THE ED MYLETT SHOW - The Most Important Conversation You’ll Ever Have With Yourself | Ed Mylett

Episode Date: June 27, 2026

What if the person holding you back isn't anyone else, but the voice you hear every single day inside your own mind? In this mashup episode, I bring together two of the most powerful conversations I've ever had about identity, self respect, and the stories we tell ourselves. The greatest battle you'll ever fight isn't with your competitors, your circumstances, or even your past. It's with the conversation you're having with yourself every single day. Because the quality of your life will always rise or fall to the quality of that internal dialogue. If you don't believe you're worthy of more, you'll never fight for more. But once you change the way you see yourself, everything around you begins to change. Leila Hormozi shares one of the most profound questions I've ever heard: "Do I respect myself more or less because of this decision?" That simple filter has the power to transform your relationships, your career, your habits, and every choice you make. We talk about why self respect is built through daily actions, not empty affirmations, and why discipline is one of the greatest acts of self love you can give yourself. When you begin making decisions that honor who you want to become, your confidence naturally grows because you're finally keeping the promises you make to yourself. Nick Santonastasso delivers one of the most inspiring stories you'll ever hear. Born without legs and with one arm, Nick refused to let the world define what was possible for his life. His willingness to embrace discomfort, overcome impossible odds, and chase his dream of becoming a varsity wrestler proves that confidence isn't something you're born with. It's a skill you build through courage, action, and relentless belief. His story is a reminder that your circumstances never determine your future. Your decisions do. Throughout this episode, I challenge you to stop waiting for permission, stop believing the old stories you've repeated for years, and start becoming the person you were created to be. You don't need to become someone else to change your life. You need to start having a different conversation with yourself. The moment you begin treating yourself with greater discipline, greater respect, and greater belief, you'll unlock a version of yourself that's been waiting to emerge all along. Key Takeaways: • Why the conversation you have with yourself determines the direction of your life• Leila Hormozi's powerful question that instantly improves your decision making: "Do I respect myself more or less?"• Why self discipline is one of the purest expressions of self love• How keeping promises to yourself builds unshakable confidence• Nick Santonastasso's incredible lesson that confidence is a skill, not a personality trait• Why your circumstances never have the final say over your future• How to replace limiting stories with empowering beliefs that create lasting change• Why becoming your best self is one of the greatest gifts you can give the people you love If you're ready to stop letting fear, doubt, or your past define your future, this episode will challenge you to raise your standards, rewrite your story, and start becoming the person you were always capable of being. 👉 SUBSCRIBE TO ED'S YOUTUBE CHANNEL NOW 👈⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   → → → CONNECT WITH ED MYLETT ON SOCIAL MEDIA: ← ← ←  ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠INSTAGRAM⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   ➡️⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠FACEBOOK⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠LINKEDIN⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠   ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠X ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  ➡️ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠WEBSITE⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Be sure to follow the Ed Mylett Show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. Now on with the show. Welcome back to the show today, everybody. So excited you're with me. Today's topic is self-love. And it's probably one of the most common topics on all of social media or podcasting.

But I'd like to take a look at loving oneself from a different perspective today, kind of my angle on it. And it's probably a little bit different than you've heard before. You know, I've often said with many of my friends that I want my friends. friends to love me, but I don't want them to accept me. And I think sometimes we conflate loving oneself with having to accept everything about ourselves. And I just don't believe that's true. In fact, I don't think you can love yourself unless you're truly being yourself, you know, adhering to your values, your disciplines, the things that you most want to pursue in your life,

that you're taking actions in accordance to that, that you're living in congruency with what you say you want. And so there's a difference between loving somebody and accepting them. My great friends. I tell them all the time. I love you. I believe in you, but I don't want them to accept all my stuff. I want them to expect of me better than I'm doing. I want them to believe in me and love me so much that they see the version of me I could be, that I'm capable of becoming. I think that's what a great friend does. And I think if you're going to be the best friend to yourself, perhaps it's time to take a look at loving oneself from a little bit different perspective. And so I understand the idea of having to feel good about yourself and to have that internal dialogue with yourself

that's favorable. I mean, let's just be honest. Studies tell us that 80%, upwards of 90% of most people's thoughts are negative about themselves in a given day. Isn't that an incredible number? 80 to 90% of our thoughts about ourself are negative? So obviously we need to take a look at that and audit that and change that. So how do we think differently about ourselves? And by the way, we don't have to believe everything we think in our life. Most of the thoughts we have aren't true anyways. Whether they're about ourselves, other people, circumstances, situations, we don't always have to just to accept what we think.

In fact, many of us would be better off not listening to ourselves so often and talk to ourselves a little bit more. Speak truth to ourselves. Speak power to ourselves. Speak faith to ourselves. Speak peace to ourselves. And so here's my version of self-love for today's topic. And there are other aspects of self-love than I'm going to cover today.

But this is the piece everybody's missing. It's like, just love yourself as you are. Well, you know, would you want to do that with your children? Just anything you love them, but are you going to accept everything they do? Should there be no improvement, no behavior change, no growth? I think with most people we love, we also expect something from them in terms of the values they live up to, their performance. I love both my children very much. but when they're not living up to their capacity, when they're not living up to what they're capable of,

or just behaving in a way that doesn't serve them or family or other people, I want to make sure they know that that's not acceptable. And so the day that I realize, write this down, the day that I realize that discipline is one of the purest forms of self-love, that when you discipline yourself, you're truly loving yourself. When you discipline another person, you're discipling to them. You're loving them. even in the Bible. Jesus rebuked the apostles when he needed to.

Discipline gives me the confidence that I need to forge ahead in life. And so I want you to begin to consider, is there an element of self-love or a large element of self-love that requires discipline? And like I said, I want my friends to love me, but I don't want them to accept me all the time. And I want to love myself, but part of loving myself is not accepting all of my stories, not accepting all of my behavior. I mean, here's what self-love really is.

It's a state of appreciation for oneself that grows from the actions we take that support our physical, psychological, and spiritual growth. Self-love means having a high regard for your own well-being and happiness and having a high enough regard for yourself that you want to treat yourself physically, emotionally, spiritually, in a way that you're worthy of and not accept from yourself behavior. that's less than that. I mean, listen, I love myself enough not to eat terribly all the time. I love myself enough not to not pursue my dreams and goals. I love myself enough to believe in myself enough to discipline myself to pursue my ultimate capacity because it's only then that I can reveal the true me. It's only then that I'm living in congruence with myself. So I'll say it to you again. You can't love yourself if you're not being yourself. And sometimes being ourselves requires taking an inventory of who we really are, re-auditing what we really want, who we really want to

become. Maybe we're living an old dream or an old story. You know, maybe lately we have behaving in a way where we're treating our bodies with the love it deserves, the hydration, the good food, the physical exercise required to truly love our bodies. And I just don't believe that you could just love yourself when you're not eating well, at least most of the time, hydrating most of the time. If you're pouring drugs and alcohol into your body on a regular basis, that's not loving yourself. That's punishing yourself. That's hating yourself. And so this notion that self-love is just like, take me as I am, that's a bunch of BS to me. I just don't believe it. And the notion that you should just continue to treat yourself poorly and just accept it,

it's not what I want out of my friends, it's not what I expect that of myself. It's not what I want from my children. It's not from anybody that I love is that. that true. In fact, I think true love is being able to be willing to speak truth to somebody. You know, the higher you climb in life, it's harder to find real friends. Because everybody starts to yes you, yes you, yes you, yes you all the time. You have a lot of yes people around you. And I know the people in my life that really love me, they'll tell me the truth about me. Hey, Ed, that's BS. Or hey, man, come on, you're better than that. Or cut that out. Or whatever it might be. When my friends do that at this stage of my life,

those are the ones who really love me that speak truth to me. And so the first thing I would just say is being mindful. People who have more self-love tend to know what they think, what they feel, and what they want, right, on any given time. And they're auditing that regularly. The second thing you do is you take actions based on need rather than want. Take actions based on need rather than want. By staying focused on what you need, you turn away from autogmatic behavior patterns that tend to get you into trouble, they keep you stuck in the past. Really, they lessen self-love when you have patterns and behaviors and habits that don't serve you. What increases self-love is treating yourself out of what you need, not just what you want. In any given moment, I may want something,

but it's not really what my body needs, my spirit needs, my psychology needs, my mindset needs. Here's another thing you're not going to hear every day. Self-love means taking care of your own needs and not sacrificing them all the time just to please other people. Too many of us, including myself and maybe you, will sacrifice our own needs, what we really need in our life just to please other people, not to inconvenience them, not to make them uncomfortable. You know, maybe what you need to do is really pursue that dream you have right now, but you're not doing it because you don't want to make the people around you uncomfortable. Maybe what you really need to do right now is see a therapist or go to a gym or change the

way you eat, but you don't want to make the people around you uncomfortable. Don't sacrifice your own needs just to please other people. That is not a form of self-love. Okay, really, truthfully speaking, you can't transfer to somebody that which you're not experiencing yourself. What do I mean by that? If you truly want to love the people around you to your maximum capacity, your max out capacity, the limitation to your ability to show them love is actually capped by how much love you feel for yourself. You can only transfer to somebody a limited amount of what you're not experiencing. You have to be experiencing something fully in order to transfer it to somebody else. And so please understand this. To the extent that you invest in your

own love, in your own care, and what I mean by this when I say is your own self-disciplines, remember, I'm connecting self-discipline and disciplines to love. The more you do those things to treat yourself wonderfully, beautifully, faithfully, the more you can extend love in a way that you've probably never experienced before to other people. When you truly have self-discipline in your life and you're doing the things that you know serve you the most, you will find a whole new level not only for yourself of love, but your ability to give it and for other people to feel it from you. So next level is this.

Practicing good self-care. You will love yourself more when you take better care of your basic needs. People high and self-love nourish themselves daily through healthy activities. Like I've said, sound nutrition, exercise, proper sleep, intimacy, prayer, meditation, healthy social interactions. The next thing is this. You've got to make room for healthy habits. Start truly caring for yourself by mirroring that in what you eat, how you exercise, and what you spend time doing.

