There is No Destination: Just a Journey — Joe Rogan

Um, it's like trying to find your calling and your passion in life. It's like, you don't have to necessarily know what that is, but whittle it down by fine. What don't you want to do? What do you hate? What do you hate? Right. Don't even look at what you like. What do you hate? I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. I don't want to do this. I, I learned very early on at a young age, like I do not want to go down this path that I see everybody on this. Go to school, get a job. I'll have kids get married, retired, die. Like I don't want, I don't want that. I don't know what I do want. I just know that to me, I don't want anything to do with that. And I'm going to go in the exact opposite direction. Whatever that is, as long as I'm far away from that, that's where I'm going to be. Well, it's one of the benefits of being an outsider. Yeah. When you're an outsider and you see all these people that are supposedly doing the right thing, but living these sort of empty, meaningless lives that they don't enjoy. Particularly that they don't enjoy, you know? And then, you know, when I was a kid, I, I always looked at normal people living normal lives, I could never relate. I never understood it. You know, I also grew up from a broken home and we were also on welfare and you know, the whole deal, because I think a lot of motivated people come from a place of despair when they're younger. And I always had this thought in my head that one day I would make it. One day I'm going to make it. I'm going to make it. And then one day I realized, and I don't know when I realized it probably when like on paper, I'd already made it. Yeah. I realized, oh, there's no such place. Like this is not real. Like you can't ever, you don't make it. No, no one makes it. Yeah. Like if you, every day you have to be trying to do better. Every day you have to be trying to, first of all, there's no perfect human. Let's accept that. You're always going to be flawed. You're always going to, you're always going to be subject to fits of rage and envy and all the things that you wish that you would never have in your mind. So you're going to constantly be working to make sure that that never happens. You've constantly be working to make sure that you are always evaluating your perspective on life and always looking at things from meditate, constantly meditate, make sure that you approach life with a learned perspective. Like you're a better person than you were the day before. And whatever you're trying to do, whether it's fighting or whether you're, do you have an art form that you practice, whatever it is that you're doing, you're trying to do better every day. And you never, even if you, you accomplish some like when, you know, you accomplish some amazing work of art, that's just that day, the next day, you got to go back to work. Like, like if you have a world championship fight and you've trained for eight weeks and you win by knockout and the spectacular result, and you're very happy with the result, you got a day or two to relax. You got a day or two. And then you're like, fuck, okay, now what? Well, now you got to get back to work. And if you, if you think that there's some place like a movie where you're holding hands with your loved ones and the fucking sunsets going on in the credits roll, that's horseshit. And we have this idea in our head that there's this place that you can get to where you've air quotes made it. And I'm here to tell you that motherfucker doesn't exist. I mean, obviously I'm not the most successful person in the world, but on paper I've accomplished a lot of shit and it doesn't mean a goddamn thing. Every fucking day, every fucking day I get up and I'm like, all right, I better figure out how to do this. I got to work on this new bit. Okay. I got this podcast today. I got to be on point. Let me think about this. Let me read this book. Let me, uh, you know, whatever the subject is, let me get all, let me get into it. You have to, if you don't, you're, you're going to feel like shit. Yeah. It's that, that destination mentality. Yeah. There's no destination. Yeah. It's just a journey. You're never going to get there. There's no, there's nowhere to go. As soon as you get there, we're like, jeez, I'm just as far away from that thing that I thought, because as you develop your, your, the things that you think you want to develop to, oh, one day I'm going to be rich, but the richer that you get the richer you want to become. Well, then you start filling up your life with these meaningless destinations. Right. Which are material objects. They're, I want a fucking yacht bitch. I want a jet, you know, and you're like, I want a bigger jet. Tom's got a fucking jet, but I want a big jet. I want to show, I'll pull my jet up beside the hood jet. Let her know motherfucker there's levels to this game, you know? And then that's what people do. And it's, they, they fill their lives up with meaningless possessions and they, and they still aren't happy. A band-aid to cover up the, like, what is the real thing here? Do you know how many really successful people I know that are fucking medicated to shit? All of them. A lot of them. A lot of them. More, more, more, more, more so than the people that aren't in a lot of ways. The people that struggle, they're on