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John Cena (2025) - China, Pain Medication and Work Ethic · The Joe Rogan Recap

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  Welcome to the Joe Rogan Recap and before we get going, please
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  follow us right here on Spotify to make sure you get sight of
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  our latest episodes in your feed.
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  That's right. Today we're doing a really
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  fascinating deep dive. It's all based on a recent JRE
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  conversation. That's the Joe Rogan experience
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  with the one and only John Cena. And our mission here is to, you
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  know, pull out the most surprising and useful Nuggets
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  from that chat. We're looking at how he went
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  from, well, struggling athlete to a global cultural icon.
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  Yeah, and this isn't just about wrestling or movies.
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  It's really about commitment, adaptation and what it takes to
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  perform at that elite, elite level.
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  We're going to get into his decade long mission to learn a
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  new language, the absolutely brutal reality of his old career
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  schedule a philosophy on pain management that honestly sounds
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  impossible. It really does.
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  And the sort of deep gratitude that keeps them going.
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  And we're going to start with that dedication.
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  I mean, a 10 year linguistic task meant to open up this
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  massive new market, but instead it led to a huge international
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  incident. It's like the ultimate
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  cautionary tale A. Cautionary tale about what,
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  exactly? About the difference between
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  knowing the words and actually understanding the world they
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  belong to. OK, let's unpack that.
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  So Cena commits to studying Mandarin for a decade.
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  A whole decade. And the motivation?
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  It was a pure business calculation, right?
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  WWE wanted to break into the huge untapped Chinese market.
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  Right. A market that culturally just
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  didn't really get professional wrestling at first.
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  It wasn't part of their, you know, entertainment landscape.
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  So a decade of study, that is an incredible personal investment.
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  And yet, after all that time, he says he's not even
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  conversationally fluent. It's amazing, isn't it?
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  He says. He can like, dream and think in
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  Mandarin. But the language itself, the
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  tones, the structure, it's just a staggering hurdle.
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  It really puts into perspective for you, the listener, what true
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  mastery of a language like that requires.
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  It really does. But he got to a functional
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  level. He learned to read Pinyin.
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  Can you just clarify what that is for everyone?
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  Yeah, so Pinyin is the system that uses the Roman alphabet, R
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  alphabet to help you phonetically read and pronounce
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  Mandarin characters. So with that tool, he takes this
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  huge risk on a global press tour.
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  And the vow he makes is to do 70% of all his interviews in
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  Mandarin. 70%, yeah. And at first it was working.
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  I mean, it was working brilliantly.
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  He's connecting. Reporters are taking off their
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  translator headphones. His effort is being validated.
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  But that's where the problem starts, because success in that
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  environment needs more than just, you know, reciting words
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  you've memorized. The cultural safety net just
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  wasn't there. It really wasn't, and the whole
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  thing comes crashing down during the final segment of the tour.
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  He's reading from a teleprompter.
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  A script he didn't even write himself.
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  It was from the movie's PR team. Exactly.
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  So in that script, the pinion he's reading out loud, it
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  inadvertently refers to Taiwan as a country.
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  Oh boy. And that is the moment where
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  just saying words becomes stepping into these incredibly
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  murky, high stakes geopolitical waters.
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  He calls it his Ron Burgundy moment.
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  Like go F yourself San Diego put on a global scale.
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  A perfect description, and the fallout was immediate and
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  severe. The Chinese audience was
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  understandably furious. And then the aftermath gets even
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  worse. Sina has to issue this very
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  public, very difficult apology to China.
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  Which in turn makes his home country, the US, incredibly
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  angry with him. He's a guy who considers himself
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  a patriot and suddenly he's trapped.
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  A total no win scenario. And that whole ordeal really
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  cemented the big lesson for him. Just knowing the language gives
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  you absolutely no guarantee of understanding the culture,
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  especially not with these deeply sensitive geopolitical
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  flashpoints. He said he liked the cultural
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  fluency. Yeah, he was just doing his
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  homework, trying his best, and it was almost enough to get him
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  cancelled. That story is such a powerful
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  starting point. It shows that intense
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  dedication. So let's connect that to the
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  environment that demanded it in the first place, the pro
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  wrestling business. But before the physical grind,
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  let's talk about the WWE's corporate side for a second.
