Do it Alone.

Oh, you think darkness is your ally. You merely adopted the dark. I was born in it. Molded by it. I didn't see the light until I was already a man. By then it was nothing to me but blinding. The shadows betray you. Because they belong to me. It's pushing the water and there's a jogger actually. Look at this. Wow. The Florida man right there for you, Blake. Jogging in the hurricane. I've trained 99% of my life alone. No one pat me on the back. I did all of the work alone. You had nobody anyway, mother f***er. Look around you. There was no f***ing team. It was you. There was no weight loss programmer. Mom and dad waking you up saying you can do it. You can be better. Trying to build belief. You built belief when you had nothing. Rock bottom. I'm gonna stop this thing. No. You gotta prove it. Prove what? I'm not a mistake. When you're built different than everybody else and you have this desire for more and this desire for achievement and this desire to win everybody else looks at you like you're f***ed up. In the end I don't care whether you love me or you hate me just as long as I win. This is my life, man. Do you know how hard I worked to get here? I built this s***. Me. Brick by brick. I fought for it. Because no one gave it to me. Because it was just me. Me alone in the gym. Me alone in the mirror. Me alone in my head. No one did it for me. I worked for it and I'm never gonna let someone else take that from me. Listen up. Today isn't just another day. It's a chance to break limits. Stop waiting for permission. Stop second-guessing yourself. The opportunity is right in front of you. Take it. Own it. And don't look back. Because legends are built one bold move at a time. Do what no one else does. Run 3 o'clock in the morning because no one else is running 3 o'clock in the morning. If they're training 3 hours, you train 4 hours. You train when the gym is closed. You know, whenever the gym is closed and you're already trained, you train again. You have to do what no one else is doing. You know, when they're sleeping, you're running. You're working out. And that means the harder it is, the bigger the dragon, the more epic the story, and by consequence, the more epic the hero. If you pan it down here, you see it's about 3 o'clock in the morning and there's not a car or a person in sight. People want to know where I find my strength at, where I get my strength. I get it from a lot of places, but right now, this morning, I'm getting it from there's not a ************ that's up, there's not a car, there's not a person. Everybody's in their bed, sleep, dreading that it's a Monday, hate it's a Monday, and I'm loving it. I'm loving that. Where everybody's getting weaker, I'm getting stronger. There are certain good things about being alone. You have time to do the things you want to do, like study and plan. The superpower of learning to be alone and enjoying it. Yeah. Well, I think it's critical, and I do think that this, these times where you just think about things, just be alone and think about things are so rare these days. And I think during those rare times is when you really get to understand what you actually believe or don't believe. You go higher, you go even more alone. Why? Because nobody is willing anymore to invest their energy in going higher because it's becoming more difficult. Along this way, the higher you want to go, the more likely you're going to walk alone. That's why this has helped me coming out here and being locked in an apartment on my own. Because there was no outsiders. It was isolation. It was visualization. It was motivation, and it was dedication. There was no nothing else going on in my life. You know what I mean? And you don't like people too, right? I mean, it's not that I don't like people. It's just that to get to the level, to get to the pinnacle, it needs to be like that. It needs to be no outsiders. It needs to be, you need to have your team and your focus, and that's it. I don't need friends. Believe in yourself. Don't fear failure. Dream big. Work hard. Stay positive. Enjoy the journey. There is a period in everybody's journey where they are so different because they've started to do new things that they no longer fit in with their old set of friends. But they're not sufficiently developed that they've gained their new set of friends. And they're unsure. Should I go back? Should I lean back into getting a bag in with the boys on a weekend? Is that the highest, you know, way that I can live my life passion forward? Because that's what everybody else does. And all of my friends are taking the piss. Oh, not drinking again. Too good for us, are we? Not going out again this week. Oh, okay. Well, like enjoy staying in home and reading. Nerd. So you're going to feel the pain of being ostracized from the group of friends that you used to have. But you're stuck in this messy middle where you haven't yet worked out who you are on the other side of this. And that lonely chapter that's in the middle is something that I would say almost nobody that I've ever met who has gone from a place where they are to a place where they want to be hasn't gone through. It is hard. It's hard when you're young to wake up in the off season at 6am to go train and work out knowing that all your friends are sleeping in and eating pancakes. But understand this. Life is hard. The only thing that you can do is win so big that all of them constantly compare themselves to you. And then you'll forget they exist. Success is the only revenge. It's not the best revenge. It's the only one. There's no other revenge. Like it feels so painful because you're like, you look around to see who can help you and then you're like, it's me again. 