a better medication. For real. The struggle of like, like a hard working person that can get, get done with a day of hard work and have a feeling of accomplishment and then go home to your family and get going again, knowing you have to get up in the morning and do it again, knowing you don't have enough money to buy a yacht, but knowing you have enough money to put food on the table. And there's a satisfaction to be able to provide that. That's a better medicine. Well, that's the thing with, with why it's so important and vital to, to travel and, you know, go to these third world countries. Like these people literally have nothing and are inviting perfect strangers into their homes and giving them things that they, that they, they do not even have themselves, like, why are these people so happy? Why are they so at peace? Right. Because they understand what's important. That it's not this materialistic thing. And that's not to say that materials are bad, but we view them as these, these, these objects of, of success. And then, and then, and I've made it and I, things are perfect in my life. And they, they do the exact opposite in a lot of ways. If you don't have a good grasp of, of what's really important in this life. And, and, and unfortunately a lot of times we need everything taken away for us to really understand what those things really are. Yeah. You can appreciate some things. You can appreciate a nice car or a nice house, but if you get really caught up in them, you are trying to fill up a bucket with a hole in it and it's never going to fill up, you're always just going to look for bigger and bigger things to try to fill that bucket up and, and you're going to feel full of anxiety all the time chasing that and there's no real, there's no real satisfaction. Then that's why, you know, when you look at one of the things that people look at, when you look at people that are extremely materialistic, that, you know, where the, the most fancy jewelry and drive the most fancy cars and the biggest houses, we always think they're shallow. Always. I mean, isn't that funny? Like the thing that you would look at in terms of like, like markers for success markers, it's like. Material things are the big ones, right? They're the big markers for success. The big house, that's the big one, right? Big ass fucking mansion. Look at this mansion. Big everything. Big everything. It was a big fucking rock on its finger. Big chain, you know, big this big that there's nothing there. There's nothing there. And so ingrained in us from the time that we're born. Cause it's hard to get. That's it. That's why it's a trick. It's one of those things. It's hard to get. So you think you want to get it because there's a lot of things that are hard to get that are worth getting. For sure. Right. I mean, becoming a great fighter is hard, but it's worth doing because once you do it and you realize like, like there's an expression that I've used before, but my Tag window instructor said to me when I was a little boy, he said martial arts are a vehicle for developing your human potential. Yeah. And I remember that. I'm like, Oh shit. Like, and I've used that many times explaining to people, but that is the benefit of getting good at a martial art. Like you go through this difficult thing and then through that you reap all these personality rewards, you reap these character rewards, you reap this understanding of what you're capable of, right? If you are capable of making it through a brutal camp and getting up in the morning, when you know, you don't want to that alarm clock goes off and you're like, I don't want to fucking run, but you do it, you go out and run and you, you do it every day and you get through it. And then you're successful and you realize that you have this incredible endurance because of the discipline that you put in. You realize that you have this incredible skill and this understanding of how to fight correctly because of all the time and the hours and the focus. You're a better person because of that, right? That's a real goal, but that yacht, you know, like, like, well, I'm gonna, I'm going to work 16 hours a day so I can get a bigger yacht. And then, you know, I need a house with bigger windows. I need a, it's, there's a nonsense to that. Like, look, I'm not saying if you can afford a nice house, get a fucking nice house. It's great to have a nice house. But what I'm saying is it's not the end. Yeah. It's the, you, you are the project. Your mind is the project. How you treat people is the project. How you, you're the way you are with your family and your friends and your loved ones and the people you communicate with. Get better at that. Yeah. That's, that's, that's the goal in this life. The goal in this life is how we treat each other. I know. And I wish these were things that were taught. No, no, no, no. It's better. It's better that you didn't learn it that way. Because you had to figure it out yourself. Yes. Cause you had to figure it out yourself and cause you can explain it to people. That's true. In particular that you can explain it to people having gone through this horrific adversity and come out on the other end with a message. Yeah. And so other people that are going through some stuff, shit, you've got the medicine. Yeah. The medicine is your, you've, you've actually experienced it