Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
Straw media. Ah my head,Oh Dave, what happened? Holy shit,
that was a hell of a party. How long we've been gone?
Six six months? Oh my god? All right, we gotta get them
(00:27):
ship together. All right, let'sdo it. We're back. It's a
motivation report. I was not awaypartying for six months. No, that's
(00:50):
absolutely not what happened. I havebeen um working a lot, and it's
really fueled this episode, I thinkspecifically because there's there's a lot of terminology
that I think is going around inthe world today to like push people almost
to a breaking point and make themfeel like they're not doing enough or that
(01:12):
they're failing because the success is notcoming often enough. And me as an
actor and a writer, I failevery day. Every time in my book,
I go on an audition or takea meeting or a pitch or something
(01:33):
and I get no response. That'sa no, that's I failed. The
majority of every single day of mylife was rejection. I say that most
of the time I say about myday is the word no, because every
(01:53):
single day I'm working, I'm stillworking towards my dream that with the idea
being that one day the yes thatI get will be so big. That's
what I can do full time.I don't think it's surprised to anybody that
podcasting is not one hundred percent mydream. I kind of fell into it.
(02:19):
I fell into it. I wasin radio first and then then podcasting,
and then I learned that I waspretty good at it. And what
ended up happening was I get sobusy convincing myself I'm not doing enough,
that what ends up happening is Ido too much, and then I have
no time for myself. Because Iwas raised to believe that your life is
(02:46):
supposed to be in service of everybodyelse, a sort of church upbringing of
saying sacrifice is the most admirable qualityin a person. So when you're willing
to give up everything of your selfin service of other people, that is
when you are living at your fullestpotential. And that's a really toxic way
(03:10):
to deal with your life, withyour problems, with your work, with
your dreams. That isn't how itworks. Sacrifice is necessary in many ways,
but you also have to learn tofind to take some time for yourself,
and you have to make space andmake time and set boundaries. I
(03:32):
get very worried that I'm going tohurt people's feelings, you know what I
mean, if I ever have tosay no, I'm worried that someone's going
to be like, well and thenbe mad. But what always ends up
happening is everybody understands everybody is Theyget it, you know, because the
(03:52):
work that's put in over all theseyears and months, whatever it is,
does not go unnoticed. And sowhen I think about failing every day,
it doesn't mean that it's a stepconstantly in the wrong direction. It means
that you have to fail three hundredand sixty four days out of the year
(04:13):
to succeed the most once. Andthat's usually how life goes. I'm not
talking about analyzing every day about howshitty it is for you. I don't
want you to start being like,well, my day sucks, so I
really am failing. I'm worth nothing. The point is is that when you're
successful, when you have everything,when you feel like you can stop fighting
(04:39):
for something that you want or foryour dream, what's the point in doing
it anymore? When we have something, we're spoiled because we forget its value.
You could work forever and ever andever to make a bunch of money
to pay off all your debt.But what usually ends up happening. How
many people are good at paying offthey're debt. You start to make more
(05:00):
money, what do you do?You spend it? You spend it on
stuff, You spend it on trips, you spend it on things. It's
all right, But the more youhave of something, the more privilege you
find yourself in possession of, theless you value it because it isn't rare,
it's commonplace. It's why people whoare super wealthy are so out of
(05:25):
touch with reality, because reality isnot things, and it's not possessions,
and it is really truly not privilege. Because everybody is going to suffer,
and it doesn't matter how much moneyyou make, and it doesn't matter what
you do, it's going to happen. Everybody is going to fail. But
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only the people who have been trainedand raised to understand that failure is a
stepping stone to success are the peoplewho end up succeeding, not just on
the outside, but on the inside. Two. And that's a thousand times
more valuable. Because you can't puta price on sense of self. You
(06:11):
can't buy morality, and you can'tsell it either. I think that's becomes
part of my trouble with religion isthat it was sort of sold to me
put yourself second, sacrifice, sacrifice, put yourself second. And then I
started doing that, and I believedit, and I believed that out of
everybody in the world, I matteredthe least because I had to make sure
(06:33):
everybody knew that they mattered the mostbecause I supported them. That's how I
believed. And so you just getexhausted, tired, and I've been gone
for six months because I burned out, and everybody goes through it. It
(06:54):
happens to everybody. I burned outbecause I had convinced myself I was not
doing enough for myself and for therest of the world that what ended up
happening was I was doing way toomuch. And so when I would step
back and try to take a deepbreath and calm myself from some anxiety or
(07:14):
some panic attacks, I couldn't seeanything. All I could see was the
stress. All I could see wasproblems. I couldn't bring myself to record
my own podcast, to do myown podcast, because the last thing I
wanted to do was another one.But I was putting so much energy and
