Daily Motivations - You vs You. BE YOUR OWN HERO

Episode Date: August 28, 2026

Stop consuming motivation.Start applying it.Speaker: Joe RoganInstagram- Daily_motivationsorgFacebook- @daily_motivationsorgSupport us PayPal

Well, I think balance is very important to happiness. And I think you can become incredibly obsessed on one goal. Your life could be a wreck outside of that one goal. It's a balancing act. It's a balancing act between family and friends and hobbies and rest and nutrition and passions and discipline and grinding and brutal workouts and recovery from those brutal workouts. It's a big gigantic mandala. It really comes down to what are you trying to accomplish and what makes you happy.

And for me, if one part of my life is awesome, but the rest of it is a wreck, I'm not happy. So I'm only happy if I've got like a good big picture going on, if I'm doing this balancing act and everything seems to be maintaining. If it goes a little bit like this, then I can bring it back like this. And I'm constantly in this state of adjustment. Being on it isn't even always about success. Being audit is about learning. Sometimes learning comes from failure. And failure is one of the best teachers.

Failing and getting right back up and figuring out why you failed. And then next time, try to do better. That's being on it too. It's not just about always being this unstoppable winner who's better at everything than everybody else. Nope. It's about doing your best all the time. What's your morning routine like? Or do you have a morning routine that you like?

Fasted cardio, is what I like to do. Or fasted yoga. That's my most recent thing is I'm doing either 14 to 16 hours Depending upon what my day looks like So I'm intermittent fasting And then I usually either like yoga Or running in the morning

Today was running And then I'll do something in the afternoon Either martial arts related Or weight lifting related Do you drink coffee every morning Like when you wake up or? Not always but I like it I like these things

These nitros These caveman nitros But I like regular coffee too But I drink water with Himalayan salt in it too. That's one of the first things. Yeah, put a little lemon in there. Do that every mind. Sometimes I throw a little cayenne pepper in that motherfucker. Wow.

Any apple cider ever vinegar? I do that stuff sometimes too. I take a lot of probiotics. I eat a lot of kimchi. I find like kimchi and game meat is like I've been on this kick for the past three or four months where I just eat kimchi and elk like three, four times a week. God, stuff. Dude, it's hard. When you eat some elk

before bed and you wake up, hard as rock. One of the fuck people up, too. You're right. What the fuck? People don't know, man. You're eating a super athlete. If you eat elk, you're literally eating a super athlete. And you get a bunch of weak bitches and you get them together. How many of them are going to keep it together?

How many of them are going to run every day? How many of them are going to work out every day? Very, very, very few. You're dealing with outliers in particular just by virtue of what you do. How many people are willing to put the work in to achieve this? Not me. How many people are going to achieve this physique? Very, very few, right?

Thank you. So we're talking about outliers. We're talking about how... That's what I like. I like outliers. I don't like people like, it's too hard. I can't hear that. The real message is we all started from...

I mean, we all had bullshit jobs. We all felt like losers. But through time and effort, you build a stronger human. You build a stronger body. You build a stronger mind. You build accomplishments and will and momentum. And then you look back and you go, hey, man, I'm not washing tables anymore. more. You know, I'm not, I'm not washing dishes. I'm not cutting lawns. I'm not digging ditches.

Yeah. I'm a different person now. And there's a lot of people out there listening to this. There's so many people that are in that starting point, like the people that come up to you and say, what do I, I don't know what to do. What should I do? How do I do it? How do I get going? But you're going to have to figure it out one foot in front of the other. You're going to have to find a thing and keep working at it and get better at it. Love is the most important thing. And that sounds so cliche, but without love, it's all useless. It's all useless. You know, there's no personal satisfaction in accomplishments if nobody loves you. You're not going to enjoy it. Yeah, at least your family. Yeah. Everybody. And the more you can spread positive energy, the more people will

love you, the more you'll have that community of love. Most men live lives of quiet desperation. It's one of my favorite quotes ever, because it's true. And I've been that guy. You're just in this world where you just can't wait to just run away. And how do people get stuck there? How do you think they get stuck there? Bills. Bills, like financial bills? Yeah. Bills and commitment. You have an apartment you have to pay for. You have a car you leased.

