How To Move 10x Faster In Life - Alex Hormozi (4K)

1. 0:00 – 8:00

   Stop Caring About Other People’s Opinions

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Today, we're gonna go through as many of your lessons as we can-

   2. AHAlex Hormozi0:03

      Okay.

   3. CWChris Williamson0:03

      ... in about three hours, and we're gonna see what we can get through. First one, "A friendly reminder that in three generations everyone who knew us will be dead, including the people whose opinions stopped you from doing what you wanted all along. Imagine that someone you know achieves every dream and hits every goal they have. Years later, they get old and die. Two years after that. How much do you care? About as much as everyone else will if you accomplish your goals and dreams. Do it for you."

   4. AHAlex Hormozi0:30

      (sighs) So I think about death all the time because it's- it's probably the central theme. It's probably the thing that I think the most about, and I think that influences how I see time, and also how I think- how it- how it influences agency, like, what actions I'm willing to take despite the judgment of others. And so, a lot of times, and it might be because I have more insecurity than everyone, that I think, like, "Man, I wanna do this thing," and then I hear all these other voices of reasons why I shouldn't do it or why somebody else will say, like, "That's bad," or "You're bad," or, like, "That's wrong," whatever. And so I think I've had to come up with a lot of these devices to get around my own insecurities to take action despite those insecurities. And the biggest one that I think about is that it doesn't matter whether I achieve all of my goals or I don't achieve all of the goals. In three generations, I'll be forgotten, and the only people who were naysaying a- a- against me will also be dead. And so then it's like, just do it for me, and then when I wake up every day, there's only one voice I have to listen to.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:33

      But that means that you need to be able to work out what to do from first principles. You now no longer have societal norms or assistants or role models or archetypes or expectations, and that's also difficult in a different way.

   6. AHAlex Hormozi1:48

      (sighs) I think that the more you flex whatever that muscle is, of like independent thinking, the more it becomes the default way that you think. And then everyone else's actions just start looking more and more insane to you.

   7. CWChris Williamson2:01

      What like? What's an example of that that you can think of?

   8. AHAlex Hormozi2:03

      I mean, shoot, just the most basic ones of, like, living the life that you don't want, not wearing what you wanna wear, not dating who you wanna date, um, not living where you wanna live. Like, you're living at home, and you wanna move, and your parents say no, and you don't make the move. Or you're dating a girl because y- she's socially accepted, you know, by your friend group. She's safe, but, like, there's always some distance in between you, but you're like, "I don't wanna risk it," right? Or, like, you're in the- the job and every day you go there, and you're like, "I mean, it's okay." And the idea of just living an okay life just sounds so terrifying to me, that the freedom to fail over and over again is still more fulfilling to me. At least it feels like it's real than walking through kind of on autopilot. And so I think that's a lot of the choices that other people make that seem insane to me now but didn't ins- didn't seem insane to me a decade ago. You know what I mean? I think it's just, like, as you practice taking more agency, taking more responsibility for the decisions, then you just get better and better at it, and then it just seems more and more ridiculous. You're like, you're like, "I just can't quit my job." And you're like, "Why?" Like, no, physically, why? Like, why can't you quit your job? Like, (gasps) like, you know what I mean? They start hyperventilating, and it's like, "You could- could you move in with your parents? Could you move in with a friend? Could you split rent?" "I mean, I could, but, I mean, other people who are gonna die in 100 years would think what?" And one of my favorite ones is, um... And I say this all the time to Layla, like, whenever we're getting to some sort of, like, mini complaint. It's like, "You know if you zoom out far enough you can't see the Earth?" So we're talking about, like, "Oh, man, they're gonna mess up this order on this vendors," blah, blah, blah. I was like, "You know if you zoom out far enough you can't see the Earth?" It's just like- it just puts everything immediately into perspective of how ridiculous some of the things that we're concerned about are.

   9. CWChris Williamson3:46

      Shan Puri's got this thing where he says, "Don't follow what most people do because you don't want the results that most people get. The average person is obese, likely to be divorced, and has less than 1K in the bank. It feels safe to do what everyone else is doing, but it's actually a terrible decision."

   10. AHAlex Hormozi4:01

       It's like the best way to guarantee to not have the life that you want is to do what everyone else is doing. Unless you want what everyone else has with no one- which no one does. (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson4:11

       (laughs) Yeah, it's, um... Being able to think for yourself and- and treating it like a muscle, I think, is a smart way to consider it, because in the beginning it's really, really hard.

   12. AHAlex Hormozi4:21

       Totally.

   13. CWChris Williamson4:21

       You've been resting on societal norms and the way you've dealt with past trauma and your parents' expectations and what all of your friends do and what's accepted and all of this stuff for so long, that when it first comes to you needing to step on that muscle, it's like trying to move your ears. Like, all humans have got muscles that can-

   14. AHAlex Hormozi4:38

       Oh.

   15. CWChris Williamson4:38

       ... move their ears, but because no one works it as a child they just atrophy away.

   16. AHAlex Hormozi4:43

       For sure.

   17. CWChris Williamson4:44

       Uh, and this is the ear muscle of personal growth.

