Daily Motivations - No Excuses, Work Harder

Episode Date: October 5, 2024

Are you ready to outwork everyone and achieve greatness? This motivational video compilation will fuel your passion and drive you towards your goals. Featuring powerful speeches from Eric Thomas and other motivational legends,  kindly follow us on Instagram - @daily_motivationsorg Facebook- @daily_motivationsorg Please Kindly support this show  Support Us

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Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connex Ontario at 1-866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor free of charge. BidMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. 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.

The struggle is real. It never gets any easier. You got to get harder. I have to ask this guy. I have to understand, like, why he works like that. So after the games, I'm like, hey, Kobe, like, why were you in the gym for so long? He's like, because I saw you come in. And I wanted you to know that it doesn't matter how hard you work, that I'm willing to work harder than you.

I know every mother ain't going to do what I'm going to do. That's how you level up. For me, I was more miserable trying to make everyone else happy than I am now with everyone else unhappy with me. Because when nobody's looking, that's the time that really counts. That's the time that really counts. That's the time that really matters. The working out at 5, 6 a.m. and all the practices and all the extra conditioning. That work that you do every single day is key because that's what you're going to be able to fall back on. And that's what you're going to be able to rely on when push comes to shove.

If a person would sit down and let their body relax, totally relax, and then start to visualize in their mind see themselves the way they want to see themselves write out a description of how you'd like to see yourself start to read it and read it and read it and read it every day carry it around and keep reading it the one point that all the great teachers, all down through history, have all agreed on, they've been in complete unanimous agreement on it,

we become what we think about. Now, it may be fantasy at first. It might even appear to us as being a lie. But if you read it often enough, you'll start to believe it. And when William James said, believe and your belief will create the fact, you will see the person's personality change.

I watch people in the seminars, personality change right in front of my eyes. And all they're doing is starting to see themselves differently, starting to think different thoughts. This next generation is just such a group of these men. I just for the small group of savages out there, run these kids right over them all. That was always my mentality. Nobody's ever going to outwork me. small group of savages out there, run these kids right over, man, run them all over. That was always my mentality. Nobody's ever going to outwork me. So it should be yours.

You out there that are listening right now. There's never been more opportunity than there is today. Getting up at four o'clock in the morning every day before anybody else and grounding my thought process is in the, no one will outwork me. No one. Motherfucker won't outwork me. It all starts with this. Two hands.

Putting it to work. I'm already working all of the hours that I'm awake. And I've already given up Saturdays. So the only thing that I have left is like Sundays and evenings. I am no longer going to be watching any football and I'm no longer going to have Netflix at all. That's what I'm sacrificing. And I think a lot of people create these to-do lists when in my experience, it's been so much more useful to write down all the things that I'm willing to sacrifice. Because if you sacrifice everything, there's nothing left than to do the one thing that matters.

I discovered work ethic and how far I could push myself. And I discovered one immutable truth. I could get so good that people would be terrified to lose me. There you go. And in fact, Kobe has a quote that's even better, which is booze don't block dunks. You can get so good people can't stop you. I can go back to that moment and just not be afraid. Just recognize that, look, whatever could be out there, I could have it.

A warrior's not always that. A warrior's a motherfucker who says, hey, I'm here again today. I'm here again tomorrow. I'm here again tomorrow. I'm going to be here the next day. I'm 50 years old. I'm still getting after it. It's a person that puts no limit on what's possible. There is no excuse for not being the hardest worker.

Yeah, someone might be bigger, stronger, faster, quicker, younger, whatever else. But there is no excuse to not be the hardest fucking worker there. And when you believe that you have the ability to do something, that the life that you're living right now is going down this direction, you fucking hate where it is. There is nothing else to do but to change direction. A belief that I cannot go that way anymore. I've got to go this way.

And what do you have to lose? You know the outcome if you continue the same shit. Why not just commit one time in your life to something? See what happens. There are no losers in the world of passion and commitment to something. No one loses there. The losers are the people that sit the starting line

and never initiate. It's the belief that supremacy exists. There's so many examples in the Olympics, and every day we see the common man with the odds against them, overcoming what people thought could never happen. And probably he didn't even think it. But there he stands, victorious, and a role model to all of us. Like, oh my God, we want to be him. But before he was him, was us what got him there was an undying belief and every drop of sweat that came out and every pain and ache and everything else was just a a telltale sign they get closer and closer to that dream that we were when we were kids of being a reality

why not believe in it what's the other other option? There is no other option. It's a life forgotten, man. I'd like to know, what's the biggest key to your personal success? It's hard. Of course, talent without work is nothing. 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 years. 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. Why are you out running before 35 o'clock in the morning and not later in the day?

Why do fighters do that? Because I don't want to do it. You have to discipline yourself to do things that you don't want to do. I don't want to get up before I run. I realize, man, if I want to be good, I got to wake up in the morning and I got to do the extra work. And I got to show up when other guys aren't. And I've got to learn.

I've got to continue to be open to learning. Focus on what you can control. Focus on what you're getting, not what anyone else is getting. Whenever you get an opportunity, you take advantage of it. You treat it like it's the Super Bowl. You treat it like it's game day.

Go out there and treat practice like no one else does. You have no like it's game day. Go out there and treat practice like no one else does. You have no idea how great you really are because you are using such minimal, minimal of what you have. So in this job, you look, you're looking for cockroaches, looking for rodents and stuff like that. And this next morning or this next night, I went to work, and I don't like cockroaches too much. I hate the mother load of cockroaches. And this restaurant got full of cockroaches and rodents and everything else. And I sat there and said, this is my life.

I said, this is my life. You are exactly who the f*** did. This is it. And I said, this ain't going to be it for me. So in that restaurant, I quit my job, left my canister in that restaurant, my spray canister, got back in my Ecolab truck, and I went home. And I started working out like somebody. I became the most obsessed person on the planet Earth.

And then just work like hell. I mean, you just have to put in 80-hour, 80- to 100-hour weeks every week. All those things improve the odds of success. Okay. I mean, if other people are putting in 40-hour work weeks and you're putting in 100-hour work weeks, then even if you're doing the same thing, you know that you will achieve in four months what it takes them a year to achieve.

If you have one good day where you eat clean, you drink a lot of water like you did. You got that day, you woke up, you put your shoes on, you went for a run, you worked out your driveway. You got a good day. That's sometimes all you need to do and decide, this is what I do from now on. I have good days. Tomorrow's going to be another good day. And then I'm going to force myself into another good day and the next thing you know i've got some momentum my legs are all beat down what was me tired for like but guess what i know how about days off one day but not today hang on a second man you can achieve the

absolute impossible you don't need great parents. You don't need a private school. You don't need to have this humongous GPA and all this other shit. What you need is the one thing I talk about in my book, which is straight up brutal work ethic. You have to be willing to outwork everybody in the world. From the social group I had before I quit my job, before going all the way like ground zero to today, I talked to no one from that time in my life compared to today. And I was absolutely miserable and unhappy and unfulfilled. And I would say that the majority of those people probably don't like me today because I changed. I didn't do what I was supposed to do. He thinks he's so fancy now,

et cetera, et cetera. And I think I'm just okay with that. And so I think coming to terms with the idea that I could be absolutely rejected by everyone I know, but like me, I was more okay with that because the alternative was I didn't want to live anymore. And so obviously there's degrees and there's continuums and there's stages of where people are at with that. But as that being taken to its logical extreme, would I rather live for them than live for me? I would rather be hated by everyone than like myself. Everyone does a few reps when a burn starts. No one goes the extra mile. It keeps going.