You have a wife that you have to feed. You have a child. You have to raise. You have your mortgage. You have your this. You have your that. And that's where it all comes from. Where do you think opportunity plays into that? Well, the opportunity takes place usually when you're young and you don't have any response. responsibility. That's when you have your options. Well, your options are severely limited, the more you gather responsibilities. Like, if I had to, as a 51-year-old father of three, married man pays taxes, has a house and a mortgage and a business and all that jazz, if I had to quit everything now and struggle the way I struggled as a stand-up comedian, it would never work. But the only way I could be this person now is, if I took that chance when I was 21, when I was dead broke and had my cars repossessed and all that stuff, that's the only way you ever get where you want to go. You have to take a path. It's dangerous. And most people want to take the safe path. The safe path leaves you stuck in quiet

desperation almost every time. It's hell. Make regular life less difficult. And that sounds so simplistic, but particularly physically difficult things. Because when you do things that are physically difficult, the strain of making yourself do those things, it's very valuable. It's not just valuable like exercise and fitness and martial arts and running and whatever you're doing that's really difficult. It's not just valuable in terms of like health and the way you look, but it's also valuable for your mind, maybe even more so. Because regular life can be confusing and little things that go wrong and little problems that arise are exacerbated by the fact that you're not accustomed to dealing with hardship. So creating your own bullshit is extremely valuable for you also,

not just accepting the nuanced perspectives of other people, but also being able to navigate through this world with some sort of an understanding of just how complex it all is and how weird it all is and not be overly thrown off by every little dip in the road and pothole that you encounter. Find something. Find a thing that you genuinely enjoy because getting good at things you genuinely enjoy is extremely beneficial for young people because it lets you know that like 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. I didn't know I wasn't a loser until I started winning until I started doing martial arts.

Martial arts taught me that like I could get better at stuff that it wasn't I wasn't really a loser I just was someone who was like in a fucked up situation but you could channel all that energy that you have as a young person into something and get better at it and then all of a sudden people admired me I was like this is crazy so I went from being someone who was incredibly insecure and basically a failure to someone who is really successful at this one thing that was very dangerous that other people were scared of. Also this idea, this is a really important one, because people have this idea that somehow I'm 30 years old, I shouldn't be doing this anymore. I'm 50 years old, I should have learned by now. That's all bullshit. Throw that away. Toss that

shit aside. You, like these ideas of numbers that people have in their head that by a certain age, You should stop. You are alive. And if you are alive and if you are thinking all those numbers that you keep attaching, well, you know, when Einstein was 30 here, right, shut the fuck up. Stop doing that. That is a waste of your time. And stop saying to yourself, I should be better by now. I'm such a total non-helping thought.

What you need to think of is life. You're living. You're alive right now. And if you've made a mistake and you're still continuing to learn. grow. That's all just data. Over time, I've learned that these people, you just, you're not going to fix them. I used to want to fix them when I was young. I used to want to go, hey man, I see what you're doing. Like, dude, don't do that anymore. Listen, just try, just do this and stop doing that and start doing this. And if you just work towards this, you could be successful.

And then a week later, the guy's doing the same shit. You're like, okay, I'm wasting a significant amount of my energy on someone who doesn't want to waste any of their energy on themselves. And so managing the community and the tribe that you're in, making sure that you're a good member of that tribe, that you're doing your part. When you're around happy, inspirational people that are successful, it makes you feel better and you get inspired. And if you act on that inspiration, your life will be more fulfilled. And it's not just inspirational in terms of financial success, but in terms of doing difficult things, whether it's running 100, miles doesn't pay you a goddamn thing other than the wealth of the knowledge that you can push yourself to such an extreme or anything else whether it's someone who becomes really good

at playing chess or someone who's really good at martial arts or whatever it is there's there's a great feeling in these overcoming these difficult things I think a lot of what happiness is is a management issue and decisions that you're making right now like you could be in a shit state of mind right now but you could make some decisions to a just that and over the next couple hours you'll get to a much better place. And this includes the way you communicate with people. It includes like the friendships that you have, making sure your friends know that you love them. They oftentimes think, I want to be the one that's enjoying life, especially selfish people.

