We're playing San Andreas today, and I'm feeling extremely inspired, so I'm going to share those good vibes here with you. If there's anything I can share with you today, it's that you can have hope for your life. I do my live stream to let you know that somebody who used to hate their life loves it today. I've learned some valuable lessons again in the last few days, and I'll share them with you here.
Find What Works and Stick With It
One of my biggest struggles on my stream has been that I'll find some shit that works and then I'll stop doing it. How many of you can relate to that in your life? You find something that works, you find a person that works, you find a job that works — and then somehow you decide, you think you decide, but you decide to fuck it all up somehow. Now with my family and with my Alcoholics Anonymous program, my sobriety, I've done very well over the last seven and a half years. I find something that works and I stick with it. But in my live stream, I struggle with that. I'll find a game that works, and I'll stop playing it. And you know what the one thing that's not negotiable on my stream anymore is? If y'all don't want to watch a game, I'm not fucking playing it — because why the hell would I play a game y'all don't want to watch?
All right, we've got to go in with a different strategy. If at first you don't succeed, don't do the same goddamn thing over and over again and then bitch that it's the game, or bitch that life's against you. If you keep doing the same shit over and over again and it doesn't work, it's you and it's your approach. Find a different approach. So we're going in this time with a change of plan — instead of trying to run them all over and losing the car, we're going in from a different angle.
Memorizing Cheat Codes for Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3
Y'all remember them cheat codes — not writing them shits down on paper? Hell yeah, I remember memorizing cheat codes, because for some reason my parents would not buy me the magazines with the cheat codes in them. For example, my dad got me Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 when I was a teenager, but he wouldn't buy me the magazine to tell you how to play it. So we'd go in the store, and I literally memorized it. I memorized it so good I still remember it today — I can still rattle that code for Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 off out loud. It's bad how well I remember it.
Let's come in hard and fast again — kill his ass and bail, get the fuck out. Oh my god, the car blew up hard on my ass. Yeah. Fuck this. Oh man. And if you can't handle a little pain, if you can't handle getting your ass beat over and over, if it doesn't make you want to do better, then you might be in the wrong game. You might be playing the wrong game if you lose a little bit and you can't stand it. Fucking get back in there or quit playing the game. Let's get back in there.
Why I Do My Live Stream
What I'm thinking of today is this: I do my live stream so some poor bastard that fucking hates his life, drinking and/or using drugs like I used to, can see something different. I mostly was a drinker. Thankfully, I realized drugs were really going to take it to a place I couldn't handle. I thought I could handle drinking. I used to drink and be so depressed, playing video games, just thinking about killing myself, thinking about hurting other people. And I show up every day hoping to let somebody know there's hope in your life. You don't have to live a life that you hate, that you're ashamed of and embarrassed of. You can have a life you're proud of, full of purpose — if you'll just ask somebody for help. All you need to do is ask somebody for help.
Oh, hell yeah — do you see that? I pressed the left stick to raise the hydraulics, and oh, that shit flipped quick. That shit flipped quick. Oh my god. Oh shit, get the fuck out, it's gonna blow up. Yeah, I know I need the lowrider — we're about to fail this one.
What am I all about? I'm all about saving lives. I'm all about sharing the knowledge and the experience I have. The experiences I've had in my life can help save somebody else's life, and I'll tell you the one thing I'm not willing to do: keep my experience inside and miss out on the opportunity to help make a difference in somebody's life. That's what I'm all about. I want somebody to come through my stream and hear: look, you don't have to live that way. If you want to live that way, if that's what you want to do, then who am I to tell you you should live otherwise? But if you're honest and you realize your life is really shitty and you don't want to live this way anymore, I want you to know you have a choice — if you ask someone for help and accept the help.
Think about what kind of life you want. A lot of us are real good at saying what kind of life we don't want. Well, I don't want people to do this, and I don't want that, and I hate that, and this shouldn't happen. Okay — well, what do you want? And what are you willing to do to get it? Who are you willing to help in order to get it? That's what I am about. I swear I've had the same damn lesson on this livestream so many times, but you know what? The lesson will be repeated until you learn it. I hope I've learned it this time.
What the fuck am I doing right now, dude? I don't remember this part from before — this is funny. So you've got to bounce left or bounce right — oh, you can bounce down too? What the hell, it's like some Guitar Hero shit.