Like, no one's in here right now. Why? Because it's Saturday evening, everyone's going to party, no one's in here. Just me. You know, no one goes the extra mile. The thing about traffic jams, guys, there are no traffic jams in the last mile of the race. It's just you and your shadow. In the beginning, everybody's there. All the pretenders and the contenders. They're all there. But the last yard of life, the last mile of the journey, ain't nobody but you and your shadow. Traffic jams don't exist that far. Because everyone else has already given up.

That's what I like too, the mental concept. I'm going that far. I love the physical high of the burn being released. I love the mental high that I just improved myself. I love the mentality that I'm defeating my competitors silently when they don't even know it. They're out partying. I'm out here getting ahead. I'm not good enough, smart enough. I'm not talented enough to do that. Some people are. Some people can start at one. Some people don't have to start at all.

If you lack talent, you can't sit back and say, I'll start in half an hour. I can't do that. I got to start now. I think it's really profound in terms of how quickly people move through life, in terms of achieving the goals that they set out. Because people are like, how is that guy so young and he's achieved X, Y, and Z? It's like, well, what takes you a month to make a decision?

We make it an hour. And then the next hour, I make another decision that takes you your next month. And so that's how you can go 30 times or 100 times faster than the quote average person who's overweight, has $1,000 in their bank account, and is going to die at 70. And after I get back from starting, I got to start again. And then when I get done with that run or that study session, if it wasn't good enough, I got to go back again. Because repetition is what taught me everything. So you can honestly outwork anything. 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. I'd say just listen to yourself. Don't listen to anybody else. Not one person because, God forbid, anything went wrong, you can't blame other people and start pointing the finger. Always know that you're only to blame yourself because you made that decision and whatever you do in life never regret it never if buts shoulda woulda coulda give everything while you can when you can and leave nothing to behind no one's gonna come to help me no one's gonna come to help me it's just me against me

period i didn't have them or come wake me up at 3 o'clock in the fucking morning and say, hey, you got to get your shit in. I had no trainer. I didn't have a nutritionist. It was this self-discipline that I had to survive. To not survive, survive as weak. To thrive. No one said, hey, man, you're 297 pounds, man.

I'm going to help you out. I'm going to help. Hey, man, you're fucking, you're not smart. I'm going to help you out. I want to help. Hey, man, you're fucking, you're not smart. I'm going to help you out. I had to work at all this. I had to overcome. And it self-disciplines everything.

If you don't have it, I don't look at you right. Because I know you're capable of more. It's not discipline so much for me. It's all on you. It's all on you. It's all on you. The self part is what's big. For the next two years, all I'm going to do is get good grades. I didn't date.

I didn't party. I didn't drink. I literally didn't leave my dorm room. I worked. I put my head down for two years, and I just worked. So today, I decided to try to PR my long run. So the first half of the run, I'm feeling great. My mind is clear, nothing going on.

Think about nothing but just my running pace, what I'm doing, my breathing, everything like that. Get to mile 15, I turn around, and the demons start to creep in. The inevitable walls creeping up on me. When you push so hard, something's about to give, and I start to give. My mind started to break down. I started feeling my legs starting to hurt i started feeling dehydrated started feeling sorry for myself started looking around no one knows i'm not here running why don't you go ahead just stop call your girl have her pick you up and that's when i feel like a little and this is when your mind has to change you gotta start

thinking i'm the grittiest mother in the world. Your dehydration, your legs are all sore. You got shin splits and stress fractures. No, you don't. You got sore legs. Get out of your head and stay hard. I call the Rocky cut scene. And almost every successful person that I have ever encountered has gone through not a month or a year, but many years of doing work without reward,

where they have to do things that other people find boring. And they have to sacrifice things that everyone finds interesting that most people want to do during that entire season of their life. And they basically sacrifice a season of other things that they would prefer to do, to do stuff that they would not prefer to do because of the one thing they want most and that's the rocky cut scene and instead of lasting five minutes it just usually lasts five or ten years never seen myself as particularly talented where i excel is i'm willing to die in the process of acquiring skill. There is no perfect time to start. You got to start now with changing your life. We're all being tested in life. And guess

what? This is one test you can't cheat on. We all have our own test. Some of us are obese. Some of us are depressed. Some of us are insecure. In the the military we have this big old rucksack on the back we have batteries, water extra gear your extra gear is the shit you're dealing with in life and the only way to overcome it is for you or you alone to face it you gotta do your best work

when you're the least motivated so those days you don't want to do it guess what you gotta do you gotta second the fuck up and do it I want to see what you do when you're the least motivated. So those days you don't want to do it, guess what you got to do? You got to second the f*** up and do it. Like, I want to see what you do when you're tired. Let me see how you push yourself. Come on, man. Get up. Get up again tomorrow. Get up again tomorrow. Get up again tomorrow.

The next day. Get up. Get up. Get up. Get up. Keep going. How long can you maintain a positive attitude? So what's the great divide of human beings? Who are you on those days you don't want to do things? It's easy to conquer when it's good weather. You got good sleep. Work's going good. The family's good.

You feel great. Your body's not injured. Those are the easy days to conquer. But who are you on those fucking days when all hell's broke loose? Your body's fucked up. You're sore. You're depressed. You're miserable miserable and that's the favorite person at school might be getting bullied might be falling behind in life who are you on those days when it's all f***ed up that's the great divide

those people who get up on those days when everything's f***ed up and still crying that's the separator right there stay hard People who get up on those days when everything's f***ed up and still grind, that's the separator right there. Stay hard. We're here to get stronger. In order to get stronger, we must fail. Accept that.

Know that. That who we are right now is not who we are, but where we are. And we're going forward with the belief. Our belief, guys, drives this workout. Believe in the difference you can be. Stop being average when your potential is trying to come outside to be more than that two forms of pain pain that breaks you and the pain that changes you that's the pain of a change right there that's the pain of progress the pain that destroys you isn't this it's later in life knowing you could have been more and all that's left is

you in the mirror in tears of a possibility left that you allow to die own your life guys you have every opportunity there's no excuse not to be the hardest worker in the room and all your endeavors schoolwork the gym your career your, your name's attached to it. It's got to mean more than anything. That's your name. It's all you got. Play it out. What if you just never do anything? Is like, maybe some people just need to stop dreaming. Maybe they need to accept their current reality and actually enjoy it. Because there's a lot of people when they're 70 and 80, and they didn't do their dreams. And if they went back, like they didn't do anything, but that whole time they were dissatisfied because they didn't try. But what if they were just like, I have a good life.

