Motivation Daily by Motiversity

THE LONELIEST CHAPTER - Alex Hormozi's Powerful Life Advice

11 min
Apr 16, 20263 days ago
Listen to Episode
Summary

Alex Hormozi discusses the psychological and social challenges of pursuing exceptional goals, calling this period 'the lonely chapter' where aspiring entrepreneurs and achievers feel isolated from their old peers but haven't yet achieved success with new ones. He emphasizes that loneliness is a sign you're on the right path, that you must root for yourself first, and that the difficult early phase is essential to building the skills and resilience needed for future success.

Insights
  • Loneliness during pursuit of exceptional goals is an indicator of being on the right path, not a sign of failure—it means you're diverging from the norm
  • People support underdogs but resent those who surpass them; success requires accepting that your social circle will shift and some relationships will become uncomfortable
  • Confidence comes after repetition and real results, not before; expecting to be good without doing the reps is asking the universe to be unreasonable
  • Taking full accountability for your circumstances is empowering because it puts change within your control; blaming external factors removes agency
  • Unfulfilled potential creates internal pressure that 'will eat you alive'; pursuing it requires willingness to be unhappy in the short term for long-term fulfillment
Trends
Rise of self-directed learning and content consumption as alternative to traditional credentialsGrowing mental health awareness around depression and 'funk' tied to unfulfilled potentialShift in entrepreneurial mindset toward embracing struggle and failure as necessary components of successIncreasing emphasis on personal accountability and locus of control in motivational and business coachingSocial friction and identity realignment as underexplored challenges in career transitions and entrepreneurial journeys
Companies
Apple
Referenced via Steve Jobs' calligraphy learning example that influenced Apple's font design and typography innovation
People
Alex Hormozi
Primary speaker sharing personal experiences of sleeping on gym floor, building business, and navigating social frict...
Steve Jobs
Referenced as example of learning calligraphy in early days that later became competitive advantage in product design
Neo
Referenced via Matrix analogy about choosing between comfort and pursuing potential; Trinity offers him the red pill ...
Quotes
"People only root for people who don't need it. The amount of times when I was on my lonely path where I was too different from the friends that I had but not successful enough to be friends with the people that I wanted to be friends with. That's when you want people to root for you."
Alex Hormozi
"Rather than fighting that or bemoaning it, see it as an indicator that you're on the right path because if everyone else were cheering you on then it means you're not in the right place because it means you're just like everyone else."
Alex Hormozi
"People want you to do well, but not better than them."
Alex Hormozi
"The sign of success is the hate that you get along the way."
Alex Hormozi
"If you have a belief and you can't explain why you believe it, it's not yours. It's someone else's."
Alex Hormozi
Full Transcript
Hello listeners, Motiv-City is excited to share that we have launched a new podcast called Morning Motiv-ation by Motiv-City. If you are looking to start your day with positivity and the most uplifting motivational audio, this is the show for you. For today's episode of Motiv-City Daily by Motiv-City podcast, we are sharing a recent episode from the Morning Motiv-ation podcast. If you like it, go follow the show. New episodes are being released every week. The link is in the description. At 2E, we give you more. More outfit choices with 20kg of luggage allowance as standard. More hotels built around what you love like that swim up suite. More, race you to the bottom, water parks on site. More, ooh that looks good, food options from poolside snacks to ala cart dining. Book on app, in-store or online. You book it, 2E sort it. At all and after protected, keys and C's apply selected hotels are on Lissy website for details. People only root for people who don't need it. The amount of times when I was on my lonely path where I was too different from the friends that I had but not successful enough to be friends with the people that I wanted to be friends with. That's when you want people to root for you. That's when you want people to support you. Once you've already won, people are like, he's amazing, he's so good. But like that's the time when you need it the least. People struggle to do things alone. And the path of the exceptional person is one of an exception which means that you are not with other people. And rather than fighting that or bemoaning it, see it as an indicator that you're on the right path because if everyone else were cheering you on then it means you're not in the right place because it means you're just like everyone else and that's not where you want to be. You always have to be the person who roots for you before everyone else does. And it's usually a single clap in the auditorium for a very long period of time. It is a slow clap that's just you rooting for you. I think most people feel really lonely when you want something that doesn't currently exist and so some people call that dreams, some people call that goals, whatever it is, you're trying to pull something from your mind into reality and you want it done a certain way and if it's not done that way, it's not what you imagined. And so people on the outside will throw stones and call you names that they think will change your behavior and get you to stop. And the more I have been the person trying to pull things into reality, the more I've tried to weather and build kind of defenses against those things so that when those stones get hurled at you by being called a control freak or by saying you micromanage things or that you have incredibly high standards, the answer is yes because I want it done right the first time. Everybody when I was sleeping on the gym floor, I was the underdog. My clients were all like, oh, good for you. You're going after your dream. They'd see my blanket and my pillow in the corner of the gym and they knew I was sleeping there and it was evident. I lived there. I didn't have a shower. I didn't have a shower. And everybody was like, pro me and then people would come in and they'd sign up and they'd be like, I'm going to support you. And then within nine months, I had hired people and I had a manager and I pulled up and I remember I walked in the lobby and all the same people were like, ah, boss man's here. Oh, you're not too good for us now, right? And I remember being so jarred by the experience and I was like, you guys rooted for me. And I was like, and now I did what you said you were rooting for me to do. And that was when I realized that people want you to do well, but not better than them. There's this period of discomfort when you change anything because everyone around you wants you to fit within the label that they are comfortable with. But they also have the anchor of what you were before. Yeah, exactly. And so they try and like, people don't like that. And so they're like, no, no, I like you in this box. So just say, I know you're having a little thing right now. Don't worry. Just just, and they just want to shove you back into it. And there's, there's a lot of uncomfortable conversations that you have to have where it becomes really socially awkward. And so like I said one the other