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It is so easy to beat people today. They are so soft. They have no work ethic. No one can stick with anything. Everyone's distracted. They're counting their fu*king notifications because they can't stick with sh*t. They can't say no.
Alex Hormozi shares powerful insights on hard work, perseverance, and embracing challenges as the path to success and personal growth.
Key Takeaways
- Embrace hard work as a transformative process, not just a means to an end.
- Reject conformity and be prepared to face criticism on the path to success.
- Avoid chasing shortcuts; consistent, persistent effort is the real key.
- Understand and accept different forms of hardship as part of growth.
- Recognize that initial struggles build resilience and unique advantages.
Summary
- Hard work is the ultimate goal, focusing on who you become rather than just the outcome.
- Success often attracts hate, and resisting conformity is essential to achieving unique goals.
- Shortcuts rarely lead to true success; consistent effort through many small challenges is necessary.
- There are multiple types of 'hard'—sacrifice, effort, risk, uncertainty—and overcoming each leads to growth.
- Overnight success is a myth; years of unseen failure precede visible achievement.
- Pain and hardship are inevitable in all stages of growth and should be viewed as signals of being alive.
- True discipline is acting regardless of how you feel, eventually making effort automatic.
- The hardest phase is the beginning, where resources are scarce and personal effort is paramount.
- Early struggles build unique skills and context that provide advantages in later success.
- Happiness comes from engaging deeply in the work and process, not just achieving goals.
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
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Hard work is the goal. And so it's not like work hard so that X,
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so that then the X is the thing. But if the goal is to work as hard as you possibly can, then the only real output we have is who we become along the way.
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The best days of my life are ones when I had nothing left in the tank. And so then the goal becomes to empty the tank.
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Not what, where I drive, but just to drive the car as hard as I possibly can.
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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 you've been down that road and you know exactly where it leads.
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And I know that's not where you wanna be.
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It's like the best way to guarantee to not have the life that you want is to do what everyone else is doing.
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unless you want what everyone else has with no one.
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Which no one does.
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So think about it.
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People always are looking for the shortcut. But you have to accept a very simple truth, which is that the shortcut never actually takes you to the place that you're trying to go.
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And it's because it's rarely one big thing.
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There are a lot of shortcuts that exist in life.
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And everyone already uses those. And so whenever an actual shortcut gets found,
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all humans immediately do it and it no longer becomes a shortcut.
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It's just a thing that everyone does, and it's not really a thing anymore.
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Like we learned how to tie knots.
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That was a big breakthrough.
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And then everyone ties their shoes and they're like, oh my God,
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let me show you the shortcut to this.
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It's like, oh, you like, oh my God.
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Everyone does it and it's like, not a thing anymore, right?
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And so all the things that you want to have don't have don't have shortcuts.
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But the thing is, is so many people waste so much time.
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They literally waste longer than it would have taken the hard way, or the only way, to get there in search of the easy way that doesn't exist.
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And so the reality of this is that it's usually a 100 small things that make days, weeks, and months hard.
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It's the never ending onslaught of sh*t.
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And then you remember, after going through that onslaught of sh*t,
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that you signed up for this,
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but then again, you figured that it would be hard.
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And then you're reminded that this is what hard feels like.
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And so you keep going because it's the only choice you have.
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I want to remind you that a lot of times, what we imagine hard to be is different than how we experience hard,
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because the nature of hard changes, too,
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and it's more of a limitation in how we describe hardship than it is.
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And I actually think there's a big problem with this.
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So just kind of like Eskimos have like seven different words for snow.
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I feel like I should have like 25 different words for hard, right?
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Like the amount of things
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there's like lifestyle hard.
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Like, okay,
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so there's sacrifice hard of like you're giving up things that you enjoy.
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There's also like effort hard of like starting to do things you're not good at.
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There's risk hard of the the fact that you could lose something that you currently have, right?
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That you have the chance of losing what you currently have.
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You have the uncertainty hard of the fact that you might be doing all of the sacrifice for nothing.
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There's lots of different flavors of hard, and each one of them presents at different times.
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And for some reason, when it gets a new kind of hard, it's a new seventh type of snowflake hard,
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then you're like, oh, this is different, but it's not.