   18. AHAlex Hormozi4:53

       I think I had a lot of practice with it because I had a... So, like, a lot of people have many voices that they hear that they feel are judging them, right? They have their friends. They have their uncle. They have their siblings. They have their cousins, coworkers, whatever. I think I had just one voice that I heard really loudly, and I was try- I was- I was talking to one of our- one of our employees the other day, and I was trying to put it in perspective, younger guy. And I was like, "I... Imagine how much you care about your mother's opinion and your father's opinion and your sib- and all of those other people." I was like, "And now imagine that there's literally only one," because I had no siblings. I basically had no mother. I had just a father, and so, like, his approval was literally everything. And he disapproved of the path that I wanted to take in my life. And so I think a lot of these mental faculties or these little frameworks or these -isms just came from, like, "How can I combat this incredibly booming voice in the background?" Because, like, when I look at what I was doing at the time, like, I was a consultant. I, you know, I graduated in three years. I took the consulting job. I did all the things. But the craziest thing was that the moment that my father was most proud of me and he approved of my life the most was when I was the saddest-And so that's when I was like, "Maybe his approval isn't the right way to feel good about life." And so that, that started basically the six-month journey of, from when I decided that I wanted to change my life till when I changed it. And I think that, like, as you become more able or more potent or higher agency, that timeline between when you decide you wanna do something and when you actually do it just continues to compress, right? Like now if I wanna change something, I'm like, "Let's change it." Like done. I, like, I, we walk out of the things like, "We're never gonna do that podcast again," or, "I don't wanna talk to this person again," or whatever it is, right? Whereas before, it's like, "Okay, I have to, I have to sleep on it. I have to really think about it." And like, "How am I gonna s-" It's like, I, why do I care about how I'm gonna say it? This is what it is, done. And it's just like and that timeline is compressed, but the hardest one for me... Like the first one was by far the hardest and every one since then. The nice thing is that no matter how difficult your circumstance is, if you have, like the bigger the wall that you have to get through is, as soon as you get past that one big wall, you then can use that wall as the evidence for why you can jump over the next wall because that will be the biggest one. And so, like, after I did quit my job and left my house and, and left Baltimore and didn't tell my dad until I was across the country 'cause I was so afraid. Like, people think of me as like some big alpha whatever, dude. I was like, I was such... I was so afraid of my father's disapproval that I didn't tell him until I physically left the state. Like, like, I'm not, like... (laughs) Think about that. Like I wasn't even just one state over, I was like five states over and then I was like, "Hey, by the way, I'm going to California." And he was like, "Well, let's... Come over, we'll talk about it." And I was like, "I'm in Ohio."

   19. CWChris Williamson7:26

       Already in.

   20. AHAlex Hormozi7:27

       (laughs) Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson7:28

       Already gone.

   22. AHAlex Hormozi7:28

       And then he's, you know, then obviously he had a different reaction, right? But like, but then after that it was like, "What do I have to do now?" It's like, "Oh, I gotta, I gotta sell strangers." And I was like, "I told my dad I didn't want to do what he wanted. How hard could this be?" And so like it, it then becomes this one huge proof point. So the bigger the, the dragon is that you have to slay, the more evidence you have that you can slay the next dragon. And I think that is... If there's ever been a, a good point for why getting over the one first hard one is so hard is that it will then give you the reinforcement that you can do whatever you need to do next.

   23. CWChris Williamson7:59

       Yeah.

2. 8:00 – 15:28

   How To Have Difficult Conversations

   1. CWChris Williamson8:00

      The life you want is on the other side of a few hard conversations and you're living a life you hate because you're too afraid to have them.

   2. AHAlex Hormozi8:09

      I think about that a lot because like whenever I feel anxious or insecure or angry or sad, I'm like, "What conversation do I need to have that I'm not having?" And so then, and usually if I just think for not that long, I'm like, "This is the conversation I've been putting off." And then, you know, I'm not the, the, the, the poster child of mental health. And so, um, I'll just call myself a pansy for not having the conversation. And then, and then I just have it. And so again, I think it's like I need to have this conversation and the time between when I have it versus, or when I, when I know I need to have it, when I actually have it, just 'cause continues to compress. And if you've ever had like a, a breakup or a employee firing, one of the, or a quitting if you're an employee, like these things that you dread, I dunno if you notice it, but like the day you do it, the moment after you do it, I'm like, "How many other conversations can I have?"

   3. CWChris Williamson8:58

      (laughs)

   4. AHAlex Hormozi8:58

      Like I wanna be like... I'm like, "Who else do I need to talk to?"

   5. CWChris Williamson9:00

      You're on a killing spree.

   6. AHAlex Hormozi9:01

      Yeah, totally, 'cause the day-

   7. CWChris Williamson9:02

      Become a serial killer for awkward conversations.

   8. AHAlex Hormozi9:05

      When I... So, like the next series of hard conversations that I had after I, I left home was actually like years later. So I had, I had multiple partners in mul- I said I had a, I had a partner in one of my gyms. I had a partner in four other gyms. I had a, a partner in a chiro and dental marketing agency. And all of them relied on me to make money. And so all of their livelihoods were still dependent on me, but I was splitting everything and it was just, it was, it was horrible for me at the time. And so I remember when I, I ended up getting in a DUI and, you know, I talked to a, uh, a performance coach or whatever, and he was like, "Your stress and these conversations could literally kill you." He's like, "They almost did." So I, I got in a head-on collision at 60 miles an hour and I walked away. No injuries. Um, but it was like my wake-up call, but not to stop drinking. It was my wake-up call that I needed to have these conversations. And that's what I was avoiding when I was drinking. It wasn't the alcohol. It was, what were the things that I'm avoiding that I'm using alcohol to get away from? And so, um, the next day I had the first conversation with the first partner and it was horrible. But the moment I was done, I was like, "I gotta call the other guy." And I called the other one, I was like, "This is how it is." A- and, and the thing is, is I had this backstop of my death of like, "You almost just died because you wouldn't have this conversation." And so then it just gave me this courage to just be like, pfft, like and whatever the reaction was, I was like, "I'd rather be alive." I think that was it. And so it's, it's weird though because death has been this really recurring theme in my life that, like, the same thing happened when I was e-... Like the only thing that gave me enough balls to stand up to my dad, to be fair, from a distance from the car when I was driving halfway-

   9. CWChris Williamson10:41

      (laughs)

   10. AHAlex Hormozi10:41

       ... across the country. Like let's not make my, let's not make me into too big of a hero here. Um, was the idea that like I started thinking like every day I was like, "I hope I don't wake up." You know what I mean? Um, and that was the, that was, that was the thing where I was like, "This is a big enough problem that like if you don't wanna wake up, then..."

