Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:10):
When not to take no for an answer. I think
it's a little bit of a maybe controversial statement to
make these days, because no is very important, learning to
say no is very important, and learning to respect to
know is very important. But a lot of our lives
and our productivity revolves around permission, whether we allow ourselves
(00:38):
to give ourselves permission if other people give us permission.
So much of our external goals and our hopes and
dreams feel reliant on other people and therefore other people's permission.
For me personally, this past I don't know year and
a half, two years almost has been an interesting battle
(01:01):
with permission, with dealing with permission, giving myself permission and
not taking to heart or letting myself get dissuaded from
pursuing a goal because I didn't get permission from other people.
I recently published a book called Fame by Misadventure. This
is my shameless plug. You can you can buy it
(01:21):
on Amazon, Bardsonnoble dot com wherever books are sold. And
I was told no a lot of times, many many times,
close to one hundred times between personal connections and reaching
out to agents, specifically for agent reach out in sending.
Speaker 2 (01:39):
Query letters, which is sort of part of the process.
Speaker 1 (01:42):
When an author has a book and is hoping that
an agent will pick it up and take it to sale.
You query agents, you say this is you know, you
give them the rundown. It's like a one page thing.
You try to make it seem tantalizing. Sixty six agents
I believe passed on the book, either directly, either telling
(02:03):
me that it's not my cup of tea or it's
not a good time, or indirectly, which is a lot
of the rejection of a lot of industries, especially entertainment,
and I think publishing is silence. A lot of my
nos came in the response of no response at all.
Any time I auditioned for a project as an actor,
(02:25):
the no is usually silent. I don't get a phone call,
I don't get an email, I don't get a text,
I don't get anything.
Speaker 2 (02:34):
And for the past I.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
Don't know ten eleven aw long have I've been acting
almost twelve years. Every day of my life, I used
to say, was rejection because I dealt with a lot
of people telling me no, mostly and directly, and I
didn't realize how damaging to my psyche. The compile and
(03:00):
sort of compounding effect of silent knows and silent rejection
was going to be when I'm given an opportunity to
audition for something or submit a query letter to an agent.
As an author, I have to remain optimistic. I have
to put my best foot forward and do the best
(03:22):
work I can in hopes of getting the job or
the representation, or the contract or the publishing deal. If
I lead in my life with a bunch of negativity
anticipating that I'm going to get no, I'm probably not
going to do the work or want to do the work,
or the work that I will do will be half hard,
(03:43):
at half hast and pretty shitty. In fact, as an actor,
a lot of the self tapes, especially after COVID the
industry pivoted to what's called self taping, where most auditions
are not in person. I have to do them at
home with a friend someone reading opposite me, and then
send that tape to casting.
Speaker 2 (04:04):
Most of.
Speaker 1 (04:06):
The auditions that I get if I don't love a project,
I have this strange relationship with my representation, my manager mostly,
who understands this. We've had a lot of phone calls
about it. I feel bad letting people down. So if
I get an opportunity to audition for something, I'm going
to do it, but it's usually apparent in the quality
of the work that I turn in how much I
(04:27):
actually care about the project, which you probably would be
thinking and would be right for thinking, Well, then if
you don't care about it, why are you doing it?
Speaker 2 (04:34):
And that's a whole issue for me to deal with.
Speaker 1 (04:37):
I have a problem and I struggle personally with letting
people down, disappointing people. So if somebody says I got
you this opportunity, and I say, yeah, fuck that opportunity,
that feels rude. But at the same time, if a
project doesn't seem interesting to me or worth my time,
or it doesn't pay very much, then I might phone
(04:59):
it in a little bit. And I think we all
do this. I think we're all guilty of doing this,
so it's not a unique thing. I listen to a
lot of motivational speeches and a lot of people are
very aggressive in the way that they deliver the message,
which is almost a sort of all or nothing approach
(05:20):
to going after your goals. You either want it or
you don't. And there is some truth to that, but
the individual pursuits and the journeys that we find ourselves on.
In terms of achieving those goals are very very different
and look and feel different to different people. It's not
as simple as saying like you have to grind harder
(05:42):
and work harder.
Speaker 2 (05:43):
That is true.
