In this solo, 10‑minute "Uncommon Moment" episode, Liam Applegate uses a quote from Ron Chernow’s biography of John D. Rockefeller—"Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things fail because we lack concentration?"—as a springboard to explore why focus and disciplined effort are essential for achieving large goals. He reflects on modern distractions (social media, endless content) and how his own habit of posting motivational quotes can become an excuse to avoid deeper work. Applegate argues that true progress often requires "inefficient" or uncomfortable actions, citing examples from Haruki Murakami, David Goggins, Bill Walsh, and Elon Musk. He stresses the importance of questioning assumptions, cultivating gratitude, and maintaining a champion mindset as daily mental preparation. The episode serves both as a personal reminder for Applegate and a motivational kick‑start for listeners, urging them to concentrate their mind, embrace disciplined effort, and pursue greatness.
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So welcome to an episode today, and today is just an uncommon moment, and I haven't done a lot of these. I did a couple last year, um, but because I want to kind of just keep up with uploading and just really putting out really good content out there, I wanted to do an uncommon moment. So this is a 5 to 15 minute episode, probably going to be the 5 to 10 minute range, but I really want to just expand on a quote I read um, today actually, um, this, uh, on Wednesday. Well, I read it today, but I saved it on my phone on Wednesday, and it's from Titan by Ron Chernow, who, um, Titan's about John D. Rockefeller. And so he asked this question: Do not many of us who fail to achieve big things fail because we lack concentration? The art of concentrating the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else. Now, this episode is more for me than it is for you. And the reason why is because there's so many things nowadays to just cloud your mind. There's so many different things that are pulling for your attention, whether it's social media, whether it's online watching things, whether it's whatever it may be. There's always something that is pulling for your attention. And it really depends on what are you going to do? What are you going to put your attention towards? And I really like this quote because he says, just to reiterate, do not many of us who fail to achieve big things— and that's what I want to do, I want to achieve big things. So why would we fail? It's because we lack concentration. The art of concentrating the mind on the thing to be done at the proper time and to the exclusion of everything else. Now, um, something that I don't really like to do is post about, um, kind of these quotes. And the reason why I don't really like posting them is because I would say it kind of sets a standard for myself. And the reason why I say that, and this is not anything that I haven't thought about, but the reason why I think that is when I'm posting on social media, it's always, how can I represent what I'm going through right now for myself and what can I represent to the person looking at my social media post and preferably on my stories, right? The music that I put on the Instagram post and I was thinking about it. I was like, all right, I don't really like posting about these discipline topics. And I was wondering, I was like, why is that right? And I think the reason why is because It's an excuse for myself not to become better. Right? Because when you start posting things, like I always try to post what is relevant to the user, to the person watching my story, right? Like they're learning, but they're also seeing a representation of myself. And when I'm seeing quotes of disciplines of like, hey, this is a person you would like to be like. Then that's something that I should aspire to. And the thing is, when I'm not posting, um, when I don't post that where it's like waking up early in the morning or being super disciplined, what I've noticed is that focusing is a really hard thing to do. And, and this is more for myself because I fall— I've fallen into this recently where, you know, where I'm not fully focused on music or I'm not fully focused on my podcast where I'm posting every couple weeks, or with my music, I'm like, you know, there's times where I'm not fully engaged. And just going back to that quote where you have to just be able to sit in that room and concentrate, it's the art of concentrating the mind. And that's what I really want to remind myself when I listen to this and when I come back to the reminder. It's like the art of concentrating the mind, the art of concentrating the thing that can run rampant, and not rampant in a bad way, but more rampant in like the sense of if you want to achieve great things, big things, massive things, if you want to be successful, you have to control your mind. And there's a reason why I'm recording this at 10 o'clock at night. It's because I read this quote, um, and it says that Let me find it real quick. It says, to be able to grasp something of value, sometimes you have to perform seemingly inefficient acts. So the value, the value is the music, the value is the podcast, the value is the brand you're building. But you can't have any of that unless you're doing inefficient acts, unless you're not— if you're not doing, like, you're