Discipline.

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. If you pan over here, it's the same thing. 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 motherfucker that's up. There's not a car, there's not a person. Everybody's in their bed, asleep, dreading that it's a Monday. Hate it's a Monday, and I'm loving it. I'm loving it. Where everybody's getting weaker, I'm getting stronger. It's not about the running, the swimming, the push-ups, the sit-ups. It's about what those things do for your mentality. You're on the daggone couch. You get better by coming out here and getting the fuck after it every daggone day. Stay hard. It was 90s. That's what it was all about. Yeah. I don't care how good you are at anything. You don't have discipline. You ain't nobody. Right. Because you give up on the slightest struggle without discipline. 100%. Who fought in these wars, you have no idea how big of a deal this is to me. I was not always this strong guy you see. I went through a lot of hard times in my life to get here today. Suffering before your mind starts saying, we need self-talk. So what I tell myself is, I go back to the months and years of preparation to get to that day. And I'm telling myself, the 3.30 in the morning, I'm looking at my shoes and I want to go out there and run 30 miles. I have to in that second, in that moment of this self-talk of my mind saying, you got to find more, you got to find more. I once again calm down. Go back into my mind, in my cookie jar I call it. And I have to reflect back on the shit I did to get here. And that becomes my self-talk. Self-talk does not work unless it is real. Most of us lie to ourselves in the self-talk. It doesn't work. It has to be real. It has to be something that you've done to make it really work. Be the guy who embraces the ugly, the miserable. Be the guy who embraces hard work, the grind. Don't be afraid of being hurt. Don't be afraid of a sacrifice to some blood. Every morning, every day of our lives, we have choices to make. You have a choice to stay in bed, to say, forget it, I'm not going to work out today or forget it, I'm not going to work hard today. You always have a choice every single day of your life. A lot of times I'll be in a 200 mile run or something like that and I'm all jacked up. Body's broken, mind's broken, spirit's broken. I started to say, what if I can pull this off? When I first walked into the Navy SEAL recruiter's office, he looked at me and said, there's only been 35 African Americans in 70 years making it through. You know what I said to myself? What if I can be the 36th? It's the, what if I can pull off a fucking miracle? What if I can become someone that no one thinks I can be? And just me talking about that, I have hair growing up on my arms. Because it makes me just like, what if? There's nothing you're going to say, there's nothing you're going to fucking do that's going to outweigh anything I've already said to myself. You go, oh, that guy sucks, he's ugly, he's fat, he's full of shit. I've already said that, you know? The fear is never reaching your potential. That's it. That always falling short, always quitting before you're done, always procrastinating, always not doing the right thing. And then one day you're an old man. Yep. And you look back and go, God, I could have been great. Yep. I could have been great. I'll never forget one time, I was running by a graveyard. And I was fucking just trying to become, I was fat. And I ran by a graveyard, and I looked out there, and I have all these epiphanies, man. I have all these fucking moments of like, of, it's crazy, man, of just thought. Because I'm always by myself, I'm always in deep fucking thought about how to be better. And I look out there, I'm like, man, I wonder how many of you motherfuckers in there fucking just are so upset with how you lived your life. And fucking just regret how you lived it. And I'm running at 300 pound man thinking, man, don't fucking die like this, bro. Don't die like this. So people wonder where this shit comes from for me. It comes from such deep thought of trying to see what this is all about. What is this life all about? What am I all about? Why am I here? I had to find purpose in my suffering. It had a purpose. It had a fucking purpose. There's also a section of men who just feel alone, like myself, who felt like they have to hold things in, that they shouldn't share their emotions, that they don't lean on people, and that they should just carry stuff in, and they need to be X, Y, and Z to be good enough. So there's this balance of that. And you almost need to learn to, again, like I mentioned, the masculine and the feminine, being able to integrate that. I feel like a real man is confident and comfortable enough to embrace the feminine energy he has in him. If he's emotional, let it out. But also have that masculine side of it. Be like, I'm going to be emotional right now, but I'm still going to go and fuck straight up right now, you know? I'm still going to take charge of what I want with my life. I'm going to work fucking hard and be disciplined. But I'm going to accept that sometimes I'm going to break down, and it's going to be hard. I'm not saying that women break down, but there's more emotion over there, and allow it to feel it, and to ask for help, and to lean on people. And being able to balance those two, and not like yin and yang. I think that's what's missing personally. Right. You can be going as fast as possible in the wrong direction, and it actually takes you further away from the destination. This is something that a lot of people, I call it the manopause, which is mid-20s toward late-20s. A lot of guys, it seems like you had yours earlier, realize that a lot of the values that they hold, a lot of the things that previously they took a sense of self-worth from, that the world told them that they should value, they don't make them feel fulfilled anymore. And they go, oh fuck, I got toward the top of this mountain, and I realized that it was the wrong mountain that I climbed, and actually I was supposed to be on that one over there. And it's difficult, because in order to get to that one, you need to go back down this one that you've already climbed. You need to dispense with the stuff that you've got rid of. This is where I think introversion is such a cheat code. You're less at the mercy of other people's desires. Because even for me, I noticed that, the more frequently and the more for a sustained period of time I'm involved in certain patterns of behavior, oftentimes socially or just what I do in general, you just become locked in those patterns, and it becomes more difficult. You have more of a narrow perspective. The brain's malleable, it just gets programmed in that way, and you're just operating that way. So for me, a lot of the best insights that I've gotten are times when I'm completely, fully detached, and just enter this weird meditative flow state of just being so alone. What I've learned is that most of the sabotage in your life is self-induced. Hear me out, okay? Most of the sabotage that is self-induced in life is because you do not have the self-regulation to do that which you know you need to do. So you need to be able to ask yourself, right? You know you need to go to the gym. You know you need to start this business. You know you need to read this book, but you don't do it. Why? Why don't you do it? Not, oh, I didn't do it today. No, no, why didn't you do it? Why did you cave to the nonsensical bullshit and the perspective that you're above the grind, you're above the work, you're above the consistency? Because these are the things that are holding you back. We understand that consistency compounds. I've said this once, and I'll say it again. But why is it that you know what to do, but you don't do it? Don't just say, oh, because I'm lazy. No, no, that's not good enough. No, it's not that you're lazy. Something else is wrong. You need to be able to identify these things. And once you identify these things, you're able to tackle them effectively. It's because 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 going to let someone else take that from me. It's because... What bothers you about yourself? I just wish I just felt more comfortable in my own skin a lot of times. Because I feel like I would be able to be more effective as a person if I could just not toil in some of my own small self-worth issues or lack of confidence at times. I wish I could trust my instincts, that my instincts were better calibrated. So that I knew when I was... If I was doing okay and good stuff, then my insides told me, You're being okay. You don't have to worry.