Speaker 1 (05:45):
The core fundamental piece of that is accurate work, ethic
and discipline is incredibly important and very valuable. If you
don't have either of those things, you will probably not
produce a product, or you will produce product very slowly,
or you will produce a poor product. All of the
(06:05):
pieces have to be in place. I think to create
a product that has value both to the outside world
and to the self. For me personally, and I think
for everybody, it should be admitted, and it should be stated,
and it should be encouraged that the only projects worth
pursuing in your life are the ones that have personal
(06:26):
value to you. I know a lot of people who
want to get into film and television or the entertainment
industry in general, for the sole purpose of trying to
make sales. I want to be a screenwriter because I
want to make movies. I want to write movies that sell. Okay,
that's not a terrible goal. That's also one of my goals.
(06:50):
But the product that's created based solely out of the
effort of just trying to make a sale usually ends
up feeling a little hollow. I think you've seen a
lot of movies where you feel like something's missing here.
They spend a lot of money on something, and it
feels like there's no heart, there's no grounding principle of
(07:10):
what this is really about, of why this matters. Some
people could make the argument that not all creativity has
to be about something thematic or deep, but I disagree.
I think even when you try not to make something
about something else, something deeper, it is recognized by the
(07:35):
audience that the heart there's no heart, or your heart
as a writer or a creator is not in it,
and they'll watch it and be like, that was fine.
I guess technically it was okay, but it didn't move me,
you know, I didn't what sticks with you as an
audience member, as a reader, as a viewer. The things
that stick with you are usually the things that make
(07:56):
you think, that make you feel a little bit, and
that's you. Usually the product of people who are creating
something from a position of personal desire, from personal want
of saying I have something to say, So what matters
to me matters first, and then I worry about the
scalability after that. Then I will worry if I can
make the say, But I need to write a good
(08:17):
product first and lead with that best foot forward. Otherwise
you just have AI. You know, That's the big issue today,
is AI sort of taking over. AI is inherently creative
in that it's an amalgam of everything else that exists,
but it is not yet at the level of consciousness
(08:40):
to where it is writing organic things based on its
own human like experiences.
Speaker 2 (08:46):
It's not doing that.
Speaker 1 (08:48):
Maybe one day there's a huge panic about this and
it's I don't know to a certain degree. It is
what it is, and we have to figure it out.
Speaker 2 (08:55):
But that is where there's uniqueness.
Speaker 1 (08:57):
And I think audiences are smart enough to know if
they saw a movie that entirely created or generated by AI,
they would understand that it was missing the human element,
the lived experience of knowing, Okay, maybe the plot isn't
entirely original, but I understand this person's struggle or this
journey because I relate, I empathize or sympathize, and so
(09:22):
the value of understanding why you want to do something
must be priority number one, and then number two is
the career piece of this. For my book, I spent
from first words on the page to publishing date four
years and three months on that process. The book, in
(09:47):
my opinion, was mostly ready to go after two years,
but then began the querying process for agents, and then
the waiting period they tell you when you send your
query letter, which is now just an email, allows six
to eight weeks for some people to respond. You can
send a follow up to some people. If some people
don't respond, that means it's a no. In fact, that's
(10:10):
usually as I said, that's usually the no is the silence.
And I don't think I understood, and I don't think
how much people actually way the fact that silence is
deafening for the soul. It has taken a certain amount
(10:32):
of time to build a certain kind of resilience to
this amount of rejection. And I used to live in
a very negative space of saying ninety nine percent of
my of every day is rejection. That's not a great
healthy place to be in because that only leaves one
percent for potential. That's saying that most of my life
(10:54):
is no. Now on paper, it is most of my
life is no. I do not get most of the
projects that I auditioned for, and nobody wanted to publish
my book. That's just a fact. For every audition that
(11:15):
I book, there's ten, fifteen, twenty, I don't know. It
depends on the year. I'm fastly approaching the two year
mark of having not booked a project via audition. In
two years, I've worked on other things. I've made things
for myself, other friends have cast me in things, but
(11:36):
via the process of sending in self tapes and booking
jobs via auditions, I have not done that. As of today,
this recording in one year and eleven months just hasn't happened.