   11. CWChris Williamson10:58

       What have you got to lose?

   12. AHAlex Hormozi11:00

       Exactly. And that was it. And I was like, "I have nothing to lose." And that was when, that was when... I think in the last podcast we talked about this where it's like, if everybody who, who's like at the bottom and feels like they have nothing going for them, reframe that as, "I have nothing going for me, which also means that I have nothing to lose by taking action," it makes you a much more dangerous person. And I think that was the flip that I've had repeatedly shown to me in my life that allowed me to take the step that I was afraid to take.

   13. CWChris Williamson11:33

       Have I told you about the region beta paradox?

   14. AHAlex Hormozi11:35

       No.

   15. CWChris Williamson11:35

       Have you seen that one?

   16. AHAlex Hormozi11:35

       No. Uh-uh.

   17. CWChris Williamson11:36

       Okay, so this is interesting. So, uh, imagine that you had to go a mile or less, and if you did-

   18. AHAlex Hormozi11:42

       A mile?

   19. CWChris Williamson11:42

       A mile.

   20. AHAlex Hormozi11:43

       Okay.

   21. CWChris Williamson11:43

       If you had to travel a mile or less, you would walk it.

   22. AHAlex Hormozi11:48

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson11:48

       And if you had to go more than a mile, you would drive it.

   24. AHAlex Hormozi11:50

       Okay.

   25. CWChris Williamson11:51

       So paradoxically, you would go two miles quicker than you would go one mile.

   26. AHAlex Hormozi11:54

       Uh-huh.

   27. CWChris Williamson11:56

       If you follow that rule, the important insight here is that if you only take action...... when things cross a certain threshold of badness-

   28. AHAlex Hormozi12:04

       Mm-hmm.

   29. CWChris Williamson12:04

       ... sometimes better things can feel worse than worse things.

   30. AHAlex Hormozi12:06

       Oh, yeah.
3. 15:28 – 24:46

   The Heavy Burden of Unmade Decisions

   1. CWChris Williamson15:28

      Next one. The heaviest things in life aren't iron and gold, but unmade decisions. The reason you are stressed is that you have decisions to make and you're not making them.

   2. AHAlex Hormozi15:40

      It's a good quote (laughs) .

   3. CWChris Williamson15:42

      You said it. You said it.

   4. AHAlex Hormozi15:51

      I think a lot of times the decisions that we make are predicated on the, on the conversations we need to have. Because usually like the... And what's interesting is like, you can define commitment by eliminating alternatives. So if you are committed, you've eliminated alternative actions, right? Like you can say, "I'm committed," but until you eliminate other options, you're not committed.

   5. CWChris Williamson16:10

      There's always a get out of jail free card.

   6. AHAlex Hormozi16:11

      Right. And so, a lot of people make decisions to end relationships, to quit their job, to start the new thing, but they don't become committed to the decision until they f- remove the other options and then you're forced to take action on it. And so I think actually defining those two dif- two different things. Now you could define, you know, decision as to kill off, like decedere from Latin. But from a, from an e- from a colloquial thing, I think there are two different instances. It's like, "I need to change this," and then I do change it. Um, and the making the decision is when it becomes a commitment.

   7. CWChris Williamson16:44

      Why are unmade decisions so heavy?

   8. AHAlex Hormozi16:47

      I think, at least for me, it's because I have this hamster wheel on the m- back of my mind where I keep playing out different scenarios. And so I keep thinking like, "Well, maybe, maybe I need to change what I'm currently doing. Maybe, maybe if I just rethought..." Like, 'cause I'm, I'm a big frame guy, so I'm like, "Maybe I just need to be thinking about this differently, right? Maybe if I zoom all the way out, the earth doesn't exist so maybe this doesn't matter. Maybe I'm just making a problem that doesn't exist. Maybe the best action I should take is nothing, right?" Like I, you know, I reframe all those things. Um, but usually, it's just because I'm afraid of something and then that's why I'm not making the decision. And I think once I name and put a face and it's usually not even a thing that I'm afraid of, it's one person's judgment I'm afraid of. And then when I name the person, then it becomes, then it becomes real. Instead of being this amorphous, like people, society, judgment, it's like Tom. I'm like, "Do I really care what Tom thinks? I guess so. It seems like I'm not making this big change in my life because of Tom."

   9. CWChris Williamson17:37

      Looks like Tom's more in control of my life than I am.

   10. AHAlex Hormozi17:39

       Dude. So I remember this when I was 19 years old, I was super angry. Like all 19-year-old men, right? That's the, the standard default, right? I was angry at both my parents for w- because I was 19, right? And I remember blaming them for everything. Blaming them for my life, blaming them for not being a better person. I literally blamed them for being a bad person (laughs) . And I remember realizing that when I blamed them...... that I gave them control over my life. And then the idea that the people that I hated the most at the time were the ones who actually were controlling me was the thing that most sickened me, to then actually flip my narrative to actually taking control. Like, that was the one thought process. Like, my mother, I'm giving her control over my romantic rela- like, my mother controls this? Fuck that. I was like, no. And so like, just the idea that somebody who I (laughs) I was disgusted by at the time, um, had that much power is what gave me the power to start taking action.