By the way, earlier when I was talking about that 80, 90% of our thoughts aren't ones that serve us. What if we replace just 50% of those negative thoughts with loving, compassionate, and supportive thoughts about ourselves? What if you did that? What if you took 50% of your negative thoughts and you replaced them with loving and compassionate and support? supportive thoughts about yourself. You would find the support you've been looking for from within. You won't need it externally. In fact, if you're constantly looking from support, I need support from my partner, support from my spouse, support from my friends. What you're really saying is, I'm not supporting myself. I need them to spell me. I need them to fill the gap. When someone

is truly loving themselves, they don't need the support or the permission from other people. It's only when you're in necessity of that that there's a deficiency within you. And here's the truth. You already know how to do this for yourself. Think about a loved one, someone you truly care about and that you want to see succeed. How do you talk to them? How do you talk to the people that you love, your children, your partner, your friends that you love? When you're speaking power and belief and love into them, how do you speak to them? What do you say to them?

And begin to give yourself that same gift, that same message. So many of us that lack self-love are incredible about giving it to other people. And by the way, you think you're great at it. But like I said earlier, it's limited by how much you can feel yourself. And so what you think oftentimes, there's what good people think. I'm being selfish when I work on myself. I'm being selfish. I'm bragging when I tell myself I'm built for this or that God made me as an image

in his image and likeness or that I can do something awesome with my life. I'm bragging. I'm brash. I'm putting myself in front of other people. But the truth is you can't pour from an empty cup. You have to begin to fill your own cup with the words you speak to yourself and the actions you take about yourself. You can't just tell yourself great things and not take any of the actions. Why? Because then you lose self-confidence. If you don't keep the promises you make to yourself, you begin not to trust you. And so it's not just enough to, I'm amazing, I'm amazing, I'm amazing. You're going to have to take the actions to validate it to prove it.

But once you start speaking truth to yourself, like you speak to your friends, and then you begin to act in congruence with them, that. Your self-confidence explodes. Your self-love explodes. Your self-worth explodes. So I think what I'm saying so far is there's a lot to be said for the way you speak to yourself and the actions you take to truly create self-love and to feel self-confidence at the same time. Let me ask you this. When a loved one's struggling in a need of support, would you kick them when they're down or would you extend a helping hand? You know exactly what you would do. Yet in our own we kick ourselves when we're down. Here I go again.

I always do this. I always make mistakes. I knew I was faking it. We let the imposter syndrome come in and the thoughts start stacking in our heads about that we're not legit and we're not real and you always knew it was going to go back

to what you're worth. And so when you're most down oftentimes is when you beat yourself up the most and you know who needs you the most during those times? You. What I would say to you lastly before we get into some really powerful stuff here

is here's the truth. How would God speak to you? What would God tell you in that moment? Whatever your faith practices, most of you know that I'm a Christian, but whatever your faith is, what would God speak to you right now? I remember when I first adopted my faith, someone said to me, I'd had Max and Bella many years later and said, can you imagine, Ed, how much you love Max and Bella, those are my children, that God loves you even more. God loves you even more than that. It was hard for me to get my head around that. But it's true. And so what would God say to you when you're down? Right? Are you open to listening to that voice? And then when you do, you've truly started to love yourself. You've truly started to give yourself the gift between your faith practices, the way you speak to yourself, the actions

you take. By the way, when a loved one makes a mistake, do you tell them how terrible of a person they are? Or do you give them credit for their intentions? Do you give them another chance? You got to give yourself. the same gift. Remember this. We really can't truly love others who we're not loving ourselves. So here's what I'd like to do right now. I'd like to give you the gift of giving you 14 signs that maybe you don't love yourself enough. Because I think a lot of you maybe list is going, I'm pretty good at this. When I started to work on this project for myself, I took a look at me. And you know what? I've got some room to grow in this area. It's probably why you feel like this, you know, maybe it's hitting really home today and I hope that you feel that it's really good

because I really created this lesson today for myself. I think I have a high level of self-love, but I could always love me more. I could always believe in me more. I could always have more self-discipline. So I was like, what are the signs that maybe you don't love yourself enough? And so I'm going to give you those 14 signs right now. I hope this hits home with you.

Actually, I hope you don't have any of them, but I'm sure maybe you have one or two of them. And when I'm done with these 14, maybe these are the things you need to work on. So first sign that maybe you don't love yourself enough, you do whatever you can do to avoid conflict. It's number one. You do whatever you do you can do to avoid conflict.

How often are you willing to avoid conflict with people? Because usually people who want to avoid conflict, if you find yourself being one of those kinds of people, you say, oh, my life I've been that way. Then all your life you've struggled with self-love. You don't want to have conflict with people because you don't want them to take a very close look at you. Because conflict creates them looking back at you more harsh.

or maybe you looking at yourself, and you may not feel enough love for yourself to speak up for yourself. And so you allow people to treat you in a way that's not worthy of you. You don't confront them. You don't create a conflict with them to create waves because you don't love yourself enough to stand up for yourself. So that's number one. If you're avoiding conflict all the time, here's the truth about life. There ought to be some conflict from time to time.

The story of life is a story of from time to time having a conflict or having to confront something in our lives. We try to avoid that. We're avoiding living. We're avoiding growing. We're avoiding growing a love for ourselves. So if you're constantly avoiding conflict, what you're really doing is avoiding loving yourself. You know one of the things that frustrates me?

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plus free shipping at bowl and branch.com slash my let with code my let that's bowl and branch b o l-l-l-a-n-d branch.com slash my let code my let to unlock 15% off exclusions apply second indication that maybe you don't love yourself enough is you feel awkward more often than not awkward or uncomfortable socially awkward or uncomfortable within your own skin you don't want to be alone a lot. And so when you feel awkward more often than not, just uncomfortable with you, that's an indication that you can love yourself more and you have room to grow in this area. The third thing, it's a big indication that you don't love yourself enough right now, is that you're always looking for an escape, whether that be on your phone and you're

scrolling through social media just to escape. Or it could be alcohol or drugs or gossip, pornography, whatever it might be, you're looking for an escape all the time. You shouldn't have to escape if you love yourself. You should enjoy your own company. You should enjoy the piece of being with your favorite person, which is you. And again, you can't give this gift to somebody if you can't give it to yourself. So if you're always looking for an escape somehow, that's an indication. When I see someone who's got an alcohol problem or a drug problem or a gambling problem,

or they're too addicted to being a fan of a sports team even. That's a form of escape, sports, watching spectator sports. Or they're on their phone all the time. I believe this is an indication of somebody who doesn't love themselves. And by the way, one of the real insidious forms, it's obvious with alcohol and drugs, is fan addiction. I have so many friends of mine that I grew up with that I think they think they play for the Lakers. I think they think they're on the Kansas City Chiefs.

I mean, they literally liver, die by what a bunch of other grown men are doing. Some of them even wear jerseys with other men's names on the back. And I'm thinking, are you trying to escape yourself that much that you're that addicted? And there's nothing wrong with being a fan of a sports team. Let me be clear. I've watched sports. I'm a Boston sports fan. I'm a fan of great athletes.

I love watching greatness. But we all know there's a level of it where we've escaped in there hiding from our own lives. Some of us escape in our children's lives. We live through them to escape our own existence, to escape our own lives, their sports, their grades, their success. What we ultimately do is put tremendous amount of pressure on themselves on our children because we've escaped into their lives because we don't want to look at our own. And so one of them is you've got to be careful. Again, I'm a huge sports fan. Go to a lot of sporting events.

But I think you all know what I'm talking about. When someone crosses that line and you're like, well, this has become like, you're really. your emotions are based on whether this team wins or loses. And I think you actually think you won when they win. And that's just to escape the fact that you're not winning in your own life. And so there's a line there when it comes to sports as well. There's healthy and everything. There's healthy use of alcohol for many people.

Some people can't at all. But there's a healthy use maybe socially in moderation where you can maintain it. And then for some people, it's just too much, right? There's a healthy use of social media, and then there's people who use it too much. It becomes unhealthy. There's a healthy fandom when it comes to sports or entertainment or whatever it might be. There's a healthy level of it, and then there's a level where it's not healthy because we've escaped completely from our own lives. That's number three.

You always looking for a way to escape. Number four, you constantly feel misunderstood. If you're constantly feeling that people don't understand you and they don't get you, believe it or not, what's bad. buried under there as a lack of self-love because you are seeking to be understood so often. It means so much to you to feel understood because you don't love yourself enough. I think when someone truly loves themselves enough, and by the way, I'm working on this, just to be clear. But I think when you really truly love yourself, you don't have the need to be understood.

You don't have the need to be accepted because you understand and accept yourself. Number five thing that would be an indication, emotion, a feeling that you might have that you don't love yourself enough is you're resentful all the time. You're holding on to resentment towards other people or a group of people or someone who doesn't believe with you politically or someone who disagrees with you religiously or you're resentful for a past event in your life. You're resentful about something in your life. That's an indication that maybe you don't love yourself enough and it's something worth looking at. If you're filled with resentment very often, that's not a form of love for oneself. You would never treat yourself that way,

Right? Number six, you're afraid to step outside your comfort zone. You're afraid to take risks. You're afraid to take chances. You think you need to be perfect. And when that happens in life, that's an indication of not enough self-love because when you love yourself enough, you're willing to get uncomfortable to grow because you know that self-discipline is one of the major keys to self-love. And so you are wanting to step outside what makes you comfortable. You're wanting the expansion of your being. See, I'm sort of at this point of my life sort of, I say often to people, I'm addicted to the expansion of my being. And what that really means is that I love myself enough not to accept where I am. And I want to expand my ability to give and think and learn and feel and grow. And that expansion makes, I know I have to be uncomfortable to do it. I love myself enough to put myself through some uncomfortable things. Oftentimes, even with our children, we love them so much. We don't want them to experience any pain, any discomfort.

and we kind of helicopter in and protect them from everything. We think that's love, but it's not. Real love is allowing someone to do some uncomfortable things in their life. So if you find yourself often being afraid or unwilling to step outside your comfort zone, that's a self-love issue. Number seven, issue that maybe you are lacking in the self-love department is you need permission from others when you make a decision. You need other people's permission, other people's acknowledgement.

Oftentimes you seek too many other human beings. advice, but what you're really looking for is permission from them. And that's an indication deep down of a lack of self-love. The most self-loving people that I know with the best self-discipline aren't looking for permission all the time when they make decisions. And although they may seek some advice from people, they don't seek a lot of it. They get counseled. They've got people around them who they bounce ideas off of, but they don't need people's permission to make decisions in their lives. So as I'm making this list, there's 14 of them or halfway through. Do any of these seven resonate with you?