The majority of the work I believe I have turned
in is good work. Yes, I've phoned in it a
couple of times. I'm just like everybody else, lazy. Sometimes
(11:57):
if I don't have the passion there right, I just
wear of show up because I don't want to disappoint
the team. But then the team is like, why do
it in the first place? Valid argument. I'm working on
getting it better at this, which is saying no to
things that don't bring me joy your value. That's the
important process.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Of saying no.
Speaker 1 (12:13):
But then the flip side of this is when not
to take no for an answer. Everybody, from agents to
independent presses to editors for the book told me no
(12:34):
via direct word saying technically I don't want this, or
zero words, which means I don't want this. I had
a product, have a product it's in the world now
that I am very proud of, and nobody wanted it.
Speaker 2 (12:54):
So what was I supposed to do?
Speaker 1 (12:58):
I think a lot of people give up or quit
at that level because the voice of rejection says, well,
most people don't want what you have, so why are
you sharing it?
Speaker 2 (13:12):
Regardless? Why are you sharing it anyway? Why do it?
Speaker 1 (13:15):
If most people don't want this thing that represents you. Therefore,
if most people don't want you, why pursue your dream
or this thing in.
Speaker 2 (13:25):
The first place?
Speaker 1 (13:27):
Nobody wants you, you should quit. That's kind of the
statistics of the psychology. Sixty six agents said no, okay,
so I'm zero for sixty six, but I didn't care.
(13:48):
There's a fine line to when to listen to that
amount of people and when not to. If ninety nine
doctors said you had cancer and then one doctor said no, I.
Speaker 2 (14:02):
Think you're good.
Speaker 1 (14:04):
You should probably listen to the ninety nine doctors who
are telling you you have cancer.
Speaker 2 (14:09):
Even less than that.
Speaker 1 (14:11):
If four out of five doctors say this is a
grave issue, you should take care of it right away,
and one out of five said, I've wave some stones
over it, you'll be all right, I.
Speaker 2 (14:20):
Would say to listen to the four out of five.
Speaker 1 (14:24):
That's still a big margin of collective thinking, of agreeing
on the fact that you have a serious health issue
that needs to be taken care of. Okay, So we've
addressed the logical piece of listening to the masses of
the public opinion or either the professional opinion. In this circumstance,
(14:48):
I was not bringing a book to the table for
agents and other people that was not ready. I am
not somebody who believes that once I've hit the last
key and typed the end on the manuscript, the first draft,
it's ready to go. That can't be true. Everything needs
(15:11):
work and refining, and the revisions are often what makes
something the most strong. I don't think there's a single
creative or even person in general out there who would
say that the first version of any of my work
or product is the perfect version. And if you find
that person, I would avoid that person. I don't think
(15:35):
NASA said like, hey, we think we figured out how
to go to the moon. Let's just give this a
go right away and see what happens. They refine and
refine and refine and find, and then they give it
a go, and still the spaceship the test's rocket blows
up before it gets to They have.
Speaker 2 (15:51):
To keep going.
Speaker 1 (15:53):
They didn't put a man on the moon the first
time around. They didn't invent all the man on paper
and then say fuck it, let's just load it full
of people and try. Sadly, some of those missions have
gone awry and people have died because things did not
go correctly, and they have to keep revising and revising
(16:16):
and revising so that way people don't get hurt. In
an effort to present the best product that I could
to the market to agents, I hired editors, one in particular,
who worked as a story editor and an overall content editor. Basically,
I guess with the flow flow of the story and characters.
And my book was twenty thousand words longer when I
(16:39):
sent it to her, fifteen thousand somewhere in there, and
when I sent it back to her after her notes
and revisions and our conversations and edited, it was fifteen
thousand words shorter. I could have added more relevant words
if I felt it needed words, but it didn't. Her
biggest thing was there's just too much here at Actually,
(17:00):
this could be tighter, and I believe in a tight product.
I don't love a three hour movie. I don't like
a nine hundred plus page book. It's just every time
I see this, I hold this in my hand. It's
very rare watch this movie that's three plus hours long.