not taking risks. And that's the thing I don't want you to fall into, whether you're the listener or whether you're myself. Right? You don't want to fall into that trap of, well, I don't need to do this, or I don't need to be more— like, mine needs to be more disciplined. And I know it's very vulnerable talking about this on my podcast, but I'm just saying, um, this is something that— it's the concentration. Like, I do want to do great things. And if you're, if you're stuck and you're, you're in the same boat, I mean, um, this is just an opportunity for you to get out of that. This is more for myself because I like talking through the episodes and really just kind of putting my ideas in. Most of the time I'm, I have like a script that I put together for my podcast episodes and I'm really just diving into that. But for episodes like this, I just take a quote and I riff off of it. And so when I read things like that, where it's like Ron Chernow, you're hearing Rockefeller talk about the discipline of the miner, Haruki Murakami, where he's talking about The Art of Running, and he's talking about value and you have to do inefficient acts. It's really pushing yourself. It's like David Goggins, right? It's Can't Hurt Me, where he literally has cartilage out of his knee. He's had so many surgeries and then he's still running 200-mile races. And this guy is just a beast. But that's what it takes to be great. That's what it takes to be great. It doesn't mean for me, at least, sacrifice everything. It just means that you want to be great. So do great things and do it well. And there's a lot of other quotes that I have that I'm just— I love. And I actually put this on my Instagram story. It says, regardless of what we do in our lives, our why, our driving purpose, cause, or belief never changes. If our golden circle is in balance, what we do is simply the tangible way we find to breathe life into that cause. Just another great quote about doing great things, right? Another one that I actually posted to my Instagram story, it says, Alex, if you're like nearly everybody else in this world, you've accepted so many things without question that you're not really thinking at all. It's a good quote because I had Jonathan Jarecki on my podcast And if you listen to that episode, Jonathan Dreki was actually great. He really— his mantra was question everything, and people really received that well. And it's really interesting, like so many people, like if you don't come into a work environment or you don't come into anything with questions, you're just assuming so many different things. And this is from experience a little bit, but because I don't have a ton of experience in the workforce, it's more of just from books too. It's like if you don't come in like Elon Musk, his whole thing was questioning, questioning, questioning. And I want to just encourage anyone listening to this is like, question the requirements. Like if they tell you to do something, like Elon says this, the only law or only rule they had to obey in SpaceX was not any of the government regulations. It was that there was gravity. Like, the world and, like, imposed this force called gravity. But all these government regulations of you had to add this size and this bolt and all this stuff, that doesn't matter. All that matters is that you are questioning why do we do it this way? Why do we do it the way we do it? Why have we always done it like this? Why hasn't it been better? Why hasn't it been more efficient? And from there, that's when you start to grow. That's when you can be honest with yourself. So there's a lot of good things in this episode, and I'm just reading some of the quotes that I've shared recently. And the whole goal is you're becoming better, right? Another one that I read actually, and I was like, this is really interesting. It says, individuals who regularly experience and express gratitude are physically healthier, more optimistic about the future, and feel better about their lives than those who do not. And it says that those who experience gratitude are more alert, enthusiastic, and energetic than those who do not, and are more likely to achieve personal goals. So this is just another reminder, be grateful. Be— have your mind focused, have your mind whole and one and just focused and concentrating on the thing at hand, that one thing or the couple of things, and just go for that. Set your goals. And then from that, be grateful or be grateful in the first place that you can even have that, the opportunities to do that. And then from there, that's when you can be great. That's when, you know, Bill Walsh, the score takes care of itself. Champions act like champions before they are champions. Right. You can do this. Anyone that's listening to this, you can do it with the right mental preparation going into your day every single day. And this is more— this is just as it is like for you, as it is for me, whoever's listening to this, really. And it's kind of a wake-up call in a sense. And the thing is, greatness requires a lot. So are you going to rise up and meet that? That's the real key. And so as I wrap it up, uh, this 10-minute episode, 11-minute episode, um, this is your kickstart to the day, um, whatever day you listen to this. And I hope you find this inspirational and helpful. Um, and I'll talk to you guys again soon in the next episode.