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It's just that the thing that you grow comfortable with, then you conquer,
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and then you're exposed to a new level.
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The reason the goal isn't coming at you fast enough is because every person you've seen accomplish the goal,
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you only see it the moment they accomplish it.
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And the reason that it hurts so much when people are like, must be nice.
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Oh, that happened overnight, is because every time you fail,
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no one cares and no one sees.
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But when you finally win,
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people take notice.
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Discredited.
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But it's the only time they notice is when you actually win.
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And so to even further reinforce the point,
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the fact that everyone looks like an overnight success
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means that the 10 years where they sucked, no one saw.
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And so the fear that you have about people noticing the fact that you fail
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is ridiculous, because they're barely going to notice when you succeed.
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When you're growing in a business, it's very painful.
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When you're stagnating in a business, in your plateau and you don't know what to do, it's very painful.
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When you're declining and you also don't know what to do, it's very painful.
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And so that means that all conditions of reality are painful.
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And so if pain is a pre-requisite for reality, then it means it's just a signal that we are alive.
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And so in thinking about that, rather than pain as a problem,
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it is a signal that I'm breathing.
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And then becomes irrelevant.
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You know, in the beginning, you're like, I feel bad, and then you think that that should weigh on the decision of whether you do the thing that you're supposed to do,
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and then you start realizing that you can do the thing even though you don't feel good about it,
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and you start hypertrophying it.
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But I think the ultimate version of the hypertrophy, when the muscle becomes a tendon or it just becomes fused,
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is when you don't even consider how you feel.
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It's just not a thought.
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You just keep you just do it.
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I think, a hopeful message that anyone can think about who's about who's in that hard period
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or in that start period is that,
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it won't get harder.
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Like this is the hardest part.
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And so if you can just make it through this, everything else is downhill.
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It's not that the things that you're the dragons you're going to slay aren't going to get bigger.
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They are.
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But you become so much more equipped to slay them back.
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And you have so many more allies.
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You have people in the stands cheering for you.
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You have the audience, you have all of these other things that are behind you.
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But at the beginning, it's just you with a stick
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against a bear.
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And arguably, that fight is a harder fight to win than beating a dragon
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when you have a nuclear bomb and six nations behind you.
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And so it's not even like the the size of the hardship,
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it's just also the resources and how few of them you have and how so much of the beginning
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is literally burning the one thing you have, which is time, because you have no leverage.
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You don't have the money to pay other people to help you.
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You don't have the resources to go like get someone to to you.
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No one can learn it for you.
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It's like there's a lot of the things that that we care about a lot.
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Like no one can work out for you.
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Doesn't matter how much money you have, no one can learn skills for you.
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And so in the early days, like it feels so painful because you're like, you look around to see who can help you.
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And then you're like, fu*k, it's me again.
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The skills that you develop
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along the way, like Steve Jobs learning calligraphy that then became Apple fonts that,
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you know, transformed how we type.
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those early days, that little trench winning in the weeds
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oftentimes gives you these huge advantages later on because you have more context than anyone else.
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And so rather than lament them and hate the fact that you're going through it,
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remembering that these will be arrows that you put in the quiver that you're going to be using to slay the future bigger dragons.
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And so expecting it to be easy is what makes it much harder than it ever is.
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We all know the happiness formula, which is, um,
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when this happens, I'll be happy, right?
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When X, I'll be happy,
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or if X, I'll be happy.
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When I'm, when I'm putting that work in and doing the reps,
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like that's when I'm actually my most in flow and enjoying myself the most.
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And so it's actually a lie that I've been telling myself that, like, once the presentation goes well, I'll feel good,
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because in some ways now I feel like when the presentation happens, I'll be disappointed because I won't get to do this anymore.
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I'll have to find something else to pick as a target so that I can get back into my Rocky cut scene.
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And so I think that that that has taken some time, and I've gotten better at it.
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I really do think I've gotten a lot better at it.
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Um, at least recognizing because the more the more times I've had W's
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and then realized that right afterwards I felt nothing.
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I had to think back of like, what are the things that I enjoyed most in my life?
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And it's always in pursuit.
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And I'm like, well, then why don't I set something really big, really far so I can be in pursuit for the longest period of time possible?