It's very rare that I see it and go This
needed every single one of its nine hundred pages, or
every single minute of its three hour runtime. I sort
(17:23):
of believe as a writer, in my own personal opinion,
everything could be tighter, Everything could be more succinct and
therefore more impactful, because it's hard to affect people on
a level where they cannot go. And I think people
are busy. I think people are stressed. I think people
(17:43):
have a lot of issues. You have your people who
love nine hundred plus plus page books and who love
three hour movies. It's not that they don't exist. They're
just a small subset of the audience. And so for
my book after I worked with her name was Emily,
my story editor. I sent it to a copy editor
(18:05):
named Katie, who did the copy editing and told me
basically that I need to go back to school to
learn grammar properly. I didn't know how to use. I
wasn't writing as great as I thought I was, both
content wise and grammatically. So I went through all of
her notes, her comments, made adjustments, made changes, corrected a
lot of things, took out even more words, refined some phrases.
(18:29):
She was very, very good at keeping track of timelines
and things that I had. It's my universe, and yet
I sort of forgot, you know, this person was born
in this year and this show took place at this time.
How could these two things be in these years they
would need to be. She was incredibly meticulous and helped
me an incredible amount. So then once that was done,
I said, Okay, this is ready to go to agents.
(18:51):
So I wasn't sending them a product that wasn't ready
to go. I paid people money to do work to
help me make a better product. And I think the
issue for a lot of people is they take the
rejection before they do the refining.
Speaker 2 (19:08):
They listen to the know.
Speaker 1 (19:10):
Before they go back to work. It's almost as if
people are waiting for the first sign of no in
order to quit, because it's hard. If it took me
almost two years with my own edits, That's the thing is,
even before I sent it to Emily, I had made
(19:32):
three passes of my own edits, so I was trying
to put my best foot forward to the editor. I
don't want to present a complete mess and say you
solve this problem. That's not how that works. It's my responsibility.
And so after getting all these rejections over the course
(19:53):
of a year that puts me at three years. I
thought I was ready to go two years and the
product was ready after waiting for a lot of agents,
a lot of people for the course over the course
of a year, nobody wanting it. Then I have to
ask myself the question does this deserve to be in
the world regardless of what people think?
Speaker 2 (20:14):
And the bigger question, the more important question.
Speaker 1 (20:16):
Is is what I have to say to myself, not
even to the world. Is what I have to say
to myself in regards to this process and this product
more important? Then?
Speaker 2 (20:31):
No?
Speaker 1 (20:33):
Is it more important than quitting? Because if quitting is
more important than I would do it. If no seemed
more important than I would do it.
Speaker 2 (20:42):
If all of the words.
Speaker 1 (20:43):
Were this is very bad, no matter how much work
you do. I think that this is bad, then yeah, okay,
it's time to step back. But after the work had
been done, people were saying, Okay, this feels solid. You're
in a good place. I worked with Emily a Ton
to create the query letter to make sure everything was.
Speaker 2 (21:01):
In top form.
Speaker 1 (21:04):
This costs money, this costs time, This cost effort. So
when it came down to the amount that I had
invested both of myself, my energy, my emotions, my time,
and my finances, I was deeply in the red.
Speaker 2 (21:22):
Across the board.
Speaker 1 (21:24):
So for sixty six agents to say no, I took
that not as a sign of a reason to give up,
but as a little bit of an offense. And I
think you have to. I think if you understand that
(21:45):
the value of what you've done for yourself, that you
believe in yourself enough and the product, which is an
extension of yourself, of your work, if you believe in enough,
then there can be no possible no that shuts you down.
There can be no universe where somebody's know takes away
(22:05):
from you all the blood, sweat and tears that you
put into the world, all the discipline, all the waking
up at five point thirty in the morning to write,
all the ways that life had to be adjusted to
make this product. I had invested so much that if
(22:25):
I listened to know, it felt like it would have
all been a waste, and I would have just what
sat on my couch, continued drinking and saying, well, I
guess nobody wants this. Therefore nobody wants me. It's it hurts,
it really does. But if I believed those people, then
what would that say about me?
Speaker 2 (22:49):
They were right? I am no good.
Speaker 1 (22:52):
I don't deserve to be in this place, and I
do not believe that. And that's what I want you
to start to look for in yourself. When is the
no not appropriate? When is the no wrong? When is
the rejection incorrect? Of course I always say sixty six.