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 for years. 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. To be successful at anything, the truth is you don't have to be special. You just have to be what most people aren't. Consistent, determined and willing to work for it. No shortcuts. They say, oh, it's already okay here. Why you still want to move up there? The air is getting thinner over there. It's getting more hard to breathe. It's getting more dangerous. Whatever. So that means along the way to mastery, you walk the way alone. And if you think about the difference between winners and losers, winners define themselves by what they made happen and losers define themselves by what happened to them. I really don't have regrets. I am a person that says, you know, as soon as you look back in your history and you come up with something that you feel like you want to change, something else has to change. Disappointment to me, to win, you got to lose. To be successful, you got to have something that's not successful. To be happy, you got to have disappointment. So I think all of those things have evolved and happened to make me who I am and understand the benefits and the privileges I have for being who I am. Who am I? I found out through this path of life who is David Goggins. So going through all, I did it alone. There was no trophy on the wall, on the mantle. That trophy's in my brain. No one helped me get there. No one paid my bills. No one did shit for me. No one ran those miles, lost that weight. I suffered on my own and developed this man who said, it's who I am, man. It's important, man. Most people struggle their whole life to find out who they are. Struggle their whole life to find out what defines them, what they actually enjoy and what they don't. You start putting yourself in situations that suck, you'll find yourself. It's the only way to find yourself. And I promise you, every single person who wants to do something with their life and has done something with their life has gone through the exact chapter that you're going through and it's the lonely chapter. It's the chapter where you don't fit in with your own friends but you don't have the outcomes yet to fit into a new group of friends and you're doing this thing. You're consuming content on the internet. You're doing these free tutorials online to try and figure out how to set up a podcast and where do I host this thing? And you're going through this and you're like, is this even worth it because you have no signs of success, right? But if there's anything that you can take away from what we're saying right now is that the sign of success is the hate that you get along the way. And what you can't do is bend the knee to their hate and fit back into the conformity because it's comfortable and it's warm because like in the Matrix when Trinity opens the door when Neo's about to go take the red pill and he wants to get out of the car she says, Neo, you've been down that road and you know exactly where it leads and I know that's not where you want to be. And then he closes the door. Like right now this moment that you're going through is Trinity opening the door and being like, you could go back but then you'd have to remember exactly what the reason was that you decided not to go out to begin with just because you listen to this podcast and you consume this content and you're like, I could do more than this. Like because you are starting to live in some of that hell where you look in the mirror and you're like, I can do more. And you start to see the person that you could be and you're like, this does start to feel like hell. I wanted to read you a quote from 2013 that you said. I've lost my mind on this game, yeah? Like Vincent van Gogh. He dedicated his life to this and lost his mind in the process. That's happened to me. And that gold belt was around my waist. And my mother has a big mansion. My girlfriend has a different car for every day of the week. My kids, kids, I have everything they ever want. Then it will pay. And I'm happy I lost my mind. Can you just reflect and talk to me about how that makes you feel hearing that? You know, yeah. It's been some while. I've got it done. And I'm up here. I've been through it all, my friend. It's been a world ride for me. It's not been easy at times, but what a life. Last but not least, I want to thank me. I want to thank me for believing in me. I want to thank me for doing all this hard work. I want to thank me for having no days off. I want to thank me for never quitting. I want to thank me for trying to do more. You know, if you're going to create anything of value in this life, even if it's with other people, you're going to have to be willing to be on your own for a bit, to forage on your own, to take walks alone, and then return to people, to your tribe, so to speak, and share with them what you've learned or maybe even just show up with whatever energy shift has occurred while you were off. Everybody, when I was sleeping on the gym floor, right, like, you know, I was the underdog and everyone, you know, my clients were all like, oh, good for you. You know, you're going after your dream. They'd see my blanket and my pillow in the corner of the gym and they knew I was sleeping there. And it was evident, you know, I lived there. I did have a shower. I didn't have a shower to go to the YMCA. I didn't have a shower. And everybody was like pro-me and then people would come in and they'd sign off like, I'm going to support you, right? And then within nine months, I had hired people and I had a manager and I pulled up and I remember I walked in the lobby and all the same people were like, oh, boss man's here. Oh, you're not too good for us now, right? And I remember being