The video addresses the deep dissatisfaction many people have with their lives and careers, citing statistics that indicate 87% of the global workforce doesn't enjoy what they do. It stresses that people often reflect on missed opportunities and harbor regrets not because of their appearance or individual shortcomings, but because they failed to reach their potential. By learning from the success stories of prominent figures like Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Warren Buffett, and Elon Musk, viewers are encouraged to transform their lives through mentorship and by associating with high-performing individuals.

This is an unfiltered call to action urging people to pursue excellence and to reassess their approach to life, surrounding themselves with people who inspire ambition and high self-esteem. It implores viewers to break away from complacency, detailing the importance of setting high goals, seeking mentors for guidance, and recognizing the significance of self-esteem, cultivated during the formative years. The video critiques the modern tendency to settle for mediocrity and urges a reevaluation of actions, especially concerning personal and professional development.

Main takeaways from the video:

Please remember to turn on the CC button to view the subtitles.

Key Vocabularies and Common Phrases:

1. self esteem [self ɪˈstiːm] - (noun) - Confidence in one's own worth or abilities; self-respect. - Synonyms: (self-respect, pride, self-worth)

The first self esteem is built the first seven or eight years of life.

2. mentorship [ˈmɛntɔrˌʃɪp] - (noun) - Guidance provided by an experienced person in a company or educational institution. - Synonyms: (guidance, counseling, coaching)

My whole basis is mentorship.

3. high performance [haɪ pərˈfɔrməns] - (adjective) - Achieving superior or above-average results and efficiency. - Synonyms: (excellence, superiority, peak performance)

self esteem is the bedrock of high performance.

4. transformation [ˌtrænsfɔrˈmeɪʃən] - (noun) - A thorough or dramatic change in form or appearance. - Synonyms: (change, alteration, metamorphosis)

Twenty years from now, when the greatest transformation of wealth occurred.

5. obsession [əbˈsɛʃən] - (noun) - An idea or thought that continually preoccupies or intrudes on a person's mind. - Synonyms: (fixation, compulsion, fascination)

obsession

6. sabotaging [ˈsæbəˌtɑ:ʒɪŋ] - (verb) - Deliberately destroy, damage, or obstruct something, especially for personal gain or control. - Synonyms: (undermine, thwart, subvert)

You've been engaging in self sabotaging activities so long, it's become a way of life for you.

7. relentless [rɪˈlɛntləs] - (adjective) - Unceasingly intense; not giving up or yielding. - Synonyms: (persistent, unyielding, tireless)

Challenge the culture of mediocrity through relentless effort.

8. complacency [kəmˈpleɪsənsi] - (noun) - A feeling of smug or uncritical satisfaction with oneself or one's achievements. - Synonyms: (self-satisfaction, smugness, contentment)

Critiques the modern tendency to settle for mediocrity and complacency.

9. assumption [əˈsʌmpʃən] - (noun) - A thing that is accepted as true or as certain to happen, without proof. - Synonyms: (presumption, belief, supposition)

Why do we care what people say? And more importantly, why do we care what people whisper?

10. pedestal [ˈpɛdəstəl] - (noun) - A position in which someone is greatly or uncritically admired. - Synonyms: (reverence, veneration, high regard)

Shows admiration for high-performing individuals put on a pedestal.

STOP WASTING YOUR LIFE - Dan Pena BEST Motivational Video

87% of the planet hate what they do. Look in the mirror. Most of you, you know, don't like what they see, not just because you're too fat, you're too skinny, you're bald, you're gray, whatever. It's because you know what you could have been. That's his one kid. He's 28 years old. $125 million. What were you fucking doing at 28 years old?

I've only got three regrets in my life. Three. One, I'm a combat-trained army officer who never saw combat. That's just the way it was during the Vietnam war. Two, I yelled at my mother the day before she died. I said, mom, mom, you're not sick, God damn it. You're not gonna fucking die. Next morning, she's dead. And three, I didn't set my goals high enough. Not because I missed my son's soccer ball, not because I miss my daughter's prom. That's all rubbish. That's not what you say when you're about to die and you whisper in your wife's ear or your son's ear or whoever's going to give the eulogy. I regret the things I didn't do. I coulda, I woulda. I shoulda.

