Daily Motivations - NO EXCUSES, GET TO WORK

Episode Date: August 27, 2026

Discipline equals freedom. Your excuses will destroy you if you let them. Stop blaming your boss, your parents, the economy, or bad luck—it’s time to take extreme ownership of your life. Whether it’s fitness, finances, relationships, or your mindset, you have the power to transform everything through hard work, consistency, and discipline. Throw away the junk food, do the push-ups, learn the skills, and take that first step toward becoming who you were meant to be. No more excuses. No more waiting. Start now. The path to strength, success, and freedom begins today.‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐‐Speakers:Jocko Willink:Instagram- Daily_motivationsorgFacebook- @daily_motivationsorgSupport us PayPal

Your excuses will destroy you and take everything that you ever wanted from you if you let them. Doesn't sound like a friend. No, it's definitely not a friend. It's definitely not a friend. It can seem like a friend. Just like your friend that keeps feeding you drinks at the bar can seem like a friend. But are they really helping you in any way, shape, or form? No, they're not.

They're not. So when your excuses make you feel a little bit better about the fact that you didn't execute on what you needed to execute on, then they can make you feel better, but they're not helping you. They're not helping you at all. It's hard work. It's helping other people out. It's studying hard. It's doing the best that you can in whatever endeavor you're undertaking.

It's all those things. And one of I think the most important underlying messages and probably the most important underlying message is that you can decide who you want to become and you can become that person. You don't have to be weak. You can work out and you can become stronger. You can eat better foods. You can study and you can become smarter.

You can learn how to swim. And you can learn how to fight and defend yourself. And so you can actually become through hard work and through discipline. You can become who you want to become. Start now. Throw that bag of Doritos away. Get rid of it. Go do some push-ups.

Go spend $12 at the hardware store and hang up a pull-up bar in your room. They start doing pull-ups. And if you can't do one pull-up, hang on that. bar and you're going to start to get a little bit stronger. You just start to get a little bit healthier. You're going to start to get more focused. You're going to start to become more resilient. And you're going to start to be able to do a pull-up and you're going to start to eat healthy all the time. And you're going to start to understand the world better. And you're going to start to progress in every aspect of your life. And you'll see that if you have that kind of discipline

right now, you're going to end up with freedom. And if you don't have that kind of discipline and you keep eating those Doritos and you don't work hard and you don't exercise and you don't apply yourself, you're going to end up, you're going to end up shackled. You're going to up shackled by a boss that you don't like, doing a job that you don't like to do with sicknesses and diseases that you don't want, relying on people that you can't even count on, alone. And you don't have to. But if you have discipline, if you have discipline, you will attain freedom. Just get up.

Move towards that challenge, whatever that challenge is. Move towards that challenge and go attack it. And you may be successful and you may not be successful, but you will be better. And the next challenge, you're going to be more prepared for. I'm a hard worker. I, you know, I was never great at anything, like as a kid. I wasn't the fastest, I wasn't the strongest. I wasn't the smartest.

But I did know that I could work hard. I had to work hard. And I listened to people. I didn't think I knew everything. even when I was young and arrogant, like we all are when we're 23 years old or 22 years old and you're young and you think you know everything, even then I always had that little like, you don't know everything.

And I think that humility played a big role in me being able to be successful because I was never afraid to say, hey, I'm not 100% sure what to do right now. What do you guys think? Or hey, I feel like I've reached the limitations of my thought process, I need some help. And so I think that's one of the main reasons

that I was able to do a good job. Are excuses the opposite? Excuses and blame. Is that the opposite of extreme ownership? That is the opposite of extreme ownership. Extreme ownership is this went wrong, this failed, didn't accomplish this, and it's not the fault of my boss,

it's not the fault of my girlfriend, It's not the fault of my parents. It's not the fault of the weather. It's my fault. And I'm going to take ownership of it and I'm going to fix it. That's what extreme ownership is. And this is a very difficult thing to do because it hurts. Because when you look around at your life and you look around at your job

and your financial situation and your relationship and your physical health, when you look at all those things and all the problems that you may have with those things and you say the reason I have all of those problems is because of me that can hurt that can sting and a lot of times our ego rejects that

and makes excuses and lies and then we don't have to change anything and then nothing changes people want to take ownership of their life people want to be responsible for what's going on in their world and I think that's happening more and more and I think there's a meme world of, of, you know, the boomers, right?

The boomers bought their house for $6,000. You know, and now, you know, no one can afford a house. It's like, okay, so there's some, there's some young people that say, you, the boomers got their houses for $6,000, and we have to pay a half a million for a one bedroom, whatever. And so there's, there's that, but there's also people that like, oh, yeah, that's what it costs for a house now. Cool, what do I need to do to make it happen?

There's a term, it's rock bottom. This is a term that we hear for someone that's addicted, someone that's an alcoholic, someone that's physically let themselves go, someone that's put themselves into a situation with their finances or their work or whatever where they reach rock bottom. But when the excuses all go away and people can actually confront the fact that this is all because of me, it hurts, but is also unbelievably empowering. because if these problems are because of me, then I'm capable of fixing these problems.