If any of them resonate with you, then there's some growth there on your self-love. If all of them resonate with you, then we've really got some work to do, don't we? Number eight, feeling that maybe you're lacking self-love is you feel invisible. You feel invisible. You don't feel seen. I think this is a big one for so many people. They just feel like the world doesn't see them, that no one cares, that nothing matters. They walk in a room.

and no one would know if they left it. And that is a thought you've created in your own mind that is not true. And frankly, if you loved yourself a little bit more, you would get a different response. So if you feel invisible, and by the way, I know exactly what that feels like. Before I was a public person, I often felt invisible in rooms that I would walk into.

That nobody saw me or understood me. as I said earlier. This is a major sign because when you love yourself enough, there's enough light on you just from you and God that that thought would never occur to you because you wouldn't be seeking it. And what's ironic about life

is the minute you don't seek it is the minute you receive it in abundance. Number nine, indication that maybe you're lacking some self-love is you compare yourself a lot. You compare yourself to other people. You compare yourself to an other time in your life. You compare yourself to a situation or circumstance.

You see somebody that's filtered or very, yeah, it's very created online. You know, I'm going to do a video on this soon, but there's so much fake online right now. It's unbelievable. There's actually a studio in Santa Monica you can go to now. It's a studio. It's in a warehouse. And it will, you can take pictures on it and it looks like you're on a private jet and influencers, some are now doing this, where they're literally, they go to this warehouse in

LA, I think it's in Santa Monica, and it will make it look like you're sitting on a private jet and you can take selfies like your jet set lifestyle and you're in a warehouse in L.A. somewhere. And then we sit here and watch these people online. I'm not saying everybody's doing that. I'm saying that that's the indication and length people will go to to curate a filtered life online that's not even true. And then we find ourselves comparing ourselves to people. and if you're doing that, that's going to contribute to a lack of self-love like you can't even believe. So don't compare to other people. Don't compare to another time in your life.

You say, well, I was so much happier when I was 25 and you're 45 now, or I looked so much better. That is an absolute form of self-loathing. It's not self-love, it's the reverse. So if you're constantly in comparison mode, that's an indication you've got this to work on. Number 10, this is going to be a subtle one. You think twice before speaking. You're constantly hesitating to speak your mind, speak your truth, stand for something that matters to you, right? You hesitate. You think twice. What's the right thing to say? I don't want to say the wrong thing. I don't want to make a mistake. I don't want to offend.

And although there's a kindness that comes with that, and I have that same thing, if you dig it a little bit deeper and it happens too often, there are circumstances clearly where I am talking to people when I say, I don't want to offend here. What's the right thing to say? That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about if this regularly pops up in your life in circumstances that it does not require that thought. You know exactly what I mean, that you constantly thinking twice before you pop up and speak or contribute or add your two cents. It happens in an occasion where you're like, I want to be understanding and kind here and measured and respectful. That's different. But if it's happening on a regular basis, that's a self-love issue. Number 11, you feel like you have to be perfect. Perfect is a trash standard.

It's the lowest possible standard, and it's an indication of lack of self-love. You have to be perfect. Nobody's perfect. Everybody makes mistakes. In fact, when you reveal your imperfections to people, it's when you connect most deeply with them. If I was to do today's show and tell you, I've nailed all 14 of these. None of them show up in my life. I'm the ultimate self-love expert.

Would you feel it all connected to me? Not at all. The good news is I make a mistake on a lot of these oftentimes as well. But what I now have, and I'm giving you as a checklist of, if I'm doing this, this is the thing I got to work on. And so perfection repels people. Perfection creates separation. Revealing imperfections creates connection with people.

And so ironically, perfect is a crappy standard. You'll never get going. You'll never start. And you're using it because you don't love yourself and believe in yourself and have enough self-discipline that you've created this artificial fake thing called perfection that you'll never reach. So you never have to be vulnerable. You never have to speak up.

You never have to take an action. You never have to get out of your comfort zone, right? You never have to show the real you because you've got to be perfect before you act. But underneath that, it's not that you think you've got to be perfect. One underneath it is you don't love yourself enough. Okay. Number 12, your life just doesn't feel right. As you're listening to this or watching today and precious you, your life doesn't quite feel right.

It's a lack of self-love. This is the biggie for so many people. that it just doesn't quite feel right. And I don't mean once in a while. Okay? Everybody once in a while doesn't feel like their life is right. It's part of being alive. I know I have it.

But if it's a predominant thought, a regular emotion, most of the time, life just doesn't feel right. It means you don't feel right about you, not life. Life is oftentimes a reflection of how we truly feel right. feel about ourselves. 13. You feel like no one knows the real you. No one knows the real you. If you have that thought, could it be perhaps that you feel like you don't know the real you? And that you're projecting that onto other people. Or perhaps because you lack self-love, you're not really being the real you. And so as a result of that, you have this sense people don't

know the real you because you're not revealing that person to them. You're holding this precious, beautiful, amazing, powerful being called you from the world because you're hiding from yourself. I'll say what I said earlier. You cannot love yourself if you're not being yourself. You cannot love yourself if you're not being yourself. The real you, the things that you think might get criticized, the things you think people aren't going to accept. Do you really want to get out of this life and have never been the real you? So many of us, and I have many times in my life, we're a mask that we think other people will like this version of us better. You can do that, but at some point you're going to get to the end of your life and what if everybody likes someone that wasn't even

really you? Wouldn't it be better in life for everyone to know who you really were and let the chips fall where they may. And here's you're going to find out when you're really being the real you is when you truly love you. And only then will you get the response from other people that doesn't matter anyway that you've been seeking so desperately. What you're going to find out is when you're really being the real you, which means you truly love you, you don't have the need for that validation anymore. Ironically, it's probably when you're going to get it. But even if you don't, you don't need it because the only validation you really need in your life is yours and your God. And once you have those two things, you're home. Like a lot of you, I've become even more obsessed with my health,

my strength, my energy, just my overall wellness. And you know, a lot of people assume GLP1's cost a fortune and that assumption keeps them from even looking into treatment. But the reality is there may be some affordable options. And Roe helps people find the lowest cost path to FDA approved with GLP1 treatment, whether that's through insurance coverage or cash pay options that are more accessible than most people realize. Roe wants to help people lose weight. And by the way, it's not just about losing weight. And that's why they have the lowest cost options out there, whether you're paying with insurance or not. They've got a free insurance checker that you can look into that makes it easy to see whether you're covered or not. All you do is you submit your insurance card.

Roe handles the rest, no paperwork, no waiting on hold, no confusing phone calls. It's going to take away all of the mystery. It's really great, you guys. Go to row.com slash my let to see if you you qualify. That's RO.com slash my let to get started on Roe. Go to row.com slash safety for box warning and full safety information about GOP1 medications. So guys, the last eight weeks or so, I have not been feeling on my game. And I'm like, what the heck changed? What is it? And then I remembered, we switched from one of the places we live to another and I stopped taking IM8. I'm 8. I'll never do that again. I am 8 is unbelievable. I am 8 is the way to simplify your supplement routine once and for all. It's got 16 supplements it replaces with 90 ingredients across nine

major organ systems in one drink. And that's why when you're on it, you feel great. And if you stop, you feel the difference. IMA8's Daily Ultimate Essentials has 16 supplements in one drink for $2.61 a day. So go to IMA8health.com slash ed right now or click the link in the description here and use code Ed for a free welcome kit, five free travel sachets, plus 10% on. off your order. That's code ed at i.m8health.com slash ed. These statements have not been evaluated by the food and drug administration of this product is not intended to diagnose, treat, cure, or prevent any disease. And then lastly, number 14, sign that maybe you don't love yourself enough is you're kind of making yourself sick. You just don't feel good. Physically, you're sick.

Maybe it's in your gut. Maybe you're sore or tired. Maybe it's emotional. You're making yourself sick emotionally. You're feeding yourself these thoughts and these emotions and these feelings that don't serve you. Maybe it's psychological, right? You're literally making yourself sick. These are signs that you don't love yourself. You're supposed to live in a healthy way. And by the way, this lack of self-love, I honestly believe over time and life shows up in physical ailments in our body.

If we have these thoughts, this lack of love, that I think we literally kill ourselves. And I'm not suggesting to you that all disease comes from thought, believe me. I've got terrible genetics in my blood for heart health and cancer. I've got all these genetic predispositions that aren't very good. So don't get me wrong. I'm not suggesting that you just think yourself into being ill. But I think you know exactly what I mean. There's an element of self-love or the lack of self-love that can make us sick.

And it can show up in disease. It can show up in soreness. It can show up in tension. It can show up in plaques in our body. It can show up in deterioration of muscle. It can show up in our mind not working in its optimal way. Eventually it makes us sick. Sick physically.

Sick spiritually. Sick emotionally. And so if any of these 14 things are affecting you, I want to challenge you to begin to look at the self-discipline part of self-love. And then if you begin to take actions that serve you, right, the disciplines of changing your life. life, that you will disciple yourself, that you begin to really truly love yourself when you're being yourself. I believe one of the pathways is not just total acceptance of who we are. Like I said

in the beginning, I want my friends to love me and believe in me. That's there. But I don't want them to just accept me because that acceptance isn't real love. Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. You'll never miss an episode, though. way. Today's topic is going to be about self-discipline, which I think is at the top of the list of everything you have to have in life if you're going to achieve anything great. It's what allows you to do something that average ordinary people can't do. You know, I look at when I evaluate people and talent in my businesses, when I hire people or any sports team that I've had, yeah, it'd be great

if someone's got an amazing ability or some, you know, crazy proclivity. But what I really look for when I'm evaluating talent and people I want on my team is their self-discipline levels. Because I know those people are going to max out their own capacity. And if you remember this, extremity expands capacity. Please remember that statement. Extremity expands capacity. So what that means is when you're self-discipline and you can get yourself to do all the way to the extreme of what you're capable of on a regular basis, not only you do what you're capable of, but you actually stretch out and expand your capacity to grow and to do more so that over time, those levels of maxing out actually increase. That's why, for example, like on a bench press in the gym, when someone maxes out,

one of the reasons we do that is because we've pushed to a new level, but that extremity expands your capacity to know bench press even more at a higher level. And the way we extend our capacity in life is to have the highest levels of self-discipline. And it's something all of us struggle with, including me. I love Netflix. I love Cheetos. I love sleep. I love laying around. The challenge with that is those aren't the things that produce bliss in our life that give us memories, that give us joy, nor do they produce maximum results in our businesses and our bodies, relationships, and even our emotions, as I've said. So let's take a look at how do we expand our capacity.

