Transcription
It's supposed to be all right. If it wasn't hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.
What the hell does fair have to do with it? I got a big news flash for you, Tammy. Life isn't fair. You're going to have to scrape and claw for everything you want, just like the rest of us. But you haven't done one single thing to make it better. You know, you can't just and moan and expect to change.
You're going to lose sleep. You'll doubt whether it'll work. You'll stress to make ends meet. You won't finish your to-do list. You'll wonder whether you made the right call and have no way to know. This is what hard feels like. And that's okay. Everything worth doing is hard. And the more worth doing it is, the harder it is, the greater the payoff, the greater the hardship. If it's hard, good. It means no one else will do it. More for you. Being bullied, coming from nothing, learning disability, messed up foundation. Life isn't fair at all. At all. So, what are you going to do about it? I knew that no one was coming back to help me. No one's going to miracle me to be somebody special. All my situations were on me now. It's solely on me. Look, look, that test might not go away. That pain might not go away. That fight might not go away. You You are a warrior. It's time for you not to back up, not to give up, not to give in. I know it's challenging. I know you've never gone through this much pain before. I know you've never been tested like this. I don't know if I can make it. Look, warrior, it's time to do what warriors do, baby.
Life isn't fair, is it? Doesn't appear to be very fair.
I don't even know if that's what we want. What are we built for?
Because, dude, the reality is is life is hard, man. We're going to be hit so many times with unexpected hardships. And these unexpected hardships for most people crumble them. And the reason they crumble them is because they lack the ability to operate during hard times. Man, I it it's tough duty to win the fair fights. And there's a lot of unfair fights out there. And why do I want to spend my time if I got 24 hours a day picking unfair fights when I'm busting my ass to win the fair ones?
Life can be kind of difficult. You don't really know sometimes where you're headed. Nobody kind of gives you any kind of guidance in this world.
One of the things that makes life more difficult for us is that we expect it to be easy.
Does demanding that it should be fair make you stronger? Does saying that that person started further ahead of you in any way benefit you? No. Because your actions are entirely independent from them.
No. is hard. Life is hard. And you could either fold or you could get after it.
Some of y'all you like, ET, I'm frustrated. I can't take another loss. Listen to me. Can you just survive today? I call it the rocky cut scene. And almost every successful person that I have ever encountered has gone through not a month or a year, but many years of doing work without reward where they have to do things that other people find boring and they have to sacrifice things that everyone finds interesting. and they basically sacrifice a season of other things that they would prefer to do to do stuff that they would not prefer to do because of the one thing they want most. Look, life is hard and there is suffering, but you're not alone. There is a way out and there is light out there and it is good. But you got to hang in there. You got to never give up and you got to remember that you are never out of the fight. This was a hard journey. I will not make any excuses for my failures out here because to do so would deprive me of my victories. Am I disappointed with the outcome? Yes. But am I content with myself? Absolutely.
It was never designed to be easy. Life was given for a reason. We exist for a reason. We were put on this earth to do great things. But the challenges, ladies and gentlemen, the challenges had to happen. They must happen. They will happen, but we must carry on. If I'm going to hurt like this, if I'm going to bleed like this, if I'm going to cry like this, let me cry because I'm in the best shape of my life. Let me cry because I'm conditioned to weather the uphill war. Let me cry because I'm building my relationship. I'm building my business. I'm building my legacy. Let me cry because it hurt, but there is a reward on the other end of my pain. Let me cry tears because I passed the test because I gave it. Everything I had. Everything in life comes with hardship. Make a decision. Will you choose the pain that hurts you or the pain that changes you? Consider this your wakeup call.
It was on me. And that's the thing you have to realize. Everything you do, you may have some support. You may not, but it's on you. You have to make the decision whether you want to be a badass or whether you want just want to be mediocre and everything's okay. But being a badass hurts real bad. Life isn't fair. We have to understand that. It shouldn't be fair. It's a trial ground. It's a testing ground. It's built to make us harder. It's built to make us as strong as we can, to test us, to drive us. So mentality is the only thing that gets us through life. But this is the thing though, it's easier said than done,
right?