   11. CWChris Williamson18:39

       See, this hamster wheel thing-

   12. AHAlex Hormozi18:41

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson18:41

       ... that continues to distract you, I've got this concept called anxiety cost.

   14. AHAlex Hormozi18:45

       Uh-huh.

   15. CWChris Williamson18:45

       So, kind of like opportunity cost.

   16. AHAlex Hormozi18:47

       Ooh, yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson18:47

       Um, when you have an unmade decision, every single second that you spend thinking about the unmade decision could have been gotten back had you just made the decision.

   18. AHAlex Hormozi19:00

       Oh yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson19:01

       And realizing that it- it's- it's a justification for eating frogs earlier in the day. I need to answer that email. The longer that you wait until you answer that email, the more times you will think the thought, "I need to answer that email."

   20. AHAlex Hormozi19:14

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson19:15

       And if we assume that what truly, truly matters in life is the time and the attention that we spend within that time, your time is being captured and your attention is being captured by a thought that could've been gotten rid of had you just done it, had you just had the conversation, broken up with the relationship-

   22. AHAlex Hormozi19:31

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson19:31

       ... left the job, told the father, whatever, d- done your stretches, cleaned your teeth, had a shower, whatever it is that you needed to do. All of that anxiety cost could've been gotten rid of had you just gone and done it.

   24. AHAlex Hormozi19:47

       You can move through life at seven times the rate of other people by simply changing when you say you're gonna make a decision from end of week to end of day. So think about how that stacks up. So it's like, let's say that there were four decisions that you needed to make. If the normal person takes a week to make the decision, and then their mind moves on to the next thing that they have anxiety for and start making that decision and decide another week, decide another week, decide another week, it's a month to make those four decisions. Whereas the- the super, the superman that takes one decision, day one, one dec- second decision, day two, third decision, day three, fourth decision, day four, they aren't even finished the week yet and they're where the other person is at the end of the month. And like, that speed of decision making, like not paying the attention cost, the opportunity cost of your time, I think that's really profound in terms of how quickly people move through life, in terms of achieving the goals that they set out. Because people are like, "How did that, how is that guy so young and he's achieved X, Y, and Z?" It's like well, what takes you a month to make a decision, we make in an hour. And then the next hour, I make another decision that takes a year next month. And so like, that's how you can go 30 times or 100 times faster than- than the quote, "average person" who's overweight, has $1,000 in their bank account, you know, and is gonna die at 70.

   25. CWChris Williamson21:00

       Can you just go back to before you made that first decision-

   26. AHAlex Hormozi21:05

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson21:05

       ... with your dad? Because you've mentioned it, you know, people might look at your, I would say ruthlessness, at least in some regards with decision making, you know-

   28. AHAlex Hormozi21:13

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson21:14

       ... hiring and firing and making these business decisions-

   30. AHAlex Hormozi21:16

       Yeah.
4. 24:46 – 33:00

   Overcoming the Fear of What Other People Think

   1. CWChris Williamson24:46

      You're afraid of what other people will think of you if you fail. But if you're afraid of that, imagine what they think of you when you aren't even trying. Oh, yeah, they aren't. (laughs)

   2. AHAlex Hormozi24:57

      (laughs) I'm such a dick sometimes. Um... (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson25:01

      Does it, is it, is it strange to hear your-

   4. AHAlex Hormozi25:03

      (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson25:03

      ... like, angry toilet tweets read back to you now in the cold, harsh light of day?

   6. AHAlex Hormozi25:11

      (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson25:11

      (laughs) God, that was a particularly difficult poo I was cracking right there.

   8. AHAlex Hormozi25:15

      (laughs) You know, real talk, the, the tweets that I have, people don't know this, but the tweets are notes to self.

   9. CWChris Williamson25:21

      Yep.

   10. AHAlex Hormozi25:21

       So they're just directed at me so that I can look back on them and like be reminders of like, "Hey, don't, don't do that." And so, like, I think to myself, "Man, I'm afraid of doing this," and I'm like, "No I'm not. I'm afraid of what this person's gonna think about me." Because if I were to be able to fail in quiet, in complete isolation, then I wouldn't care. And then I think, "Well, what if I, (laughs) what if I, what if I don't succeed in public? What would they think then?" Nothing. Right? They don't think about me at all. And so obviously that comes from the perspective of, uh, seeking to gain approval and attention from others anyways. So it's like, listen, if you're insecure, which everybody is, let's be real, um, you might as well use the insecurity to get something out of it, right? Like, one of my, one of my favorite things about entrepreneurship is, like, use what you've got. And so a lot of people think that they need to fix their conditions in, in order to get, like, the perfect conditions before they start. But the perfect condition is whatever one you're in, because it gives you whatever assets you have, that's the cards that you're dealt, and so it's you just play the hand. And a lot of people have great cards. It's like, "Man, I'm so afraid of..." It's like, use it. It's like, "I have nothing." Well, it makes you very dangerous, 'cause you have nothing to lose. Right? Like, one of the, um, really interesting things about... I think about it from a business perspective, but it probably applies to everything, is that there's always an advantage and a disadvantage from every position, right? So, like, I remember when... I mean, Gym Launch is still a big company and still continues to grow, but in the gym licensing space, there's not many people who can compete with us there, right? And I would talk to guys who were in the space. You know, I would talk, you know, talking at a conference, whatever. And, you know, younger guys would be like, "Well, I wanna, I wanna be in this space too, and it's not fair because, you know, you have this big advantage." And I was like, "You have a way bigger advantage than I do." And I was like, "'Cause if I were in your position, I would go to every single gym owner and be like, 'Pfft, you don't wanna be with Gym Launch, you don't wanna be with Alex, you're just a number to him. Like, you're never gonna talk to him. Like, you're just a cog in the wheel there. With me, you're gonna get my personalized attention. There it's just some employee down the chain that's following some process,' right?" I was like, "But on the flip side, if I'm talking to that same gym owner, then I'm gonna say, 'You don't wanna talk to Jimmy, he lives in his mom basement. He has no proof that he's good at what he's, what he's at.'"