I will do whatever it takes, and when I say I do whatever it takes, I fucking mean it. I know how to get you to the top of the podium at the Olympics. Not for a bronze medal, not for a silver, but for a fucking gold. If we're not going for gold, don't waste my time.

Show me your friends and I'll show you your future. But Bill Gates doesn't hang. Steve Jobs, who I knew didn't chill. Warren Buffett doesn't hang. Elon Musk doesn't hang. Would you want your children to be like your two best buddies or two best gal friends, whatever you call them? Would you? Probably not. Would you even want your children to be like you? Probably nothing. So why? Why is there so little being done about it?

If I were to judge you by the guys you chill with, you hang with, how would I judge you, young man? How would I judge you, young lady? I'd probably judge you a dipshit. You hang out with monkeys, what happens? Your life becomes a fucking circus. Now, with the greatest respect, kids, this is not Barnum and Bailey's circus.

You only have one time to make a first impression. The first impression is how you look. Now, I already know how I look, and you know how I look as well. Second impression is when you open your mouth. Most of you with the greatest respect, can't speak properly, you stutter, you mumble, you sweat, and I can go on and on. So you go where there are people that you want to be like. You find somebody that is, in my whole basis, is mentorship.

Find somebody that is where you want to be 20 or 30 years from now and go to him or her. Now. I had the presence of mind to be attracted to some very, very famous, very wealthy people in my 50 year career. And I went after them to. Not for money, not for anything like that, but I just wanted them to talk to me and to share their wisdom. And today, people are afraid. We've had mentees in the last couple years that actually got through to Bill Gates. You can't stop trying. If you wanted to be a world-class athlete, where would you go? A world-class post, right in the nineties, the kids really were looking towards the future. Now I go back and I go to schools, and now they just want to chill and play video games.

Me and every beating I got from my dad, I deserved 20 more because he only beat me for what I got. Caught. If the nuns caught me, they beat me. If the priests caught me, they beat me. And then my dad would come back into town and he would beat me because they didn't beat me enough. The first self esteem is built the first seven or eight years of life. Who are you around the first seven or eight years of life? Mom, maybe dad, older brother, uncle, a grandmother? Right? What the hell do they know about building self esteem?

We knew. Our parents told us crap. We listened out of politeness, most of us, myself included. Out of fear, in my case. But now, kids, your dad. A dad will tell his son or a daughter, and they'll just say, that's rubbish. Dad's talking shit. Why is he telling us that?

What are you going to tell your grandchildren and your children 20 years from now, when the greatest transformation of wealth occurred? What were you doing, grandpa? What were you doing, dad? Would you have your thumb up your ass? What are you going to tell him? You had your thumb up your ass. It may have been covered with old Geneva or New Geneva, but you had your thumb up your ass. Okay? And if you want to build self esteem, deal with people that have high self esteem. Now, it's not likely Elon Musk is going to have coffee with you. Maybe it's not likely that Warren Buffett's going to have coffee with you.

self esteem is what most of your parents didn't give you. It's a form of self confidence. It's a form of self awareness. Well, it's the least informed thing that our parents know anything about. And when I get paid parents, and they say I did, you know, I didn't know any better. You don't know what you don't know. I did what my parents did to me. Did as the operative word. I did what my parents did to me. Now, what kind of teaching structure is that?

Most parents aren't capable of creating high-performance kids, unless you're Andrew Agassi and Stephanie Graff. I mean, those kids are going to be high-performance in one way or another because they're both world champions. And so self esteem is the bedrock of high performance. It's the bedrock of everything, and it's the least thing that is taught in schools.