On the other end of suffering is a life that many people don't know even exists. It's a beautiful world. We all live in this world where our brains are keeping us in this box. Outside that box, on the other edge of suffering, is a world that's endless of opportunity. But we are afraid to go outside that box because in that box is comfortable. outside that box, man, God gives you a shovel and he says, "Man, start digging." That's not fun.
I think part of the challenges in life is a lot of us are running around halfassing ourselves, half fooling ourselves, not full of ourselves, not studying ourselves enough, not holding oursel to task enough, not patting our own self on the back when we do get what we want enough, not cracking our own whip on our backside when we do get out of line, even though we knew better. I wish we were more full of ourselves that way. But understand this, life is hard. No matter who you are, there are bumps and hits and bruises along the way. And my advice is to prepare yourself. Success and achievement come from overcoming adversity. Life is hard. See, it's hard when when you uh 49 years old, been working on a job for 17 years, and they come in and tell you you're finished and give you one week severance pay, and you got to start all over again. It's hard when you're married and raising children and your children are crawling and your husband dies unexpectedly. It's hard handling just the tragedies of life. It's hard when you're working on something and and you put everything you have in it and it doesn't work. You lose your money and other people's money. It's hard. You will go through things and while you're going through them, you can't understand why it's happening to you. But after you go through it and you get back and you look at it and you say, "Oh, now I understand why I needed that lesson." At some juncture you will encounter pain. And the moment that you get acquainted with pain, you get acquainted with hardship. You realize that no matter what you do, no matter how much you study, no matter how much you plan, you will not be able to avoid a measure of pain. If you want this thing, I don't care what it is, then you're going to have to get acquainted with pain. The pain of discipline. The pain of growth, the pain of learning, the pain of giving, the pain of forgiving. It all hurts. So pick your pain. Choose your heart. But getting knocked down or getting knocked back doesn't mean you stop living. It doesn't mean you stop growing. It doesn't mean you don't carry on. But I dare you to go the hard way. I dare you to go down that path that many refuse to go. I dare you to show up and show the world that you have something that is special and unique about you. I dare you to show the world something they ain't never seen before about you. I dare you to stand up. I dare you to breathe life into your purpose. I dare you to do it.
We used to look up in the sky and wonder at our place in the stars. I want to skip the flattery and the atta boys cuz I do know this. The sooner that we become less impressed with our life, with our accomplishments, with our career, with whatever that prospect is in front of us, the sooner we become less impressed and more involved with that and these things, the sooner we get a whole lot better at doing them. It's like we've forgotten who we are, don't we? Explorers, pioneers, not caretakers.
Now, why do you pursue things that scare you? Why seek the role that's hard?
Because it costs me something. Cuz it cost. It comes with a price. It's not really a risk unless you can lose the fight. I feel more alive in them. I have an experience in the making of them. I'm nervous every day I come to work. There are things you can get away with in this world and there are things you can't.
Life is not easy. It is not. Don't try to make it that way. Life's not fair. It never was. It isn't now and it won't ever be. Do not fall into the trap, the entitlement trap of feeling like you're a victim. You are not. Get over it and get on with it. And yes, most things are more rewarding when you break a sweat to get them.
I feel like when I nail a day and I knock and I know I did, I feel like yes, I get I I have a measure at the end of the day like you set out to do something. You prepared for it. You had intention and you did it. That gives me gratification. That makes me feel gives me significance. That gives me confidence. So be brave. Have courage. And when you do, you get stronger. You get more aware. You get more respectful of yourself and that which you fear. I want to talk about our opponent this afternoon. They're bigger, faster, stronger, more experienced, and on paper, they're just better. And they know it, too. But I want to tell you something that they don't know. They don't know your heart. What? Cuz heading out there is what I feel like I was born to do. And it excites me. Look, just because you can. Nah, come on. It's not a good enough reason to do something. even when it means having more. Be discerning. Choose it because you want it. Do it because you want to. It's on you. It's on you.