I have a wife who loves me. I've got some kids. I have a job that I, you know, like, I don't mind it. Pace the bills. I mean, if you go back 500 years, it wasn't people were like, man, this is my passion. It's like, dude, I'm just rowing, rowing a boat across a ferry. And that's what I do. And that's what my dad did. And his dad did like, this is how we eat. And so like, we have these, these, um, idealized versions of purpose that I think Instagram and all this stuff kind of make terrible, but like, I think there's a lot of honor and work period. And I think a lot of people, uh, fool themselves by thinking that what they do for some reason is not honorable. And I think a lot of it is like the internal versus external scorecard of like, I was saying what I said earlier about like,

I believe these things to be true about the universe or like the world. But a lot of those are like, what do I believe about myself? Which is like, I can choose to do work in this way, which then I can derive joy from. So like, if I'm traveling shit, I can choose to be like, I will be the best shit shoveler because I believe that I will figure out how to do this more efficiently and I will get better and I'll have calluses on my hands and I'll have a better back and whatever. But I will do this well. And I think you can find joy in work if you decide to do it well.

So on one hand, if your dream causes you so much pain, then you will quit what you're doing and do it. And if it doesn't cause you enough pain that you're not pursuing it or that you don't like, if you don't feel like you're in a cage right now, then maybe you're not in a cage. And maybe you just need to like the life you have. And that's cool, too. The other thing that's so interesting about being alive is that you're all in. No matter what you do, you're all in. This is going to kill you. So I think you might as well play the most magnificent game you can while you're waiting.

Because do you have anything better to do? Worked on my gift. I realized that all of us are born with a gift. But you got to hone it hone it you know it's just not you're not gonna become great you know greatness is upon you and i realized that my gift wasn't going to create itself my gift wasn't going to nurture itself my gift wasn't going to perfect itself that was something i had to do and so man before you know it we did a video that went viral i think it's got over 50 million hits now.

And we turned. You know, very few people bet on the underdog. But if you would have, you're the one big. And that happened to be us. We bet on ourselves. Sometimes you have to let other people's dreams for your life die for yours to live. And for me, it was like when I when I continued to every day not want to wake up, that was my wake up call where I was like, either I continue to live this way and not want to be alive. Or I just risked the fact that I'll die to everybody else.

And I think that it was the hardest decision of my entire life. By far. All the hard stuff I went through, still the hardest decision of my life. If you make all the right decisions, but you have, like, you absolutely think that it's impossible for you, but you still do the right things, you will win. So what keeps me going? I've quit several things. I know what's on the back end of quitting. It's a lifetime of thinking about why the f*** did I do that? And I ain't doing that no more.

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. Every day is just constant improvement, constant curiosity, constantly getting better. The results don't really matter. It's the figuring out that matters. Do not give up. Do not feel like you're tired.

When you're tired, think of last year and think of that f***ing record. Every time I get tired or I think I can't go no more, I think of that f***ing record. That ain't us. We can make it. We got to believe. We got to be mentally strong. When we're tired, that's when we got to put our fundamentals together.

That's when we got to be more focused. There's not a motherfucker that's up. There's not a car. There's not a person. Everybody's in their bed, sleep, dreading that it's a Monday. Hate it's a Monday.

And I'm loving it. I'm loving that. Where everybody's getting weaker, I'm getting stronger. It's not about where everybody's getting weaker, I'm getting stronger. It's not about the running, the swimming, the push-ups, the sit-ups. It's about what those things do for your mentality. You don't get better on the daggone couch. You get better by coming out here and getting the f*** after every daggone day. 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 two-a-days or five-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, he had this beautiful quote, and it read, Rest at the end, not in the middle. And I took that to heart. I believe there's time for resting at the end, but for me, that time is not now.

To have a dream, sacrifice for it, and never, ever rest in the middle. My personal goal is to squeeze every ounce of potential out of whatever I have. And I think that if you feel like you have potential left over, then it will eat you alive until you do something about it. If you haven't gotten what you want, then you're not worthy of it, period. And that's okay. Now you can admit that you suck and improve. Better to know you're bad for a season than pretend you're good for a lifetime.

You're not making as much money as you want because you're not as good as you think you are. You're not struggling from imposter syndrome. You're a student and pretending to be a teacher. No students say they feel like frauds are trying to learn. You're a fraud when you get up to teach the class, and you've never done it. When you push yourself that hard, you sleep easy at night. It's not because you're physically tired.

It's not because physically you're worn out, but you sleep easy. It's that by going, the physical exhaustion, your brain can finally rest, knowing you give it your all. You have control of this. This belongs to you.

This is yours. You're the captain. You're the master. You're the foreman. You're the general. You're the master. You're the foreman. You're the general. You're the head. Don't give control of this to nobody. The harder and harder you work in here,

the harder and harder it becomes to accept failure out there. Second place isn't an option anymore, guys. The more you give in here, the more you get out there. Why would you not want to give it at all? an option anymore, guys. The more you give in here, the more you get out there. Why would you not want to give it at all? What else are you going to do? Can you come here and kill it right now? Or stay home on the couch?

You know, watching the life pass you by. I know it sounds like habitual while I say all the time, but sometimes you've got it ingrained in your head. What else would you be doing right now? Taking the time off? Or taking the time, but sometimes you've got it ingrained in your head. What else would you be doing right now? Taking the time off? Or taking the time to get ahead? It's just, that seems so simple to me, that solution, that

the choice is there. If it doesn't seem so easy to you, it's because you don't believe in yourself. You believe in yourself, you want to be in here killing it. It's giving you that much more of a chance because you believe you can come back. But people that don't come in here. Because they're tired of stuff.

Are people that don't believe in themselves. That's why they don't see the asset. Of being in the gym to grow. They see it as a waste of time. Because they don't believe they can ever get there. So therefore why take the precautionary steps. To sharpen and hone the arsenal to really go to battle? Because they don't even want to go to battle because they know they're going to lose.

You got to get real dogish. You got to get downright funky if you want to make it. Now, like I was telling you before, if you want to be ordinary, you ain't even got to listen to me. Just go on about your business. Every single morning, do you want a positive reinforcement or do you want a negative one to go about your day? How do you want people to see you? Like that? You know? Or like that?

It's your property. This shit comes off the sweat. Replaced by that. Best part about it is once you have this, you got this too. You scare shit out of people.

People know that you have the ability to do at least one thing right in your life. And they're willing to bet you can do something else right too. They give you the opportunity and you take your trained talent and you marry them to the person you want to be last step success once you have it all you give it back there's someone else climbing his way up that's a big life here's the fact all of you have extraordinary capabilities

all of you you have to decide if you are willing to do the things to put you in that category 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. Your excuses will take everything that you ever wanted from you. If you let them 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. 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, just get up. Move towards that challenge, whatever that challenge is.

And you're going to fail. And you're going to fail. And you're going to fail. And you're going to fail. And then you're going to win. So the goal was to be the first one at breakfast. So I set my alarm. I make sure I'm up by sunrise.

