Life Lessons Learned from Hollywood (and Drag Racing) with Ali Ashfar

Alex Dodd is also known as Ali Afshar and is an actor and producer, known for Three Kings (1999), Godzilla (1998) and The Siege (1998) and is also the founder/president of the world record holding auto racing team Easy Street Motorsports (ESX).

He is the creator of the exclusive ESX Super Vantage Aston Martin and ESX STI Subaru vehicles. Alex and his company ESX raced for Subaru of America for 7 years from 2001 through 2007 and won two NHRA National Championships in 2006 & 2007.

Favorite Success Quote

“You can sleep when you are dead”

Key Points

1. Always be Hustling

You can sleep when you are dead, or as Newton put it “A body in motion tends to stay in motion.” Once you gain momentum, it is imperative that you keep hustling and keep grinding to ensure continued success.

While there is plenty of debate about the effects of sleep and success, if you want to be successful, you will lose sleep to achieve your goals. If you want to achieve great things, you have to be willing to lose sleep, put in the effort, and work ungodly hours for a certain amount of time. But it will be worth it.

2. Do What You Love

As cliche as it may sound, a life spent doing anything other than things you love, is a life of drudgery and pain. Why would you willingly subject yourself to daily work that you find dull and uninspiring just for an added 0 on your paycheck?

Do what you love and the money will follow (given that what you love is more than playing xbox). If you live your life doing things that light you up with a passion, you will never work a day in your life, and money and impact will be a natural byproduct.

Don’t waste your life with things you don’t love. Follow the advice of your middle school teacher and do what you love.

3. Use Your Passions Instead of Drugs and Alcohol "Stuff" happens. Welcome to the real world. When it does, many men are tempted to fall into drugs and alcohol to escape their problems instead of facing them head on. Instead of falling for this trap, dive headfirst into your passions and create a life centered around the things you love to help yourself heal and get through the hard times.

Bad things will happen, it’s up to you whether you allow them to destroy you and ruin your life with addiction, or whether you use it as a catalyst to create your best self.

4. Change the World with Kindness

The world is full of bad people. It’s full of wannabes and windbags trying to seem important and putting others down in the process. Don’t be like them.

Life is short, love others, be kind and leave nothing on  the table because you never know when it is your time. You will never regret a life of passion, love, and kindness. Period