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  We should because around 2011, 2012, they were being
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  surprisingly forward thinking. How so?
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  They offered a free second language program to all their
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  talent. That's alongside financial
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  planning advice and even the secondary education options.
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  They were really trying to act like a modern global company.
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  That's genuinely impressive, but here's the stat that tells you
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  everything about the reality of that job.
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  The adoption rate. Solo.
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  Yeah, Sina was one of the only people who took them up on it.
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  He could only name two others. Claudio Castinoli, who already
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  spoke like 4 or 5 languages, right?
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  And Nattie Neidhart, the rest of the talent they just passed on
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  free education. And you have to stop and ask
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  why. Why would they fail to take that
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  opportunity? And it all comes down to the
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  brutal math of that workhorse schedule.
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  Or. Like in 200 and 22130 matches a
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  year. Think about that.
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  That's 220 days of what Cena calls intentional physical
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  trauma. Intentional trauma, Exactly.
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  So when your life is that constant grind, your priority
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  isn't, you know, grammar study. It's survival.
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  It's recovery. You just don't have the mental
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  space for it. He compared the lifestyle to a
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  touring stand up comic. You're always on the road,
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  always booking your own hotels, your own cars.
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  You're just living on that post show adrenaline buzz.
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  It's an entrepreneurial mindset just to keep the wheels turning.
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  But that schedule also means you have to be so smart about risk.
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  Right. And he made this crucial
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  distinction between WWE and something like the UFC.
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  He. Did.
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  In combat sports, it's pure survival.
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  The best person wins, and that means careers are often shorter.
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  But in WWE, the goal is different.
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  They are fundamentally working together to put on the best
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  show. And that one difference changes
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  everything. It allows for calculated risks
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  for choreography. It extends your career window
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  from a few years to maybe 1015, even 20 years if you.
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  Can manage the physical. Tool.
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  And that physical tool. Yeah, it brings us to maybe the
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  most mind blowing part of this whole conversation, his
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  philosophy on pain management. OK, so get this.
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  Cena has had about 10 major surgeries.
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  We're talking neck fusion, PEC reattachment, triceps, having
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  his nose physically relocated. Serious, serious procedures.
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  But the claim he makes is that he has never taken a single
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  prescription pain pill, an opioid, after any of them.
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  It sounds impossible. He says he still has the full
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  prescription bottles from 2008 sitting in a drawer, unused.
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  Never a single pill after a neck fusion.
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  What's the logic there? His reasoning is both
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  philosophical and very physical. He realized really early on that
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  the pills didn't actually stop the pain, they just made him
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  feel dumb and disconnected him from the work of recovery.
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  So he sees pain as a messaging system.
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  Exactly. It's not the enemy you need to
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  silence. It's your body's alarm system
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  and you need to listen to it to guide your physical therapy to
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  know when you're pushing too hard or not hard enough.
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  That is an incredible level of body awareness.
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  And that focus on recovery led him to some really specific
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  advice, Like for anyone facing ACL surgery, he strongly
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  recommends getting having a cadaver graft, specifically from
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  an Achilles tendon. Over the traditional method of
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  using your own Patella tendon. Way over, He says the cadaver
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  graft is about 6 months faster for recovery and the final
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  repair is 150% stronger than your original ACL.
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  That's a huge difference. It is, he said.
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  He was at a party just walking around totally fine five days
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  after his surgery, which is, I mean, that's just unheard of for
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  that kind of procedure. It really is.
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  It also just brings up the question of pain tolerance in
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  general. Is that something you can learn
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  or you just born with it? Well, he and Rogan talked about
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  that, and they basically landed on the idea that it's deeply
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  personal, maybe even genetic. Like hot sauce.
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  Exactly like hot sauce. It's the perfect analogy.
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  What's unbearable for one person is nothing to another, and seen
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  as tolerance is clearly just off the charts.
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  So we've got the physical endurance, but what about the
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  mental side? What actually fueled his path to
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  becoming a star? Yeah, because it wasn't a
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  straight line. He was failing at first.
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  Oh, big time. And his motivation wasn't
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  ambition. It was pure fear of failure, the
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  terror of getting fired. He compared it to the CEO of
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  NVIDIA, Jensen Wong, who apparently works seven days a
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  week, driven by that exact same fear.