I get out of bed. I put on my gear and I head downstairs. But when I get there, Kobe's already there with ice packs on his knees, drenched in sweat. Now, it took me a minute to figure it out, but this guy wasn't only awake before me. He had already worked out. He had just played

in the finals days earlier. Meanwhile, I'd been off for months and I was still exhausted. What he had done that morning was incomprehensible to me. That dedication he had only days after falling short of an NBA championship. That taught me something I've never forgotten. Legends aren't defined by their successes. They're defined by how they bounce back from their failures. And if you're not strong mentally, and you have no willpower, you're going to continue falling back in this hole versus a man that sits back and goes all right this is why i cuss this is what is in me this is this is what it took for me to be me sorry it didn't take hey okay we're gonna do this

today no this really sucks this is real dude this is real, dude. This is real. And every day I'm set back. I'm set back. I'm set back. I'm set back. So this is what I would tell your boy. This is exactly what I tell him. Every day you wake up, you're going to probably be set back for the first four weeks before you lose to significant weight because the mind is going to be with you the whole time. 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 of and that's the reality of it so you have to create a false reality to live in that just to get to work on yourself that's the reality you obviously don't want it bad enough i became obsessed with being the baddest that God ever created. Am I that? I don't care. I believe it. And I was trying to tell him, 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 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. How much harder will you work in this offseason now to get back to the championship? I push myself too exhaustion. I was, I became the most obsessed person on the planet Earth. And I was basically I had

to invent a guy that didn't exist. I had to invent a guy that can take any pain, any suffering, any kind of judgment be called whatever in the world and be able to stand in the room and say go yourself i had to build this callous mind and i built it through suffering i built it through downright and just crushing myself if it was raining outside three

o'clock in the morning if it was snowing the first instinct is don't go out there and do my instinct was we gotta go out out there. Anything that was horrible in my life that I would normally say no, that was inhumane to most people, I had to go do it. It's easy to give up. It's the easiest thing in the world to do. 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. 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. Maybe I should just quit and go back to making noodles. Quit? Don't quit? Noodles? Don't noodles? You are too concerned with what was and what will be. There's a saying, yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift.

That is why it is called the present. We are so worried about what other people think about us. You know, it's like, oh my gosh, what if they think I'm crazy? What if they think I'm over obsessive or competitive? And what this is like you're too much this is just not healthy for you to be thinking this way right yeah how did you get your mindset into this alter ego to be comfortable being black mama like how did that happen it's a good separation for me you know emotionally to be able to put myself in a place where at practice or when I'm training or doing games, I switch my mind to something else. I switch my mode into something else.

It's go time. Right? So that was my mental switch. It was like an actor getting ready for a film. You got to put yourself in that cage. When you're in that cage, you are that character. And then when you leave there, it's something completely different. But when I'm in that cage, bro, touch me don't talk to me if you want to be great you want to be bad

mother ever at what you do you're gonna be misunderstood by everybody because you're gonna be so obsessed and so driven to get there that's what it takes it takes every second of your life anybody says balance yeah balance is important for a lot of people. It is. But if you want to go to that edge where people do not like you, don't understand you, question everything you do,

you've arrived. When you are misunderstood to the point where people think you're psycho and you're nuts and you're this and that, why are you in the gym at one o'clock in the morning? You just got to be doing an op for 13, 14 hours at the ranger

school, man, at the gym was wrong. You will never understand what is wrong with me. And when you get to the point where all you want to do is be successful as bad as you want to breathe, then you'll be successful. And I'm here to tell you, number one, that most of you say you want to be successful, but you don't want it bad. You just kind of want it. You don't want it badder than you want a party You don't want it as much as you want to be cool. Most of you don't want success as much as you want to sleep Some of you love sleep more than you love success and I'm here to tell you today if you're going to be successful You've got to be willing to give up sleep. You've got to be willing to work off for three hours of sleep, two hours. If you really want to be successful, some days you will have to stay up three days in a row. Because if you go to sleep,

you might miss the opportunity to be successful. That's how bad you got to want it. You said before about how you build up self-esteem and confidence and stuff. And there's this quote from one of my friends, Alex Hormozy, that says, you don't become confident by shouting affirmations before about how you build up self-esteem and confidence and stuff and there's this quote from one of my friends alex homozy that says you don't become confident by shouting affirmations in the mirror but by having a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say you are outwork yourself doubt i love that phrase uncommon amongst uncommon men there's moments where you don't want to do this oh which is why it's so interesting because you do it right you you do it without any reservation you just go through it right but you always talk about i don't

want to do this but you always do that's it i came with this thing called perform without purpose and so many people they need to have a 5k a 10k i need to have a a course in front of me they need to have a 5K, a 10K. I need to have a course in front of me. I need to have something in front of me for me to get my f***ing ass up and do some s***. And that used to be me. And nowadays, you know, past 20-some years, I don't need f***ing purpose. We're all looking for this golden purpose. Is it this? Is it that? Is it making money? Is it my family?

Motherf***er, the purpose is you. 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 two-a-days or five-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, he had this beautiful quote

and it read, rest at the end, not in the middle. And I took that to heart. I believe there's time for resting at the end, but for me, that time is not now. My next dream is to be honored one day for inspiring the next generation of athletes to have a dream, sacrifice for it, and never, ever rest in the middle. When you're passionate, everybody cheers you on. They're stoked for you. Oh, you found your passion? Awesome.

Follow your passion. Live with passion. Be passionate. Chase your passions. Everything. Passion, passion, passion, passion. Passion's good. The world's going to be like, yay, passion! Right? When you're obsessed, they're like, why are you going to be so crazy?

Why can't you be satisfied? Why do you always got to get things so perfect? Why do you spend so much time here? When you're obsessed, people think you're nuts. So it's different. And it's like, I always tell people, if no one thinks you're crazy, you're not yet operating to's different. And it's like, I always tell people, if no one thinks you're crazy, you're not yet operating to the outer limits of your potential. You're not there

yet. Go do something. Do the best thing that you can think of. Put the best plan you have into practice. It's not going to be perfect and it will change along the way, but it will change partly because you become disciplined pursuing the path. And you become disciplined you become wiser and as you become wiser you become able to formulate better and better plans what do you think most people get wrong about motivation they think it's a permanent fix they think it's something that is a constant they think that maybe once i get it, I'm going to hold on to it. And that's the thing about that I always talk about. It's nothing is permanent. Nothing is permanent.

And a lot of times you have to learn to perform without motivation. You have to learn to perform a lot of different things. You have to learn to perform without purpose. You can't be interested and you can't be obsessed. Interested is a hobby. Kobe Bryant was not interested in winning championships. He was obsessed. And obsession comes in the small details that nobody pays attention to. And I have a saying, interested people watch obsessed people change the world. Now, one of the things I recommend to young people, especially true for people in their 20s,

is that you should push yourself beyond your limits of tolerance in your 20s to find out where it is. How much can you work? How disciplined can you become? Like, can you work 12 hours a day? Can you work eight hours a day? Can you work three hours a day? Like, flat out. Where's your limit? How much work can you do and how much socialization? You should find out. Push yourself past and then back off to that point where it's optimally sustainable. It's good to think about that as a goal.

It's like you're trying to discover what your limitations are when you're in your 20s so that you can hit that edge so that you can sustain yourself across the decades. And so, yeah, because you don't want to have too much fun, right? Too much fun takes you out. You don't want to be the oldest guy at the disco, you know? It's not fun being the 40-year-old at the singles bar, precisely. So you want to make sure that what you're doing is age-appropriate and you want to push yourself in every direction that you can, but you should be doing that with an aim in mind it's like you're trying

to make yourself into a better and more competent person and so some discipline along with the fun is a good idea it's either you have it or you don't that sounds like excuses to me i mean you got to figure it out right if you really have an obsession to figure it out you will figure it out right and every puzzle is constructed differently all.'s situation when he came into the league was different than mine. Mike's situation in Chicago was different than mine. Everybody has a different puzzle, man. You just got to figure out your own puzzle. It's interesting to think about the sliding doors of if you go to Charlotte,

if you stay at Charlotte, you know what I mean? Hey, man, listen. The better you get, the easier it gets. Right now, the phase you're in is called growing pains. And what you don't even realize is that the game is trying to test you right now, trying to see how bad you want it. You think the game is going to reward people who can't handle hardship and adversity? No, that's not how it works.