so jarred by the experience and I was like, you guys rooted for me. And I was like, and now I did what you said you were rooting for me to do. And that was when I realized that people want you to do well but not better than them. There's no luck in this game. It may be a little bit of luck but the luck happens after you bust your *** and you put yourself in that lucky situation. Luck doesn't happen. You put yourself in that situation where luck might happen. And that's what people don't know. But to get there, luck ain't going to happen. You have to put yourself in that situation, man. It takes a lot of work. I don't care if you're tired. I don't care if you're sad. I don't care if you're sleepy. If it's raining, if the markets are crashing, if the sky is falling, if your girlfriend just broke up with you, you're going to get it done no matter what. This is the level of discipline that I'm expecting from you. You think you become a champion on the field? You don't. You become a champion when ain't nobody watching you. You're doing your own drills in your own way. You're doing what Coach tell you to do and you're doing your own stuff. When you said, I'm all in, were you really all in? Let me tell you what the cost of being all in is. Early mornings, late nights, being misunderstood, having very few friends, being your own cheerleader. Are you those things? People always talk about, man, I'm a hard worker. Everybody in this room is a hard worker. That's not going to separate you from anybody else. What are you working hard on? People always look for one thing for the other. Oh, you got to work smarter and not harder. No, you got to work smarter and you got to work harder. There's times where you can go without your friends, you can go without going out, you can go without other people around you. You have to separate yourself from the pack. You have to be willing to spend time with yourself. You have to be willing to start cutting things out of your nutritional program. Eat healthy. Get enough rest. Get enough sleep. All of these things come into play with finding your purpose. And it's almost sacrificing. You have to sacrifice. Greater the sacrifice, greater the reward. This is so true. And when you do these things, you'll start seeing that, okay, I used to do this. And when you go out and you don't do it anymore, it's very, very clear that you've made the right decision because your friends will still be doing that and you'll find yourself that you don't fit in with that crowd anymore. You just don't fit in. Nah, I got something to do. You'll start getting away from people that are negative. You only want to be around positive. You'll start not wasting your time on things that aren't productive. And you will start taking your time and energy and putting it into things that you enjoy doing that are productive for yourself. Admit it, you aren't like them. You're not even close. You may occasionally dress yourself up as one of them. Watch the same mindless television shows as they do. Maybe even eat the same fast food sometimes. But it seems that the more you try to fit in, the more you feel like an outsider. This isn't for the masses. This is for those who want to leave normal behind. Those who are in search of a new realm. It's a lonely journey. You're isolated. Those who used to keep pace with you will fall off. They'll see where their world ends and yours begins. Your ability to suffer, endure, outwork must be greater. You must be willing to extend yourself to the limit with no guarantee of success. Every day you must ask yourself, did I do enough? Stay hard. The biggest thing you have to do is shut off technology. You have to go dark. What I mean by that is you have to be quiet in your mind. Get away from people. We love being around people. We love talking. We love parties. We love all that. It's okay to be alone. It's also okay to be unhappy. It's okay to be unhappy sometimes, man. It's okay to say, you know what, man? I'm f***ed up. So you gotta go to the truth first. Who are you? Get really accountable and say, okay, who am I? What's the truth about me? Get to that dark place in your mind. Figure out. It may take months. It may take years. Figure out your purpose. Figure out what you want to be in life. And then from there, okay, I have my purpose. It may take a long time. No one knows their purpose because it's too loud. Find your purpose. From there, alright, you gotta start planning. People love the planning phase because it's very comfortable. Then from the planning phase you gotta go to execution. So the execution phase would be all hate because that's where the real work begins and that's when the failure happens and the failure and the failure. But, you know, that's kind of how you have to do it. People want to find their passion but you don't find it, you create it. And you create it by getting good at something. And to get good at stuff, you start by doing something you suck at. Then you get good. Then you like it. Then people ask how you found your passion. Answer. By starting when you sucked and not giving up. You fall into the trap of what is called Parkinson's Law. Now Parkinson's Law says that work expands to fill the time allotted for it. If you have two hours of work to do and eight hours of time, you will stretch that work over eight hours. Parkinson's Law also says that work contracts to fill the time allotted for it. If you have eight hours of work to do and because of an emergency you have to have it done in two hours, you will get it done in two hours. Highly effective people are always setting tight, stringent, disciplined deadlines on themselves so they get more work done in a short period of time rather than less work done in a long period of time. Does this make sense? If you committed the next 365 days of your life to the persistent pursuit of your potential and you were grinding 24-7 and you didn't cheat yourself, imagine what you would become. You would become a ruthless killer. You would become such a G that nobody would say, nah, this person ain't doing it. You'd be undeniable. 