So what can you do to build self-confidence and self esteem? Why do you think you're going to have it? Why? Because you deserve it. I don't think so. You deserve what you get in life by working hard. When our kids got out of. And they went to great schools when they got out, I said, I am hard. Olympic athletes say, you're as hard as my Olympic coach was when I won two gold medals.

That's the kind of person you want in your life. Not somebody that agrees with you, not somebody that says, it's all right, you can try again. You're only 26. You've got the rest of your life. That's crap. Now look at all these people in their thirties, forties. Somebody told them that bullshit 25 years ago. Now look at them. Just look around the goddamn table you're sitting with. And I don't even have my glasses on. I see bald heads, gray hair.

Be the first in the building and the last to leave. And my daughter says, daddy, that's the janitor, the guy that cleans the floor. I said, yes, honey. Five months into her first job, she said, the chairman of the company, big company, said, whose light is that up there? Well, that's Kelly Penas. What is she? She gets to work at 05:00 and then he's leaving. Whose light is that? 1115 at night. Well, that's still Kelly Pena.

If you're in sales, make 300 cold calls a day. 300 cold calls a day? 300 cold calls a day? Correct. Will it still work? Absolutely. We got kids doing it. We even got some lazy dutch kids doing it right now. Just pick up the phone. Yeah, yeah. And I mean, for a dutch kid, 24 years old, to make 20 cold calls a day, there's nobody teaching sales in this country that I'm aware of that tells you to make 300 cold calls a day. In fact, there's nobody on the planet that I'm aware of that tells you to make 300 cold calls a day.

I had a guy just do a $50 million deal. He said, "Dan, if you just told me I was 2000 cold calls away from my first deal, I would have sent you a check for 20 grand" and said thank you. And I went to come to the castle. I believe in God. Yeah. I have no proof. Neither do you. I have no proof. But I have faith. Faith.

And that's one of the missing things from your not a journey. Because life's not a journey. A journey are for meatheads. Life is find somebody who you want to be like and follow what he did. Just like Socrates, Plato and Aristotle did 2500 years ago. So I modeled very successful people and that's what the whole program is based on. But I believe.

And the kids that are the most successful, whether the lazy dutch kids that I poke fun at or everybody else, they have faith. But most of you don't have, and I say generally speaking, most of you don't have faith in yourself because you have low self esteem, no self confidence, you look like shit, you dress like shit, and you blame it on the 21st century.

The reason why you dress the way you do. 25 years ago, if you come to a seminar like this, you'd all be wearing suit and tie. 40 years ago, the women would be wearing hats. Dress. If you want to get money from banks, dress like the president of your country. Unless you're from Pakistan or India or something, dress like the president of the prime minister of your country.

You only have one time to make a personal question. Kids. You come in looking like some of you, I wouldn't give you fucking toilet paper. Most of you I'd be embarrassed the way you're dressed. But see, Michael didn't bring me here to make. If I leave here with anybody liking me, I failed. You understand what I'm saying? I failed. I'm not here to be your friend. You want a friend to go get a fucking dog? I'm here to drag your sorry ass across the goal line, no matter what it takes.

CEO of Onassis group, who was my mentor, told me if you don't ask, Mister Pena, you cannot get. So I used to carry that forward into my love life. You don't ask, you don't get. You can't go up there stuttering with your hands sweating and dressed like you. It's absolutely dead easy. Almost everybody can do it. Well, follow the rules.

You know, everybody. If they dress like a. Like a person, like the president of your country, some people, again, I'm sure this is not the case for your audience, Michael, but some people dress the way you do kids, because you don't want the opportunity. You've been engaging in self-sabotaging activities so long, it's become a way of life for you.

But success leaves clues. If all these guys work 8100, 120 hours a week that changed the world successfully is closed. God almighty. Elon Musk is a hard bastard. Henry Ford was a hard bastard. Rockefeller. And you know, well, my interfacing with the Heineken family, he was a hard bastard, you know? So how do you think the world got changed? Slappy happy? I have another gabbagino. Is that how it happens? I don't think so.