The grind ain't meant to be easy. That's why you're going to appreciate it so much when you get through it. But I remember we were playing against the Lakers, Tom. You know, like, I always try to outwork people, right? That's just how I made my mark. So the game was at seven. It's like, you know what? I'm going to come to the Staples Center because we're playing this one.

Lakers had Kobe and Shaq. Okay. This is, this is like the championship Lakers. So now I'm going to get there at three o'clock and I want to make sure I make 400 made shots before I go back into the room. And then I sit in this on and I get ready for the game. So get in the car, get to the gym, get there. And as I'm walking onto the court, who do I see?

I see Kobe Bryant already working out. And I'm like, okay, that's kind of cool. It's Kobe. It's all Kobe, you know. And so I put my sneakers on. And you ever get lost in what you do where you end up like, wait, it's been an hour and a half. I'm here. I'm in it. So once I set my foot across that line i started working out and so i worked out for a good hour hour and a half and when i came off after i was done i sat down and of course i still heard the ball bouncing i looked down like this guy's still working out

so he was working out like it looks like he was in a dead sweat when I got here. And he's still going. And it's not like his moves are nonchalant or lazy. He's doing, like, game moves, you know? I sit there, and I unlace my shoes. I'm like, I want to see how long this goes. So I sit out there and watch. Another 25 minutes.

And he got done. I said, okay. I think I've seen enough. Go play, you know? Come back. Get in the sauna. Get ready for the game. That game, he drops 40 on us.

Okay. And after the game is over, I'm like, I have to ask this guy. I have to understand, like, why he works like that. So after the game, I'm like, hey, Kobe, like, why were you in the gym for so long? He's like, because I saw you come in. And I wanted you to know that it doesn't matter how hard you work, that I'm willing to work harder than you. Wow. Consistency, consistency, consistency, man. That's the name of the game, bro. Don't get much simpler than that. If you

keep going every single day and don't stop, your competition will fall off, bro. These ain't cut like you, bro. They ain't ready for prime time. They ain't trying to really get it right. They take days off, this day off, that day off. They lazy. I'm tired. No. Grind every day one foot in front of the other, bro. And I promise you, you're going to be laughing at these folks, bro.

Give it a year. Watch what happens. The bike got easier. I was able to run more. I went from like one mile one mile is a great accomplishment two miles and then from two to three was a big one then i went from three to six and then like they have a warning order that they give people to get ready for buds and the whole thing was running six miles five days a week and that was my goal and so i just

kept i failed i go back to scratch i used some positive motivation i have like one day where i can defeat but i started realizing this is part of the process this is part of the journey i had to realize this is part of my process versus just saying like i used to i'm just not good enough if i'm not good enough we always say that i'm just not good enough and then we try something else. I'm going to make myself good enough. And that became my mentality. I'm going to make myself good enough. And so I misunderstood a lot.

But that's that's all it came down to. I made myself good enough. And the days I couldn't run that far the next week, I would do two a days. So on the running, if I ran a quarter of a mile, I'd wait a couple hours. It'd haunt me, bother me. I'd try to run a half a mile the next time. Same day. You can do more than this.

If I had to walk, I had to walk. It just became just a process of grinding and grinding. And grinding's not even a good word for it. It's not even a good word for it. And just going further and further. And then when I got through running, I'd go the bike i go to the pool if i got tired somewhere my legs are tired i go to the gym and i developed this crazy workout where i was doing volume like two three hundred reps of like very lightweight people i say you know how come you don't have any like loose skin my workout

routine in the gym became sick. I gave everything. I gave everything to who I am. And that's why I'm... I don't believe that. Don't believe it. I gave everything. And when you give everything, man, you have no regret. People didn't understand me. People don't understand me now. I don't give a fuck.

I know exactly what I was doing. I'm not crazy. I'm not this and that. People try to title me and label me. No. I had something to fucking do. There's so many people that have the ability and just refuse to get off that couch. Refuse to study a few more hours.

Refuse to go deeper, to go further. And that's where I gained the advantage. It's so easy to be great nowadays, friend because most people are weak no you're you're you're out running on a track working out and you start talking to yourself saying man my knee is really sore right now maybe i'm maybe i'm doing too much maybe i need to back off. Man, my lungs are burning. Maybe I can just slow down here. I'll do an extra two sets tomorrow. It'll be okay.

That sort of stuff. That stuff's dangerous. And that's when you just got to say, you know what? I'm not negotiating with myself. The deal was already made. The deal was made. When I set out at the beginning of the summer and said, this is the training plan I'm doing.

I signed that contract with myself. I'm doing it. You know, throughout that process, you'll start talking to yourself like, man, I think I need to maybe if we, nope. No. This is non-negotiable. Non-negotiable. Yeah. You have to learn to train your mind well beyond motivation.

If you have motivation, that's great. That's some kindling to the fire. All it takes is a little bit of spark and you can burn a whole forest up. But motivation, you have to learn to exist without it. You have to be your best self when you're least motivated. My philosophy is why be normal when you can be the best i don't want to be normal i want to make the difference so everything i do i want to make the difference because when i make the difference i'm the best and that is not arrogance that is confidence

to get through where i became to get through where i'm at now there's nothing but pride i have for myself that i can't really show people. Because I have this face. I have this face that they see like, are you happy? What's wrong with you? I'm driven. I'm obsessed. Nothing is permanent. Nothing is permanent.

And a lot of times you have to learn to perform without motivation. You have to learn to perform without purpose. You have to learn to perform a lot of different things. And that's what people think. They think I need to have this motivation to work out, to study, to be better. So if they don't have it, they just don't do it. Hey, bro. You better get ready to buckle up because this is going to get no easier, bro.

Once you get in the grind, it gets easier? Come on, bro. You silly, man. This grind is only for the strong ones, bro. And if you're weak, I suggest you go ahead and leave. It's tough, but it's true. Be safe. Sun don't stop for nobody, man.

Sun don't f***ing stop. Sun gonna be up in the morning regardless. That sun is gonna be up in the morning regardless. Regardless of how I be up in the morning regardless of how i feel and how depressed i am the sun is going to shine in the morning and the night time the moon going to be there and you're going to look up these days going to keep going by so do you let the days go by and look up and you don't waste a year doing what or do you just pick it up all right gotta figure it out Made some mistakes Life goes on

You figure out life from this point You wanna become best You wanna become champion And now you wanna say like you tired Who cares? You tired or not? Nobody care about you He was tired

He have personal problem Family Nobody cares We're all writing a book What's your book look like? What does your f*** your book look like what does your book look like like your life is a book you got a bunch of chapters in your book but when they close that book how good was the book how good was your book what was the ending to your book? What was really your work ethic like? And for how long did you stay disciplined? Well, I mean, every day.