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  And Cena's fear was justified. He was literally told he was
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  being cut from the roster, his character, this sort of generic
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  prototype, it just wasn't connecting at all.
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  And then came the happy accident, the white rap guy
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  gimmick that saved his career. A total accident.
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  Stephanie McMahon just happened to overhear him freestyling with
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  other wrestlers on the back of a tour bus.
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  And she saw something. She told him to try it on TV.
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  And instead of quitting or refusing, he took what he called
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  the shitty chance they put him on Velocity this tiny, unwatched
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  Saturday night show. So he had nothing to lose.
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  Absolutely nothing. And because nobody was watching,
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  he felt free to commit completely.
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  The outlandish clothes, the edgy rhymes, He went all in.
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  And that's what finally caught fire.
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  And that same creative instinct, that willingness to seize
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  control, it's still there today. You just have to look at his
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  recent heel turn at WrestleMania.
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  Oh that was brilliant. The genius of it was the anti
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  pageantry. Explain that.
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  So his opponent comes out with all the spectacle pyro dirt
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  bikes, a huge entrance. Cena decides to do the exact
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  opposite. No music, just a black screen
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  with Cena in white letters. And this blank, cold, terrifying
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  look on his face was instantly iconic.
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  And he said the idea didn't come from him dictating, it came from
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  him asking the production and camera teams how basic can we
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  possibly go. Just leveraging the talent
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  around him. That's it.
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  Which leads us to his philosophy now, as he's looking at
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  retirement from wrestling. His goal seems so different from
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  what you'd expect. They really are.
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  His main goal is simply to live useful.
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  He wants to make sure he has a depth of purpose, whether or not
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  Hollywood is calling. He can't control the
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  opportunities, but he can control the effort.
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  Right, Give $10.00 of value back for every $1.00 invested in him.
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  And he said his Hollywood career really only took off with movies
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  like Trainwreck and Sisters. Why then?
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  Because those sets created an environment where he was allowed
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  to fail to learn. It was patient.
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  It was a huge contrast to his earlier attempts, when his mind
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  was always still back in wrestling.
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  And all of this seems to stem from just this deep sense of
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  gratitude. Relentless gratitude.
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  He is completely aware that he's not supposed to be where he is
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  coming from. As he says fing West Newbury,
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  MA, he feels this constant drive to honor the luck he was given.
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  That idea of honoring the opportunity, it reminds me of
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  something when I was starting in stand up.
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  I slept on this horrible beanbag for months just to be in the
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  city near the clubs. I hated it, but I chose it.
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  And Cena had the exact same story sleeping in his 1991
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  Lincoln Continental in the Gold's Gym parking lot.
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  Refusing to go home. Exactly.
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  The discomfort didn't matter. What mattered was the choice.
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  The choice to put himself right next to where the opportunity
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  was. And he's even applying that same
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  philosophy to his personal life now.
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  He talked about mending this shitty relationship he had with
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  his 80 year old father. Yeah, by finally just getting
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  out of his own way, accepting his dad for who he is, not who
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  he wished he was. It's the same principle,
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  choosing the harder, more useful path of acceptance over the easy
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  path of a grudge. So if you're listening to this,
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  the big lessons from Sina's journey seemed pretty clear.
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  First, just knowing the words doesn't mean you understand the
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  world. Cultural humility is key.
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  Right second, when you have nothing to lose, be willing to
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  take that shitty chance. That's how his whole career
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  started. And third, use that deep
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  gratitude to fuel you through the grind.
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  Choose the bean bag, choose the car because the value is in
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  being where you need to be. And it all connects back to his
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  main goal. Cena believes that if you can
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  just capitalize on 30% of the opportunities life gives you,
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  you'll be in the top 1% of humans who have ever lived.
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  Which leaves a really important question for you to think about.
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  His goal is about the big moments, right?
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  But how can we in our day-to-day lives get better at recognizing
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  and grabbing the small opportunities?
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  What do you mean the little moments?
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  The fleeting chance to choose kindness when you don't have to,
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  or saying yes to a difficult task?
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  You really want to say no to those tiny percentage points?
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  They add up. They become the 30%.
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  The compounding power of saying yes to the small stuff, that is
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  a deep thought to carry with you.
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  Thank you for diving deep with us.
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  Go out there, choose purpose, and don't squander your luck.