Yes, I have definitely lost too many of my friends. And it took me a little while to start getting pattern recognition on what what happens. And it's a very clear pattern. And once I kind of put that out there, I've now heard from many, many scores of people that, yep, that's what it feels like. And I think if you know what it's going to feel like, just like anything else, if you know what to expect, then it's easier to contend with. So, it's like a storm that is hitting you. You know, you lose someone, someone that you know dies, you are going to get put into a storm. And what's scary about it is it's it's an emotional storm, and you have no control over it. So, you're going to break down, start crying, you're going to remember bad things, good things. You're not going to be in control of your emotions, which is very difficult for adults because we're used to having some level of control over our emotions. So, for a period of time, you're going to get hit with waves of emotion that you have no control over and they're going to knock you off your feet and you're not going to be able to finish a sentence. You're going to it's it very difficult. But over time, that storm is going to fade a little bit. and those those waves are going to get weaker and and those waves still may come. So, I don't know if you've lost anyone that's close to you. There's going to be times where it's been a month since your friend died and you're going to be sitting there and you're going to hear a song or you're going to smell a burger that you you you once had with this individual and you're going to get overcome with those waves of emotion again and you might start crying right there. You might have this massive wave of emotion hit you and it'll and then it'll subside and over time the waves will become weaker and they'll become less frequent and and here's where people also get into trouble. They think that that means that they didn't care about that person and that's not true at all. It's just that your mind is processing it and it's okay. So that's what happens. You start off with these huge uncontrollable emotional storm. That storm will pass. That's number one. Just know that that storm is normal and it's going to pass. And then it's going to still hit you, but over time those waves of sadness and sorrow are going to get weaker and they're going to get less frequent. And that's okay. That's a good thing. Remember, but don't dwell. So, so you've got you look, you remember your friends. You honor your friends. You remember what they gave you, what they taught you, what you learned from them, what was great about them, what you missed about them. You remember all those things, but you don't dwell in the past and and dwell on those thoughts and dwell on the loss all the time because that's not healthy either and it's not not going to help you. It's not what your friend would want you to do anyways. I like the insight around when you are going through grief and then you stop the sense of guilt that comes through because you feel now somehow that you're doing a disservice to their memory like you didn't really care or something like that.
Yep. It helps to, you know, it helps to write about what what I've told people to do is write that person a letter and tell them what you loved about them, what you're going to miss about them, how you felt about them, what you regret. You write all that stuff in a letter, put in an envelope, bring it to their grave, and put it there. And and that will help you process as well. I mean, I've unfortunately or fortunately I've I've given a bunch of eulogies for friends that I've lost. And in the beginning, I didn't really recognize that that's a way of healing. But certainly writing down your emotions, your feelings, what you're going to miss, what you loved about them is very therapeutic and it's very good. And so that's another thing I recommend is you write that stuff down and and you you bring it to them. Why do I think people are drawn to advice telling them to do hard things? Because I think pe any person, any human realizes that if you want some kind of a good outcome, you're going to have to work hard for it. And if you and if you don't work hard for something, you're not going to get an outcome that's really worth much. Well, that is the thing that separates the achievements on the other side of it, right? If it was easy, everyone would do it. If it was e easy, everyone would achieve it. So, this is one of the things that I I try and rely on when training's been getting hard. So, I ruptured my Achilles a couple of years ago. That sucked. I wouldn't advise it as a as an injury generally.