365 days, if you committed to that, you would win. But where do you go to? You wake up on a morning, it's cold, it's wet, it's dark, you've got no cartilage in your knee, it's warm on the couch, your missus says stay in bed, it's comfy, it's cozy, you've got work later on, you had an argument last night, you're slightly hungover. God, I know every mother******* ain't gonna do what I'm gonna do. So this is how you level up. That's how you level up. I know there's a whole bunch of people with that right there. That fires me up. That makes me happy what you just said. That brings joy to my life right there. Because I know there's so many people that have the ability and just refuse to get off that couch, refuse to study a few more hours, refuse to go deeper, to go further. And that's where I gain the advantage. It's so easy to be great nowadays my friend because most people are weak. Most people don't want to go to that extra mile. Most people don't want to find that extra because it sucks. It's miserable. It's lonely. You talk about that you were kind of lonely by yourself. I was the same way. And that used to hurt me growing up. Now I thrive in that. That's the only place to be. That's why when you think about the mentality of greatness, there are no breaks. I hate to tell people that. Because everybody wants it fast. To be great, Monday on top of Tuesday, Tuesday on top of Wednesday, Wednesday on top of Thursday, Thursday on top of Friday, Friday on top of Saturday, Saturday on top of Sunday. And start over. And true greatness is always evolving. It never stays the same. Your comfort zone will stay the same unless sometimes you're forced to come out of it. You will never touch a level of greatness until your comfort zone is disturbed. The mentality is what's going to make things happen. You know, it's having that mentality to never give up, keep pushing forward. People don't like to think. They like to ask. They don't have enough confidence in their decisions that they make on their own. The truth of the matter is, you really have to believe what you're doing is working. There was a kid who everyone underestimated. Too small, too quiet, too ordinary. But every day, while they laughed, he worked. In the gym, in the books, in the shadows. He knew one truth. Effort beats talent when talent doesn't try. Years later, they asked him how he did it. And he just smiled because they never saw the grind. It's the quiet hustle that makes the loudest impact. How loud do you want your success to be? My biggest fear in life is not reaching my full potential. And not being the greatest I can be. Because everyone has a choice in life. Everyone has a choice. So then this person up here or this person down here. Hey, look, let me guess. New year, new you, right? New year, new you. You've been saying that every year, but it's always new year, same you. You know, I just don't understand why you go every year remaining the same when the person that you are today has just been destroying your life. You're mentally killing yourself every year and you don't even realize it. I mean, it's time for you to look yourself in the mirror and make some change before it's too late. One day in the gym is basically imperceivable. Two days in the gym, you don't recognize any change whatsoever. A hundred days in the gym and you're almost a new person. Right? You've seen those before and after pictures. One day of playing guitar. One day of playing guitar you can barely play one chord. A hundred days of practicing guitar and you can play literally almost any song. People only root for people who don't need it. Like the amount of times when I was on my lonely path where I was too different from the friends that I had but not successful enough to be friends with the people that I wanted to be friends with. That's when you want people to root for you. That's when you want people to support you. Once you've already won, people are like, he's amazing, he's so good. But like, that's the time when you need it the least. And so you always have to be the person who roots for you before everyone else does. And it's usually a single clap in the auditorium for a very long period of time. It is a slow clap that's just you rooting for you. And that visual I think is one that you can kind of take. People struggle to do things alone. And the path of the exceptional person is one of an exception, which means that you are not with other people. Look at the past. Look at who you've become, the progress that you've made. And if you haven't made a lot of progress, just be happy at the fact that you're f***ing alive. Because you have the chance to make progress. And live in the present moment, here now, and use your time, energy, and attention, my friend, to pursue your goal. One of the most important things that I learned from my dad is that regardless of your circumstances, even if things are f***ed around you, you can change that by going to work. This one is so bad that I told the universe, excuse me, this is my destiny. I know it. And you know what? Because of that belief system, it happened. But you know what gives me strength? The fact that I was able to hear, squat, and go to the point where I couldn't do five more, and I got five more, and then got even five more. It was always five more. The fact that I could do that gave me so much strength in life. I'm in total respect