Daily Motivations - This Is How You Start Over

Episode Date: October 1, 2026

Sometimes your greatest breakthrough begins with facing the person you've been running from."We all make mistakes. We all carry regrets. But very few people are willing to confront them, take responsibility, and rebuild from the ground up.In this episode , Shia LaBeouf opens up about the darkest period of his life, his battle with ego, addiction, accountability, faith, fatherhood, and what it truly means to change. This isn't just a conversation about redemption. It's about learning that your past doesn't have to decide your future.Speaker: Shia LaBeoufInstagram- Daily_motivationsorgFacebook- @daily_motivationsorgSupport us PayPal

The way that I felt about craft and life in general was, I don't give a fuck what you think, you know? I don't care what you think about me. I had come from an environment with very little cheerleading going on. And so I created a sort of survival instinct where I would cut people out, you know, and minimize opinions. And the way that I would do that is I had to believe that my opinion was greater than everybody else's opinion around me. Me, man, we got to get to the root of what the fuck is going on here. You know, something wrong with you. You know, let's get well.

I got arrested in Georgia for fighting with a cop wound up in rehab and didn't hear a damn thing about God, spirituality, personal growth, accountability. My whole, as soon as I got to rehab was, let me get back to this hustle. So I started writing a script in rehab. That's how mad I was. I wasn't listening to no therapist. I had been therapist my whole life that it felt like you want me to focus on the problem. Well, how am I going to like, how am I going to hack this focus? and on the problem thing, and how am I going to find my way back to this hustle so I can get back to my ego?

Because really all I cared about was my ego. I didn't give a f*** about getting well. You know, it was all about get well for you. Get well for the camera. I have experienced ego death. You can't run no more. Bro, you got to let go. You got to let go in full.

And I want to get in my car and I drive up to Utah. And I'm in Utah for three months. And while I'm in Utah, it allows me, it gives me, they take my cell phone from me. And if they didn't take my cell phone from me, I was never going to be. able to deal what I needed to deal with. I had never known how to pray because I could never cultivate silence. I had no absence in my life. Every unforgiving minute was full of some scroll or some more like ego feed, constant, nonstop rotation of this this ego thing and that ego thing and ba-pah ba-pah, just constant fulfillment of like my own personal desires and they took my

phone from me. And just for that reason alone, I would, I would urge anybody to go this route if you're in a situation like mine just to get the phone out of your pocket. And what that gave me was time to like really assess what had been my operating systems what had been like the motivational force in my life which was always me it was always ego it was always the smallest decision the smallest decision to even go into everything everything everything you eat everything was ego everything was ego i would eat that not because it tasted good but because it would do this or do that you know and when do you become a man when you get a driver's license like what do we do you 16 we give you a driver's license okay well like you get a job like when do you do you become a man like when do you

you become a man. You become a man when you become responsible for other people. And part of that is taking accountability. I grew up in a culture that told me going to war made you a man. Going to prison, coming back, coming back, makes you a man. Making a million dollars makes you a man, you know, and it doesn't. And you don't know it till you didn't done all these things and realized damn I'm still a little boy or been around people who've been there a bunch of times. Also my definition a warrior has changed. Me too. You know, I didn't really know what that meant.

And really, it's about bringing others back. And that's my whole fucking mission, dog, really. It's just like, dudes who've been where I've been or something similar. Just know it gets better. It does. Like, it don't make no sense. It doesn't make no sense. It's irrational.

It doesn't make any sense on paper that I could have joy in abundance in my life. life that I could feel any kind of joy in my life after being what I've been. Pain is an adhesive, bro. If you've been through it, you can connect to people, period, and the story. Rock bottom. Bottom isn't when you experience the worst moment of your life. Bottom is when you change. It's about what you do with it once it happens.

So like, you know, I had no love in my life. I had no purpose in my life. My whole purpose, as you know, was just craft. It was just, I'm going to be good at this thing. and that's all that I have. The only thing I care about in life is being a good actor. And that's such a vapid, shallow existence. And he said, welcome to AA.

And he said, I need you to go home and clear out. Like, clear the decks. And I'm like, nah, man, like for me, and I don't know if you felt this way, but every woman was the one for me. There was never a two. If you liked me, you were the one. And that had to do with my insecurity and my fear.

