23 Controversial Truths About Life - Alex Hormozi Summary

00:00 Stop Caring About Other People’s Opinions

• “It feels safe to do what everyone else is doing, but it’s actually a terrible decision. half the world is in debt, obese and divorced” – Shaan Puri
• Reject conformity: Wear what you want, date who you want, live where you want
• “The bigger the wall you have to get through, the more evidence you have that you can overcome the next one.” – Alex Hormozi

08:00 How To Have Difficult Conversations

• I bet you that I have more insecurities than most people because those insecurities are what drove me to do well in those things not because I cared about school but because I cared about what other people thought about me
• ⭐ The Region Beta Paradox: imagine that you had to go a mile or less and if you did a mile a mile okay if you had to travel a mile or less you would walk it and if you had to go more than a mile you would drive it okay so paradoxically you would go two miles quicker than you would go one mile uh-huh if you follow that rule the important Insight here is that if you only take action when things cross a certain threshold of Badness sometimes better things can feel worse than worse things (paradox) (Literature Note)
• if you look around and you see that people are stuck in region beta this zone of comfortable complacency right it's the guy that sticks and it's just okay job because his boss isn't too much of a dick but the pay isn't that good and he's not really that passionate but it's all right whatever whatever the person that stays in the acceptable relationship they're not that fired up but they're not really in love and their partner's not really got much alignment with their interests or the person that stays in a crappy apartment and there's a bit of mold in the ceiling but it's cheap and it's in a good area of town or whatever all of these people would be better off if their situations were worse yeah because it would give them the activation energy to kick them out of the bottom
• If you zoom out to a far enough time horizon all labeled negative experiences most of the time, turn out to be neutral or even super good net wins. Then it just means, if you're in a really tough time right now, you just have to wait in order to see the reference point get updated.. (Literature Note
• Reference Notes: it was funny because if I look back on the instances that were the most painful in my life every single one of them without fail has created a disproportionate gain

15:28 The Heaviest things in life aren't iron or gold but unmade Decisions

• ⭐ Decisions become true commitments when alternatives are removed
• I got nothing else to do with my life, now oh you said you're gonna go pro interesting let's see what happens when you have 30 other things every single week vying for your attention now let's see how committed you are (going pro)
• Unmade decisions are often tied to fear of the potential consequences. Making decisions promptly reduces anxiety cost, which is the mental energy spent thinking about unmade decisions. Anxiety cost is analogous to opportunity cost, where every moment spent worrying could have been gained back by making the decision. (Literature Note)
• how is that guy so young and he's achieved X Y and Z? it's like well what takes you a month to make a decision we make in an hour and then the next hour I make another decision that takes your next month and so like that's how you can go 30 times or 100 times faster than the average person.
• if you do this they're willing to go 10 times harder with a gun in their face to not die and so if you take fear and regress it all the way down to its basis form like that's what the insecurity is like if they they think I won't be enough and if they don't think I won't be enough then this won't happen if this one happened this one happened I'll be alone I'll be dead I feel like if you just regress it all the way down like that's all it is and so like
• the biggest Achievers in life I think have have most directly tied them not doing whatever it is that they want to do to death if whether they're consciously aware of it or not

24:46 Overcoming the Fear of What Other People Think

• cynicism is so popular on the Internet is that the upside of never trying is never having to feel the pain of failure that's fundamental it's sour grapes at an existential level right it is a cynicism safety blanket it is protecting you from ever having to feel the downside of anything I will assure my own failure in private so that I never have to face my failure in public
• To understand is to forgive - Blaise Pascal, You can't hate up close. (Literature Note)
• it's like if you really see someone and you see all the things that they went through and the things that they that happen to them to become who they are then you understand them and then you understand why they did X Y and Z because if we don't understand we assume

