. the others are working out just as hard as you do and they look sour in the face why is that and they told people all the time I said because to me I am shooting for a goal in front of me is the Mr.

universe title so every rep that I do gets me closer to accomplishing that goal to make this goal this vision turn into reality every single set that I do every repetition, every weight of the lift will get him a step closer to turn this score into reality.

And fight. You know, David Gaggins, he wrote me last night. And I can't repeat what he said verbatim. But the basis of his message was be the guy who embraces the ugly, the miserable. Be the guy who embraces hard work, the grind. Don't be afraid of being hurt. Don't be afraid of sacrifice to some blood.

You know, and, you know, the whole week I was thinking, I want to finish this fight. I'm going to finish this fight before the championship rounds. This is, you know, I should be able to smash this guy. You know, Gaghan's message was for a reason, you know, his reason. And Greg Jackson's been saying. I would say ask her out. No matter who she is.

is, whether she's a job or a new city or, or a actual person, you know, whether, whether she's, uh, an opportunity or a fear, you know, if you're afraid of heights, ask her out. You know, like, whatever she is, man, ask her out. And man, I just, if I could go. back to that moment and just not be afraid just recognize that I look whatever could be out there I could have it everybody thinks they're a loser every young person thinks they're a loser at least a young person in the situation I was at I didn't know I wasn't a loser until I started winning until I started doing martial arts martial arts taught me that like I could get better at stuff that it wasn't I wasn't really a loser I just was someone who was like

in a f*** up situation. But you could channel all that energy that you have as a young person into something and get better at it. And then all of a sudden people admired me. I was like, this is crazy. So I went from being someone who was incredibly insecure and basically a failure

to someone who was really successful at this one thing that was very dangerous that other people were scared of. And that gave me immense confidence. And also a real understanding of the direct correlation between hard work and success. So it's like if you were to make, if you're playing a video game and the way to win the game

was to make the most successful character, right? You would have probably a really character-driven human being in terms of like they'd be patient, you know, they'd be hardworking. Like you think about all these traits that they would have, right? They'd probably be tough emotionally, like, et cetera. All right, cool, that's the character. And that's the person who's going to be really successful. We can all probably agree on that.

Okay. How do you create someone who's patient? How do you create someone who's tough? How do you create someone who, right? So all of a sudden, if we had to then engineer the game in order to boost those points, we'd have to get them beat up a lot so that they could get tough. We'd have to make them wait a long time so they could become patient. And so to the point that you made about like these people who become really successful,

have these traits and also share the fact that they've been through all this shit. It's like, well, they got the trait from the sh**. And then the trait was the ultimate output of the experience. And that trait then made them super successful that they didn't have earlier. You can have what you want. what you want in five years. But there's two conditions. You have to know what it is and you have to aim at it. Okay. Figure out what you want. Write it down. Figure out what you could do to start moving towards that. Okay. Do that with your family relationships. Do that with your friendships. Do that with

your career. Do that with your education. Think about your misuse of alcohol and drugs and other things that might drag you down. You want to drink? Okay. What do you mean by that, exactly? How often? How much is too much? How are you going to constrain that and why? Develop a vision and you have to do that in dialogue with yourself, right? It's like if I could have what I wanted, what would satisfy me? And you might think, well, I could never get that and I could say, well, maybe not, but I'll tell you one thing, man. You can move towards it. And I know that everyone who knows the underlying neuroscience knows this. Almost all the pleasure is in the moving toward. But if you set up a goal that you'll think is, you know, just on the edge of conceivability, then every time you move even a tiny bit towards that, you're going to think, good work, man, good work. You get a little kick from that. You get a little stronger from that. Here's what I know. I know that until you make a decision that you no longer want to feel how you feel, or you no longer want to think the way that you think, or you no longer want to have the kind of results or no results that you have, until you know,

you make that decision that, you know what, I know I don't feel great, I know I doubt myself, I know I've had a lot of bad things happen, I know there's a lot that I regret, but damn it, with the time that I have left in my life, I really want to start to enjoy myself. I want to take better care of myself. I want to feel happy. You don't even have to believe you deserve it yet. You could just want it. You've got to start there. You've got to start with wanting, something better for yourself. And then I personally think the most important thing is to start acting like the person who has the things that you want right now, even though you don't feel like it. It's time to stay focused. It's time to decide fuck clubs, fuck party and trying to fit

in and socialize, rub elbows with everybody so people can stop calling you weird. Why are you so anti-social because I'm trying to get it. Why are you staying on the basketball court so much because I'm trying to get it? Why are you out there practicing in the hot sun when ain't nobody else out there? Because I'm trying to get it. Why are you not clubbing? Like every time I text you and invites you to go do some fun and cool, you always studying because I'm trying to get it. Let me tell you something, homie. These women ain't going nowhere. These clubs, these parties, all this shit ain't going nowhere. The more weird you are

is a reflection of how committed you are to focusing on your shi molding and shaping and developing your ideas and your craft so that when it's time for you to make your rounds, you're going to fly. It's time to get back to work. Stop hearing yourself talk. Get off the podcast.

Don't be on social media too much. Cut out all the boys. Get back to the fucking little bit of all.