stress into believing that everybody was goingto be upset if I failed that I
(07:38):
didn't give myself the grace a breathingroom and of setting boundaries, because we
have to set boundaries with friends,with family, with coworkers, with everybody,
because you have to put a valueon yourself. Your peace of mind
is very valuable. But when you'reworking towards something, it can start to
(08:01):
feel like you're spinning your wheels andall you want to do is you want
to succeed. You just want it, you know, you want to wake
up and have it happened. That'show I feel. Why can't I just
wake up tomorrow and land that bigrole and then just be a famous actor
like you know, it would changeeverything. But that would imply that I
(08:24):
had been doing nothing along the wayto getting a part like that, that
it just happened by chance. AndI wasn't auditioning, and I wasn't practicing,
and I wasn't writing, and Iwasn't training. But I do those
things every single day. I practicemy speaking here on the show. I
work hard every day and embrace thefact that I'm failing all the time,
(08:50):
because when the opportunity comes, itwill be mine and I will be the
most prepared. I call it pushups anytime something doesn't really go my way
or I don't get it. Itsounds stupid, but I say push ups,
push ups, push ups, pushups, because in the interim between
success and failure, you have tokeep practicing. Think of any sports team,
(09:16):
think of any athlete. If theyfailed and then quit, what would
happen to their career, to theirbody. No, they keep practicing because
they know that failure is not theend. It's just the way that you
pave the path. How often doyou think about quitting on your dreams?
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Truly, honestly, how often doyou think about quitting on your dreams.
It's funny because we talk about quittingas if it's something that just sort of
happens, right, that we sitdown and we analyze everything that's going on,
and we just decide to a consciouseffort to do everything in our power
(10:05):
to lead us in the opposite directionaway from our dreams. Usually what happens
is we get too busy and weneglect our dreams and they just sit there.
We're not actively quitting. But whenyou say to yourself, I feel
like quitting, think about what Thatmeans I failed today. I failed,
(10:28):
I failed yesterday. I've been failingconstantly. My life is no. Every
single day of my day is rejection. I feel like quitting. I feel
like giving up. That means Ihave to convince myself that I won't do
it anymore. I have to sitdown with myself and honestly tell myself your
(10:52):
dream is not worth it. Quit, stop doing what you're doing and give
up. You're nothing and you don'tmatter, and you should just sit alone
and wallow in your failure because youwill never achieve your dream. So quit.
But if you are going to quit, if you choose to quit,
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remember that quitting means you are activelymoving in the opposite direction away from your
dream. You have to consciously remindyourself that today I'm giving up. Tomorrow,
when you wake up, you haveto go. That's right. We
quit. We quit yesterday. SoI got to hold myself accountable to my
quitting. And I have to activelynot pursue the things that I want because
(11:37):
we quit. Remember, we're done, we'll hung it up. What does
that look like? Depression, anxiety, fear, you don't want to leave
your house, you can't. Igot so burned out. I didn't know
what I was doing or what directionI was going in. I didn't know
(12:00):
how to make space for myself.I didn't know how to come back to
this, to my own show,to my own creativity. I didn't know
how to be honest with people.I didn't know how to set boundaries.
But I never thought about quitting.I just knew that I was in flux.
And it's important that you remember thedistinction between those things, because I
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can guarantee that ninety nine percent ofyou do not actively quit. You just
stop. It's very different. Youstop chasing and you start standing still,
but you aren't actively going in theopposite direction. You're just waiting, waiting
(12:43):
for a miracle. You're not workingtowards, waiting for I don't know,
God to come down and give youa high five and a bagful of money
and say here's a Porsche, getin and drive the country. You're successful.
Now, congratulations, Go marry ahot lady or something. That's not
how it works. When you're standingthey'll you're not moving backward, but you're
also not moving forward. So arewhen you say I give up? Are
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you? Are you telling yourself thatwhen you wake up tomorrow, you're going
to start doing everything in your powerto move backward. Is that what you're
saying. I feel like quitting.Okay, If you truly want to quit,
you've got to start fucking your ownlife up. That's what happens.
You get consumed by substances. Youget consumed by sex, drugs, rock
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and roll. I don't know,but you let outside things take control and
push you backward. Quitting is whenyou trust toxic things to fill the void
that failure has created. But thething is that failure might create a void,
but when you find success, eventually, God, it fills up that
(13:50):
void real fast, doesn't it.And it feels good. I could go
months and months and months between bookinganything, and then in the span of
a week, I book three thingsand it feels amazing. You feel wanted,
you feel successful, you feel validated, you feel like you're living your
(14:11):
dream. And then you wake upthe next day and you keep failing.