33:00 In Life You Must Choose Your Regrets

• ⭐ I must have thought about it for a year, in life we must choose our regrets. what the does that mean okay first off in an existence where opportunity cost is baked in because you don't get to split test life and by doing a thing you can't do a different thing I have the chosen going to the gym and going to the theme park if I go to the gym therefore I can't go to the theme park even if the decision of going to the gym was the right call I will always have the open loop of yeah but what if I'd gone to the theme park you can't ever know right okay so that means that fundamentally regrets are baked in to our existence
• okay well if regrets are inevitable  they're going to happen no matter what an easy way to look at the decision is rather than which do I want to do which regret could I live with because there are certain regrets that you can't bear living with now you can bear living with them but they're going to be worse than other ones (highlight)
• I love that as a decision making frame because it also jump starts our fear engine because rather than saying like what do 36:08 I want it's what I what do I hate least and so we get to run it so then you get to use your run away from engine rather than you go towards doing yeah the right Mouse and the cheese again (highlight)
• Jordan Peterson talks about the study where they starve a rat and they put it into a tube they waft the smell of cheese in from the front and there's a spring attached to the rat's tail so they can work out how hard it's pulling how hard it's pulling is a proxy for design for how much it wants it you'd think this rat is starving it's going to pull as hard as it can so it whopped the smell of cheese in and it runs towards it and whatever they do another iteration of the study this time they waft the smell of cheese in from the front and the smell of a cat in from behind yeah it pulls harder yeah why because not only in life do you want to run towards something you want but you want to run away from something that you fear (highlight)

three most common traits of very successful people:

• superiority complex => i can achieve this thing (the cheese)
• massive crippling insufficiency => I fear the cat
• impulse control => i'm in a tube there's only one way I can go.
• you don't gain confidence by saying shouting affirmations in the mirror but by stacking giving yourself a stack of undeniable proof that you are who you say are, outwork yourself doubt.
• I'm a really loyal guy but as soon as I put a 10 in front of you and you've got your your girl at home you jump you're not that loyal you just haven't had the opportunity to show that you're loyal
• I thought I was were actually really negative but when I try to think okay well I can be patient if I act patient even if I don't feel patient and then that allowed me to start giving myself a stack of undeniable proof that I am who I wanted to be
• The way you really win is when you complete something and say there's nothing else I could have done. (Literature Note)
• ⭐️ they say the true hell is on the person that you are meets the person that you could have been

42:18 Work as Hard as You Can at One Thing & See What Happens

• Turning Pro: What would this look like if I treated this pursuit like a professional athlete does? (Good Question)
• they review game tape and they do mindset work and they've got a sports psychologist and they look at what they eat and they look at what they drink and they go to bed on time
• we haven't missed a single episode three times a week three times a week three times a week for three years now and before that it was two a week for a year and before that it was one a week for a year yeah and it just keeps on ramping up and the opportunity to commit yourself fully to something that you care about is Beyond a blessing
• I got nothing else to do with my life, now oh you said you're gonna go pro interesting let's see what happens when you have 30 other things every single week vying for your attention now let's see how committed you are
• Measuring hundreds: how many hundreds of hours have you put towards something? if you do that I promise you the thing that you're making will get a lot better and you'll also see how much more you're capable of which is (Framework)
• 🌱 If you knew you were gonna win 100% it wouldn't be fun. That means the meaning comes playing the game itself rather than the outcome (Evergreen)

54:09 Become a Hero By Using Your Pain

• self-love is holding yourself to a higher standard than anyone else does you believing in you more than anybody else does is such a first principle's way of looking at self-love (highlight)

58:42 Success is the Only Revenge

• I do I think being really specific about your pain is helpful so like even being specific about the cheese really specificity in general is helpful but like even more so like what is the twisting the pain what is twisting the knife like what is how do you operationalize twisting the knife right instead of being like I hate my life right it's I hate the way Andrew makes me feel when he says that I'm a piece of and I'm not going to amount to anythingf

1:11:02 You’ve Already Achieved Goals You Said Would Make You Happy

• Most powerful frame for gratitude has been thinking about my 85 year old self waking up as my 30 year old self and all of a sudden looking at Layla and be like man I remember when we were this young and then looking out the window (Framework) (Literature Note)
• because I'm thinking about my 85 year old self would think and you know we're talking about whatever but it it it allows me to enjoy the mundane in a way that I know that I would give everything that I had when I was 85 to enjoy again and it's just it's a it's a Trippy frame