   11. CWChris Williamson27:14

       (laughs)

   12. AHAlex Hormozi27:14

       The reason that we're number one in this space is 'cause we've done it so many times and we have a system that we know that if you go on this side, you will get this result on the outside. I was like, "There's always a position and there's always an advantage." I was like, "You just have to play the one you've got. And most people just look at what everyone else's advantage is, and don't think, 'Which one do I have?'"

   13. CWChris Williamson27:29

       When you're talking about i- it's not you that's afraid of failing-

   14. AHAlex Hormozi27:32

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson27:33

       ... you're afraid of other people's opinions about-

   16. AHAlex Hormozi27:34

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson27:34

       ... why you're going to fail. Like, the reason I think that cynicism is so popular on the internet is that the upside of never trying is never having to feel the pain of failure.

   18. AHAlex Hormozi27:46

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson27:46

       That's fundamental. It's sour grapes at an existential level, right?

   20. AHAlex Hormozi27:51

       (laughs)

   21. CWChris Williamson27:51

       It is a cynicism safety blanket. It is protecting you from ever having to feel the downside of anything. I will assure-

   22. AHAlex Hormozi28:00

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson28:00

       ... my own failure in private so that I never have to face my failure in public.

   24. AHAlex Hormozi28:07

       It's kind of like investing. Like, everyone's afraid of losing money when they invest, but the only guaranteed investment that doesn't work is never investing to begin with. And so it's like they take the long failure rather than the short one. Right? I mean, it's what it is, right? You just fail long. (laughs)

   25. CWChris Williamson28:24

       (laughs)

   26. AHAlex Hormozi28:24

       And they're like, "I prefer that." Um, but that's, I mean, that's... Yeah. I- It's, it's like you and I are going back and forth on trying to figure out how many different ways can I say that either the people that you're worried about judgment are gonna die, or that you're gonna die. Or that even if you do achieve the thing, they won't care anyways. Or if you don't do anything, they won't think about you to begin with, and don't you wanna be thought about to begin with? Like, don't you want some level of significance? I just... You're gonna die. And I think, like... I was, I was very grateful that so... One of my biggest inspirations or whatever, you know, influences when I was in Baltimore was I would have lunch with my grandfather three times a week. So he was 90. Old guy. So I would go to the nursing home and we'd have lunch three days a week. And listening to him talk about the regrets that he had in life, it's so much more painful to watch someone who has no options left. Like, he's gonna die. I mean, he's gonna die tomorrow. And he died a couple years later. I mean, like, it was... And he, he lost all his mental faculties, you know, almost sadly. Basically when I sto- when I left Baltimore, one of the sad parts is I was one of the only people that kind of, like, kept him lucid, you know what I mean? And after that, no one really, no one really visited him, no one really did anything. And so I think he, he just r- rolled downhill. I think the lunches might've been the only thing that he looked forward to. And, um, seeing someone old with no options and nothing but regret... Now, not that he had everything to regret. He had things that he did really well, and I took those things from him. Um... It... He would, he would repeat the same lessons. You know, like, every lunch, this'd be where a lot of older people kind of repeat a few key lessons. And everything that he had... He flew during, you know, he fled during the, um, during the World, World War II. Uh, you know, he fled from the Germans and all that stuff 'cause he had a, a Jewish-sounding last name. Um, he wasn't, but he... It was enough that he was fleeing, right? Um, and he always used to say, he's like, "You have two hands and one brain." He's like, "Use them." And that was always his thing that he said to me. And, um...I think, just like when- when I- when- think about the things that he was going up against, compared to the things that we're going up against now, it just made me feel like, all right, like this is not as big of a deal as I really think it is. I don't have Germans at the- at my door, you know?

   27. CWChris Williamson30:46

       What were the regrets that he had?

   28. AHAlex Hormozi30:47

       Him?

   29. CWChris Williamson30:48

       Yeah.

   30. AHAlex Hormozi30:50

       He would've spent... I mean, again, there's deathbed regrets and then there's real-life regrets, but there's- there's things that he would've done differently in terms of the business, there's things he would've done differently with his wife, he had- he got divorced, um, that, you know... Uh, he would've done things very differently with his kids, so my mother, um, and her sisters. Um, which actually talking to him about how he raised my mother helped me in some way forgive her for some of the things that I felt were wrongdoings that she had done to me. And so it's funny because... You know, one of my favorite quotes from Blaise Pascal is, "To understand is to forgive." And like when you- when you... I think there's another saying that I like a lot which is, "It's really hard to hate close up." It's like if you really see someone and you see all the things that they went through and the things that they- that happened to them to become who they are, then you understand them and then you understand why they did X, Y and Z. Because if we don't understand, we assume that it's because they're just evil people, and most people aren't that way. They're this way because they've been reinforced or punished for doing something like that in the past. And especially for her, she was reinforced for acting a certain way over and over and over again to the point that it was- it was core to her character. And so when that got put on me, I was like, "I hate you. You're terrible. You're evil." Like, blah. But like when I looked at it on a much longer time horizon of like, she was four years old when she came here, she couldn't speak English, she got beat up as a kid, like all these things, I'm like, "You know what? Maybe give her a little grace." You know? And I remember when- when I came back, and it was right around that same time where I realized I was giving this person all this power, she yelled at me for something when I came back home from college my freshman year. And it was a standard fight, you know. Like here's the button that I press to get into the normal fight that we get into. Um, I just remember she hit the button and I just like wasn't that upset. And I- it's like I felt nothing. She like hit the button, she like hit it again harder, and I was like... And I just remember looking at her and being like, "I get it. I'm sorry." Like, "You had a tough, tough life." And then she just broke down and, you know, started crying because it was like she felt understood. And I think, um... I know that was a roundabout way of getting back to regrets, but he regretted how he had raised her. But his- through his regrets, I got to see why she was the way she was, and then it defused the bomb that was between me and her.
5. 33:00 – 42:18

   In Life You Must Choose Your Regrets

   1. CWChris Williamson33:00

      Christopher Hitchens?