And he's like, well, look, man, I'll tell you what. You know, you can keep doing it your way or you can try some new shit because the way that you're living, you're fully, you're doomed, is what he said. You're doomed. That was the word. And I flipped to this page, he made me flip to this doctor's opinion. We got in our book. And in the doctor's opinion, is how our book starts. It mentions the word doomed.

And he's like, this isn't like another AA guy. This is a doctor telling you you're doomed if you don't figure it out. And he goes, to put it in perspective, if you went to Kaiser Perman, Renente right now. And they sat you down and put your, you know, x-rayed you and put your x-ray up on a lightboard. And you're looking at a picture of your clavicle. And doctor said, hey, man, you see that gray spot just above your chest cavity? You're doomed. And you wouldn't be thinking about the job that you got to get to or the girl you got to hold on to or where are you going to go for Father's Day or what? Immediately your whole life would get very small. And the only rational response to that kind of information is, well, what do I do? and I'm driving back from the beach back to where I'm living and I get out of my car and her bags are packed

She's on her way out and Something in me from having heard what I just heard What feels like this is this is now I can't get no lower I hear this like I can't call it and this it becomes like this the most diplomatic breakup I ever had in my life and I say what can I do And can I get you a car? She goes no, I don't worry about it go get well I just want to give you one more opportunity if you want it just to speak about your wife, man, and just about what she means to you and, you know, her path and her relationship with all this. I know she's been a part of your life for a long time, but just if you feel and it, just speak on her.

Yeah, well, I'll never be able to speak on it. I don't know nothing like this relationship. I never have in my life. I never had, even my parents, even my father, you know, I never had what I got with her, which is to enter my life to be with me, she had to take a loss. She had to like eat shit to be with me. To be with me, she had to reenter being a part of my life. She had to take a hit in ways that I've spoken about before and in other ways too probably.

And what I know love to be is selfless loving action. And I've never known anything as loving or as selflessly active as what this woman did for me in my life. She showed up for me at a time when, I mean, this is the first time I saw her, we had been estranged for like years because of my jealousy. She went and did a movie with another actor and I thought she was cheating on me. So then I cheated on another, but it was just fucking mess. Yeah, we're just little boy shit like nonsense. And we hadn't talked for two years when all this shit hit. I wound up at this rehab, right, in Utah. And they do something called family week and every week on a Sunday everybody who's involved in the program has their

family show up on these Skype calls and everybody will show up in the same room your mother your father your brother your sister your wife your friends what just you and the people or no it's you the whole squad of you that are in this group like 12 of us in my class everyone's family everyone's family pops up on the screen week one no one shows up for me no one they got the calls I know they got the calls but no one showed up my mother my father no one no one showed up manager friends no one showed up week two same thing so i'm sitting in this room and even the person who's like therapy's in me she's starting to feel like this she's empathizing with where i'm at everybody else in the room we've got a dude who like you know this isn't just alcoholish this is like an arsonist and like

child predators and all kind of wild people in this group right and they got people showing up for them And I don't have nobody showing up for me. Week two, week three, I'm there 90 days. There comes a point where family week comes around. I say to my therapist, like, I'm not going to go. Like, I don't want to subject myself to the kid. Like, I'm on a path. And, you know, let me just stay here.

Like, I don't want to keep reminding myself of how my situation is. And she says, no, I think you should show up this week. And I show up thinking, all right, my mom's going to be on there. You know, my mom will be on. And Mia is on the screen. you don't deserve that kind of shit, you know what I mean, you don't deserve that kind of like, like, I don't deserve that kind of shit, you know, I don't put, I don't put her through years and years of fucking nonsense, bro, just like, I don't have nothing to offer her either,

you know what I mean, I'm in the middle of my shit, you know, I'm like two months into this program, you know, I don't even have nothing going on. I don't even have no, I have nothing, nothing going on, I'm making this list. She's at the top of list, but I, I'm not reaching out to her nothing like that and uh you've heard her voice like she's like a fucking angel you know what i mean she and uh everybody does the shit and i'm fucking gone you know and so they let it go first because i can't even fucking believe and they all know because i didn't have no family show up for me and uh and she just she um mused and she's like hi shya you know and it's like she's prepping a movie she ain't got no time for this you know but she found time and she said hi shy and uh we just smile we had nothing else to

