How to Improve Your Life With Simple Non-Negotiables | Joe Rogan’s Advice in 29 Minutes

What would the hero of your life's movie do right now? Do that! Unless you're kind and friendly and warm and loving, you're not gonna fucking enjoy this life. You're just not. Everyone encounters difficulties. There is no easy road. It does not exist. Oftentimes people make the mistake of getting stuck, and it is just a tactical mistake.

He's an American comedian and sports color commentator. As a fan of comedy, he started his stand-up career in 1988 in the Boston area. In 2009, he began his podcast called The Joe Rogan Experience. He's Joe Rogan, and here's my take on his top 10 rules for success. Rule number 3 is my personal favorite, and make sure to stick around all the way to the end for some special bonus clips. Also, as Joe is talking, if he says something that really, really resonates with you, please leave in the comments below, put quotes around it as well so other people can be inspired as well. Enjoy.

Be the hero of your own movie. If your life was a movie and it started now, forget about whatever financial disasters you've had, personal failures, relationship failures. What would the hero of your life's movie do right now? Do that. Do those things. We define ourselves far too often by our past failures. We look at our past and we say, well, that's me. That's not you. You are this person right now. You're the a person who's learned from those failures. And you can choose to be the hero of your own movie right now. Write down your goals. Write down things you want to improve. Write down things you won't tolerate from yourself. Write down things you've done in the past that you never want to see yourself do again. And go forth from here as the hero of your own movie. Build momentum. Build confidence and momentum with each good decision that you make from here on out. You can do it. Anyone can do it. We live in unique times. We live in one of the rarest times in human history where you can choose almost all the input that comes your way, whether it's the movies that you watch, the books you read, the podcasts you listen to. You can choose to be inspired. Do that. Do that and be the hero of your own movie. It's good to treat other people the way you would like to be treated yourself. It's like a fucking golden rule, and there's a reason for it. And that reason is that we're connected in some strange way that we don't totally understand. And unless you are good to other people around you, unless you're kind and friendly and warm and loving, you're not gonna enjoy this life. You're just not. You're gonna be problems everywhere you go. You're gonna have problems everywhere you go. You got to figure out a way to enjoy this fucking life. It's not because of Jesus. It's not because of Moses. It's not because of anybody that may or may not have ever existed. It's because that's how you fit in better in the world. That's how you stay positive. And it doesn't have to be some shit that was written 5,000 years ago on fucking animal skins. That doesn't have to be the Golden Rule because it's old. You know, that's dumb. We need to figure out like now, today, what is, you know, the best way to live your life? What is the— you know, there's got to be ways you can be putting forward the most positive energy. I mean, we know objectively what's causing pollution. We know objectively what's causing birth defects. And, you know, and are we taking in too much chemicals and not enough vitamins? We know objectively all this stuff. We know how to organize our world, and yet we don't do it. We know how to organize our health, and yet very few people do it. We know all these things. The right path to like being like a happy, healthy person is to do all the shit that we already know you're supposed to do. Take care of your body, take care of your health, take care of your mind, your stress, meditate, be kind to people. We all know that. I mean, you ask anybody, they know how to get by and to be the most evolved version of you that you can be. I mean, it's not like a magical checklist. If you talk to people about it, you said, okay, here you got a person, you wanna improve them, what are the things that you're gonna do to them? Okay, well, if I was a life coach, the first thing I would say is this guy's got to get on a diet that makes him healthy. I don't mean a diet just to lose weight. I mean just healthy foods in your body. Many, many vegetables. Vegetables, a lot of good, good quality protein, a lot of water. Stop the sodas, stop the bullshit, start working out your body and get a better sense of like how this machine feels when it's moving. It's flowing better, there's less tension in it. Your mind feels like relaxed and, and you enjoy Enjoy every single moment of the day better. Step 1, everybody knows that step, right? What's step 2? Be cool to people. Be nice to as many people as you