How do we increase our self-discipline? For me, and what I would recommend for you, is that it starts out by taking an honest look and audit at the things that take away from our self-disciplines. what are the things that rob you, that steal you from your disciplines? So in my case, for example, I'll give you some things that rob me of my disciplines, that take my focus away, take my attention away, that make it more easy to do than the things I need to do. For me, some of it's television. And in my own case, it is that. Like, I really do enjoy Netflix. I'll get captivated. When I wake up in the morning. One of the things I used to do is I would do a little bit of a morning routine,

but then I'd find myself flipping sports center on. A lot of the guys can probably relate to that, or you flip on one of the morning TV shows. And all of a sudden, I've lost 30, 40 minutes into this abyss of things that really don't matter at that time. It's funny. My wife would say, haven't you already watched these highlights last night? You're watching the same exact highlights again the next morning. And I'm like, she's totally right. So for me, it's been sports. It's been Netflix. It's been watching sports on television. This, This robs me of my self-disciplines. Another thing for me is worry.

Believe it or not, the emotion of worry or the emotion of fear steals my self-discipline because I'm captivated in a problem that really hasn't even existed yet, probably won't exist, but I've given my attention and my energy off the task at hand. See, there's this fallacy. I've had people on my show that have taught this that you can multitask. The truth is, there's really no such thing as multitasking. your brain can only hold one process and one thought at one time. And so this idea that you can do three things at once, like I'll have the TV on in the

background, but I'm going to write an effective chapter of my book. That is not true. That TV on in the background steals some of your self-discipline from you. For some of you, it might be that it's a worry addiction. It might be addiction to a relationship. But these are the things. You have to make a list of the things. For me, in a given day, what takes my self-discipline from me is worry,

fear and the process of watching screens, watching screens, scrolling through Instagram, scrolling through TikTok, watching YouTube, watching sports on television. So I've made lists of things that are my self-disciplined stealers. And I haven't eliminated them, but I've reduced them and I schedule them in non-productive times. So it's not that I can't watch SportsCenter.

It's not that I can't scroll TikTok or Instagram. I can do that. But I have to schedule it in time. that don't take away from moving the needle. You've got to do moving the needle activities in your life. The most successful people do the highest impact things possible in any given moment or any given day. And the people that lose or that produce subpar results

or average results, they still work very hard, but they don't do the needle moving things. So in my fitness, for example, one of the needle moving things is drinking water. That's a self-discipline that is required of me to stay in my peak physical state in every given day. I'm going to show you in a minute how I make sure I do that. And then I eliminate and I make a list of the things that take that away from me.

One of the other things is I have to do breath work. I have to control my breathing. I love yoga now. I'm doing a lot of yoga. And I have, what is it that eliminates that for me? One, it's getting up too late. Two, it's turning on that television and watching sports. So I've made a list of the things that rob me of my disciplines.

The second thing in self-discipline is this. Show me your schedule. show me your day timer and I will show you your life. If you show me your schedule today and what you do consistently and what you have scheduled because what you schedule is a priority. Okay. So if you show me your schedule, I will show you your life a year to three years from now based on today's schedule.

So second thing in self-discipline is scheduling the things that matter, literally putting them in and having a time for them scheduled on a regular basis. This may seem trivial, but it's not because there are things. I need self-discipline for me, one of the areas is like my personal friendships and relationships, even with my own family. And so for me, if I'm not careful, I won't have the self-discipline to make sure those aren't just maintained, but that they're growing and evolving in a way that's beautiful that those people deserve in my life. And although this may sound orchestrated, I schedule those things that that schedule makes me look like I've got self-discipline.

okay but truthfully it's just scheduled so i have things in my calendar that says text bella call max call mom i have scheduled these things in my calendar when i'm in my schedule i will do the things that are in there so a lot of times we just schedule our appointments don't we we just have appointments and that's all we have an account at the end of the day i didn't make my contacts i didn't tell the people that i love that i love them i didn't do the amount of emails i was supposed to do I didn't take the time to write the chapter of my book. I didn't craft my social media captions. Things need to be scheduled.

That's where self-discipline comes from. And then the third thing is, I've built the habit of keeping the promises that I make to myself. The process of self-discipline is like a muscle that you can grow. And so I think the mistake many people make is they start with these huge things that they think require self-discipline. And unless they do these huge things, they lack it. Whereas I believe you start in the micro.

You start small in life. And that's what builds a real discipline. So this may sound crazy, but I have eliminated and written down the things that take my self-discipline away. I have scheduled the things that make me look like I have self-discipline. And then third, I start with the small promises I can keep to myself. And that's to this day, 25 years later on this journey, 35 years later on this journey, I still schedule things. I still do little things that create momentum,

because momentum, as I've said before, is a magnifier. Momentum can make an average ordinary person like me produce superhuman results. So I create what might be considered artificial momentum every single day. So let me give an example of that. I make my bed every single day. I've been doing that for many, many years.

That seems insignificant, right? Because I could pay somebody to make my bed every single day. That's not why I do it. I do it because it starts, my day with discipline and it's something that I can control and I can maintain. I have a routine that I do, whatever your routine might be. For me, it could be the cold plunge or my prayer time or my meditation time, my stretching, my scripture reading. I do these things early in my day. These are promises that I can make to myself that create this identity of a self-disciplined person

when the truth is I am not one. I have not been one, but I have created an identity of a self-disciplined person. Let me give you another one. I lay my clothes out the night before for the following day. I do this whether I'm staying in a hotel room or whether I'm staying at my own house. I know that sounds insignificant. It is extremely significant because now I've done something that I told myself I was going to do and it's done. And when I wake up in the morning, I'm in autopilot mode. So these small things, the second thing I do, excuse me, the third thing I do, I have a big gallon of water that I pour the night before.

And when I get up, I drink half of that water. It doesn't matter if you drink 10% of it. But it's something to start my day. Self-discipline, I've done it. When I point my mind as a weapon at the small things in my life, and I start stacking those up that I do over and over and over again, now the medium-sized tasks are disciplined and the big ones are disciplined. And so I'm going to tell you that I don't think anyone has natural discipline.

They build structures around them. They build systems around them. They schedule them and they eliminate the things that take from it. And over time, they build this identity where they seem like they're incredibly disciplined people. Remember this for a second. Your brain is always trying to conserve energy. It's always trying to conserve energy.

It's trying to build a habit. It is trying to do this so that it doesn't have to work to think. And so the more you do these little things, your brain wants to continue to do them. It's not just a muscle. It's how the brain functions because now that it's just stuff that you, do every single day, it doesn't have to think about it anymore. And under pressure in life, we act reflexively. Under pressure, we act reflexively. So if your reflex is to have these habits that serve you, your life becomes very easy. It also frees your brain up to be much more creative

and innovative and energized and aware than people who don't have discipline. See, the benefit of discipline and self-discipline is not just that you get these things done. It's that your brain's not having to work so darn hard. See, when you don't have self-discipline, when you don't have things you do early in your day, when you don't keep promises to yourself, when you don't schedule the things, right, when you don't do those things, when you don't eliminate the things that rob you of your self-discipline, not only you're not getting stuff done, you're more tired. You're more physically exhausted. Here's the fallacy. People think self-discipline, people that get up, that work out, to do their stuff, to make their calls, that have these relationships that are sending out a bunch

emails that are making a bunch of contacts. They're tired. That's not the case because after a while, this is automatic. Their brain's not having to think about it. It's just what they do. It's their routine. Your brain, on the other hand, if you're not disciplined, isn't nearly as organized. So it's having to work to think through, to get back up, to start over, to restart, to get going again. It's constantly having to work. And what you're doing is you're depleting yourself of the energies that could have gone towards creativity, focus, awareness, and intentional activities. Does that make sense? So actually, undisciplined people are more tired at the end of a day than disciplined people.

And that's what I found. They say, you're 52. You're working harder than you've ever worked in your dadgum life. Why? Because I have built all these structures around me and eliminated most of the things that take my focus and discipline away so that I am wired, man, with a ton of energy to create and innovate and think and be present in the moment. because I have self-discipline.

And self-discipline is a process, is a habit. It is not something someone's born with. And it's not very complicated. What has to happen is you've got to do it for a while. But now the idea of not working out in a given day makes me sick to my stomach. I can't even imagine not working out. But way back in the day, I had to schedule it. I had to eliminate the sports center.

I had to have the glass of water next to me. I had to have my workout clothes laid out the night before. I had to make my bed, then I had to do my, do you follow what I'm saying? These things make the discipline part look much harder than it is. It's actually autopilot for me now. I don't have to think about it. So there's all these benefits to having self-discipline. Very short intermission here, folks.

I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. Now on to our next guest. All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. I'm really glad I get to do this today. Today's going to be a special episode. I was just telling this woman off camera how impressed I am with her.

Her husband's a friend of mine. Her husband is Alex from Ozzy. Most of you probably know Alex. He's one of the really the most bright minds in all of an entrepreneurship, all the influencer space in the world. And Alex is telling me for a long time, he goes, look, man, as good as I am, you need to meet my wife. She really runs things around here.

And I thought, yeah, that's nice for him to say about his wife. And then we had dinner, the three of us one night. And I left that dinner. I made a mental note, which, was she's a rock star. She really does run things. And I want to have her on my show. And it didn't take me very long. Once the show spot opened up, I immediately texted her and said, I want to have you on. And the reason I wanted to have her on is she is one of the most articulate and successful and smart entrepreneurs I have ever met in my life. And for such a young woman to have so much

wisdom and understanding of the entrepreneurship space. It really took me back a little bit. I was surprised that I didn't gain that kind of knowledge, nor do I probably even have it now, that she's gained very young because of her experience. I would also say that she's an expert on success and all the trappings and positive and negative things that come with that. And so I'm really, really excited today to discuss success and entrepreneurship with my really good friend. She's an entrepreneur. She's the co-founder of Acquisition.com. which is kind of a portfolio company that buys businesses. And she knows out of scale and grow companies.

That's her expertise. So Layla Hermosey, welcome to the show. Wow. That was more than I expected. Thank you, Ed. It's true. It's true. And you know one thing I noticed about you and you say this in your content.

By the way, Layla has really gone bold on her content recently, which we'll talk about in a minute. But the reason I wanted her on is because when I watch her stuff just like Alex, I'm like, yep, that's right. Yep, that's right. No question I agree with that. And one of the things you say to kind of counteract that potential for you is you say that, and I want you to elaborate on this, you say that I want to know at the end of the day or the end of my life that what I'm doing daily is I'm respecting myself with the choices that I make. I thought that was a really profound way that you worded

that. What do you mean by that? Like respecting yourself with how you how you behave or the decisions you make or the actions you take. I think that a lot of people nowadays blame others. And they position every decision to leave a business or leave a job or leave a partner as this person is toxic. And I'm talking, I'm not talking about like abusive situation. I'm just saying generalized, right? I think it's become a very generalized term.