So even though extreme ownership hurts and is painful, it's also liberating because now you have control over your fate and over your destiny, and that is a glorious thing. The more discipline you have in your life, the more freedom you will end up with. So if you lack the discipline to, exercise and eat healthy, you will end up being a slave to disease. If you lack the discipline to work hard, save your money, you will end up a slave to finances.

If you lack the discipline to manage your time correctly, you will end up with no free time. if you have self-discipline if you have the discipline to save your money and work hard and invest your money properly if you have the discipline to manage your time correctly and not waste a bunch of time if you have the discipline to exercise and eat healthy you will end up with freedom and it's i know it's a counterintuitive it's contrarian but i've seen this over and over and over again. If you want freedom in your life, you have to have discipline. I think that's one of the few things that you learn in basic seal training is to shrug your shoulders and go forward. Like, one of the things they do is they'll line you up on the ocean. And this is in California. And sometimes

people think that California is nice warm water, but it's not. It's 55 degrees. And I don't know what that translates to in centigrade, but it's cold. And one of the things they do is they'll the line you up and they say interlock arms and you get arm and arm with the guy next you and they say forward march and you march in the water and they say take seats and you sit down and they leave you in there and it's called surf torture and you just sit there and they'll after a while they'll pull you up out of the water they'll line you up and the doctor will come down and see if anyone has hypothermia and if no one has hypothermia or signs of hypothermia yet get back in the water and they just keep doing that And so, yeah, it's, what you learn to do is, okay, I'm going to go forward.

There's no, I can't get out of this. I'm going to go forward. I'm not going to quit. So I'm going to go forward. Bring it on. And I think if there's anything that you learn, it's to keep pushing through things that suck. I would love to be able to, you know, give you this profound anchor that people need to have. But it's like, oh, do you want to do this or not?

which is what I think a lot of it boils down to you. Do you actually want to do this or not? 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. And this is interesting too. When you talk to people that went to seal training that didn't make it, most of the time, it's some reason.

There's a medical reason. There's a family problem. There's very few people that look at you and say, oh, I quit because it sucked. Which is what, by the way, which is what happens to the vast majority of people. The vast majority of people that don't make it through seal training, and by this I mean 80, 90% of the people that don't make it through seal training,

they didn't make it through because they quit. Then there's a small percentage that had a medical problem, and then there's a small percentage that got performance dropped, meaning they couldn't perform the runs, the swims, the technical aspects of the job, and they failed, and they get dropped. But the vast majority of people, they quit, but they don't usually say that. And even in their mind, they probably don't believe it.

They probably believe, well, you know, it was my leg, and once my leg was hurting, I knew I was going to have a hard time on the runs, and I wasn't going to be able to make the runs. That's why I quit. But it wasn't really quitting. It was because my leg. because you're sad, now you're going to make a bunch of bad decisions because you're sad. No, no, it doesn't work like that.

It doesn't work like that. You're sad, okay. You get emotional sometimes? Okay. Got it. Now, get control of your emotions and carry on with your life. And sometimes you're going to get hate with those waves. And that's okay.

I think that's a big misconception and 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 run my life and I'm making a bunch of bad decisions. And my excuse is, 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. And in society, the last thing I want to say to you is, well, you can't act like that. Oh, you lost one of your friends. Hey, that doesn't mean you can make excuse. you can't use that an excuse.

No, I go, hey man, okay. That's what I say, right? I'm a polite person. I'm empathetic person. You're sad. You're making bad decisions. You're saying it's because you lost your friend or you went through this traumatic thing. And I go, okay, how can I help?

Instead of saying, hey, man, yeah, guess what? It's time to carry on. Don't dwell on the, I've told a thousand veterans this. Remember, don't dwell. Remember, remember your friends don't dwell in the past though. Remember don't dwell. That's what we have to do. And the emotions, yes, embrace those emotions, but don't let those emotions embrace you.

Don't let those emotions run your life. There is a, because people say, oh, suppressing your emotions is bad. Okay, so I'm just going to let all these emotions out and they're going to run my life now. No, no. No, at a certain point, you say, okay, my emotions are now leading me down the wrong path. I'm in control. I'm not going to allow my emotions to make my decisions. They're in the calculus.

I'm not saying take your emotions out of the calculus, but they have to be one component of your calculus, not the whole equation. The equation has to include emotions, yes. Logic, yes. Future, yes. Goals, yes. Family, yes. Work, yes. Finances, yes.

All those things have to be in the calculus. Emotions has to be a part of that calculus. You can't pull them out of there or they'll bite you. But you can't make them the overwhelming denominator of everything that you do. Or it's going to be problematic. We're going to have wins. We're going to have losses. We're going to have successes.

We're going to have failures. We're going to have good nights. We're going to have bad nights. We're going to have good relationships. We're going to have bad. relationship. We're going to have good ideas and bad ideas. We're going to make money. We're going to lose money. All these things are going to happen. And if you oscillate emotionally, up and down drastically, it's going to be problematic. So finding a good, stable,

centered way to be and look at the world and take everything that you see with a little bit of a grain of salt and don't get swayed too drastically in one direction or the other, you're going to be okay. If I'm in the woods, which is where you are right now, you're in the woods and you don't know where to go. Because the wife's not there anymore, the job's not there anymore, you don't know where to go right now. 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 person's not there. perspective is not going 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 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.