and honor with the squat ref forever. It's my altar. It's what taught me how to get there. I used to care so much about what people thought of me when I was competing. I wanted to be the best, and I wanted everyone to know that I was the best. I had the biggest ego ever. Then I realized something, that it's not so healthy to think that way because you cannot please everyone. There are always going to be haters. And to the scale of the universe, for the small time that I'm here in this world, it's better that I spend it with people that I care about and who care about me. I will have a better return on my investment. So for the New Year's resolution, think about it. A small thing that can change your entire world. Time alone, again, will make you see, first of all, who God is, second of all, who you are, and the third thing, it lets you see what will fit you. What's suitable for your life. Where is your sweet spot. What works for you. Alright guys, so that's my tip. And that's it. So stay focused. Don't be afraid to be by yourself and spend time alone. Okay? The most important thing is the mentality. Self-talk positive. I think all the details depend on you. I am cold. I am emotionless. I am zen. At peace. Ready for war. Everyone is jealous of what you've got. No one is jealous of how you got it. People see the trophies but not the training ground. Everybody wants the view but no one wants the climb. Now I'm going to repeat something which a clergyman perhaps shouldn't say but nevertheless it's a fact and it will cure many of them. You are not going to get anywhere in this world. You are not going to get anywhere financially, spiritually, socially or otherwise until you get to that point where you don't give a damn about what other people think about you. My philosophy is why be normal when you can be the best. I don't want to be normal. I want to make the difference. So everything I do I want to make the difference because when I make the difference I'm the best. And that is not arrogance. That is confidence. Dedication. Hard work. Dedication. Hard work. I'm a one man army. One man army. The world can go against me. I'm still coming on top. I got God on my side. My mind is absolutely bulletproof. Solid as a rock. I am number one. Kobe Bryant was not interested in winning championships. He was obsessed. And obsession comes in the small details that nobody pays attention to. And I have a saying, right? Interested people watch obsessed people change the world. Then there's the athletes who train to win. They train every day, every session so that they win on match night. And then I remember saying to Adam's group there are just those very few players who train to dominate. They train so hard that winning is inevitable on race night. And Adam said, that clicked with me. I decided I was going to train to dominate. So he said, when I go into the Olympic final I know, I know I'm going to win. When you ask me, why do you do it? It's because there's a possibility that you can and that's enough. Like I think I can do this if I know I can be something. And so, why would I not? The best line I've ever heard in my life. Sometimes when you're in a dark place you think you've been buried but actually you've been planted. But here's what you should know about winning before you chase it. Winning's not loyal to you. It doesn't care about you. Winning doesn't care how sore you are. Winning doesn't care how much sleep you get. Winning doesn't care how hard you work at times. And sometimes a guy doesn't outwork you and he still wins. It isn't fair, man. Sometimes there is no justice. Winning requires all of you and then more and it promises you nothing. It's a mastermind of creating fear and doubt in your mind. It causes setback after setback. So the question is about winning. Are you willing to sprint when the distance is unknown? And why chase this thing called winning? Because the only thing that's guaranteed in life if you don't chase it, is losing. Since we're 11 years old, I always make pressure to me. Cristiano, you are the best player in the world. In my mind, I'm always thinking in that way. And I put a lot of pressure to myself. You have good sides when things go good, okay? But when the things go wrong, you feel that too because you make too much pressure to me. I make pressure to me. But I love that. I know to deal with that. I hate losing. I mean, it's not even a question. But I mean, I have to respect losing because losing is a part of winning. You know, you never just win. You got to lose to win. Losing is going to hurt. You know, to a point where you would look at how can I do things differently? How can I change? Before you can look at someone else, you got to look at yourself in the mirror because that's how things get started. Whatever I'm afraid to do, I do it. Anything I'm afraid of, I confront it. And that's my personality. Like right now, I'm scared to death. But as the fight gets closer, the less nervous I become because it's reality. And in reality, I'm invincible. Do not give up. Do not feel like you're tired. When you're tired, think of last year and think of that f****** record. Every time I get tired or I think I can't go no more, I think of that f****** record. We can make it. We got to believe. We got to be mentally strong. When we're tired, that's when we got to put our fundamentals together. That's when we got to be more focused. When we're tired, look across the field and see how tired they are. That should give you more effort. Be like, I'm going to beat it. I'm going to get fundamentally strong. Everybody's great when they're not tired. The champions is when they're tired, that's when the real champions come out. That's when that real dog come out.