If people enjoy being around you, right. You'll enjoy everything more. The solo effort. That's right. Of going through life, like with a narcissistic perspective. Yeah. One of the major problems with that is there's no one to share it with. Because you're all out for yourself.

That's right. Even if you get there, you're going to be filled with sadness and despair. That's right. It's not what you want. What you want is to be happy, right? Well, I know you think that you have to be all about yourself to be happy. But in fact, that is a way to ensure unhappiness regardless of success. That's right.

You are not your past. You're you. you're you right now. Like the past you did, you might have done some things you wish you hadn't done. Don't dwell on that. You learn from it, that's fine, but don't dwell on it. Just keep moving. Keep moving.

You know, use it as fuel. Say never again. You know, I get what I did wrong, but don't think that you're that person that made those mistakes. You're the person who's learned. You know, and to have that attitude is a really important thing. And to not say, why am I doing this now? I could have been doing this my whole life.

Well, you weren't. So the fuck is that going to help? Yeah. You know, you gotta just gotta not think like that. You just gotta be happier doing it now. It sounds like really hippie, but true happiness comes from making other people happy. True happiness comes from being around happy people

and enjoying each other's company. That's... Yeah, that's really hard for people to wrap their heads around because they always associate true happiness. No, true happiness is with, like, titles, or, you know, numbers, or, you know, objects that you possess, or whatever it is. You're not concerned about being nice to be,

You're not concerned about having a positive impact on people. You're more concerned with making ones and zero. But it really truly is how the human race interacts with each other. You really have to be nice to other people to be happy. You have to. If you're not, you won't be happy. And we all make mistakes, and we all find ourselves in positions of frustration. And we've all acted out and yelled at our dog, or maybe we shouldn't have.

And there's all pressures in this life. But I think it's really important to recognize. what those truly are. And to understand that at the end of it, we can alleviate a lot of how we deal with in this life. If we really treated people the way we would treat them as if they were ourselves living another light. You don't have that.

Everything else is horseshit. You can have a $100 million house and a private jet. If you don't have love, you don't have anything. You're missing the key ingredient. That's right. You know, it's like having cement, but not having water. You have nothing. It's just hard for people to understand that there's techniques and there's strategies

and there's philosophies that can help you steer through this world with a happier life. And that is a big part of it. A big part of is embracing love and friendship and camaraderie and being nice to people. It's hard for some people because they're not even nice to themselves. I think everyone looks forward to this utopian time where whatever, motivates them, drives them, freaks them out right now, can be set aside, the work is done, and you can just sort of like watch the sunset over the pond. And the problem is this utopian vision of the future that we have is probably a carrot that's on a stick that will just never reach.

And we keep working hard to improve our society and our life and ourselves and our families and our relationships, hoping that one day we'll achieve this ultimate peace that will never come. I completely agree with you and we're going to get attacked for this by people who are unhappy with their choices in life. And that's a fact. You know, there's a bunch of people that will say, yeah, well, I have a family. So, you know, it's a great idea for you to just go out there and go crazy. I have people to support. You need to listen.

Stop saying that. Stop saying any of those things. Every single person who has ever done anything worthwhile or exceptional or difficult or extraordinary. anyone, whether it's great artists or authors or mathematicians or whatever the fuck it is. Everyone encounters difficulties. There is no easy road. It does not exist. It is impossible.