Like this person's bad, toxic, all of these things. And I think at the end of the day, what I have realized has empowered me. rather than stolen my power for me, is to not ask, is this person bad or toxic? Is this job bad or toxic? But when I'm in this situation or when I'm around this person, do I respect myself more or less? Do I respect myself more or less if I go to the bar with single girls who invite me out that flirt with men? Less, so I don't hang out with them. Do I respect myself more or less if I allow an employee to be in my company who does not embody our values

and speaks poorly to people on my team, less. So I cannot have them here, right? Do I respect myself more or less in my marriage, right? I respect myself more because I have a husband who promotes me, supports me, and would do anything to see me succeed. And so I think that there's just been this frame shift that's been in the last few years where I just see people blaming others for their problems, for the relationships in their life, for their situations.

And at the end of the day, it's not about them, because the reality is too, that guy that, you know, maybe you think is an a-hole that in your last relationship, there's some girl that would really like that. She just has different expectations. Just being honest. And same with jobs. You know, there's some people who probably come work for me and say this is just like way too much. It's terrible. It's toxic. Whereas like, I only hire people who see it as like, I will become a champion if I work here. And so I think at the end of the day, it all comes down to like our personal values and vision for ourselves. And, and, and, and And the way that I center myself with that is just, do I respect myself more or less?

Because at the end of the day, I cannot show up for my company. I can't show up to make content. I could not do this podcast if I don't respect myself. And so I will sacrifice honestly at anything to keep that for me. Because since I was young, that is like the one thing that I have held on to. It's just like I have to respect myself. That's so good. What a great question to ask yourself.

I want my kids to hear that. When I respect myself more or less if I go do this, that's like a great barometer. Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. Don't forget to follow the show on Apple and Spotify. We have all the links in our show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. Now on with the show. All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. I love our episodes where it's just you and I, because I get a chance to answer your questions. And one of the questions that I keep getting on a very regular basis is about priorities. And I think it's a really valid question. In other words, who do I make the number one priority in my life? What do I make the number

one priority in my life. And so I'm going to say something pretty controversial to you to begin today. And then I think more we talk throughout the next 15 or 20 minutes, I think you find that this is a correction and an adjustment. So many of us, including myself, need to make. The number one priority in your life, I'm exclusive of God and your faith, but in terms of other people or focuses of yours, the number one priority in your life needs to become you. Yeah, you. And I know initially that sounds selfish like me. And for so many of us, that's a foreign concept, to make ourselves a priority. Isn't that crazy, by the way, that it's a foreign concept for so many of us to make ourselves the number one priority in our life. Most important person in your life as a human being

is you because you can't begin to serve other people. You can't pour from an empty cup. And so many of you, I mean all people, but particularly the ladies, you're constantly serving other people and caring for their needs first and you always put yourself last. And I know a lot of you men are saying, hey, brother, I do the exact same thing. I care for my family. I care for the people that I work with, my friends, and at the end of the line is always me. And what ends up happening is our cup is empty and we have nothing to give those very people that we think we need to be serving and contributing before ourselves. That's why when you're flying on an airplane, they always tell you put your own oxygen mask on first before you put it on even your child.

And I always thought when I was flying, that's crazy. I'm going to put it on myself and what, but I can't begin to help other people. If I'm not breathing myself, if I don't have energy and life force myself. If I don't have the cup full in my own life, I can't continue to pour into people. And that's why so many of us feel depleted and tired and fatigued lost in our lives. Maybe we even feel like our focus isn't where it needs to be. Maybe we lack of happiness in our life. And it's because we're constantly focusing outside of ourselves and we have no reserves, no energy, no time to create and think and innovate and renew and be born again in our lives. And again, I'm not talking about exclusive of God.

I look at the relationship that you have with whatever your faith is. You and God are one, right? You're one. Part of that renewing of you, that energizing of you, that refreshing of you should be focusing on that relationship with your higher power. So I'm not talking about that. You know what I mean. Put your own mask on.

Fill your own cup. And in our lives, we don't do this. And what ends up happening is we belong nowhere. And I want you to remember a few things. The people in your life that you want to be. want to help most need the best version of you. They need a version of you that's growing. I often say that if I'm the same person next year at the same time that I am now, I'm of no value to you because you already had that version of me. I want to be replacing myself

every year, every day. Naturally, inside our body, our lung tissue, our bones, everything is renewing itself on a regular basis? It's part of nature. But is your mind renewing? Is your spirit renewing? Is your energy renewing? Probably not because so many of you. Put the needs of everybody else first. Your intentions are great, but you're doing it the wrong way. They're not even getting the best of you. They're not getting the most happy, powerful, blissful, growing, the vibrational frequency you're capable of carrying, the most faithful version of you. They're not getting that. They're not getting the strong you. And oftentimes in life, we don't know what we don't know. We don't even know what we're missing. You may say, no, I'm a pretty

good version, even as I give to everybody. You don't know what you're capable of by not putting yourself first. and it's not selfish. It's the most unselfish thing you could do would begin to prioritize your own spirit, your own energy, your own focus, your own reading, your own growth, your own renewing. Because probably for a lot of you right now,

you're somewhere where you don't feel like you belong. Right? You're at a job maybe where you don't feel like you belong. Maybe you're in a relationship where you don't feel like you belong. Maybe you have a group of friends that you know long, you've outgrown them. It's just not what it once was. You don't belong like you used to.

Listen to me on this. The longer you believe that you don't belong where you are, eventually you begin to believe, I don't belong anywhere. The longer you stay where you know you don't belong, you stay at a job where you know you don't belong there. You stay there too long. You begin to believe you don't belong anywhere. You stay in a relationship that you know I don't belong in this relationship.

eventually you believe you don't belong in any, and then you stay for that reason. And that's what I mean by putting ourselves first. You become almost like this elephant, you know, the elephant that's tied to that steak in the ground. You watch these massive animals, multiple tonne animals. And what holds them in the ground is this little steak with a string to it. And over time, they're trained, they train, they program themselves. That this little steak holds this multi-ton animal in the ground and they don't go anywhere. they just stay in the same little space. That steak is in their mind. They could move that thing in a

second with a flinch. They could move. But they've patterned themselves. They've conditioned themselves to believe that they have to stay where they are, that they're anchored in that spot. And over time, eventually, they stop even trying to move. They've been trained to do that. Well, ironically, in our lives, if we're not renewing ourselves, we're training ourselves to stay. And it's not real. It's make pretend. I'll give you another animal analogy. It's almost like we become like a spider who lives in the web of our own making. And we just stay in this place and eventually we can't serve anybody in this web. We can't make a difference for anybody, never mind ourselves. And listen to me, time is running out on you. I don't care if you're 18 years old listening to

this or you're 85 years old. Time is running out. This life goes by like a flicker. It's a flicker. It was just yesterday. I was turning 21 years old. I remember turning 30 going, man, I remember giving my dad a cup on his 30th birthday, saying my dad is 30. And then I turned 30. And then I remember my kids being born. And I remember then their first day of school.

Then they graduate high school. One of my kids getting ready to graduate college. Then I was 40 like that. And then I'm 50. It was just a flicker. Heck, here's how crazy I am. I don't know if any of you do this, but I'm going to watch college football as a guy. I watch these guys play college football, and I know they're younger than me.

But in my mind, this sounds delusional. They're only like three, four, five years younger than me. I know that sounds crazy when I say it. I'm 30 years older than everybody on that field. But in my mind, it's a four or five year separation. Is that crazy? It's nuts, but it's one of those stakes in the ground. And I have to tell you, I usually teach things that I've had to work on myself.

For years, I just depleted myself caring for everybody else. and I realized I looked around at one point and I was getting older and I don't feel like I was getting better, not to the extent that I could have. I had planted these proverbial stakes in the ground, not everywhere in my life. You know, when I say things, I think sometimes it's easy to discount. Well, that's not me. Is there an area you do it in your physical life, in your spiritual life, and your financial life? We can have these stakes. We can have these webs in different areas of our lives because we spend all our time. And you know what?

Maybe we focus on everybody else in our lives because we can hide in doing that. We don't have to really take a look at ourselves. We don't have to really audit ourselves. We kind of hide in the lives of all the people we care for. But at some point, we're going to wake up and it's going to be us. They may still be in our lives. But my children are going on and having their own lives now.

And even the people that you're in your intimate relationships with, their lives will change and evolve as well. And for you to love them the most and have the most rich memories, it has to be a new you, a renewed you. You know, it leads me to another point. Who are you? And now it sounds overly philosophical and we're not going there today. But if you begin to think about it, like who do you really think you are?

Really, in my opinion, what we are is we're a collection of stories and memories and emotions that are all reinforced with neurology. That's really what we are. You say I or me. When you think about it, it's a collection. of stories of your life and memories of your life, emotions of your life. And it's kind of wired with the neurology in our brains. You know, it's interesting. An emotion in your life, a feeling in your life really needs a story to exist. It really does. I mean, and the stronger, the emotion you

attach, the easier you remember the story. You've had lots of things happen in your life. You don't remember anymore. One of the reasons you don't remember it is wasn't that emotional for you. The feeling wasn't that deep. But when we begin to have stories where there's a major emotion attached to it or a major feeling, then the story sticks. And then we begin to accumulate these stories. Lo and behold, we believe that's who we are. You are not your memories. You are not your stories. You are not your past. You're not even the collection or the accumulation of your achievements. Who you are is a soul, is a spirit that needs to be renewed, that needs to be re-energized, that needs to be in some sense born again, energized again, focused again. And we only do that

by giving ourselves the level of self-care that's required, some quiet time, right, some time in reflection, some time in self-awareness, some auditing of the things in our life that bring us bliss and joy, the things we want to achieve and focus and grow in our lives. So when we begin to evaluate, I've always said, and by the way, sometimes when you've had a past that's actually successful, you can hang on to those stories. We've all met that guy who says, yeah, I was a high school quarterback and they're 40 years old. They're talking about high school. Right. And I always kind of laugh when you hear that person talk, but are you doing that in any area of your life, maybe something two or three years ago, five years ago? Are you a story about somebody who hurt you? Are you a story about one of your

failures or a breakup or a mistake? Do you use those stories as sort of a weapon against yourself? Do you ever use those stories as excuses to not grow and achieve now? Have you taken, see, it's not the events of our life that define us. It's the meaning we attach to those events. And the stronger the emotion, the more that meaning stays deeply within us. And we become a collection of what we believe life means or what we believe we mean. And the longer you begin to believe, you don't belong here. And you stay there.