I mean, since 20 years. It was an everyday process. And trying to figure out strengths and weaknesses. For example, jumping ability. My vertical was a 40. It wasn't a 46 or a 45. My hands are big, but they're not massive. So you've got to figure out ways to strengthen them

so your hands are strong enough to be able to palm a ball and do the things that you need to do. Quickness, I was quick, but not insanely quick. I was fast, but not ridiculously fast. So I had to rely on skill a lot more. I had to rely on angles a lot more. I had to study the game a lot more. And it just never changed.

What I found is that winning doesn't happen on show day. It happens in the early mornings, painful workouts, long cardio sessions, and hungry nights. It happens in those moments of fear we all have when faced with a difficult goal, and then more so in what you make of that fear.

It happens in every second of every day before you win. If you can take every opportunity you have to bring yourself closer to your goal, win every one of those opportunities, all while becoming more resilient in the process, how can you lose? That is an exciting opportunity. I became obsessed with being the baddest that God ever created. Am I that? I don't care. I believe it. And I was trying to tell him, 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 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 how bad do you want it there's two options to continue forward pushing upward and if you do that dream is given birth and forever you will live in the reality of it if you stop quit throwing the towel i promise you there's no distance you can travel far enough to find that dream again for it's dead and it is death is replaced by regret what's the least

amount of sleep you play the game on no there's a story where it's like you know no one knows about where you went and played a game and it was so insane for whatever reasons no sleep you play the game no sleep zero sleep zero sleep's like, you know, kids, you know, Natalia had a certain, you know, health situation, what have you, and you're staying up all night, and then you got to go out and perform because fans don't know. Teammates don't know, nor do they care, nor should they, that you've been up all night.

You got to perform. Like, I see a lot of players take vacations with other players that are close friends. And they'll just take vacations just to take vacations or just hang out, just to hang out. Like I'm not, I never did that. Why not? Why didn't you do that? Well, because when I retire, I didn't want to have to say, I wish I would have done more. All week he was working hard.

End of the week, if you don't tire it, this is a good question. You have to worry about yourself. But this is Saturday. Your sixth day you work so hard, of course you're going to tire it. Tomorrow rest and Monday we're going to begin one more training. If you don't want, go back to Dagestan and stay with your mom she's gonna give you every day good breakfast you don't do nothing stay there but if you come here don't complain you want to become best you want to become champion and now you want

to say like you tired who cares you tired or not nobody care about he was tired he had personal problems I Family problems. Nobody cares. A lot of people live their entire lives not fulfilling their purpose. One time in my life I felt that. What was my purpose? Until you find the

center of your being, you will continue to walk, going through the motions. The one companion that's always going to be with you is yourself. Yourself is what you have. And you need to encourage yourself.

You need to look around and you need to be able to say, look, I'm not stuck here unless I choose to stay here. If you don't have somebody who's going to do that, become that somebody. What's something difficult you're going through that you don't have somebody who's going to do that, become that somebody. What's something difficult you're going through that people don't often see? I mean, my mind is a storm. I don't think most people would want to be me. They may think they want to be me, but they don't. They don't know. They don't understand. There's 24 hours in a day

where you're alone in this brain and your brain is talking to you in all kinds of ways. And it wants to control you and pull you in these different pockets. You've got to tell your brain where you want to go and how you want to get there. If you can't control your own brain, it's over. Every day when you get out of bed, life's standing right there to kick you in the face, man. Life is going to throw all kinds of crazy shit at you, and you have to be ready for it, and you've got to fucking deal with it. You can't curl up into a ball.

You can't run away from it. You can't hide. You have to take all this shit head on. Great things happen, and really bad things happen, and you've got to take it all in stride. You've got to pick yourself up the next day, strap your fucking shoes back on, and get out there and go to fucking war again.

It's that mentality. It's the mentality. Bring it on, mother. I can take it. You can't break this. I'm stronger than you think I am. And everything you throw at me and all the hardships you throw at me, you might knock me down, but I get back up.

I'll be stronger for it. It's that mentality that builds an iconic status that centuries from now people still talk about. Nobody cares. At the end of the day, nobody cares. What we're going through, how your body feels, nobody cares. We got to do our job. And we emphasize that to each other again today.

Hey, I got your back. You got mine. Nobody cares, man. We got to go. Is it fair? No. Life is tough sometimes, and it's not fair, and it doesn't care sometimes. But you're going to hold true to what you believe, and you're going to hold true to who you are,

and you're going to be that person whether it's easier or it's not. I go to such places in my mind, and I study the darkness. There was no team. 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. I lived alone for so many years in this misery. I can take myself to such a level of real, real passion and purpose. I've trained 99% of my life alone.

I did all of the work alone. I never ran from anything because I never had nobody to go to. I've always had that where I'm going. Home to get meat. Ain't nobody there. You know what I'm saying? So I've always been in a situation where i'm forced to deal with it myself you always have to be the person who roots for you

before everybody else does and it's usually a single clap in the auditorium for a very long period of time it is a slow clap that's just you rooting for you the path of the exceptional person is one of an exception which means that you are not with you. The path of the exceptional person is one of an exception, which means that you are not with other people. The superpower of learning to be alone and enjoying it, these times where you just think about things, just be alone and think about things, are so rare these days. During those rare times is when you really get to understand

what you actually believe or don't believe. It's a lonely journey. You're isolated. Those who used to keep pace with you will fall off. They'll see where their world ends and yours begins. Your ability to suffer, endure, outwork must be greater. You must be willing to extend yourself to the limit with no guarantee of success every day you must ask yourself did i do enough 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. No one's effing coming to save you.

No one. No one's coming to push you. No one's coming to tell you to turn the TV off. No one's coming to tell you to get out the door and exercise. Nobody's coming to write the business plan for you. It's up to you. Unless you understand that you've got to push yourself, you're not going to make your dreams come true. Largely, everyone needs to go

through the same challenges that you're going through. Every single difficult thing that you do is kind of like a massive wall that you need to get over. And you go, wow, I'm so glad that I've got over that wall. And think about how many other people are going to fall at that wall. What I've learned is to always keep going. Always. And I've come to find out is that, you know, no matter what happens, the storm eventually ends. And when the storm does end, you want to make sure that you're ready. And so I've really learned to put one foot in front of the other, good, bad, or indifferent, because eventually that storm passes.

If you don't show up, guys, you know the outcome. You'll never get the job, never get the part, never get the girl if you don't show up. If you show up, you put yourself in a situation to create those opportunities. And when you show up, how hard do you go? That's the faster that opportunity will come to life for you. It's up to you guys. Small down payment that you're willing to pay every day for the large investment of a greater life. You only got one life, guys. If you work it right, you only need one.