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And that's where I think a lot of people from the outside, you know, they cast their expectations of life on to me and say, I wouldn't live my life that way.
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You're always you're always working.
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You're always doing these things.
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But it's like, I'm actually always spending my time in pursuit because in pursuit is my button for enjoyment.
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One of the things for people who are not where they want to be
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is that they have pain.
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Like oodles of pain.
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And I remember when I was starting out, I was looking for passion.
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I was looking for purpose.
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I was like, I just want to find something that I'm motivated by.
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But it's the, it's the cat and the cheese.
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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.
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And so if you have the cat and you're staying in your current situation, you're being used by the cat, right?
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You're being used by the business owner who, you know, it doesn't treat you well and is, you know,
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and you're in this job they don't really want to be in, right?
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Or you're being used by the situation or the context of the relationship that you're like, not that into, right?
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Versus saying like, this is terrible.
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And because of this terribleness, I now have something that I can run away from.
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And then and then and then like, rather than not looking at the knife or trying to take painkillers to not feel the pain,
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it's like completely sobering up, taking the knife and twisting it in your own heart and being like,
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I'm going to fu*king do something about this.
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And I think that that's that's what the hero's like.
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If we are heroes in our own story, it's not avoiding pain, it's choosing
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from the very beginning the alchemy, which is like you have these terrible situations,
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and it's like, and you have the opportunity to turn turn them into magic and, and, and skip or shortcut
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all the growth you're going to have in a really short period of time simply by twisting the knife and being like,
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I'm going to do something about it.
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Charlie Munger, in one of his seminal speeches, he talks about how to guarantee failure,
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how to make sure that you are a failure.
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And he inverts the concept of success.
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It's like, what could you do to make sure that you were a failure?
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It's like, well, you would definitely get involved in drugs, drinking.
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He says, what was it, leverage liquor and women?
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That's, you know, the Charlie's Charlie's big one, right?
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But one of the ones that he has, I think he has seven in his, in his speech is consistency.
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He's like, you have to make sure that you're inconsistent.
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He's like, because if you are consistent and you have none of the other attributes,
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he's like, it's, you still might be successful.
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He's like, it's, it's very tough for people who are consistent to not be successful.
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And he makes an, especially pointed point about consistency because in my opinion, it's one of the most difficult of the virtues
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for humans to do because we're so attracted to novelty.
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And so like,
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I mean, I used to deal with this with, you know, people on their diets all the time.
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I remember I ran gyms.
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And so someone would come in and I would always ask the question, so have you been following the meal plan?
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And then they would say, yes.
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And so then I started changing the way I asked the question.
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So I'd say out of the 21 meals that you were supposed to eat, how many of the 21
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did you have exactly the way it was on the meal plan?
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And then they would be like, oh,
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I mean, at least half.
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And they would say it as though that was a mark of success.
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And right now the meal plan could be your content plan.
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It could be your it could be your showing up to work on time plan.
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It could be the time that you want to put towards your side hustle, it doesn't really matter.
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But if there's one muscle that you can flex, it's learning to do the same thing over and over again,
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like one of the one of the values that we had at gym launch is do the boring work.
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Because boring is
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what makes you rich, right?
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It's it's it's writing the follow up sequence to your to the purchase page
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that you don't feel like doing, but,
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you know, you should do.
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It's running the split test for the 10th time.
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It's it's actually going through and prepping for 20 minutes before you have the meeting.
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Because it's amazing how much smarter you can appear with 20 minutes of preparation.
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Like you can appear 50 IQ points smarter if you just prepare for meetings for 20 minutes.
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If we want to behave a certain way, then we want to increase the likelihood that
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a behavior occurs.
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And so B.F. Skinner said this, and I just love this.
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It's like my most savage quote of his.
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He says,
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people say you can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it drink.
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False.
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He said if I dehydrate the horse, I salt its mouth.
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I put it in the heat and I put its face one inch away from water.
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I can guarantee that it will drink.
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And I think about that visual all the time.
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When I think about myself as the horse, and I think to myself,
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what is the behavior that I want, drinking water?
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And what is the salt in my mouth and what is the dehydration, the motivation
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for this behavior that I can create?