You begin to believe that you mean you belong nowhere. And you begin to tread water in your life. You have that stake in the ground. Listen to me. Settling sucks. Settling sucks. Stop settling. You do not get in your life what you hope for or what you dream for or what you'd like to have. You get in your life which you believe you're worth and what you're willing to fight for, what you're willing to change for. If you really love these people that you keep putting priority in your life, will you please fight for them and make yourself a priority? Will you please fight for them and lift that stuff? stake out of the ground, get out of that web, stop being this collection of these BS stories you tell yourself. You know exactly what I'm talking about. And by the way, the story gets bigger and bigger and bigger. And the more you repeat it, the more that neurology connects, the more it's deeply embedded in you. You've got to tell yourself a new story. And you don't have to change the story of the past.

You've got to create a new compelling story for the future. What's your new story? What's the new story? What's the new you? What's the new version of you? Even if the old one's one you like. For most of us, it's not. But even if it was one. you like. You want to stay on that story forever? What's the point of having another day? God did not give you another day because you need it. God gave you another day because somebody needs you. And it's a new version of you that they need. So I came here today to remind you that it's time for you to change. Lift the steak out of the ground. You belong in your dreams. Let me say that to you again. You belong in your dreams. You belong in the new story, not the old story, whether it's a bad one or a good one.

You don't belong there. It's a figment of your imagination, even if it really happened. You've repeated it and repeated it and repeated it and made the emotion bigger. And guess who suffers? The very people that you think you should be serving first because they don't get to see this beautiful, productive new version of you. They stay with some version. By the way, you may be growing a little bit. You may be expanding a little bit. Things may be going pretty well. But could they go better? Could you be happier? Could you be a version of you? Could it be bigger? And if I could give you one last piece of advice, make it bigger. Make it bigger. Make your life bigger. Dream big. Think big thoughts. You can always back it down and subtle for the little ones. Dreaming is free. We don't charge you for it. Yet so many people don't even dream anymore. When you were a little boy or a little girl, you had all kinds of dreams. You're going to be an astronaut or an NFL quarterback or the president of the United States or a powerful business woman. And as life begins to happen, we begin to believe these stories that other people tell us about ourselves and the meanings we take from them and the emotions that become embedded in

them and they stick. And those are the stakes. And then we go, well, I'm just serving everybody else. I'll get around to me. And you never get around to you, do you? You never get around to you. So who should be the number one priority in your life between you and God? You. And only from there can you pour from a full cup. That's what I recommend you do today. Make these changes and I think you'll be very grateful that you did it. And more importantly, these people that you love or that you want to lead that you want to make a difference for,

they'll be the biggest beneficiaries. Very short intermission here, folks. I'm glad you're enjoying the show so far. If you want to hear the full interview, be sure to follow the Ed Milet show on Apple and Spotify. Links are in the show notes. you'll never miss an episode that way. Now on with the show. I'm fired up about this week's show, everybody,

because so many of you have been sending in questions asking me to talk about overcoming failure, which we've covered a little bit on the show, but this idea of being perfect. And so here's what I want to title today's show, okay? Progress over perfection. I'm even giving you two other subtitles, and then I'll kind of elaborate on them.

So if you're where you can write, write this down, progress over perfection, growth over destination, and expansion over stagnation. So progress, growth, and expansion. Those are the three things we're going to talk about this week. You know, I have this saying that I used for years when I was coming up in business. It was sort of a tongue-in-cheek thing that I said.

But anytime I would catch any flack from people about, oh, you're too focused on business or, you know, you just want to be, you know, the criticisms you get, you just want to be rich, or, you know, when's enough enough? All the things that anybody trying to do something great with their life is constantly getting criticized with by people who aren't. and people who aren't are threatened by your progress. They're not threatened by your perfection. Listen to me.

They're threatened by your progress. And then what they will do is criticize your lack of perfection and use it against you. And if you're focused on trying to be perfect, it hurts. Let me say all of that to you again because it's never been said to you this way before. It is your progress that is threatening the people around you that are criticizing you in private and in public.

And so what they're going to criticize you with is not being perfect. They'll set an impossible standard up for you. So you're making progress in your business. Well, you're not a perfect mom anymore. You're making progress financially. Well, you're not getting everything knocked out in your faith that you're supposed to. Or you're so obsessed with getting in shape and training so hard. You're blah, blah, blah is suffering.

You're not perfect. And they'll point out your lack of perfection because you're making progress. So I had this saying when I was coming up in business all the time, pardon my progress. Sorry it bugged you. Pardon my progress because I'm going to make progress. The other thing is it got me focused on the right thing. You're not going to win every sales call. You're not going to win every meeting.

You're not going to be rich in 35 seconds. You're going to have tremendous setbacks in your life. And if you're focused on getting things perfect and getting every sales call right or every meeting right or saying the right thing all the time and having everything in balance in your life and being completely perfect and you're a perfection person, you will make no progress. And so my ambitions, even very early in my career, were not particular destinations. They were growth. That's why I say growth over destination.

If you become so destination obsessed that the lack of that place that you have to imaginarily get to causes you to not grow when the very thing that's going to cause you to get to that destination is growth. So progress over perfection. Assume this, know this. If you're a great leader, John Maxwell says this, you're probably not going to have two great days in a row, right? What you want to be focused on is getting better. That's why when you don't get a sales call right or something feels like a setback, if you're making progress from it, meaning you've got something you've learned from it.

So you go, I'm not going to make that mistake again. I'm not going to say that again. Well, I learned a big thing there. That's growth over a destination. That is progress over being perfect. long ago, I gave up the notion that I was going to be perfect. In fact, I think people that are perfectionists, listen to me. I think you're an egomaniac.

And you go, no, I don't have any self-confidence. That's why everything's got to be perfect. You really evaluate that. I think it's your ego telling you you've got to be perfect. Once you surrender, you're going to screw up. And by the way, let me tell you something that's going to help you. Everybody's screwed up. Most everyone is just trying to figure things out.

Most people that you see are just doing a better job of faking it, that they got it all together than you are. People have been on my show, the most famous, successful people in the world in about every area. Sports, acting, entertainment, business, fitness, mindset, scholastics, you name it, parenting, whatever it is. They're all still trying to figure it out.

The best of the best in the world. Here's a stat for you. I just saw on social media. I think the best tennis player I've ever seen, and by the way, I think Pete Sampras was great. He was a neighbor of mine for a while. I think Djokovic is amazing. Indal. But for me, when I want, I love to be born Borg. If you follow tennis, I love to

McEnroe, Jimmy Connors. I'm a huge tennis fan. But the most beautiful, dominant player I've ever seen is Roger Federer. He's just the best for me. You could argue it's the other couple guys or whatever. But for me, it was Roger Federer. And I think if you ask them, they tell you was Roger Federer. Here's a crazy stat. He just said it. He won like 80, I'll mess this up, 84% of his matches. So he won a lot of his matches, 84, but he only won 52% of the points. Did you hear that? He won 84% of every match he ever played, but only 52% of the points. That means every other point he was losing. Every other point he was losing. But unlike people who then would lose the match, Roger would get information out of that lost point. Oh, this guy,

one of my backhand over here, I got to cheat a little bit to the backhand. Or I see how he's spinning the serve differently. And he would get information and he would grow, he would grow out of what most people thought was a lost point or failure. And what it was really, it looked like a loss, but he was making progress. So he didn't get the destination that he wanted, which was to win the point. But what he did is he grew from it so he could win the match. The whole idea in life is to win the match. But it's how you deal with the lost points and not having to be perfect.

Imagine if Roger Federer got frustrated on every point he lost, it would be every other point. Then he would have won none of the matches, which is why most people lose the match of life. because they can't deal with the lost points. They can't deal with the criticism, the feedback, the negatives, the idiots, the small people with small minds who project their small lives and small thinking onto you. That's one huge thing to deal with. Now you know why they're doing it. It's your progress.

And they're going to nail you with not being perfect. So when you see it coming, now you know what it is. Then there's the other type of person. They can't deal with the missed sales call, the financial setback, the person who quit, hits, the person who screwed them and take advantage of them. If you're going to win, just get ready. All of that's probably going to happen to you. But the greatest player of all time in tennis can tell you right now, he won most of his matches but lost every other point. Is that crazy? Because his losses, he got something for the loss, right? He got something for the loss.

He got information, a lesson, a move, something from it, knowledge of how the other person moved, his competitor, what he would do differently next time. Maybe he learned what not to do. Oh, man, don't hit that second serve to the right side because this dude just has a return that smokes it. So I've got to hit it to the other line, whatever it is, or I got to get to the net faster. I got to take behind the baseline further. He's deducing information when other people think it's a loss. He's making progress. He's expanding rather than being stagnant. Let me say it to you again. Progress over perfection, growth over the destination, expansion over. Expansion over stagnation. You got to keep moving. I can't teach you to drive a parked car. Keep moving. Keep making

progress. Keep adjusting. It's these small adjustments. By the way, for most of you, it's not massive changes you need to make. It's small fine-tuning things that are the separator. The difference between winning and losing in life and business is so small. It's almost too scary to talk about. But we got to talk about it. I have this saying I say often. I'm addicted to the expansion of my being. So if you're going to get around, me. If I was 33, when I was 33, I was this way, when I was 23, I'm now 53. I'm addicted to expanding. What can I learn? How can I be a better man? How can I have better thoughts? How can I help more people? How can I have more fun? How can I have more bliss? How can I have more joy?

How can I have a deeper understanding of my faith and where I'm going when this is over and the meaning of my life? I'm addicted to the expansion of my being and I hate being stagnant. So, you're I think a healthy person's like a running river of life. The water just keeps running. It's not perfect. It evaporates some of it. It hits the rocks. It bounces the wrong way.

You can't control most of a running river, right? Or a waterfall or a rapids, right? You can't control all of that stuff, right? But I want that in my life. What I don't want to have is stagnation. What happens in stagnant water? It starts to get mold and fungus in it, the mosquitoes start to gather.