can. Smile at as many people as you can. Have them smile back at you. Tip well when you go to restaurants. Just do the most you can. Be as nice as you can, you know, and just still manage to not have people walk all over you. Just get through this life as nice as you can. What else? Do what you want to do with your life, right? Don't, don't be doing something you don't enjoy. Don't do something that's— don't get locked into, you know, a car that you can't afford and doing something crazy because you need the money. Don't, don't do that. Do what you want to do? Dude, what the fuck is it that you really want to do? Because if someone else is doing it, you can do it, you know. I mean, everybody makes their own path through this world, but a lot of people don't follow the path that they really fucking feel pulled to, you know. There's, for whatever reason, they got negative programming, you know. When they were kids, someone told them they couldn't do it, or told them to take the shortcut, or, or take the, uh, the, the sure route. That's a sad thing, man, when you talk to dudes, especially like talented dudes, and they don't follow up with what they want to do. You know, there's a bunch of people that will say, yeah, well, I have a family, so, you know, it's a great idea for you to just go out there and go crazy. I have people to support. You need to listen. Stop saying that. Stop saying any of those things. Every single person who has ever done anything worthwhile or exceptional or difficult or extraordinary, anyone, whether it's great artists or authors or mathematicians or whatever the fuck It is. Everyone encounters difficulties. There is no easy road. It does not exist. It is impossible. Everyone has issues. If you have time to pursue a hobby, if you have time to do anything in your life, you can better yourself. And here's one way you never better yourself: when you come up with excuses for why other people are successful and you're not. That shit is fucking dangerous. When you give yourself an escape— yeah, well, that's easy for you to say, you know, you do this, you do that— trust me, me. Everybody has a hard road. I wanted to jump out a window several times during my young life. I wanted to jump in front of a fucking train, just end it because too much pressure. Not really, but you know what I'm saying, theoretically. We all go through hard times. We all go through depression. We all do go through doubt and then moments in your life where it's really fucking difficult and you're trying to figure out what the fuck your path is gonna be. It's hard as shit. But Stefan and I were talking about this before the podcast starts, that that is what makes you a person, and those difficult moments are what build your character. Show me a great man who's the son of a great man. You know, that's what we're saying. These kids that are born billionaires, you're fucked. You're fucked. You're never going to be a self-made person. You have a backup trust for your backup trust for your trust, and you're fucked. Man, I'm fascinated by martial arts. I'm fascinated by comedy. I'm fascinated by many, many different things. I don't understand when people say they're bored because if I had the time to live 100 lives, I'd be speaking different languages. I'd be living in different countries. I would, I would try a number of different careers because I think there's a lot of unbelievably fascinating, puzzling, complex things that you could study in this world. That's just me and my personality, but that's a personality also that I've cultivated over years of challenges. Were you like that as a kid too? Well, I was involved in martial arts very early, and I think that is one of the things that motivated me to explore difficult tasks, because through difficult tasks you learn an incredible amount about yourself, and you, through, through the fire of competition, you get to understand, you get to understand motivation, you get to understand the resistance that you have inside your mind to doing hard work, you get to understand understand the rewards of discipline. Like, you don't truly appreciate relaxation unless you've worked hard, and that is the yin and the yang of life. And I've said this to, to the point of people getting sick of it, but one of the worst decisions a man can make— I can only speak for men, obviously— um, is to be comfortable. I don't think you should try to be comfortable. I think what you should try to do is try to earn comfort. And if you, if you can get a day off where you, you, you've worked hard and you've accomplished goals, that day off will be so sweet. When I work hard and I sit in front of the TV, I enjoy the shit out of it. I put my feet up, I have a nice drink, you know, I enjoy my free time. You have one of those chairs that nids your back or something like that? I do have one of those.

Do you really?

Those are great.

They're great, right? Yeah.