But when you fail, you're movingforward. When you quit, you're moving
backward. When you let yourself getburned out, it's often because you keep
doing what I do. You tellyourself you're not doing enough, and then
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you end up doing too much.You tell yourself you're not good enough,
and so you start to believe it. You tell yourself you have to sacrifice,
you have to put everybody else first, and you start to believe it.
Imagine what would happen if you toldyourself every day, yeah, today,
I'm going to fail, and youknow what, I'm going to learn,
and I'm gonna keep growing and I'mgonna keep moving forward. You'd start
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to believe it. When we quit, we start listening to the part of
ourselves and the voice out there inthe world that says you don't matter,
and you start to believe it,and you let it push you backward,
and you get further and further andfurther away from your dream. You are
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what you repeatedly do, right,We are what we also repeatedly say to
ourselves. Were People are always talkingabout the grind, the grind, the
hustle, we we I have usedthese words many many times. They're good
words, but what ends up happeningis we overuse them and we sort of
become a little mad at them becausethey represent something that we feel like we
(15:41):
can't do. You see people whoare super successful always talking about the grind.
You know, Instagram is full ofpeople like grind, I'm grinding,
I'm hustling, I got my sidehustle, blah blah blah. And you're
like, shut up, You're richand successful, you make you a whole
diet tea and you have a millionfollowers and you're hot. You know,
you have this weird we have thisweird resentful attitude towards people. We feel
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like they didn't work for what theyhave, but you don't know their journey,
but you start to resent the wordsgrind and hustle. I certainly did,
and in my burnout, I waslike, fuck that, the grind
and the side hustle. I don'twant to do that anymore. I don't
want to give glory to those wordsbecause all they are is indicators of failure.
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Because if I'm not succeeding, clearlyI must not be grinding hard enough,
I must not be hustling enough.So fuck those words. That's how
I felt. I stop wanted toput the work in for myself because I
was tired, But even though itwas tired, I didn't want to quit.
I didn't know how to quit.When I think about what I want
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in my life, success from writingand acting the will label of these two
things, paying my bells on thesethings, not even to make a bunch
of money. I just want todo that. And I think about quitting,
The first thing that comes to mindis I hear myself say I don't
know what else I would do.I honestly don't know what else I would
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do. Podcasting sort of fills thespace in between. It lets me be
creative as we meet cool people,let's me create content. But it's not
my dream dream of being mister podcastforever. It's nice, it's a good
job to have, but it's anotherthing on my path towards success. So
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when I think about quitting, Igo what would I What would I do?
There isn't a shred of my existencethat says, go be an accountant,
Go be I don't know, Gobe a CPA. Go be a
banker or a broker, or areal estate agent, or a I don't
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know, a pool boy. Whatever. It's not to say that I'm shaming
other jobs. It's just not mypassion, it's not my dream. I
know that I'm intelligent, so I'mphysically and emotionally and mentally capable of doing
many tasks right different jobs, butI don't feel like I'm good at anything
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else besides the thing that I reallywant. And when I'm doing that thing,
I feel the most alive I've everfelt. That's what success feels like.
Sometimes you can convince yourself that moneymakes you feel alive, Buying things
makes us feel good, going ontrips, but after a while, it's
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just stuff. What is it insideyou that pushes you to get out of
bed every single day? Because what'sgoing on unconsciously as even if you think
of quitting, or even if youthink of giving up, if you're still
living, you're still working towards yourgoal. Baby steps is what's important.
(19:04):
You're allowed to take a break.Burning out for me was hearing the words
grind and hustle and all this stuffover and over again, and rather than
think of quitting, I just stoppedand I was standing still. Didn't feel
like I was actively moving toward thethings that I wanted. I was stuck
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because I was freaked out, andI was sad and I was depressed.
So I just waited. And it'simportant that you remember that quitting takes active
decision to go backward right standing still. What happens in between quitting and success
patience. Patience is in the middle, and when you burn out, when
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you're tired of the grind and thehustle, you are allowed to rest.
The difference between people who fail andpeople who succeed is not the grind.
It's that when they burned out andthey became afraid and they got scared and
they thought about quitting, rather thando that, they took a break.