$650,000 in Debt Is a Blessing
I'm not even looking at the opposition here — and in life, I encourage you: don't even look at anyone you think is your opposition. In the short term it might look bad to have lost a job, but in the long term that's an opportunity to get a better job, to clear out space. You know, I was real frustrated a year and a half ago. I'd had this online business that was real successful, and a year and a half ago nothing was working. I was so frustrated. All I was doing was losing money. I was embarrassed at everything I was putting out. A year and a half ago I felt like I was at a low point in my finances. I was borrowing money off credit cards at 16% interest just to pay my fucking minimum payments. I saw a bankruptcy attorney just to try and see if that would help, and even she said, "Yeah, I can only help you with a little bit of your debt. You've got student loans, you've got business debt — I can't even help you with most of it. I could help you with fifty-three thousand out of six hundred thousand." I'm like, fuck. I was at a low point, and I realized: this low point is the opportunity I need to get out of this shit. I need to learn and grow. It's time to stop just spending money all over the place, time to learn and grow and become a new person.
I'm so grateful I made a video that went viral on TikTok — a video saying six hundred and fifty thousand dollars in debt is a blessing. Motherfuckers thought I was crazy. People were making it into a meme — one guy put a Nerf gun to his head and made a meme out of it. You know what? I love that, because most people would not think six hundred and fifty thousand in debt is a blessing. When you've been in debt your whole damn life and it gets to a ridiculous point like six hundred and fifty thousand — that's my debt and my wife's debt combined — it's time to make a change. I've clearly made enough money to be out of debt. I've made enough money in my life to be debt free, but I spent too much money to be debt free. So I've cut down drastically on my expenses, and I'm amazed how fast the debt has disappeared — amazed — once I stopped spending so much.
I do little things that don't even save much money, just because I enjoy them. Like I take the bath water out of my kids' bath, fill up a couple of one-gallon jugs, and I pour the bath water down the toilet when I flush it. Now that doesn't save hardly any money, but I enjoy doing it, because I'm like: it's fucking stupid to be using clean water to flush a toilet when I could just take these kids' bath water and pour that in the top of the toilet tank. I love it. My life is so good today — so good that when it's not good, I'm looking at it as an opportunity. I'm like, okay, my life is moderately difficult today. What's the opportunity here? What am I supposed to learn from this? In some ways I look forward to the next challenge, knowing that challenge is going to help me learn and help me grow.
I Remember Choosing My Parents
I started reading a lot of these books, and I had a memory come to me one night just walking my dog. I remembered choosing my parents before I had a body. I mean, I had a body — it was more like being an atom, I had an energy body — but I didn't have one of these the way we think of them as physical bodies. I remember choosing my parents. My dad was an alcoholic at the time I chose my father. And my mother was in an abusive first marriage with a man who lied to her, who told her that if she cheated on him he'd kill her — but he, as a man, had a right, he had needs, he could cheat on her whenever he wanted to. This is a man who told her he might have killed someone before, a man who draft dodged, a man who lied and cheated on his taxes. That was my mother's first husband, and she was still married to him. My father was an alcoholic, a drug addict, a gambler, and a sex addict who frequently saw prostitutes, who would often blow a whole bunch of money gambling, who was shooting IV drugs, who was drinking compulsively and had never been able to stay sober — a Vietnam veteran. And I looked at the two of them together, and I said: this is perfect. I can help these two. I can make a big difference in their lives. And I did — I made a massive difference in my parents' lives. And then my brother looked at the three of us, and he's like, this is still pretty fucked up — I'm gonna come help here too.
My brother took one look at our family and figured, y'all need another one — y'all need some more help down here. And I'm grateful, because Alcoholics Anonymous was the first place outside of my family and closest friends where I ever felt safe in public to just tell the honest truth like that.
Telling the Honest Truth in AA
When I was about two months sober, I was miserable. I was wanting to drink. My mind was racing constantly. I was so afraid of failing, so afraid of dying. I shared in a meeting one day — they said, "Anyone having trouble staying sober?" — and I raised my hand and said, "Yes, I'm struggling. I barely made it today sober, and I'm gonna drink tomorrow. I just want to let you all know." And man, I'm so glad I shared that, because I got the help I needed.
Then I walked into a meeting at two years sober. They said, "Anybody have a topic?" and I said, "Yes — let's talk about getting suicidal." This was two years sober, so five and a half years ago. I walked in and said, "I've been suicidal today. Even though I've got a family that loves me, even though I've been sober two years, even though I've worked on all this shit, I got to such a miserable place today doing a damn Tony Robbins happiness challenge. The day spiraled, and I got into a place where I couldn't eat and I could think about suicide." Hold up — let's creep in, grab the guns, and bounce. And I shared that. I said, "I'm not going to hurt myself. I'm in a safe place now. I'm just telling you all this is what I dealt with today. I got through it sober, and I don't want it to happen again." That's what I said five and a half years ago.