day about like going home for the holidays and the reason I don't like doing it is because often I have to confront a lot of people that I haven't seen in a long time and they'll speak to me in a way that I don't like. And before that I would roll it off like whatever, no big deal, but I don't accept that. If you're going through that right now, like, and I promise you every single person who wants to do something with their life and has done something with their life has gone through the exact chapter that you're going through. And it's the lonely chapter. It's the chapter where you, you're, you don't fit in with your own friends, but you don't have the outcomes yet to fit into a new group of friends. And you're doing this thing, you're consuming content on the internet, you're, you're doing these free tutorials online to try and figure out how to set up a podcast and what do I host this thing. And then, and you're going through this and you're like, am I, is this even worth it? Because you have no signs of success, right? And if there's anything that you can take away from what we're saying right now is that the sign of success is the hate that you get along the way. And what you can't do is bend the knee to their hate and fit back into the conformity because it's comfortable and it's warm because like in the matrix, when Trinity opens the door, when, when Neo's about to go take the red pill and he wants to get out of the car, she says, you know that right? You know exactly where it ends. And I know that's not where you want to be. And then he closes the door. Like right now, this moment that you're going through is Trinity opening the door and being like, you could go back, but then you'd have to remember exactly what the reason was that you decided not to go out to begin with, just because you've listened to this podcast and you consume this content, you're like, I can fucking do more than this. The skills that you develop along the way, like Steve Jobs learning calligraphy that then became Apple Fonts that, you know, transformed how we type, those early days that little trench winning in the weeds oftentimes gives you these huge advantages later on because you have more context than anyone else. And so rather than lament them and hate the fact that you're going through it, 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. And so expecting it to be easy is what makes it much harder than it ever is. I'd say one of the strongest mental frames that has gotten me through my hardest times is thinking this will be the story that I will one day tell. And that means the harder it is, the bigger the dragon, the more epic the story. And by consequence, the more epic the hero. And if you think about the difference between winners and losers, winners define themselves by what they made happen and losers define themselves by what happened to them. And the difficult part of the lonely chapter is that the rocky cut scene lasts 90 seconds in the movie and lasts five years in reality. The first time you squat, you're orienting yourself to your environment. You're barely actually squatting. You're just looking like you have a bar on your back. But you learn so much between that first rep and your 10,000th rep of squats. So I think for most people, it's like if I can just decrease the action threshold for people to begin and be OK with the fact that they're going to suck and it is OK to suck, it is you should expect to suck. And it would be unreasonable for you to be good if you haven't done it before. And so it's like, are you asking the universe to be unreasonable for you by expecting to be good on your first try? And I think that's where a lot of people, the expectation that destroys their ability to be successful because they expect to win on the first shot and no one does. It's not speed of activity. It's elimination of ways. There's all these other things that people are distracting, they're distracting themselves with. And so if you were that young man, you have to recognize the trade-offs that you have to be willing to make. You have to change your environment so you can change your behavior. And you have to delete everything that's not the thing that you want most. And if you can't decide what you want most, then that's what you need to do first. But once you know what you want, then go get it. People want the confidence before the reps. But especially in confidence, the proof comes before the pudding. You have to do the reps before people are like, wow, because you can't fake confidence but not to yourself. To your still-know. And as far as I'm concerned in life, I'm the only one I'm trying to impress. And so if I know I'm fake, I'm the one who in the middle of the night is looking up and being like, I can't believe I'm so full. I would hate that. It's an empty life. It's also living for other people. And so if the toxic trait is people wanting the outcome without the repetition, right? It's without the price. That's how I say that's number one. The second one is has everything to do, it's an offshoot, but it's entitlement, right? Is fundamentally believing you deserve things. You have to be willing to trade the things you love right now for the things you want. You may not like the price of what you want, but you can't change the price. And so there's all this groveling that goes back and forth for younger men of basically wishing it didn't cost this much time or cost as much failure or cost as much risk in order to get to where they want to go. And so they basically stop their heels and then retreat inwards into their basement and video games and whatever else rather than confronting their own inadequacy. The first thing you have to do is say, it's my fault. Everything that I have in my life is my fault. But if it's your fault, it's also under your control to change because you cannot change what you do not control. And so to me, it's taking full accountability. If you have a belief and you can't explain why you believe it, it's not yours. It's someone else's. And most people walk around parroting other people's words for the vast majority of their lives. And so they basically act as recorders where they clicked recorded at one point of their life and then they clicked play in another time in their life. And they're just clicking record, play, record, play, record, play over and over again. And the reason there's that, in my opinion, that other self that's behind it is because none of those words are yours. And so it makes sense that people feel alone and they feel like they're acting because they never say what they think. And as a result, they also sound like everyone else because they were never themselves to begin with. Giving myself permission to be unhappy for an extended period of time in order to get what I wanted gave me so much relief from, honestly, I don't like using the word nowadays because it has so many associations, but just from like the depression or the funk that I was in for a few years. Right. Yeah, I just, I just didn't like my life. And I had achieved by most measures because I don't have the, I, you know, school failed me, I was whatever, like I wasn't that I finished in three years and I did really well in school and I had a really good job. But it was empty for me. And so my, like my goal is things we talked about earlier, but my personal goal was to squeeze every ounce of potential out of whatever I have. And I think that if you feel like you have potential left over, then it will eat you alive until you do something about it. To be sorted. At all and after protected keys and C's apply selected hotels only see website for details.