The Game with Alex Hormozi - Why I Didn't Care When My Dad Said He Was Proud of Me ...and how you can be the person people love to talk to | Ep 111

Episode Date: March 7, 2019

Unconditional love, respect, and pride from a parent to a child is based on character, not on circumstance. Today, Alex (@AlexHormozi) shares a powerful story from Ben Horowitz about the importance of having friends who can be there for you during both good and bad times. He also discusses the power of believing in someone before you can see any results and the difficulty of being kind to people who are not nice to you.Welcome to The Game w/Alex Hormozi, hosted by entrepreneur, founder, investor, author, public speaker, and content creator Alex Hormozi. On this podcast you’ll hear how to get more customers, make more profit per customer, how to keep them longer, and the many failures and lessons Alex has learned on his path from $100M to $1B in net worth.Timestamps:(0:32) The value of unconditional support(1:47) Unconditional love and respect in relationships(5:40) The power of believing before you can see(7:17) Reflection on unconditional human relationshipsFollow Alex Hormozi’s Socials:LinkedIn | Instagram | Facebook | YouTube | Twitter | Acquisition

This one kind of came to me and I was feeling it. And it's really, really interesting. And I really want to share this with you because I think this is actually like a really powerful moment. So hopefully you allow this me to share this with you how to be an unconditional human and be someone whom others count on. And, you know, I wanted to start with a passage that I read where this is Ben of Horowitz, who's CEO of a company that they sold for like $1.6 billion.

It's like an amazing story. And he said, there's two types of friends in this world. You have the types of friends that you call when you have good news who are amazing and celebrate with you. And then you have the types of friends who you call when you have bad news, right? And ideally, you want, like, most times, like, either one of those things are amazingly valuable. Like, a lot of people, like, I don't have many people that I would call for good news because there's not a lot of people that I know that would really genuinely celebrate with me. They would genuinely want me to succeed. and so like that is rare in it of itself but if you find someone who has both that is someone who becomes

a mainstay in your life um and what made me start thinking about this was that i had so my father called me um we had a conversation earlier this morning and i love my dad um but he said you know i'm i'm really proud of you right of you know what you've accomplished and what was interesting for me was that i didn't actually feel any emotional response from that and so i started thinking about it. And I was thinking more. I was like, why do I have no emotion response to my dad saying that he's proud of me? And for those of you don't know, like, my dad wasn't a huge supporter of me making the initial changes in starting the gym and doing all that stuff because it made sense for him not to be because I was throwing away a life that was otherwise considered successful.

And so I think ultimately what it comes down to is like my mom, on the other hand, was supportive, eventually, like, much sooner. And I still, I feel very good about that. And I think the key piece to this is believing before you can see. And so in John 2029, and like, you don't need to be a Christian to just take the message from this. Is that, so Jesus is in this part of the Bible, he just come back from the dead. And, you know, some people have heard rumors about it. And, you know, Thomas's doubt, and he's like, I don't believe that no matter what.

Like, no one comes back from the dead, right? And so anyways, he's there. and he puts his fingers to the holes, it's like, oh my God, I can't believe that's you. And he says, and so Jesus responds to him and says, you know, you believe because you can see, but blessed are those who believe, who have not seen and yet still believe. And I think there's a ton of power in that that's taken outside of the, like, that's outside of just the whole faith component. But having the belief in something before you can see it within the context of a human relationship,

I think is one of the most powerful things you can give to someone. Because ultimately, when, if someone, if someone, if someone's, if someone, if someone's, if someone, someone comes up to me now who knew me, you know what I mean, and did not believe, and then says, I'm really proud of you, it doesn't have any power because, well, sure, you're proud of us now. Because, well, here we are. Like, it would make sense for you to be proud of us now. And so that would be a conditional reaction, right? That's a conditional reaction based on circumstance, right?

The power in the significance of a relationship, like, that really moves you and that ties you. And this is what I'm hoping maybe some person here does this for someone else, is that if you can believe in someone without condition, without circumstance, before it happens, that's, so like those of you are parents, like that's the time is when there is no fruit yet. You're planting the seeds, you're watering, but there's nothing there to be proud of yet. And yet you still are proud.

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Right. And so it's the concept of unconditional love, unconditional respect, one that's not talked about nearly as frequently or unconditional. pride from like a parent to a child, not from an egotistical standpoint, but like being proud of someone for who they are and not for what they have done, right? And that's the difference, because one of them is based on circumstances. The other one is based on character. It's based on who they are. Because of who you are, I am proud of who you are. I love you because you are my husband wife. I will respect you because you are my husband wife, not because of what you have done, but because of who I am and who I choose to be,

and I'm going to respect you despite that. Like, there's another verse that's kind of related to this where he says, we're just talking about being kind of people. The intention of this morning was not to be biblical. Like, I was just like, it's been on my mind. So he says, like, even tax collectors are nice to their friends. And so, like, again, it's circumstantial. So, like, if you have people who are nice to you,

of course you're nice back to them. The difficulty is being nice to people who are not nice to you. Right? The difficulty isn't believing in someone who most people would not believe it. It's in loving someone who is acting unlovable. It's giving respect to someone who is not respectable or acting in a way that is respectable. And so, like, I think that one of the most powerful things that you can do as a human being is to believe before you can see. And what happens is when you believe before you can see, the things that you believe come to fruition.

And so if you have employees that you want to see, like, radically transform, then you need to believe before you can see the result. Because if you are encouraging them in a, like, if you are, if you are only doing it based on circumstance in the beginning, then like, duh, like, it's great to say like, hey, you're a great sales guy after you're doing great sales. But it's believing in them before it happens, and that's where the power is. And that's why it's significant for someone to like receive, like for me, it means more to me when my mom says, like, I'm proud of you now because she was proud of me before it happened, right? Because she was like, I'm proud of my son for who he is for the effort that he's putting forward. Not because of what had happened, but because of who I am and who she chooses to be, right?

And contrary to that, and I'm not hating on my dad. I love my dad. But it made sense for him. That's the thing is it is logical to not do that. It is logical to not believe in someone or to tell someone like, I don't think this is a good idea. I think you were throwing something away, blah, blah, blah. It makes sense to do that.

But it is not the thing that drives a deep emotional time or bond or allow someone to reach a new level of achievement, transformation, whatever. So that was on my mind. morning and I hope you don't mind that I shared it with you I hope that you are all the type of friend that people want to call when they have good news because you can actually genuinely celebrate with them because you genuinely want them to succeed and you don't start comparing yourself to them or or being envious and on the flip side you're the type of person that people can call when

they have bad news because they know that you're not going to say I told you so I told you that was a bad idea but instead just be there to help and so I think all of that comes down to have being an unconditional human and not basing the actions of how you are talking to your employees, talking to your spouse, talking to your parents, talking to your kids, based on the circumstance, but based on the predetermined relationship that you already have and who you choose to be. So a little bit pie in the sky today, but that was something that was just on my mind because I got off the phone and I was like, you know what?

I think there's something to that that might be worth unraveling. So lots of love. Get you guys soon.