   2. AHAlex Hormozi33:01

      Mmm-mmm.

   3. CWChris Williamson33:01

      Brilliant. So, Christopher Hitchens, one of the new atheists, uh, was... sat in some British pub with Douglas Murray when Douglas is young. And that, you know, you can imagine it's some musty Chesterfield sofa, he's probably got a cigarette in his mouth and a-

   4. AHAlex Hormozi33:19

      Yeah. (laughs)

   5. CWChris Williamson33:19

      ... glass of scotch or something. And, uh, Douglas is vacillating between these two different choices that he needs to make, and he is, um, complaining, lamenting the fact that, "I have this thing, but I have this thing, and if I do this thing, I can't do this thing. And- and- and what- what do I do?" And apparently Hitch like sat back and, "Douglas, in life we must choose our regrets."

   6. AHAlex Hormozi33:46

      Mmm.

   7. CWChris Williamson33:48

      And I was like, "Fuck."

   8. AHAlex Hormozi33:50

      There you go.

   9. CWChris Williamson33:51

      So I'm three Manhattans deep in Douglas Murray's apartment in Manhattan at 2:00 in the morning, and he sneaks off to the toilet. And I quickly write this down because I know that my like half-cut-

   10. AHAlex Hormozi34:03

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson34:03

       ... alcohol brain isn't gonna remember it.

   12. AHAlex Hormozi34:05

       (laughs)

   13. CWChris Williamson34:05

       So I note it down, because that was all the trigger that I needed.

   14. AHAlex Hormozi34:08

       Yeah.

   15. CWChris Williamson34:08

       Which is also a good argument for noting things down. And I reflected, I misreflected on that for a year. I must have thought about it for a year. "In life we must choose our regrets." What the fuck does that mean? Okay, first off, in an existence where opportunity cost is baked in because you don't get to split test life, and by doing a thing you can't do a different thing... I have the choice between going to the gym and going to the theme park, if I go to the gym therefore I can't go to the theme park. Even if the decision of going to the gym was the right call, I will always have the open loop of, "Yeah, but what if I'd gone to the theme park?" You can't ever know.

   16. AHAlex Hormozi34:40

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson34:40

       Right? Okay, so that means that fundamentally regrets are baked in to our existence. And I'd always thought that the reason I had a regret was due to some suboptimal decision-

   18. AHAlex Hormozi34:54

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson34:54

       ... I'd made. If only-

   20. AHAlex Hormozi34:55

       Yeah.

   21. CWChris Williamson34:55

       ... I'd made this decision better I could have ameliorated the regret. Okay, so regrets are an unavoidable part of being a human, and they're a byproduct of opportunity cost which you can't get away from. But what does it mean that you have to choose your regrets? Okay. Well, if regrets are inevitable, if they're going to happen no matter what, an easy way to look at a decision is rather than, "Which do I want to do?" "Which regret could I live with?"

   22. AHAlex Hormozi35:22

       Mmm.

   23. CWChris Williamson35:23

       Because there are certain regrets that you can't bear living with. Now, you can bear living with them, but they're going to be worse than other ones.

   24. AHAlex Hormozi35:29

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson35:30

       So what is the difference between I need to have a difficult decision, I- I need to have a difficult conversation with my boss about leaving to go and do this thing, or I need to... That's the regret, that's one regret, of the sitting down-

   26. AHAlex Hormozi35:41

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson35:41

       ... and seeing them face to face and telling them that you're going to leave their small mom-and-pop business and you're the main salesperson-

   28. AHAlex Hormozi35:46

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson35:46

       ... and it's gonna be terrible and they're gonna cry and you're gonna feel like a piece of shit.

   30. AHAlex Hormozi35:49

       (laughs) Yeah.
6. 42:18 – 54:09

   Work as Hard as You Can at One Thing & See What Happens

   1. CWChris Williamson42:18

      think we look at, uh, sports stars. I'm watching this quarterback on Netflix at the moment.

   2. AHAlex Hormozi42:22

      Yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson42:22

      And is, Patrick Mahomes is just this artist.

   4. AHAlex Hormozi42:26

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson42:26

      You know, he's, he's a halfway between a warrior and a savant and an, and an artist and a musician and, and an everything rolled together, right? The reason that we love seeing behind the scenes with stuff like that is it is somebody at the absolute zenith of their capacity-

   6. AHAlex Hormozi42:42

      Yep.

   7. CWChris Williamson42:42

      And they are putting everything that they can into making this as good as possible. And I think that I sometimes find myself getting... I- I- I certainly did before I had the podcast, I was wistful that I have the raw materials to work very hard at things, and I'd never had a pursuit that I could have applied it to.

   8. AHAlex Hormozi42:59

      Mm-hmm.

   9. CWChris Williamson43:00

      There was nothing... I remember the first time I ever heard Peterson say, "Work as hard as you can at one thing for a year and see what happens."