(23:15):
If you don't think I don't remember that number, the
amount of people that said no of agents, I will
always remember that number because it stings good. Let that
be the thing that encourages you to say, it doesn't
matter who I'm doing this for, what matters, is that
I do it for myself. Who did I write this
(23:39):
book for. I hope some people enjoy it. I hope
some people like it. But at the end of the day,
I did it for me. I had something I wanted
to say, and I would love to start a dialogue
through people who read and respond. But ultimately, even if
nobody does, what I get to say is is that
(24:00):
after all of that time, energy and effort and money,
after all the crying and the horrible drunken nights and
the depression and the self doubt, and then on top
of that the rejection and the nose and the nose
and the nose and the nose. I took all of
that and I said, I don't care. None of this
matters when it comes to what I'm going to do
(24:23):
with that product. And that's saying I'm going to make
it live. I'm going to put it in the world regardless,
because that's where it belongs. And I didn't do it
for you. I didn't do it for the people who
said no. I didn't do it to prove anybody wrong.
I did it to prove myself right. I did it
(24:43):
because I believe in myself, Because Quitting was not an
option because if I quit, then it would haunt me
forever and all I would ever be was the person
who talked about doing something, not the person who did it.
And I want you to ask yourself, where in your
life are you starting to see that line? Where are
(25:04):
you letting yourself get pushed back across the line too?
I don't deserve something because everybody's on the cusp of it.
It feels like every single day there are opportunities in
life to where we shouldn't take no for an answer,
but we do because we don't believe that we're worth it.
We don't believe that we have the value. We don't
(25:25):
believe that we deserve to be in certain positions, and
that's not true. You do. You deserve to be wherever
your dream takes you. Sometimes it has a mind of
its own and you end up in places where you'd
never expect it to go. When I wrote this book,
I said, everybody's gonna want this.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
This matters.
Speaker 1 (25:45):
I worked really fucking hard on this, and it's really
good and I'm really proud of it. So who would
read this and think, Ugh, I don't want this. Everybody's
gonna want.
Speaker 2 (25:54):
This it's good. That is what I felt.
Speaker 1 (25:58):
That was the energy I think I need to go
into the querying process, because if I felt like nobody's
gonna want this, so why I try, I probably wouldn't
have even queried people in the first place, and I
wouldn't have learned what it took to go through all that,
to write the query letters, to send it, to be persistent,
to follow up with people, to take the pain of
the rejection and get stronger. Nobody goes to the gym
(26:18):
having not worked out ever or in a very long
time and says today, I'm going to bench press two
hundred and fifty pounds and then does it. That does
not happen. You go to the gym and you put
some weight on the bar, and if you're lucky, you're
bench pressing. Depending on who you are, I don't know,
one hundred pounds, seventy five pounds, one hundred and twenty pounds,
good for you, whatever it is, that's where you're starting.
(26:41):
But you have to start somewhere. Muscles are constantly broken
down to be rebuilt. That is how people make progress.
That's how you gain muscle mass, that's how you get toned,
that's how all these things happen. It's easy for me,
and it's my favorite example to make when it comes
to physical fitness because I like.
Speaker 2 (26:56):
To do it.
Speaker 1 (26:57):
But it's also a physical reminder of what discipline looks like.
Speaker 2 (27:04):
You cannot go to the gym.
Speaker 1 (27:06):
Every day, five six days a week and get your
diet at least in a seventy five to twenty five
place and not change. People will take a picture and
then a week later they'll take another picture and go,
I don't feel like I'm something's happening. The diet's not working.
It's too short of a period of time. You need
more time. Time is always the variable, and that's the
(27:29):
thing that sucks, because it could be a week, it
could be ten weeks, it could be a year, it
could be ten years.
Speaker 2 (27:36):
It could be fifty.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
I don't know, and know that neither do you. But
if you don't invest in the goal, you will not
see results. And if you take no for an answer,
then you certainly won't see results. So if you say
I'm gonna bench press to it in fifty pounds today
and you go to the gym and you can't do it,
the way almost kills you, and you say, well, I'll
(27:59):
never try that again, because apparently I just can't do it.
I can't bench press two hundred and fifty pounds. That's
not a way to approach your goals. You have to
work up to it. You have to get broken down
in order to be rebuilt so that way you are stronger.