Everyone has issues. If you have time to pursue a hobby, if you have time to do anything in your life, you can better yourself. And here's one way you never better yourself. When you come up with excuses for why other people are successful and you're not, that shit is fucking dangerous. When you give yourself an escape, yeah, well, that's easy for you to say, you do this, you do, you do,

trust me. Everybody has a hard road. We all go through hard times. We all go through depression. We all go through doubt and moments in your life where it's really fucking difficult. And you're trying to figure out what the fuck your path is going to be. It's hard as shit. but that is what makes you a person

and those difficult moments are what build your character when you're alone with your thoughts you get an idea of what your thoughts actually are if you live your life just acting constantly on the momentum of other people's expectations of you wanting to be liked by these other people you can run into a trap and you you set up a life that you didn't really want

you're fucked you're you're trapped in this situation where you have a mortgage you've got credit card bills you've got student loans you have to pay, you have a bunch of shit going on, you have to continue to feed. And all that, and especially if you have a family and you have to feed them, oh my goodness. Then you're fully locked in, you can't take any chances whatsoever. And oftentimes people make the mistake of getting stuck. And it is just a tactical mistake, just like it would be a mistake if you got stuck on a video game.

Just like it would be a mistake if you followed a map incorrectly and you got stuck in the woods. your life is certainly some sort of a journey. It's certainly some sort of a journey. And we have to all be aware that when we're making journeys, we're not going to always make the right steps. And sometimes you have to back up and try again. And if you're in a position where you can't back up and try again, you've trapped yourself.

And the system will set out honeypots for people to get trapped in. The system will set out the ideas of retirement, the ideas of the golden years, providing you benefits, providing you a healthy work environment. Why? Well, because they want people to work for them. They don't want people to realize their own dreams and escape. But those, that's a fucking pain the ass.

You've got to hire more people and train them. And they want to set it up so that you stick around. Stick around in some sort of an unsatisfying world. It's up to you to see that video game problem. To see that issue as it comes up on the map. No, no, I think this is a right turn. To see all the problems that could potentially lay in front of you and calculate your future.

And then also look around all the people that didn't do it. And look at the misery that they're in and learn that you don't want to be like them. And then look at the people that have kind of taken chances and navigated their way. What do they do differently than you? What objectivity do they have that maybe you lack? What insight into their own mistakes are they willing to delve into that you're not, that you step back and you go, you know, I just don't, I just don't want to look at myself that closely. But the person who's able to look at themselves, the closest, is going to get the more rational results.

Everybody's got these stupid barriers they put in their own head. You've got to resist those goddamn things because they don't do you any good, and they certainly define the potential for your future in a negative way. It's not self-serving, and it's not even real. You know, you put this artificial ceiling on the potential for what you're doing. If you hit a wall, okay, that just means you need to regroup and rethink. It doesn't mean that wall's there, especially when it comes to something like social media or like a podcast, something where you're just, you're putting out a piece of art, you're putting out something that you've created. There's no wall as far as, like, how many people are going to enjoy. enjoy it or how far it's going to go. It's just, it is what it is. And if people don't like it,

make it better. If they like it less, fix that. Figure out a way to do it. You can do that. And this idea that there's no way to get past the starting block today is just ludicrous. It's crazy. And it's just this poor thinking. Look, there's a lot of ways you could look at bad events. You could tell a bad event is just who you are. And you just have bad events and you're a fucking loser and life hates you and God hates you and look at that happening to Mike again can't fucking believe it there's a lot of guys who go through life like that and you know they can say that they seek comfort in lowering the standards that they expect out of things so when things go bad and they say well I fucking knew it for them it alleviates some concern about what's going to happen

in the future because the future is always dog shit it's hard to be comfortable with yourself so it's very hard to be comfortable with other people that's why I always stress with people like you've got to accept yourself for what you've done wrong. Do your best and also find some difficult shit to do because that gets away a lot of the anxiety that you carry around in your body. A lot of like difficult things make regular life less difficult. And that sounds so simplistic, but particularly physically difficult things. Because when you do things that are physically difficult, the strain of making yourself

do those things, it's very valuable. It's not just valuable like exercise and fitness and martial arts and running and whatever you're doing that's really difficult. It's not just valuable in terms of like health and the way you look, but it's also valuable for your mind, maybe even more so. Because regular life can be confusing and little things that go wrong and little problems that arise are exacerbated by the fact that you're not accustomed to dealing with hardship. So creating your own bullshit is extremely valuable for you also, not just accepting the new. nuanced perspectives of other people, but also being able to navigate through this world with some sort of an understanding of just how complex it all is and how weird it all is, and not be overly thrown off by every little dip in the road and pothole that you encounter.