The Martell Method w/ Dan Martell
9 Brutal Lessons I Learned in 2025 I Wish I Knew Earlier
13 Jan 2026
Chapter 1: What mindset lessons did the speaker learn in 2025?
I've got nine mindset lessons I learned in 2025. I want to go through each one, tell you a story and tell you what impact it had on my life so that maybe it could serve you at where you're at right now.
Welcome to the Martell Method. I went from rehab at 17 to building a hundred million dollar empire and being a Wall Street Journal bestselling author. In this podcast, I'll show you exactly how to build a life and business you don't grow to hate.
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The first one is every level requires a new level of letting go. Learning to let go continuously becomes a theme in my life. What beliefs do I have that keep me stuck? What are areas of my life that I know better that if I just learned to let go would change everything in my business?
And that for me this year was a big takeaway is that every new level has a new devil and part of that devil to defeat it requires the let go. That's one. Two, people will attack you when you surpass them. It's human nature.
See, it sucks that there's probably people that you worked with a long time ago, went to school with a long time ago, or probably good friends of yours today that were your cheerleader, your fans. They supported you. They wanted to see you do well in life until the moment you surpassed them.
I don't know if you can resonate with this, but I guarantee there's something you've done recently where somebody criticized you for doing it. And you might take it as like, why would they do that? That's not nice. Like, why can't they support me? I'm telling you that on the come up,
The people that were your biggest fans have to criticize you because in the moment that you surpass, you've essentially showed them where they let go. You showed them where they chose comfort, where they chose simple, where they chose an easy life and you didn't. You literally woke up and decided I'm going to do the hard thing, even though I don't want to do it. I could just lay in bed.
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Chapter 2: How does letting go influence personal growth?
And in doing so, you show people where they gave up. And this year, I got attacked. I got attacked in the comments. I got attacked from peers. I got attacked from people that literally I thought were like my friends. I'm talking like close friends. And I kept coming back to this. The moment you surpass somebody, you've essentially shown them where they could have, they could have went with you.
Like, that's the crazy part is I want to see everybody win. And instead of them going like, oh, so cool that you did this. Teach me how. No, they got to talk about me behind my back. And they think you don't hear it. That's the crazy part is that you, they think that nobody's going to tell me. If you surpass other people, they will celebrate you on the come up.
And then as soon as you go too far, they can't help but start to attack and just know that it's coming and it's their own journey. And I actually have no feelings around it other than I really hope they get back on the train. Cause it's a lot of fun to win.
Third, the energy you put into a project, the energy that you feel connected, like right now, me and you, this energy hopefully is felt by the person watching. So the energy in is felt from the people out. That to me is such a big idea. As I worked on my book this year, that's where I continue to come back to it is,
I've been so excited about the content that I've been working on and creating and the ideas. Actually, I said I have nine, I have a bonus one for you today that comes from that.
That I'm continuously reminded when I grab snippets and I share it on my Instagram and the reactions I get or I'm speaking and I go, you know, there's something I wrote about this morning and I share it and everybody's like, oh my gosh, that's so good.
And when I think about where the inspiration or the feeling, even this list today, when I sat down this morning and I was connected to the energy of like the reflection and then also the excitement to share it with you today, like the energy that goes in to a creative project goes out to the audience, goes out to the viewer, out to the reader.
And I think that's something that most people don't understand. Like, if you're working on something and you don't feel it, guess what? The person that's going to use it won't feel it. The person that's going to watch it won't feel it.
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Chapter 3: Why do people criticize you when you succeed?
The customer won't feel it. So honor yourself and make sure you're only doing things that you, like, resonate with. Don't diminish the standard to make everybody happy. Like, fight for what you feel is great. That is number three. Number four, your life, oh, it's so good. Your life is the byproduct of your most dominant thoughts, actions, and feelings, period, full stop.