Yeah. And it's like a random how people just do it, you know, getting out of their car or something. I was playing cricket during that during the rehab for that. It's pretty just uncomfortable. It's endless calf raises, right? Which not fun. And the discomfort that you feel and the the pain, the um fear of it rerupturing, which is the number one thing you don't want it to to have happen. The thing that I went back to in my mind was this is why I'm here. The discomfort that I was feeling, the um effort, the pain, the sweat. Thankfully, this is during COVID, so it meant that if I had to do a workout every single morning for half an hour on just my carbs, like what else are you doing? Right? There's a pandemic going on. Um, this is why you're here was the reminder. It's like, look, this is the reason why the rerupture rate is uh 5 to 10%. Because people don't want to do this thing. People don't want to do the thing because it hurts. Because it takes half an hour every single day for nearly 12 months. It's a full 12-month recovery. That's why this is why you're here. And I think that you're right. I think that the selection is people deep down know that picking up heavy things physically, psychologically, existentially, culturally is good for us. And I think that that's why it's attractive. I agree. Through no fault of anyone, the kid gets sick or the person gets sick. And no, there's nothing you can do about that. What you can take ownership though is how you respond to that situation. And so that's what you have to do. There's things that you can control. There's things you can't control. Now, I will tell you that human beings can control a lot more than they think they can. And often times it's pretty easy just to say, "Oh, that's not me. That's not on me." And I think that's that's the whole genesis of the idea of extreme ownership is most of the time or much of the time people say, "That's not my fault. There's nothing I can do about that." And more often than people think, there is something you can do about it. and you can and it is your fault. I had said something along the lines is of combat was sort of when I most felt alive and I wouldn't trade it for anything. And I also would say the worst days of my life were in war, losing my friends and war is horrible. And the way I responded to it and I asked him if he had anyone had had ever known anyone that had cancer and had come out the other side and he said yes. And I said often times those people say I wouldn't wish it on anybody but I'm glad it happened to me cuz it gave me such a better perspective about life and about value and about the fragility of life and all those things. And that's the way I feel about combat. I don't wish it on anybody but I wouldn't wouldn't give it up. I wouldn't trade it for anything. And so I think what you're talking about is a great way of looking at your past to say, "Oh, okay. Um, I had some hardships and I benefited from those." It's basically the same thing as saying, "Got bullied. Good. Now I know how to handle myself a little bit better. I didn't have a bunch of friends. Good. Now I feel more comfortable and I'm alone."
Do you have any advice to men that are getting older and becoming chronically aware of that?
Yeah, lift weights, do jiu-jitsu, go for runs, stretch out, eat good, stop drinking. It's pretty straightforward. If you don't use it, you're you're going to lose it. Every day that you don't do work, you're going backwards. And it and it definitely will hurt you and it'll show up. You can't get away with what you got away with when you were 23. You It doesn't work. You You have to You have to stay ahead of it. when you're watching TV or you're, you know, looking at Instagram or you're, you know, going out for dinner on a date and you go to a movie. I'm not doing that. I'm reading a book. I'm getting ready for a podcast. I'm writing something. I'm preparing for something. I'm talking to a client. I'm designing something. I'm thinking about a new supplement. Like it's just a guy asked me the other day, are you working more now than you were when you were in the SEAL teams? And the answer is 100% yes. I am working harder now. As I've said since day one, it's motivation is a feeling that comes and goes. And it doesn't matter whether it's there or not. Discipline is infinitely more important. So no matter how you feel, get up and do what you're supposed to do. That's it. And that's discipline. It's not motivation. If you only did what you were supposed to do when you were motivated to do it, that's leaving it to chance. But if you're disciplined, you go do what you're supposed to do. That's the way it works. Discipline equals freedom. That's it. I mean, if you have the discipline to get up and get the things done, you know, the weekend where you really only had two things to do for the weekend, whatever it was, you had to write this thing and you had to answer this other thing. and on Friday you're like, I'll do it tomorrow and on Saturday like I'll do it and it's basically hanging over your head the whole weekend. Whereas if you just done Friday afternoon, the whole weekend would have been a lot better. So just do the thing. But you can't just say it's going to happen overnight because it doesn't happen overnight. This journey that you are on, ladies and gentlemen, is a powerful thing. The path that you have chosen was never designed to be easy. Some people want it easy. But I dare you to go the hard way. I dare you to go down that path that many refuse to go. I dare you to show up and show the world that you have something that is special and unique about you. I dare you to show the world something they ain't never seen before about you. I dare you to stand up. I dare you to breathe life to your purpose. I dare