It starts to stink. It turns the terrible brown, you know, that ugly, murky color of water where the dirt starts coming up to the top. Nothing worse than stagnant water. It's one of the most unhealthy places in the world. But running water, the river, the flow, the waterfall, all of that stuff, well, that's some of the most beautiful things in the world. There's a beauty to the movement, to the expansion.

and by the way to not knowing where it's all going, not having a sense of total control over all of it. Once you give up this idea that I've got to have total control everything, I've got to be perfect. I'm not going to start until I know everything, right? I don't want to make mistakes. Can you imagine if Roger Federer said he didn't want to make mistakes? Do you imagine if I said I'd want to make mistakes?

Michael Jordan missed 70% of the three-point shots he took in his career. 70% roughly, give or take 5%. Think about that. every three-point of the guy took he missed of him. He quit shooting, right? Or was so worried about what people would say when he missed. But what he was interested in was making progress throughout the game, learning from the miss, right?

If you're learning, you're not losing. And it's something that so many of you have to get over in your life. I think the most important thing you say is progress, growth, and expansion. Progress, growth, and expansion. PGE. And if I'm doing those things, I'm cool. And I could tell you where I am today in my life, whether, you know, I'd love to be further along in different areas, clearly, but it's because I've been obsessed with progress, not perfection.

I've been obsessed with growth. How can I learn? What can I read? Who can I get around? Who's got the directions? In this case, what podcast should you be listening to? I think it's this one, right? How do I expand? What do I learn from this setback? How do I reframe and reshape this experience so that it serves me? you know, there's been huge failures in my life. And I'd like to tell you, I wouldn't take any of them back. I'm sure there's a couple business. I wish I would have done differently. But you know what?

I learned the lesson. I'm not going to do it again. I didn't go into this thinking it was going to be perfect. I'm under no illusion that life is easy. I actually believe usually if life is going really, really easy, you're probably not making progress. you're probably not growing. You're probably not expanding.

And it's sort of like that water that stagnates. It feels pretty good for a while because you know where it is. And it's calm, right? And it's not a lot of loss. They're not running over the rivers of rocks of life. But then slowly but surely those people that you think have those lives that are so cool because nothing's happening, that life starts to collect stuff it doesn't want. It starts to stink.

It starts to not look so good. And I think the lives that are lived the best are willing to not be in total control of everything all the time. They're willing to live as a learner. They're willing to make mistakes. They don't take themselves too seriously. I really believe that perfection thing is an ego thing. You're obsessed with what people think about you. And it's your obsession with what other people think about you that will ultimately cost you your dream.

It's this obsession with what people are going to think. It'll cost you your dreams. It'll cost you your destiny. Whereas if you could just get to the point where you make mistakes, learn from them, and actually, and sometimes laugh at them. I've done so many stupid things and said so many stupid things in my life that it's actually kind of laughable sometimes. But I've said a lot of good things, and I've had a lot of wins too.

And I've helped a lot of people. I want to give myself a little bit of grace because I'm human. I don't take myself that seriously. This is really, we're all playing with house money here. If you're listening to this, more than likely, you live in a part of the world where you can make an impact on your own destiny. If you're listening to this more than likely, more than likely, most of you could get access to medical care if you needed it. More than likely most of you had a meal today.

Not everybody. And if you're not one of those people that has those things, I hope in any way, shape, or form my work will help you get to that baseline level. Because I have met a lot of you that have come to events as I'm living in my car right now. I'm sacrificing everything. And I understand that. I learned recently when I was a little boy that we were on welfare. I didn't even know that as a little boy.

And so I pray for you that that situation changes. And I can tell you how it's going to change. Progress, not perfection. You growing and learning and getting better, not just some destination. and you focused on expansion. I can promise you that and not being stagnant. That's how it'll change. You know, the thing on this destination thing is, too,

because I've hit a lot of the destinations that I have, I'll just tell you what happens when you get there. A healthy person has already thrown out the next one. And sometimes I've seen people get to their destination, and it's not all it's cracked up to be. And they're some of the saddest people in the world. I mean it. People have told me, man, once I make a million dollars,

then blah, blah, blah. And I've seen them get there. And then when they get there, if they don't have another destination because they weren't into growth, I could tell you that the arrival is not what they would think it is. And when they get there, they're actually disappointed. And I've watched a lot of people get to that income or that destination or that house or that whatever. And then they get stagnant. And everything they thought it was going to be, it wasn't.

Now, here's what is even better than you think. getting to that destination and then still growing and not being stagnant. And maybe it moves where your growth isn't financial anymore, but it's spiritual or physical. Maybe you got there and you sacrificed a little bit of your health to get there. And so now you've got that financial goal. You know, now you've got this thing that you're obsessed with doing in your body or in your faith. But if you get stagnant when you get to a destination, it's a very sad thing. Because you did all the work, you're like, this is what it was.

This wasn't worth it. And so what is worth it, more than you can imagine is making your dreams come true, but being in a constant flow state of dreams. He doesn't always have to be more money or more stuff. In fact, it can never be money or stuff. It could be how much you're going to give. It could be your faith. It could be all kinds of different things.

But something that will disappoint you tremendously is getting to a destination and then having nowhere to go from there. Because guess what? You have to bring you with you. I remember my first big dream was to have a nice home that I could pay off. I remember my dad telling me, hey, Eddie, that's great. But just remember this. When you get to that mansion, you got to bring you with you.

And if the you bring with you when you get there, this is me talking now, if the you bring with you when you get there, isn't someone who's expanding, isn't someone who's making progress, isn't someone who's still growing in some area, you'll be miserable with that person. I believe a life of misery is one that's got no progress, no growth, and no expansion, no matter what the destination is. So you've got to have some area in your life that's making progress, growing and expanding in order to stay happy. Again, it doesn't have to be money. In fact, for most of you, it won't be money.

It'll be in your faith, in your spirituality, in your physicality, in your growing, in your contribution. It'll be in those areas. But I can tell you this. Making your dreams come true with no growth, with no progress, with no expansion is very underwhelming. Here's the good news. If you make your destinations in your life, but you have somewhere to make progress from there in an area, growth in an area, expansion area,

it's a million times better than you think it is. I can tell you that. The cool thing about making your dreams come true isn't even the reason you want your dream. The truth of the matter is it'll be all the dreams you make come true that you don't even know you're going to make come true from people that you love. Some of them may not even be born yet.

I didn't know that I'd make the dreams come true of certain family members of mine. why my first dream was about me. It was about me. I was young. And when I got there, that was cool. But the things I've been able to do for friends and family that I never dreamed of, that they never dreamed of when I did it. Heck, most of them didn't think I was able to do it in the first place. But being able to do those things for the people you love and care about, some of them haven't even been born yet. Some of the people's dreams you will make come true have not even been born yet. And someday, 20, 30 years from now, after you've made all these big dreams come true and you keep expanding. and making progress and growing, you'll make the dreams come true people that haven't even been born right now. That's when you go, God is awesome. There's a harvest that I'm reaping when I'm

planted all those seeds back in the day. And I can just tell you that. You plant enough seeds. There's a harvest. But the harvest will trip you out. The harvest is not what you think it's going to be. That harvest usually blesses other people in ways you can't even imagine. The key thing is that while you're harvesting, you're still planting some type of seeds in some area of your life so that there's abundant harvest still coming. But those of you that have the blessings of the things, you're playing with house money. You're playing with house money.

This is all a great, beautiful game that you can win if you just don't take it all too seriously, right? What matters most in your life is inside how you feel. If you're a person of faith, living by whatever that means for you and go into the place you want to go someday, that's what matters the most. And that's what is progress.

I can promise you no matter what, your faith is, you guys know that I'm a Christian, but whatever your faith is, I can promise you it's not predicated on you being perfect. I can promise you that's an overriding message, as a matter of fact, in your faith, is that you don't have to be perfect and you won't be. I can tell you that the idea is to grow in your life and to expand, but someday you could be at that destination. And it's certainly not to be stagnant. It's to expand and to give and to contribute and to help. And when you're feeling the most helpless, get the most helpful. I can promise you that if you get the most helpful, there's a huge, huge upside for you in your

life. And so today, reevaluate all of these things and give yourself credit and make sure people know, pardon my progress. I'm just getting better. I'm just growing. I'm just expanding. I'm just learning. And you know what? You're not going to stop me. No setback. No, nothing's going to stop me from getting back up and growing again and learning again and expanding again. Nothing's going to stop me from doing that. And if you can stay in motion that way, like that running river, and you never completely get stagnant, not for long periods of time, eventually you're going to like where that river flows. You're going to like where it ends up. I know that it ends up in a beautiful place because the beauty isn't even where it lands because it's always going to keep moving.

The beauty is in the ride. The beauty is that ride down the river. It's just awesome. And I can tell you that I've just become addicted to that ride. And if you'll go on that journey, if you'll have those thoughts, if that starts to dominate your mindset and this matter so deeply, all of a sudden the criticisms kind of fade away. Are they really doing that much themselves? Really? You never thought you're going to be perfect anyway.

And I can promise you this. When you do have that big success someday, the noise that thunder makes when you win drowns out these critics, these goofies. few mistakes you made, these setbacks. The truth is that when I think about it, I can remember all of my setbacks. I can't really painful times. Like the time I tried to pull $20 out of an ATM and it wouldn't give me the money out because I didn't have $20 in there. Time I had to beg for gas. The time my electricity has been turned off multiple times. Cars repossessed. I had the water turned off. I've had all kinds of setbacks. I've lost houses. You know, I had my cell phone. turned off all early in my life. But I can tell you, once you win, you don't spend a lot of time

thinking about that. Now, if someone asks me or I'm doing a podcast, I can go back there. But once you win, that kind of gets erased. Your day-to-day mindsets about your day-to-day life then and the things you're doing then. So what I guess I'm saying is this two will pass one way or the other. I just want you to have a victory for all the pain you're going through. You should be getting something for your pain. You should be getting something for these difficulties. You should be getting something for these critics. Let them underestimate you. They underestimate you at their own peril. And someday they'll tell you, oh, I knew you were going to do it. I just believed in you from the beginning and you'll know better. And you can just give them grace and smile back at them.

Tell them, hey, here's the keys to the lakehouse. Go enjoy it if you choose to. Anyway, you'll give to their favorite charity. That's what you'll do because you're a good person. Before we start the interview with my next guest, just want to remind you all that you can subscribe to the show on YouTube or follow the show on Apple or Spotify. We have all the links in our show notes. You'll never miss an episode that way. Now on with the show. Welcome back to Max Out with Ed Milette. This man to my left, I think is one of the most inspiring people on planet Earth today. Thank you. And an unbelievable public speaker for the record that you're going to hear about in a minute. But this is Nick San Antonio. And as you can tell, Nick and I have been friends now for a while, but Nick has a story to tell, as you can tell, it's probably different than anyone you've ever heard before.