And all of the time that you spend across the
course of a year getting to the goal, now you're
(28:21):
lifting two hundred and fifty pounds. What you realize is
that all the times that you couldn't do something, we're
simply adding up to the time that you could. All
of the nose are waiting for the yes. All of
the rejection is building towards the permission, and the most
(28:43):
important permission. I hope that you find, which I found
in the process of writing and publishing this book, was
I gave myself the permission, and now people are kind
of digging it. I'm not Stephen King. It's not an overnight,
overnight sensation. But I'm hustling. I'm doing my best. I'm
moving copies as much as I can. Indie authors, man,
(29:06):
it's a real thing. I am a self published author,
but I partnered with an indie press because I'm also
a perfectionist. Every single step of the way of getting
this book into the world was because I believed in
the product. Not just in the core of it, in
the pages and the words and the themes and the jokes,
but I believed in the cover. I believed in the
texture of the paper. I believed in the embossing on
(29:29):
the cover. I believed in the design of the cover.
I have had a vision for years, and I have
executed on that vision over the course of four plus
years to the point where then the product is in
the world. And if you saw it in a bookstore,
I guarantee you wouldn't know that it wasn't published by
Simon and Schuster. Go look at it. Fame by Misadventure
(29:51):
available on always a reason to sell this help. Fuck Yeah,
I'm really proud of this. Go buy my book. I
worked really hard on it, and I think you should
always feel that way too.
Speaker 2 (30:01):
Everyone's like, oh, I'm just trying to sell something.
Speaker 1 (30:03):
Of course we are. We're trying to sell ourselves. That's
how life works. You want to appear interesting to people.
We're constantly trying to sell ourselves. We want friends, we
want romance, we want success. If you are not trying
to sell yourself in some capacity. That means you don't
believe that you have value. You're presenting your value to
(30:24):
the world. You're saying I deserve to be here, and
you deserve me. You you almost owe it to me
to recognize my value because I won't back down, because
I'm not about to say that no is an acceptable answer,
that rejection is okay with me, because it's not. I
also produced the audiobook mister podcast Guy Right, It's Easy.
(30:49):
Hired four actors read one of the parts, myself, diverse
cast lots of fun. I am so goddamn proud of
both the physical book and the audiobook. Usical score composed
by a friend. It's cinematic, it's fun.
Speaker 2 (31:03):
This is all real.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
I want you to hear in my voice, and I
hope you hear in my voice, how fucking proud of
myself I am for doing this because also, I didn't
do it for money. That's not the value I'm talking about.
I did it because now every single day of my
(31:27):
life that the book is in the world, I say,
I am a published author, I am a novelist.
Speaker 2 (31:37):
It's real. I did it. It exists.
Speaker 1 (31:39):
You can hold it in your hands. You can listen
to it. You can be a nerd like me and
crack the spine and clandestinely sniff the pages.
Speaker 2 (31:49):
This shit is real. I am real.
Speaker 1 (31:56):
I'm here, So tell me again why you don't want it.
That's fine, I'm already on to the next one. Maybe
more people will want that one, maybe not, maybe less.
I'm not about living my life in order to get
permission from everybody else. I'm about living my life to
get permission from myself. And that's the process that I've
(32:19):
been going through. And I drank myself almost to death
during this process because that rejection got to me so much.
It's not to say that across the course of over
four years, I've just been one hundred percent optimistic. There
are dozens of days I wanted to kill myself. I
(32:41):
would drink so much in hopes that I wouldn't wake up.
And I would wake up and my first thought would be,
why why am I still alive? This was supposed I
was supposed to go quietly in a night so that
all of this could finally be over. I did that
(33:04):
for a really, really long time, but it didn't kill me.
I'm still alive and so an agent says, I don't
want your book. That's fucking nothing. In comparison, I could
have died the amount of times I got behind the
(33:28):
wheel of a car and almost killed or could have
killed myself or somebody else. Miraculously it never happened. And
so another agent tells me, no, that's nothing.
Speaker 2 (33:39):
I'm alive.
Speaker 1 (33:42):
Despite my best attempts to not be, I am. And
so something's going on that's saying, why would you take.
Speaker 2 (33:49):
No for an answer?
