Eric Thomas

I talk about the roulette table of my life.

It's the frame I think through where we wake up in the morning with these 24 chips.

If you spend eight hours sleeping, you wake up with 16 chips left.

And how you place those chips on this roulette table that sits in front of us...

just before the wheel spins every day determines all of our outcomes in our lives.

So I've chosen now to allocate two chips to this little piece here called fitness.

The roulette table spins and I get my returns.

As I went down that chapter, I realized that in the context of time and death and time management, the most important question to answer the fundamental is discipline.

How can I allocate more of these chips to the things that are in line with my values?

Where does this thing called discipline come from?

If it underpins everything we do.

Being the hardest worker in the room is about actually learning how to walk the walk when everyone else just wants to talk the talk.

It's understanding that you are going to be exhausted and alone and in pain and struggling for years with no support, with no cheerleading squad and nobody patting you on the back.

This game isn't for everybody.

But if you're willing to go through that pain and if you're willing to do the goddamn work, then you can put that badge on and call yourself the hardest worker in the room.

We don't rise to the standards we have when others are watching.

We fall to the standards we have when no one is watching.

The only work that really matters is the work that no one sees.

It shows you who you really are rather than who you say you are.

Listen up.