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They rested. It's called resting thegame. I learned that n improv funny
enough. The game is the funnypart of a scene, right, you
pull on the game, you makeit more funny. But it's not funny
all the time if you're just beatingthe game to death. So if you're
grinding for your game, you haveto know when to rest your game because
you can't be one hundred and tenpercent three hundred and sixty five days out
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of the year. But motivation videosand other podcasts would say you have to
be one hundred and fifty percent everysingle day of your life or you might
fail. But what I'm telling youis that when you put in that much
energy for such a long period oftime, which I did, and you
start to feel like you're not makingthe gains that you want. You get
(21:03):
scared and you stop, and I'msaying it's okay to stop just for a
minute, just to catch your breath. So many fitness trends are go go,
go, go go, no rest, no rest, limiting rest periods,
what it's also called sleep. Peopleare like, you gotta, you
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know, be willing to give upsleep. If you want to be successful,
you need to sleep. They sayeight hours. I can never successfully
get it. I try to getsix. I usually manage that you need
rest otherwise you will burn out andyou will feel like quitting. But it's
okay to take a break. It'sokay to rest rest the game because the
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game can't be on all the time. What do you think we play things
in seasons? What happens in theoffseason practice? You get better, but
you rest. What happens when yougo to sleep, you rest. Rest
is an integral part to the functionof your biology. Your body will collapse
and you will die if you continueto try to deprive yourself of sleep and
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rest. If you were like I'mjust gonna stay up all the time forever
and grind, you will pass outand maybe pass away. So be very
careful, give yourself grace, restthe game when you need to take a
break, or you will burn outand you will feel like quitting. When
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you get on the bus today,or in the car or the train or
what however you're going to work orwhatever you're doing, as long as it's
safe, take a look around youand remember that all around you people are
quitting every single day. People arequitting all the time. People are saying,
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I don't want my dream anymore becauseit's too hard, it's too painful
to fail the majority of the timeand succeed so little, so I feel
like quitting. And now ask yourself, which one are you in the crowd?
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Are you one of the people whotoday you made the conscious decision that
you're going to quit, or areyou one of the few who decided that,
even though it hurts more than it'sever hurt before, you're going to
keep moving because the only thing thatyou know, deep down in your core
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is that you're good at what youwant. Your dream is the most valuable
thing in the world to you,and if you quit, you move away
from it. Are you going tobe somebody who says I'm done? Or
are you going to be somebody whosays, I have more in me and
I will get up, but letme take a break for a second.
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Remember it's okay to rest analyze whereyou are in your journey, but you
also can't sit there forever and actsorry for yourself and hope people will notice
how bad you feel. Because whathappens is we sit and we rest,
and we cry and we complain,and we want attention. We want people
to validate our struggle. We wantpeople to come over and say, I
see how hard you're working. Goodjob, keep going. But you can't
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be prepared for that to happen.You can't expect that to happen, because
it might not. You might realizethat at the end of every single day,
you're alone, and so who becomesresponsible for your success. People coming
up and giving you things for freethat you didn't work for because you were
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sitting and waiting, or you becauseafter you gave yourself the grace of taking
a break, you stood up andyou kept going. Remember how crazy it
sounds to quit. You have towake up and every single moment of your
life consciously make the decision to movein the opposite direction of your dream.
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Does that sound like something you wantto do. Does that sound like something
that will make you happier or doesit sound like something that will make you
more sad? So that way,hopefully more people will pay attention to you,
and then you will feel like yoursadness is validated and you rely on
other people to pick you back upand convince you why you need to move
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forward again. And that's not theway that life works. You are responsible
for you and nobody else. Iam responsible for me and nobody else.
So if I find myself doing toomuch for others and not enough for me,
how do I fix that? DoI wait for everyone to say,
I see how much you're doing,congratulations, take a break. No,
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I tell them what I'm going through. I say, this is how I
feel. That's setting boundaries, that'sbeing clear. I see, this is
what I need to be happy andsuccessful. This is what I need to
survive. But I can't just siton a bench and cry and hope somebody
comes over and puts their hand onme and says, you know, I've
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seen how good a job you're doing, and I'm really proud of you.