I don't use it that much though, honestly. I'm more of a workaholic than I should be probably. If the balance was— I probably should relax more than I do, but I never feel like I earned it. But that's part of the reason why when I do feel like I earned it, I can enjoy it. It's because I am more connected to the idea that I need to accomplish things. And it's not like for anybody else's benefit other than my own or anybody else's approval other than my own. I just— when I have a task, whether it's today I'm going to write 1,000 words or 2,000 or whatever the number is, if I don't do that, I write things down. I'll write down a list of things that get accomplished that day. And if I don't accomplish that, I'll get sick. Like, it'll drive me fucking crazy if I can't fill out that list. That drives me nuts, you know? But that's what led me to be a championship-level martial artist. That's what led me to achieve— it's like that. It's the reinforcement of those goals, like understanding that you can achieve those goals. It's gonna be difficult. You're gonna push through the difficulty, and then you're gonna understand what difficulty truly is and how much of it is just mental, how much of it is just in your mind, this adversity to to difficult tasks or to struggle. And a lot of people have that. They're scared. They're scared of complications. They're scared of failure. Failure is a big one that people are afraid of, but failure is one of the most important things you could ever have as far as the motivation to do things differently. One of the reasons why I think that I'm good at friendships and relationships is because I failed at them in the past. One of the things that I'm good at comedy is because I bombed on stage. One of the reasons why I'm good at work is because I've been a shit worker in the past, and I know the feeling of failure, the feeling of shame of being like a weak, non-motivated, lazy person. That's a weak feeling. It's a— you don't respect yourself, you know. And I have this phrase that I use all the time to people to try to motivate people. I say that be the hero in your own movie. Pretend that if your life was a movie and your life started now, what would the hero do? What would the person that you respect do? What would the person that you admire, person that inspires you, what would they do? Well, do that shit. And if you do that, you slowly build momentum. You like, today I did what I wanted to do. Today I started a class in yoga. I did this. I did all these things that I was saying I wasn't going to do. And now I feel momentum. And momentum is a very important point in people's lives. That's why some folks don't like to take days off because they feel like they're losing momentum and they sort of have to restart the wheel up again after a vacation, you know? And there's a lot of folks that live life on a cushy cloud of marshmallows and bullshit. And then one day something goes wrong. And I mean, And that's why spoiled kids are so sad. Like, a spoiled young boy is one of the saddest things ever. A young boy that becomes a man and can't take care of himself, and his dad has to keep on rescuing him, his dad has to keep on bailing him out of situations and giving him money. I've met guys like that, and that is a crippling affliction when they don't have the character themselves to be able to get by in life. They constantly need someone to help them and bail them out, even as a grown man. I've met guys in their 40s that still need help from their parents. I'm like, what the fuck, man? You're never gonna get it right because somewhere along the line they didn't face enough of the adversity to realize that there's sometimes you just got to get up and get shit done. There's sometimes we have to pull yourself up and you have to push forward even if you want to stay in bed. And if you don't do that, you just keep calling on your daddy and your daddy keeps rescuing you. You never develop those tools. You never develop that ability to recognize what you're doing wrong with your life. Because you're, you're soft. You got a cushiony, you got a safety net, a safety net for your safety net. If you had a kid, obviously you do have a kid, but say if you had like a 20-year-old and he's just a doper where he wake and bakes and doesn't get anything done, he's just always like hanging out with his friends and playing video games and he's just a loser. I, I wish there was a way you could show someone like that, like, I know that you're getting some comfort and satisfaction out of just laying around doing nothing, eating, getting fat, But your life would feel better and richer if you had a goal, you chase that goal, you accomplish some things, you would get this boost of confidence, you get this boost of self-esteem. Like, whatever it is that you're into doing, maybe you're into drawing comic books, maybe you're into making pottery or sculptures, or— but find whatever the fuck that is and pursue that instead of doing nothing. Like, the people that are doing nothing, those are the real people. Look, doing something might be as simple as like that Alex Honnold guy. He just climbs rocks, but he's world-class rock climber.

It's something, but it's also a goal of his, and he's also the best at it, right?

Yes.