and you know, it's a map, it's a map of the territory. It's not, it's not a fucking pill that you can take and all of a sudden everything's going to be better. But what it is, is a map of the territory and you know, and a knowledge, hey, you can get through these woods. And on the other side, there's a beautiful green meadow and there's a lake. And it's really nice. Yeah, for sure. You know, I think that, that was one, uh, one of the benefits of the way I grew up, which was really hard and horrible, but I got to see firsthand both sides of money. You know, I went from living in a basement with five of the people and living on welfare to living with my father in a mansion. And it's like, Oh yeah, all this money and all this stuff is just emptiness and meaningless and, and it doesn't necessarily equate to real happiness. And like, why are we all chasing this so hard? And I got to see that firsthand very, very early on. I was like, I don't want this at all. It's a trick. It's like the same reason why people love to play video games because they're difficult, but there's no, there's no real reward unless you're a professional video game player and you make a living doing it. There's no real reward. You just get better at it and you get some sort of a sense of satisfaction. And I mean, there's a, there's something to be gained from it. In fact, some video games they've actually shown can increase your cognitive performance and other things similar to the way chess does, but the, the trap is that they're hard to do. So when we see things that are difficult, human beings are sort of puzzle and problem solving oriented. We see puzzles we want to solve and we see mysteries. We want to find out that's why everybody's into like Bigfoot and UFOs and shit, cause it's a mystery. Oh, what is it? What do you think it is? Like we have a natural inclination to try to solve things like that. And we think that because in life, look, if you try to solve where the food is, you survive, that's what made us alive. That's why our DNA has been passed down for all these hundreds of thousands of years, because our ancestors figured out where the food is, you know, they figured out how to drill a hole in the ice and fish. They figured out how to, you know, how to survive. And this is why things that are difficult to do are attractive to us, but we have to be able to differentiate between things that are difficult and meaningful and things that are difficult and bullshit. Yeah. My, you know, Brian Cowan, my friend Brian Cowan sits up to me once. We're really young and it was the perfect thing. We're both in our twenties. And he said, all you want is enough money. So you don't have to worry about what something costs when you go to a restaurant. He's like, everything else is bullshit. I was like, you're right. Yeah. That feeling of being able to have enough money to just get a nice meal at a restaurant and not sweat it, like everything else is gravy. Yeah. Well, you know, they, they've done countless studies on this. Like once your basic human needs are met, you know, you have food, shelter. Everything from that point on is, doesn't correlate to any kind of happiness. And in many ways is the exact opposite, you know, creates more stress and all of these things. Like what, how much do you really need? And if you, the more you, you think you need the more problems you're creating and the more distractions you are from the important things in life and, and developing as a human being, you know, you're developing all these materialistic things, but you're not developing yourself emotionally and mentally and spiritually. And, uh, yeah, like just as soon as you realize that and be like, why am I, what am I, what is the purpose of what it is that I am chasing? Yeah. I think the study was like, they said $80,000, like everything over $80,000. Like you really don't experience any much more, you know, before that you're, you get into like 40,000, 30,000. Well, now you're struggling. It's hard to feed yourself. Becomes very, it's a weight on your shoulders. But once you hit a certain number, it's like, eh, you're going to be all right. Yeah. Yeah. You're not going to be in the street. Yeah. You're, you're living. Like I remember I lived in a, this apartment, I had this, uh, kind of shitty apartment and then I moved to a better apartment and then I was sitting in this better apartment, I was like, I'm kind of used to this. Like I'm used to this. Like this is just home now. There's a feeling when you get where you're home, like, all right, I'm home. Now I'm in this other apartment. It just costs more money. Yeah. You know, like, okay. I remember thinking that like, is this better? Yeah. I mean, I guess it's better, but it's cost twice as much. Like now I got to fucking think about how I'm going to pay for this bitch. Yeah. Well, yeah. I think about like when I had like $5 in the bank or when I had $5,000 in the bank, like, did I feel different? I didn't feel different at all. No, you know, I might've felt different. Like when I go out to eat and the check comes, I come, I'm going to pay for this kind of thing, but emotionally, I didn't feel any different whatsoever. Yeah. And yeah, I think that's such an important lesson for all of us to learn. And if, you know, the earlier, the sooner you figure those things out, you know, the better.