Speaker 1 (33:51):
There's more here for you. You keep expecting other people's
permission to be the thing that saves you. But what
I was waiting for was for myself to give myself
permission to leave the terrible negative space that I was
in for years, the ninety nine percent of every day
of my life as rejection. I needed to leave that place.
(34:13):
I couldn't live there forever because if I did, it
would have killed me. And luckily, thanks to my own
gumption to a certain degree and my spouse and my therapist,
I said, this cannot stand. I must get better because
(34:33):
if I actually believe in my goals, if I want
to believe that I have more value to offer this
world than less, then I have to put my fucking
money where my mouth is, and I have to do it,
and I did, and now there's a book to prove it.
(34:55):
Even more than selling the soap, what I want to
sell to you, and I hope that you understand, is
that you have so much to offer this world, more
than you could possibly imagine. The gifts and the extent
to which you could be somebody great is limitless. But
(35:21):
you got to start at day one. You got to
go into the gym and humble yourself and be like today,
I can only lift twenty five pounds. That's what rehab
is for too. People get hurt.
Speaker 2 (35:33):
You got to come back.
Speaker 1 (35:35):
My favorite thing to say right now, because it feels
very earnest to my journey and to other people's journeys,
is you can't bounce back if you don't fall down.
And everybody loves a comeback story. So learn to bounce back,
and then people will be like, son of a bitch,
what a great story he bounced back. People love to
bounce back. Nobody loves the story of the person who
was just a big deal. Right away feels disingenuous and
(35:58):
it burns out, and even if people like it for
a minute, it's sort of flavor of the week. People
love a story about struggle, about persistence, about pain, because
everyone knows that we all suffer. Be that person, Embrace
your suffering. That's an old episode of this show, many
years ago. The necessity of suffering. I still believe it.
(36:20):
It's still true. You have to go through hard shit
in order to get good shit. That's how it works.
And if you had no hard shit, then you wouldn't
be able to appreciate shit. You are so goddamn strong.
I want you to say it. I want you to
hear it. I want you to believe it. If nobody
(36:41):
else has told you today or ever, you are. But
it's hiding, it's buried. It's underneath all the nose, it's
underneath all the rejections. It's underneath the permission you're not getting.
And at the end of it all, it's underneath your
opinion of you your self. You think you're no good,
(37:04):
and so you believe you're no good.
Speaker 2 (37:07):
And that's not true. You are great.
Speaker 1 (37:14):
But nobody else can do that work for you. Nobody
else can develop that discipline, nobody else can get up
at five point thirty to make you do the work.
The amount of people who get personal trainers to basically
force them to do stuff are some of the most.
I used to be a personal trainer. God, they complain
so much because they believe I'm paying you to make
me better. How come I'm not better because you're not
(37:34):
working on your fucking insides. That's why you get better
when you want to be better, and then you do better.
That's how it goes. People's goal is to be the best.
I don't think the goal should ever be to be
the best. The goal should just always be to be
better tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. What is best.
Best is never best is not happening, best is not coming.
(37:58):
But better is every single day, is every moment. Every
day I'm at the gym, I'm on the treadmill. I
fucking hate running. I hate it, but I push myself
an extra minute every week. I started at ten minutes
running straight, very poorly, and as of today I can
run straight for eighteen minutes. And if I really push myself,
I could probably go a lot longer. But I'm going
(38:19):
a minute a week. This is what eight weeks worth
of success. But every day that it hurts, and I
hate it. And this is sort of after the weight
lifting period. I'm on the treadmill the times that I'm miserable.
What I say to myself every single time is I
will never be this week again. I will never be
(38:39):
this week again. Catch me tomorrow, watch me next week,
next year, with the next book and the next book
and the next book. You don't want it, that's fine,
but I will never be this week again. You will
never make me feel this rejected ever again. I will
(38:59):
never drink so much as to try to kill myself
ever again. Catch me tomorrow, watch me. I will never
be this week again. It feels like you want to
owe it to other people, to prove other people wrong,
to prove other people that you can do something. And
that's fine. External goals are helpful, but those that's your
(39:21):
number two goal. Always, Your number one is you. So
people tell you no, who cares? Don't do it for them,
Do it for you. Don't take no for an answer.
Ninety nine percent of your life is not rejection. One
(39:41):
hundred percent of your life is possibility.
Speaker 2 (39:46):
Go get it.