Now you may not. You know, my Dante isn't for everybody. I understand that. I can't understand it, really, but my wife tells me you're not everybody's cup of tea, so I understand it. I don't want to believe it, but I know it's true. I'm 72 years old, but all the people I've been privileged to be around, I've been around some big, big hitters, they're all the same. But now, because if everything's on iPhone, they're trying to paint their legacy. Now, they don't swear on camera now, they don't do all these things because they want their legacy.

I don't give a shit about my legacy, because I am the best on the planet of getting you to do what you don't want to do because you're a lazy fuck to get what you want out of life. Nobody's better than I am. Nobody. And I know it. And not everybody loves me, and I don't care. That's good. Again, if I leave here with anybody liking me, I failed. I failed. You have another mission.

Yeah, I'm on a mission. You know, I'm obsessed. If you can't tell. obsession. Who did I study speech giving when I was learning to be a world class speaker? Hitler, Churchill, Kennedy, Stalin, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Those are the movies that I watched. Being a high-performance person doesn't mean you're a good guy.

And bad things happen to good people every single day. And some of you in the audience don't want. You can't. It doesn't resonate well with you. You do what for your kids and your employees? Your kids and employees don't do what you tell them to do, they do what they see you do. Most of you have bad habits. You have habits, but most of them are bad.

So we have to change. Yeah. And some of them that. Some of you have aspirations to have your children get good grades, right? As they have Asia, right? Yeah. Yeah. You weren't an a student. How do you think that resonates with your kids? I've never seen a high-performance person that was part time. I'm going to say that again for you lazy Dutchman and dutch ladies.

I've never seen a high-performance person that was part time. So if you don't have the power of the human spirit, if you really don't believe in yourself, and we already talked about, you don't have self esteem, you don't have self confidence, you don't feel self worth, we're going to explain exactly why you don't have those things, but I'll give you a hint. Mommy and daddy fucked you up big time.

If you weren't afraid of what people thought of you, said about you, whispered about you, what could you accomplish? A lot more than you've accomplished today. A lot more. Why do we care what people think? Why do we care what people say? And more importantly, why do we care what people whisper?

Because we have no self-worth. We have next to little self-esteem, and we have no self-confidence. And how do we get that way? Yes, mommy and daddy, when was the last time you exhibited some courage? Some of you have to go back a long, long way. Some of you never, I said yesterday.

I cannot believe that there are people in this audience that have never been spanked, never had a harsh word said to them by their parents, never got in a fight on the school grounds. I can't believe that. And you wonder why you are the way you are. Now, I'm not saying that being a high-performance person is beating the shit out of everybody, but it doesn't hurt.

Most guys come to me because I'm the alpha male father. They never had a. Most young guys come to me because they can't get their willy wet. What the fuck's the world come to? You got to come to a raging, crazy old fucking man, 72 years old, to get your willy wet. What's happened? Almost everything bad, that's what's happened.

So far since I initiated the snowflake test, 95.6% of everybody that's been tens of thousands that have taken the test are snowflakes. Now, if somebody came and spit in your wife's face, your daughter's face. You're standing there. Your mother's face. Where I come from, there's only one alternative. Correct. But you know what? At least 50% of the answers we get to say, well, I try to ascertain if he was having a bad day or I try to ascertain where he's coming from in life. Maybe he came from the body or the ghetto. Are you fucking crazy?

The guy just fucking spit in your mother's face, you stupid morons. There's only one fucking alternative. You beat him down through the pavement or die trying. And now the other excuse is, well, I'm afraid of going to jail if I put a whooping on the guy. Well, you couldn't put a whooping on a fucking paperback, first of all. And that's your excuse, you don't want to go to jail, so now we've got four or five generations of wusses.

Well, I have to ascertain if the guy's having a bad day or not. The world's fucked up guys, gals. They're selfish. And I tell you to be more selfish. And your parents should have told you to be selfish, because you can't be anything unless you love yourself.

Leadership, Motivation, Inspiration, Success Mindset, Self Esteem, Mentorship, Motivationfromzero