Zedd: Discovering Pure Performance - How Sobriety Elevated His Music and Life | EP 852

The Daily Motivation

Lewis Howes

Education, Self-improvement

4.8 • 893 Ratings

🗓️ 6 January 2025

⏱️ 7 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

"I'm significantly better at my craft sober... I can deliver a better result for people who have spent their hard earned money coming to my show." - Zedd World-renowned DJ and producer Zedd opens up about a transformative revelation that changed his relationship with alcohol and performing. Through meticulous calorie tracking and data from his Whoop device, he discovered that his pre-show ritual of multiple Jack and Coke Zeros was masking a deeper truth about his artistry. The turning point came during a pivotal Las Vegas show where, faced with a caloric choice between eating or drinking, he took the stage completely sober - only to experience the same electric connection with his audience that he previously attributed to alcohol. What started as a practical decision about calories evolved into a profound professional epiphany. Zedd reveals how he confronted and overcame the paralyzing fear that sobriety would end his career, discovering instead that the real source of his performance energy came from genuine passion for his craft and connection with his audience. His journey from believing he "couldn't perform sober" to recognizing that he's actually "significantly better" without alcohol offers a compelling look at how facing our fears can lead to unexpected breakthroughs in both personal and professional life.

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hi, my name is Lewis Howes and welcome to the Daily Motivation Show.
0:12.6	I started writing down all my calories and little things you wouldn't even think like
0:17.0	AG1 50 calories. You know, you have 10 of those things throughout the day.
0:21.3	That's a full meal.
0:22.2	So I started writing them down, and there was this one show where I was pretty hungry,
0:26.4	and I had the show at 1.30 a.m. starting, and I look at my sheet, and I'm like, well, I can either drink or eat.
0:33.8	Because a shot of alcohol, just for the ones who are interested is just about a hundred calories right one shot yeah I guess you don't drink yeah yeah yeah and you can go through 10 shots a night no
0:44.1	holy cow that's a look like two meals yeah it's it's you know you can have your entire day's worth of uh calories yeah that's crazy so I looked at it like, okay, well, I can't afford to drink today because I don't
0:56.2	have the calories.
0:57.2	And if you mix it with other things, it's even more.
0:59.7	Sugar and spriter drinks, it's like more calories.
1:02.4	Even more calories.
1:03.1	So I looked at my sheet and I was like, okay, well, today, because I want to stay on track, You can undo a whole weeks of starving and doing well and working out by one silly night out.
1:13.1	And I will even argue that it's worth it to do that occasionally if the right circumstances are met.
1:19.4	But in that sense of thing.
1:20.6	It was my default, right?
1:21.9	It got to the point where I would show up and I want to thank everybody who does this because it just shows how much they care.
1:27.7	But I would show up to places and people would know my favorite drink, which was Jack and Coke Zero for a long time.
1:32.4	There's all of it. And it was premixed the moment I walked in, so I didn't even have to ask for it.
1:36.6	Like that's really good hospitality, but it became a norm. It became like Anton's drinking and he's drinking Jack and Coke. I would have two before I go on throughout the two hours set, probably two to three on and
1:48.8	like one or two after.
1:50.4	We're talking about-
	...

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