1:24:13 Nobody Will Hate on You for Doing Worse Than Them

• this is famous seesaw when you're on your way up everyone roots for you because you remind them of their dreams when you're at the top everyone tears you down because you remind them that they gave up on them and you have one which is for anyone who needs a reminder no one is going to hate on you for doing worse than them
• you guys rooted for me and I was like and now I 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
• Fame doesn't change you it just changes everybody around you (Literature Note)
• ⭐ I had a performance coach tell me this he said hatred isn't isn't something you avoid he said it is a requisite for Success he said if you get no hate you are not successful and for some reason that just like really stuck with me because then it just like rather than it being this thing that I was trying to avoid it actually became a leading indicator (Literature Note)

1:36:22 Hold Yourself to a Higher Standard Than Anyone Else Does

• every single night of bad sleep that you have is on you yeah because before you had the excuse that you're ignorant yeah and guess what now you don't every worthwhile goal is worthwhile because it has a cost associated with it and so the cost that you're going through is what makes the goal worthwhile to begin with because
• if what you are setting out to do were immediately available to you then it would mean it would be immediately available to everyone which means it wouldn't be worthwhile so the very fact that it's difficult is why it is worth doing and so like we can't resent the price tag of the shoes that we want to buy we just have to make the decision whether or not we want to pay.

🌱 Leading indicators that you are on the right path

• I had a performance coach tell me this he said hatred isn't isn't something you avoid he said it is a requisite for Success he said if you get no hate you are not successful and for some reason that just like really stuck with me because then it just like rather than it being this thing that I was trying to avoid it actually became a leading indicator (Literature Note)
• ⭐ if there was a big meta indicator that you're doing the right thing doing what everyone isn't doing is already probably the biggest the single biggest indicator that you're doing the right thing (Literature Note)
• ⭐ Sadness = you don't know what to do, or in other words ignorance, and that is solvable. The opposite of this is anxiety, which you have many options but you have few priorities.
• I could define sadness was ignorance and that is solvable and so whenever I feel sad now it's been my trigger to immediately think what do I not know what option do I not see because the opposite of that is anxiety which is you have many options and you have few priorities looks you have many paths that you could presume you just don't know which one and so being able to operationalize what these emotions felt like
• You can cry about how much your situation is shit, and? That's literally not going to change anything. I can promise you that there is someone who has had it worse and has done it better

1:48:56 How to Remember Everything You Learn

• You Don’t Have to Feel Good About it, Just Keep Going
• you don't have to feel good about it you just have to keep going the feeling will pass but you will remain you are greater than your feelings
• going to bed late and waking up early to work for a few days won't kill you you're not going to burn out you're doing what it takes if you're one of those people that push work-life balance just remember the people who like working a lot don't care I've never regretted trying harder at anything ever hard times last long but an epic story feels like a lifetime nailed it

2:05:23 Judge Yourself By Your Actions Not Your Thoughts

• 🌲 Experts learn to become rewarded from the work itself, so like they don't actually have something that you don't it's just that they measure success differently (Evergreen)
• the people who are experts and this is from my my good friend Dr Kashi people who are experts at any skill become experts because they learn how to become rewarded from the work itself and so like they don't actually have something that you don't it's just that they measure success differently
• ⭐️ The work, works on you more than you work on it. There is profit in all labor. (Literature Note)
• One of my favorite quotes is the work works on you more than you work on it and so if you want to be the best in the world at something you do the work to become the best in the world and the work works on you and so I mean there's a there's a Biblical proverb I think it's just like there is there is profit in all labor
• the thing is that the rocky cut scene lasts 30 seconds in the movie but it can last five years in your life and when I was sleeping on the gym floor - Alex Hormozi
• we basically have this wish that if it actually came true we would hate it even more than our current circumstance if you knew that you were going to succeed it wouldn't be worth doing to begin with the fact that you are uncertain when you start is what makes it worthwhile and the fallacy of being in the pursuit is the worry or the concern that it won't amount to anything because who you are becoming is the thing that you are amounting to in real time every day (highlight)