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And so I am not a believer in free will.
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I believe that we respond to the conditions that we've had
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and then we learn behaviors as a result of those things.
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And so, for example,
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I could get everyone in here, the entire crew to get naked.
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I guarantee you I could do it.
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I just crank up the temperature and I'd wait.
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And eventually, everyone would get naked.
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It would happen.
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And so everyone has this idea that they have this free will,
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but that's what would happen, eventually.
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And so if that's true,
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then we have significantly less control and at the same time more control over our behavior
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if we can stack the deck in our favor.
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And so part of the reason going to bed at 9 p.m. is so powerful
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is because we're changing the conditions so that we can change our behavior.
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If all of your friends are poor, Harvard did that long study and said
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that the number one correlate was your reference group, which is who you compare yourself to.
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Also note, not who you spend the most time with, it's who you compare yourself to.
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And so if you want to change your life, change who you compare yourself to, number one.
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But part of who you compare yourself to is who you spend your time with, or who at least you consume the most of.
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So if you're doing this, then maybe that's a good thing.
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Or maybe it's a terrible thing because you're comparing with the wrong people?
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But either way,
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if you want to get fit, if you get around fitter people,
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you will be deprived of fitness because you'll be the least in-shape person.
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And then all of a sudden you'll be more motivated.
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If you are poor, but you're the richest of your friends
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or the same level of wealth as your friends, then get around people who make more money.
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And then of course,
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people say,
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but I can't get around people who make more money.
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Okay.
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No one else has ever done it.
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No one who has had it worse than you has ever figured out how to do it.
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You're right.
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Right.
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Of course you're not right.
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So shut the fu*k up.
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The best art is art where the artist makes it for themselves
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and where you see commercial work.
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It's where a bunch of people are trying to make something for an audience.
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And so it's they're trying to like rinse and recycle stuff that actually solves no one's problems
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because no one is actually the audience.
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Whereas when you make it for yourself, there's thousands of people just like you
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who will have the same depth of understanding of it,
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but it feels selfish to make something for yourself.
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But when you make it for yourself, you actually make it for everyone.
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I think when you're on the start path, you can't
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look at the outcome as the only positive because you will never make it.
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And so the positive frame
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that I've always used is sure you can have the external ones of like,
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I like thinking about my first videos had like 13 views.
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And I'm like, well,
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if I had an audience of 13 people, I used to spend years pitching, you know, weight loss stuff to rooms of 13,
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and that was fine.
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And so thinking about that way was helpful.
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But the the most helpful frame was thinking about who I was becoming
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as the asset that I was building.
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So in real time, whenever I finished a long day's work,
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I was becoming more like the type of person who could work for five years without reward,
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and that would be part of the story I would someday tell.
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And so some some of the biggest reinforcers I've had in my life has been future casting
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the story that I would tell about the shi*ty period that I was in.
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Like, I remember when I was sleeping on the floor at my gym because I didn't have enough money for two rents.
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And I was like, I will fu*king tell this story.
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And when I lost everything for the first time, I like, I have the screenshot
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of the bank account, like when I show it, people are like, oh, look, there's that thing.
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But they forget that there was a person who screenshotted it to be like, this won't fu*king happen again.
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And I think having a larger narrative of where you're ultimately going,
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one, gives you the vision of where you're like the one like knows where he's going,
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but it allows the dragons that you have to slay along the way, the hard things that you have to overcome
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to feed into the larger narrative of who, of the story that you'll someday tell.
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And so, like, no one ever tells stories about the hero who made it all happen immediately
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and had no hardships.
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No one cares, right?
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Like, okay, you were born to a billionaire.
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Is there a story there?
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Not really.
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But everyone loves the story because we can see ourselves in the character
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and how much we hope to be like them.
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And it's the being like them, not the having what they have that we usually like.
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And so reframing ourselves as the hero of that narrative, in my harder times,
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was what really got me through that.
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And thinking.
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I will tell this story someday.
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I think a lot of the discontent comes from the judgment people have about what they should
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or should not do along the way.
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And so they take my description as prescription for what they should do.
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And it couldn't be further from the truth.
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If you want to take a break at every two steps and take in the view, do it.