Is it nice to give those encouragementsto people? Absolutely? I try to
do it as much as I cando it. For your fellow man,
for your brothers and sisters, andyour family and your friends. Encourage each
other, but on a personal level, you can't expect encouragements. You have
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to learn how to give it toyourself, because if you don't know how
to encourage yourself, how could youpossibly have the skill set to make your
way to your goal. I burnedout, and I sat down, and
I rested, and I formulated aplan of attack. I said, if
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I'm going to come back, ifI'm going to start taking care of myself
better, if I'm going to startputting myself first, I have to know
what to do. Because what alsohappens is what I call the fuck you
speech. The fuck you speech isyou get so stressed and so anxious,
and you so desperately want validation thatyou're not getting, and you feel like
all of your hard work goes unseenthat rather than deal with it in a
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healthy way, you blow up atsomebody. You blow up at a friend,
at a family member, and youlay into them because you want your
pain and anguish to be vindicated.It only ever works in movies, right
when somebody shows up and like laysdown the law and tells somebody they're an
asshole and just blows the roof offthe whole thing, and everyone's like claps,
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Oh my god, he finally didit. He stood up for himself
in life. That will fuck you. You believe that other people deserve to
hear the pain that you're going through, and you hope that if you lay
into them enough, it will makeyou feel better. And what ends up
happening is it burns bridges and ithurts you. That speech is never worth
it no matter how much you thinkthat people are being shitty to you.
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You have to rise above and finda way to do it the right way,
which is clearly communicating who you are, what you want, how you're
going to do it. That's howyou get work towards your dreams. You
have to have a plan. Itdoesn't just happen. Are you feeling burned
out? Are you feeling like quitting? What is the voice inside you say?
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Does it say give up? Goin the opposite direction? Does it
say take a break? Or doesit say keep moving forward? Remember,
the difference between losers and winners isthat winners know when to rest the game
and it's okay, give yourself permissionto take a break. Its important that
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you do because if you don't,you will collapse. And usually what happens
when a lot of people burn outthey quit. Don't quit, they're what
else will you do? If youhave a dream and you're tired of chasing
because you feel like you're not gettingit enough, take a break, rest,
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but don't quit, because if youquit, you're only hurting yourself and
you're only taking yourself further away fromwhat you want. It is your responsibility
to take care of you, andit is your responsibility to win or lose.
Nobody else's encourage the people around youthat you care about. But remember
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when it comes to theself, youcan't expect encouragement. You have to know
how to give it to yourself.I'm giving it to you now. You
are worthy. You are worthy ofsuccess, You are worthy of winning,
You are worthy of your dreams.I promise everybody is you can have anything
that you want, but you mightnot get it until you're sixty five.
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I might not become a big shotuntil I'm seventy. Maybe I'll be a
great elderly actor and everyone will belike son of a bitch. He overnight,
he's a sensation, and I'll sayno, no, no, I
was working for sixty years. Everyone'san overnight sensation when no one knows who
you are. You could be workingfor twenty years and suddenly if you become
famous, everyone's like, where didthey come from? Where do you think
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they came from? They teleported herefrom another realm. No, they came
from hard work, from working towardsthe thing that they wanted, and from
taking breaks when they need it.Nobody is an overnight success, truly,
and if they are an anomaly andthat happens, it is not sustainable because
they don't have the skill set tovalue what it means to truly be successful.
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So you could be given all themoney in the world and not know
what to do with it. Itcan't buy you happiness. It can't truly
buy you success. You have toinvent that for yourself. You have to
create that for yourself by fighting towardsthe thing that you truly want. I
believe in you. You have tobelieve in yourself because I can't make you.
(31:17):
Only you can do that. TheMotivation Report as a part of the
straw Hut Media Network. Thank youso much for listening to the ten of
you that are still around after I'vebeen gone for six months because I got
tired and sad. But I'm reallygrateful for anybody who spends the time listening
to this. I hope that itcan touch you on a personal level and
(31:42):
hopefully make you feel a little validated, because I know how much we want
to feel validated in our struggle.And you are You're scene, Okay,
I see you via your ears hereon whatever podcast app that you're using.
But truly that's the point of thisshow, witnessing you. I witness your
struggle just like I have my ownstruggle. Don't think that I don't have
(32:04):
the same ups and downs as manyof you. If you've got a question,
or you need some advice, oryou want to chat about it on
the show, send me an emailat the Motivation Report at gmail dot com.
I can be found on social atwill Sterling Underscore. If you want
to see pictures of my dog andyou want to read weird tweets that are
either funny or trying to be inspirational, this is your space to come and
(32:28):
get motivated, but also to relaxa little bit. I listened to a
lot of motivational speakers, and Ilearned a lot, and they give me
a lot, you know, mydrive or my passion. I get a
lot from them. But I alsostart to hear the same thing. And
I want you to know that thisis a space where I can kick you
in the ass a little bit andtry to make you do stuff that's hard
to do, but also tell youit's okay to fail, and it's okay
(32:49):
to fall, and it's okay torest. You don't have to go one
hundred and fifty percent every single day. Maybe today all you can put in
is fifty. Put it in Tomorrowyou give one hundred. It's okay.
You have permission to rest. Thanksagain for listening, and I'll catch you
next time.