I told myself I couldn't quit. I told myself this was going to happen. This is destiny. Whatever is really burning in your heart, you got to really believe in yourself. Even when nobody else won't, you got to believe in yourself and say, look like you ain't gonna make it keep going when they tell you you can't come on man who are they you got to be relentless i gotta thank the man up top god because i'm nothing without him last but not least i want to thank me i want to thank me for believing in me i want to thank me for doing all this hard work i want to thank me for having no days off i want to thank me for for never quitting but snoop dog you a bad do you be yourself and make sure that you love being yourself? And it's going to be roadblocks, it's going to be tribulations,

but always remember this is a life experience. Accept the experience, appreciate the experience. Find your journey, respect your journey and love it. You're going to realize it one day. That happiness was never about your job or your degree or being in a relationship. It was never about being like the others. That happiness was always about the discovery, the hope, the listening to your heart

and following it wherever it chose to go. Happiness was always about being kinder to yourself. It was always about embracing the person you were becoming. One day you will understand that happiness was always about learning the person you were becoming. One day you will understand that happiness was always about learning how to live with yourself. That your happiness was never in the hands of others. It was always about you. It was always about you.

Just shut up and let me enjoy this pain. I don't want anything to numb it. I don't want anything right now. Those times when you get up early and you work hard, those times when you stay up late and you work hard, those times when you don't feel like working, you're too tired, you don't want to push yourself, but you do it anyway.

That is actually the dream. When they saw me in the gym in the pumping iron days, they said, why is it that you're working out so hard, five hours a day, six hours a day, and you have always a smile on your face. The others are working out just as hard as you do, and they look sour in the face. And they told people all the time,

I said, because to me, I'm shooting for gold. 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 that i lift will get me a step closer to turn this goal into reality so i couldn't wait to do another 500 pound squat i couldn't wait to do another 500 pound bench press i couldn't wait to do another 2 000 reps of sit-ups i couldn't wait for the next exercise but where do you go to you wake up on a morning it's cold it's wet it's dark you've got no cartilage in your knee you've

got shitty shorts whatever it is that's the issue today. I know every motherfucker ain't going to do what I'm going to do. I know there's a whole bunch of people with that right there. That fires me up. That makes me fucking happy what you just said. That brings joy to my life right there. Why? Because I know there's so many people that have the ability

and just refuse to get off that couch, refuse to study a few more hours, refuse to go deeper, to go further. And that's where I gained the advantage. It's so easy to be great nowadays, my friend, because most people are weak. 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 fucking try. Be the guy who embraces the ugly, the miserable. 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 sacrificing some blood. There was probably a hundred days where I didn't want to do anything. I wanted to stay in the pool or stay in my bed and not get out.

But those were the days where you have to. You have to get up and do something. Because I think that's really what separates the good from the great. The greats do things when they don't always want to do them. Rich people don't sleep eight hours a day. That's a third of your life. I had 130 days in game just sitting, looking at a screen, playing one character in one game. If you think ordinary is cool, ain't no problem.

But if you are sitting in this room and you have extraordinary aspirations, then you're going to have to do extra. Imagine if I could put this kind of focus into something in real life and just make that seem a little bit like a video game. Imagine the results I could get then. You have to decide if you are willing to do the things to put you in that category. You know, when you're kind of addicted to it, you can play at any time. You cannot be asleep eight hours a day.

You can't live in L.A. and wake up at eight o'clock in the morning. It's 11 o'clock on the East Coast. The stock market's been open two hours. They're already making decisions about your life, and your ass was asleep. And again, so I was just like, imagine if I could feel like that. But in real life, turn life into a video game. The Bible says he who loves to sleep and the folding of hands, poverty will set upon you like a thief in the night. I have never met anybody who became incredibly successful in any area of their life

until they had suffered and sweated and sacrificed and kept their focus and fought through tears and trials and death. And if you have a dream and you commit to it, it will come to pass. A blade, a blade does not become strong. It does not become tempered until it's been through the fire. Until it's been through the fire. Nobody's been through the fire nobody cares you know at the end of the day nobody cares what we're going through how your body feels nobody cares we gotta we gotta do our job if you don't change what you're doing and how you do it

nothing else will change your biggest enemy is. My whole book is about you battling yourself. People don't understand it's you against you. The only person that gets in your way is you. Nobody else. It's you. Here's the big challenge of life. You can have more than you've got because you can become more than you are. That's the challenge.

And of course the other side of the coin reads, unless you change how you are, you'll always have what you got. Most people don't want it that badly. Which is why they always ask the question, how do 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.

So I can't want to do it. So I can't make you do it. Nor do I have the time or energy to force you into that place that I know you have to be to do it. There's no luck in this game. 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 doesn't happen you put yourself in that situation

where luck might happen would i be able to do it would i you don't know until you say yeah i'm gonna you know what i'm gonna take action nothing changes if nothing changes man and i'm not preaching at you i'm just i just want to remind you because i you know I've spent a lot of time in my life sitting around wanting things to change. And not being able to make them change and not thinking I could. And I wish somebody had told me that earlier sometimes. That in order for something to change, there needs to be change. It's you against you. You against you. And if you misunderstand that,

you have a real problem. A real problem. I can understand you misunderstand me running on the street, shirt off. I can get it. I get it. If you misunderstand what I'm saying right now today, the problem is you. And you don't want to fix it. Here's how to get older without getting better. Keep relearning the same lesson. If you keep making the same mistake over and over, the mistake isn't the problem. You are. There was no passion, no drive, no nothing. But I had this fire that I'm going to be somebody.

And it has to be there because on all those bad days and all those days you don't want to do it, you have to be your own motivator, your own coach, your own trainer, your own everything. And what that means is you may have failed miserably yesterday, but you come to work. You're like, man, you just lost everything. How the hell are you just fucking damn motivated? Because this is what it takes. It's not about the shoes. It's about knowing where you're going. Not forgetting where you started.

It's about having the courage to fail. Not breaking when you're broken. Laziness is something that has to do with you you're not connected to something deep enough you don't feel the necessity you don't feel the devil at your heels you don't feel the fact that you could very well die tomorrow that will impel you to get something done there's no necessity behind it. And the human animal, the way we were created, is when we feel pressure, we feel the necessity to get things done. We can move mountains. But when that pressure, like almost like a barometric pressure, releases, and we don't feel the need to get something done, we can become incredibly lazy because there's no necessity.

So you have to create necessity in your life. You have to create the need to get things done. Why do that much? Why go that far? Why try to become everything? That's a good question, why? And you're the only one personally that can answer that question for yourself. One of the big thrusts for success is to come up with a strong enough why. And if the why is powerful, the how is easy.

If the vision isn't clear, the old prophet said, without a vision, we die. Without a vision, we perish. Without a dream, we're nothing. Most people, the bottom 80% are lazy. They're looking for an easy way. They're looking for a shortcut to be successful. And there aren't any. But if you do something repeatedly over and over, you develop a habit. So most people are in the habit of looking for easy ways

to get the things they want. It's almost like you have to have the ability to go to the deep end, no matter whether or not you'll ever go there. Right. Yes. And some people are like, well, I'm never going to go to the deep end, but you should be able to. Yes. What are you willing to give up? What do you want to sacrifice? What are you willing to forego? If you're struggling, if you're frustrated with yourself, if you're at that point where you're so sick of yourself and your excuses, I've been there, Stephen's been there, this is a normal part of the human experience.