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I mean,
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in four generations, no one will remember your name.
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And so enjoy the view if you feel like it.
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I just happen to enjoy how much I can see that I can do.
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That's what I enjoy.
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And I and I feel like I am most present when I work.
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And so I'm not going to go on to work-life balance, whatever,
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because we already know where that conversation goes.
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But people have a harder time accepting that someone can just
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work all the time and and truly love it.
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And I define that by there's nothing else I would rather do at any time.
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And so for me, I feel like I exercise absolute freedom in my life.
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And freedom is reinforcing for all species.
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Dogs, cows, fish, humans.
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Freedom is one of the most positively reinforcing thing that people have, that everyone wants freedom.
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Everybody wants to be able to say, fu*k you.
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Right.
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But once you say, fu*k you, you have to do something because you can't just stand there and say fu*k you over and over again for hours for the rest of your life.
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You start to do something and that thing that you choose to do
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after you do, after you say fu*k you,
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is what you want to do.
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What's interesting about humans is that our ability to endure
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is very robust if we know that we'll make it out.
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And so they've done mice studies where they drop the mouse in
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and then they let it drown, and it drowns really fast.
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And then they drop a mouse in.
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And then before it gets to the point where it drowns, they pick it up.
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And then they put it back in.
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And the second time they put it in, it can last like 20 times longer.
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I think for the stats is something around
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will drown in less than an hour.
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If it's taken out, dried off and allowed to relax, it'll swim for a day.
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An absurd amount different.
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And so if I were to say, hey,
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I need you to hold your breath, but I don't tell you how long.
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20s in you might be thinking, this is stupid.
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Is he going to stop? He's going to wait for me to pass out.
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And all these stupid thoughts go into your mind.
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But if I say, I need you to hold your breath for three minutes,
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your lungs might burn.
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But you can see that there's this end that's coming.
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The difficulty with personal development and entrepreneurship
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is that you don't know when the end is coming, but you still need to fight.
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Like the second mouse who gets out, gets dried off and gets put back in.
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And the only certainty that I can give you is that it's the same thing
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that every other mouse, every other person who got through that period went through,
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and you won't die.
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And if you do die, you won't care.
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Because you'll be dead.
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And so best case, you win.
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Worst case it won't matter.
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It's rarely the information or the intensity that makes things hard.
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It's the sticking with it
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that makes it hard.
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And so the desire that we have to quit is simply breaking the consistency.
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And so that's why consistency has always been the hardest thing for most people to achieve.
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But the intensity of what you have to do to be successful is much lower than most people expect.
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And so oftentimes
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they suffer significantly more in a short period of time than is required to be successful over a much longer period of time,
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with a much lower intensity.
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And so it's just like if you walk for five minutes a day,
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you're going to get, you know, 50% of the health benefits, probably more than that, I'm sure, of just even exercising.
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You add 10 years of your life if you walked 5 or 10 minutes a day.
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And the path of personal development is
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befriending uncertainty.
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And so I obviously sit from the entrepreneurial perspective,
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but almost all decisions that you make in the beginning, you have incomplete data
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and you have to make decisions anyways.
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And so it's growing comfortable with taking your best bad guess and being directionally correct
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rather than searching for a perfect answer.
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Because a perfect answer assumes perfect information, which you can only have after you begin.
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And so in some ways, making a decision is the perfect answer so that you can get the information.
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Feedback?
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to then improve the quality of the decision later.
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And I think that one loop is what a lot of people miss out on is that they spend they obsess
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for years, sometimes on the perfect pick, the perfect business, the perfect job, the perfect mate.
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When most of the times beginning each step eliminates the next step,
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which means the information, the feedback that you get from walking gives you more about where to walk.
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Then trying to sit at the beginning in the darkness and pick a direction.
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What's wild about the fear that people have when they're starting out
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is that they say things like,
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I have nothing going for me.
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I have no advantages.
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I have nothing to my name.
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I have no money, I have no network, I have no resources.
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But using Rory Sutherland's, reframing, it also means that you have nothing to lose,
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which makes you incredibly dangerous.
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And I think people wildly underestimate how many shots on goal you can take when you have nothing to lose.