Yeah, but those, those people who smoke pot all day and do that, those are also the guys who hate on Joe Rogan for being in shape, you know what I'm saying, or being disciplined, or get on Kevin Hart's Instagram and hate on, you know what I'm saying, because they don't— it's their own insecurities. I see what you're saying. But I would assume they would get motivated by seeing other people do something with their lives. Like, that should be motivating, not—

yeah, but if you grew up— if you grew up with losers and you're around a bunch of people with shitty attitudes, especially if it's in your household— I was very lucky that both my mom and my stepdad, they're not— they're not— they're the least hater people I've ever met in my life. They're just not haters in any way. Like, if someone's doing well, They were always like, wow, look at this guy, or like, wow, look at her, wow, look at him. There was never any hate in my house in terms of, uh, other people's success. But if you grew up with a dad and your dad's like, yeah, these— all these rich assholes, this— he thinks he's a badass, and this— you know, there's people that look at other people's success and instead of saying, wow, that guy did a lot of work, like the way I'm a successful person, but the way I look Kevin Hart, he exhausts me, you know, or The Rock. Those guys exhaust me. I'm like, Jesus Christ, like, I feel lazy next to those guys. Like, they do so much. Like, those guys are so overbearingly ambitious, you know. But some people, they see that and they compare themselves and they don't like it, so they get started getting really shitty. And it's like a natural feeling to try to chip away at that person. And the worst people that you know are the people that don't have a good self-judge. That everything they do is awesome. Yeah, those never grow anywhere, right? I mean, that's a huge issue with comedy when you run into people that have terrible comedy sets but think they did great. Like, we would always— Greg Fitzsimmons and I would always talk about that with like open micers. Like, there's people that hear phantom laughs, like they think they're doing great, and they have this delusional self-opinion where everything they do is awesome, and they don't know why they're not successful already. They don't know why they're not famous. And those people, I believe— I mean, in some sort of a weird narcissistic way, you could look at it this way— that those people are there to teach you. This is the consequences of not feeling that awful feeling when you fail. I was talking to Burr a couple weeks ago. He did a set at the Comedy Store, and I saw part of it. It was— he was killing. And then I ran into him in the hallway, and I go, "Oh man, main room show was great, right?" And he goes, "Yeah, fucked up at the end though. I tried to hang in there too long, and the last bit bombed." Like, he was just It was rotten at him that the last bit, like he goes, I fucking hung in there too long. I should have got off of that bit before that. But you know, when I was in there, he was fucking killing, you know, but that wasn't in his mind. The success was not in his mind. This was like, okay, whatever that happened at the end, don't fucking do that again. But that's why he's Bill Burr. That's why he's really good. When you're alone with your thoughts, you get an idea of what your thoughts actually are. If you live your life just acting constantly on the momentum of other people's expectations, of you wanting to be liked by these other people, you can run into a trap and you set up a life that you didn't really want.

You're fucked.

You're trapped in this situation where you have a mortgage, you've got credit card bills, you got student loans you have to pay, you have a bunch of shit going on that you have to continue to feed. And all that, and especially if you have a family and you have to feed them, oh my goodness, then you're fully locked in. You can't take any chances whatsoever. Oftentimes people make the mistake of getting stuck, and it is just a tactical mistake, just like it would be a mistake if you got stuck on a video game, just like it would be a mistake if you followed a map incorrectly and you get stuck in the woods. Your life is certainly some sort of a journey. It's certainly some sort of a journey, and we have to all be aware that when we're making journeys, we're not going to always make the right steps, and sometimes you have to back up and try again. And if you're in a position where you can't back up and try again, You've trapped yourself, and the system will set out honeypots for people to get trapped in. The system will set out the ideas of retirement, the ideas of the golden years, providing you benefits, providing you a healthy work environment. Why? Well, because they want people to work for them. They don't want people to realize their own dreams and escape. And those— that's a fucking pain in the ass. You got to hire more people and train them, and they want to set it up so that you stick around. Stick around in some sort of an unsatisfying world. It's up to you to see that video game problem, to see that issue as it comes up on the map. No, no, I think this is a right turn to see all the problems that could potentially lay in front of you and calculate your, your future. And then also look around all the people that didn't do it and look at the misery that they're in and learn that you don't want to be like them. And then look at the people that have kind of taken chances and navigated their way. What did they do differently than you? What, what, what objectivity do they have that maybe you lack? What insight into their own mistakes are they willing to delve into that you're not? That you step back and you go, you know, I don't, don't, I just don't want to look at myself that closely. But the person who's able to look at themselves the closest is going to get the more rational results. One of the things that's causing this funk that people are in is that we're living our lives, many of us at least, in these very unfulfilling ways. Where you're going to this office with artificial light and you're doing something you don't want to do all day long, and then you get home and you're tired. And on top of that, you're eating shit. You're eating potato chips and you're drinking soda, and your body is just like, what in the fuck is this? We're supposed to be out in the fields. We're supposed to be walking up hills. We're supposed to be looking for animals or gathering vegetables. We're supposed to be doing all these things that our body's designed to do. We're supposed to be in nature.