How you show up with your thoughts, how those thoughts drive your actions, how your actions drives your emotions. Those, and when I say dominant, the ones you think about most often, that's what shapes your life. When you hear me say the world isn't as it is, the world is as you are, that's what I mean.
When you realize that being the person who has $10 million is how you get $10 million, not having it, will change everything. Because most people wouldn't want things if it didn't give them the emotions that it comes with. Like if you're thirsty and you want water and the water doesn't quench your thirst, you don't want water. You want whatever's going to quench your thirst.
You want the feeling that comes with the thing. If you want a nice house, it's not the nice house you want. You want the sense of accomplishment and maybe safety. You want the feeling. If the house didn't provide that, you wouldn't want it. And that's why your life is 100% the byproduct of your most dominant. Write that down. Underline it. All caps. Bold it. Dominant.
actions, feelings, and thoughts. And that I will continue to come back to.
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Find it at martellmethod.com. Number five. Oh, this is so good. These are all great, but as I read them, I'm just like reconnected with it. You've never gotten better when things were easy. Never, ever, ever. In the history of mankind, there's no person that has said to themselves, I completely transformed my life when things were great. It's never happened.
It will never happen because pain is the perfect teacher. Pain will literally teach you the lesson that you've been avoiding. And any time life got hard and I realized that it was teaching me exactly what I needed to, at that moment, I got excited.
So I wanna encourage you to use this philosophy because this will change everything if you can get to this place, is that when things are hard, you respond with good. Challenge good. Set that good. Somebody mad at you, good. massive frigging debacle. Good. Why? We're the opponent. We're the opponent.
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Chapter 4: How does energy impact project outcomes?
Well, I had to remind myself, I decided to travel the world this year with my family. That's not a great environment to create content. I decided to focus 97% on Martell Ventures, my AI venture studio, not on media. I only allocate three hours a week to create content for my team. not a scenario where they have unlimited access to me.
So how can I complain about an outcome I want for the work that I'm not willing to do? That's just honesty. And you gotta look at yourself and say like, oh, I wish my content was popping off. Are you actually giving it a 10 out of 10 or are you doing some six out of 10s? Are you lobbing up? Are you inconsistent? Like just don't complain. Be honest with yourself.
If the work ethic isn't there, quality, drive, consistency, you can't complain for the outcome you didn't get. And number nine, don't take criticism from people whose life you don't want to live. As I read in the comments and there's all these people and they're talking about, you know, I don't like the, I don't like his hair. I don't like what he said. I don't agree.
The statistics and who would want to live. And I'm thinking there and I'm like, at first I was like, Now I go, do I want their life? Like, can I just assume what kind of life a person that would take the time out of their day to leave a comment on my social media is living? And if I wouldn't trade places, why would I accept that criticism?
Now that's an easy one to dismiss the people in the comments. The harder one is somebody that you consider a massive mentor in your life. Years ago, I hired somebody I look up to. He is incredibly wealthy. He taught me a lot. And as I got to know him, got closer to him, I started to see the cracks in the character.
And as a young person that's easily influenced by people that are way further along, I kind of made exceptions. I accepted things that I wouldn't have accepted from a friend, things that were said, comments that were made, requests of me that I just absolutely didn't agree with. Just, it was just these little tiny things that I just kept overlooking them. And then eventually I said to myself,
I don't want that person's life. I wanted to learn the skill that they taught me. I wanted to be mentored around the thing that I saw them do world-class levels at. But when I got close enough to actually see the life they lived and the challenges they had with their health and the challenges they had with their friendships and the challenges they had with their family, I was like, no.
And eventually I just created some space. Stopped replying to the text messages, stopped checking in, stopped showing up. And I created space because I had to be honest with myself. Why would I take feedback? Why would I take coaching?
Why would I be mentored by somebody whose life I do not want just because of a financial level of success they achieved when other areas of their life are not things that I aspire to? It's a dangerous strategy and a lot of people fall into. Those are nine, those are nine strategies from levels and devils and people will attack you and the byproduct of life and all these things, review this.
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