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Whereas when someone has something to lose, they have to be more and more selective about the shots they take.
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And so you have the perfect conditions for taking risk because the worst case
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scenario is baseline is where you're currently at.
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Yeah.
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And so that means.
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Your downside is this.
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Which means that it's like going to the casino and playing craps.
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But they say that you can just keep playing until you win.
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But people are afraid to roll.
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I think it's genuinely right to say that your calendar is a better measure of your wealth than your bank account.
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It's also the easiest way to know where someone's going to be in five years or even a year.
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How so?
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You just see what they're where they're investing their time, and you can predict, like more accurately,
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what their life is going to look like in a year based on what they're doing today.
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A reminder that the life that I'm living today is a result of the work that I did 6 and 12 months ago.
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And so if you were to look at my calendar 6 and 12 months ago, then you might extrapolate out to what I'm doing today.
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But just like people want the immediate reward,
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they also see their current condition as a result of the behavior they're doing today, when it's not at all.
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And so that's why I think having in some ways,
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a very vivid imagination of like, this is where I think the the benefit of quote visualization comes into play.
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I don't see it as much as a benefit for like, oh, I have to imagine this thing to happen.
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But I think it's more powerful to think I'm doing this thing today and I'm imagining it happening.
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So it's an approximation of the feedback loop that you want to have.
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And so it helps you substitute and get through the period where nothing's actually happening.
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I have led a toothless life.
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I have never bitten into anything.
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I was waiting, I was reserving myself for later on, and I have just noticed that my teeth have gone.
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A lot of people wait for perfect conditions to start.
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But don't realize that starting is the perfect condition.
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He's saving himself to use his teeth.
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But he could have had all of his teeth at the end if he had been using them the whole time.
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And so we have this idea,
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I call it the fallacy of the perfect pick.
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But thinking that you're going to have this one shot, this one pick of this one opportunity,
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that's going to take you all the way.
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But it's the habit of biting
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that takes you all the way, not where you choose to bite the first time.
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And I obviously now have a huge history of this.
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And you do too.
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Which is we have learned to just bite and know that our teeth will get stronger,
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and we will learn how to chomp down along the way and
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waiting to begin, never got anyone anywhere.
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So I think about death all the time because it's, it's probably the central theme.
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It's probably the thing that I think the most about, and I think that influences
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how I see time and also how I think
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how it how it influences agency.
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Like what actions I'm willing to take despite the judgment of others.
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And so a lot of times, and it might be because I have more insecurity than everyone,
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that I think like, man, I want to do this thing.
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And then I hear all these other voices of reasons why I shouldn't do it.
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Or why somebody else will say, like, that's bad or you're bad or
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like that's wrong, whatever.
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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.
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And the biggest one that I think about is that it doesn't matter whether I achieve all of my goals,
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or I don't achieve all of the goals.
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In three generations, I'll be forgotten.
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And the only people who were naysaying against me will also be dead.
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And so then it's like, just do it for me.
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And then when I wake up every day, there's only one voice I have to listen to.
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I have to listen to.
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I think this is the mysticism, this is the unknown that the beginners or the people who are at the very beginning of their path
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don't understand.
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Is that there is no magic.
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There is no mysticism.
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There is no spirituality around this.
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Everything comes down to behavior.
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And and by doing that, you can take out all of the the hullabaloo, all of the
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the voodoo that unfortunately is so prevalent on social media.
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And so when you hear the, the podcast clips and whatever of people saying,
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you just need to be more this, if they haven't described it by a behavior,
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it is useless.
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And so this has allowed me to also separate signal from noise when I'm consuming content in general.
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Or if I want to learn something, I'm immediately thinking, well,
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what does this mean that I have to do?
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And if someone can't break it down into the behaviors, then they don't know either.
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And they may be very good at the thing,
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but they may be very bad at teaching it.
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And being able to separate those two skills, because those are skills too.
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Being able to transfer a skill is a skill,
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will allow you to audit who you're listening to so that you can get the highest return on your effort,
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because then you know that you're doing activities that lead to the outcome that you want.
Topics:Alex Hormozihard workperseverancesuccess mindsetdisciplineovercoming adversitypersonal growthmotivationno shortcutsentrepreneurship