And you know what? I went to work on it. I told my wife, I told like everybody, and here's what happened from doing that: I got the help I needed. I saw a hypnotherapist — I saw one counselor who was a hypnotherapist, then I saw another one — and I got the help I needed to reprogram myself, so that when I get upset now, I don't think about suicide. Because if I'm upset, I have an opportunity to learn something, to grow, and to be a better person. Why would I want to end the pain of my own growth? When I'm in pain, it's an opportunity to learn and grow. And sometimes you're just going to go through rough spots in life. It's okay to go through rough spots where you don't know what's happening, where you don't understand, where you're confused. That's okay. It's okay to go through rough spots in life. In fact, some of the rough spots are the best learning opportunities.
The Police Officer Crying in the Greek Village
I think about when I was a police officer and I was dating a dispatcher. Dude, I'd go from absolutely feeling like I'm God on top of the world to suicidal with a gun to my head. One day it's "oh my god, we're talking again, this is so good, it's gonna work out," and the next it's "this bitch is ignoring me — I'm getting a hooker," having hookers ten years older than me over. Then I want to kill myself, the next day I'm calling my parents up, then I'm trying to apologize to her, and the next day I'm at work in uniform with my gun and my badge.
I literally was so fucked up mentally that one day I fell down on the ground while I was walking. I just relaxed my entire body and fell down on the ground, on the USC campus, in the middle of the Greek village where there's all these houses. It was like nine o'clock at night, and I'm talking to my parents and I'm crying, because I hate myself and I've forgotten my purpose in life and I'm struggling, challenged as much or more than I can handle. And I'm laying there on the ground, crying on the phone to my parents, in full uniform. Nobody found me wondering what the fuck this police officer is doing crying, laying down in the middle of the Greek village on his phone to his parents. If you had just looked at that snapshot of my life, you might have thought this guy is hopeless. But I like telling these stories, because that time of my life was an extremely valuable learning experience. I threw my career away as a police officer to hook up with a dispatcher, and that was the craziest time of my life.
I remember one night I tried to kill myself. I had a gun to my head, tried to squeeze the trigger, and couldn't do it. I physically couldn't do it. And I look at that as who I am — I'm the CEO of a several-trillion-cell body, and all the cells in my hand just mutinied that night. They're like, fuck you, we're not pulling the trigger. Fuck you. Not doing that. And then I'm laying on the floor, crying, texting this girl I'd had sex with before, trying to feel better and get some attention — but she had moved, or she lived out of state. I was just so miserable, so lost, so hopeless and confused. And you know what? I learned so much from that time of my life.
So if you're having a tough time in your life, I want you to know two things. One: if you're willing to learn something, you can wrap that tough time up pretty quick. And two: the tough time you're having in your life can help you learn and grow. In a tough time in your life, if you can find some meaning for the suffering in your life, that makes all the difference in the world. Damn it. Oh fuck. Oh my god — not hit. There we go. Damn.
Man's Search for Meaning
If you can find some meaning in the suffering, that makes all the difference in the world. Viktor Frankl wrote a book called Man's Search for Meaning. He said the ones who lived in the concentration camps were the ones who could find meaning for their suffering and a purpose for their life. They would find ways — they'd just happen to get assigned to a work detail that would keep them out of the gas chambers that day, or they'd get transferred from one camp to another when everybody in their dorm was going to get killed. It was as if the universe was there to support them. And he said the people who lost meaning for their life, the people who were just in the concentration camp going "what the fuck was the point of all this — this is all meaningless, my life means nothing, I've lost everything, it's over" — those people often would die within days of losing the meaning in their life. Within days. Say somebody was living for their family, and they found out their family died — they would lose the meaning in their life, and they just died. They'd die of dysentery, they'd get gassed. He said the most essential thing he saw in there was that you had to have some meaning for your life: why are you here?
And his meaning? He wanted to share what he learned in the concentration camps in a book with somebody someday. The thought of writing that book gave his life meaning — the thought of being able to share what he learned about human psychology from seeing human beings in the worst circumstances you can imagine. The thought of writing a book like that kept him alive.
I'm clearly not a victim of anything. I'm here because of my choices, and as proof of that I offer this: I'm still where I am today because of all the choices I've made. I'm choosing to do this stream. I'm choosing how I dress. I'm choosing what I say. All of my life is a function of the choices I've made, and I say to you: your life is a function of the choices you're making. If you're not happy with your life, make some different choices.
I know — no, dude, health is low, man, I need you to get my health back up — oh damn, I'm dead again. I'm choosing what game to play, I'm choosing what mission to do. I'm choosing the life I'm having today, and from there it's impossible to be a victim. So I think we're going to choose to wrap this game up now — and if you enjoyed riding through San Andreas with me, there's plenty more gameplay like this waiting for you on my Games playlist.