   10. AHAlex Hormozi43:07

       Yeah.

   11. CWChris Williamson43:07

       And I'd never had a thing that I could work... I- I could work hard at business-

   12. AHAlex Hormozi43:11

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson43:11

       ... but the line between your inputs and your outcomes is so meandering and messy-

   14. AHAlex Hormozi43:16

       Yep.

   15. CWChris Williamson43:16

       ... that I can always excuse away good or bad performances as not being on me.

   16. AHAlex Hormozi43:20

       Mm-hmm.

   17. CWChris Williamson43:20

       And for the most part, I would take responsibility for the bad ones-

   18. AHAlex Hormozi43:23

       Right.

   19. CWChris Williamson43:23

       ... and not take responsibility for the good ones-

   20. AHAlex Hormozi43:24

       Right.

   21. CWChris Williamson43:24

       ... because that's how I'm wired. But I- I never had something that was linear.

   22. AHAlex Hormozi43:29

       Yeah.

   23. CWChris Williamson43:29

       Or close to linear.

   24. AHAlex Hormozi43:30

       Mm-hmm.

   25. CWChris Williamson43:30

       I'm like, I put an hour in, and I get an hour out, or more than an hour out.

   26. AHAlex Hormozi43:34

       Yeah.

   27. CWChris Williamson43:35

       And it's direct. And then about three years ago, I had this conversation with Dean, my video guy. I was like, "I wanna turn pro." I read-

   28. AHAlex Hormozi43:41

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson43:41

       ... uh, Steven Pressfield, War of Art, and then I read Turning Pro. I was like, "I wanna turn pro with the show. What's that mean? What would it mean if I treated this pursuit like an athlete does?" So an athlete, they review game tape-

   30. AHAlex Hormozi43:55

       Yeah.
7. 54:09 – 58:42

   Become a Hero By Using Your Pain

   1. CWChris Williamson54:09

      and villains always have the same backstory-

   2. AHAlex Hormozi54:11

      Oh, yeah.

   3. CWChris Williamson54:11

      ... pain. The difference is what they choose to do about it. Villain says, "The world hurt me. I'll hurt it back." The hero says, "The world hurt me. I'm not gonna let it hurt anybody else." Heroes use pain. Villains are used by it.

   4. AHAlex Hormozi54:28

      And full kudos here. This is a permutation of what, uh, Donald Miller said, um, who's a great writer. And he has a, a number of, of books. And he, he, he talked about the first element. The second element of that quote is the part that I added to it, um, about heroes using pain and villains being used by it. And so-One of the things for people who are not where they wanna be is that they have pain, like oodles of pain. And I remember when I was starting out, I was looking for passion, I was looking for purpose. I was like, "I just wanna find something that I'm motivated by." But it's the, it's the cat and the cheese. It's like we're looking for cheese, but we have all these cat behind us, and all we have to do is look and remember that they're behind us and chasing us. And so... if you have the cat and you're staying in your current situation, you're being used by the cat, right? You're being used by the business owner who, you know, doesn't treat you well and is, you know... and you're in this job that you don't really wanna be in, right? Or you're being used by the situation or the context of the relationship that you're in with the girl that you're, like, not that into, right? Versus saying like, "This is terrible. And because of this terribleness, I now have something that I can run away from." (laughs) And then y- and then, and then like, rather than not looking at the knife or trying to take painkillers to not feel the pain, it's t- like completely sobering up, taking the knife and twisting it in your own heart and being like, "I'm gonna fucking do something about this." And I think that that's, that's what the heroes... Like if we're heroes in our own story, it's not avoiding pain, it's choosing fr- from the very beginning, the alchemy, which is like you have these terrible situations. It's like... and you have the opportunity to turn, turn them into magic, and, and, and skip or shortcut all the growth you're gonna have in a really short period of time simply by twisting the knife and being like, "I'm gonna do something about it."

   5. CWChris Williamson56:15

      Yeah, I think because people presume in the beginning that passion and purpose and meaning and joy and, and fulfillment are the things that get people going. But as I've said, of all of the high performers that I've spoken to, the vast, vast, vast majority of them are driven by insufficiency and resentment and terrible parents or terrible upbringings, or a chip on their shoulder about bullies in school. P- pick your poison.

   6. AHAlex Hormozi56:43

      (laughs)

   7. CWChris Williamson56:43

      They have decided to use that to create the activation energy, right? You can lower your action threshold and increase how many points you have to prove. It's like, "Oh, I want to live a better life." "Eh, yeah, that sounds good." It's like, "I want to prove the bullies that said I was a worthless piece of shit in school wrong." It's like, that's some fucking potent fuel. I do believe that scaled over a long enough time, it's toxic. And I don't think that it's necessarily-

   8. AHAlex Hormozi57:10

      How long? (laughs)

   9. CWChris Williamson57:11

      Well, (laughs) that's the que- that's the question. Like a lifetime, right?

   10. AHAlex Hormozi57:14

       Yeah. (laughs)

   11. CWChris Williamson57:15

       Like, but ev- I mean, it'll, it'll fuel you for a decade pretty well.

   12. AHAlex Hormozi57:18

       Yeah.

   13. CWChris Williamson57:19

       And I think that... I look at me, I look at, you know... I was bullied pretty badly in school, and was an only child, and had expectations from parents.

   14. AHAlex Hormozi57:28

       Sure.

   15. CWChris Williamson57:29

       And, and you know, I combined all of those things together, and I did have a chip on my shoulder, and I did want to prove to the world that I was worthwhile, and I did want people to, to realize that they had doubted the wrong person. Fuck yeah. Yeah, damn right I do.