Yeah.

And nature is like a medicine. Like, it literally is a medicine to you. Like, people, people that go— you don't have to go hunting, you don't have to go fishing. Just go hike, man. Just go hike up to the top of a mountain and look out. You know, there's a reward that you get from that that is intensely, like, soul-filling. There's like something about, like, when I was in Colorado and there was this, this area of Boulder where you drive up one of these roads and there's this area where you could park and it was this incredible view, man. And these people just park and just go out there and just look. But you get there and you park and you go, 'Fuck,' because you would see— you're literally seeing the Continental Divide, these snow-capped mountains in July. Yeah, in July it's covered with snow because those mountains don't give a fuck. One thing that we are, we're an animal, but we're also the next stage of animals where we're aware of who we are and we contemplate our existence. And when you contemplate your existence and you're an intelligent life form, you should always be seeking to improve. If you're always seeking to improve, the thing that you look at, like, what has brought me the most positive results? So it's kindness. It's kindness, friendship, the connection with human beings on a very positive level where you like build up like a trust and you have a warmth and friendship and you root for each other and you share in each other's bounty and you build together. You know, that we all know inherently inherently in our heads that kindness is like one of the best gifts you can bestow another human being, whether it's giving them food when they don't have any or helping them out or hooking them up or doing something to help them just, or being around them and complimenting them, whatever the fuck it is. We know that inherently that feels great and we know it. We know that that's the next— we have to figure out how to use our resources together so that we can be like that all the time. I think it's always about doing what you actually want to be doing with your life as far as if you have an inner creative expression to get out. And there's a lot of people that always wanted to be singers and they just, for whatever reason, never pursued it.

Yeah.

So they just sing around the house and they always wonder what could have been if they just tried to be a singer. That's one form of— that, that could bum you out. That's one form of a roadblock in your life, the, the, the depressed feeling that you didn't try, that you didn't try to reach reach your potential. You didn't go after what is intriguing to you. Like, we all have almost like a beacon that pulls us in a certain direction. But some people it's nursing, some people it's construction and architecture, being a parent. For some people, for some, for us it was stand-up. Yeah, it's really simple. Yeah. And it's like there, there's, there's a something— the, the happiness that's involved in pursuing your, your inherent desires is unavoidable. I mean, it's not— it's, it's, it's unappreciated It's underappreciated. People think, well, all you have to do is find a career. Yes, all you have to do is find a career, but I guarantee you there's one out there that you really, really want to do. Yeah, the key is like, I want to be famous.

That's what I was gonna say.

Thank you guys so much for watching. I made this video because CeeCee D asked me to. So if there's a famous entrepreneur that you want me to profile next, leave in the comments below and I'll see what I can do. I'd also love I would love to know what did Joe say that had the biggest impact on you? What change you're gonna make in your life or business after watching this video? Please leave in the comments, I'm gonna join in the discussion. I also wanna give a quick shout out to Tuan Nguyen, thank you so much for picking up a copy of my book, Your One Word, it really, really, really means a lot to me. So thank you guys again for watching, I believe in you, I hope you continue to believe in yourself, and whatever your one word is, much love.