And so I'm excited to have you here today, brother. I'm grateful for the opportunity, brother. You know how much I've wanted you here, and we've been connecting through social media for a while, and I consider you a friend. I appreciate that. And I'm so excited that I'm going to help even get you further exposure to the world. I'm excited. I am too, brother. And so they need to know more about you.

So I'm curious, you did sort of get into this sort of, you know, you said that was the hardest time of your life was middle school and high school, at least the beginning of high school. Did you kind of go into a little bit of a depression, sort of down on yourself? And then if you did, how'd you get out of it? Yeah, so middle school, high school,

I was at an all time low for me, you know, and my big question was why. You know, I realized I was different and I realized some of the negativity of kids staring at me. I was just like, why? You know, there's billions of people, why do I have to be on this earth with no legs in one arm?

These kids don't know what I'm going through. Like, why? I was pissed off, you know, the universe, God, whatever may be, I was just pissed off that I was in a situation. And when I got into high school, I realized, you know, that I was in the slump. And I realized that, you know, confidence is a skill. It's not just something that you wake up with. And that's what I thought. When I thought in middle school and high school, I was like, well, I guess I'm just not born with confidence.

You know, I thought you either had it or you didn't, but to show people that's a skill and you gradually work on it. So I need to work on myself. And I'm lucky that I realize that the only person that's going to make a drastic change in your life, you know, physically. mentally, emotionally, spiritually like you were talking about is you. You know, you have to take control of yourself. And I realized, I was like, man, like one choice. You have one choice. I can either look at all the negative I have in my life and focus on that, which won't propel me.

It will dig me into a hole or I can focus on all the good and all I'm capable of doing and that will elevate me. So when I was freshman year, it was funny, my best friend, we're still best friends to this day. And all my wrestler best friends are, you know, we're still best friends. But he was a bowler. And in my high school, you know, I was like, man, if I could be part of a team, you know, just like a group something, a support system, I'll feel better about myself. It'll be labeled as, you know, an athlete, if it's a bowler, whatever it may be.

You know, I'm an athlete. Nick's an athlete. So I, that fired me up. So I remember our varsity team was super good and our JV bowling team was undefeated until I joined the team. And I joined the JV team. And I remember, dude, I totally remember they didn't even have the correct like jersey for me. I had an older jersey. So like, it's me.

And like, people are like, how was this kid going to bowl? And I was just like throwing a ball down the lane. And I realized that I wanted much more, that it just, it wasn't challenging me enough. And I wanted something more physical. And so I got into my sophomore year and all my best friends. So that best friend wrestled his younger years and like Matt Rats when he was younger. And so sophomore year, they all were on the wrestling team. They all were like all stud wrestlers for my high school.

My older brother was a wrestler for that same high school, but I never got to go to high school with them. So like the coaches knew me. They knew your family. And so I was like, man, I thought wrestlers were the coolest thing, you know, the hardest physical sport, like physically and mentally, I want to be a wrestler. So at the time, this arm was about five inches longer than it is now. And my bone was growing faster than my skin. So it was like your finger, but super pointy.

So I couldn't really touch it on things. It was super sensitive. And painful, too, right? Yes, painful. So I used to tuck it because if I would have hit my arm hard enough, my bone when it came through. That's how, like, yeah, sorry, but that's how, like, you know, light it is. And so I made that decision to myself, I said, if I could become a wrestler, you know, If I could be with my friends, you know, just get after it in the room, you know,

it would make me feel so much better about myself and just lift me up. And so I came home one day and I said, mom and dad, I want to be a wrestler. And I remember I waited for my dad to be home. Yeah. And my parents supported me in everything and anything throughout my life, you know, Nick, as long as you're happy, you know, we want you to do it. But this was a little bit different. I said, mom and dad, I want to be a wrestler.

My mom's like, oh, my God, Nick, you know, wrestling is the most physical sport. If you're out there, you hit your arm. And I was like, I was a 17, 18-year-old kid. I looked at him, I said, can we cut it off? Oh my gosh, bro. And they were like, what? And I'm like, can we take care of this? Like, it's not helping.

And it took me a couple hours, but I persuaded my parents to schedule an amputation. So we found the best doctor, and they basically lasered five inches of my arm off and did a skin graft, so they pulled extra skin and pulled it over my bone so I'd have padding. And I always tell people, the only little mountain,

the only little challenge that I saw, that was stopping me from wrestling was the fact that my arm hurt. It wasn't the fact that I was born with no legs of my arm because I knew that my hard work and dedication, if I worked harder than the able body, it would make up for my lack of limbs. If I put the work and work my butt off, that I would, this wouldn't matter, you know?

It wouldn't matter. So I made that decision and so my sophomore year, I always say I was the happiest kid to cut his arm off. Like I was just- Come on, bro. Yeah, so we amputated my arm my sophomore year and remember I love food, we're Italian, and I missed Halloween that.

that year because I was I was in a cast I had like you know 17 stitches of my arm and I remember going back to school and I was so happy like I said happiest kid just cut his arm off and people like dude what did you just do yeah and I'm like oh I amputated my arm I'm gonna be a wrestler and it was the same old it was the same cycle it was people dude you can't wrestle you know it was dude how are you gonna be a wrestler you have no legs of one arm like dude let's be real right you know the outside noise the naysays the haters and I looked I said you're right I'm not gonna become a wrestler I'm gonna become a varsity wrestler and and you know

So I think from the earliest of ages, from, you know, my parents telling me what the doctors told me and all this, I always carried a little bit of chip on my shoulder to show people what I'm truly capable of doing. Bro, can we just stop for a second here? We can stop. To go wrestle. So there's all these, by the way, a lot of you are parents or you're a young athlete watching this, you go, man, I'm wrestling, man, it's so hard to cut weight.

Or I got to go to the gym, or, man, I got to miss my party on the weekend to go to practice. This guy cut his arm off to go wrestle, right? And by the way, that's going into it knowing I don't actually have every other thing going for me to go dominate in the sport. It's actually after bowling, which by the way, I would love to see you bowl. That to me is like the coolest visual in the world. But the fact that you go for bowling just to belong to a team, they're like, you know what, screw it. I'm going to a next standard, a next level. I want to go wrestle.

Then to have your parents kind of still back it, though, man, and do you go to that extreme? Like, what are you willing to do to chase your dream? This guy's willing to cut his arm off, right? Part of it. I mean, what are you willing to do to chase your dream? What's the sacrifice you're willing to make? And how's it compared to that? Right?

And with no guarantee he makes a team. And then to up the ante go, you're right, I'm not going to wrestle. I'm going to varsity wrestle. I don't know this, by the way. Did that actually happen? So my junior year, I remember getting in the room and I said to my buddies, because most of my buddies, they're all my buddies now, you know?

And I was like, beat me up. I said, beat me up, slay my face in the mat as hard as you can. Do whatever you need to do. Because if you hold back on me, I'm not going to know how to become the best wrestler so I could possibly be. And that's the same thing for my parents. If my parents held back and gave me everything, you know, I wouldn't be here.

I wouldn't have the mindset I have, I wouldn't be the man I am today if people held back on me. So that was my first thing, my message to everyone, yo, beat me up, like don't feel bad. Like, I'm here, I'm here for me, like beat me up. So my junior year, what I was doing was basically just trying to figure out

where my strengths were, like what I was good at. And with wrestling, if you go to your back, if you both your shoulder blades touch, it's a pin at six points, and that's the most amount of points you can give up. So I knew that, that you know I needed to work on staying off my back. You know, even if I couldn't win,

if they could tech fall me and get, you know, a lesser amount of points in a pin, I'm winning. So my junior year, I was like, like I said, I was like one in 20, and but my coach threw me out for a forfeit win. To get my varsity jacket. And I came off, I was like, I don't want it. You know, I never even got my varsity jacket.

I never got it and I, because to me, I didn't earn it, you know, it was given to me and I didn't want to wear something that, you know, it was just given to me. So my junior year got my butt kicked, big learning experience. In between the summer of junior year and senior year, I kind of got in the weight room a little bit, not too much. But my senior year, I came out as Central Regional's 106-pound varsity wrestler from my high school.

Come on, dude. Come on. And, you know, like I said, we talk about moments of confirmation, moments of reassurance. It was just like, this is what you're, you know, regardless of, you know, how I got to 106-pound varsity wrestler, it was, you know, I stuck through the journey and I made it. So at that point, I'm still trying to find my why. You know, Nick's confidence is, you know, I got a little bit. You know, I'm part of the wrestling.

I'm hanging with the wrestlers. I'm a senior wrestler. You know, I'm a varsity wrestler. But I would go out and there would be gymnasiums packed to watch me wrestle. There would be standing ovations when I lost and I was, I hated it. I was like, why are you clapping for me if I just got my butt kick? You know, I did give it my all, you know, I always gave it my all, but why are you clapping for me? You're not supposed to applaud losing.

I'm a competitor. And I came off the mat one day. And this lady came up to me and she was crying. And I'm like, oh my God, you know, what did I do wrong? Yeah. And she said, Nick, I want to thank you. And I said, for what? You know, 17, 18 year old kid?

What? And she said, my son or daughter never wanted to do a sport. My son or daughter never wanted to do an extracurricular activity. They want to try all these things. They saw you on the mat and they're like, oh my God, I want to try this, mom, I want to try that. And that was my quantum moment of I was just trying to live my life to the fullest. I was trying to find my purpose and I was motivating and passively.

I was motivating a changing. lives passively on the sideline. Imagine how many people I can change for the better, how many perspectives I can change for the better and motivate people if I focus my energy and helping people. And that's when I realized that I, boom, here's your, here's your why, Nick. You are an example. You are an example. You know, like you accepted this life before you even were in here and you are here to be an example for those that think they don't can't. A lantern, a lantern for others to spread light. Dude, you are that. And I told everybody when we started, you would inspire. I'm trying right now not to tackle you myself because I'm so freaking fired up and I'm

afraid you might rustle me back to the ground. I don't want to be pinned. But I'll be honest with you brother. Like there's so much here. Usually in interviews I want to jump in an ad but this is too good. And so. Thank you. Hey y'all. It's Kelly Clarkson with Wayfair. Ever order furniture online and wonder what if? Like what if it doesn't hold up? That sofa was four days old. You should have ordered from Wayfair. With Wayfair, there's no what if. Just style you can trust. Visit wayfair.ca. Wayfair, every style, every home.