you to do it. I dare you to be strong. I dare you to be a man. I dare you to be a woman. I dare you to be the one that they never even knew existed. All you got to do is just stand on what you do. Pain, passion, focus, faith. You put it together. You will be an unstoppable force. All you got to do is just go after the work. All you got to do is just live your life. All you got to do is understand that when you fail, that don't mean you stop. That means you learn, you grow, and you go about your business. Cuz that's all this life is about, ladies and gentlemen, is business. Business is not fair, but business must carry on. Life isn't fair, but life is a gift. Life is beautiful. All you got to do is live it. Accept the challenges, but don't give up. Embrace the suck and keep on fighting. Life is going to be hard. I assure you of that. But you don't stop. Every day you breathe is a chance for you to live. Every day that you breathe is a chance for you to make a difference. Every day that you breathe is a chance for you to stand up. Every day that you breathe is a chance for you to make a difference within yourself. Every day that you breathe is an opportunity for you to fight. Every day that you breathe is an opportunity for you to let the world know that you are about your business. Don't give up. Go for it. Live for it. Don't let no one tell you you're not good or you're not good enough. Why believe in something if you don't believe in you first? Why believe in other people that don't believe in you? Why depend on the opinions of others? You don't even have one about yourself. gives you the ammunition to do the most of yourself. Life every day you live life. Every day you breathe life. You are above the ground. You are walking the path. You are doing the things that are necessary to get you to the next level and beyond. That's what you have to do. You have to keep going. The moment you doubt, you step too far back and not enough forward, you lose. You will lose yourself because you have given up. You will lose yourself and you will never find your way back because you gave up too soon. You will lose yourself because you didn't think you had it anymore. Battles are meant to fight. You will fight each battle of your life. And some you will win and some you will lose. But if your heart is beating and your brain is functioning and your eyes are open, ladies and gentlemen, get out there and fight for your life. It's hard. Deal with it. is challenging. Deal with it. You don't think you got it. I say you do got it. I say you must have it. I say you will have it. I'm telling you right now, ladies and gentlemen, if you are not focused, you are never going to see the goodness and the greatness that you have within yourself. But greatness does not come overnight. Greatness requires work and hard work is how you get it. There's no time for being lazy. There's no time to say I'm sorry. There's no time to say I can't go any further. When you truly want to adapt and adapt, every situation requires some kind of attitude that you can endure it. Attitude adjustments are necessary. So when these things happen and when certain circumstances come in your life, you must continue to believe that hey can only last for so long and this too shall pass. Let the hard work begin. Let the testimony be the testimony. When you are tested, be the testimony. When you have been pushed back, push back even harder. When you feel that you can't carry on, feel within yourself that you are alive and you got a job to do. It is all business, never personal. Be productive. Be strong. Be powerful. hard work never quit. And from the bottom of my heart, ladies and gentlemen, conduct your business. And to all of you watching here, come close to the screen and listen. People don't have to like you. People don't have to love you. They don't even have to respect you. But when you look in the mirror, you better love what you see.
You better love what you see. Be uncomfortable. Get yourself in a situation when you feel a little bit about a challenge. You feeling something about being challenged. You're understanding that challenges are good for you. Challenges are going to make you better, going to make you stronger, going to push you through any adversity that you may face in life. But nobody's coming to save you. There's no night and shining armor. And the people that say they will, they don't really stick around for long. The reality is this. This whole life thing was never really meant to be about anyone else. You're kind of supposed to be the hero of this story. Even if you feel weak right now, even if you feel alone, you feel down, you feel like you can't do it, you can. And you will. All you have to do is show up. So, show up today.
You have the power to do more than you can ever begin to imagine. Don't underestimate yourself. You don't know enough about yourself to become a cynic. And so, you've got to challenge yourself to access that power that you have within you. You're more than a conqueror. I'm amazing. When you don't think I'm amazing, I love me. Even if you stop loving me, you can say the nastiest, meanest, evilst that you could ever conjure up. It will never change the way I feel about myself. It takes faith to jump off of the edge. It takes faith to step into your purpose. It takes faith to step into your destiny. It takes faith to pull away from everything that is familiar. To step into uncharted territory, to become the person you were born to be. It takes faith.
This is my time. This is my time. I'm bright enough. I'm bright enough. I'm old enough. I'm old enough. I'm young enough. I'm young enough. I've experienced enough. I've experienced enough. I'm wise enough. I'm wise enough. I understand. I understand. That I am enough. enough enough.