You know Joe Rogan from his podcast The Joe Rogan Experience, from the UFC, his stand-up shows or from Fear Factor back in the day. He’s a man with a lot to say, and here are some of Joe Rogan’s best quotes on personal development.
Joe Rogan on Who You Should Be
“Be the hero of your own story”
Joe Rogan
We root for a hero in a movie
We all find ourselves rooting for the hero when we watch a movie. From Rocky to Harry Potter, we get invested, we watch them try and fail and root for them to be victorious.
Is there anyone you should be more invested in then yourself? Is there anyone you’ve seen putting in the necessary work, failing, and getting back up more than you?
Start rooting for yourself, see yourself as a developing hero in your own movie
Don’t be a side character of your own life
If you’re introverted this may strike a chord, but even if you’re not you may sometimes feel like you’re just a side character in your own life. Do you go to work only for your boss or colleagues to be the ones speaking up in the meetings? They decide what you do and how you do it?
When you’re at social gatherings are you usually just sitting on the sidelines watching others have fun or spend most of your time listening to the one or two interesting friends that you have?
You’re not the main character in you life! This is because you haven’t made the decisions you needed to make. Often we slide into jobs we don’t like and relationships we don’t want because we don’t want to make those hard decisions.
- Cut out those friends you don’t want
- Start the company you want to work for
- Spend your time doing what you love
- Become an authority and become a hero
You may not be the hero type but all heroes start as a looser in the movies. Then something happens that turns them into the hero we all root for. You have to make that something happen to become the hero of your own story.
Start by writing down what you want to do, it’s an easy first step and will get you moving in the right direction.
What does it mean to be the hero in your movie?
- Do what you think you should do
- Don’t be content with being less than your potential
- Don’t be lazy
Joe Rogan On Excellence
“Excellence in anything increases your potential in everything”
Joe Rogan
This is a hugely motivational quote where Rogan really hit several nails on the head. I’m going to break it down here because there’s more to unpack here then first meets the eye.
Looking at highly successful people we see that this really is true. Schwarzenegger, Bruce Lee, Elon Musk and even Rogan himself all achieved excellence in one domain before becoming even more successful in another.
- Schwarzenegger was Mr. Olympia before becoming the highest paid actor on the planet and later, the Governator.
- Bruce Lee was Hong Kong’s cha cha champion long before he was a successful martial artists or movie star.
- Musk co-founded Zip2 in 1995 which he sold for $307 million in 1999 before moving on to PayPal, Tesla, The Boring Company, Space X and Neuralink.
- Rogan was a Taekwondo Champion before becoming a well known comedian, presenter and pod-caster.
There’s a few things we can all learn from this.
Just get started.
Even if you are making progress with something, eventually you’ll ask yourself if you are wasting your time. You might be spending your time juggling for example, you spend hours everyday perfecting your throws and coming up with new routines that you post online. As you approach excellence it is normal to wonder whether your time would be better spent doing something else.
But what Rogan is saying here, is that it doesn’t matter what you do, what matters is that you achieve excellence.
Achieving excellence means you saw something through to the end. It means you were willing to make the sacrifices necessary and that you understand how much work excellence requires. These are the traits that increase your potential in everything.
Focus on bettering your strengths rather than improving your weaknesses
“I just don’t know what I should do.”
We’ve all been in this position, especially when you’re fresh out of school, you have all this time and energy that used to go into studying and now you don’t know where to put it. Rogan is saying here that it doesn’t really matter as much as you think, just pick something and get started.
- Play to your strengths – they give you a head start
- Do something you already enjoy – That will keep you going when times get tough
- Just start – don’t think about it too much
- Keep going – Don’t stop till you’ve achieved excellence
Joe Rogan on Living for Yourself
“The audience changes every night. You’re the same person. You have to speak your mind and do the stuff that you think is funny and makes you laugh”
Joe Rogan
He’s talking about comedy
But the truth applies to anything you do in life. It’s tough doing the same set day in and day out, repeating the same jokes with the same delivery for different audiences. Eventually it get’s old and the material feels stale. Have you ever worked a job where you could relate? Doing the same thing day in and day out and feeling stale? I know I have.
Live for Yourself
If you spend your life doing something you don’t like it’s like a comedian doing the same jokes for the rest of his career.
- First, you need to find a way to do the jokes that make you laugh. This means finding something that you enjoy or that gives you a sense of meaning.
- Second, don’t make your jokes for the audience, make them for you. If you spend your life only trying to make other people happy, no one will be happy.
Joe Rogan on People
“You know as much about what life is all about as anybody who’s ever lived, ever. That’s the craziest thing about us. We’re all just kinda wandering through this.“
Joe Rogan
Although this quote doesn’t have the answer to the mysteries of life, it is reassuring to know that we’re all in the same boat. On days when you’re not feeling it or you feel like giving up, you can look at your idols and think “they have days like this too.”
In fact, idolizing people or putting them on a pedestal is a false economy. By idolizing someone or trying to emulate them, you may have some success but in the long run you rob yourself of your full potential. You can’t find your own destination if you’re travelling on other people’s roads.
Self confidence is half the battle
It can seem like some people just know what’s going on. That know what they should do, they go out and do it. But the truth is that you can do that to!
