Sean Everett walks through an early-morning routine and explains how to build belief in yourself. He argues that breaking free from societal expectations, treating time and money as resources, and embracing your uniqueness are the keys to avoiding regret and living authentically.
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Good morning. It's early as hell out here. We've been up since about 1:32 AM. Uh, got about a 4-mile jog in this morning. There wasn't a soul around. And couple hours of work in already. And, uh, sun's coming up now. So yeah, we've been getting after it. And you know, we don't We haven't used an alarm to get up in, gosh, probably a decade. So, question to you is like, how do you do this for yourself? And really, you just gotta tap into something different, some unique energy source, the universal energy source. And, uh, that really starts with like building belief in yourself. And so, that's something that we're gonna talk about today. Is how do you cross that major chasm? And this battle that you're facing, the reason that you haven't achieved the things you want to achieve, regardless of who you are on this planet— like, everyone wants a little bit more— it's, it's all a mental game. And I'll give you a couple, couple reasons why that is. So first of all, the universe is free. All of this is free. We've just developed these flimsy, frail human constructs wrapped around the outside of it to monetize it. So large countries, whomever, will go and just invade a territory and just have big guns and, you know, armor and muscle and say, no, it's ours now. So they take it. They literally took it, and then they wrapped around it and said, you now have to pay me money. to enter this territory, and if you do anything here, you got to continue to pay me money. We call that taxes. And then we're going to develop these weird rule systems, which we call a legal structure, and basically just charge you for everything. So, you know, that's a planet Earth thing that humans have developed. There's really no reason that exists in the rest of the universe. Right? So, you can literally go out into this forest and you can grab a stick, chop down some wood, eat some plants. You know, like, it's free. This universe is free. And so, what is blocking you from that? Well, it's these societal structures. And some people have basically just gone far enough where they take a leadership position and then they end up telling other people what to do. And so, you really gotta break out of this sort of idea and mindset if you wanna get to where you wanna get in life because every single human on this planet is made from the exact same stuff. Same matter, same stuff from this universe, breathing the same oxygen, same blood cells, same physiology, same DNA, same cellular structures. Yeah, there's minute variations, but we're not talking about order of magnitudes different. Like, you are not a tree, you are not a sun, you are a human being if you're listening to this. And if you're an animal listening to this, like this bird chirping out here, maybe he or she understands what I'm saying, but maybe not. They don't have opposable thumbs. Y'all have opposable thumbs, so you get to figure out what you want to do. And one of the major questions, instead of just like sitting on your couch and hoping and thinking and dreaming, Is when you're on— I mean, this is an often used example— when you're on your deathbed at the end of your life and you look back and you stand there and you're like, man, what if? I really wish I would have done X. Like, what stopped you? The only thing that stopped you was your brain. And so it's not really about like having a belief, or it's really just about like, what do you want to get? Figuring out what that thing is first. And then making steps to go get it. And a lot of times it's just society and marketers and advertisers and businesses and like influencers and celebrities telling you what you want, not what you actually want, saying you want this thing because I want to like sell you stuff. So you give me your money and you exchange your time for that money. So basically you're investing in me so I can get the thing I want. So, if you're spending money with something, that money ideally should be used as a tool. It's not money, it's just a resource like time, like oxygen, like food. You're utilizing that resource in order to get you somewhere. So, what is that thing getting you? And so, it's like you can develop tools and methods and functions to help you get from A to B, and then it can compound because You could build a step, and once you're on that first step, you can build the second step and the third step, and then all of a sudden you can scale a wall because you build some steps. And then once you get above the wall, then it's like, well, what's next, right? So that's why you hear a lot of these people who sort of got what they wanted— they thought they wanted, like the money, the stuff, the things— and they just lose hope and fall into this deep depression because they realized that wasn't the answer. So like the other mindset is imagine you're already sitting in the place where you've gotten everything you wanted, all the physical things, all the experiences, yada yada. And then what? What do you do then? So everybody wants this like magic retirement so they can relax and chill. Okay, you're sitting on a beach nonstop for 10 years. Then what? You're gonna get bored at some point and you're back to your phone scrolling or like thinking or whatever. So whatever that thing is, and then what? Why don't you just go do that now instead of waiting for like all this other stuff? And because of that, you will have a stronger pull and push to get you further than any other human on this planet. And then all that other stuff will come in the rearview and it'll be cool, right? So, you know, if you want to buy like things and stuff, and that helps you get to the next thing and stuff, which helps you get to the next thing, or you just really dig it, like it brings you so much joy, hell, go do that thing. So this, this idea that you have to have like this foundational rooted belief in something, you don't need that. You just need to figure out like what the hell you want to do with your time. We've all got a finite amount of time. And it's not going away. Like, every second that ticks by is more seconds in the rearview and less time in front of you. There have been billions of humans that have existed before this moment today and have passed, and there may be more in the future. But right now, where we exist in this moment, in this time, there's only 8 billion of us. You are one of the few, like, You are one of only 8 billion humans with opposable thumbs, a prefrontal cortex, who can fashion tools, create language, and create things that are much bigger than ourselves by virtue of having a collective group of individuals organized against a singular goal. And the question is like what you want to do with it. Like, throw it all away, nobody else really matters, right? Like When you're the average life expectancy on this planet, I used to be an actuary, and so they have these actuarial tables like GAM 84, 83 table, whatever it is. The average life expectancy is 76, 77 years old. You know, women live a couple years longer than men, and that's not a lot of years, and they're ticking by. And it is true what our parents said, like. What used to feel like an hour is now a week going by, and that week that went by is now like a month going by, and that month going by is now like a year. That— it's starting to go faster and faster and faster and faster, which means you're gonna wake up one day and you're gonna be a decade in the future, and you're gonna look back and go, damn, what the hell did I even accomplish? Like, where did the time go? What did I do? And if you're not clear about that, you're gonna end up with some regret. So if you want to be like one of one in this world, like throw away the pro athlete, the influencer, the celebrity, like get rid of all that garbage. Like what, what else is left when you're done posting on the internet? What's left when you're there by yourself at night alone about to go to sleep and you're just in your head? Are you cool with like the trajectory your life is on? If not, you gotta make a shift. So I'm just here to tell you that, um, this like world and these constructs and the society, they're all human-made. You can make a construct. You, you don't have to rely on the one that exists today. You can go make your own village with your own set of rules, like Yeah, everyone's gotta like wear their hats upside down and, you know, we gotta clap 3 times every time we wake up in the morning. It's just another sort of artifact and like a mechanic of the system in place that humans develop. So all these like traditions, humans came up with it like out of nowhere. They're not like written into the base code of the universe to like do jumping jacks, right? Or like have coffee first thing in the morning. We just came up with that. So what, what do you want to create? It's a big old blank piece of paper. And I think the real intention of all this is you just gotta be unique, you gotta be different, and you just gotta stay weird. And then once you're like your true authentic weird unique snowflake self, something cool is gonna come from that. Like, that's cool. Like, being unique and different, that's cool. You know what's not cool? Being the same stamp-and-repeat person that you see a billion of wearing the same thing, doing the same thing, being the same, looking out for the same. Like, come up with something new. That's more rad. That's cool. So yeah, stay weird.