say. But she saved my fucking life, dog. It's, uh, before the kid, before the job, before fucking, before God, before any religion, before any, before laugh, before a laugh, before a laugh. Before Bo, before a phone, before anything was this woman's face. And, uh, there wasn't no promises made, wasn't no long conversation of being had, nothing, just her presence, the ministry of presence. Sometimes that's all you need to offer a person who's in a situation like that is like just to be present and She was present for me at a time when I didn't deserve to have nobody in my life She's a real one she's a real one and I'll never be able to I'll never be able to It's the first time I really understood love because I didn't have nothing to give and I was sitting there thinking like

Well, I don't have nothing and you're showing up for me like you're a You're going to be tied to this shit. It didn't make no fucking sense. And love is irrational that way. You can't rationalize real love. It doesn't make any fucking sense. And I had spent my whole life trying to rationalize it. Yeah, she gave me hope, bro, when I was really like running on fumes.

I wasn't running on empty, but I was running on fumes. I had a sponsor in my life who was kind of, he was saying, yo, be patient. The shit will show up. Miracles will show up. This was another miracle. bags packed is a miracle, you know? Them laughing in the car is a miracle. My wife's face on the Skype call is a miracle.

It starts to add up where, you know, it becomes this like, it creates faith. You will be father? Yeah, in March. And what do you think the best gift of father could give adulteries? Unwavering stability, a rock of Gibraltar, unmovable, unshakable. I think of it this way. I think it's true for men and women. When a little kid goes to a park,

and they never been to a park before, and they see a bunch of little kids playing, and mommy and daddy are right here. They go out two or three steps, and they get scared, and they come back, and they grab the hand, and the hand is there. And then they go out a little bit further, and they take ten steps,

and then they get scared, and then they will come back, and they grab for the hand, and the hand is there. That's a parent. I'm always here. No matter what, I'm always here. That's the gift of, that I always wanted at, from my parents that I hope to give to my child is stability, is to be a rock, an unmovable,

unshakable, forever love, an unjudgmental hand. I'm always here. You come to find that most of these stories of saints in the faith were fiss-ups, full-blown f***ups. They weren't perfect people who did perfect shit their whole lives and they wound up. They had to have experienced real negative shit in their life to be able to have this other thing, this salvation, this hero's journey. They're explaining saints to me. It's like the hero's path, you know, and I'm a writer. I'm in my head, you know, what is my hero's journey? I'm always asking myself, well, what, and I always thought it was going to be through the craft, that my hero's journey was kid from the bottom, came to Hollywood with no fucking training,

and now I'm like, you know, working with these people and this and I'm doing that. And that was my hero's journey, and it was so curt, it was so blunt and lazy. And it wasn't like this, other thing that's available. And so you get around these dudes and you hear about their path and how these guys got there and you start meeting dudes who like professional tennis players, you know, got lost on steroids, you know, drugged up, got completely wayward and then decided to enter the order. And so these are dudes who know something about competitive, you know, competitive sports. They know about like ego in the way that I do. The only people I've ever been able to feel like I'm close to in terms of the way that I deal with my craft is athletes.

It's sports figures. And you find that a lot of sports figures are deeply insecure people. You know, you get respect based on what you can do and how hard you work. And sports is like that. And that's a shitty way to live. Because everything that comes to you is based on you and what you do. And if everything in your life surrounds you and is centered on you, you become a faking, a vapid, self-interested, selfish, self-centered human being. How could you not? The world is happening in front of you.

The default setting already is that you're completely self-absorbed. But then when you're involved in a meritocracy, like people working for commission, basically, then it's all about your efforts. Your efforts dictate how your life is going to go. Yeah. And that really is my purpose in life now. It's to like be able to express the reality of my life that you could be where I just was. Now I don't need to be anything.

I don't need to be a certainness or a certain that to have permission to have friends or a wife or anything. Like I deserve it And that's a hard thing to To say that you deserve love when on paper No, you don't So I was there for 90 days And in that 90 days I made a list To all these people that I hurt

And I mean a bunch of shit happened But I came out and Just hit the ground running Trying to make amends trying to write these wrongs This is also still a part of that There's some people who don't want to talk to me You know? And I understand

understand that. And so my purpose now is to be patient.