   16. AHAlex Hormozi57:45

       I think being really specific about your pain is helpful. So like, er, even being specific about the cheese, really specificity in general is helpful, but like even more so, like what is the twisting the pa- what is twisting the knife? Like what is... how do you operationalize twisting the knife, right? Instead of being like, "I hate my life," right? It's, "I hate the way Andrew makes me feel when he says that I'm a piece of shit and I'm not gonna amount to anything," comma, "because he's right." Like, why does it hurt me? Like if someone says, "Alex, you're a piece of shit, you're not gonna amount to anything-"

   17. CWChris Williamson58:20

       If someone accuses you of being poor or fat.

   18. AHAlex Hormozi58:22

       Right. I, I would have... I'd be like, "I have evidence to the contrary, so this will probably not bother me." But the things that bother us are the ones that you know have an element of truth, or sometimes not an element, are comprised almost entirely of truth, and we just don't wanna look at it. And so I think it's, it's the, the twisting the knife is looking in the mirror and saying, "What if they're right?"

8. 58:42 – 1:11:02

   Success is the Only Revenge

   1. CWChris Williamson58:42

      Success is the only revenge. As you expand, they shrink into irrelevance. As you get louder, no one can hear them. You don't beat them, you cast a shadow so big no one can see them to begin with. When people copy, they copy the wrong stuff, because they don't know why it worked to begin with. And when it breaks, they don't know how to fix it, because they didn't build it. So don't sweat it. Copycats will always be behind.

   2. AHAlex Hormozi59:09

      Good shit. (laughs)

   3. CWChris Williamson59:11

      But success is the only revenge.

   4. AHAlex Hormozi59:12

      Yeah.

   5. CWChris Williamson59:12

      It is such a lovely... there's that, um-

   6. AHAlex Hormozi59:16

      Want me to tell you the story behind it?

   7. CWChris Williamson59:17

      Damn right.

   8. AHAlex Hormozi59:18

      Yeah. So I was 15 years old, so this was really early in my life.

   9. CWChris Williamson59:23

      Still jacked.

   10. AHAlex Hormozi59:25

       Still jacked.

   11. CWChris Williamson59:26

       (laughs)

   12. AHAlex Hormozi59:26

       Always jacked. Perma-jacked. And I, uh... (laughs) This is gonna sound s- so lame. So I had this teacher. So I'm a freshman in high school, and I might have been 14, whatever the age is, and I'm walking through the hallway and this, this teacher, who's like an admin of some kind, walks out of his office and he's like, he's like, "Son." And I was like... I'm like either s- in trouble, what am I gonna do? And he's like, "You work out?" And I was like, "No." He's like, "Why not?" And I was like, "I don't know how." He's like, "I'll show you." He's like, "You got the genes." And so that teacher, Mr. Givens, um, ended up working out with me every day in high school and sh- showed me how to work out. And he probably saw on some level that I was some angsty teenager that felt angry about whatever, and I, during our workout sessions would be like, "This guy said this to me." Like, "He..." you know, you know, "Wa-wa-wa," or like, "He..." this bull- wa-wa-whatever. And I was like, "Man, I'm gonna come back at our 10-year reunion," and I was like, "I'm gonna show him." I was like, "He's gonna be working for me," like blah, blah, blah, blah, right? And he's like, "No, he's not." And I was like, "What do you mean?" I was like, "Let me just have my moment." (laughs) Right?

   13. CWChris Williamson1:00:33

       (laughs)

   14. AHAlex Hormozi1:00:33

       He's like, "No, he's not." He's like, "And you're not gonna do that, not if I have anything to say about it when you come back for that 10-year reunion." And I was like, "What do you mean?" He's like, "Because if you come back at a 10-year reunion and say, 'Hey, s- John..."... like, everything I have. Look at me now. And he's like, "The guy's gonna laugh and be like, 'You did all of this to try and prove me wrong?'" (laughs) Man, I feel sorry for you. And when he said that, when he actually played out what my, like, revenge fantasy was in real life, I realized it looked s- it looked stupid.

   15. CWChris Williamson1:01:03

       Petty.

   16. AHAlex Hormozi1:01:03

       Yeah. I looked like the beta in the fucking (laughs) situation.

   17. CWChris Williamson1:01:06

       Yeah.

   18. AHAlex Hormozi1:01:06

       Right?

   19. CWChris Williamson1:01:06

       Yeah.

   20. AHAlex Hormozi1:01:07

       And so, he was like, "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." And he s- and that's when he said, he said, "Success is the only revenge." He's like, "It's not the best revenge." He's like, "It's the only one. There's no other revenge 'cause everything else is petty."

   21. CWChris Williamson1:01:27

       Mm-hmm.

   22. AHAlex Hormozi1:01:27

       "Everything else does show that you were thinking about these people all day long, which means they win by default." He's like, "All you can do is think about your goal and winning." He's like, "And when you win, that's when you become so big that they shrink into irrelevance. You cast a shadow that no one even can see them behind you."

   23. CWChris Williamson1:01:45

       This is the nuance, I think, on, on the previous point, when we were talking about the toxicity of that fuel-

   24. AHAlex Hormozi1:01:51

       Yeah.

   25. CWChris Williamson1:01:51

       ... long term.

   26. AHAlex Hormozi1:01:52

       Yeah, you can see me light up. (laughs)

   27. CWChris Williamson1:01:53

       Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I think that when you think about, um, the activation energy of using the things that you don't like-

   28. AHAlex Hormozi1:02:03

       Yeah.

   29. CWChris Williamson1:02:03

       ... you have to be careful that you're using them and that they're not using you-

   30. AHAlex Hormozi1:02:06

       Mm-hmm.

Episode duration: 2:54:28