I'll see you soon. The idea that we were literally on a gigantic organic spaceship, you know, that's just too fucked up. It's too crazy to think. You know, it's so much easier to think about Tiger Woods and what was Jesse James thinking, and it's so much easier to distract yourself with, you know, "Who wears this dress better?" in Us Magazine, 76% say this girl. You know, it's, I think as human beings, we have, we're in a weird sort of an adolescent stage of evolution. And we have these incredible technical and technological capabilities and this insane ability to communicate with people all over the world and this insane ability ability to exchange information, but we're still trapped in this monkey body and we still have these monkey instincts and we work like incredible hours. And you know, if you see kids in school now, they have insane amounts of homework. They're training you to be a goddamn fucking drone. I mean, you work all day in school and then you come home and you have hours and hours of homework. 3 and 4 hours of homework a night, to the point where you're just accustomed to like doing things you don't want to do. And then you're going to take that and you're going to go to college and you're going to work on it there, and eventually you're going to get a job, and that job is going to require hours and hours of your day, and to the point where you don't have time to think about space. You don't have time to think about if there's some sort of a weird connection between every human being being on the planet and every single action that you do, I mean, is life itself really just sort of a gigantic mathematical equation that's too bizarre and unrecognizable to the average person? Well, those thoughts, there's no room for those when you have to get up for work in 5 hours and your baby's crying and you gotta get gas and there's all sorts of different issues that people have that keep them from thinking about the real weird aspects of this life. This life is incredibly bizarre. J.D.S. Haldane said it best, "Not only is the world stranger than you suppose, it's stranger than you can suppose." And it really is. And when you start getting into like the, you start getting into quantum physics and the idea of particles in superpositions where they can exist in motion and be still at the same time. And then there's subatomic particles that blink in and out of existence and exist in two different places at the same time. And like, what the fuck is going on? You know, it's too much. It's too crazy. In order for you to take care of your mortgage, in order for you to be a good neighbor and show up for the homeowners association meeting on Tuesday night and, you know, gossip with the neighbors about who's losing their house, there's too many variables. There's too much things going on, and people gravitate towards stupid, meaningless shit. Because it's easy to absorb and because, uh, it, it jives well with our monkey instincts. You know, the Large Hadron Collider doesn't get nearly as much weight in the news. You know, there's, there's a bunch of— there's 10,000 scientists that are making black holes. That, that's not getting— that's not getting the news, you know. That's not getting nearly as much attention. We're so strange that we're like a movie. We are with the whole human race It's like a goddamn Coen Brothers movie. There's a certain amount of programming that the media does, you know, I mean, especially if you watch like stuff like Fox News, there's a certain amount where they're sort of conditioning people to think a certain way. But for the most part, it's what people are interested in. You know, I think like the really deep scary stuff is too daunting for a lot of people. There's something about people that it's like they don't wanna know what's behind the door. They don't wanna know what's outside. It's too scary. They wanna control their micro world, you know? And that's why people like, you know, having a small group of friends and living in a small community and, you know, and they like to know their environment. And when you get into really crazy shit like quantum physics and you get into the universe and infinity, the idea of an infinite universe, universe, perhaps not even just one universe but infinite numbers of universes. It's just too nuts. It's too crazy to think that above you literally goes on forever. There is no roof. You step outside your house and there is no— you can go, you can make a straight line from your fucking head to a star that's 14 billion light years away. That's, that's insane. That's one of the things that hits you when you do mushrooms, you know, if you especially do like a large dose, you, you, you start realizing that there's no ground, there's no up and no down. You're like in the middle of this and there's no, there's no edges. It just goes, it goes forever and you're like, just like right there, you're right there swimming in this universal soup.