2:18:59 Success Comes From Doing The Things Others Won’t Do

• Charlie Munger in one of his seminal speeches he talks about how to guarantee failure how to make sure that you are a failure and he inverts the the concept of success it's like what could you do to make sure that you were a failure it's like well you would definitely get involved in drugs drinking he says was it leveraged liquor in women
• it's one of the most difficult of the virtues for humans to do because we're so attracted to novelty
• Do the boring work
• one of the values that we had at gym launch is do the boring work because boring is what makes you rich right it's it's it's it's it's writing the follow-up sequenceto your to the purchase page that you don't feel like doing but you know you should do it's running the split test for the 10th time it's it's actually going through and prepping for 20 minutes before you have the meeting

2:25:09 The Ultimate Productivity System

• I have this little twist kitchen timer it's very easy and it's been probably my biggest Focus hack you know to date which is I turn it when I want to start working and part of it allows me to think how long I get better at predicting how long it's gonna take me to do something so I think I think this will take me 35 minutes so I turn the clock to 35 and I click on and I start working on the thing and the moment my phone rings or I look at slack or whatever I stop the timer and so you actually see that your time on task is usually significantly less than you think it is and I think that in my early days I would spend a very long time in front of a computer telling myself that I was working with very few minutes actually on task and that's why I think that most things are actually significantly easier than people think they are they just don't know how to try hard because the harder that you try the easier it gets and so it's like if you can just learn to love what trying hard feels like then all of a sudden it becomes unreasonable that you can't win
• if you were to say what would it take for somebody to be unreasonably good that it would be impossible for them to not be a top one percent salesman or a top one percent content creator and he said what would that person need to do irrelevant from outcome what would be the actions or evidence that they would have to do prior to that thing that would make it unreasonable that they couldn't succeed and then you do those things what happens is you realize that it's actually not that hard because you put so much work into it and the bar from other people working is so embarrassingly low
• a productivity hack an easy productivity  hack instead of spending time getting in the mood to work just start working confront the work people think they need perfect conditions to start when in reality starting is the perfect condition I'm married to that I love that
• it just takes work shitloads and shitloads of work every time I try and dress it up or cut a corner I get brutally reminded the work just needs doing the work doesn't care who you are it just cares that it gets done
• There's no shortcuts for you Goggins
• I will do what is required and this work needs doing and there's just no way around it and it's just it's just looking at the face of the work and it's like smiling back at me like no one else is going to do it

2:35:07 A Hack For Knowing Who You Should Take Advice From

• Don't take advice from anyone who's life you don't want aspire to live.
• there's no greater waste of time than justifying your actions to people who have a life you don't want
• Punking the game => oh cool, don't.

2:43:55 Why Cynicism Is A Loser’s Strategy

• the Winner's mindset sits in the uncomfortable place between two surface level contradictions extreme paranoia in the present and unshakable faith in the future the tension between the two makes someone hard to beat today and hard to outlast tomorrow the cynics get to be right and the optimists get to be rich
• one of the biggest fallacies of the advice from people who are in your current situation is that they are right most of the time when you bring a girl home 99 times out of 100 when your parents say she's not the girl I don't like her she won't last they're right every single time except for the one time it matters and you end up marrying the person right like when they say like you're not going to succeed like this idea of yours it's not going to last and they're right every single time except for the one time that matters when you hit it big and so it's one of those things where they are right more times but they are not more right.

2:49:10 Learning Isn’t a Spectator Sport

• ⭐ intelligence means rate of learning, which means it's a rate not a not an attribute
• Learning means same condition new Behavior so if I hold up a red card and then I slap you and then I'll hope a red card again and then you duck you've learned if you wake up every day and life shows you a red card and then you don't duck and you don't change then you have learned nothing
• the next day you go back and you do the exact same activities in the same conditions and you have no new Behavior it means you learned nothing it also means you're stupid because it means your rate of learning is slow