And at some point, either the pain is going to get big enough or you're going to bump into somebody's story somewhere on this planet who has been in the position that you're in right now, facing the stuff that you're facing right now. And there is something about their story at this exact moment in time that will ignite something in you that is missing. And what is missing in you right now is hope here's to the crazy ones the misfits the rebels the troublemakers the round pegs in the square holes the ones who see things differently they're not fond of rules and they have no respect for the status quo you can quote them disagree with them glorify or vilify them about the only thing you can't do is ignore them because they change things they push the human race forward while some may see them as the crazy ones, we see genius. Because

the people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do. Playing out the fear, Layla says this and I love it, but that 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 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. You have to be open-minded to the possibilities that I can do this. Once you shut your mind down

to the possibility that it can be achieved, there's no way it can happen. Is there advice you can give to young kids that are living through a situation of any sort, a tough life? Try to find a thing that you really enjoy. Try to find a thing that you really enjoy. Try to find a thing that you're passionate about. 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 I could get better at stuff, that I wasn't really a loser. I want to maximize what I can. I want to be the best that I can be.

I want to do things well, and I don't want to leave stuff on the table, but I don't want to be chasing the end goal so much that I never actually enjoyed the process of getting there because ultimately that's really all that matters. But you're going to look back at any destination and realize that it was 99.9% journey and only one day of celebrating achieving the thing. 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 know exactly what to do. It just sucks doing it. Hey Theo, this is Greg from Indiana. I actually just wanted to call and tell you, so I was at work the other day and I've just been kind of in this like rut at work. It's not a bad job, but I just really want to get out of it. So I was catching up on some of your podcasts and you said something that resonated with me. You know, you said nothing changes if nothing changes. I thought about it and I went home and I applied for a job I'm probably not qualified for, but I was like, I'll just take a shot. And the next day, I get a call from them. I have the interview. It goes well.

She said she was going to set me up with an in-person interview. Never even had it. They emailed me a few days later, and I got the job. So now I'm going to be doing a job that I think I will appreciate more and enjoy more. And I'll be making double the money that I'm making now. Bro, that's awesome, man. That's really great. Congratulations for trying something new.

Yeah, it's crazy to sometimes think like, what can happen if we decide that? I'm going to see what happens when I decide that I am qualified? What happens when I decide for myself that I'm going to do something different? I've made huge, huge, huge developments while I was staying up until four in the morning, five in the morning running a nightlife business. You can make huge developments in your personal growth journey while you're doing a nine to five. You have this moment where you go, well, what if? What if this is the time sobriety sticks? What if I go to therapy and I actually do change the way that I think?

What if I could get out of debt? If that person did it did maybe i could do it and without either hope or that kind of rock bottom moment i don't think you're going to change we can stay here get the kicked out of us or we can fight our way back into the light. We can climb out of hell. One inch at a time. You are responsible for your life. And if you're sitting around waiting on somebody to save you, to fix you, to even help you, you are wasting your time because only you have the power to take responsibility to move your life forward. What matters is now, this moment, and your willingness

to see this moment for what it is, accept it, forgive the past, take responsibility, and move forward. I came to realize that all the time I was praying to God, asking for God to do something, God was waiting on me. How many times do you have to hear, if nothing changes, nothing changes? Right? And yet, somehow we expect things to change you're always afraid to take the first step because all you see is every negative thing ten miles down the road but you can do anything you want you are bound by nothing the time come for you to be your own man and take on the world and you did but somewhere along the line you changed you. You stopped being you.

You let people stick a finger in your face and tell you you're no good. And when things got hard, you started looking for something to blame. Like a big shadow. I'm going to have setbacks, I know. But if I'm feeling 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 and nothing changes, man.

Because if you're thinking, then you're not taking action. And if you're not taking action, then there's no consequence. And if there's no consequence, then there's nothing to be afraid of. The overthinking can be an excuse for actual fear. It doesn't matter whether I achieve all of my goals or I don't achieve all of the goals in three generations, I'll be forgotten. And the only people who were naysaying against me will also be dead. And so then it's like, just do it for me. You know, we'll sit around forever wondering, well, what if I, what if I was a

dog catcher? Would I be the best? What if I was a, you know, we expect things to change. You think you're going to get in better shape. You think you're going to get more money. You think your relationship is going to improve. You think you're going to get promoted. You think you're going to get a raise. You think the world is going to get better without you doing anything, but it isn't. Nothing is going to change unless you change what you're doing. Change the time that you wake up. Change what you do when you get out of bed. That's what you need to do. You have to change some things or nothing will change. So make changes and start little. Get up a little bit earlier get a workout done that's what you

need to do a positive place that you draw mental strength from when life is difficult has to be i just want to be better and i'm trying my best that's all that there is you want to be better that is something to be proud of you want to leave it all on the field of play. You want to make yourself as good as you can. You want to make the world a the better. If you don't have hope and you don't have this breakthrough where you have for just a millisecond, this insight where you go, well, what if things did work out? If you don't have that moment, most people stay so stuck in resignation. If you are trying to battle the same boss over and over again, and you don't change what you're doing, and the boss keeps beating you, then it's not the game's problem. It's your problem. You are the problem. I was

not always this strong guy. You see, I went through a lot of hard times in my life to get here today and um a story i'll tell you with real quick i tried once to get in the air force to be an air force pararescueman and i quit for fear of the water i was 175 pounds i left the Air Force four years later at 300 pounds. I went from 175 to 300 pounds. There's a long story in there on how that came to be. 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 years. 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. Why pay the price? Why work this hard? Why go this far? Why try to learn this much? Why try to do it all? Why try to see it all? Why try to have it all? Why do it? Why learn it? Why study? Why put yourself out? Why try to take on this much

responsibility? Why develop yourself to the full? Why try to become all that you can possibly become? So I define learning by same condition, new behavior. And so when you go to a video game and you battle through the level and you battle the boss, if you keep doing the same thing to the boss and you keep losing, then you have not learned because you have the same condition and the same behavior. And so I often say that like for anyone who's listening to this podcast, if the goal is to get better and you're like, man, I really want to learn something from this podcast. If you listen to this podcast and then you're in the same exact conditions as you were before, and then you do not change your behavior, you learned nothing.

And so using that definition has at least allowed me to change my behavior faster, which then goes into rate of learning, which I define as intelligence. And so a lot of people are like, man, he's so smart, but he just doesn't. It's like, well, then if he doesn't change his behavior and he's in the same conditions, he's not that smart. The more that you're able to let go and not fear about stuff, the more enjoyable you'll find it. So the thing that is making you better is the thing which is making you feel pain. And this is a perennial balance. What would have had to have happened in a week for you to look back on that week with pride. Maybe stop breaking promises to yourself. When you say, I'm going to wake up tomorrow at 7 a.m.,

and when the option comes to hit the snooze button, don't do it. There's one win that you've got for the day. That's action. The path of the exceptional person is one of an exception, which means that you are not with other people. And rather than fighting that or bemoaning it, see it as an indicator that you're on the right path. Because if everyone else were cheering you on, then it means you're not in the right place because it means you're just like everyone else. And that's not where you want to be.

When you were born, you are a phenomenon. You are unique. Your DNA has never occurred in the history of the universe going back billions of years. It will never occur in the future. Your life experiences with your parents and everything that you experience in your early years going on up is unique. It's yours. You're one of a kind, right? So that is your source of power. To waste that is just the

worst thing you can do in your life. And what the power is, is finding that uniqueness. What makes you, you and how you can mine that, how you can go deep into it and use that to create a career path.